Path of Dragons 13 - Chapter 80 - Choosing Wisely

“I’m afraid to look.”

Jasai’i took Benedict’s hand, giving it a comforting squeeze.  “I was too.  It turned out well enough.”

“That was different,” Benedict mumbled, looking away.  “A lot less rides on ascension.  This is demi-god.  I’ll be stuck with this decision for centuries.  And if I choose wrong…”

“You won’t.”

He sighed.  “I wish I had your confidence,” he admitted.

His anxiety about advancing to demi-god had driven him to wait an entire day before finally committing to it.  And now that he stood on the edge of the miracle that was Druhmor, the nervousness fell upon him like an avalanche.  It buried him under a mix of fear and self-loathing that he’d hoped he’d left behind years ago. 

For someone like Benedict, confidence was an incredibly difficult thing to grasp.  For years, he’d managed to pretend, but always, in the back of his mind lurked his real feelings.  His fears.  His anxiety.  His certainty that he would make all the wrong choices, and when he did, the few people he cared about would pay the price for his mistakes. 

People like Jasai’i.  Their child, Louis.  Even Elijah. 

He was well aware that the Druid – his only real friend – believed that his demi-god evolution held the key to a return to Earth.  It was a well-founded notion, especially given Benedict’s ongoing study into ritual circles and portals.  He would never be a space mage like Hu Shui, but connecting to other dimensions represented a way to circumvent the abyss and, perhaps, return to the World Tree’s embrace.

From what he’d observed, those dimensions were entirely separate from their reality.  Some were tiny – barely more than a few acres – but others were so vast that they counted as universes unto themselves.  In a lot of cases, their very existences were so antithetical to his ability to understand them that even glimpsing them through the lens of his abilities was enough to drive him temporarily mad. 

And yet, there were enough habitable dimensions out there that he felt confident that he could one day use them for travel.  He just needed more power.  More focused abilities.  In short, he needed the right demi-god evolution.

Which was the origin of the pressure he’d felt from the moment he’d reached level two-fifty.

“You don’t have to do it yet.”

Benedict sighed. “That’s not true.  I should have done it the day the evolution became available.”

“We could wait.  With my new class, we might unlock more features.  We might gain access to the Knowledge Base.”

“That could take decades.  Centuries, even.  If it happensat all,” Benedict argued. 

Still, her suggestion had merit. After all, she had recently evolved as well.  Her ascendent class was a unique one, too.  Ward of the World Tree.  Before, she’d been a mere Archivist, which had come from a Scholar archetype.  The class was a blend of a fancy librarian and researcher, with abilities that helped her to catalogue vast quantities of information in her mind. 

But Ward of the World Tree was a massive shift for her, and it seemed to have put her on the path to becoming a full-blown Envoy.  Since then, she’d spent long hours communing with Treebie, which somehow gave her a trickle of experience.

No one knew exactly what sort of abilities she might get from such an odd class, but the expectations were high.

The only limiter seemed to be that Treebie, for all that his existence was wondrous, was not a real Branch of the World Tree.  He lacked a true connection and, of all the normal features that came with a Branch, he only offered a single one – class evolutions. 

Hopefully, that would one day change.

For now, they all had to assume that it wouldn’t, though. 

“I need to do this,” Benedict said, reiterating his previous resolution.  “It could be the key to everything.”

“You don’t need to take this burden.  You don’t have to save us, my love.”

“I know.”

But he would never know peace if he didn’t at least try.  So, without further conversation, he and Jasai’i set off across Druhmor.  They followed the well-established path, losing themselves in the botanical wonder Elijah had created. 

“I can’t believe he did this,” Benedict remarked after a little more than a mile.  He ran his fingers along the leaves of a nearby bush.  “I thought he was kind of dense.  You know, not stupid, but incapable of understanding the complexities of advanced rune theory.  So did Hu Shui.  But he was paying attention the whole time.  In retrospect, I think it was just a matter of focus.  While Hu Shui and I concentrated on unraveling the mysteries of that Primal Realm, he was busy keeping us alive.  Fighting the monsters only he could fight.”

He shook his head.  “Even in my wildest dreams, I never expected him to put these kinds of concepts into practice.  And especially not using plants as a medium.”

