Level One God

I was beyond exhausted by the time we finally reached a road. Maybe the word “road” was generous. It was a flat stretch of dirt, packed down tight by what looked like countless pairs of boots and wagon wheels. The road bustled with life.

Carts drawn by creatures that looked like horses and cattle rumbled by. Tomte and human riders rode up front and some of the covered wagons held crates of goods, others had dirty, shallow-eyed people, and one even held piles of sharp swords. The cart of weapons was flanked by an Iron man and woman who glared at us as they passed.

We all stopped, taking in the sight of civilization with some collective shock after our time in the Black Wood.

A large group of travelers passed, heading to our left. I looked to the right and saw a single rider approaching atop a wagon.

I did a double-take. The wagon looked like it was being driven by a rolling boulder that was making a deep, humming sound as it grew closer. It was almost as tall as I was and must have weighed tons. The rider holding the reins looked like a small person-shaped boulder.

I squinted, inspecting the thing in the driver’s seat.

[Geonite Male, Level 18 (Wood)] “Like tomte, geonites build their cities and prefer to dwell underground. The geonite culture centers around war and craftsmanship. They’re renowned for an ability to work with delicate crystals native to their home caverns, and also for the relative ease with which they’ll declare war. It’s said that one of the greatest geonite wars started over an unpaid bar tab. Ask any geonite, and they’ll say that story is an exaggeration. It should be noted, however, that geonites have declared at least two wars over rumors of the bar tab rumor itself.”

I was curious about the tooltip. I’d never seen a distinction between male and female before. I inspected the rock pulling the wagon. It was almost three times the size of the driver, mostly featureless except for a few cracks in the smooth stone, and making an odd sound that reminded me of a whale call.

[Geonite Female, Level 10 (Wood)] “Geonite females are rare and highly prized. Renowned in geonite culture for their beauty, they’ll often accept as many as ten mates to a single female. When a geonite female chooses to speak, which is an uncommon occurrence, her mates view her word as sacred law.”

Beauty? I tilted my head, trying to get a better look at the rolling female. I supposed there was a nice roundness to her, if I squinted a little.

The townspeople weren’t paying attention to the approaching wagon. It was still a little ways off, and I’d had to look twice to realize something was odd about it.

Bloody Steve stretched, arms behind his head as he leaned back, pushing out his bare, hairy belly. “Gods! I can practically smell Thrask and her fine, sultry musk from here,” he said. “It’s about feckin time. You know I’m not allowed in a few establishments within the city proper. Quite proud of that, I’ll admit.”

“Yeah?” Kass asked. He ran a hand through his golden hair. “Perch and I got ourselves banned from this place in Coil, once. But it was all just a big misunderstanding.”

“What kind?” Bloody Steve asked.

“I killed the owner’s son,” Perch said simply.

“Oh,” Bloody Steve nodded in surprise. “Well done, then.”

The three of them continued rambling about their various mishaps in cities across Eros, but my eyes were still on the approaching cart. I nudged Lyria. “Ever seen one of those?” I asked, pointing at the wagon that was rolling closer.

“Geonites,” she said. “My mom used to say not to talk to them. They’re apparently really easy to upset.”

“Does Bloody Steve know that?” I asked.

Bloody Steve was jogging toward the wagon, one hand raised as he shouted. “Ey! Rocky! Give us a ride or I’ll smash you up!”

Kass winced, then ran to catch up to the shouting tomte. “Hey! Bloody Steve! We’ll get the next wagon. Leave them be! No need to upset these fine geonite folks!”

“Wha?” Bloody Steve turned, cupping a hand to his ear, then kept strutting toward the wagon. “Let us hop on, ya big ugly bastard!”

A few seconds later, several rocky figures that were all short, but thick and powerful, had poured out of the back of the cart. They had hair like molten lava that had cooled to wavy glass and clung in long clumps down their backs. Some of their hair was a blinding red and a few had completely black hair like obsidian. Their skin was like polished stone, cut through with deep cracks at the joints.

Five of them were chest-bumping Bloody Steve before the driver even had a chance to hop down and join the fray. There was a deep chorus of “Oi! Oi! Oi!” and a few shouted threats from voices that rumbled like boulders grinding together.

As the little creatures all circled and bumped chests, I noticed the cracks in the geonites' skin starting to glow red and fiery.

“Okay, okay,” Kass said, wading into the chaos with his hands raised. He looked like a schoolteacher trying to calm a bunch of rowdy kids.

To my surprise, they all separated, hands bunched as they glared and pointed at Bloody Steve.

I went to stand beside Kass, along with Minara and Lyria. If this did break into a fight, I wanted to have my party’s back. I had to admit the geonites seemed more like cute little creatures to me than bloodthirsty warmongers. The female, on the other hand, looked like she could simply roll over all of us and crush us to paste, Wood rank or not.

