259, 1/2

Erick flew for three days, mostly as lightning and moving a lot faster than he ever could as a dragon.

Over those three days, Erick had toyed with the idea that he was on an infinite treadmill again, but that was simply untrue. He had run tests with leaving giant ever-glowing lights in the sky, one half of them yellow, the other half black, pointing all the way back to where he had started, each of them connected by a strand of node network. That line of connected lights was still visible, even now, stretching far, far into the distance. From this angle it looked like a string of gold-ringed black eyes, and each eye lay directly behind the other.

Erick had needed to move off of that center-line to see the vast distances he had already crossed, but it was all still there every time he checked.

The Margleknot sky looked the same this entire time. The angle of the sights up there hadn’t changed, so either the sky was fake for every single person, or those other surfaces were, like, a solar system away, or more. But that would make the sky fake, for sure, because Erick saw stuff happening on other parts of the cosmology up there. Either way, the sky was not a good indicator of distance traveled.

The desert seemed never ending.

Until suddenly it wasn’t all the same thing over and over again… Somewhat.

There were rocks on the ground now.

Over there was a tiny oasis of wet sand and no visible water at all. Grasses still grew in that wet sand, though. It was a spot of green in an otherwise empty world.

… Which gave Erick an idea of how to end the monotony.

Erick molded resons into a [Terraforming] and threw the storm into the sky, attaching it to the node network and an [Undertow Star], molding it all together into a self-sustaining system of mana-siphoning worldly transformation.

Instantly the sky clouded over, the horizons turning dim and grey. The only lights came from the line of gold-rimmed light orbs and the node network behind Erick, and the sudden appearance of a tiny star of power that flooded the world with tendrils of shadow—

The star pulsed and Benevolent lightning scoured the sky, ripping across the empty heavens, splitting here and there as it chained off in every direction, adding clouds wherever it split as it stretched out into the vastness of the desert environment. The clouds gathered more lightning.

And then came the rain.

Erick flew as a dragon for a while instead of as lightning, enjoying the cool rain on his scales and the strike of lightning on the ground here and there. Every time the lightning struck damp soil it scattered in every direction, spreading green here and there. Sometimes that green glowed. Sometimes it just blew or washed away in the storm as minor lakes popped up here and there. Flash floods raced across the desert as shadowy tendrils cast down from the sky in every direction, touching upon the new life. That new life fed the mana demands of the many spells he had tied together; the [Terraforming], the [Undertow Star], and the node network and all the giant light orbs attached to that network.

The storm wouldn’t go forward anymore because Erick wasn’t putting down any more network in that direction, but it would go backward, back to where Erick had started the network about two days ago.

Maybe there was life hiding out down there, somewhere, but Erick hadn’t seen anything, and probably because of that time worm. If the only thing living out here was the time worm then fuck the time worm. It could drown, new life could spread, and that would be fine.

Lightning crashed, as if agreeing with that thought.

Erick grinned. It probably was agreeing with him.

Erick flew for a long while as a dragon, just enjoying the rain. He even stopped at what looked like a brand new lake to take a break and a drink and to feast on some mushrooms growing and glowing on a broken new-forest, near the lake’s edge. He didn’t like the red mushroom he tried, or the purple one, but the blue ones were fantastic. He copied a lot of those and then grilled them on some utility cooking spellwork.

With a belly full of blue mushrooms and water, both of which were completely superfluous to him since he was a True Wizard now, Erick flew faster once again.

He left the storm maybe 20 hours later. It was hard to keep track of time since this desert world was full-sun full-time, but Erick thought it might have been a day of flying, both as a dragon and as lightning, to escape the [Terraforming] storm. He enjoyed the sun on his scales for a few hours, and then he turned to lightning again and began flying faster.

Another two or maybe three days passed before the scattered rocks and tiny spikes of stone in the desert turned into more than that.

It happened all at once.

The horizon led off into the infinite distance…

…. and then the horizon got closer.

Beyond the density of atmosphere that existed here, Erick saw something that was not the end of the desert, but it was something similar.

Obsidian shards, like mountains-sized knives, stuck up from the sands, like teeth cutting tan flesh. Those daggers had a lot of space between each one, and they edged from horizon to horizon as far as Erick could see. But as he really looked, and as he flew closer, he saw that those obsidian shards were ever-so-slightly curved away from him. As though they were the start of an arc of black knives jutting up from the desert sands.

There was some sort of magic on them.

Erick got closer and stopped a few kilometers from the encirclement, and it was an encirclement, for sure. It had to be ten thousand kilometers wide according to Erick’s guesstimations. He could only see part of the circle. He couldn’t even see the end of the grey sky pillar that pointed at one of Wraithborne Tower’s Layer 1 cities, but he was pretty sure it was in there. Somewhere. Probably in the very center of the obsidian dagger ‘wall’.

