Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO ON KINDLE SEPT. 2)

Elijah turned the seed from the ancestral tree over in his hand, studying its structure via Soul of the Wild. From a visual perspective, it was just a seed. The size of a walnut, its oblong exterior was rough and marked by deep grooves. It really didn’t look like much. However, with his other senses, Elijah could feel just how different it was from any other plant he’d ever studied.

There was so much potential there. So much magic. It wasn’t like the Miracle Seed that could have ended up as anything he wished. Yet, it was equally as potent – just in a different way that he didn’t quite understand yet.

But he intended to plumb its depths and discover all of its secrets, because he believed that doing so might prove the answer to all of the questions he didn’t even know to ask. Once, he’d planted such a seed in Ironshore, and since then, the resulting tree at the center of Druid’s Park had connected with its progenitor. Because of that, the ethera in and around the city was even higher than its proximity to the grove should have dictated.

Doubtless, that would help with the city’s development. It probably already had.

However, that was only a shadow of what he felt was possible with the seed between his fingers.

“Are you just going to stare at that thing all day?” came Sadie’s voice, cutting through his concentration.

Elijah looked up to see that she’d donned her form-fitting training outfit, which was comprised of skintight yoga pants and a short sleeve compression top. By comparison, Elijah just wore a loose set of tan trousers that ended mid-calf and a flowing shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the laces undone.

It was a striking difference that marked how uniquely they approached the new world. Sadie hadn’t quite left the old ways behind. Sure, she’d embraced the need for medieval style armor and weaponry, but she still enjoyed the comforts of Earth’s centuries of technological advancement. Meanwhile, Elijah had fully gone over to the other side. He’d picked up some technology along the way – like the laptop still sitting in his treehouse, unused and mostly forgotten – but for the most part, he lived in a post-World Tree world.

And his outfit – as well as his home – reflected that.

Regardless, Elijah couldn’t deny that he appreciated Sadie’s attire for quite a few reasons that had nothing to do with practicality.

“I think it has the potential to be important somehow,” he answered, pushing those thoughts aside for the time being. “I’m not sure what form it might take, but it feels like a piece of a puzzle I just can’t fit into place.”

“Then you’re trying to force it into the wrong spot. That’s how puzzles work.”

“Bad metaphor, then,” Elijah admitted, standing. “I’m not even sure what I want from it. I just know it’s important.”

“You’ll figure it out. Eventually,” she said with a reassuring smile. “Do you want to spar a bit? We still need our second training session for today.”

Elijah nodded, retrieving his staff from where he’d left it on the ground. After that, the pair headed to the beach, where their training wouldn’t disturb Nerthus’ work. It wasn’t long before the clack of Elijah’s staff against Sadie’s weighted training sword filled the air, echoing across the beach and scaring away the crabs. The sparring session went on for most of an hour without even the hint of a break, their weapons moving so quickly that it would have taken a high-speed camera to catch each movement.

Without his Sash of the Whirlwind, which Elijah had left in his treehouse with all the rest of his equipment, he found the training that much more taxing. Sadie was fast and strong, and from a technical standpoint, she was miles ahead of him. The only reason he managed to keep up was due to his combat experience and high attributes. Even then, Sadie kept him on his heels – which was the whole point but was still a little frustrating to endure.

Because Elijah did not like losing.

It was a simple acknowledgement – after all, what kind of a person enjoyed such a thing – but Elijah’s hatred for coming in at even second-best was enough to put significant weight on his ego. That had always been the case, too. Even though he was apathetic toward his career, when he’d participated in any competitive activity, Elijah had found the prospect of losing so frustrating that he’d often said that he hated losing more than he liked winning.

But however he put it, it just wasn’t in the cards with Sadie as his opponent. At best, he could hold his own, but her superior technique was enough to ensure her victory. It was good practice, though, largely because it forced him to focus on all the little things he usually ignored. Like foot placement. Or efficiency with his movements. Or a thousand other factors that typically didn’t matter because he could overwhelm his opponents with attributes or the increased reaction speeds that came with his equipment and Shape of the Master.

Against Sadie, he couldn’t do that.

Which was both thrilling and frustrating in equal measure. It was also effective, and Elijah felt that if he kept it up, he would continue to improve.

He wished he could say the same about the rest of their training regimen, which mostly consisted of running, swimming, and repeatedly lifting heavy boulders. It was taxing, to be sure. The running and swimming would always be difficult if they pushed themselves to their limits, but they’d both reached a level of fitness where they could keep going for days without stopping.

