Spellheart 9: Chapter 43 (Patreon)

I was done playing around. My evil twin had become a scourge on the Hearthwood. He’d already caused me more trouble than I ever should have allowed. As the anger built within me, so did my resolve. I had a plan to deal with him once and for all, starting today.

“Mac, I’m going to need your sensors. You’ll have to run the Scanner at maximum efficiency if you want to spot him. My evil twin is both quick and crafty. If we want to catch him off guard, we will have to be fast. You ready for this?”

[I was manufactured ready, Theo,] Mac replied.

We went over everything I needed from him, and sent all the messages I needed to send. This would take a bit of coordination to get right, but so long as I timed things well all should go smoothly.

I turned to my companions. It was time I clued them in on my plan as well. “Okay, everyone. We’re going to open up the last nexus seal and merge the Devilbeast Wilds with the Hearthwood.”

“But Theo! Won’t that unleash powerful monsters all over the Hearthwood?” Melise asked, face full of worry.

I nodded. “It will, assuming my evil twin left any alive. It seems like quite a few of them are already dead. But we have Dean’s Orb to weaken those that remain. Besides, the Shadowblade Beasts are good and tamed now. They’re living out of the Monster Dens and becoming more docile with every passing day. We can do the same with the other monsters in the Devilbeast Wilds. And those we can't tame? We’ll just have to slay them.”

Melise nodded slowly. Nela tightened her hand around her spear. Yorik hefted her hammer over her shoulder. My women and I were ready for battle.

I already knew exactly where the last nexus seal was, thanks to my adventures with Segolas, so we headed straight there.

“This reminds me of old times,” Eltiana bounced chirpily on her heels behind me. She was skipping through the dungeon, throwing out the occasional poisoned dagger as Barbed Tooth Raptors darted out to take a bite out of us.

“I don’t remember it being this easy,” Assyrus replied as she stomped on the head of an undead raptor that had tried to sneak up on us.

It was true. When we first started exploring these tunnels, every fight pushed us to the verge of life and death.

But now? Battling our way through the dungeons beneath the Hearthwood was simplicity itself. Most of the monsters were below true mage, except the final boss.

“Damn, another Crimson Eye Observer already?” It surprised me to find the guardian of the nexus seal floating just beyond the dungeon core. Killing one of these powerful monsters had nearly cost us our lives back then.

“I want it!” Eltiana said with a big smile on her face.

I chuckled. “As long as you promise not to fake your death this time.”

Eltiana charged her opponent. It was a great mass of undulating eye stalks surrounding a large central eye. Each lens stared in different directions, and it had already caught sight of Eltiana. It fired a beam of crimson destruction from its largest central eye, but by the time the beam struck, Eltiana was no longer there. Instead, she was behind the monster.

The Crimson Eye Observer was no match for Eltiana. Even fighting on her own, she skipped through the air and bounced off the walls faster than any of the Crimson Eye Observers could track.

I figured she’d stick it with her poisoned iron sword before it could so much as blink, but Eltiana decided to toy with the giant eye monster a little.

She flipped through the air as it rounded on her, firing a beam of light that missed by a mile. It tried to turn and fire at her again, but she grabbed one of the Observer’s eyestalks and used it as a handhold to do a flip in mid-air. At the peak of her arc, she looked back at us and blew me a kiss.

“She’s showing off...” Assyrus rolled her eyes.

“Perhaps I should hurry this along,” I suggested with a shake of my head. We had time to kill before everyone else was ready, but it would be easier to spend our time waiting camped out around the nexus seal.

Eltiana must have heard Assyrus and me because she started dodging the Crimson Eye Observer even more flamboyantly. More than once, she tumbled through the air. The wind her clothes and the thin skirt-like dress she was wearing, folding it up on itself.

“And, of course, she isn’t wearing any underwear...” Assyrus shook her head. “Finish it off.”

“No, no...” I waved Assyrus down as I watched and suddenly changed my mind. “We should let Eltiana have her fun.”

Eltiana put on a good show for us. She’d dodge by no more than a hair repeatedly, putting her nimble acrobatics on display with every move. It was less like a fight and more like a delicate dance.

Unfortunately for her, and quite fortunately for me, Eltiana’s clothes didn’t hold up quite as well to her narrow dodges. The Crimson Eye Observer’s beams cut thin burns down the center of her back, the sleeves of her arms, and the corners of her dress. Bit by bit, her clothes flaked away.

“Now, this is how a fight is supposed to go!” I pointed to my companions with eyebrows raised.

Nela shook her head and took a seat on the cavern floor. The others soon followed suit.

Broken, beaten, and exhausted, the Crimson Eye Observer collapsed to the ground.

In the end, the Crimson Eye Observer tired out before Eltiana did. I would never have guessed this could happen, but apparently, after fifteen minutes of continuous laser fire, the Crimson Eye Observer ran out of juice.

