Bonded Summoner

Book 9. Chapter 29: Stenos and Brock - Claiming the Future

For centuries, the necromancers of Morvalis believed they understood death. They treated it as a resource, dominating corpses and binding willing and... perhaps less willing souls to wage their wars. They used their claims of righteousness as justification for all their crimes against the spirits and buried them away.

Standing in the heart of the Prime Instance final boss, Stenos finally understood how blind they had all been.

The entity looming before them was an abomination to the very concept of the cycle. It was a Luminous Lich–a creature of false, stagnant stasis draped in blinding, burning white miasma. It represented a horrific extreme: a refusal to pass on, dressed up in the mocking visage of holy righteousness. The native undead armies would have shattered against it, their dark magics utterly failing to pierce the blinding light.

Perhaps it was what the bishops or cardinals might have become had they been successful in their betrayals. Stenos had lost his life but found a path to penitence for his sins. Thanks to the wisdom of Arawn, he was no longer just a necromancer. He was an arbiter of the Lord of Annwyn’s judgment.

Breathing out a cloud of freezing, necrotic mist, Stenos didn’t force the dead to rise; he invited them. He channeled the wisdom of the god he served, calling upon willing spirits from the Underworld.

Beside him, the armored form of Commander Legias, whom he envied, was empowered. The commander raised his greatsword, not as a puppet, but as a willing soldier following Stenos’s tactical guidance.

With a sharp whistle, Stenos summoned two massive, skeletal hounds wreathed in Underworld shadows. The spirits driving the twin beasts howled, so eager to join the hunt he could feel it in his very bones.

“Keep the guardians busy,” Stenos commanded, sending the commander and the hounds surging forward to tie up a few of the Lich's Radiant Guardians, who swarmed the massive mausoleum battlefield. They continued to wake up from their caskets, requiring them to be controlled before they attacked anyone unopposed.

The Luminous Lich was a true monster, and Stenos thanked his lucky stars that he didn't need to face the boss himself. He just needed to help clear the path for the true heavy hitters.

When he was invited to join this Prime Instance, he was shocked that he was to be given such an honor. But as a native, even one turned into a Servant of Arawn, his unfogged mind, which understood the inner workings of the church, was of value. With the Church of Mortem cleared out, he found himself a well-respected individual, one who had stood against their corruption when it truly mattered.Stenos would help steward his people in its transition going forward, along with several others. The raid would help his spirit become even stronger, and he could be the known local hero that would help teach and inspire others and spread the word of Hearthtribe and Arawn’s greatness.

Having lived as an undead for a while, Stenos found his new existence strange. He could still eat if he wanted, but regular food now tasted awful, and he had a strange hankering for pickled food of all things. The things he had enjoyed in life now only gave him a bad taste and indigestion. Only strong perfumes smelled of anything at all, and he had come to find that many emotions were muted.

Stenos now rarely found humor in anything and lacked energy and interest in anything except magical research. This was what drove him in life, truly, but he also enjoyed a night at the local tavern and the occasional game of cards. Not anymore.

Then why was it he felt such joy here on the battlefield? He was the furthest thing from a thrill seeker. Was it the wonder, the mysteries of the universe Hearthtribe had unraveled for him? Even as his revered commander fought by his side, titans that filled him with awe fought beside him. Or was it that he was finally so full of purpose and resolve–certainty?

A titanic, gem-studded tortoise let out a low hum, and gems studded on its body began to vibrate as a large earthen spike was formed out of the ground. Some gems from the giant tortoise merged with the spike before it was shot across the battlefield and exploded like a deadly lab explosion, tearing apart a group of Radiant Guardians. A large paw smacked another skeleton, their bones shattering in a million pieces under Garona’s tremendous weight.