And the boulders were way too small.

So, after another couple of hours of training – and a further hour recovering in the hot spring – they headed to Ironshore. Sadie wanted to check on Carmen’s progress with the armor she’d commissioned, and Elijah needed a similar status update from his sister-in-law, though for a different project.

When they entered the forge, they found Carmen predictably hammering away at a piece of glowing metal. Visually, it was quite striking, as it shimmered in a rainbow of colors that rippled with every hammer blow. Elijah barely noticed it. Instead, he was wholly focused on the tiny shockwaves of dense ethera that came with each impact. Some of that emanated from Carmen’s hammer, but much of it came from the metal itself. With Soul of the Wild, Elijah felt a host of disparate attunements in that small billet, though they’d become so intertwined that he had difficulty separating them in his perception.

For a few minutes, Elijah and Sadie watched Carmen finish her task. There were so many complex things happening that most people wouldn’t even see. Multiple abilities at work, twisting the disparate attunements together – Elijah couldn’t help but wonder if Carmen was even aware of it all.

Probably. She wasn’t the world’s foremost Blacksmith for no reason. Even if her senses weren’t quite as attuned as Elijah’s, she knew something was going on.

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Finally, she set the block of metal on her anvil, then removed the goggles she’d been wearing to protect her eyes from the sparks. “Hey guys,” she said with a grin that exposed her white teeth amidst all the soot covering the bottom half of her face. “What’s up? I’m making tons of progress with the alloy for your armor, Sadie. That celestial gold is a mother to work with, but it’s definitely doable. Did you know that it’s not really gold? If it was, it would need to be melted down and poured into a mold. This is more like steel, though obviously much more complicated to manipulate. Can’t even manage it without significant ethera running through the stuff. If I’d had this when I was doing the engravings for the Great Forge project…”

She trailed off, realizing that she was on the verge of rambling. She took her goggles off with a sigh, then said, “Sorry. Running on about three hours of sleep in the past four days, so I get a little jittery. I’m guessing you both want status updates, right?”

“You need to rest more,” Elijah said, already casting Soothe on her. Its effects weren’t specifically meant to combat fatigue, but the spell still helped a little. “You can’t keep burning the candle at both ends. And you don’t need to, either.”

“Oh, that’s the good stuff,” she responded with a bit of a shiver. “And I do need to go this hard. Sadie’s armor is going to take weeks to get right, and in case you forgot, we’re on a time limit here. Three weeks, right? I’m going to struggle to get it done in time.”

Sadie wrung her hands at that statement. Clearly, she wanted to tell her new friend not to worry herself, but Elijah knew that going to that meeting without her armor was just out of the question. So, she was at odds with her own mind.

Elijah cut off any further discussion on the subject, saying, “You finish with that hunk of radioactive waste I brought by?”

Elijah had emptied his ring only a few days before. The shield was still sitting in his treehouse, waiting to be appraised, but the pearl had been placed in his cultivation cave. Meanwhile, the piece of the elephant’s foot that he so recently reacquired had been left with Carmen.

“Oh. Yeah. I finished it. Nasty stuff. I made a bracer out of it. Well, mostly, it was made out of some leftover volcanic mithril – you owe me, by the way – with the radioactive stuff ground down and mixed into the metal,” she explained. “It’s in that box by the door. Don’t open it here, though. It’s extremely toxic.”

That was within Elijah’s expectations. “What does it do?” he asked.

To that, Carmen responded by handing him a piece of paper she pulled from her leather apron’s pocket. On it was an item description, which she said, “That’s the result I got from Blacksmith’s Eye.”

Shackle of Penance

Overall Grade: Complex (Low)

Enchantment Grade: C

Trait: Corrosion – Inhibits the wearer’s ethereal flow while degrading their body.

Elijah frowned.

“Not exactly what I expected,” he muttered, handing the page back to Carmen.

“Keep it,” she refused. “That thing is worse than a cursed item. The only advantage is that it’s up-front about what it does. Not sure what use it could be. Maybe for a prisoner or something. It would probably kill anybody who wore it, though.”

Elijah wasn’t so sure about that. He’d have to test it out to see for sure, though he definitely wasn’t looking forward to that. Still, he collected the box, vowing to investigate the effects of the Shackle of Penance sometime in the near future.

