Chapter 176, 1/2

Chapter 176, 1/2

Erick walked down the hallways of the embassy, following Otaliya and Tasar as the two wrought had a private conversation. Near-invisible tendrils of thought spilled off of their heads, connecting them together. Otaliya walked strong the whole time, but Tasar flinched and stared and glared, likely in time to silent words which Erick would never know. Eventually, though, some sort of understanding took place.

The telepathic lines broke.

Tasar breathed out, then she said, “My mother has been doing this for hundreds of years. She has an excellent approval record, though she hasn’t done an inquiry in a while. This is fine.”

Otaliya nodded, saying, “109 full approvals. 29 half-step approvals. Only 430 failures. Probably the best record of anyone currently alive today.”

“Ahh.” Erick was instinctively unhappy about those numbers, but he had no basis for comparison. “Uh...”

Otaliya instantly understood Erick’s apprehension. “A 20% win rate is considered rather high because these are inquiries we’re talking about here. A successful inquiry is a business dealing between immortals and mortals, with the possibility for this deal to transfer ownership along agreed-upon mortal lines, lasting into forever. Because of this, Stratagold is very particular about striking any sorts of agreements at all.”

“Oh.” Erick said, “That makes a lot more sense, yes.”

Otaliya glanced backward, smiling briefly before turning back forward. As they walked, she said, “I estimate that you have a 95% chance of passing your inquiry. Tasar is less optimistic at only 50%. I disagree with her statement because, while I might recently have become something of a hermit, I do still talk to people.”

Tasar sighed. “I don’t want anyone to be surprised when this doesn’t work. Archmage’s Rest is already a firm ‘no’. The Church of Rozeta is a likely ‘no’. The Royal Faction is about the same as the Church. No one liked that you went into the Core without proper clearance, Erick, and that fact will be a large impediment toward gaining a good outcome from an inquiry.”

“Tasar is right, of course, but we have options.” Otaliya said to him, “You still have to take Bright Tea, and that can either be a great boon for your future inquiry, or a great detriment, so our goal, for now, is to figure out the geology of the field to prepare you for Bright Tea. Once you are there you can talk and charm and deal with all of these various factors to hopefully turn each ‘no’ into a ‘yes’.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Erick asked, “Who else needs to sign off on an inquiry, anyway?”

Otaliya happily said, “That’s why we’re headed toward the inquiry preparatory committee hallway. Wrought society doesn’t change much, but it does shift over long enough time periods and my own information is half out of date. We’ll learn more once we talk to the people currently on the ground.”

- - - -

Down a lavish hallway that split into a dozen different building-sized office spaces, where thirty meetings of various sizes were happening in rooms and in hallways, Erick found the people he had spoken with not ten minutes ago. Otaliya didn’t know these people, specifically, but she knew the parents or owners or the label of the various ‘marketing firms’ that were the inquiry preparatory committees.

Otaliya seemed impressed with the people Erick had chosen out of the eleven possible firms inside the hallway, so there wasn’t much to do but move to a room and start talking politics and goals, and then one of the men on the other side of the table said something that threw Erick for a loop.

“You have a history of vigilantism and moving against established countries, Archmage Flatt. This history is going to be taken into account in the inquiry, and will likely result in a rather unpleasant experience.”

Another one of them agreed.

And then Erick started checking out of the whole experience as his exploits were trotted out and held up to the worst possible lights.

“Heroes often do not achieve a positive inquiry because of their disdain for established powers...”

“The destruction of much of Songli will be a problem because of...”

That went on for a while.

But! Erick was happy that Otaliya seemed to be about as angry with these people as he was. She frowned a little as she jumped in with, “But as the Savior of Light he...”

Ah. But she was on that ‘Savior of Light’ thing. He hoped he wouldn’t disappoint her, but he probably would.The inaugural upload of this chapter took place via N0v3l-B1n.

“With all due respect, Misses Otaliya, you haven’t been in an inquiry room in a century and...”

Erick listened. He cared. Yes, he was present. Yes, he answered questions, and he pretended to be enthusiastic about the whole thing, but there was this undercurrent of bullshit and appeasement of the powers-that-be that irked him the wrong way.

Finally, when sitting in a chair with Otaliya sitting to one side and Tasar standing in the back of the room, similarly disgusted by the whole experience, Erick was almost at his limit. The trio of IPC people in front of him, each representing a separate IPC firm, each dressed impeccably and each with a secretary standing behind them, had just asked him what sort of opportunity he was hoping to get out of Stratagold, and then...

One guy asked, “The major question that you are going to be asked, and that you need to answer in the best possible way, is: ‘Are you willing to eradicate the shadelings currently living under your power?’ and ‘To what extent are you willing to enact the will of Stratagold upon the Crystal Forest?’. Will you follow orders handed down by the Heavies?”

