Aswelth

Aswelth hummed as he worked on the tunnel, sometimes, even waiting for five minutes got boring. All that was happening right now was that his QI was burrowing into the ground making the tunnel. Nothing he could do but stand still and let it do its thing.

Suddenly, he experienced a small pushback from the Qi as it went through another part of the bedrock and into a more dense area. It was always a pain when things weren’t uniform, some places would require more Qi to get through and some less, and each time it changed the Qi would attempt to pushback.

Sighing, Aswelth pushed the Qi through in an attempt to brute force any resistance. Except the resistance did not break. Instead, it intensified. Deciding to take it a bit more seriously, Aselth sent his senses into the tunnel and to the resistance. Surprisingly, there was no dense rock blocking the Qi, it was something much more serious, it was a barrier of Qi.

Dense, beast Qi, with a dual attunement of ice and Earth by the looks of it. This wasn’t a low level beast that he had encountered. Turning his Qi bladelike, Aswelth cut through the barrier, trying to get a feel of what exactly it was.

And he got it. It was a mongoose. Strange for it to be burrowing in mountains, but evolved beasts tended to deviate from their normal counterparts. That ice affinity likely had something to do with it. The mongoose howled as it attempted to attack back, using its meager Earth magic to send spikes at him. A stomp and very little Qi had the ground under him solidifying, making the pikes harder to execute and effectively nullifying them at this distance.

A wave of his hand had him sending Qi into the Earth, barbing the ground around the mongoose, effectively trapping it in one place. Mongooses could be one of the fastest animals, especially ones in their natural habitat.

Aswelth began preparing the next wave of attacks as the ground suddenly became slippery under him, the mongoose was being sneaky. Another stomp and the ground once again solidified, this time with a lot more QI then before. Aswelth summoned a tenth of his remaining Qi, letting it coalesce into a tunnel and then sending it into the tunnel at high speed.

Throughout its journey, it became narrower as it concentrated its Qi into a needle like shape. The covering he turned into Earth, and the insides he turned into the one element you definitely did not want running around in your insides. Lightning. Fire was another option, but ice attuned beasts were sometimes resistant to such attacks. The element was far too common, causing numerous beasts to have some form of resistance to it.

The poor mongoose did not even see the needle coming, its senses not able to detect the small object until it was too late. The needle pierced into its side as its veins burst by the influx of lightning. The heart of the beast was another story, it found itself completely incinerated. Reduced to nothing but ash.

Ice haired burrowing Mongoose killed [Late Plantling]- Qi gained

A very small amount of Qi trickled into Aswelth’s Plant, its growth extremely minimal. The System was harsh in cutting Qi growth if the difference in power was over a realm. ASwelth knew that he was bottle necked at this level.

Breaking through to the Treeling level required the formation of a fruit on the Plant, something he could never achieve, not with the limited understanding of Qi, his seed and casting that he had. All he could wish for was to retire to some quiet place where he could live out the rest of his life in relative peace.

And there was one more worry… Was this a pack mongoose? And if yes, exactly how many mongeese did that pack have? And where was the pack?

Aswelth sensed out the tunnel, trying to get a feel of its route. It seemed to circle around the valley, never crossing a particular line, this was likely the ward or whatever working, keeping the beasts away. Though Aswelth would prefer to know exactly how it did say work, the fact that there were Plantling beasts waiting for the ward to fail did not sit well with him. Especially when he was going to leave the valley soon.

And then he found something else, there was another one of the tunnels running alongside this one. Leading to the same location that this one seemed to come from. Two diverging roads? But even more importantly, there were people inside that tunnel. Thousands of them, just travelling to a forest full of beasts. Mortal too.

Sighing, Aswelth sent a wave of mana towards the tunnel wall, letting it join with the tunnel on the other side. Remembering at the last minute that brute forcing tended to create a fair bit of rubble. Rubble that could kill someone on the other side. A little more Qi had any rubble incinerated, likely creating a huge rush of light.

But he was sure that whoever they were, they would prefer a bit of light over actual rubble. Now to make the rest of the tunnel. It would take these mortals a while to cross the mountains, and he could use it to make more of the tunnel, there was more than enough of it there already anyway.

Marcus

Marcus looked at the mongoose in abject horror. It had not occurred to him that the tunnel was a beasts' lair. But it did explain the tunnel’s strange nature, the way it was not uniform but just large enough. It was just large enough to fit a beast. A beast that would have eaten him if given the chance.

And more than that, the surrounding tunnel was uniform. And very wide. It had the markings of those old Qi reinforced tunnels, perhaps even was one such tunnel. A man made a tunnel. Which meant there was someone on the other side of it.

“Marcus, I don’t suppose you have any idea where this new tunnel goes?” Larvis asked.

Marcus looked around, trying to get a feel of the direction. “The mongoose is in the same direction we came from. The other way should be the valley…maybe.” Marcus answered.

“Then I think we should get going” Argus said, “There are people back there that have no idea what happened, and it could get bad if there was no clear way out.”

Shuffling sounded out as people began finding the way in. One at a time, but at worrying speeds. The tunnel was definitely not large enough that they could stop moving. Well, it had to lead somewhere… Marcus started walking towards the other end of the new tunnel, away from the mongoose.

Walking upright was extremely rejuvenating after the constricting walls of the old tunnel. Or was it a mongoose lair now? Behind Marcus, the others followed suit. For however large it was, it was still a dark tunnel. Still with no end in sight.

But less depressing than before. The crowd walked its way through the tunnel, hoping as they had hoped when they began this journey, that something good awaited them at the other end.

Eventually, the walk ended, and they found their way to the end. At first, it was just a little light at the end of the tunnel, but it hushed the entire crowd. It had been hours since they had seen sunlight, and they were eager to return to its embrace.

Marcus could feel the tension in the air, everyone watched eagerly. Finally, he crossed the final stretch and emerged outside to a land covered in snow. A city marked the background, nestled within the snow, but that was not what held his attention.

It was the man that stood before him that did. There before him was the man that he had journeyed to get to, Blood General Aswelth. Marcus felt a shove from behind him as Larvis emerged too, in an absentminded manner, he moved out of the way, making way for the emerging crowd.

A few minutes later, after most of the people had emerged from the tunnel and were crowding the entrance, the Blood General stepped aside to give way to a ten-year-old girl Marcus recognized from her description as the Archduchess.

The General bowed, saying “Archduchess, you have returned”

The Archduchess nodded her head and said, “yes, I have,”-- and then she stretched her hand forward, a staff appearing in it,—“And I see that you have been busy while I was away.”