The undead mammoth beastkin, Taron, crashed into the enemies like a true force of nature, his axe cleaving into the skeletal soldiers with ferocity and skill. This warrior was covered in a black and blue aura, but unlike the undead puppets of the Luminous Lich who moved in rigid formation, he moved in sync with his brethren, like a pack of hunters who found their prey.

A smile touched Stenos’s lips as he focused his cold and death spells on his summoned hounds. His magic covered them in a layer of frost and empowered them as they tore into one of the guardian’s legs and caused it to stumble as its limbs froze. Commander Legias strode forward, striking the off-balance enemy undead and shattering its bone.

How was it that he could feel far more fulfilled than he had ever been in life? On some level, he wished he had found this feeling, this calling, while alive, but Stenos did not regret it for a mere moment. He had no illusions that he was some kind of hero, but he couldn’t help but be thrilled he was becoming an unforgettable part of his world’s history in this moment. A small note in the song that would be sung across the ages of his world. A history that he would personally retell, perhaps for hundreds of years.

Or he would, if he hadn’t foolishly extended himself. The raid leader’s warning shout was simply not enough time for Stenos. A shower of bone erupted from the Luminous Lich, an unholy aura emanating from hundreds of bone spears as they were fired across the ancient mausoleum with an unholy scream filled with hate.

One hurtled directly at him. The Lord’s Aura violently exploded to intercept it, but the sheer momentum of the attack was too much. The spear wasn’t destroyed–only slowed. It was going to skewer him, and Stenos was far too sluggish to react.

Oh yeah. He was told not to spend too long outside of the Sanctum. He had gotten...distracted.

Several odd, cold spirits appeared before him, like a series of flaming, deathly blue lanterns. Will-o'-the-wisps, he believed Morwen had called them? Together, they breathed a powerful cone of cold, blasting the slowed spear and finally sending it off course. He was saved.

Morwen’s calm voice carried as the floating priestess landed next to him, her new Covenant Staff with a skull of an Elder Stag on top. Arawn’s light of the Underworld was emanating from it, an aura of deathly cold surrounding her as her robes whipped around her in the wind. “Careful there, Stenos. If you only bolster your friends, it leaves you vulnerable. The Lord’s protection is strong, but it’s not enough to be brazen. Why have you left the Sanctum?”

Stenos tried and likely failed not to look sheepish. “I... feel I cannot fully guide and protect them without being a little closer to see and react to what they are fighting.”

“You worry for them. This is good. And your guidance for them is valuable. But you must also have a little more trust in their abilities and their instincts. You have come a long way compared to your brethren, Stenos, and balance is nearly within your grasp. Let us return after you reclaim that bone, as things are about to get even more dangerous outside.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Stenos did as instructed, slamming the butt of his staff on the ground as he channeled the deathly wisdom of Arawn. The bones from that defeated, shattered skeleton soldier were already beginning to reconstruct through the Lich’s will alone, but Stenos’s spell was much more focused. He snatched the bone and reinforced his own warriors, their wills latching on with the wisdom of Arawn.

He allowed Morwen to help him float, still not having the mastery of magic or strength this required, and they flew together back to the Sanctum much faster than he could run. As Morwen lifted him into the air, Stenos looked down. He realized the physical clash was only half the war; the true battle was between the domains. Thankfully, Hearthtribe's Champion Aura, bolstered by the Priestesses of Arawn, was aggressively smothering the Lich's false light.

He entered the flaming embrace of Sanctum, finding the warmth and life encompassing him not damaging at all. Something within it still bolstered him, despite it being a near antithesis to his new existence. Feeling warm and at home, he could also feel Lord Hart watching over him.

Looking out from the safety of the flames, the realization hit Stenos with incredible clarity. This was true balance. The living and the dead were not meant to be masters and slaves, nor were they natural enemies. Under the banner of the Hearthtribe, they fought as a single, unified pack. Life provided the warmth, the drive, and the structure; death provided the wisdom, the patience, and the endurance.