They had been dancing around that subject for a while now, but, having gauged that Erick would not erupt at them, one of them decided to just ask the important question in the most unambiguous sort of way.

And yet, Erick almost fucking lost it. He almost started screaming obscenities. But he pulled back. Not fast enough, though. Not before every single person in the room recognized that he had gone from indifferent to explosive.

So Erick took a calming breath, and said, “This is a very good question. My response to this is—” Fuck you I do what I want; try and stop me. “My response is that they should be happy to...” They should be happy that I’m inviting them to participate in the new world I’m creating on the Surface, considering the lack of care they put into the rest of civilization. “My response is that is... Shadelings are people, like any other. I will not allow them to be murdered simply to assuage fears.”

The man on the other side of the table successfully kept his fear-response under control. All of them did. Otaliya looked a bit sad, though.

The man who had asked the question, spoke plainly, “You’re not going to get a successful inquiry if you’re not willing to enact certain Stratagold laws. One of them is the execution of any shadeling or a monster pretending at being a person.” He snapped a finger at his secretary and the secretary stepped to Erick, pulled a piece of paper from a folder, and set down that paper in front of Erick. It was a set of laws. The main guy said, “These are the basic laws that everyone aiming for a successful inquiry must meet if they desire the full support of Stratagold. I have studied all of your works, Archmage Flatt, and while I know you’re going to fail 14 out of these 20 points, I also know that Stratagold is only going to forgive 10 of them.”

Erick read—

Otaliya did not look at the paper as she countered, “On the surface it might appear that this is a failed inquiry but if Erick acquires [Gate] he will literally be too large to ignore. These particular rules won’t matter. What we have here is a case of the entire world changing in light of new events. Stratagold needs to become a part of the foundation or they will become part of the destructible house. Having a World Tree alone makes that entire list of rules dubious at best, and an attempt at dragging down at the worst.” And then it was Otaliya’s turn to speak plainly. “The simple fact is that Stratagold needs Erick more than Erick needs Stratagold, and the problem that we will face going forward is convincing the inquiry board that they need to adjust themselves. This is not a normal inquiry by any stretch of the program. Do not mistake it as such.”

Erick felt his anger sputter and die as he heard Otaliya’s point of view, and found a kindred soul in those words, or at least a very good pretender. If the other people of the preliminary IPCs had followed suit, Erick would have remained less mad. But they did not.

The first guy, who was an incani, said, “Madam Otaliya. You were not here for the great Wasteland Inquiry 35 years ago, ten years after the wars that made the largest incani land in the world reincorporate into what they are today. The litigants came to this embassy, to these preparatory committees, and we prepared them for a whole year. Everything was set for a win. But during the war, 17 years prior, one of the litigants broke rule 6 when they evaded Core Patrols and went for the monsters in the Main Tunnels. Didn’t even threaten the guardians. Just leveled to 97 and then went back to the land that would become the Kingdoms and became a war hero. Saved the nation from total desolation. Millions of lives saved. That bit of information about his trip to the Core came out in the inquiry and ruined everything. We had accounted for it, though. The Wasteland Kingdoms still should have gotten a positive result. But, no. Failure. On its own, it was just one such failure when there should have been success, but there were others.

“We think that Stratagold might be at a saturation point for inquiries. Almost everything that they would have approved 10 years ago is being denied these days.” The man looked to Erick, saying, “I can’t say for sure, but we widely believe that this inquiry will be under Inquisitor Kromolok himself. The inquiry board will be ruthless. They will uncover every hidden thing you have to hide— Anything that could possibly harm Stratagold, and—”

“Let me stop you there.” Erick had ignored many of the smaller problems he had noticed in this meeting, like the fact that this incani worked for the Wasteland Kingdoms, but he couldn’t ignore it any longer. “You’re speaking like you don’t want to be here. So perhaps you should leave and save me the trouble of having to deal with this attitude that this isn’t going to work. By the way: tell the Wasteland that I’m going to accept their offer to visit as soon as I can, but I’ve been busy.”

The incani man sat straighter.

There was some shit going on between him and the human from a different EIPC group sitting on the other side of the table, while the third person, a dragonkin woman, simply ignored whatever was going on between the human and incani.

The incani man surprised Erick, though, when he said, “I do not wish to misrepresent my firm. I merely wish to impart the severity of the 14 failed rules on the 20 point list. It’s getting harder and harder to secure a win these days, with success rates between 2 or 3 percent, depending on how you measure.”

The man wasn’t willing to drop the act...

Or maybe Erick was just being paranoid? It was possible.

Erick... sort of believed him now. Shit. Erick said, “Heard and understood.” He breathed, and sighed, then spoke to everyone. “Look. I’m finding it really hard to believe that with every good thing I’ve done so far, that Stratagold wouldn’t want to ensure that good things kept happening. Like... Should I just go to a different Geode? The wrought aren’t a monolith, are they?”

