Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO STUBBING AUGUST 15)

“ARE YOU A TREE, A DRAGON, OR A MAN?” came the voice in Elijah’s head.

“All three and more,” Elijah answered without hesitation. Indeed, he was also a beast.

“WHAT OF YOUR SOUL?”

Elijah thought for a second. “It’s a tree.”

“THERE IS YOUR ANSWER.”

Elijah frowned. After three days of tinkering with his plan, he’d finally done what he’d come to do. He had asked The Mountain for advice. Initially, he’d considered letting Kirlissa guide him. She was a transcendent, after all. She had already told him that she had achieved an ancestor soul. The ninth and final tier of that aspect of cultivation. By all rights, she was an expert.

But she wasn’t a Druid.

And so, her advice was only good inasmuch as it was general. For anything more specific, he needed a Druid with a powerful soul. And Kirlissa had sent him to The Mountain.

The dragon was more wild than civilized, on the edge of surrendering his sapience to nature and becoming a wyrm. However, he was also a brilliant cultivator who could have progressed to transcendence anytime he wanted. The only reason he hadn’t was because doing so would necessitate abandonment of the tree.

After all, a planet could only support so many transcendents. Temporarily, it could work, but if they remained on the planet for longer than a few days at a time, it would collapse beneath their feet.

That was why Kirlissa lived on the moon.

And why many transcendents moved to the frontlines in the war against the Ravener’s forces. There, they could unleash their power with little restraint, save to protect their allies.

Very few remained within the World Tree’s domain, and even fewer lived among their people. Normally, they used projections to maintain a presence in their chosen territories. Meanwhile, like Kirlissa, they lived isolated lives, away from the people who would be obliterated by their very presences.

The Mountain would not abide such a life, so he chose to constrain his power and remain a deity. It was a rare choice. One that most deities never got to make, for they lacked the ability to progress. Of those that possessed such a Legacy, very few would turn down the power to transcend the system and become more than a god.

He had.

And from what Elijah could tell, he was content with that choice.

It also made him frustrating to communicate with, and his long isolation only made that worse. Still, Elijah had learned to communicate with a growing tree. He could talk to an ancient and lonely dragon.

Or as he felt The Mountain’s presence withdraw, he amended that expectation to making sense of whatever he said. For a long few minutes, he considered it. But then, an idea sparked within him.

He wasn’t a tree.

So, why was his entire cultivation system built on that principle?

Certainly, he liked the imagery, and it made sense, given his inspiration and archetype. However, his concept of a tree suffered from his Earthly origins. Maybe his version of a tree needed to reflect his identity. Not just in what it represented, but in its actual form.

The more Elijah thought of it, the more he realized it was the piece of the puzzle he’d been missing. Hastily, he outlined the steps he needed to take in order to adjust his imagery. This time, it wouldn’t require tearing everything down and rebuilding it. Instead, he only needed to refine. To force it to grow according to his parameters.

“YOU UNDERSTAND.”

“I think so.”

“TELL ME.”

Elijah opened his eyes to see a skyscraper-sized head only a couple of miles away. The dragon blinked.

“I’ve been compartmentalizing everything. Soul. Mind. Body. Core. It’s all connected,” Elijah said. “That’s why I used the tree imagery. Branches for my soul, leaves for my mind, trunk for the body, and roots for the core.”

“GOOD. MORE.”

“I neglected something that should have been obvious. I’m not a tree. I think that’s part of who I am. The Druid part. But I’m also a beast. And a dragon. I don’t think I need to veer away from the tree imagery, but I do think I need to adjust it to better reflect what I am.”

“YES. YOU UNDERSTAND. DO IT.”

Elijah frowned again. He knew he couldn’t do it all at once. For now, he needed to focus on three things in order to upgrade his soul. The first was to incorporate into the structure some of the lessons he’d learned on Gorveth and from his study with Tura. Second, he needed to expand the scope of his soul. And third, he wanted to add fang-like thorns.

He followed The Mountain’s advice and got to work.

Though he hesitated.

“DO NOT FRET, YOUNG DRUID. ALL THINGS MUST END.”

“I can find somewhere else,” Elijah suggested.

“NO. IT IS TIME.”

