Name: Nash

Level:50

Titles:3

Class: One with the World

87.63 M/0 EXP

Strength

56

Soul

42

Constitution

57

Agility

55

Dexterity

61

Endurance

73

Perception

136

Intelligence

76

Willpower

90

Health

943/943

629

/day

Mana

1222/1222

11.05

/hour

Stamina

585/585

8.8

/min

These improvements are quite significant. Especially the 16 points in perception. Endurance was also coming along nicely. I even gained a point in my Soul stat. Those are especially hard to come by.

I look at the screen for a few minutes, but as the euphoria dies down I start to feel… hollow, as if the very marrow was sucked out of my bones after wrangling out every smidge of improvement that I could.

I’m glad I did so, but for me to return to normal it will take me days, no… weeks, maybe even months.

Being reliant on Aether doesn’t seem so bad if the only way to increase my stats in any reasonable time frame is so… draining. Even as that thought settles on my mind my innard's revolts. For some reason, I should avoid being overly reliant on Aether except in the most extreme of cases. Avoiding a long term risk while dying before getting there is a wise trade.

I stretch my arms while sitting cross-legged while feeling the changes rather than trusting implicitly on what the system told me.

Sending my awareness and my perception field scanning throughout my body, I search slowly finding all the improvements. Nothing extraordinary compared to this last month, but there is a marked improvement and as I finish and start looking at my inner world someone comes running in my direction. I open my eyes and stare at the messenger.

“You came for me?”

“Yeah, Charlie wants to talk to you as soon as you came out of meditation.”

“How long did I spend meditating?”

“Forever, like… 3 days, I think. You didn’t even move a muscle while you were at it.”

“Lead the way,” I say cursing the time it cost me while trying to get used to the duality in my muscles. There is power hidden under the hollowness from having my very essence stolen by the process used to fuel my growth, and the feeling is overpowering.

Less than 200 meters later, I’m at Charlie’s office and the boy runs off. I enter and it takes me a moment to realize that the office is empty.

I must be even more tired than I thought to not notice that before entering, though I don’t have to wait long for him to arrive.

“Good, you are finally back.”

“I heard it took about three days.”

“Yeah and we didn’t think it a good idea to interrupt you.”

“What did I miss?”

“A whole bunch of things, we are up to our neck in problems popping up, but I guess you are asking about the attacks and as expected there has been just one. You got back in time for the next one, we have about 7 hours.”

“Why the urgency then?”

“Ohh, that? One of the problems we are dealing with is on the second silver mine we discovered.”

“Did you have to shut down because of something on the HLZ?”

“No, we actually don’t know what has happened over there. The cameras in the vicinity stopped and our connection was severed. We thought about sending a pair of scouts on a speeder, but…”

“Wait, back up. Speeder?”

“That is what people have taken to calling the small flying bicycles.”

“Ohh… well, there are worse names out there.”

“Either way. We thought about it, but it seemed a bad idea when you can just take a look, we just didn’t know how long you were going to take. We also didn’t send anyone to collect and bring back the ore. We can’t let even more people die, especially just collect a little more silver.”

“I agree, but without silver, we wouldn’t have a detection network nearly as compressive. It’s not just about greed, we need these resources.”

“For now we have other mines. Let’s cross that bridge if we come to it.”

“Trading lives for resources need to protect lives leaves a bad taste in my mouth as well. I’m going to take a quick peek, I will be right back,” I say.

He frowns at my abruptness, but I barely take notice as I sit and connect to the roots underground sending my awareness hundreds of miles away moving faster than any human ever moved, some ten seconds later I slow near the mine and start looking at the place more carefully.

I feel the ground overturned and a near complete severing of the roots underground. Somebody has started to experiment. Luckily there are nearly complete redundant lines slowly connecting that run parallel to the finished main line. One inside the HLZ and another outside.

I connect to the detection network, but a close look at both nodes in the region reveals they are offline. That should have sent an alert to the village and Charlie didn’t mention anything. Tapping into the feed directly, I realize that something is funky. This seems to be the only place where this - disruption - is present, but even that is alarming enough.

Fully alert after realizing the change can only really come from sentient beings acting against us, probably another human, I send mana to the region not in a trickle, but in droves as I get Aspen’s help and start completing the circuit of the roots forming a perimeter around the whole area.

I rely mostly on the root lines already in the region and it takes me only a few minutes to surround their encampment. Then I start working underground and growing the roots deeper than the overturned Earth trenches. From what I can see there is not a single tree still standing, though that won’t be much of a hindrance for me to set up runic visual capture devices, AKA little magical cameras.

Still, it is a small hindrance to make them stealthy without a fixed organic structure like the trees. A few seconds later I connect to the roots touching the detection nodes in the region and look through them to realize that there are new runic plates that were specifically designed to counter the current design and allow the detector to go off-line without sending a warning.

Bridging the gap they forced while remaining fully underground and not visible, I connect to the roots in the small work site for the miner responsible for this mine. Luckily there was nobody there when they took the mine, otherwise, things could have gotten ugly.

I slow the mana stream navigating the roots near to their emplacements not to let them glow brightly in the senses of any magic users, but I don’t need mana to use the perception field.