Tasar stepped away from the wall to stand next to the desk, saying, “Stratagold wants you here, Erick, but we also want to be sure that we haven’t invited danger into our lives.”

“Well that’s just it.” Erick said, “You say ‘danger’ but I say ‘change’ and I think that’s the fundamental problem.”

Tasar frowned a little.

But everyone else agreed with him; from people across the desk, to Otaliya sitting beside him, they all knew the truth. The EIPC people were just focused on the problems, which... was probably helpful. Erick just wasn’t feeling it right now. Thankfully none of them had spoken about how Last Shadow’s Feast was going to be just as much of a problem as a boon...

They were probably saving that discussion for day #10 of this preparation, or something.

Otaliya spoke up, “This perspective of ‘change’ as ‘danger’ is the core of the actual problem.” She spoke to everyone present, saying, “The Heavies and the Church and the Inquisition and the Merchants and the Army, and all the rest. None of them like change. It is a word that has likely been scoured out of the lexicons as the one bad word you should never say in an inquiry. But change is where we must focus this inquiry.” She added, “It would behoove us to still not use that actual word.”

While the human and the incani were stunned, the dragonkin woman leaned forward a little, saying, “If you know of a way to make such a gambit work I am ready to hear it, but there is literally no way to frame the scouring of the Forest of Glaquin or the eradication of the sects of Nelboor or Last Shadow’s Feast as anything but a major change.” Ah. Maybe they would get into Last Shadow’s Feast today? The woman continued, “And that’s not even touching the shadeling thing. This is the kind of change that Stratagold would normally watch for 10 years before making a decision. A hundred years of waiting is probably a better estimate.” The woman said to Erick, “With all the respect you are due, I feel that aiming for a wyrm’s eye is a waste of mana. Of course we should aim for such, but it is easier to hit a larger target. Pick a few goals and focus on them. Aim for a partial-inquiry. Perhaps help with getting the metals for Gates? Perhaps runic web clearance? A connection to the Teleport Station network? A partial win seems possible, but a full win is out of the question.”

Erick... Wasn’t sure how he felt about that. So he listened.

The human man frowned a little and began to list ways in which they could win the whole thing, to which the incani man sided with the dragonkin woman, saying that a partial win was perhaps all that Erick could hope for. Otaliya spoke a bit about how they should focus on a full win, and then pare down if it seemed to be going badly, but she was still very much of the opinion that Erick could, and should, win the full backing of Stratagold.

In a lull in the conversation, Erick asked Tasar, “Do you think it is possible to achieve a full win?”

Everyone turned to Tasar.

Tasar said, “It is right to try for a full win, but when you entered the Core without proper protocols you removed the possibility of a full win. I can’t help you with that, anyway. I am here to help you on the Worldly Path, and in my opinion, Stratagold’s support is not necessary for that success. You already have Oceanside on your side.” She looked to Otaliya, and said, “If anything, my mother is right. Stratagold needs to throw in with you. Not the other way around.”

Otaliya seemed to brighten as she allowed herself a small smile.

Tasar added, “All of our half-known knowledge of [Gate]s can come from Archmage’s Rest and Oceanside and the Heavy archives, but the only way to get runic web clearance is from Stratagold. The Headmaster might approve of sourcing you metal, but he can do nothing for runic webs. T-station access requires full approval, but since the goal is [Gate], then perhaps you don’t want to settle for a t-station. With these facts in mind, gaining runic web clearance is the bare minimum of what you should hope to achieve. Everything else would be easier with full inquiry approval, but it is not strictly necessary.”

Erick nodded, feeling a bit better about having Tasar at his side at that moment. He turned to the other people, saying, “So that’s how it is. Runic web clearance. That’s the bare minimum goal. Metals are a second priority because I can get those elsewhere. And while I appreciate the thought of asking for t-station clearance, I don’t need that [Force Trap] on my land, because I don’t want to guard it all the time.”

Tasar looked a little bit relieved.

Good. Erick had hoped that she would approve of such a decision.

Erick said, “Everything else Stratagold can offer, from labor to trade routes to help governing and all the rest. All of that is unnecessary.”

While the other people looked unsure—

Otaliya smiled, and said, “Well said. But don’t say that part about governing in the inquiry. With a runic web they are going to demand some oversight protocols. Now, as for actual speaking methods, what you want to say to the Heavy representative is something along the lines of ‘There is opportunity here to carve away the shadows of the surface, producing something more stable’ while telling the representative from the Church something similar. The Merchants will want to know that you can provide security to them, but that shouldn’t be a large issue considering your magics and your proven capability to track down and eliminate threats. The Merchants will likely be your largest supporter.” Otaliya added, “All of this is subject to change depending on who is actually going to be seated upon your inquiry board.” She asked the people on the other side of the table. “Who is usually there this time of year?”

