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

The next morning, Elijah awoke with a start, leaping out of the bed and already casting Storm’s Fury. Only a second later, when his mind caught up to his senses and he realized that he was in an inn room – that he was safe and not back in the Primal Realm – he let the spell dissipate. But it took a while longer for his heartbeat to return to normal. He ran his hand through his sweat-slick hair and sighed before sitting on the edge of the bed.

For a moment, he’d been back in the Chimeric Forge, where he’d only been able to sleep for a couple of hours at a time. And even then, he was half awake, ready to defend himself from any monsters that might disturb his dubious rest.

It would be some time before he left that place fully behind.

The night before had been necessary, though. It wasn’t a celebration – not really – just a normal night where he caught up with a few friends. Atticus was the ringleader, of course. If there was one thing the man liked as much as making money, it was having a good time. And he was an acknowledged expert at both. However, the highlight of the night – and not in a good way – was when he saw Delilah.

They had both known that whatever they’d shared had run its course. They were going in two different directions, and the relationship, such as it was, had never been that serious. Still, when she came onto him, obviously expecting a repeat of some of their previous nights together, Elijah had surprised her with his refusal. That, of course, necessitated an explanation, which hadn’t gone that well.

Sure, Delilah claimed she understood. She even said she was happy for Sadie and him. But Elijah wasn’t so blind that he didn’t see the disappointment in her eyes. Delilah didn’t want a relationship. Elijah knew that much. However, she didn’t want to lose him – or whatever they had – either.

In the end, Elijah recognized what that meeting meant. There would be no friendship there. At best, if they saw one another again, they would be cordial. Anything else would be too painful.

As he considered it, he hung his head and wished things could have been different. He liked Delilah, but he certainly didn’t love her. In another life, maybe they could have made something of it, but with their differing goals in life, there was no way they could make it work.

It was bound to end. Indeed, it already had – at least as much as something non-official existed in the first place – and last night’s meeting only cemented it. Elijah just wished it could have ended without anyone getting hurt.

Too much to ask, he knew, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

Regardless, it wasn’t long before he pushed himself to his feet and headed into the bathroom to take a shower. Once again, he used his own soap – as opposed to what was provided by the inn – and reveled in the rejuvenation that came with it. Too often, he took it for granted, but Elijah knew that soap was at least one of the reasons he’d managed to take the most recent step in body cultivation. Without it, it would have taken years for him to prepare.

After the shower, Elijah dressed in a set of clean clothes. He forwent his normal gear – he was tired of constantly wearing armor – but he did slip the Arcane Loop on his finger. He’d bonded it the day before, but he hadn’t had a chance to explore its use. Now he did.

Over the next few minutes, he practiced placing and retrieving items from the attached space. At all times, he was subtly aware of it – not unlike the locus associated with the grove and its surroundings – and it only took a thought to retrieve an item or place one inside.

And it was bigger than he expected. Certainly, he knew that it was a cube nearly five feet in every dimension, but knowing that and actually seeing it in action were two different things. He could easily fit the contents of his Ghoul-Hide Satchel inside and have most of the space to spare.

So, it begged the question – would he keep the Ghoul-Hide Satchel? Or would he discard it now that he had an upgrade. Certainly, the Arcane Loop was far more convenient, but he’d grown accustomed to having the satchel at his hip. And it wasn’t like he could ever have too much space. With that in mind, he decided to keep both. Regular supplies would go in the satchel, while more important things – like his weapons and armor – would go in the ring’s dimensional space.

After playing with the ring a bit by summoning and dismissing his gear, Elijah got the hang of making each item appear in his hand. It took a bit of concentration, but with his multi-faceted mind, it wasn’t that difficult to muster the necessary focus. When he was satisfied that he had the skill down, he headed downstairs and enjoyed a nice breakfast of what Agatha called bougatsa, served with yogurt drizzled with honey and sprinkled with nuts. The bougatsa was a pastry stuffed with spicy sausage and cheese, and true to all of Agatha’s meals, it was absolutely amazing.

“Every time I come here, I’m grateful that I chose this inn the first time I visited Argos,” he said with a sigh. “Agatha, you are amazing.”

She gave him a grandmotherly smile, then said, “Yes, yes. You still need to get some shoes. Can’t have Argos’ patron running around barefoot. It’s unseemly.”

“Patron?” Elijah asked.

She shrugged. “That’s how they talk about you. Nonsense as far as I’m concerned, but that’s what they see.”

“Hmm.”

Elijah definitely wasn’t sure what to think about that, but he wasn’t surprised. Not after he’d seen how people looked at him. Thankfully, he didn’t spend that much time in Argos. He liked the place well enough – he could even imagine living there and being happy – but not with the near-worship directed at him.

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“Well, thanks for the meal, Agatha,” Elijah said, handing over a silver ethereum. Agatha lacked a folio, and it was the lowest denomination coin he possessed at the moment. “I’ll see you next time I pass through.”

With that, Elijah left the inn. Before he departed Argos, he visited Atticus’ shop again, only to find that the Merchant was still abed. So, he left without seeing his friend. It was only a few moments before he was back at the Teleportation Spires and waiting to be transported to Seattle.

Pointedly, the space mage in Argos was not much of a talker. Elijah definitely preferred Eryka.

In any case, he soon found himself just outside Seattle. He’d seen the spires during his last visit, but only from afar. They were located about half a mile from the city itself, and Elijah couldn’t miss the fact that they were well-guarded by Isaiah’s men, each one armored in composite gear and carrying those rifles.

Security remained tight, it seemed.

Elijah didn’t make any efforts to conceal his identity, but his entry into Seattle went off without a hitch. However, he did see a few drones hovering high in the sky, telling him that Isaiah was keeping an eye on things. He resisted the urge to wave.