As they come into view, I curse. Dozen people handling cartloads of Silver Ore.

“What?” I hear from Charlie after coming back to the room. I look up and see the commander and half a dozen other people in the office.

“Somebody took over the mine and they spoofed the life sign detectors.”

“We had guessed that could be it. They weren’t showing anything outside the norm.” Says Richard.

“How do you want to handle this?” I ask.

“How many people?” Asks Richard.

“I saw thirteen people and their goal seems to be exploiting the mine.”

“Why so aggressive? Your village was doing the same thing.” One of the recent arrivals says presenting what I imagine would be these interloper’s argument.

“Hey, we built the infrastructure and they took it from us. At the very minimum, they would have to pay us for the tunnels and stuff.”

“How the hell are they mining on the other side? Or did just take the ore we hadn’t sent anyone to take yet?” Asks another of the new arrivals.

“There is about three tons of ore, most of it loaded in a couple carriages,” I reply in a matter-of-fact tone.

“If that is the case, they have mined at least a little. We only about 2 tons of ore in place when our operators lost control of the mining bots.”

“Why so much?” I ask

“It’s not that much really, we were waiting for it to accumulate about 3 tons before sending carriages to collect everything instead of getting it piecemeal.”

“That was a bite in the ass,” I say. “Still, how do you want to handle this?”

“Do they know you are there?” Asks Richard.

“Not for now, I don’t think so. I was careful and didn’t do anything they could detect.”

“It’s a small advantage, but let's warn then just before you establish a visual link so we can directly talk to them.”

“How do you want me to handle this? Shock and awe? “

“Sure, just don’t take it too far, we don’t actually want to fight them just yet, but make it quickly so they won’t have much time to react.”

I nod and move over to the comm system in the corner of the office. I prepare a connection to the other side after getting everything into place.

After operating stealthily for a few more minutes, I send a rush of mana to the region flooding the entire root network which surprises the mages as I quickly form a pedestal in the middle of their encampment for them to communicate with us.

Roots grow from the ground at a visible rate all around them and the pedestal of twisting vines reaches about a meter high before I finish the link.

I open the connection and turn on the screen so everybody can see the other side. As I focus my eyes I finally notice something that passed unnoticed till now, their uniform. They are Lord Max’s people.

It only takes me a moment to see one person at the back of the group in the encampment.

“Brad.” I hear the menacing word coming from Richard’s mouth, which sends a chill down my spine. Damn, he really took Brad’s actions personally.

Brad looks fairly composed even after all that and I wonder at the source of his confidence. Though now that I think about it, he was never short of confidence and that was why so many actually followed him while he was in the village. Though after he was caught red-handed most changed their tune in a jiff.

“Well, I hoped you wouldn’t bother with us for a while longer, but what brings you by as it were?” Brad asks.

“You have the temerity to ask that?” Charlie asks incredulously.

“Ohh, fancy words Charlie. Should I be scared?”

“Tell me why we shouldn't just show up there and drive you off.”

“I don’t know, maybe because of the system’s contract you signed. We didn't give you any cause to attack us.”

I can feel Charlie’s tightening muscles, but he keeps his outward appearance immutable for a few moments. The commander however can't hide his feelings as well and that brings a very punchable smile to Brad’s face.

Brad’s words however answer a long doubt of mine about why Max had signed so readily the contract. He managed to sneak in a few loopholes. Charlie then says, ponderingly:

“Regardless, do you think you are going to get away with it?”

“We already did. You don’t really have any recourse.”

“Yes, we do. You took our mine, we will take it back.” Says Richard after a thoughtful glance at my back that I hope they can’t see.

What are you thinking Richard?

“Except it’s not your mine. You didn’t even have anyone here to stop us from taking over it. Really, you can only blame yourself.”

Charlie nods at that and says: “If that is how you want to play, fine.” Moving his hand over the one responsible for turning off the connection, he hangs up.

“He is going to be pissed.” Says Richard.

“Who cares. What were you thinking, Richard?” I ask.

“How did you?… You were with your back turned to me!” Says Richard.

“Just tell us,” I sigh.

“Well, Nash said something about them paying for building the tunnel. We don’t know how they are mining, but they must be using the tunnel. If we built the tunnel, regardless of any limitation on the contract, we can demolish it.”

“I’m like this idea,” I say. “I can easily collapse it with a little earth magic, maybe even make it harder to dig it again. Not sure if there is anything on the contract about that, but we did build it.”

“Yeah, it was too easy for everything to be solved neatly with the contract.”

“Let’s just hope that this is the only loophole they managed to sneak through.”

“We saw a few more obvious loopholes they tried to pass through, but maybe he send them specifically to distract us. He must have had a good lawyer in his midst.”

“We don’t want to exaggerate things. It could be just one or two small oversights.”

“I’m going to get someone on it to look through and find any more loopholes if there are any. Being allowed to attack and take over anywhere without people is a rather large one, all things considered.”

I give a big grin: “Worse comes to worst, I can always do this on my own. I’m not exactly bound by that contract.”

“You are also only partially protected. If you poke the bear, may come to bite you in the ass.”