The incani man spoke first.

Talk resumed.

Erick was more invested, this time. He’d go for a result of full support, but his expectations lowered quite a bit. He didn’t care too much about t-station clearance, but he decided to try for it, anyway. He didn’t even need metal support, but he also wasn’t going to be openly using [Duplicate] to solve any metal problems, so he did kinda need metal support. Runic webs were the only thing he truly needed Stratagold to sign off on, and now that he knew that, he had a goal.

Toward that end, Erick had to make sure that Riivo was on board with Erick’s runic web goals. Apparently that old iron man was the main deciding factor on who got runic web clearance or not. Oh, sure, Erick needed the whole inquiry to sign off on him getting runic webs, but he needed Riivo’s support first.

The EIPC talk lasted four hours, with plans to resume discussions in two days once all three of Erick’s various teams and Otaliya had time to better prepare. Today was just the preliminary discussion.

Erick saw the human, Radigo, the dragonkin, Loori, and the incani, Walz, off; thanking them for their time. Otaliya and Tasar had some sort of private conversation with each other near the end of the talks which Erick was not privy to, but that was fine.

On the way out of the EIPC hallways, Otaliya said, “That was a productive first meeting, Erick. I will strive to get you full approval, but perhaps they were right that lesser approvals are a more realistic goal.”

“Oh yeah. I’m fine with partial approval. I want the runic webs first and foremost.” Erick said, “And thanks for helping, Otaliya. You provided a great perspective that would have otherwise been missing.” He smirked. “About the only one in there with a positive attitude, too, and that helped a lot.”

Otaliya probably would have been blushing if she were made of flesh and blood, and not white-green copper.

“A very positive attitude,” Tasar said, smiling a little.

Otaliya gave a small, happy laugh, then said to Erick, “I look forward to the next meeting, but for now, I think it is time for me to run around and find out everything else I have missed these last many years. Do you mind if I take Tasar with me?”

Tasar went from happy, to unsure yet excited.

So Erick said, “Not at all; go ahead. I’m going to head to the world diner’s market, grab something to eat, and then escape back to Yggdrasil to unwind for a while. Sleep, probably. So I’ll see you two later.”

They went their separate ways.

Erick went to the food court, grabbed some food, evaded many other people who wanted to talk about this or that (while telling them to send a letter instead), and escaped back to Yggdrasil where he promptly did some [Renew] work on his Other Self, switched back to his Normal Self and ate real food, and then he did some planning for [Steadfast Ward]. He didn’t get far in his magic planning. He’d make that magic in the morning.

Today had been a very good day.

Also frustrating, enlightening, angering, and a bit wonderful. Erick liked Otaliya and was warming to Tasar, but Tasar remained almost alien in many of her mannerisms. While Tasar seemed keen on standing in place and watching the proceedings in front of her, her mother was much more animated and present.

He kinda wondered what had happened in Tasar’s office before Erick had interrupted them, but whatever. He wasn’t the type to pry. It was hard not to notice that Otaliya was very much a shut-in, though, so he was glad to help her get out of the house and to have her on his team, even if most of her information about inquiries was out of date. The wrought themselves were out of date, for the most part, so Otaliya’s perspective was still invaluable.

He hoped that Tasar and Otaliya were doing well right now, whatever they were doing.

- - - -

The two wrought headed off together to the t-station at the bottom of the embassy, just Otaliya and her daughter, happily walking beside each other. Otaliya was happy to say that Tasar had warmed up a lot throughout the whole meeting, as she watched everyone talk excitedly about opportunity and change. Otaliya had always been one of the most gregarious wrought inside the embassy; she knew every mortal inside the facility in ways that most wrought would never want to know, from what foods they liked to what their family lives were like. That was before The Event, though. Things had changed since then. Otaliya had kept up with the largest news but everything else... Everything else had slipped away.

And now...

Now she was back out of the room. She was surprised she had done it, too! Just... Stepped out. Like it wasn’t a big deal. And now she was here, walking beside her daughter again like she used to, oh so long ago.

It was nice.

So many things were nice.

He pressed his palm against the other wires, rapidly breaking all twenty four of the remaining [Hermetic Razor]s in quick succession. With a bloodless palm and not a mark on him, Erick moved on to the 200 point [Hermetic Shredder] wires. Those wires met a similar fate, but they were about twice as hard to break. They didn’t break because of Erick’s strength, though; they had just been expended, trying to damage him.

