Dao 4 Chapter 7 (Patreon)

“So, we are hunting monsters for directions now?” Cherry sat quietly in the room they’d be given in the inn. Neko had wanted to stretch her legs, and Dar had sent Tami and the maids with her. With all four of them together, they shouldn’t be in any real trouble.

“Monsters with a different dao. You said it yourself. That first body had already produced a new fruit.” Dar grinned. He loved new dao fruit. “Besides. You guys have been idle all day, and I need to rest. You might as well make yourselves useful.”

Cherry cocked an eyebrow waiting to see if Dar wanted to reword that.

He didn’t.

“Well, Neko would probably start destroying things if we kept her cooped up the entire journey.” Cherry agreed.

“And we are making fantastic time.” Dar grinned, proud of his little locomotive.

“Yes, but I’m not sure that thing will work the whole way. It certainly won’t work when we get to the foothills; they are too steep.” She pointed out.

Dar finished making a little stone heater and put it down in their room. Even if the cold didn’t bother him, it was still more comfortable to be warm. “We’ll keep moving after this. But these villages are disconnected and need help. Heck, after Martin and Mel’s reaction to the girls, I wouldn’t be against recruiting on our way back.”

Cherry hummed in agreement. “For now, work on your dao.”

“Right. Tomorrow I’ll help the girls clear the woods of any more monsters, and then we’ll head out again.”

“Dao for now. What are you going to focus on?” Cherry opened up the family dao booklet and Lilith’s dao booklet, placing them side by side.

“Wind, or something related to it. Maybe if I can come at it from the angle of Tami’s speed dao?” Dar started to flip Lilith’s book. “Mostly because I think I’m going to be traveling a lot here soon. Between this trip and the war on the horizon, my personal mobility will be important.”

Flipping among the book, Dar found several entries that felt like they were something that led up to some form of air or wind. Dar tried to focus on the lesser dao characters, but as normal, they slipped out of his awareness.

But if he really forced his mind to recognize them, there would be pain and damage to his body, but it was decreasing with time.

Making his decision, Dar focused on the dao of light, a wonderful counterpoint to his dao of heavy. He figured with his locomotive, decreasing the weight might help him power it longer.

He forcefully traced the dao on the floor even as his body swelled with the forced power.

Unlike the past where he’d feel his nose bleed and a pressure explode out of it, it felt more like he was bloated and uncomfortable, but not in any bodily danger.

A grin couldn’t stop spreading across his face as he worked to forcefully learn the lesser dao. If he could manage these without risk of injury, then he should just pick out a whole series for what he thought was next and try to learn them all in one night.

***

“We should hurry.” Amber stated amid the dim forest. “We have left our lord alone with just Cherry. He has a penchant to push himself as far as he can if not distracted by us.” She twirled a pair of small, yet enchantedly sharp daggers. She had a number of them hidden among her uniform.

“Kittens.” Neko agreed.

“Wait. Is that why you all have sex near constantly at night?” Tami blinked amid the darkness and stumbled when she missed the tree to lean on.

“Quiet.” Neko snapped and crouched low, her hands giving off a faint sheen as a pair of magical claws formed on the back of her hands.

Marcie grabbed Tami’s hand and placed it against the tree. Having cultivated the dao of shadow, her and Amber were perfectly comfortable out among the trees as the sun set. “Our lord does not idle well. When given time, he pushes himself to become stronger for all of our sakes. The sex is just fun and a reconnection of dao companions. We would never prevent him from being stronger.”

The leopard demon turned to her with a glare, her slitted eyes were dilated to the point of nearly covering her entire iris. “Quiet. Monsters.”

“I see them.” Amber whispered. “Besides, we are casting out our dao of quiet. All of us here practice a greater dao. I will go first.” She touched the buckle on her neck in a quiet reverent motion. “I am his shadow. His strength is in me.”

Dar hadn’t realized what their new outfits signified. But the oaf that she loved often missed things.

He was out of place in this world, didn’t understand the gifts he gave her were enough to endebt a kingdom to him for the rest of its existence.

The knowledge, the opportunities that he casually offered to anyone close enough to hear were worth his weight in gold. Then there was the security he offered.

Just staying in his manse would probably have had her on her knees polishing him every night to enjoy such a life.

Then he had to go and give them the dao fruit, make them immortal, stronger, faster and now able to manipulate shadows.

