Chapter 299: The Punishment For Failure

Erik brought his weapon down, letting the heavy head smash the ground apart. Vibrations rocked up the shaft, dampened by both the leather grip and his mana-enhanced durability.

“Skies,” he hissed in annoyance, noting the null-water moisture beneath the fragmented ground. It was probably a bad spot for a seed. With any luck, the roots would bull through whatever resistance the tiny amount of null-water could put up; without that luck, though, they might find themselves plunging into more null-water than they could handle. A normal plant, one without mana, might have been able to handle that. Not the ones that the Little Guardian created and controlled.

Those were so filled with mana that they might as well have been mana itself. For some of them, still, it might have been fine. The smaller of the Little Guardian’s plants didn’t anchor themselves so deep; they held on to tiny fissures and micro-fractures in the ground, the plants small and light enough that naturally-occurring crevices and cracks were enough. The bigger examples of the plants that made up the Groveways, though, needed more than that. They needed to run deep, to bury themselves beneath a kind of weight that could support their own without threatening to topple over.

To present a real threat against the warriors of Virtun and their mana-enhanced transportation, those bigger examples would be greatly needed. In particular, the great trees that now served as homes for many of the downtrodden citizens of Erandur - this time, used as a weapon rather than shelter.

Still, Erandur itself made that extremely difficult. The place was like a stonemarsh of null-water, the dangerous liquid running through the entirety of the cavern’s feet like nothing Erik had ever seen before. Beneath them, solid ground might as well have been an illusion. The porous rock was infested with hidden reservoirs of null-water, like spiderwebs of liquid woven beneath their feet, ready to catch any material that broke through.

Luckily, it wasn’t everywhere. It was just spread so far and so thin that it simply felt like it was. As long as they were careful, the plants could still spread. The cavern of Erandur’s strange biome simply meant that some areas were thinner than others, too anathema to the presence of mana to support more than the shallowest of roots and the lightest of plantlife.

It seemed that Erik had found one of those spots. He rifled through his pouch, searching for a seed that didn’t need to anchor itself so deep, and carefully placed it within the crack. It would grow, or it would not.

Erik couldn’t do anything about which of the two it would be.

On the way back out of the small fissure, he moved slowly, cautiously, so as not to brush against the small droplets of null-water with his gauntleted fingers. The earthen mana trapped within wouldn’t be leeched out by such a small amount, but it could contribute to a minor weakening over time, and the enchantments that made Erik’s armor such an effective defense weren’t easy to make.

Not for a small settlement like Orken, anyway. Maybe it was different for the warriors of Virtun. It certainly seemed to be for Erandur - or, at least, for the warriors of the White Towers that had guarded the mines until recently.

Erik had never seen so much mana-enhanced metal in his life. Even now, the number of new allies, those people of Erandur’s outskirts that Doran had trained, that now clad themselves in the stolen armor and weapons was astounding. There were dozens of them.

And even then, Erik wasn’t sure it would be enough.

Virtun was a city that rested near the World Dungeon’s center. The area where it all started. Each and every one of those cities dwarfed every other city that Erik had ever heard of or visited, both in size and in power - both in terms of manpower, and in terms of Cores.

Elara’s armor and its ability to phase through solid matter was just a single example of that power, he was sure, even if it was a particularly powerful one. The transportation artifact, the one that Erik could hear approaching even now, was another one of those examples. The men and women in that transportation artifact, Erik knew, would be a third.

Then again, we have the Little Guardian on our side.

He moved to the next spot, smashed the ground, and dropped another seed in. All around him, the others did the same. By now, they must have planted a whole forest’s worth of the things. At least, it felt that way. None of them had sprouted yet, still waiting for their moment to bloom.

The sounds of the transportation artifact had stopped by now; Erik couldn’t see it, but Kala had already informed them that the delegation from Virtun had arrived at the outside of the White Towers. The metallic centipede was wrapped around one edge of its null-water shore, imposing despite the difference in size between itself and the towers that it rested beside. A convenience and a threat, all in one.

Erik hoped that, for all of their recent animosity and troubles, the Erandurians within were managing okay. He didn’t regret working to right an injustice. Erik never would. He did regret, however, that a different set of innocents might end up being punished in lieu of the ones that had been saved. Erik somehow doubted that whoever was responsible for the decision to enslave outlying towers’ denizens and force them to work in the mines - whoever that truly was - would be the one punished for the lack of tribute.