With a sweep of his hand, Erick cleared away all 200 of the 200 damage wires, breaking them like so many expended [Force Bolt]s breaking upon a solid rock. Such an act would have cost him 40,000 damage from his usual [Personal Ward] worth 130,000 damage, meaning he would have gone through 30% of that spell to do what he had just done. [Steadfast Ward]s were great against small, constant damage, but...

With wary eyes, Erick moved on to the thousand, 1000-damage wires.

He touched the first one with the palm of his hand and his hand gave away first, the wire digging in.

Erick pressed on. When the wire touched his bone the wire broke, snapping away from his flesh. He inspected the damage, both physical and in his Status. A near-imperceptible cut had dipped into the meaty flesh of his palm, going all the way through like a terrible paper cut. Blood welled on three points where the wire had clipped a few veins under the skin, and then the blood started to flow. It wasn’t painful; It was a truly clean cut.

It was certainly not a 20 point cut, though. According to his Status it was a 140 point injury to his Health.

A few things were confirmed at that moment. Most importantly, Erick had made his [Steadfast Ward] properly; It took into account all of his defenses, first, and then it applied the absolute defense against the remaining damage. But also, according to the math, his Constitution was only worth a 75% damage reduction. The diminishing returns carved off hard, apparently.

Erick cast [Defend], dropping his maximum Health by 10%, and touched the next 1000 damage wire.

This time his hand went right through, breaking the molecular wire like it wasn’t even there.

With a swiping hand, Erick wiped away all the other 1000 damage wires.

Apparently [Defend]’s ‘take 50% less damage for 1 minute’ stacked with Constitution. Good to know. But how, exactly, did it stack? Up to a full 100% damage reduction? Absolutely not. So where was the line?

Erick did a few more tests with higher strength [Hermetic Shredder] and discovered the line: 95% damage reduction. Intelligence’s spell cost reductions were capped around 94%-96%, too, even with Clarity’s 50% off spell costs and Favored Spell’s further 25% reduction, so this made some amount of sense.

Both of these Steadfast spells were failures. Erick grabbed both new blue boxes and broke them. Two small parts of his soul crackled and broke, but this was a small soul injury which would heal by tomorrow. And then he could try again.

Perhaps he needed to make some sort of halfway spell, bridging [Personal Ward] and [Steadfast Ward]; a spell of protection that crossed the first’s ability to ‘restore itself to some larger initial number’, with the second’s ability to have a ‘floor’ of damage that it absolutely prevented. If he was a Warder he could just have both spells active at the same time, but as a non-Warder, Erick was only allowed one [Personal Ward], so he had to settle for some half-way spell.

And maybe he could include some Variable-Cost-Variable-Effect spellwork into the thing, anyway. [Hermetic Shredder] was VCVE and it wasn’t Blood Magic. While Kiri had made that one, Erick had Remade it just fine, while also making a few VCVE spells of his own like [True Plasma Bolt] and [Slowing Bolt]. Maybe he could approach this solution to this problem through [Conjure Armor]’s Variable modifier? He hardly ever used conjured armor anyway, and perhaps including a [Steadfast Ward] in some conjured armor was a good idea.

He would try those methods tomorrow. There were so many ways to go with this, it was no wonder that Nirzir had trouble organizing all of it into one good spell. He could solve this problem eventually but right now he needed more time to think, because, with his current thoughts based on the information given to him by Archmage’s Rest, this [Steadfast Ward] seemed like a failure. An all-around failure.

Yggdrasil could certainly use it, but Erick could not.

Erick thought for another second...

If he wanted to go full power with this sort of spell, just to be truly crazy, perhaps he could add an Undertow effect? Like he had turned a [Force Wall] into [Undertow’s Edge], he could turn a [Steadfast Ward] into a very large Drain which fed into the power of the ethereal Force. Throw in [Renew], too, and some Permanency spellwork and perhaps it could even Drain itself, gradually becoming stronger and stronger. Since Undertow could use some Light spellwork, such a spell would even benefit from Erick’s usual Sunform...

Except such a spell would definitely hit the Propagation Ban.

Something to think about, anyway!

When his mana came back Erick cast a full strength, normal [Personal Ward], like he had every single day for well over a year by now, and then, when his mana came back again, he went for a swim. The cool water felt great against his skin.

Afterward, Erick sat upon a well protected part of Yggdrasil and did some aura work. Transforming his aura to Force was better this time; it was less ‘tentacles under the clothes’ and more a solidness to the air around him. Moving on, Erick tried channeling Elemental Air. Light turned to a breeze which flowed around him, rapidly moving out of his control as his aura fled into the greater breeze all around, leaving him feeling weak, and drained. After a moment of rest, Erick tried again, and this time he kept his Airy aura under better control. He was getting the hang of aura control, even if it was straining in an odd sort of way that left him sweating and panting. It was a new ‘muscle’ so this weakness was to be expected, but Erick expected less weakness than this.

