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

Elijah set off into the night, feeling good about the meeting with Colonel Jessup. He still couldn’t quite determine the man’s level, but he was satisfied with everything else he’d learned. Jessup was a no-nonsense, hardline soldier who didn’t concern himself with politics. He only cared about accomplishing his mission and keeping his people alive. Everything else was secondary.

A laudable attitude, as far as Elijah was concerned.

He was also very forthcoming about the progress he and the other squads from Seattle had made. There were three that had reached the Painted Wastes, but no one had come close to the Broken Crown. More importantly, they had identified another ley line nexus that was much closer to the Primal Realm.

Currently, there were two more teams on their way, and once they arrived – alongside a delegation from the Conclave – they would set off to that site. Upon reaching it, they would build a fortress around a new set of Spires.

It was a good plan, and probably the only way they could reach the Broken Crown. At least that was the case before Elijah had conquered it. If they set out now, they could likely make a good run of it. Still, reaching the Broken Crown was just the first step. Actually breaching the fortress and entering the Primal Realm were both much more difficult.

Even so, Elijah was satisfied with their progress.

Part of him still feared that future entrants into the Broken Crown would find ways to defeat dragons, but his recent experiences put those concerns to rest. The Primal Realm wouldn’t give them that kind of an advantage, and what’s more, with his advancements, he was strong enough to take whatever they could throw at him.

But more than anything else, he knew that an alliance with Seattle was far more beneficial – to him as well as the rest of the planet – than an adversarial relationship. Once the Primal Realms had been conquered, and the world was safe from excisement, that would probably change.

Hopefully, he could help lay the groundwork for cooperation, because integration into the wider multi-verse would assuredly come with many other threats.

To that end, Elijah had come to a tentative agreement. It would need to be approved by the other parties – specifically, the other world leaders – but he felt good about it. The gist of it was simple enough. Elijah intended to plant a new tree near the Primal Realm, and he needed to protect it. He had no desire to do so himself – it was a waste of his strength – and with the bulk of Ironshore’s forces guarding the city, Chimera Island, or in the troll Primal Realm, they didn’t have the numbers to fill the hole.

The others did, though.

There was a part of Elijah that didn’t want to depend on them. After all, someone in Seattle had tried to have him killed. Gunnar was certain it wasn’t Isaiah, but Elijah knew good and well that no one’s judgement was infallible. His relationship with the other powers was guarded at best and oppositional at worst. Still, he’d pushed those reservations aside, choosing to believe in humanity’s better nature.

Perhaps he’d come to regret it, but he refused to mire himself in pure cynicism. He didn’t like Isaiah. He hated that the man had tried to play politics, and the result was that the Hartwood Grove had been attacked. But diplomacy meant working with people like him. Or at least trying to in order to avoid the inevitable alternative. Nobody wanted war.

Or more accurately, no one wanted a pissed-off dragon slaughtering their people. Least of all, Elijah himself.

He had no interest in that, and for reasons exceeding simple morality. He didn’t have the time to manage his own grove, much less rule a conquered city. Isaiah might not be his favorite person in the world, but Elijah couldn’t allow that to matter. Not with the very fate of the world at stake.

Hopefully, he wouldn’t come to regret it.

So, once he’d explained everything to Jessup, the colonel had agreed to pass the information on to his superiors. By the time Elijah finished his current task, it would have reached Isaiah and whoever else was in charge. From there, he would contact everyone else to arrange a meeting.

It was a thin hope, and Elijah was more than prepared for it to backfire. But he would give the rest of the world leaders one more chance to work toward the greater good before he took the steps he didn’t want to take.

With that in mind, he flew across the sky and back toward the Broken Crown. As he did so, he was once again shocked that the area seemed so deserted. Had the vespirans simply dissipated into ethera? Or had they retreated into the Primal Realm where the energy was much thicker? There was no telling – not without looking it up next time he visited a Branch, and that wasn’t a step he wanted to take.

He had better uses for his time and money.

