Book 2 C 27 Grinding

I lay awake in the big bed that Aerleras manipulated into being. She extended the walls, floors and ceiling with her magic. With her connection to us, her mana supply never dropped and she was amazed at how much she could do now. She was delighted at the results and maybe went overboard a little, adding a second floor with stairs and more room to the dwelling. She moved the bed upstairs and left the bottom floor for gatherings and eating our meals, while upstairs was for the big bed she made. It could easily fit 10 on it now.

I lay in the middle, Aerleras and Ki'Diera on either side of me, Julie next to Aerleras and Cindy by Ki'Diera holding her tail with content. We were not intimate last night, as I and the girls were conscious of the fact this place has no way of covering up the sounds, should we decide to engage in such. Before we fell asleep we did hear the occasional moans of others engaging in the act and we all giggled to one another, but we were happy to simply be together once more.

We wake up as one again, it is now becoming a habit due to the Soul Link. Aerleras is fully refreshed now having slept with the trees around her. I too, feel refreshed somehow, more than usual. Even the girls can feel it too. As we go down the stairs to the gathering and eating area we find the old female Elder waiting for us with the young Elf girl who brought us the poison, waiting for us. The table was prepared with fruits, breads and pastries. And there was also a pitcher of freshly squeezed juice. I frown at the pitcher.

“(Good Morning your Majesties! Worry not King Scott Smith, the juice is safe, I vouch for it myself.)” says the female Elder seeing my reaction.

I nod seeing the oath is in affect, reading her mind to make sure that she is indeed, telling the truth. I take a seat and the Elder pours me a glass of juice. I take the glass and sip it, testing it, still unsure, but no message pops up this time. Knowing and believing are two different things entirely, and trust is a whole different matter.

The girls delightedly dig into their breakfasts commenting on the fruits and making faces of joy at the taste, Cindy, Julie and Ki'Diera also take out and down a yellow potion of some kind, must be the one George Harland made for them.

“(Your Majesties if there is anything else, I will take my leave then)”, Says the Elder female politely.

“(Your name Elder, we have never been introduced,)”, I say to her looking at her, seeing her transformation from just yesterday is astounding. She is an older elf, many wrinkles from many years, she was once a great beauty in her own right, but her hair has now gone silver, her eyes still carry a fire in them, a golden yellow color to them, giving her a penetrating stare, he fragile frame is 5'6”tall and she still walks with pride about her. Today, she has a kinder, more caring face on her.

“(Begging your forgiveness your Majesty)”, the Elder female says, “(I am Ariannona Fildon, I have served on the Elder council for the last 400 year.)” she says with pride, giving a little curtsy. “(and this little one is Wellisa Kylrad.)”

Wellisa bows, the little girl is 4'9” tall, small and petite, still a child by any standards, not even fully developed, pretty, once she grows into an adult, her beauty will surely strike any man blind, her long grass green hair falls about her as she apologizes profusely “(I am so sorry your Majesty ,I did not know, please forgive me)”, She cries out,” (I would never do anything to harm the princ.....the Queen!)”.

“(Worry not Wellisa, no fault lies with you, nor do you have anything to apologize for, rise and be at ease, please)”, I say to her as I pat her on the head lightly.

She looks up and nods to me, smiling as tears fall from her dark pink eyes.”(Thank you your Majesty, I will do everything to be of help)” , she says to me grinning with wet eyes, relief is apparent

Ariannona and Wellisa then take their leave and close the door behind them. Looking at the girls who finished eating their breakfast and heaving a happy sigh each “ We should start clearing out the zone then. If we do indeed have a 30 km radius safe zone, clearing out the creatures to create larger buffer will help ensure the safety of all, plus we can grow our strength.”

“Should I allocate my points then?”, Asks Aerleras pulling up her status screen.

“I would do so, based on your abilities, dexterity is your most used stat for your stealth, speed and defense. We share our mana and stamina, as well as our health, so I would add to your strength as well, giving you a greater attack. We will not always be as one, and having us as 5 individuals may prove better at times in battle.” I say to her thinking it over.