It was night, one giant shadow blanketed the world. It was when her lord slept, when he was at his weakest, so it would be when she was at her strongest.

For him she would learn to kill at all costs, even her life. So that one day if anyone ever tried to take advantage of her lord’s weakest moments, she would be there, she would kill them.

Shadows, her shadow, spooled out from her like two giant tentacles as she shot forward.

They latched onto nearby trees, pulling her forward like a silent owl in the night diving for its prey.

Her daggers flashed in the darkness for a moment before she landed on top of the first monster’s shoulders. The two enchanted blades punched right through the top of its skull and she twisted viciously, imagining two problems for Dar before she used those shadow limbs to pull herself up and away.

The monster let out a keening wail as it crumpled to the ground, alerting the others.

They spun, becoming far more active and rushing to the side of the one who had fallen to see what had killed it.

They were pack creatures, Amber realized.

She could use that against them.

When they didn’t find anything, one looked up.

Amber fell on it, her blades flashing again and stabbing into its face. But this one had been warned. It blocked, and her two daggers punched into its forearm before she snapped a kick forward, pushing off of its arm and tearing two grooves into it.

The monster howled in pain, yet relative to its size, Amber knew that the hits wouldn’t even slow it down.

Amid the clearing, the monsters spun, focusing on Amber as she once again pulled herself up and out of their reach with her shadows.

The tree she landed in was ripped apart by them, as the monsters tried to reach her.

Amber could only dodge to a new tree. There were too many of them, and they were focused on her. “Shit.” She was still ineffective once she was seen, and she hated it.

Licking her lips she tried to focus, to become one with the shadows as her lord could do or Cherry could do with trees.

She wanted nothing more than to become a shadow, his shadow. Amber felt a tug further away towards the village but resisted the urge even as her smile blossomed in the dark.

Instead, she dove into the shadow for only a moment, coming out the other end behind another monster, her blades gouging out two long gashes in the back of its legs before slipping into the shadows once more

The monster spun around, falling to its hands and knees.

Marcie was there in an instant, her blades cutting deep into the monster's neck and finishing Amber’s kill for her before jumping away.

The mousy girl followed Amber’s lead perfectly, but Amber wanted to take down the monsters on her own.

“Marcie, stay back.”

“We are his shadow.” The way she said it, Amber knew that Marcie considered them to practically be a single unit. And it somewhat fit. They were often very close together.

Amber’s time training Marcie for Dar had made the girl stick to her like glue, while being almost entirely dependent on her.

Not bothering to tell Marcie to leave again, knowing that she wouldn’t listen, Amber dove back in through the shadows amid the monsters and became a flashing flurry of knives, cutting any surface she could reach before disappearing and creating more chaos.

The monsters were howling up a storm; the villagers could probably hear the ruckus. Hopefully they weren’t too scared.

“Too slow.” Neko pounced on one and her two claws made of mana tore jagged rents of flesh from the monster before she moved bonelessly out of the way of another and tore its arm off. “Dar would be disappointed that we are taking so long. Besides, we cannot leave him alone with Cherry or she will get kittens first.”

Amber chuckled, Neko had certainly developed a fairly one track mind.

The leopard demon waded in among the demons, dodging out of the way and tearing through whatever came at her if she couldn’t dodge.

The claw dao that Niko used was vicious.

Sometimes Amber wanted to train with something closer to Niko’s claws, but stealth and protecting Dar at night was the most important.

A large specimen of the monsters roared in defiance and started to flee.

Amber was off again, using her shadow to pull her from tree to tree, flying after the escaping monster. Her daggers were held tight as she caught up to it using her shadow to latch onto it and pull herself in hard and fast enough that its back crackled with her landing, and her daggers plunged all the way past the hilt guard in the back of its head.

It fell in a huge heap, an enormous thud amid the quiet forest.

Amber was forced to ride it down as her daggers refused to come out; the hilt had gotten stuck.

Amber put her foot between her daggers and pulled hard to rip them free.

Casting a look back the way she had come, she didn’t spot any lumbering figures. Instead Marcie waited patiently for her amid the carnage while Neko licked her fingers.

Amber shook her head as she saw Tami walking slowly, working to maneuver her antlers between the trees.

Weren’t deers supposed to have good night vision?

Not her problem. Amber walked back, picking up pieces of snow and using it to rub the blood off her weapons, and then herself. The last thing her lord would want was a room splattered by blood that she tracked back.

