Earthchild

Chapter 68: Intermittent Paralysis

Lerko hadn't been able to go into the tunnels in days with any of the Delver teams. There were only eight of those in the entire camp, and they'd cleared out all of the surrounding tunnels already. 

This meant that he had to work with the Attacker teams now, which was much less thrilling. They'd just killed a swarm of ants. Lerko, with his twin blades and empowered body, had done the most killing on the team. Even the team lead, a handsome woman with an Enkiith accent, had only fal...

Chapter 67: Fundamental and Permanent

There were a few Flora spells that Caen was interested in. They all had to do with the manipulation of wood and foliage. With a boosted Flora affinity, he began adapting the spells. It was slow and meticulous work, but Caen had always enjoyed preparation of any kind.

The time construct at the corner of his vision kept him aware of the hours as they rolled by. It was well past noon by the time he left the Plane to go get lunch.  He wasn’t so hungry, but it’d been almost twelve ...

Chapter 66: Contracted Bonds

Author's Note: Daily releases are now 1 chapter a day. Patreon gets extra chapters twice a month, however. Thank you so much for your support.

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They ate and talked, though Hakohnzo continued to sleep. Albion's cooking was very good, and Caen made sure to voice that several times during the meal. Good food deserved praise. 

A beautiful time construct hung in the corner of Caen's field of vision. He'd connected to Guinevere, linked ...

Chapter 65: A Farmer's Children

The air quality was deceitfully pleasant. A light breeze tousled Caen's hair even though they flew over leafless trees on Hakohnzo at impossible speeds. 

It was obviously a magical effect of some kind. A pocket of air, maybe? But how was it filtering air in here as well? Caen was fascinated.

He connected to Hakohnzo, glad to now be able to do so without needing to look at the creature. And once again, he was shocked. Its soul structure, too, was imperceptible to him. <...

Chapter 64: Beautiful, Ugly Moon

They'd been moving through root-portals almost every hour for a good while now, and Caen’d had to Mimic Zeris's Space affinity to handle the excruciating discomfort. 

Now, having run from a swarm several chambers back, they were waiting for Zeris to activate the root-portal. Her will was strained, and she was running very low on mana, so she needed to work slowly. They had completely run out of food and water. Guinevere's mana storage device was empty, and Caen was nearly gutted ...

Chapter 63: Breakthrough As An Option

Vensha had not slept in days; how could she? She was furious.

Anger was easier than helplessness. Easier than terror and frustration. Her niece and nephew had gotten caught in the middle of foolish political shenanigans. A tribunal, she'd heard, had been established to try several high-ranking military officials at the Odaton camp. Vensha cared for none of it.

The idiot whom they'd tried to assassinate was doing nothing to help support the search for Zeris and Caen. She'd scuttled...

Chapter 62: Tangled

After another day of running around the tunnel system, killing ants and avoiding being grabbed by roots, Caen had healed their wounds and applied the sleep abeyance spell. They'd been forcing themselves to manage their rations and water far more severely because they were almost out. Their collective water and food were all but depleted. Without Guinevere's supply, they'd have been out already.

“Alright, let's do it,” Zeris said. “Actually, wait. Just give me a moment more to make...

Chapter 61: Big Brother and Big Sister

They'd just killed a swarm of ants and had escaped back to a chamber they'd been in before. Between Zeris's map, Caen's tyyr ink markings on the floor, and the dark blood of dead ants, it was always easy to tell.

Caen was healing their wounds. He'd spent quite some time on his own wounds, being the most injured—though his full armor with its weak enchantments definitely helped. His reserves were just about a third of the way full, so he was prioritizing once more. He and Zeris had al...

Chapter 60: Group Chat

The chamber was empty save for an antenna ant standing by the exit he'd yet to scout. The creature's soul structure revealed that it was calling out to other ants. Flickering Soul-sense, Caen shot it in the head twice.

He could hear chittering further down that passageway, but Zeris and Guinevere had taken the first one he'd scouted. Zeris's rifle rang out a few times. 

Quickly, Caen put his sword between his teeth, then grabbed a blanket from the ground. He took out a vial f...

Chapter 59: Agitating The Roots

“I'm going to try something!” Caen said to them. “It might make the roots very mad.”

Whenever he'd used the sedation spell on the awakened trees above ground, they'd gone crazy and begun sending out a distress call. Both times he'd seen the broad ant and antenna ant use the same ability, it had been a much lesser instance. Whatever thread cluster regulated the ability, the trees seemed to have a much stronger version of it. 

But more importantly, he'd seen a Spatial...