“Then I should take advantage of our combined pools and put it all into strength and dexterity?” she asks looking at the screen.

“I think that would be the best option, maybe more so into dexterity than strength even.” I say to approving of her line of thinking.

Aerleras looks over her screen and manipulates it, “There 700 into Dexterity raising it to 1020 and 440 into strength taking it to 714,”, she says smiling and dismissed the screen. She then gets up and grabs the table, breaking off the entire side as she braces herself getting up. “umm this was not expected” she says in wonderment.

We all laugh at her expression, remembering my time when I did the same which seems like years ago. We merge as one and teleport to the courtyard to see if we can find Rick and the others. I do see Montgomery right away and head for him.

“Montgomery” I say to him, as I approach him, he is leading the Supers in training.

“Yes Chief?”, he asks as he sees me and smiles.

“We will be starting on a new project, clearing of all creatures within 30 km radius of us. It seems our safe zone has widened quite a bit with the upgrades.” I say to him.

“Copy that Chief we will get right on it then. 30 km huh, that is a large area.” He says, then understands the size of the area. “We are going to need more Super Soldiers to cover such an expanse.”

“Yes, hopefully we can enlist the Elves to participate as well. Split up the area into zones for now till the integration is complete. Maybe even a go with grids for identification purposes to identify areas faster.” I say to him and he nods agreeing.

“We will get started on the grids and map them out.” He says to me.

I nod and leave him to find Rick now. Then wonder, maybe he is at Beverly Copp's place? But as I think that, I see him and Beverly entering the West Gate together, they are holding hands. I smile at the sight and think good for you Rick. I and the girls quickly approach him and Beverly, he sees us and almost begins to sweat bullets especially seeing my wives with me.

“Good morning Rick! Beverly how nice to see you again!”, I say greeting both.

“So this is the one who stole Ricks heart huh?” Cindy asks smiling.

“You take good care of our Rick here” Julie jumps in.

“You have gotten yourself a fine warrior indeed”, Ki'Diera adds.

“Thank you all” Beverly says blushing and smiles, “it took a while but he finally gave in”.

“Sounds like someone else I know,” Julie hints and takes my arm into hers.” I had to chase this big idiot around like a puppy for two years before we finally got together, you would think they would get a clue after the first hint”. Julie laughs.

“I know right, I thought dinner and revealing clothing would tell him something, but this guy here was as clueless like a log”, Beverly laughs to Julie. Rick is beginning to turn beet red watching the exchange.

“So when is the wedding?”, Ki'Diera asks innocently.

Beverly blushes once again and turns her face away, “He has not proposed yet” she says softly.

“What? You call yourself a warrior Rick Hanson?” Ki'Diera blurts out looking at Rick with fiery eyes.

“Umm, I do not call myself a warrior, it is a term you have used for me” Rick says quickly trying to find a way to escape now. “Let's go Beverly we have much to do today, if you will excuse us.”. he says and starts to pull Beverly away.

“Before you go Rick, there is something you should know,", I say to him laughing inside at his demise with the wives and Beverly. "It seems our upgrades have widened the safe zone to 30 km radius”.

“When did this happen”, he asks in shock at the news.

"Not exactly sure, but it explains why the monsters are not re-spawning, so I gave Montgomery the go to start clearing out the remaining ones to give us a bigger buffer zone.” I say to him.

“Understood, I will get some of the Elite on it too, to help out, that is a big area.” Rick says to me.

“Alright you can coordinate with him on it, he is going to break it into grids so we can identify the areas easier and send help where needed when called for.” I say to him, ”Also I am going to see if we can get the Elves to assist on the matter, and let them have a dedicated zone for now.”

“The Elves will assist, we only need to ask them,” Aerleras says confident. I nod to her and smile.

We then teleport to the Elves once more, after bidding Beverly and Rick good luck and a nice day. Rick has a sheepish look on his face. There we find the council and let them know of the new safe zone parameters and ask them to have the Elves cover the Eastern area. The Council approves and agrees to it, saying it would benefit them as well, to widen the safe zone, dispatches would be sent immediately.