The world didn’t tend to work like that, as much as Erik might have hated that fact. No, it would likely be other relative innocents.

It always was.

As the ore-flesh beast came to a stop, I fought back a hiss of dismay.

I now truly understood why the Great Core had seen fit to provide me with a Lesser Core through the actions of Windgiver. I, more than ever, didn’t think that I would be able to defeat the ore-flesh beast and the Coreless within the span of a single life.

The main problem was the ore-flesh beast itself. It was too fast. It was too strong. Even worse, it was resistant to most of my blessings. It had no true flesh, and so I could not infect it with my venom. I could not fill it with spores. I could not force it to bleed.

I could not even use [The Golem’s Fading Heart] to reshape it as I would stone; the ability, so useful in remaking earthen material, did not function in the same way upon ore-flesh.

It was a conundrum. One that, I was sure, any other Core’s creation would have faltered at. But I was not simply any other Core’s creation. I was of the Great Core - and it didn’t matter what I faced.

In the end, my coils would grasp victory.

[Acceleration Gale] continued to pull back, the time-twisting wind returning to its source. As it did, the world around me noticeably slowed, until I was the only thing caught within its embrace.

The only creature blessed with time by the Great Core.

I let out a hiss, feeling some of the tension release from my head-scales. No longer did I struggle to manifest the [Acceleration Gale] in such a wide area, combining it with [Verdure Parasite] to spread the Great Core’s plant-flesh as fast as possible. Now, with the ore-flesh beast coming to a stop away from the homes of the Great Core’s chosen faithful, I had a small moment to relax.

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I didn’t, though.

Plant-flesh continued to spread; it wasn’t as fast as only moments before, but it was still significantly faster than it could have been before the Windgiver’s gift. I had used it well, increasing the amount of plant-flesh that I could draw upon with the aid of the Great Core’s faithful - creating seeds that were then spread, allowing for more seeds that could then be spread further.

Now, plant-flesh surrounded the enemy. I made sure to focus on the smaller examples of the Great Core’s plant-flesh faithful, leaving the larger and more alarming ones as simple seeds. There was no reason to cause a full panic. Not until the time had come.

If I moved too early, the ore-flesh beast could simply escape - or even fight back. I still wasn’t sure how I would defeat it.

I just knew that I would. It was as the Great Core willed.

For the moment, though, I needed to be patient. It was hard. The personal [Acceleration Gale] that still wrapped around my scale-flesh made me itch to act. The memory of the ore-flesh beast crashing through one of the tree-nests that I had created for the faithful made me rage.

But I could be patient; there was time.

There was always time.

I flit between the faithfuls’ perspectives, searching for problems. For things that, should I fail in this life, could be solved in the next. There were many, but they were too hard to parse. It seemed as if the arrival of the ore-flesh beast and the Coreless within had brought chaos to the minds of the faithful, especially those who had not been close enough to witness the Great Core’s success over a Lesser Core through Windgiver.

As much as it hurt me not to act on that, to take the time to remind the faithful of the Great Core’s strength and glory, I had more important things to attend to. That could come later, once victory was achieved.

It didn’t take long for me to find a perspective that felt particularly important.

It was Windgiver.

Ewan watched from a distance, a hood pulled over his head, as the head councilman greeted the warriors of Virtun as they exited their manacrawler. Nobody had realized what he’d done yet; it hadn’t been all that long, after all - and it wasn’t as if the Wind Core was retrieved from its prison and worked upon every day.

Only the few that guarded the doors to the Wind Core would have any idea that he’d visited it. Let alone that he’d taken it with him.

They wouldn’t talk. Hopefully. Ewan had been convincing in his misappropriation of power, he thought. It wasn’t so hard when one was a councilman’s son. Not so unreasonable for him to be sent to do some final checks before the Virtun delegation arrived.

Now, of course, they’d arrived in full.

The manacrawler, as the Virtun warriors referred to it, was as impressive as always. It was threat and utility in one, both transport for tribute and a fist that hovered over any who looked upon it.

Ewan looked around, trying to see if he could spot any of his allies. Corinne and Kel were both absent - as were the remainder of the dozens of citizens that had ventured to the mines with Ewan to witness the tragedy occurring there. It was probably a good idea to make themselves scarce. There was a reason Ewan was hiding behind a hood. As civil as his father had been with him upon his return, Ewan knew that the members of the council likely wanted their hides. Even if they believed the account of what happened in the mines, they would also believe that a lacking tribute might doom them all.