“Are we done?” Tami asked.

“Neko, do you hear any more?” Amber asked. The leopard demon had tracked down the current group well enough.

Niko stood still for a moment, her spotted cat ears twitching and swiveling as she paused mid lick. “Nothing. There might be more, but for now we return to Dar. Kittens.” She said the last word with a heavy purr.

“I don’t think we can get pregnant from Dar in his inner world.” Amber reminded the demon.

“Practice then.” Neko shrugged. “We keep trying. Come on silly deer, let the leopard lead you.”

Marcie frowned. “Isn’t that sort of…”

“Neko good. No eat deer demon.” The cat girl nodded to herself.

“Go on ahead.” Amber bit her lip. She’d touched that world of shadow, making herself one with the darkness for the first time. She wanted to reach out to that one that had been calling her.

She heard Marcie’s footsteps follow Neko and Tami back towards the village, giving her a moment to absorb into the peace and quiet. She stood, trying once more, but it had been far easier in the heat of the battle.

Reaching out with her mind, she quested for her home. Dar’s shadow was where she belonged, and where she always wanted to return.

She felt herself fade and that spot called out to her once more.

Amber let herself go, gave herself over to that shadow for just a brief moment of utter bliss as she disappeared into the darkness.

She became aware as she bled across the village and into Dar’s shadow, where she rested for a moment in sheer glee. She was in his shadow, and she felt a connection to it. Now she could always find him, always return to her lord whenever he needed her.

She was well and truly becoming his shadow.

Amber bled out his shadow, prostrate before him.

Her lord was distracted though and didn’t notice her.

He was tracing dao characters on the floor and occasionally flipping through the celestial demon’s book. Such an artifact sent a chill through Amber’s spine.

Yet once again her oaf of a lord didn’t understand what he had and what he offered them.

Instead Cherry noticed her first. The dryad had her head in her hand watching their lord with a silly smile on her face, but she snapped to attention and glared daggers at Amber as she appeared. “Do not disturb him.” Cherry’s voice was a whisper on the wind. She was using the dao of quiet to prevent her voice from entering Dar’s ears.

Then Cherry stood and came around to Amber, standing over her.

“I would never dream of disturbing him.” Amber stood gracefully, using her own dao of quiet. “I am his shadow.”

Cherry glanced at where Amber stood up from Dar’s actual shadow. “So it would seem you are. He is growing stronger at an incredible rate. Continue to guard him as you do at night.”

Amber blushed, having been seen through completely by Cherry. “I will not fail him or if I do, I will already be dead.”

“Do not die. That would do more damage to him than you know.” Cherry cupped the younger woman’s face. “Dar is a complex man. He is powerful, and growing more so by the moment, yet he cares deeply, almost too deeply for those around him. Comparatively, we grow more fragile and a weakness for him.”

“I am not weak.” Amber furrowed her brow in argument. “The amount I’ve grown—“

“Is nothing compared to his growth.” Cherry interrupted her. “Know this. Accept it. But don’t stop striving to be his shadow, unless you want to be left behind.”

Amber swallowed, wanting to argue with Cherry, but knew she was right. Instead, the maid just nodded. “I understand. Tomorrow I will train under the shadow half of the tree while we travel. He gives so much.”

“Yes he does. But he does not mind if you continue to take. So take as much as you can and become a stronger maid. For if he ever needs you and you fail, I will find Valdis to have your soul brought back so I can kill you myself.” Cherry’s eyes were often cheerful, but Amber knew better.

Deep down there was an ancient dryad in her, one who was crazy about her tree to the point she would even seek the spirit of death that Dar had spoken of in the past. Amber wouldn’t put it past the insane dryad to use Valdis to torture the maid should Cherry’s tree and Amber’s lord come to harm.

“Understood.”

“Now, go be his shadow.” Cherry looked away, and Amber let out a sigh of relief.

There was just an intensity about the dryad that rattled Amber to the core.

AN - I have *checks notes* a lot of editing to do next week for Dao. I'll strive for 2 chapters of Dungeon, but I'm going to only touch it after I meet some aggressive goals on Dao. The last week before a book is due to the editor is always a busy one for me because I end up having to edit about half the book.

And before someone is like 'do dungeon instead' Dao is some people's favorite of mine, I'm wanting to make sure those people have a nice satisfying ending to the series.