In those final three words came a world of meaning. Elijah’s hesitation came from the certainty that if he cultivated at the base of the tree, it would almost assuredly consume the fruit. The tree itself would likely survive, but that would only be because of its deep root system. Elijah simply couldn’t absorb that much energy.

But he would be surprised if anything remained above ground.

The Mountain read his intention, then offered that seemingly simple response. But he meant so much more. Through the connection they shared, Elijah caught a glimpse of The Mountain’s story. Predictably, it was tragic.

Long ago, well before Ashakar even existed, he’d been a prodigy. A Druid with a bright future and a loving family. But back then, Esik’s position was shaky. They had no transcendent to protect them, which made them prime targets of the hated vespirans. The wasp-people attacked, and the dragon now known as The Mountain managed to fend them off, they took many of his people hostage.

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Including three of his children fresh from the Culling.

And they slaughtered the rest. All but Rijh es Gialle, the dragon that would become The Mountain. He went after them, and he ended up leading a coalition that slaughtered the vespiran nest of origin. But by then, it was too late. The people who’d been abducted – including his children – had already been taken by the mind control larva.

The tree had been planted as a memorial at the site of the original attack, and Rijh es Gialle had slowly retreated from society to become the Mountain. People had tried to bring him back. Many, many times. But he kept turning them down until he gradually lost track of his draconic identity and veered ever closer to the brink of wyrmhood.

Now, he teetered on the edge of that cliff, and it would only take a little push to send him over.

Elijah wondered if destroying that tree might be just that push.

“DO NOT WORRY FOR ME, YOUNG DRUID.”

Another burst of thoughts told Elijah that, at last, The Mountain intended to leave his range.

“Are you sure?”

The Mountain didn’t answer, save through a deceptively subtle sense of reassurance.

That was enough for Elijah.

He sat cross-legged next to the tree, then closed his eyes. After that, he started to absorb ethera. Great torrents of energy entered through his mind, then filtered down to his core. From there, he pushed it into the channels of his soul.

During his exercises with Tura, he’d learned to keep that ethera in place, poised in limbo between the act of casting a spell and releasing it. This time, Elijah removed the spell from the equation, which ratcheted up the difficulty by putting undue stress on his channels.

For long hours, he kept it there, and with each passing second, the walls of his soul continued to degrade. Thinner and thinner, until, at last, they became malleable enough to manipulate.

Elijah didn’t dissolve his soul, though. Not like he had with his other cultivation attempts. This was an iteration on a form he already felt was appropriate, not a complete rebuild.

In that way, it was much more similar to normal cultivation methods than his previous steps forward. Even then, it went much further than most would dare – or at least it would, so long as he followed his plan.

When Elijah took the first step, he realized that something else had changed. Before, his cultivation sessions were always exercises in controlled chaos. Each time, regardless of aspect, he’d stood on the brink of ruin. One little mistake, and everything would end.

But now, Elijah felt like he was in control. Almost like an artist preparing to paint a masterpiece. In short, he was prepared. He had a real plan. He was ready to become a real cultivator.

With that in mind, Elijah shoved his awareness deep into his soul, where he implemented the lessons he’d learned from Treebie and his many training sessions with Tura. Using pinpoint control, he carved runes into his very soul. Some were esoteric, their meanings instinctively understood. Others were intentional, learned during his time on Gorveth or from the crystals Tura had made him study. Still others were combinations of those two extremes.

But the basic principles were clear.

Life.

Nature in all its facets.

And anathema to corruption, in all its destructive forms.

They were all intertwined, but also separate. Like they existed in a few extra dimensions, but expressed their meaning in the physical world. Just like spells, but without the overt effects.

Elijah understood it, but a good deal of that comprehension came at an instinctual level. That made it difficult to put his thoughts into words.

He knew how to get where he wanted to go, though. The process wasn’t painless, but even the soul-deep agony of carving glyphs into his channels was nothing compared to what he had experienced in Gorveth.

Fortunately, the tree provided plenty of energy with which to work.

At first, at least.

But then, something worrying happened. The well began to run dry. He could feel the gnarled tree flaking away, its roots shriveling, and the fruit falling aside, ruined by a lack of ethera.