In any case, he covered quite a lot of ground in a short amount of time, and before the day was through, he caught sight of the enormous skeleton marking the Primal Realm. He landed about ten miles away, but the thing’s size still made it seem to loom over the entire desert.

Elijah ignored it.

It no longer impressed him. Not after seeing the collapsing state of the Broken Crown. Instead, he sent out his senses as he searched for an appropriate place to plant his seed. He only had a few left, though Nerthus had claimed that the ancestral tree at the center of his grove would bear more within a decade.

The implications were clear. He wouldn’t be able to drain every Primal Realm. Not until after the threat of excisement had passed. By that point, other factions would have laid claim.

Could he force the issue?

Certainly. But plunging the world into war just wasn’t worth it to him. If others – like the Four Corners Alliance in New York – could manage the Primal Realms on their own, Elijah was more than willing to allow it.

But the Broken Crown was different. Special. Not only did it emit more ethera than any of the others, but just the thought of it elicited a feeling of ownership within Elijah’s heart. It was his by right. He’d already conquered it. Now, he just needed to claim the benefits for himself.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

As it turned out, he found the right spot after only an hour of searching. The area looked little different than any other stretch of terrain within the Painted Wastes, but it felt right in a way that Elijah couldn’t really quantify.

He was tempted to immediately plant the seed and get to work, but he refrained. Instead, he reached into his Ghoul-hide Satchel and retrieved a handful of more mundane seeds. They had come from various cacti and trees he’d seen during his trip through the Hollow Depths as well as his previous journeys across the desert.

He planted them, then cast Nature’s Design and Blessing of the Grove. The water that fell from his localized storm was conjured, and as such, it would soon dissipate. However, while it wouldn’t function as a means of lasting hydration, it did carry with it a significant level of vitality. At the same time, it served to put his stamp on the local ethera.

Finally, he used Grove Conduit, though only at its lowest potency. It wouldn’t put any real strain on the Hartwood Grove, but it did accentuate his ownership of the area around him.

The combination of those three spells created an atmosphere of intense growth, and soon, Elijah was surrounded by towering cacti and various types of trees that traced their lineage back to central Australia. He studied them all, focusing first on their biological resistance to drought. Once he’d reacquainted himself with those features, he delved into the ethereal structures within.

And he was stunned by just how intricately they were woven into the desert. The cacti seeds he’d harvested in the Hollow Depths were, quite predictably, the least suited to the current environment. Without his interference, they never would have grown in the surface desert. However, studying them did inform Elijah’s understanding of how the plants interacted with the environment – both in biological and ethereal terms.

Still, he knew they would perish soon after he removed himself from their presence. They just weren’t suited to the region.

The cacti he’d harvested on the surface were much better off, and to the point that Elijah suspected they would thrive even without his continued influence. There was quite a lot of fire within them, but a surprising amount of water-attuned ethera as well. The two formed a tentative and delicate balance.

It would only take a small shift to throw it off, meaning that Elijah could only take so much inspiration from their inner structures.

The trees were better, though.

Even though they’d changed slightly with the influx of ethera, Elijah recognized all four of them. The first was a mulga tree, with needle-like phyllodes instead of leaves. Before the world’s transformation, it had been the dominant tree in the Australian outback, and for good reason. It was incredibly hardy and well-suited to arid environments. The ethera-laced version was even tougher, with a significant thread of earth intertwined with vitality, fire, and water. When Elijah studied it, he got the impression that it was built like a sturdy defender. It didn’t try to redirect or repurpose the environment. It simply stood tall, trusting in its own durability to withstand whatever nature could throw at it.

By contrast, the desert oak was more adaptable, harnessing its environment’s characteristics and using them to fuel its own growth. In that respect, it resembled some of his previous trees – as well as the giant sunflowers outside the fallen nuclear reactor.

The coolabah occupied a space between the two. It spread its twisting branches wide, and sent its roots extremely deep in an effort to cast a wide net for moisture, useful ethera, and other nutrients.