Stenos didn’t want to be wasteful, conservatively and paradoxically using the pool of flames for Arawn’s cold. He was still learning Nordic Runes, and could only form a few weak spears of frost to help rain a little bit of destruction down on their enemies. He continued to help bolster his hounds and the commander from afar, and true to Morwen’s guidance, they handled themselves well enough without his micromanagement.

Above the battlefield, the temperature plummeted, followed instantly by a wave of searing, contradictory heat.

Jake, who stood nearby Stenos, had shifted something within him to become some kind of arbiter of justice, but it was Nessa who descended like a goddess of execution onto the giant Luminous Lich in the distance. She was enhanced by the State of the Justicar.

The environment violently warped around her as two massive, intersecting rivers of frostfire erupted from a large pool of cold water on the ground, creating a swirling, paradoxical lake of burning ice that trapped the Luminous Lich in the center. The sphere of water, or lake as he understood it, was twice as large as usual, the Lord having his own lake and fiery river to assist the Justicar with her task.

The Lich shrieked, unleashing a torrent of its stagnant, holy miasma.

Nessa didn't even flinch as her flaming river took her body away, dodging the blast. Then, her slender, serpentine tail had coiled like a spring. At the very tip of her tail, a distinct, secondary snake-head add-on lunged forward with incredible speed, its fangs sinking deep into the Lich’s barrier, echoing the truth of her spirit.

It injected the Dao of Justice in its venomous payload. Brilliant, silver fire erupted from the puncture wound. The absolute, righteous truth of her poison violently rejected the Lich's false holiness, burning through the blinding, nearly endless miasma barrier like acid through paper.

The boss's magical defenses crumpled, but before it could retreat, Hearthtribe’s heroes struck in perfect harmony. The fiery rivers wrapped around and latched on like a python’s tails, constricting and dragging it down toward the purifying lake in an attempt to drown it.

Rookard moved like a shadow, the living beastkin slipping inside the Lich's guard. His golden axes carried the beastkin’s vengeance and dug brutally deep into the entity's collarbone, dragging its towering frame further downward and finally breaking its posture.

In exact, unspoken synchronization, Taron stepped into the opening. The undead mammoth brought his massive axe down in a devastating overhead cleave, shattering the Lich’s physical vessel and dropping it to its knees, and its huge body was encompassed by much of Nessa’s enlarged lake.

The living and the dead, fighting as one.

Yet, the entity refused the cycle. Its physical bones were broken and started to freeze, but its false, radiant soul shrieked, desperately trying to pull the ambient light back together to force itself into a state of stagnant stasis once more. Its body was broken, but given enough time, it could rebuild as many times as it wanted. The miasma began to build as the monster raised its staff, preparing a deadly attack.

Morwen stepped forward, raising her Elder Stag staff high. The vast pool of resources from her magic circle lit up beneath her, blazing with the faith for the Lord of Annwyn.

“Your time has passed,” the high priestess commanded, her voice overlapping with a deep, echoing resonance that sent a reverent shiver down Stenos's spine. For a fraction of a second, the towering, antlered apparition of Arawn himself superimposed over her form, judging the enemy and imposing its sovereign will, its command over death.

At the god's silent decree, the will-o'-the-wisps that had saved Stenos swarmed forward. They didn't freeze the enemy this time–they consumed. They latched onto the Lich's white miasma and reforming soul, shattering its false holy light and tearing pieces of its spirit into a million harmless, fading motes.

With its miasma burned away, its body broken by the pack, and its false soul shattered by the Underworld, it was finally unable to escape or rebuild itself. The being’s ancient will still moved its crumbling body with strings of condensed miasma barely holding it together, but not for much longer.

The rest of the heroes descended like falling stars, cutting into it from all directions. Each filled Stenos with awe, from Ophelia moving like a bolt of lightning on her mount and releasing a blast of fiery lightning through her polearm to the giant Echidna shattering reality with her might. A storm of mixed attacks Stenos could scarcely comprehend crashed into the monster one after the other, breaking apart the white bone and spreading the silver-flame poison of the Justicar.