The obvious conclusion as to why he was learning so slow was that the Script truly did support so very much of his magic. He was basically starting from scratch with this aura control, too. At least he had the mana necessary to work his aura like this. If he was doing this as his Other Self he would already have bottomed out at 0 mana and have to stop for the day.

... He’d have to learn how to do this as his Other Self eventually, but that would come later, when he wasn’t in so much danger down here.

Erick moved on.

Channeling Water through his aura was apparently a mistake. He could take the sensation of water crawling over his skin and into his ears and out of his throat and lungs for a good 3 seconds, but he was practically waterboarding himself in the open air. He spit out phantom liquid and turned off his aura. This development was less than great, because this did not bode well for Fire or Lightning, or any of the other dangerous Elements.

... He went back to Force and Air. Those seemed safe, for now.

Later, he’d see about getting a platinum slime from Tasar.

- - - -

Half a day of various aura work was more than enough, for now.

Erick had to do something more productive, and where better to find problems to solve than in the letters he had received from various people at the embassy. Many of those letters were for visitation requests of all types, but a few were for monster killing requests. Erick grabbed the kill requests, which numbered 32, sat down in a comfortable chair he had made, asked Yggdrasil to look over him as he worked, and then he methodically went through each kill request.

He started with the easiest requests first, mainly the ones which included directions and monster signs to watch out for; basically what anyone would post in a quest to the Adventurer’s Guild. Most people hadn’t put this much thought into the letters they sent him, so Erick would need to do some actual research and poking around to find out where those various monster kills required Ophiel to go. But for now, these first few requests were easy enough to find...

Erick just had to learn how to navigate the Underworld, first.

This was probably valuable information in its own right, but Erick simply hadn’t gotten around to it yet. There were only so many hours in the day, after all, even if he was losing track of those hours and those days like water under the bridge.

Anyway.

There were a few things to know about the Underworld that Erick didn’t truly know until he had experienced it himself. Mainly, and broadly, there were two ecosystems. The first and largest ecosystem by far, was in the open tunnels where air or water flowed. The second ecosystem was inside the stone and dirt, where monsters and otherwise (mostly monsters) got around with various stone-moving spells.

The edge of existence between open air and solid stone was where most things lived, though.

The truly dangerous monsters lived in the deep stone, and could move freely, so it came as no surprise to Erick that the main defenses of the occupied land around Stratagold was filled with anti-[Stoneshape] runework; either in the form of pillars drilled deep into the stone to spread their power out over set distances, or in the form of runic webs that were hidden inside the main walls of every settlement, and under the roads. Once the runic webs underground were powered, it seemed like they were meant to remain hidden and untouched. One could still physically dig into the stone, but who would do that? Almost no one, that’s who.

Ophiel lightstepped through the air into the space in front of the embassy, then down one of the tunnel streets, remaining ‘hidden’ in the sky, in the light. Erick was absolutely sure that someone saw him, but that didn’t really matter. No one else was in the ‘sky’, and no one stopped Ophiel’s movements.

Erick did get a good look at the lights at the roof of the kilometers-wide tunnel, though; they were runic web lights, cleverly hidden beyond light sources that were too bright to casually observe. Erick suspected that there was a bit of Light’s Blinding aspect contained in the space surrounding those light fixtures. Perhaps even some Elemental Illusion to hide the fact that the lights were small runic webs. This ‘hiding’ of the webs seemed like a rather normal thing down here. Erick wondered if the people down here actually knew how they were protected by these webs. They had to, right? Maybe.

The town below was of a normal sort, with streets and houses and restaurants and businesses. A creek spilled out of the side of the tunnel to irrigate some crops where some (probably) Classed Farmers were pulling all sorts of food out of the ground, while other Farmers planted foods or watered the crops.

... Erick needed to investigate the water systems now.

Sunform Ophiels shifted their light to ultraviolet and descended into the creek that fed the land, moving near invisibly under the waves. And... Yup! The water source looked like a natural creek on the outside, spilling water out of a break in the rock, but once Ophiel got past that facade the ‘creek’ turned out to be a water main that was purposefully shunted this direction. Following the water source for a little while had Ophiel popping out in Yggdrasil’s cavern, near one of the glowing spire-sized crystals in the water.

Erick briefly wondered if Stratagold expected Yggdrasil to release some [Exalted Rain] into the water supply. Perhaps not? Maybe so? No one had said anything to him, at all. But...

He’d ask around later.

For now, Erick sent his Ophiel all around inside the waterways, and even up the waterfalls at the other side of Yggdrasil’s cavern. The trip past the waterfall lasted 15 minutes, taking him perhaps 300 kilometers, maybe 350, through winding tunnels, some of which were natural but many of which were not, all the way north, to somewhere at the bottom of Vibrant Falls Cavern. Up above lay Archmage’s Rest, somewhere on one of those city-sized dagger-like platforms that stuck out into the cavern.