But the most interesting among them was the ghost gum. Part of that was its striking appearance. With smooth, white bark that glowed in the moonlight, it had an alien, almost mystical appearance that was further enhanced by the dense flows of ethera running through it.

Elijah also knew that, according to some Aboriginal traditions, the tree was considered sacred. Adherents to those traditions believed the ghost gum’s white bark to be a manifestation of spirits and viewed the tree as both a living entity and a symbol of death. In addition, the bark had medicinal value, with Aboriginals using it to treat various ailments.

It also existed almost purely off of ethera, which made it unique among the flora he’d seen in the desert.

However, Elijah had no intention of using one plant as inspiration. Instead, he knew he needed to incorporate aspects from them all if he wanted the new tree to last. So, he spent nearly a week in study. At times, he was forced to destroy one swarm of wasps or another – not unlike how he’d dealt with the harpies nesting on Chimera Island – but for the most part, he was left to his own devices.

He did feel the local ethera rising, though, which confirmed that he couldn’t simply sit on his laurels. It would take years for it to reach the levels he’d experienced when he’d first arrived, but it wouldn’t be that long before the wasps, vespirans, and drachnids became strong enough to threaten the Seattle forces.

So, as much as he would have preferred to study them for a few more weeks, he just didn’t have the time to go down that path. His current understanding, bolstered as it was by his knowledge of botany, would have to do.

Without further delay, he moved about a mile away so that his impromptu grove of trees and cacti wouldn’t interfere with the new growth. Then, he got to work.

The first step was to plant the ancestral tree seed. Once it was in the ground, he removed one of the barrels of water in his Arcane Loop and trickled a few drops upon the pile of cracked earth atop the seed.

As he did so, he re-cast Nature’s Design, Grove Conduit, and Blessing of the Grove, bathing the area in vitality and ethera. The seed responded well, though Elijah kept it from immediately sprouting. Instead, he delved deep into its structure.

Not for the first time, he realized that the ancestral tree’s biggest advantage lay in its adaptability. It wasn’t entirely dependent on its environment, but it was incredibly malleable, which allowed him to guide its growth into something that could thrive in the desert environment. His guiding hand wasn’t nearly as deft as Nerthus’, but his recent growth wasn’t limited to physical power or the potency of his spells.

The nature of his completed cultivation system gave him far more insight into the tree’s structure, and he used it as inspiration for his guidance. He knew the system of conduits and veins that comprised the channels of his soul weren’t appropriate for an actual tree, but some of the lessons he’d learned during his cultivation still shone through.

But mostly, he used the other trees and cacti native to the desert as inspiration.

Altering the seed was the first – and most important – step, but even when it sprouted, his job wasn’t finished. With Nature’s Design, he twisted the ethereal structures into place, pushing the tree’s growth. Inch by inch, it sprouted, and within a few days, it had reached the sapling stage.

With how much vitality and ethera he was pumping into it, that was incredibly slow. By comparison, a normal tree would have reached adulthood after a few hours. But as he’d discovered during his previous iterations, the ancestral trees took quite a bit longer to grow.

Channeling patience born from experience, Elijah guided the tree’s growth. Days passed into a week. That week became two. Then three. Only after a little more than a month had passed did the tree reach adulthood.

During that time, he’d been forced to rest on more than one occasion. His tent came in handy for that. Twice, he had to purge the area of vespiran influence. But the process wasn’t as tedious as he’d expected.

Mostly, that was because of his continued awe at what the seed became. It took its glowing white bark from the ghost gum, its shape from the coolabah, and its height from its forebear. Its needle-like leaves came from the mulga, and its inner structure most closely resembled the desert oak.

There were characteristics of cacti in there as well, though those came mostly from unseen traits that enhanced its suitability to arid environments.

Elijah sighed, a smile on his face as he looked up at the result. It was a unique hybrid that absorbed so much of the local ethera that he knew it could keep even the Broken Crown under control.

After a few minutes spent admiring the tree, he turned away and gathered his things. Only an hour later, he used Roots of the World Tree to return to his grove and prepare for something he should’ve done long ago – assert his dominance in service of the world’s survival.