Just as Kairen had hoped, the arrival of the mercenaries and the transfer of ownership had been a significant event, giving him the points needed to make the remaining purchases. While a part of him wanted to completely deny Zar any additional benefit, it was in the minority. He was curious to see what else he could learn from about the third row of upgrades once they were affordable, and was doubtful regarding his ability to simply not purchase any upgrades. Kairen might be able to delay, but once his upgrade pool was full the system would likely compel him to choose something, just as it had previously. Kairen knew eventually he would be testing the limits of that mechanism, but not right away.

The fertility upgrade was both cheap and something unlikely to benefit the entirely male group of workers present. It would benefit the rat colonies that had been established, and with the nomads out of the picture Kairen was less concerned about the rats causing problems for the humans. Spoiled food or infested homes were the least of the troubles he wanted to inflict on those he viewed as invaders. Eagerly he purchased the upgrade, and watched as his pool size increased to 1000. While it would take a day or two for him to gather the points needed to actually purchase one of the new upgrades, Kairen eagerly looked over the options available, curious as to what new information he could glean now that the pictures were moving.

The first thing Kairen noticed was that not all of the pictures had been animated. Three remained as immobile as ever, and still had the greyed-out hue that implied they were unavailable to be purchased. It didn’t take long to guess at the likely cause. Two options had lines connecting them to the shrinking monster upgrade, while the third lay directly above the pool depth upgrade, the only second tier upgrades that Kairen hadn’t purchased at all. He had skipped some of the blessings, but the fact that all five were tied to the same third tier upgrade and all increased in price whenever he bought one meant they weren’t quite the same.

It was frustrating, having some of his choices locked away like that. While Kairen did have the points needed to purchase either or both of the shrinking and depth upgrades, he didn’t know if he wanted to. Neither of them seemed immediately useful for his purposes, and the slavers would definitely notice the physical change to the pool, even if they couldn’t feel the monster ward being put into place. Then again, Ramses was a mage and while he seemed to struggle to understand Kairen and his capabilities, that didn’t mean he would be completely oblivious to any magical changes that might occur.

Kairen shook his head, and made a rude gesture at the mage who was hard at work recovering his magic, also known as napping by the pool. He fantasized for a moment about suddenly enlarging the size of the pond to unexpectedly dunk the mage, but not only was it a frivolous use of his points the next level of that upgrade cost more points than he had or could afford. Instead, Kairen turned his focus towards the third-tier upgrades that had been unlocked. Once he had a better idea what they would do he would see if he could make sense of the locked ones from context, or reconsider where he wanted to invest his points.

The tree of blessing abilities only offered a single third tier blessing. The static image had been that of an old man in excellent health, and the moving image elaborated on that theme. It cycled through a variety of individuals, old and young, healthy and sick, before showing their condition improving. The boost was barely noticeable when applied to children, but had impressive benefits to the elderly and the sick, providing them with additional energy and life force that they needed to once again go about their lives normally. Vitality, the energy of life was both a powerful blessing and a subtle one. The structure of the tree suggested that every Oasis would offer this blessing to one degree or another, and Kairen could see how it would get overlooked. The benefit towards general health was useful, but could easily be attributed to plenty of other causes, such as the abundance of water or safety from the hazards normally present in the Shifting Sands. More than that, each of the blessings provided minimal benefits per level. Kairen had provided both the endurance blessing and the education blessing to the nomads, and despite knowing that both blessings were present, he found it difficult to actively attribute any difference in behavior to their presence. The nomads worked harder than he remembered the adults from his village doing, but it was easy to simply write it off as being more dedicated to their work or simply being better fed and hydrated.

It was just a suspicion at this point, but Kairen had a feeling that the higher tier blessings he chose also affected the rats. The fertility blessing clearly portrayed its universal nature, but the second and third tier blessings only showed images of humans for their descriptions, although that might simply be to help him understand their purpose. He didn’t know if all life present in the Oasis benefitted from them or if whatever quirk of magic allowed Alpha and his progeny to see him was responsible, but there clearly was some empowerment happening. For animals, their capability to understand his directions and tirelessly carry them out was impressive. Most nights he had worked with Alpha and the other named rats for hours on end, carefully pointing out areas to dig and making sure that they didn’t backfill other areas of his message. Despite the long period of time spent doing activities that didn’t help them survive, the group of rats always seemed to have the energy to go forage afterwards and return the next night willing to work some more under Kairen’s direction.

If the rats did benefit from the blessings that Kairen chose, then obtaining the vitality upgrade became a long-term goal for the ghost. He didn’t know what the usual lifespan was for a desert rat, but it was far shorter than that of a human, let alone whatever lifespan Kairen might expect from his new existence. Gaining more time with his small friends was a treasure worth far more than whatever benefits the slavers might gain from the same blessing.

Making a note to further test the blessings later, Kairen turned his attention to the middle tree, the one that so far had offered upgrades that physically changed the Oasis. The third-tier choices continued with this theme, with three options each connected to a single upgrade from the second tier.