The beams of energy it fired were pathetic scattered things, not even powerful enough to kill off a Mage Acolyte.

It made sense that the beams grew weaker over time. Few monsters could perform as devastating attacks as the Crimson Eye Observer, especially for as long as it had been fighting.

Eltiana gave the limp Crimson Eye Observer a kick. She shrugged, drew her sword, and ran her weapon straight through the monster’s central eye. It was too tired to so much as twitch at its death.

I clapped. “Well done, Eltiana! Well done indeed!”

“Tada!” Eltiana held her hands wide, and the last scraps of her clothing fell to the ground.

I rushed up to the light of the Nexus seal and scooped her up in my arms. “That was beautifully done! If I didn’t have an evil twin to destroy, I’d show you a good time after a show like that.”

“I demand a shoulder ride as a reward!” Eltiana held up her arms, and I scooped her up and placed her on my shoulder. She pulled my arm up around her waist, and I cradled her as she sat with a wide smile on her face.

Everyone else picked themselves up off the cavern floor and strode into the cavern of the Crimson Eye Observer, behind which stood the Nexus Seal in all its glory.

“Ah, now this reminds me of old times!” Assyrus stared at the heaping pile of zeal crystals with an eager gleam in her eyes.

“Shovels?” Yorik asked.

I quickly tossed out the requested tools, and we all got to shoveling. No matter how powerful we became, we’d never be above scooping up money by the shovel full from a pit in the ground where it grew like fruits falling from trees.

It was a task that required a lot of hands, though, so I called in a few family members. Jobs like this one were best kept in the family, considering the amount of wealth we were hauling into the Hearthwood Clan’s personal coffers.

“I’m going to miss this constant supply of zeal crystals,” I sighed. “Maybe I’ll have Argona make something like these nexus seals. Not in the Hearthwood, mind you. We can use the zeal directly. But maybe in some of the regions where we don’t want monsters to grow too strong.”

But before I could set those plans in motion, I had another one to follow through on. It was time to open the nexus.

I turned my attention to the seal itself. My fingers traced the complex network of magic that formed it.

“You know, these things once seemed incomprehensibly complex to me...” I smiled softly. These days, piecing together a nexus seal would be easier than looking at Argona’s work. Her creations were about the same level of complexity, but her nimble fingers could put this same pattern on a piece of adamantium the size of a fingernail rather than taking up an entire door.

Four glowing chains crossed over one another. I gripped two of them with either hand and focused on my Earth zeal. Power roiled within me, just as power roiled beyond this seal.

I pulled, and with a great heaving strain, the first of the chains snapped. I grabbed another set of chains and snapped those as well. Soon, only a single set of chains held the seal shut.

“There’s going to be one last burst of energy,” I said as I turned to my companions. “Make the most of it since this is the last one we’re going to get.”

We could recreate the power I was about to unleash in the Cultivation Chamber, but it was tedious and expensive. There was nothing quite like receiving a burst of power for free.

The others sat down and concentrated, and I turned back to the last of the chains. With one deep breath, I pulled and tore them apart.

A colossal wave of magical energy erupted from the seal. It washed over the chamber behind me in an unstoppable tide. The very earth beneath my feet shuddered like we were in the middle of an earthquake.

The burst of zeal from this last seal was greater than all the others by an order of magnitude. Fitting, considering this was the last seal we had to open.

And I would have been surprised if the earth didn’t shake when the Hearthwood was being physically expanded to encompass an entirely new land mass. We would have to seize control of the new landmass immediately. And probably build new roads.

“How are things looking up there, Mac?” I asked as I took a few deep breaths. The zeal-rich air wouldn’t benefit me like it could all those on the surface, but it was still like taking a lungful of very fresh air. It felt good. Not as good as a long session of dual cultivation, but still refreshing.

[We are going to need to build new roads. A few buildings are on the verge of falling, but I am utilizing all the powers of a dungeon core to keep them standing.]

I nodded slowly, though Mac couldn’t see me as we communicated remotely. “We have a limited window to find my evil twin before he figures out a way to shield himself now that the pocket world he’s been hiding in has merged with the Hearthwood.”

[I suspect I pinged him a moment ago. A second ping will come momentarily. Ah, yes, there he is. I will provide the coordinates in a moment.]

“Tell Dean we have him. Now’s our chance to catch him off guard!”

My matriarchs and I rushed through the pocket world passage. Eltiana had to rush to my Personal Chambers to grab a new set of clothes, but everyone else was ready for battle.

I was as refreshed and ready as I’d ever be. I would have liked to have Spell Eater by my side, but my Sword Storm blades and the experimental weapons in my Dimensional Storage would have to do.

It was finally time to ruin my evil twin’s day for once, instead of him ruining mine. I’d had enough of his unpleasant surprises. It was past time I gave him one of my own.