For now, though, he and Sadie spent a little time chatting with Carmen about her plans for the armor, but Elijah quickly lost interest and slipped away. He liked magical items as much as the next guy, but hearing the two women talk about runes and enchantments was more than he could handle.

So, he wandered off, eventually reaching the Hunter’s Lodge, where he hoped he’d find Kurik. Not because he needed the dwarf for any particular task, but rather, because he was one of the few people in town who didn’t treat him like an outsider. There was value in having someone to share a beer with, after all.

Unfortunately, Kurik wasn’t around, but Elijah did discover that the location served as more than just a meeting ground for the city’s hunters. It was that, but it was also where they sold the raw materials they gathered while on the hunt. Most of the meat had already been claimed by the city’s various restaurants, but there were quite a few hides, wild herbs, and other eclectic items up for sale.

Perhaps it was because he had armor on the mind, but Elijah bought a hide that had reportedly come from a level ninety-five bull moose. He suspected the hunter had inflated the level a bit, judging by the ethera flowing through the rolled-up hide, but it was still the best available. So, he paid his fee before heading to Gavina’s leatherworking shop. Fortunately, the place looked to be in a far better state than the last time he’d visited, and the little goblin was much more amenable to taking his commission.

Part of that was probably because she’d hired a couple of burly dwarves to act as guards.

In any case, Elijah commissioned the armor before heading back to Carmen’s smithy to find that she and Sadie were still engaged in deep discussions concerning the set of armor she intended to forge. Not wanting to interrupt – or perhaps, endure – that conversation, Elijah told them he was headed back to the grove.

However, along the way back, he got a little caught up in the freedom of flying and ended up far out to sea. So, he decided to put his new bestial form to the test in deeper waters. Mid-dive, he transformed into the huge leviathan. It completed just in time for him to crash into the waves, and he dove deep beneath the surface.

One of the unlisted advantages that came with Shape of the Sea was that his vision was entirely unaffected underwater. Because of that, he got a fantastic view of the world all around him – and once again, he was awestruck by what he saw. Even before the world’s transformation, the oceans had hosted far more life than the land, but it seemed that trait had been taken to an extreme.

There were so many colorful fish – many of which were five or six feet long – that Elijah briefly worried that he’d get swarmed. However, despite the fact that they were clearly predatory in nature, they had no interest in challenging him. In fact, they darted away the second he drew close.

Except for one sea denizen that wasn’t a fish at all.

The dolphin approached him curiously, but without even an ounce of fear. That was likely appropriate, considering that the sea mammal was clearly ascended. More importantly, Elijah recognized it, and, despite his changed shape, it recognized him as well.

It darted in, bumping his nose before speeding away. It only got about thirty feet before it turned back to him, almost as if it was beckoning him forward. Elijah complied, using his powerful flippers to propel him in a chase. Very quickly, he discovered one important factor – if it wanted to, the dolphin could have easily left him behind. Elijah could move very rapidly – over a hundred miles an hour if he wanted – but the dolphin was at least twice as fast as he was.

But it didn’t leave him behind.

In fact, though it took Elijah a few minutes to figure it out, the dolphin wasn’t leading him anywhere. Instead, it just wanted to play. And Elijah was definitely onboard with that. He chased the dolphin for more than an hour at full speed, changing directions rapidly as he pursued the sleek creature.

Then, finally, it tired of the game and left him entirely behind. Elijah tried to keep up for a few minutes, but it was impossible. Soon enough, his playmate was gone, leaving him in the middle of the ocean.

Deciding to get his bearings, he pushed himself to the surface, only to find that he’d come closer to the edge of the giant maelstrom than ever before. It was still miles away, but the wind had churned the seas into gargantuan swells.

Even with his enormous size, the towering waves made him feel extremely small.

For a few minutes, he tried to ride them, but it soon became clear that if he continued along that path, he’d find himself within the storm itself. So, he dove deeper than he’d ever gone before, not stopping until he escaped the current. After that, he pointed himself back the way he’d come and left the storm behind.

Once he’d gotten far enough away, he surfaced, took on the Shape of the Sky, and returned to his island. However, the brief contact with the maelstrom reminded him that there was one responsibility he’d not considered of late. The survivors of the plane crash were still out there in the center of that storm, and he was probably the only one who stood any chance of rescuing them.

That left a sour taste of guilt in his mouth that overrode the fun he’d had with the dolphin. One thing was certain, though – he couldn’t afford to waste anymore time. He needed to buckle down, get to work, and prepare to fulfil some of his responsibilities. People’s lives depended on it.