It took Kairen a bit to spot the difference between the first third tier upgrade and the plant growth option beneath it. Both showed new plants springing into life and rapidly growing to maturity, and for a moment Kairen wondered if multiple upgrades with the same purpose was simply a way for the system to compensate for the increasing cost of purchasing upgrades. However, on closer inspection, Kairen noticed a few small details that set the third-tier choice apart. All the plants that grew were surrounded by a faint ethereal glow that didn’t seem to actually cast any light. More than that, every time the animation played small details were different. From the shape of the leaves to the color of the fruit that grew, something had changed every time Kairen watched, and even after ten cycles he hadn’t seen it repeat itself, while the Plant Growth option simply played the same moving image over and over. What finally clued Kairen in as to the benefit of the third-tier upgrade was when he recognized some of the plants being generated. He had seen them quite recently, when the Nomads had tried to plant them, first inside the Oasis and then just outside his boundary.

Magical plants were the benefit offered, and one that Kairen had no intention of purchasing for as long as the slavers held control of his territory. There wasn’t any guarantee as to which plants would begin to grow, but any magical plants would be an unexpected windfall, a rare treasure handed over to his murderers not just once, but continually.

Crossing that upgrade off his list, Kairen focused on the other available upgrade on the physical tree. It was linked to the grassy area upgrade, but while that ability increased the size of the Oasis horizontally, this one seemed to do so vertically. While Kairen could see that the source of water was located quite far underground, most of the Oasis consisted of a layer of soil only a few feet deep. It was enough to provide fertile ground for the plants that grew, but the nomads had quickly hit a transition layer between dirt and sand when they had been making mud bricks. This upgrade promised to extend that layer drastically, turning a few feet of soil into fifty or so, transforming to solid rock as the depth increased. It would probably take additional upgrades, but Kairen thought he saw the beginning of mineral veins appearing at the lowest edges of the displayed upgrade.

Mining wasn’t an uncommon profession in the Shifting Sands. Despite the name there were many areas of the desert that were simply barren, rocky ground, where extracting resources from the earth was possible but difficult. Kairen’s village had been located in one such place, and his father had been a successful miner, bringing enough ore and metal up to both keep his family alive and to stockpile some money for the future as well. Kairen doubted the slavers would be willing to do any mining themselves, but all it would take would be a simple raid and they would have a force of experienced slaves that could be forced to labor away. Kairen mentally put the upgrade just above the magical plant one on his ignore list. It’s only saving grace was that the change would occur underground, where it might take some time for the slavers to notice anything different, depending on how much the earth would rumble during such a change.

Before moving on to the defensive tree, Kairen looked at the last option in the physical tree, the unmoving upgrade that was tied to pool depth. Knowing it would affect the pool in some way helped, but the static image of something unidentifiable, obscured by a cloud of mud, didn’t offer many clues as to what the upgrade would do.

The two options that were moving didn’t provide any new information for Kairen to take advantage of. Both were tied to the storm deflection upgrade, and both seemed to expand the defenses provided by the magical barrier. One seemed to affect sunlight and possibly heat as well, turning the harsh glare outside in the sands into something more tolerable. Kairen was sure that the image exaggerated the effect for purposes of getting the point across, but keeping the temperature in the Oasis bearable was hardly something that Zar and his lackeys could use maliciously. The other upgrade clearly showed the barrier deflecting or slowing all sorts of projectiles from arrows to sling bullets to javelins. Magical spells weren’t affected at all, and the shots from a ballista and a catapult had their trajectories only slightly altered. It was still a potent defensive upgrade, one that would make assaulting the Oasis a far more difficult proposition than it already was. If the Nomads had been present and had had the fortifications necessary to keep the slavers out Kairen would have been ecstatic. This was the sort of upgrade that he had hoped for to help tip the scales of a potential fight, only he had gotten access to it too late to actually change the outcome of events. Kairen would have felt far worse if any actual fighting had occurred, but as it was the arrow deflection upgrade was ignored as well.

Kairen was somewhat disheartened at how few of the upgrades were actually appealing for his current position. He didn’t know what he had been hoping for, but something more than hordes of rats would have been a nice feature to look forward to. He supposed it was all a matter of perspective. All the upgrades were good, he was just looking for some choices that were bad, or at least situational enough to be misused. Fortunately, one of the last options in the defensive tree looked promising in that regard While Kairen couldn’t make heads or tails of one, the other showed large numbers of monsters outside the barrier. Wanting confirmation of his hunch, Kairen purchased a level of monster shrinking, and watched the group of monsters begin to move.

His initial guess was correct. The third-tier upgrade lured monsters to the Oasis. Kairen could see the potential upsides of such an ability. With the barrier keeping the monsters out of the Oasis they would be easy targets for any mages or archers to whittle down, providing valuable combat experience and materials to whoever held the Oasis. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but Kairen could easily see the unexpected monsters causing problems for Zar, especially if he refused to upgrade his barrier any further. Monsters outside the Oasis might be a nuisance, but monsters inside it might be his ticket to salvation.