And Elijah had only done a single branch. He hesitated.

“KEEP GOING.”

“What? There’s not enough –”

A mountainous cascade of vitality and ethera washed over him. At first, Elijah felt like he was drowning, but then, he felt the very flesh stripping from his bones as he endured yet another storm he was not prepared to confront. It reminded him of the maelstrom, though instead of conflicting elements, it was a hurricane of pure life combined with an avalanche of ethera.

Elijah gasped as his body disintegrated, bit by bit.

Only to be rebuilt by a fundamentally familiar, yet unrecognizable spell. Healing Rain. One of the most basic spells in a Druid’s arsenal, though backed by the power of a near transcendent.

It was devastatingly rapturous.

Elijah almost lost himself to the torrent of healing, untethered vitality, and dense ethera. Barely, he managed to keep a grip on his sanity, and in doing so, he kept ahold of his purpose.

The apertures in his mind opened, spinning like miniature hurricanes. They channeled ethera into his soul, renewing the pressure Elijah needed to continue his work. At the same time, great flows of vitality roared through his channels, repairing the walls he’d so arduously thinned.

For a second, it created a stalemate.

Elijah screamed.

The ethera overtook the vitality, and Elijah sharpened his thoughts into an etching tool so he could continue his progress. All the while, the continuous cycle of destructive ethera and near-transcendent healing waged a war of attrition on his body. Without that, he’d have run out of energy. With it, he was once again thrown into the now-familiar torture that came with cultivation.

Fortunately, Elijah maintained his plan.

Over time, his branches became something else. If he’d had a thought to spare, he might have compared the result to the tree Sadie had branded with the Chorus of Angels. Yet, in comparison, that was like holding a mud hut next to the Palace of Versailles. Sure, they were both buildings, but they were incomparable.

One branch followed another until, at last, Elijah had finished. His soul glowed with renewed strength and incredible fragility.

“KEEP GOING, YOUNG DRUID. LEAN ON MY STRENGTH.”

Elijah needed no further encouragement, and he moved on to the next stage of his soul cultivation.

He’d set out to incorporate some aspects of his identity into his imagery. He was not a tree. He was a dragon. And dragons had teeth.

Elijah delved into the knowledge he’d gained through copious use of Nature’s Design. His soul was not a real tree, but there were enough similarities that manipulating it required the same touch.

Harnessing the dense vitality all around him, Elijah forced a new off-shoot to grow from his soul. It was not another limb. Instead, it was a thorn. And engraved upon it was a series of glyphs whose meaning could be boiled down to one, simple word.

Sharp.

Even perceiving it was enough to cut Elijah’s thoughts.

Satisfied, he moved on to the next thorn. And the next after that. Nine on each branch, each one a weapon and a defense.

Elijah had no idea how long the process took. Days. Weeks. He didn’t care. He was beyond the simple constraints of time. There was only the process. And when he’d finished, he was both exhausted, satisfied, and a little afraid.

“FINISH IT.”

Elijah obeyed that command, falling back into a strategy he’d never really intended to employ. Not this time around. But The Mountain’s aid came with a certain expectation that Elijah regarded as an opportunity. He had no intention of wasting it.

His apertures shuddered, spinning faster and faster until his entire soul flooded. He held it for as long as he could, but soon enough, his soul shattered.

Elijah was cast adrift in his own body. But even as he floated in the nothingness of his own consciousness, he kept the image he’d rebuilt firm in his mind.

The branches of a tree, connected by a web of tiny, fungal filaments, and guarded by sharp thorns. It shimmered in his thoughts, ready to take shape.

Gradually, the ethera still flooding through his apertures adjusted, then conformed to the shape he’d built. But as the new channels began to solidify, they were stronger. Wider. More pressurized. And more than anything, the glyphs that he’d so arduously etched were built into the very structure, as if they’d always been there.

But Elijah was more concerned with the other addition, and when he focused on the thorns, they glistened with absolute sharpness. With deadly intent.

He didn’t need to see the notification to know he’d been successful. Still, he let the message flow across his inner eye:

Elijah smiled. Finally, he had the weapon he needed to enact his plan.

However, his expression faded when he opened his eyes to see an old man sitting before him.