A Jaded Life

Further experimentation with my Throne and the Astral River sadly failed to produce additional insights, only repeats of that first experiment. I could find entities drawing Astral Power from the Astral River if they drew in enough power. Though even that was odd. I was fairly certain that the Horned Deer I had killed during my first experiment hadn’t a greater magical inclination than one of my companions, one of the dryads or, Hel, even one of the Stalking Stalks outside their home. Those were magically quite potent, and yet, I wasn’t able to detect them, or any of the critters out there. Only that deer, an animal I hadn’t seen before, meaning it might be some distance away from our current presence but it had been the first I spotted. Where were the others, was it a simple coincidence that I hadn’t spotted anything before that deer or was there something else? Some correlation between their ability to conceal themself, maybe, combined with the magnitude of the draw?

Either way, I was now able to detect beings at a distance, but what I couldn’t do was correlate their presence and existence within to anything outside of it. In other words, I could get information on the existence of some being that was somewhere out there, but I couldn’t find out where that being was, what it was or anything beyond the fact that there was something out there. Not terribly useful, but better than nothing.

The slightly more interesting, and infinitely more indiscriminate, thing I could do was try and flood these beings with elementally biased Astral Power, causing adverse reactions if they lacked the correct bias within themself, as evidenced by the dying deer. Not that I was about to go and start killing random critters somewhere out there, especially not as their levels were far too low to provide any profit, but a few might have expired during my experimentation. Not all, some had reacted in weird ways, but without having any information beyond the knowledge that they existed, it was difficult to find out what made them special and what happened to them.

My attempts to get feedback from them by using Mind Magic continued to fail. I simply couldn’t get into their minds, not beyond anything I had achieved in that first experiment but wrapping a simple command in a shell of mentally biased Astral Power wasn’t all that useful. Especially not as I didn’t know just how effective the command was carried out, it might be that the slight change in their Astral Power draw could come from the effect mentally biased Astral Power had on their bodies or minds, just like the Ice biased Astral Power I had used in my first experiment had a thoroughly negative effect on that first deer. No, if I wanted to learn more, I’d have to figure out a way to perform these experiments point-blank, or at least across a short distance, so I could evaluate their effect directly, not just through the Astral River.

But for that, we’d have to continue onwards, something Lia and Alex were highly interested in. Sure, they had their experimentation, even if it occasionally filled the Gingerstone House with smells that ranged from oddly pleasant to nauseatingly bad, and had been allowed to gather a few interesting plants from around town but that only kept the two of them occupied for so long. They needed something to sink their teeth in, both literally and figuratively, or they would get seriously bored. Knowing where my mind went when I got seriously bored, I wasn’t sure if I wanted Alex to get into that state. Sure, they lacked the magical means of mass destruction but that didn’t make the alchemicals ways they could cause mass destruction any less dangerous. And I was quite certain that they could come up with a couple of ways to cause massive damage.

Luckily, the lessons Luna was receiving from the dryads seemed to be slowing down. Sure, the dryads and some of the proto-elves were masters of plant manipulation but they aimed for slow changes to create a permanent effect. While Luna was doing that, mostly to optimise plants for later combat, she primarily used rapid changes that created highly temporary and mobile effects, almost the exact opposite of what the people here sought. Thus, a lot of the lessons and things they had understood and taken for granted were completely shattered by Luna, who happily broke the paradigm they had operated under.

Sure, Luna learned some things but ultimately, the dryads were instinctive spellcasters, they used Nature Magic as easily as others could breathe, simply because of their nature. Teaching didn’t come to them easily, especially not when the one they were supposed to teach used such a different paradigm compared to them. Similarly, trying to teach the locals my own brand of magic was largely a failure, they seemed to always fall back on their Nature Magic, though they did manage to perform a few new tricks with it.

And so, just a week after we had arrived in the dryads’ enclave, we decided to continue on our path. I had no doubt I’d eventually return, if only to take advantage of the accumulating power beneath the World Tree, but the dryads didn’t need to know that. No, it was much better if they thought I was planning to leave and continue our journey and we’d never return.

Amusingly, we had been asked to make some small adjustments to the Gingerstone House, after I removed my throne, of course, to make it a permanent structure within their community, allowing visitors to spend the night without intruding in individual homes. The dryads had helped a bit by shaping some wood into furniture and adding it to give the home a more homely feeling but overall, it was my effort.

Granted, it was an effort I was well-rewarded for. The system itself rewarded the achievement of using Crystal, Fire and Earth Magic to turn soil into sand and then into clear glass, giving me two skill points in Fire and Earth Magic alongside three in Crystal Magic, bringing them to eighteen, forty and thirty-seven, respectively. In addition, the dryads added a nice bounty of fresh produce, in addition to some seeds and cuttings for Luna, though we’d have to be a little creative in their storage, I had a feeling that trying to store fresh, still-living cuttings within the Shadow Realm would rapidly render them into dead branches. Alas, it was an interesting challenge for Luna to puzzle out.

Less amusing, and more interesting, was that Luna’s request to build a small Shrine and Library to Lady Hecate within the boundaries of their village was rejected. They didn’t want to have any direct and overt divine influence within their community. It was a desire that made them incredibly appealing to me, to the point that I offered to create a small library with a few tomes on simple magic without the need for a connection to Lady Hecate. They rejected the offer, maybe because it felt too similar to the one from Luna, annoying me just a little.

I could understand trying to keep divine influence out of your community, even if the Lady Hecate seemed to be incredibly benign, primarily interested in spreading magic by teaching it to mortals, though that also advanced Her domain, as I understood it. She was the Goddess of Magic after all, so more mortal spellcasters meant more influence for Her, even if the influence was only passive. Or, maybe She was simply hoping to find a few mortals that could reach a point at which they could advance the overall state of magical development and eventually each Her a trick or two. Before the change, science had advanced through the countless contributions, both big and small, of numerous scientists, each contribution a tiny brick that allowed the tower of knowledge to rise into the sky.

Magic had a greater reliance on individual ability but at the higher levels, sharing became important, something I realised more and more as I taught Luna but also before, when I had taught my students. But to get a few people to those higher levels, a lot of people had to be introduced to magic in general before those with potential could begin to grow.

Alas, the dryads weren’t interested and so, they wouldn’t get the chance. Instead, they wanted to rely on their innate talents, a foolish idea in my opinion but who was I to criticise them if they wanted to weaken themself? Hopefully, they wouldn’t fail to protect the World Tree before I came to harvest it, that would be a real shame.

Either way, the five of us happily continued our journey, quite refreshed after the week spent in the safe haven built by the dryad community, wondering where our journey would take us next. There was still a huge amount of world to explore and, more importantly, somewhere in the northwest, the Nexus of Ice was slowly forming, a place I desired to control.