This was his destination, for sure. Erick checked his Lightning Path and saw that the Lightning was pointed in this direction, specifically to here, too, but only briefly. The real way forward lay beyond…

Over there…

Illusions, perhaps? Erick narrowed his eyes and tried to pierce whatever illusions might be laying on the other side—

He couldn’t see clearly, but he saw some sort of illusion magic encapsulating all of the land on the other side. It was still desert over there, but there were… buildings? Spellworks?

Oh.

Guardians on a wall, looking at Erick in the sky, wondering what the heck he was doing.

Erick spoke in draconic, which was his usual language these days, “Hello! I’m Erick Flatt, Wizard of Benevolence, and I’m coming into the Wraithborne Tower’s hideout. Make way, or I will make way. You have a minute to comply.”

He floated there.

A voice called out from the ‘wall’, “You can’t enter from here! The worm is too close and you are too large. Please fly around to the other side!”

Erick transformed back into a person, the transformative clothes that Lionshard had given him transforming with him, turning from jewelry on a horn to a nice white and black suit. Erick felt a little constrained by his human form, but that was normal. Being as a dragon for so long always had a few side effects, and the instinctive, disruptive feeling of ‘I don’t want to be this small’ was one of them.

Erick’s voice remained large. “This better?”

“… Yes! Please come through here, and fast!”

One of the illusions between two obsidian knives faded exposing a land that looked pretty fucking miserable. At first glance Erick saw soldiers that were dead, in the literal sense; they were bones and armor and dried flesh. There were a bunch of mostly-dead soldiers, too, in the sense that they were skin and bones and severely malnourished. The mages controlling the undead looked dirty and unwashed, with pit stains and worse in their white underclothes, while their over clothes were purple fabrics that they used to hide all the rest. Men, women, bug people, some person made of paper who might have been an elementassi of Elemental Book, goblinkind; there were all types beyond the wall, in what appeared to be a forward settlement on that side of the obsidian knife wall.

And for every person, there were at least two undead.

The largest of the undead were flesh golems 50 meters tall, both of them looking like sexless men, hanging out on both sides of the obsidian knife entryway, gazing at Erick with full-black eyes that seemed almost malevolent in their gaze. Not Malevolent, though; or at least not that Erick could see.

The entrance had only been open for a bare second.

Erick zapped right on through to stand near the person whom Erick suspected of being the speaker, seeing as how he was in a central position on a wall-like bulwark-building, but he was obviously not in charge of this entire land. He was simply too… unclean, really.

Erick started with, “Hello.”

The man in a purple robe bowed fast then he shouted to the side, “Close the Wall!”

The two flesh golems tapped the 100-meter-tall obsidian knives and sound rang out. A flickering mirage echoed into the space between the knives, and the desert beyond turned indistinct. Erick couldn’t see anything beyond maybe 50 kilometers. He had lost sight of his storm days ago, anyway.

He wondered if these people knew about the storm out there? They looked like they could use some water.

The purple man turned to Erick and did a proper, formal bow, going all the way down to his knees, pressing his head against the ground. “This one greets the honorable Ascended Flatt. How may the Wraithborne Tower be of service?”

“You all look rather miserable. Rise, please. Need any help with anything?” Erick thumbed back toward the way he came, saying, “I left a large perpetual storm about 4 days back that way. Barring shenanigans by the worm— and you do mean the time worm, right? When you spoke of the worm. Anyway. Barring shenanigans then that part of the desert is going to be full of water and life for a long time coming. And that’s just some of what I can do, so let me help you in some big way, and then you can point me toward the exit to layer 0.”

The man focused as Erick spoke, his eyes still cast downward as he thought fast.

And then he rose, as Erick had commanded, and said, “Water four days from here is a boon that cannot be overstated. We appreciate this generosity. The Endless and its time worm does not abide by such water creation, so we will send out skeletons to grab and return whatever water they can carry and hope that some is left by the time they can get that done.”

Erick smiled, saying, “Water is important then. I’ll consider making a storm here. Moving on: Who is actually in charge here? What is this place anyway? I came to this part of the Wall for whatever reason, and you look marginally in charge, but I don’t want to put you under any more pressure because I am sure that maybe Morbion will come down and interrogate everyone who speaks with me.”

The man tried not to show fear as he said, “We have been informed of possible actions happening around us because of your esteemed personage. If you wish to speak to someone in charge then please continue on to the main city, which is in the center under the big grey pillar, and go to the largest building with the biggest dome. It is there that Chancellor Eldawae holds his court. Welcome to Da’luwe.”

“And a fine welcome it is.” Erick gestured toward the grand city in the far, far distance. “That’s Da’luwe, then?” He gestured downward to the empty land between here and there, and then down even more, to the jumble of buildings and hovels on this side of the obsidian wall. Everything rotted and fields looked weak and terrible. Women and men tried to use magics to eke out tiny fruits from a meager orchard that was not getting nearly enough water. No one seemed to be getting enough of anything. “So what does that make this blighted land? A subsidiary? A torture? A relegation? Are your soul shackles chafing you, mister man in purple?”