There was supposed to be some kind of enrage mechanic as the endless being desired to take root in their bodies to begin anew, but their torrent of unleashed epic-scale attacks erased what was left of the unholy being’s will. And it was done before it even launched any of its unholy threads, showing their incredible coordination.

Stenos watched the false light fade, a deep, vindicating peace settling into his bones. This was true harmony between life and death.

***

Brock wiped a slurry of frozen sap and blood from his visor, his chest heaving as he slammed the edge of his shield into the ground, bracing for the next impact.

This wasn't a fight. It was a siege against a creeping apocalypse.

The raid had barely finished scattering to their assigned positions when Bramvalen’s Prime Instance Final Boss decided to test its boundaries. They were fighting a Cryo-Blight Terrorwood–a writhing, hyper-dense ecosystem of frozen timber and razor-vines.

To the natives of Bramvalen, the abomination was a walking blasphemy. It was a systemic affront to both halves of their world. For the Aesryn of the frozen north, ice was a pure, harsh element of survival and strength; to see it twisted into a spreading, parasitic rot was a disgusting mockery of their frost magic.

And to the Theskarrians–the stout, highly vital tribal warriors of the southern jungles–the fact that this monster corrupted their sacred, vibrant flora into an engine of endless winter was an unforgivable insult to their endurance.

But the Terrorwood didn't care about their pride. It was starving for the basin's five exposed Primordial Amber Nodes: massive, glowing fissures of raw, crystallized life-sap. If the abomination sank its taproots into the amber, it would gorge on the ancient life-force, rapidly hyper-growing its frozen ecosystem until it plunged the entire Prime Instance into a permanent ice age.

Jake and the heavy hitters were anchoring the central node, drawing the bulk of the boss's towering main body. Around the perimeter, Brock could hear the sheer, ground-shaking effort of Geomarch Darren and the massive Siege Tortoise, Garona.

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The two earth-shapers were working in frantic tandem, violently compacting the permafrost and creating subterranean pressure traps to limit the Terrorwood’s creeping taproots from expanding underground.

Through the freezing mist, Brock caught flashes of the other squads holding their assigned fissures. To the west, Takoda rode atop his scaled-down Brachiosaurus, ‘Missy,’ the beast acting as a living siege tower while Seamus, the lion beastkin, roared, bathing their flank in Lugh’s blinding light.

To the east, a near-literal wall of white-golden martial aura held the line–Longwei and Yiming of the Warrior Brotherhood fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with Antonius the Legionnaire, blending eastern Valor with Roman discipline into an unbreakable phalanx. Then, Xara and Xu Weiyan mixed their frost and flames, cutting through the monster’s timber in a way that was difficult for Brock to comprehend.

But Brock couldn't afford to watch them. Node Delta was falling apart.

The towering War Oak Treant, Drysander, stood at the edge of their glowing amber fissure. The Paladin of Guan Yu swung a massive green-dragon glaive, cleaving frozen vines and monsters in half with every sweeping strike. Safely nestled high within his heavy, armored boughs were Nadessa and her mothers. The Elysian Druid wielded her new Covenant staff, calling down violent, localized thunderheads that chained pure lightning through the creeping frost-vines, while her mothers bolstered her father to become an impenetrable fortress.

Unfortunately, the Cyro-blight Terrorwood did not really need to go through Drysander, and was perfectly fine with going around him. Down at the treant’s sides, Brock and his wives moved in desperate synchronization. They deflected the barrage of frozen thorns and laid down suppressive fire against the cryo-rot beasts–horrific fusions of jungle predators and parasitic plant matter. It was a gruesome meat grinder, a brutal war of attrition that Clan Brock was slowly losing.

Whenever one of the beasts fell, massive, blooming plant-maws would erupt from the permafrost, rapidly devouring the corpses to fuel the Terrorwood’s endless swarm.

