NOVEL NEXT 107 - Beatrice Might Actually Have A Good Idea Or Two
Archmund watched as Beatrice held the Gem of Mental Fortification (name still pending workshopping to sound less uninspired), her power flowing into it.
His vision for magical flows had improved. He could practically see the circuit forming between her and the Gem, looping chains of purple-black flowing up her arms from the Gem, to the crown of her head, to some place beyond comprehension, then from that unknowable place back to the Gem.
There likely wouldn't be much resistance to her magic. The process by which he'd made the Gems meant that although they buffed Willpower, there was precious little of the Monster's willpower (lowercase) within the final product. Therefore, no Enchantment. Therefore, less resistance, and in theory, easier Attunement and easier eventual Awakening. It would be easier for a beginner to just give up, since you'd be pouring your magic into the Gem and nothing would happen for a long while, but for someone even a little more proficient with magic you would in theory be able to make leaps and bounds with this power.
"Wow," Beatrice said. "This is… Alright, I'm starting to get what you're doing. I'll admit, I was a little skeptical for a bit there, but this seems like a real boost."
He checked her stats. There was no discernible change.
"So you're on board with the plan going forward?"
"Yep," she said. "Do you want me to go back to farming Monsters?"
"Maybe for an hour or so," he said. "No point in wasting too much extra power. In that time I should have made another breakthrough."
No discernible change in the stats. He wasn't sure how much a 1 point gain really meant, if there was any rounding involved, or if these jumps were big and he was ignorant of their significance. But he could test small things.
"If you've gotten a bit smarter," he said, "maybe you can help me with something. I'm not sure where Gelias has gone, and you seem like my best bet of finding him."
"Me? Not Rory?"
"I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Rory…"
Beatrice raised an eyebrow.
"It feels like you do the thinking for him sometimes."
He'd wanted to say Rory did his thinking with his heart, or other parts of his body, but he didn't want to be that crude.
"That… fells true, actually," Beatrice said. She actually seemed to approve of what he'd said.
"You were expecting me to be ruder."
"Yes?"
"What did I ever do to you."
"You disarmed and kicked me into the dirt in front of your entire county. And then you had your maid do the same thing."
He'd forgotten he'd done that second bit. He hadn't even watched. He'd been rather occupied at the time with Rory.
"Yes, true, I did do that."
"I didn't even get one victory, while Rory and Gelias got to prance around like show ponies."
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It seemed like she'd gotten a bit of her fire back. He'd kind of missed it. It felt bad being a dick to people who wouldn't complain at least a little. He liked the delusion that people listened to him because he was right or because they liked him, not because he could hurt them. Conditioned power, not condign power.
"Gelias kind of does his own thing sometimes," Beatrice said with a shrug, which was a little surprising because he thought she would have held more of a grudge.
"Would he betray us?"
"No," Beatrice said instantly. "Well, you have to define what you mean by 'betray'."
"Clarify."
He put some magic behind the words, making them commands carried by the voice. A mistake, to be sure — she would've done so anyways, and she flinched as the power approached her.
"He's got that elf thing going on," Beatrice said. "The one where they think they're better than everyone, so they do their own thing and don't tell you what the plan was until after the fact. Then they stand there all smug, going 'I told you so', and the worst part is that they were right so you could get mad, but you'd be better off just accepting you were wrong. But they still won't tell you the plan next time."
"I don't know many other elves."
"Neither do I, but that's what they're like in all the histories."
He really needed to sit down and actually read through all of those.
Hmmm. Now there was an idea. A series of publications that took all the major events of Omnio history and rendered them accessible to children of all ages at a basic literacy level. It would promote patriotism and increase a baseline quality of life, so he could probably get the Empire to fund it. And since it was using Omnio history instead of trying to use stories from his old world that didn't map properly onto concepts in this one, it wouldn't get the secret police on his tail. .He was well on track to leaving the Dungeon immensely rich, but you didn't stay rich by not getting other people to pay for your stupid ideas or provoking the government.
"Do you think you can find him?"
"Do you have any idea how hard it is to find an elf that doesn't want to be found? They're natural survivalists. They have heightened senses. They don't need to eat or drink for weeks. They can speak to the environment."
"Luckily," Archmund said, "so can I."
Gelias was suffering.
His eyes saw only darkness. His mouth was dry, his muscles sore. The Dungeon and its web of power, its invisible interlinked hierarchy, swung at him like a net, and he had to suppress almost all of his power to avoid getting tangled in it.
Archmund, he surmised, had caught on to his well-meaning betrayal.
Sometimes the younger races acted in ways that were bad for them. In such times, it took a wiser guiding hand to steer them away from utter ruin.
Those were the thoughts of his ancestors, passed down for generations along the wooden curvelines of his bow.
Personally, he didn't feel too good about any aspect of this bullshit.
It had been so straightforward to go down into the Dungeon through the middle subtier (T2S2 if you wanted to use shorthand, which really would have been more convenient far earlier), but getting back to tier 1? Where there were raw materials, varied terrain, victuals, and open space?
For some reason the way back up was far harder than the way down.
He'd thought it would be easy to run atop the cubicle walls, jumping from wall to wall, never touching the floor upon which Monsters crawled. He'd thought he could climb up to the Upper Subtier pretty easily without much opposition. Stay high above, and there wouldn't be any Monsters, and he could get out safely.
Oh how stupid he'd been.
The Monsters had evolved, because of course they had.
Now some emerged with great, bulging eyes, Sentries capable of piercing through the dark to spot him. They would bleat, a tortured sound, and point him out.
Then Climbers, with muscles as large as boulders and fingers as delicate as wires, would climb atop the walls and try to swarm him.
He suspected Archmund didn't even know the details of what were happening.
He'd probably gone "find Gelias", and then the demon of the Dungeon had done just that.
He was probably off doing some experiment for his own personal strength, not realizing that in doing so he was making the Dungeon far more hazardous for future exploration.
But he'd said that was a plan, hadn't he? Rip as much wealth out of the Dungeon as possible in a short amount of time and use it to buy a comfortable life, and then turn his back on it forever.
As Gelias stabbed an arrow through the hand of a Climber and kicked it off the wall, ripping the arrow out as it fell (this was how he could preserve what remained of his physical arrows), he wondered if it really might be easier to just go back, give up, and try to persuade Archmund with words.
But no. That wasn't the way. Words could be lies. Only actions revealed the true path.