Erick watched him, but he also mana sensed every single other person in the closest 500 meters. He counted 376 people, and maybe 1200 undead. The undead were harder to count because some of them looked composed of multiple bodies. Maybe 21 people were actively listening to this conversation. Every single undead was listening, though.

The man in purple’s body betrayed his hope even as his words came out, “We’re doing fine here. Your worry is appreciated, Ascended Flatt.”

Erick got to the point. “How much is your debt?”

“7,300 res—” The man stilled. His soul twisted just a little, and then relaxed. “My debt is my own, Ascended Flatt.”

“… Hmm!” And then Erick handed him a reson jewel worth 7,500 resons. “Yours.”

The man touched it—

And the reson jewel vanished from his hand, sucked into his soul, and then Elsewhere. Something broke inside of him as his soul relaxed, free of restraints. His face changed from subservient to joyful and then came rage—

Erick watched the man.

The man recognized that he was being watched.

The man breathed a bit of relief, and then he continued on as he had before, saying, “I accept the shackles of office, and no more.”

Instantly, the undead standing around Erick and the man, here at the center position of the village beyond the wall, flickered. Power passed into the air, into the man, and more soul shackles cloyed into the guy’s soul. Those soul shackles didn’t seem too arduous, but Erick didn’t really know—

The man asked, “Would you please pay the debts of our entire village? The total is 450,000 resons.”

… Ah. So he could talk about debts now? Openly?

Erick almost said ‘no’ because he only had 4.2m resons on him right now, but then he realized that this guy was probably thinking of him as the part-owner of a Margleknot Sun, which, yeah, that thing was probably making over half a trillion resons per day.

Erick asked, “How does such a payment work?”

“Pay the undead. Or me. Or the big guys over there. Any of them would do. We’re all linked by common bargain.”

Erick turned to the undead, who were looking at him. And then he used his aura to deposit orbs of golden crystal each the size of a torso, each worth 50,000 resons, onto the ground beside the nearest undead. As soon as the power touched that undead the power disappeared into them—

And some of the undead inside the city began to turn into real people again. Flesh grew around bones and people started to step out of their own rot. Some piles of dust in broken houses turned back into people that were rapidly joined by other people, all of them looking rather damned happy for a brief moment, but then rapidly falling into despair. Some of them openly cried out how they couldn’t afford this. They couldn’t afford to be alive.

The still-living relatives seemed to agree with them. Someone complained about how there wasn’t enough food or water to go around, either, which was a problem on top of their debt. Some were happy, though.

Erick finished paying off the debt that the purple man had requested and then he added another 50,000 reson crystal to the common cause just because he could—

A spring turned on in the village square.

A spring.

Turned on.

In the village square.

Why was it off at all? Who the fuck knew!

Erick added another 50,000 crystal to the undead network—

Three more springs turned on all around the village. The walls turned sleek and clean. A spring burbled out by the orchard field.

“Oh this is just fucking ridiculous,” Erick said, looking all around, judging the Wraithborne Tower’s policies. Or perhaps this was purple-dude’s fault? Hard to say and Erick didn’t want to get into it anyway, because… He just didn’t. Not directly, anyway. So instead, he said to the very-happy purple dude, “I’m going to make a water tower over there. I don’t trust whatever horrible Evil-water you got working under these sands. You can take from the water tower’s edges, but if you go inside and break the magic or harvest too much, it will break down.”

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The purple guy said something about how that wasn’t necessary, but he was a mouthpiece of the laws around here.

Erick did what he wanted.

And soon, about a hundred kilometers away from the obsidian wall, in the middle of nowhere, Erick raised an eternal stonewood tree out of the ground, and then transformed it into a wide, wide tower. It was about a kilometer wide, and the main walls were 80 meters tall, but some things poked above that 80 meters, such as a grand dome of eternal stonewood that stretched over the whole thing like a latticework bubble. Erick placed a small [Terraforming] in the center, under that dome of latticework, and then he made the eternal stonewood do some illusions, to make the whole thing not really visible above 50 meters. Eternal stonewood could do illusions, after all, and Erick did not want to alert anything about this ‘tower’s’ presence.

Like the time worm.

Erick played with the spellwork in the ‘coliseum’ for a while, making sure that it was working right and that it would eventually fill with water and plants and such, and eventually life. A node network and a bunch of secondary spellwork would ensure that whatever Benevolent life grew here would overflow the coliseum itself to spread far and wide, and also deep. Only the stuff inside the central area would contribute to the stability of this place, but the life that would grow here should be able to do that five times over, at least.

And that would probably be good enough…

Erick spent another two hours adding some redundant systems to the whole thing, like extra [Terraforming] magics and a more robust node network and even a few [Duplicate]-based generators, like the ones he had used in his base on FENRIR.

“And that’s good enough,” Erick announced to himself, as he stood at the edge of the place. “Very good.”

Low waters flowed away from raining storms and flashing lightning. Mosses and grasses were already growing here and there, while lilies opened up petals and flowers atop pools of clear water.

The whole system was poised to grow and grow, and that was great.