The water for Yggdrasil’s lake came from the kilometers-wide rush of gently-glowing water in the center of Vibrant Falls. Yggdrasil’s particular river was peeled off of the main flow by many of the nearby dagger-like cliffs. Erick suspected that this cavern had been here long before Yggdrasil came, but it had been expanded and changed in a lot of ways once Erick and his World Tree were planned to come here.

Temptation called Erick to explore Vibrant Falls, fully, but...

He’d have to come back this way, anyway, for some of the other requests.

He recalled Ophiel and went back to the tunnels around the embassy, moving out further and further into the tunnels that surrounded this Stratagold outpost, toward the place outlined in the first of his monster kill requests. There were quite a lot of people down in this city, living their lives. The three main tunnels each held hundreds of homes and businesses.

And then Ophiel reached the Main Roads.

There was no way anyone could mistake the Main Road System for anything natural, though the system apparently, and quite often, did divert through natural caverns in the Underworld in order to make the system easier to manage. Those natural caverns were places like Vibrant Falls, which probably wasn’t all that natural, now that Erick was thinking about it. But this part of the Main Roads was very much not natural at all.

Five kilometers wide, half that tall, with an arching roof from one side to the other, the Main Road was a brightly lit tunnel that led off to the left, and off to the right. And it was absolutely filled with farmland. As far as Ophiel could see, and he could see pretty darn far, there were farms.

From his time in the embassy, Erick knew that the right path arced over the Geode of Stratagold for a hundred kilometers before it sloped back down and went on, continuing across the Underworld for a few hundred kilometers more before it left Stratagold’s influence. The same was true down the left path. Along both ways, various satellite cities and otherwise had carved out land from the side tunnels. Millions upon millions of people lived near Stratagold and all the surrounding lands.

Erick had no idea how that all worked out in practice, which was part of the reason why he was fulfilling these requests. The other reason was that people needed help.

All of Erick’s various requests for help came from people who lived in these lands, but the actual requests were for spaces far, far down the Main Roads, down those Side Roads, into lands which people ‘affectionately’ referred to as the fringe. Some of those Side Roads were like the lands around the embassy; filled with people. But some of those Side Roads led deeper into the Depths, into danger.

Erick experienced the transition from civilization to not, as Ophiel lightstepped past the final small garrison stretched across the edge of Stratagold’s protective sphere, stepping out into a land of desolation. Behind him was light and civilization. In front was darkness. The floor of the Main Road was cracked and pitted with the scars of massive spellwork, likely cast from the garrison below against whatever hordes of monsters had tried attacking. None of those theoretical monsters were there now, but Erick did notice one strong-looking iron wrought standing at the garrison, with his eyes locked on Ophiel's normal sunform. Erick would have switched him to invisible ultraviolet, but that would have alerted the wrought anyway once they started fluorescing.

He had already accidentally made that mistake over in Vibrant Falls, and wasn’t that embarrassing.

Whatever.

Moving right along, the lights of the Main Tunnel were maintained for a good ten kilometers past the final garrison, but past that, one was on their own. Dead lightpoles rose from the center of the tunnel like broken obelisks in the night. Something barked in the shadows, and then barked again. Something else moved in the dark, sending the barking monster into a frenzy of yips and yells. Horrible squelching noises followed. The death wasn’t that loud at all, sounding off with all the force of a [Force Bolt] spacking against a distant target, but Erick’s senses were wide open and he easily heard the gruesomeness.

He heard quite a few more killings in the dark as Ophiel, now transitioned to invisible ultraviolet sunform (even if it risked illuminating someone) slipped ahead, toward the distant targets.

A hundred kilometers later some lights began to reappear in the Main Tunnel. Another garrison was stationed across the 5 kilometer wide passage, where soldiers killed something lizard-like that was trying to crawl over the wall. Erick moved quickly enough that Ophiel’s light hopefully wouldn’t illuminate too many people, for the town beyond was Erick’s turn. Inside that space, a Side Road led off to the left, to a natural space—

Yup. This was the correct area.

A cavern, kilometers across, held a spherical stone building in the center, a kilometer across itself, that was chained by mundane means to the sides of the walls. The spherical building was an alchemy workshop of some baron who had a problem down one of these tunnels... this way...

Erick found the tunnel. It was the same as marked in the instructions; Tunnel Redvine.

Down the ways, to a land of herbs that were apparently some of the best there were for making Health Potions, there was another cavern, which led to another cavern, which—

Erick’s connection to Ophiel got a bit fuzzy so he sent out another Ophiel to bridge the gap between them. He continued.