Darren and Garona’s subterranean containment finally buckled under the sheer mass of the boss.

The ground beneath Node Delta exploded outward as a tidal wave of blue-white ice and jagged roots erupted from the permafrost.

“Hold the roots!” Brock roared, slamming his shield into the mud again, his flames of Hestia infusing his Sublimated armadillo scales to enhance the shield’s size, burning brightly and melting the surrounding frost. Vines slammed into his shield with such force his clawed feet had to dig into the dirt to not be sent flying, and his badgerdillo beastkin mate, Bria became a storm of violence as she spun her large axe, sending waves of blades and manifestations of claws shredding outward to relieve some of the pressure. Before one of those horrible plant maws could get around his flaming shield and bite into his flesh, hopefully.

Vanessa, his faun druid mate, channeled nature energy into the ground, her seedlings taking root and creating a weak perimeter, which was then enhanced by Mindy, his Clerical mate infusing flames of Brigid into the plants. A strong defense, but he knew it wouldn’t hold against the beast for long.

Serena, his panther beastkin priestess of Bastet did her best to curse and debuff the monsters, but they were endless. Clan Brock just wasn’t built to handle this number of enemies.

Brock gritted his teeth, his shield’s heat flaring as he slashed outward with his sword, sending a wave of flames with it. The Terrorwood wasn't just trying to kill them; it was trying to freeze Bramvalen in a state of permanent, dead stasis. If they lost this node, the basin died with it. They weren't just holding a line; they were fighting for the world's right to have a future.

He and his wives had been invited to this Prime Instance because of just how hard they had worked to reclaim it. They had bled across the violent jungles of the south and the unforgiving, frozen tundras of the north. When the monsters had threatened to overrun the central city, Clan Brock had stood on the walls, holding the line until the flesh underneath their armor had been bruised and healed ten times over.

They had spearheaded the brutal, grueling campaign to reclaim the lost ruins of Rasengrad, fighting tooth and nail to carve out safe zones for the surviving natives. They hadn't just survived Bramvalen–they had invested their souls into its salvation. Brock wasn't about to let an overgrown, parasitic weed steal it all back.

They fought furiously, not giving an inch, until a piercing howl shattered the freezing air.

Bree blurred through their flank, a streak of primal, lethal fluidity, as she was enhanced by the Chief–the giant dinodog was even larger than normal in the State of the Pack Predator. And she wasn't alone. Guided by the Chief’s overarching command, a pack of summoned flame-covered raptors followed alongside her. As they charged, Bree unleashed her Fertile Flames on the enemy, the same ones surrounding the beasts.

It seemed the mixed emerald-and-red-colored fire violently bulked her up, growing massive, imposing, and ferociously fast. The supercharged pack tore into the edge of the root-wave, melting a temporary trench of slag through the hyper-dense wood.

“You’re doing great. Keep doing your best for now. Help is coming, Drysander, and Clan Brock!” Bree yelled, her voice echoing as she and her giant, blazing raptors vanished into the freezing mist toward the next node. Brock wasn’t able to tell, but perhaps they were having a worse go of it over there.

It seemed Bree had bought Node Delta a small breather that lasted...about ten seconds. The main mass of the root-wave recovered, rearing up to crash down on Drysander. The fight returned for a time, their party doing their best to mix their attacks with heat and lightning, which barely held the monster’s giant vines and its beast swarm off.

Then, the sky screamed.

Ruby dropped from the canopy, landing heavily between the Primordial Amber and the encroaching frozen tsunami. Her expression was completely serene, anchored by an absolute, incredible weight.

As her boots hit the earth, her familiar blood-plate armor shifted. Overlapping, magma-colored scales rippled across her body, mimicking a fiery, armored pangolin. Her claws elongated into heavy, glowing trench-diggers.

She slammed her claws directly into the permafrost.