Chapter 58: Here Goes Nothing

Caen quickly looked over Bwedel's injuries. His arm was not getting better, he’d lost far too much blood, and Caen was not skilled enough to help him. He cast another spell chain to mend some more gashes, a soothe spell, and even gave the man some numb root.

They all picked a passageway at random and had walked along it for almost twenty minutes when, to Caen's dismay, they started hearing chittering up ahead.

“God bloody dammit,” Guinevere muttered. “Couldn't be easy, cou...

Chapter 57: Quite The Show

Moving through the portal was a terrible feeling. It was worse than using one of those hop pads in Chrenai. He doubled over, wheezing, and that worsened the pain from his abdomen where he'd been shot.

The injured combatant was breathing a little heavily. Guinevere was faring better, though of course, Zeris was completely fine. Spatial magic practicians were acclimatized to moving through space, and everyone else had an affinity in Spatial magic.

Still sweating and trying to recove...

Chapter 56: Root-portal

They did need to kill several waves of ants on their way to the specific tunnel that Major Hulte had in mind. The reason for this was obvious: they had light sources accompanying them. If anything, that should have been the first giveaway to Caen that this was no typical Delver team. In fact, Ladia appeared to be the only person here with enchanted goggles. Caen’s, of course, were not truly enchanted.

His improved strength and agility allowed him to cleave through ants with more ease ...

Chapter 55: Investigative Delve

At the front zone, Caen fiddled around with some dry plant tendrils he'd foraged from the forest in the Odaton camp. Having Mimicked the tree’s Flora magic affinity, he slowly and carefully tried to weave the plant tendrils together using a spell chain and several modifiers. 

He'd adapted quite a number of Blood healing and Flora spells and hadn't gotten over the feeling of casting them. Mimicking the affinities of planar creatures didn't seem to give him any passive augmentation...

Chapter 54: Test Subjects

Caen had joined up with the Cutter team that he'd met Guinevere in some days ago, but she seemed to have moved on to a different team. After Caen had mentioned his interest in joining up with a Delver team, the team lead had explained that she could only recommend him if he demonstrated exceptional skill, and that would still not guarantee whether or not he got selected to join one.

And so, in the days that followed, Caen held back much less as he killed ants. He flickered Soul-sense an...

Chapter 53: Crucial Point

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I apologize for the delay. I made a scheduling error. I've taken extra steps to ensure this doesn't happen again. Thank you so much for your support.

One evening, while taking a break from adapting a fairly complex paralysis spell, Caen tried to cast a mend spell on the stump he'd Mimicked. There was a slight chip on its side.

Nothing happened. The spell imprint—the part of a visualization that let him monitor the stability of his spell con...

Chapter 52: Watched And Examined And Inspected

After helping out with the kitchen for an hour and a half in the morning, Caen rushed down to the Plane. He'd woken up late today because of his sleep debt. The sleep abeyance spell could be applied almost indefinitely, but without a boosted affinity, he couldn't cast it reliably. A few bad experiences had taught him that casting that spell in his abjection could easily result in him suddenly going unconscious.

The night before, Caen had claimed a cot in his newly assigned tent and had ...

Chapter 51: A Spell Possessed In Common

Caen worked through the night, practicing various modifiers on his Blood-healing spells. He was especially pleased with how effective one of Healer naMoon's bone-mending techniques proved to be. The hours he spent on healing his assailants would not count toward the tokens he earned at the healing tents, but he was more than satisfied to get in all this practice.

After retrieving it from his Grimoire, he—still with a boosted Blood-healing affinity—successfully cast a sleep abeyance ...

Chapter 50: The Second Lesson

Ardor was give and take. Something passed on and received in equal measure. And he could feel this man's passion. He could hear it almost as clearly as a song echoing in the dead of night. He felt in his heart that he had something this man needed.

So Caen Impassioned the man's fire.

Streaks of purple, pink, and red blossomed and writhed within the swelling orange fireball above the Fire practician's palm. 

“Tahal,” Caen swore, looking on in awe.

For a single ...

Chapter 49: Serious Business

Caen sat on the stone slab, holding the bucket of frothing water as two men came into throwing range across from him. One of them was holding a catapult, a fat pebble braced in its sling. Yellow Tassel’s nose was crooked at an angle—probably the result of his fight with the Vedul woman last night. 

Squinting in the dark, both men laughed as they swaggered towards Caen. “Well, what do we have h—” 

Caen flicked out the bucket, splashing them with acid immediately...

Chapter 48: Violating The Habitation Code

Caen dropped his connection to the tree immediately. The thrashing branches had begun to still, but a large swarm of ants had now come upon the Cutter team.