Indeed – the accomplishment was monumental in scope.  It was one thing to build a runic circle.  Doing so required time, practice, knowledge, and an eye for detail.  However, the patience it would take to literally grow the glyphs was incredibly humbling to consider. 

Yet, Elijah had managed it.

Just one more miracle to add to his collection.  If Benedict had ever doubted his friend’s unique power, the creation of Druhmor and the terraforming of the planet would have pushed those doubts aside.  The reality was that Elijah was just different, and in so many ways that normal people simply couldn’t keep up.

Not that Benedict was normal.

He wasn’t.  He had power and intelligence aplenty.  But he just couldn’t hold a candle to someone like Elijah.

The trip through Druhmor took more than a day.  He and Jasai’i camped in a soft meadow, where they slept beneath the tree’s twinkling leaves.  They looked like stars, though when Benedict tried to explain the concept of heavenly bodies to Jasai’i, she had some trouble truly understanding the idea. 

Not surprising, considering that, for her, she’d only known the abyss. 

Still, aside from both of them worrying about Louis, who’d been left with one of Jasai’i’s childhood friends, it was a more than pleasant night.

The next morning, they awoke to the sound of birds singing.

For a few moments, Benedict forgot where he was, and just lay on that soft bed of grass, enjoying the sound. 

Then, he felt how tense Jasai’i had become.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“What is that sound?”

That was when he realized that she had never heard a birdcall before.  Neither had Benedict for so long that he’d almost forgotten the sound.  “How?” he mumbled to himself. 

He’d seen insects buzzing around.  He’d even heard tales of small rodents and reptiles.  But birds?

Their existence defied belief.

And yet, there they were.  Benedict didn’t see them, but they continued to sing even as he explained the origin of their song to Jasai’i.  She seemed skeptical until, hours later, she finally caught sight of one.  It looked nothing like any bird Benedict had ever seen on Earth, but all the avian hallmarks were there. 

Jasai’i loved the tiny, blue-feathered creature immediately and without hesitation.  The same could not be said for the bird, which flew away the second it knew it was being observed.

Still, Jasai’i’s smile lasted for hours until they finally reached Treebie.

The tree was absolutely massive, and according to Elijah, the crown was more than a mile high.  The roots were far more impressive, having reached the planet’s core.  And given Gorveth’s size, that meant they’d grown hundreds of thousands of miles below the planet’s surface.

Jasai’i wasted no time before approaching the tree and laying her hand upon his mighty trunk.  She closed her eyes as ethera swirled around her.  The cracks in her skin pulsed subtly, and somehow, the energy contained within felt far less oppressive than before.

Was that a characteristic of her class?  Was something else at play?  Benedict had no idea.

He left her to her communion with the tree, and instead focused on mentally preparing himself for the choice to come.  So far, he’d not even checked his options, so he had no idea what to expect when, at last, he stepped forward and extended his own hand toward the tree.

Treebie’s bark was simultaneously rough and smooth.  Parts felt like glass, while others had the familiar texture of a normal tree.  But Benedict paid no real attention to that.  Instead, he felt almost overwhelmed by the dense surge of vitality and ethera coursing through the tree.

According to Elijah, Treebie was very young, and he’d yet to learn how to curate his own soul.  He’d described the phenomenon by comparing it to a toddler who’d been granted the might of a god – an apt comparison, as far as Benedict was concerned.

As such, it took a moment for him to acclimate, but when he did, he saw the expected notification:

Congratulations!  You have satisfied the requirements to evolve your class [Blood Ritualist].  You have 216 paths available to you.

He rarely thought about his ascended class, save to express gratitude that he’d chosen it over some of the more overtly demonic options.  It had allowed him to expand his repertoire into other dimensions.  Even so, he knew that his elder core had influenced his path to a significant degree.  He was a demon, and there was no escaping his nature, even if he still wasn’t certain what it meant.

Either way, there were more options for his demi-god class evolution than he’d been led to expect based on his research back on Earth.  Most people were only afforded a few options.  Maybe a dozen or so.  He had more than two hundred. 

Realistically, perhaps he should have expected as much, given the unique circumstances surrounding his situation.  After all, being thrown into the abyss and surviving had to count as a pretty impressive feat for his Legacy. 