Five roaring blood-red greatswords–each one nearly as tall as Brock himself–violently thrust upward from the earth, locking into a wide pentagon around her, lined with runes he wasn’t familiar with. A gourd on her back unleashed a torrent of blood that blossomed into jagged blades like sharp stones, wrapping around the pillars and forming a den-like structure.

A translucent, deeply oppressive apparition of a craglike mountain range flickered into existence, entirely enveloping her newly claimed den. The massive root tsunami crashed against the perimeter.

The array retaliated. From the den’s roof, a mesmerizing, fractal avalanche of heavy geometric blades cascaded outward. They tumbled and ground over each other with the brutal, crushing weight of a rockslide, expanding outward to meet the boss's advance even as they dug into the ground and forced more earth upward. The heavy metal pulverized the frozen roots, crushing the frozen wood into sawdust beneath thousands of tons of phantom pressure.

And the avalanche didn't recede. As the wave of blades rolled outward, the blood-covered metal violently anchored into the frozen dirt in its wake. It left behind towering, jagged crags of interlocking blood-red earthen swords–a literal, permanent forest of superheated blades that walled off the entire flank.

Because in the center of the den, Ruby's scaled chest flared blindingly bright. Acting as a living heat sink, she channeled the intense energy of her hearthflames through the ground and into the crags. The entire geometric sword wall turned white-hot, incinerating the pulverized roots and melting the frozen jungle into ash.

Brock stared at the fiery fortress that had just erupted from the ice, his heart hammering against his ribs. The other badgerdillo hadn't just stopped the attack; she had built a siege bunker in five seconds flat.

His mates were equally shocked, and it was Vanessa who laughed. “Bria, you’re tough as nails, but you need to step your game up, Babe. That other badgerdillo has you beat.”

Bria grunted in acknowledgement, and Brock cringed at that. Bria was a bit competitive–he could only imagine how much harder the girl was going to train now. And it totally wasn’t fair–who could compete with Clan Hart?

However, he couldn’t worry about that for now. He didn't want to waste the miracle.

“Form up next to the crags!” Brock bellowed, shaking off his awe and rallying his party. “Use the gaps in the blades for cover! Shoot through the array and hunt the cryo-beasts before their maws can feed!”

His party surged forward, slotting themselves behind Ruby's superheated...blood...sword wall. Safe behind the absolute subjugation of the mountain, they finally unleashed their heavy artillery into the freezing mist, throwing javelins with manifestations and empowered by their Divine’s flames and lightning.

The sword wall would expand and contract, adding blood, earth, and somehow metal into the wall. It didn’t take too long until Clan Brock was actually pushing forward, the monster restricted as this path was completely denied. Likely, Garona had eventually managed to restrict the plant’s growth, and they got other paths under control. Bree eventually rejoined them with her pack of monsters, as by pushing forward, they had cut off the monster’s other path.

Brock risked a quick glance back toward the center of the basin. Above the chaotic canopy, a massive pillar of void-flame and celestial twilight pierced the heavens. The distant, earth-shattering roar of the Terrorwood’s main body crumbling under Jake and the heroes’ combined assault echoed across the permafrost.

Brock grinned behind his visor, gripping his shield tighter. The siege was breaking. Clan Hart had already won; the rest of the battle was just cleanup.

***

Standing on the cracked, arid bedrock of the dead water continent, Jake looked down into the massive, sweeping basin. At its center was where the Grand Water Temple used to float. Thankfully, its shimmering barrier was still a part of the conflict agreement for this world.

The area around the temples was an absolute sanctuary, its divine bubble impenetrable from the outside–only failing when betrayers invited the enemy within foolishly.

Because there was no temple in the crater, there were no betrayers to root out. And within its protected borders, the final remnant of the continent’s population had gathered.

