Chương 111: B2 Chapter 53: Homestead

"Finally!" Trinlen shouted as he almost literally leaped to his feet at the announcement that the dragon was defeated and it was time to pack up and move on. Carlos looked at him and raised an eyebrow, and he stammered and scratched the back of his head sheepishly.

"I mean… Don't get me wrong, boss: this whole trip in general has been great, for so many reasons, but this —" He gestured in all directions around him.

"—has been unpleasantly cramped. It'll be nice to get to roam around again." Carlos looked up at the ceiling of tangled branches, vines, and leaves, then at various scraggly wooden trunks dotted around the hidden hollow, and nodded.

"Yeah, I get that. Hopefully, with the dragon gone, we won't have to hide again. Anyway, I see everyone's already packed and ready… Including us, apparently?" Trinlen shrugged.

"Yeah, I took the liberty of getting your stuff ready while you fought. I figured, either you win and we'd move on to the wellspring, or you lose and we'd have to bug out ahead of an angry dragon's wrath, and either way we would be moving. And, well, every minute we don't have to spend packing after the battle is another minute less of staying in this insufferably small enclosure. Speaking of which, can we go already?" He grinned cheekily.

Carlos casually cast a silent Telekinesis spell to grab his tent and pack, then shrugged and looked at Lorvan.

"Maybe? The dragon was definitely the wellspring's guardian, but… Lorvan, should we be concerned about anything else noticing us if we just openly fly around?" Lorvan shook his head dismissively.

"No. Anything strong enough to be truly dangerous to you, the dragon would have eliminated already; such creatures do not tolerate close rivals. Some things might notice you, but they will all be too terrified by the magnitude of power displayed by and against the dragon to dare attacking so soon. The creatures of the deep Wilds learn young the need to hide when the powerful roam." Carlos nodded.

"Makes sense. Alright, if everyone's ready?" A silent chorus of nods and affirming waves answered him, with a few people pointedly hefting packs on their shoulders.

"Then let's go!" He engaged the spellcasting machinery of his soul and grinned in exhilaration as magic poured forth and enacted his will upon the world. The web of a Teleport spell enveloped them all, the dense thicket around them was abruptly replaced with open sky in all directions, and their clothes and hair fluttered in the wind as Flight spells swiftly carried them away.

The trip was swift and uneventful, as predicted, thick jungle canopy passing by below as the group navigated through the air by the gradient of aether density. Before long, the wellspring came in range of Carlos's bulk aether sense, and he whistled in awe. A quick spell carried his voice to Lorvan despite the wind of their speedy flight.

"I see what you meant when you said I'd know it when I saw it. That is very distinctive." In the distance, just a few miles away, aether fountained into the air, streaming up from the ground below. The upward fountain curved, split, and spread in all directions, tending toward horizontal. Great streams flowed steadily, ever-renewing as more aether sprang from the ground.

Various disturbances and obstacles divided the streams into smaller and smaller tendrils, and pockets of turbulence or stillness were scattered around. The biggest factor dissipating the aether fountain, however, was aether's tendency to spread everywhere like an uncontained gas; the mere existence of less-dense areas adjacent to each stream steadily siphoned off more and more of the flow the farther each stream went.

Ultimately, it saturated an area nearly a mile across before its spread thinned it enough to decompress by one level. Carlos quietly appreciated the moment for a while, luxuriating in the feeling of having won such a major goal, and of being surrounded by powerful friends and allies. Then another thought occurred to him.

"Hey, Lorvan? The dragon was Level 59, but this wellspring is only Level 54. Why would a dragon care about a wellspring that's 5 levels below it? I thought just matching the wellspring's level is the highest it can raise you to?" Lorvan answered immediately.

"That is correct for direct absorption, but there are ways to use aether less directly. At the very least, the teleporters that the Enchanters Guild installs at wellsprings draw on the wellspring to power their operation. I do not know what methods a dragon might use, but it surely had some use for this aether. Incidentally, I have cautioned you about this before, but it is worth emphasizing: Take care not to drain the wellspring entirely. If a wellspring is drained to its last dregs, it will cease renewing itself.

Its flow will stop and never return. With the two of you, and also Kindar and your dungeon, further amplified by the dungeon's active assistance, your speed of absorption is extraordinary, even for nobles. It would be easy to go too far by simply not paying enough attention." Carlos nodded, though Lorvan might not see it with how they were all facing forward while flying.

"I remember, and we'll be careful about it. On another note, I've had enough of staring at it from a distance. Also, I kind of want to cast my first major spell again and see how much better it's gotten. Let's cut this short, shall we? Sight Gate!" Space twisted and opened in front of them, forming an enormous portal that the whole group easily flew through side by side, and then they were floating directly above the fountain of aether.

Carlos absently let the portal close behind them as he focused his attention on scouring the details of the scene below. A single enormous tree grew directly in the main path of the aether, and some of the biggest branches of the aether streams followed branches of that tree—or maybe the tree's branches followed the aether; Carlos really wasn't sure which one caused the other.

The ground around that tree's trunk was relatively clear, with its shade blocking light from any plants that grew too nearby, but plenty of other trees ringed it at the boundaries of its canopy. There was one major break in the tree cover, dozens of feet across, where there was simply nothing but bare earth. Just outside the edges of the cleared area, several broken-off stumps stood, their tops jagged, splintered, and charred.

Inside the circle, the dirt was bereft of even fallen leaves, instead looking blackened with a dusting of ash and soot. Huh. The dragon—Ankalon—must have cleared that with a controlled burn, maybe as a place to land and take flight without having to crash through tree branches every time. Carlos noted the spot in passing, but focused most of his attention on other things. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

He noticed five different places, all within the under-one-mile diameter Level 54 zone, where the aether was barely moving at all. The active streams all passed by well to the side of each of those places, and the aether that was there felt almost congealed, despite its gas-like nature. Lorvan noticed where he was looking before he could even ask, and volunteered some advice.