It very well might have, Ewan admitted. It very well still might. He had faith in the exchange he’d made, though. Elara’s Little Guardian would protect his people from whatever came, one way or another.

Already, his [Little Guardian’s Totem]s should have been spreading through the friends and families of those who accompanied Ewan to the mines - and that was just a passive sort of protection. From what he’d seen and heard, the Little Guardian could do a lot more than that.

Ewan still didn’t really understand where Elara and her party had found him. How they had convinced a monster to become such a powerful and reliable ally. He knew that monster taming existed, but the Little Guardian wasn’t tame.

It was as if the snake simply thought of any humans that chose not to fight against him as one of his. As allies. As brethren.

It felt strange to trust an Ascended monster so much, but there was something about the tiny snake that seemed to demand it. Not to mention how many people the little snake had saved. Sheltered. Sustained.

Those were not the actions of a monster.

No, in this case, the only monsters were of man.

“…unforeseen troubles within our city that have run havoc on the economy and its ability to operate, as you may have seen. An extension on the deadline for this year’s obligations…” His father, in his scope as the Treasurer, was in the midst of making a request for lenience with the particularly large example of a warrior that served as the delegation’s head, one that Ewan recognized. He went by the name of Vencar, and was both strong enough and sane enough to wrangle his given warriors into behaving on a particularly good day.

Today was not a particularly good day.

The warriors of Virtun were high-strung, on-edge. Fidgeting. Ewan had a feeling that something was about to go terribly wrong. In all of its days since the agreement between the White Towers and Virtun had been penned, there had never been a failure to bring together the required tribute. Never a request for extension. Some people might have thought that was grounds for hope; that a little bit of leniency was reasonable in return for past performance, especially considering the clear and obvious growth of the Little Guardian’s Groveways throughout Erandur’s city cavern.

Those people had never met a warrior of Virtun. Reasonable was not a word in their vocabulary.

Ewan’s muscles tensed unconsciously, ready to spring into action. What kind of action, he couldn’t say. Even with the changes that he’d recently gone through, Ewan had no illusions about his ability to fight dozens of warriors of Virtun. He wasn’t even sure that he could fight one. Though they wouldn’t heal like he did, each and every warrior of Virtun had a mana-enhancement that was multitudes more powerful than they should have been; there was a reason they were so mentally unstable. Then, of course, there was the ability that their armor that - in combination with the xenlite that was mined from their very own city - could allow the warriors to momentarily leave the material world and pass through solid objects.

He’d heard stories of a member of a previous year’s delegation having used that same ability to lodge a fork into the arm of a cook who had oversalted a meal; it had fused with the skin so thoroughly that the only way to get it out had been to cut out the entire piece of the arm it was attached to.

Ewan wasn’t sure how his healing would react to something like that, and there were worse places to get stabbed than an arm.

“...back on track, with triple the required tribute upon reaching the deadline in a year’s time,” his father finished saying, having finished making a few offers in return for lenience in regards to the missing xenlite. As always, his father was calm and collected despite the tension. There was a reason that he was the one speaking, rather than some other member of the White Tower’s council. For all of his father’s flaws, the man was controlled. “It’s a good deal for us all, is it not?”

Vencar mulled it over, his head rocking side to side in thought. Ewan could make out the shifting in the warriors behind him, and he suddenly had a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Sky,” Vencar said, turning towards one of the other members of the delegation. A strikingly beautiful woman, with her helmet slung from her belt, who was leaning suggestively against another one of the warriors.

The woman smiled, radiant and cherubic, and then disappeared.

She reappeared again in a shadowy blur, just in front of Ewan’s father and leaning over a dagger that pinned his foot to the floor - phasing straight through the leather of his boot, the flesh of his foot, and into the stone below it.

It was the first time that Ewan ever heard his father scream.

Scream, he did.

“We already had a deal,” Vencar said, voice pitched over the screams. Despite that, he spoke with a chilling lack of emotion. “I see no need for a new one, especially when you seem so…unreliable in holding to the first. There is, however, a punishment for failure.”

He looked Ewan’s father, who remained unable to free his foot from where it was pinned to the stone, up and down. “Consider this the first of those punishments. For every day that we do not receive the agreed upon tribute, there will be another. If, in a fortnight’s time, we have still not received our tribute in full…

“I suppose there would no longer be any need for a deal at all, would there be?”