Outside, tens of thousands of people worked, guarded by Hearthtribe for any Tartarus plots. This was a monumental task that could never be completed by Hearthtribe alone. Tens of thousands of miles of mithril wire, hundreds of array anchors across the terrain, dozens of towers across a vast landscape, and the need to channel mana and faith into arrays to fill the water in a deep lake. A lake they hoped would soon become an ocean.

They did this to create a permanent array which was difficult to tamper with. The Array Flags certainly channeled a small portion of the leyline’s energy, and following the truths of the dao, drew mana in and sent it along the network like a river current.

The array plates were like super array flags that got anchored in bedrock and even some defensive enchantments. With the mithril cables, the amount of current that could travel was up to a hundred times more.

Even with that, they still weren't foolish enough to try and fill an entire ocean at once, nor could the Hearthtribe Alliance economy possibly afford it. But more importantly, they didn't need to.

Jake was surprised when he originally learned that the base physical difference between mundane, Tier 0 water from pre-System Earth and a Tier 4 ocean was essentially zero. The difference lay entirely in mana density–like water carrying a massive electrical charge, though it was a little different. It did take some time for magically dense water to become inert, just as it would take to build up such a charge.

However, magically dense water alone wasn't enough to cleanse a corrupted, dying world.

To transform ordinary water into the treasure it was trying to replace and keep it that way without just bleeding out the charge, it required something the arrays couldn't synthesize: Spirituality. Intent. Will.

The natives helped with that. Hearthtribe and its allies had refined a massive stockpile of Tier 2.75 near-treasure-grade water, which held a fraction of spirituality and a decent magical charge of water mana. Because of its sheer magical density, it was incredibly heavy and could keep that charge for much longer.

When they flooded the temple’s crater, that high-grade water sank to the deepest parts of the Great Well, resting over the tectonic array plates like a hyper-dense, liquid battery. Then, Jake and the casters continuously conjured millions of gallons of pure, mundane Tier 0 water from the void to fill the rest of the basin. This soaked up the energy from the planetary array.

Around the shores of this new, artificial lake, the surviving worshippers were kneeling, praying, and...stretching. There were water-aspected elves, blue-skinned goblins, towering river trolls, and the continent's native Anurans. They were a resilient race of amphibious frog-kin who had survived the planet's boiling apocalypse by magically hibernating in hidden, deep-crust aquifers and underground lakes until they learned about Hearthtribe’s plan.

Though they were only a fraction of the population compared to the fire and earth continents, their devotion was absolute. And Hearthtribe had found those river trolls and water aspected among their population, rare instances of those born with the right affinities, though there were still not all that many–the loss of the moon had certainly influenced this.

The Anurans and their water-aspected brethren performed a ceaseless, water-focused bhakti yoga, singing their devotion and spiritual intent directly into the magically seeded lake.

It was a beautiful, symbiotic engine. The dendritic river arrays throughout the world siphoned the oppressive fire, wind, and earth mana of the other continents, transmuting it into water mana to feed the dense liquid battery at the bottom of the well as man-made leylines. Of course, they did their best to keep things as close to what they were before, but many mithril cables followed their blueprint instead.

Meanwhile, the worshippers injected their pure spirituality from the shores, and some faith was even transmuted from the other shrines across the manmade leylines as the prism shrines they created. Over the coming weeks, that spiritually charged treasure water would slowly bleed upward, uplifting the partially upgraded water from the arrays, like a steeped tea. This would help all the water hold the incoming charge better, helping the transformation take weeks or months instead of months and years.

Once they completed the merger, and the planetary moon was fully formed to draw cosmic moisture down from the void, the system would become entirely self-sustaining. The Great Well would eventually overflow, bleeding a literal wave of holy, life-giving water back into the dead oceans, lakes, and rivers throughout the entire world.

Unfortunately, they could not find anything good enough just yet to become the core of their moon to pre-seed it. They were hoping they could earn something from the upcoming final Dungeon Raid, but they realized they just might have to live without the reduced cost of the merger.