As much as his anger at Seattle’s leader was still there, his visit wasn’t about that enmity. He had other, far more important things to do.

The trip through the city wasn’t the eye-opening event he expected it to be. In the back of his mind, Elijah had believed that Isaiah had cleaned the city up in anticipation of the Summit. It was a strategy used in dozens of Olympic Games as well as World Cups. But as much as Elijah had expected such a situation in Seattle, the city he found wasn’t that much different from the one he’d seen during the Summit.

Sure, it wasn’t as crowded, but that was a good thing. And there weren’t any carnivals or bazaars. But mostly, it still seemed like a well-developed city that had embraced the idea of marrying technology and ethera to create something beneficial to all.

Elijah hated it.

Not because he couldn’t acknowledge that it was an effective way to manage a city. He knew it was. However, his personal disdain for Isaiah meant that he just couldn’t help but see it in the worst light possible.

He kept it inside, though. He didn’t need to like Seattle to do what needed to be done.

With that in mind, he traversed the city via the monorail, and soon enough, he arrived at the Silo. Remembering how poorly his stealthy entry had been received in the past, he decided to go through the front door. Fortunately, the guards on duty didn’t give him any trouble, and soon enough, he found himself inside Lucy’s office.

It was a messy place dominated by a metal desk and a huge whiteboard in the corner. Elijah was inspecting the equations written on its surface when the door opened and Lucy arrived.

“Elijah? Where the hell have you been? You just disappeared for months,” she said. Then, she got a good look at him. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Lucy ordered, crossing the room and gripping his shoulders. “You look terrible.”

“Ouch,” he muttered, pulling away from her inspection. “I’m fine. I mean, I got sucked into a Primal Realm, but I’m fine. Just haven’t fully recovered. I got your message, though. You said you’d figured the seed out?”

“Elijah. You can’t just say you got sucked into a Primal Realm and not elaborate. You know that, right?”

He sighed. “Yeah. I figured.”

Then, he launched into an abbreviated version of what he’d experienced in the Chimeric Forge. It skipped over the worst parts – like being dissolved in acid or having his flesh stripped away by toxic gas – and clinically focused on the events themselves. It didn’t take as long as it probably should have, but it was enough to give Lucy the pertinent information.

“You need to tell Isaiah.”

“The less I see of him, the better. I’m sure you’ll relay it to him, right?” Elijah asked. “Your partners, aren’t you? I get it. He’s in charge of the city. You need him, and he needs you to feed everyone. Makes sense you’d work together. He knows all about the seed too, I’m sure.”

“Elijah…”

“I’m not blaming you, Lucy. It wasn’t a secret. Not really. I expected he’d find out. My point is that I don’t need to tell him about the Primal Realm if you’re going to. I’m not really here for that. I’m here to talk about the seed. You figured it out, didn’t you?”

“Mostly,” she said. Then, she launched into a long explanation – using the other side of the whiteboard – of the way the seeds’ ethera worked together. In a lot of ways, it confirmed some of the things Elijah had witnessed in the Primal Realm, but it also opened him up to a lot more questions that he hoped to answer via a little experimentation.

In either case, she also gave him a map of the ethereal flows, saying, “This is almost ninety-nine percent accurate.”

Elijah flipped through the notebook she’d handed him. There were hundreds of pages of notes. “It’s more than I expected.”

“This is like mapping the human genome, Elijah. Without skills specific to the task, we never could have managed it.”

He nodded. Some of the patterns, he recognized from when he’d tampered with the sunflowers via Nature’s Design. However, the map of the seeds’ ethereal flow was far more complex than he’d seen in that relatively simple flower.

Still, the fact that he understood even a fraction of the information was enough to give him hope for the project.

“This is going to be invaluable,” he said, hefting the notebook. “I can keep this, right?”

When Lucy said that he could, Elijah dismissed it into his ring.

“What the hell did you do?” Lucy demanded.

“Magic,” he answered with a grin. He made it appear again before once again sending it back into the astral storage space. “Pretty cool, right? If you like that, you should definitely see my shiny cape.”

“You have a cape?” she asked, glancing at his fur cloak. “I mean, I guess that fur monstrosity counts as a cape, but I don’t really think of it like that. And it’s definitely not shiny.”

“No – a brand new addition. I’ll have to show you sometime,” Elijah said. Then, in a more serious tone, he added, “Thank you for this, Lucy. I don’t think anyone else in the world could have managed it.”

“Do you want the seed?” she asked, retrieving it from a box in one of her desk drawers. She offered it to him.

Elijah shrugged, taking it. “Oh, right. I’d let you keep it, but the last thing I want is for Isaiah to get his hands on it.”

“He’s not a bad guy, Elijah.”

“He planted someone at the gate who he knew was going to try to kill me, Lucy. Then, he specifically tried to rile me up so he could “put me in my place”. Those aren’t the actions of a good person. At best, he’s amoral. Which is fine. I get it. City to run and people to save and all that. But I don’t trust him, and neither should you. The second he thinks he can benefit by screwing you over, he will do just that,” Elijah said. When Lucy tried to speak, he raised his hands and interrupted, “But I’m not here to tell you what to do. I’m just telling you that Isaiah’s not to be trusted. Do with that information what you will.”

She sighed. “Okay. We’ll just have to agree to disagree about him.”

After that, the conversation had become too awkward to continue. So, it wasn’t long before Elijah said goodbye, then headed back to the Teleportation Spires and, after a short wait, back to Ironshore. The increased ethera density was a comfort, but even more of a relief was the fact that he was finally getting back to the task at hand.