Bloody Steve looked highly amused by the whole ordeal. “What?” he asked, palms raised. “What did I say?”

One of the geonites thrust a finger at him. “Make the apologies,” it rumbled. “We demand the ritual.”

“Wha?” Bloody Steve asked, spreading his arms out like a puffed up chicken. “You mad ’cause tomte women won’t break my pecker off if they sneeze at the wrong time? I’d be mad, too. No offense, my lady,” he added in a much softer tone to the large boulder. “I’m not sayin I wouldn’t risk my pecker for—”

“Alright,” Kass said in a calming voice. “Why don’t you nice folks just hop back on your wagon. Pardon our friend, here. He’s not drunk, he’s just an asshole. We’ll properly reprimand him once you’re gone. I promise.”

Bloody Steve narrowed his eyes up at Kass. “Reprimand me? How about I reprimand one of my hammers up your asshole? How about that?”

Kass put a hand on Bloody Steve’s back and guided him away from the geonites, who were muttering between themselves and bouncing on their feet, as if they were still trying to decide if they wanted to fight or insist on the apology. They didn’t wear shirts, but they all had on a similar style of puffy, flared out pants that cut off around mid-calf. They also seemed to favor sandals, for some reason.

“Sorry about him,” I added as we all worked to push Steve down the road and away from the little rock people.

They eyed me, glowing red eyes glinting beneath the shadow of rocky brows. Finally, one of them made a dismissive gesture and hopped back in the wagon. The rest followed, jumping on top of a pile of glittering stones beneath the covered canopy of their wagon.

The townspeople saw us moving and hurried to catch up as we headed down the road, presumably toward Thrask.

“What was that, Bloody Steve?” Kass demanded.

“I heard once that geonite women get real excited if you challenge their harems of boy toys,” Steve said. “I thought maybe I had a shot with her if I riled up those boys. But she was a tough nut to crack. Next time, I suppose.” As if he didn’t have a care in the world, he spat to the side and picked up his pace. “To Thrask!”

I leaned toward Kass. As usual, his golden hair was in perfect order and he hardly looked like he’d just trampled through the woods with us. “Did Bloody Steve just say he was trying to hook up with that giant rock?”

Kass blew out a breath that puffed his cheeks. “I’m afraid so.”

I shook my head, then decided it was a good time to take inventory of what I had after our trip through the Black Wood.

I’d burned through a shocking number of my siphons and only had two left. Somehow, I’d lost a few of my glass vials, too. Instead of twenty, I was down to fifteen, and I’d drank all the recovery potion I had stocked up. I’d also used the last of my pink flowers brewing more potions for the others in the group. I was out of rot poison completely, as well as the corpse fingers I needed to make it.

That was a sad thought. The poison had started feeling like part of my own abilities, but maybe there was a chance I could buy some more of the herb in town.

I only had two ingredients left to make potions. I had the four carapax pheromone sacks I’d scavenged in the mess of bodies around the queen. Of course, I’d quickly turned those into eight sacks with my bag of duplication. I also had the flipweed and the greenish mixture I brewed from it inside three of my vials. The potion was a “modification” class, but I didn’t know anything more about it.

I skimmed through my accomplishments again, making a mental list of all the reward tokens I’d earned, including the three bed tokens I’d finally be able to claim in the city.

[Common Survival Token x2]

[Rare Armor Token]

[Rare Trophy Token]

[Rare Survival Token]

[Epic Armor Token]

[Epic Weapon Token]

[Epic Augment Token]

[Epic Bed Token]

[Legendary Bed Token]

[Cursed Bed Token]

I couldn’t help smiling a little as I read the whole list. It was a serious haul. I wondered if the others had earned any accomplishments for themselves, but realized they wouldn’t know if they had yet. They all had to wait until they got to the city and talked to the naidu at an Arcanery. More and more, I was wondering how people in this world could keep their sanity without a helmet like mine. I didn’t know what I’d do without all the information it gave me.

I still had carapax pheromones in my Alchemist’s Kit, so I pulled out a vial of Flipweed to practice. I may not know what it modified, but I at least knew I wasn’t about to summon a horny swarm of carapax with it.

With everything sorted, I settled into what had become my usual training routine. Elemental Projection, Forge Echo, meditate, repeat. Every once in a while, my Elemental Projection would trigger the Chain passive and fire a second jet of liquid. I was starting to realize reaching tier 2 had done more than simply increase the volume I could project with my ability. It felt like I had a better grasp over my Forge Echo, like it was slippery, before, and I’d gained a small amount of traction.

I wondered if reaching Tier 2 of Chain would simply increase the chance of it triggering.

Was there a Tier that would evolve abilities? Maybe I could eventually get Chain high enough to make two copies of an ability, for example. That would be nice.