We teleport to our last destination, Bre'Tirgan and give him the news on the zone as well and to coordinate with the Elite an Supers to add Ny'Har'en to supplement their forces. Then we Teleport to the South by the River, where all the farms would be. This area for me, is the highest priority for safety and cleaning it out would benefit all greatly. We radio Montgomery of our intentions letting him know the south would be taken care of by us.

With that done, we merge once more and let the Crown and bracelet begin to detect other presences. Teleporting place to place to get both a visual and detection, we quickly find roaming Scorpions about. They have wandered further in and are more spread out individually. Using Aerleras base Strength stat supplemented by my TA Advanced Marine boost our strength is now greatly enhanced as one. Using Aerleras enchanted Dagger we easily pierce the Scorpions hardened body where my Rifle shots merely bounced off of it before.

Before it can react we teleport onto it's back and plunged the Dagger into it's thick armored head, piercing the brain, utilizing ambush attack, activating sneak attack, Ki'Diera's body and weapon enhancement, Cindy's flames covering the Dagger to cook the brain and Julie's incredible mana pool, the poor creature is dead before it knows what even hit it, with it's brain pierced and fried in one shot.

Satisfied we look for more prey and quickly find it, repeating our actions over and over. Our mana regen never allows us to drop off on mana, keeping up with our current use. Going on hours of hunting we killed every Scorpion we could find around the farm areas and moved outward even beyond the 5 km zone.

At one point we came upon a large group of them, 26 total. We know that the sneak and ambush attack would only work on a few, so we took our time on them. Teleporting in and out, killing 4 and 5 at time before the sneak attack no longer worked, then teleport away and wait nearby using my invisibility, watching as they were running about, looking for their attackers. We would then once again teleport in from another direction and do the same, repeating the process till all were dead.

We found using invisibility with the 5 of us, sucked our mana at a great rate and can only be used sparingly. When the last of the Scorpions were dead, we had used up over half of our combined mana using the invisibility. We decided it was a good time to break for lunch and return after.

When we returned to the Keep, Montgomery presented a map with grids on it going 30 km out. He broke down the areas from NE to NW quadrant 1, NE to SE Quadrant 2, SE to SW Quadrant 3, and finally SW to NW Quadrant 4. Each Quadrant was broken down into 62 grids and each grid was further broken down into 10 sections numbering 1 to 10. So one could call out quadrant 1 grid 15 section 8 is clear, if such were to happen. As each Grid and section were cleared out, we would mark them as safe and clear of creatures for now.

Supers, Elites, Ny'Har'en and Elves were already working hard to clear out their assigned zones. We would hold a strategic meeting later to go over the map and assignments once again, going into more details and also to hand out more radios.

We checked our messages and found we gained few levels in our xp spree, we had taken an xp potion as well, only one of us drank it first, as we wanted to see if the effects would spread to all and found it's effects were beneficial to us all when merged as one. When we split up only the person who had drank it was still affected. This was good news as it allowed us to save the other four potions and extend our xp boost over time. Up till now no one has received a second potion, so they were precious commodities.

After lunch we head back out and continue clearing section after section, calling it in to Base camp who in turn mark the map as clear with each transmission. By nightfall we had cleared 8 grids total for the entire day and were on our 9th and gained 4 level each, Ki'diera got 5 and Aerleras only 2.

As of now Aerleras was highest at level 116, with Julie, Cindy and me at 109 each and Ki'Diera now at 108. The gap was closing in on all of us, we were able to close in on Aerleras by 6 levels . If we keep this up for the next week or two we should see great improvements. I also recall in my dream I was over level 500 and the Elite and Supers were over 300. That means I would need to get another 2 levels a day over the next 7 months, and considering the girls will be out of commission soon, due to their pregnancies, that seems almost unlikely

With that in mind, either we find stronger monsters or something big is about to happen that will cause us to gain so many levels in that time, I am truly hoping for stronger monsters.

Be careful what you wish for, says a mocking voice in our heads.

A shadow flies over us at great speed, the wind buffets us forcing us to brace ourselves, and a roar pierces the surrounding area.

We look up and coming at us like a speeding train, maw open and flames erupting from it, is a green Dragon.

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