The monster was a vine monster that Erick already had experience with. Changeling Vines. They were inside Ar’Kendrithyst, too. They were one of the rare intelligent monsters that didn’t always have cores. This one was a worse variant of the Carmine Vine from Treehome; it wasn’t trying and failing to reproduce, it simply replaced people with copies of itself that then went on to repeat the process. This one was a redvine in its base form, though, and since the massive cavern was absolutely filled with redvines, the creature was rather capable of hiding well. The baron couldn’t just torch the place, either, because magical herbs were not like food; you couldn’t [Grow] them, for they had to mature.

Inside the now-sealed-off cavern where the creature was hopefully contained, Erick cast an Imaging, searching for a Changeling Vine, wondering if he would get luck—

He got lucky. There were actually ten changeling vines in the area.

Erick killed them all with precision [Luminous Beam]s. Then, because the problem in the cavern was larger than what the baron thought it was, Erick moved on to the other caverns and did the same, erasing another 23 changeling vines. Then he went to the large spherical keep which housed the processing rooms and other alchemy stuff, as well as the head alchemist, who Erick was supposed to inform if he chose to undertake this quest.

The baron himself was back in the town.

Ophiel descended to the landing at the entrance to the sphere. The guards fired some spells at the strange entity, but [Animadversion] threw those spells wide. Erick’s demands to see someone in charge only made the guards try even more desperate spellwork, while one even tried a [Strike] with their spear.

Erick was a patient man, so he was willing to let people be scared for a little while. It wasn’t like their attacks were doing anything. But...

A separate Ophiel turned on [Physical Domain] and started speaking to the entire facility.

Someone in charge came out pretty fast after Erick started shaking the whole facility.

Erick frowned when he saw who had come out. The guy wore expensive looking robes with hands stained red. Not too unusual, but he was sweating blood, too, which was very suspect. And now, Erick started inspecting all the people around him a lot more closely. While he was doing this, Erick reported on what he had found and demanded access to the facility, for there were a lot more changeling vines than there should have been.

That’s when the red-sweat guy turned into a vine plant and tried attacking him. It was a pretty impressive transformation, if Erick was honest. His robes unfolded along with his arms and his bones and his ribcage, becoming vines and eyes and slashing thorns, filling up the entirety of the entrance platform as it tried to get at Ophiel. One spear guard unfolded into a changeling vine, too, but the other guard was just a normal dragonkin. Erick rescued the normal guard.

Erick studied the scene before him for half a second. These vine monsters were odd, because while there were some oddities among these people, their souls were normal in that they had no rads next to their hearts, where a monstrous soul was usually contained, and their bodies were normal without any vines anywhere. But then, at a shift, they were monsters. Their souls retreated to their cores and they attacked with vines made of controlled plant matter.

Erick killed the monsters that attacked him, of course, but he also demanded that one of them transform back. The monster in charge, possibly sensing the uselessness of further ‘attacking’, complied. Erick noticed something he did not notice before. The guy had no veins. Just arteries.

How strange! Erick hadn’t even considered looking for that. It was such a nuanced difference too, that Erick was sure no one else had noticed it. And then he killed the monster, even though it was pleading with him and promising to be good. These things were obligate... Parasites? Mimics? Erick wasn’t sure. But he wasn’t going to let them infest other lands.

They didn’t have DNA like normal people, either. They were all changeling vines, which was easy enough to Image for. Armed with his new knowledge, Erick set the Imaging to a new target. After checking to ensure that, yes, this was going to work, and it was, Erick went to work.

He spent 20 minutes clearing out the whole place of Changeling Vines, most of which started to abandon the sphere once the future of their infestation became obvious. The other Ophiels stationed around the place caught the fleeing obligate mimics, with the Imaging proving their identities as either vines fleeing for their lives, or people fleeing for their lives. Whatever the case, everyone was fleeing for their lives.

Short bloody story made shorter: It got sorted.

Then Erick moved on to the town on the Main Road and found three vine-people there, as well as an incubation house on the outskirts of town. Baby changeling vines were growing in soil made of bones and rotten flesh.

Simultaneously, Erick spoke to the wrought at the garrison in town, ensuring that everyone knew what he was doing and why he was doing it. By the time reinforcements from Stratagold showed, Erick had already cleared the entire place.

The commanding wrought officer politely thanked Erick, then rapidly went about cleaning up the mess Erick had made.

The baron of the town, who had sent Erick the request for assistance, loudly thanked Erick, but most of his words were reserved for the various people who had failed to realize what was going on under their noses. According to what Erick was seeing, the baron and the commanding wrought had some issues, with the wrought saying that this wouldn’t have happened if they allowed them into the redvine caverns, and the baron saying that they purposefully didn’t help at the alchemy sphere, but none of that was Erick’s problem.

He moved on.