"Those will condense into pools of stagnant mana if left alone long enough. You should deal with them before they become problems." Carlos nodded in acknowledgement as he descended to land in the cleared circle.

"Right." The ground crunched slightly under his feet, but the dirt—or whatever the dragonfire had turned it into—was mostly hard-packed and unyielding. He walked toward the great tree at the wellspring's heart and gazed reverently up and down its tremendous height, ending with his eyes looking down toward its roots.

"So… What happens if we dig under it and try to follow the aether stream back to wherever it's coming from? Surely someone has tried that before, right?" Lorvan gave him a sharp look.

"People have attempted it, yes. The wellspring reacted to the digging like a cornered beast, similar to when people tried to release small controlled portions of a contained wellspring's aether. The details of the consequences were different, but it was still disastrous. Even if you take every possible precaution and prevent any actual damage, you could still lose the wellspring as a result." Carlos laughed humorlessly.

"Heh. All the blatantly obvious cheaty shortcuts to power are traps, I guess. I figured it was probably something like that." He sighed, then squared his shoulders and turned around.

"Alright, time to get started on making this our home. The cleared circle seems as good a spot as any for the dungeon core. Unless being directly in the main aether stream would be better?" Purple replied with a wordless rejection, followed by an image of his foot-and-a-half-tall crystal floating above the darkened open ground and a sense of firm approval.

"No? Okay then, here you go." With a quick adjustment of his Telekinesis spell, Carlos positioned Purple a foot above the ground, then waited a moment for Purple to establish his new anchor before releasing the spell. He hesitated briefly, then added a telepathic request. [Be as careful and cautious as you can, but please investigate the wellspring and see what you can find. If there's anything that can do that safely, it's a dungeon core.] Purple felt something inside him relax as he grasped the aether of his new home. He had grown accustomed to the sensations of releasing that grip and allowing himself to be moved, but no matter how familiar it had become, it was still distinctly uncomfortable. That he would never have to do it again came as a relief, and he paused for a moment just to let that relief permeate him entirely. Then he got to work. First order of business: Taming the wellspring's aether.

He extended a web of hair-thin filaments of essence in all directions, expertly weaving it into the existing flows. With how much stronger and more detailed all his senses had become since his early days, he could now also tell that each filament bore a fuzzy coating of even finer prongs, that then themselves split several times further, until even his improved senses could barely discern them.

He considered for a moment how to describe this to Carlos, since the man wanted to learn everything he could about magic, and was surprised when his comprehension aid supplied just a single word: "fractal." The concept of infinite splitting dazed him for a moment, but that revelation occupied only one of his several minds.

Another of his minds simply continued the action of embedding his web into the wellspring's emerging fountain, a task that was much easier when he could loosely dangle things into the stream than it would be if he were immersed inside it. A third mind worked on establishing influence over all the nearby trees and other plants.

A fourth mind searched for appropriate materials to build a house from—as permanent a house as he could manage; strong metal and stone would be ideal, and wood would suffice for now if necessary, but leaves and cloth would not do. Purple's fifth mind cautiously probed downward into the ground, tentatively extending his domain into a tube just beside the wellspring's aether font, ready to withdraw immediately at any sign of a negative reaction. His probe extended 10 feet down, then 20, with no reaction.

He reached 30 feet, and even 40, with no new development. Well, the soil was different, and there were a lot of rocks mixed in, but the wellspring hadn't changed. Then as he approached 45 feet down, he sensed something different. The stream of aether still hadn't reacted to his investigation; it just had something different that was located that deep. The stream was spread out more, and even split for short segments, and had a bunch of concentrated knots scattered around.

He focused in on one of the knots and realized that it was a piece of metal. Each piece of metal was being constantly bathed in a stream of high-level aether, which surely had to have some kind of effect on it, right? He poked at the pieces of metal a bit more closely and found that there were two types. One type, located mainly in the outer areas, had a feeling of lightness to it. The other, concentrated more toward the center, felt dark and unyielding.

He carefully, cautiously, took hold of one of the light pieces and gently pulled on it, moving it through the ground. The knot and section of stream tied to it stretched to move with it at first, and he got the faintest impression of something being vaguely aware of what he was doing, but whatever it was did not object.

After moving it a few feet to the side, the aether knot slid off and snapped back toward the central stream, and Purple felt the vague awareness questing around, searching for what it had lost, but still barely aware. He almost moved it back, but realized that another of his minds had found some other pieces of metal elsewhere, and he quickly moved one of those pieces into place. He touched it to the unanchored aether knot, and after a moment, the knot settled into it and he stopped feeling the barely-aware search.

He decided to go for a piece of the other type of metal as well, but this time prepared a substitute in advance. He tugged on the chunk of dark metal slowly, gradually, while holding a piece of something else right next to it and closer to the center. After a few minutes of this, the knot and stream had switched over, and he left it to show his prizes to his friends and find out exactly what he had acquired. Up on the surface, the ground churned for a moment, then two irregular metallic lumps emerged.

One shone bright and silvery. The other seemed to drink in the light around it. Carlos's and Amber's eyes widened at the sight.

"Oh? You found some mythril and adamantium? Excellent!" Lorvan nodded, seeming unsurprised.

"Wellsprings are the most common places to find either of those. There might also be a small amount at the stagnant mana pool you cleared out, but probably only mythril if so, and even that is unlikely."