I fired a stream of liquid and worked on making it jerk to the side mid-air, meditated, then saw how quickly I could shrink and expand my bottle with tier 2 of Forge Echo. No matter how much I tried, it felt like there was a clear upper and lower limit to size. The smallest I could go reduced my bottle’s size by about twenty percent, and the biggest increased it by the same amount.

Not for the first time, I wondered how I could get my hands on a different type of weapon. I had learned to love my Alchemist’s Kit, but both abilities would also work if I managed to get a weapon with an elemental effect, like a bow of shadows, or something.

I had a little fun imagining the challenge of creating a Forge Echo of a bow and trying to fire at my enemies from two directions at once. With that, I’d be able to use my Alchemist’s Kit more for what I assume was its intended purpose—a regenerating alchemical grenade.

I also still liked the idea of a giant, Forge Echo sword spinning through the air like a flying blade of death.

I was somewhat distracted with thoughts as I was spraying my potion and trying to urge it to curve after it left my hand. It suddenly worked, and the liquid bent off at a slight angle, landing in a patch of thorny bushes beside the road.

Until then, I’d been assuming my potion must have only worked when ingested. But when it splashed on the plant, there was a sudden and immediate creak, like one of those couches old people used to cover in plastic being sat on.

Lyria was the only one close enough to hear it, too. She spun, shield raised and one hand poised, ready to coat it in an element.

We both watched the thorny vine swell, as if it was being inflated like a balloon. It grew until it ripped free of the soil and then twitched. A moment later, it raised straight into the air, flailed around like a tentacle the size of my leg, then started smashing into the ground again and again.

We both jumped back as we watched it carve a groove into the ground, pounding relentlessly.

“What did you do?” Lyria asks. “Did your corestone evolve a new ability?”

“No…” I said slowly.

I lifted my potion and inspected it.

[Potion of Minor Life. (Common) (Modification)?]

I held the bottle toward Lyria to explain.

All she did was shake her head and give me a rueful smile, walking off as the vine continued going berserk.

I was honestly tempted to spray my new potion all over the bushes, trees, and anything else I could find. But I decided to start cautiously. When I looked back, I saw several small pebbles in the road rolling around and smashing into each other. There was even a little tiny dirt golem raising its arms in the air and roaring.

Apparently, I had been breathing life into all kinds of shit as we’d been walking without realizing. Whoops…

The vine must have just been the first one to make enough noise to get my attention. For the sake of everybody else who might come along on the road, I hoped the effects didn’t last too long.

Even as I wondered, I watched the small golem die a pathetic death. Its rocky arms crossed over its neck, it staggered, and then collapsed into dirt.

Poor guy.

I sprayed a rock about the size of a basketball with the potion.

It started to shake, then rolled toward me.

I jumped just in time to avoid getting smashed into as the rock rolled past me, up the hill, and fired itself off into the bushes like a rogue cannonball.

From what I could tell after a few more tests, the potion wasn’t quite as useful as it had first seemed. The things it animated came to life angrily and lasted only about a minute. Using the potion in a fight seemed just as likely to get me attacked as my enemies.

Then again, I’d be the one flipping the “chaos switch,” so to speak. Chaos was only bad if you didn’t know it was coming. If you were the person unleashing the chaos and you planned for it, though? Then, chaos could be a pretty comfortable ally.

In theory. Either way, I put it on my mental list of options in a pinch. I couldn’t ever have too many options.

I paused my practice when we passed more travelers on the road. Humans and tomte travelers were the most common, by far. But we passed a couple of geonite groups, most led by another large female. One group didn’t have a female and looked noticeably more dejected. They didn’t even get that mad when Bloody Steve taunted them about it.

I knew Thrask was supposedly an underground city, so I didn’t know exactly what I had been expecting.

I certainly didn’t expect a bridge, though.

The trees gave way to rocks, which were cut through by a fast-flowing river. There was a walled-in fortress at the center of an island that was barely big enough for a hundred people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder on. The tiny island was absolutely choked with armored tomte, walls, siege weaponry, a drawbridge, and a crowd of travelers waiting for access.

“Wait,” I said to Minara, who was near the back of the group. “That’s not Thrask, is it? I know it’s a tomte city, but it’s kind of small. Isn’t it?”

“What do you mean by that, Helmet?” Bloody Steve asked, glaring up at me.

“That’s the entrance to Thrask,” Minara said. “The city is beneath.”

I supposed it made sense to guard the entrance so well. I wasn’t sure why I’d been picturing an open cave mouth where anyone could stroll. This looked more like a military level of security.

I rubbed my hands together. “I can’t wait,” I said.

“Think you’ll have some good accomplishments?” Minara asked.

“Oh, maybe,” I said. I didn’t even have to hide my shit-eating smile, thanks to my helmet.