However, when he took a look at the choices, he found himself a bit disappointed.  The vast majority of the available evolutions were stuck at the Exotic rarity, which was the same tier as his Blood Ritualist class.  He ignored those, focusing instead on the improvements.  There were a little more than twenty Legendary options, with ten Mythics.  But Benedict was far more interested in the Arcane options.

There were three of them:

Benedict narrowed his eyes as he considered the choices, drilling down into the actual class descriptions.  The first he inspected was the Hell Warden class:

Benedict grinned at the attribute bonuses.  One-fifty-seven.  He’d known that demi-gods gained quite a few more points per level, but the sheer number told him everything he needed to know about the gaping chasm between an ascendent and a demi-god.  That he’d managed to kill one of the latter – even when he had all the advantages – was a true accomplishment. 

And Elijah had been routinely fighting creatures at that level for years before evolving.

He shuddered at the implication that came in the wake of such a thought.

The class evolution itself was what he’d expected from the name, though he couldn’t help but focus on two aspects of the wording.  The first was the name itself, which suggested that he would become some sort of demonic jailer.  A slavemaster, from the description. 

Benedict ground his teeth at that idea.

He remembered what it was like to be a prisoner.  He’d spent months in the catacombs beneath Easton, forced to raise one undead minion after another.  The idea of forcing that upon others – even if those creatures were barely sapient, like the imps he routinely summoned – was abhorrent to him.

He would do it, but only if he had no choice in the matter.

And he had other choices, so he moved on to the next:

Benedict shook his head.  The class sounded good, at least at first glance.  But then, he saw some issues.  The first was that, according to the attribute allocation, it was slightly weaker than the Hell Warden.  Not by a lot, but Benedict didn’t have the benefit of so many attribute points that he could ignore even the slightest difference. 

The second issue came from the note that it was a major deviation from his current class and would entail the alteration or deduction of many of the spells he currently took for granted. 

As he re-read the entire description, Benedict came to the conclusion that the Dimensionalist wasn’t meant to be a straightforward fighter.  Instead, it would set him on the path of a non-combatant, incorporating some Scholar and Explorer traits into the class’s toolkit.

That was a very attractive option.

For all that Benedict was willing to fight, he’d never relished combat.  Not like Elijah seemed to. 

But was he in a situation where he could choose that option?  Gorveth seemed safe enough at the moment, but the fact that it was a planet stranded in the middle of the abyss had not changed.  Just outside Elijah’s latest circles, there were truly dangerous monsters that could destroy everything they’d worked for. 

He pondered that for a few minutes until he finally decided to look at the last option:

Benedict frowned.  Not because the class was unimpressive.  Indeed, it seemed like the perfect evolution for him.  The part about forming symbiotic relationships with his summoned entities was extremely appealing, and not just because he found that idea more morally defensible.  Instead, he’d found that he’d gotten much better results from willing creatures. 

In addition, the class featured better attribute bonuses than any of the others, suggesting that it was, at its base, more powerful.  If he had to guess, it was on the verge of stepping into the next tier, which meant that it was the most powerful of his options.

That only served to complicate things, though.

Voidcaller and Dimensionalist were clearly a cut above Hell Warden, though.  So, he eliminated that one without further consideration. 

That left Benedict with a choice between two distinct but related classes.  Both focused on accessing other dimensions.  Voidcaller was the more combat-oriented option, while Dimensionalist concentrated more on exploration and scholarly study.

He pulled away from Treebie and asked Jasai’i her opinion. 

“I can’t make the choice for you,” she stated, stepping close and slipping her arm beneath his.  She leaned in.  “And I fear that my selfish desires might unduly affect your decision.  If I give you my advice, you may one day resent the path I send you to walk.”

From that statement, he knew which one she preferred, and it wasn’t difficult to figure out why she’d come to that conclusion.  After all, she loved him.  An odd acknowledgement for a man who’d never really been loved before, but he was certain that was the case.  And if that was true, then of course she would want him to avoid combat.  The Dimensionalist class offered that.

But could he choose that, knowing the dangers still out there?  One day, it might help them escape Gorveth.  However, that wouldn’t do anyone any good if they were devoured by monsters.

Suddenly, he couldn’t get a singular image out of his mind.  Jasai’i and Louis, dead and devoured by an abyssal abomination.

He couldn’t allow that.

He chose Voidcaller.