It was a logistical and magical masterpiece, but Jake could still feel the sheer, exhaustion-laced ache in his own spiritual channels just from verifying the conduit connections. The dug mithril cables transmitted a powerful magical current, and when combined with their array plates, helped replace the lost leylines of the continent.

The towers surrounded the landscape and key parts of the world. This helped them channel and localize the air mana and alter the weather to protect the lake from the heat.

At that point, they wouldn’t truly need the planetary array any longer. The world should be in balance, and over time, the world would grow once more. However, they would leave the arrays so that they could re-enable them in the future. To help nurture the water moon to counter Sati’s rise. Without the array, Sati would hit the fourth Tier long before the world did, and that could have a dangerous impact on the world itself. By allowing the array to bleed the fire continent to enhance the water one, it should help keep the world stable.

As for Hearthtribe’s other progress, they had finished three of the four Raids, and Jake had finished much of their final Covenant gear. They could still tweak some of it over the coming months, no doubt. But outside of the dungeon, they will have run out of places to claim peak materials that wouldn’t harm their Ledgers unless they involved themselves in Haldrith or The Great Maw. Essentially, this Raid would set the limit for what they could accomplish.

For The Burning Steps, they had not yet hit the Dungeon Raid button to call it down. They wanted to finish this project first. Because after their victory, the world would be supercharged by its potential earnings. It was important to do what they could to bleed the imbalance and empower the lake and future ocean by setting the groundwork here. They would have a finite amount of time to select their reward options, so they needed to be as ready as they could be.

So combined with their saved CP, Jake thought they would have enough to accomplish this. However, they were still waiting on an answer. The natives of Radiant Blade’s stolen water world, Pelagos, had yet to agree with the merger.

In just a couple of days they would have a final meeting between the two worlds’ many leaders, and Jake couldn’t help but be a little worried that things might not work out.

It felt like a sure thing–a slam dunk. Or rather, a grand slam, he corrected himself with a wry smile, his mind instinctively syncing with Berri's baseball-obsessed wavelength. It was impossible to predict how multiple cultures might react to something like this.

Things had worked out on Highlands beautifully with the Elysians, but Jake recognized it was tenuous. All it might have taken was just a little bit of friction, and the entire deal could have crumbled. That the beastkin were so harmonious and the Elysians so desperate and compatible in general helped a lot. But would he get the same kind of positive reaction this time? The elves and trolls were...a bit difficult still.

Fhesiah’s voice interrupted his thoughts as she floated next to him, looking over the lake. “Still working hard, I see, Husband. We’ve had plenty of breaks these past few months and had many victories, but here you are, worrying about even the wording of your thoughts to appease your twin-minded wife. And then some Tier 1 natives that should practically be groveling at your feet to accept your mandate. You should spend less time worrying about this and come have a bit of fun with me.”

Jake chuckled and shook his head. “I’m not trying to appease Berri–I’m trying to find sync with her. We’re almost at the peak, and we still haven’t managed to fuse. I may actually fuse with Nessa or even Sati first, so I’m doing my best. Speaking of which...”

Fhesiah’s eyes widened slightly in surprise at that before she nodded seriously. “True. We haven’t managed to fuse either. But do we need to? It may solve itself when I Tier up. My two Bloodlines will be in sync, and then it just might be as easy as breathing. Though...you’re right. Something about me being first and then nearly last in something... anything, does bother me. Then we have another excuse to go have some fun!” Her kitsune tails danced behind her, though she kept her ideas of what she wanted to do for herself–she wanted to surprise him a bit.

Jake could feel her mood. While most might guess that a trip into her kinky dungeon was what was on her mind, he could feel her excitement blazing inside her through their bond–of a different kind. “Fine by me. Where would you like to go?”

The fire burned in her chest brightly, her eyes lighting up with anticipation. “You’ll see. Let’s go get ready, Husband.”