He flickered Soul-sense and tore through ants, maiming more than he killed. It was an unfair matchup. Their soul structures quivered, destabilizing whatever working strengthened their carapaces for just an instant. And that was always enough. 

He halted those caustic sprays of theirs as he moved, but still got hit by drop...

Chapter 47: Inverting Moreness

Caen rushed in, flickering Soul-sense as he cut into limbs and stabbed the unempowered carapaces of the ants. Their chittering was only barely drowned out by the loud whirring of the cutting equipment.

In moments, the Protectors had cleared the wave of Planar creatures. They stood around, heaving tiredly in the ensuing lull, as Haulers moved aside ant corpses. Sometimes, the awakened trees sent out sluggish roots to begin pulling down the ant corpses into the ground. Several retreating ...

Chapter 46: How to Pick up Vedul Women In A Plane

After parting ways with his uncle, Caen spent half an hour working in the kitchen that night.

Afterwards, as he used up four of his tokens purchasing extra food, he quietly bemoaned the fact that he hadn't gotten any from following the Delver team into a tunnel. Though, of course, he hadn't done anything.

Caen snuck his food into his spatial bag and headed down to the officers' quarters. It was a two-story building. A pair of guards leaned lazily at the entrance, eyeing the specul...

Chapter 45: To Channel The Planar Light

It took them nearly an hour to cut their way deep into the dense woodlands of the Plane. The Delver team was far more effective at putting down ants than any Attacker team Caen had seen here. They operated with coordination born from their number and seamless teamwork. Since they all wore enchanted eye gear, their group moved swiftly under the cover of darkness. They killed every ant they came across, including a particularly large one with sturdier limbs and mandibles.

Caen hadn’t g...

Chapter 44: High Priest Sh'kteiro

At the healing tents, Caen sat on a stool, Mimicking Ergen’s Spirit-healing affinity. His father was in the middle of a cleansing session, as were many other healers here.

Caen cleansed his spirit and was pleased to note that he was getting much better at working with a boosted affinity. The passive augmentations, though temporary, were of immense help here. He spared the time to perform a few Spirit-healing exercises.

Ergen was speaking quietly with another patient. Caen graz...

Chapter 43: Inverted Moreness

Still very sore, Caen entered the Plane with an Attacker team made up of mostly Body-enhancers. The team lead was a chatty, barrel-chested man named Mokob. 

Caen spent three hours roaming with them and killing a moderate number of ants. When he wasn't disrupting the ants' spells with Soul-sense, he practiced conforming his affinities to those of several people in the team and just studying their soul structures.

Neither having the time construct nor his pocket watch was rathe...

Chapter 42: Scripting A Basic Alarm Ward System

Boundaries weren't always necessary for creating wards, but they often helped define the reach of the working. If Caen spun his bed on an axis, it would create a perfect circle, but that seemed to him like more of a hassle than just taking quick measurements.

Since his cot was pushed against a corner, he had to go outside the tent to complete the circle. He retrieved a metal stake from his toolbox and used that to make a two-inch deep furrow in the grassy ground. It was a perfect circl...

Chapter 41: Hello to Zeris

“Tet’s balls, lad!” cursed the Body-enhancer. “Are you sure?”

“It's true,” said one of the Earth practicians who had hung back during the melee. “I was keeping count.” He jutted his chin at Caen's glaive. “That has to be an artifact of some kind. Ploughed straight through carapaces like nothing I’ve seen today.”

“Oh,” the Body-enhancer said, nodding. “Rich people.” He looked relieved.

Caen didn't bother correcting the man. It hadn't even oc...

Chapter 40: Total Kills

The people in the Attacker team Caen had just joined were hardly an eclectic mix. Everyone kept to themselves, but their badges were out on full display. Three Earth magic practicians, a Body-enhancer, and a Fire practician. Brown colors for Earth, pink for Body-enhancement, and orange for Fire.

Caen's team lead didn't offer up her name, nor did she ask about anyone else's. She stood with arms folded till three more combatants walked up to them.

The first was a Liquid magic practi...

Chapter 39: Mashed Potatoes and Oats

Caen flung tiny balls of flame at an ant's eye two or so yards away. At the same time, the grizzly man put two crossbow bolts into its face. It fell. 

Caen reoriented himself to face where Lerim was hacking at the legs of another giant ant with his machete. Caen kept the man always within his field of vision. 

Caen charged the ant from the side, cutting partway into one of its leg joints and retreating quickly. Lerim and the woman with spiked gauntlets finished it off.&n...