Path of Dragons Book 13: Chapter 63: Life, With Every Breath

Book 13: Chapter 63: Life, With Every Breath

Elijah flew above Druhmor, enjoying the feel of the air passing through the branches of his wings. As he did, he beheld the landscape he’d helped to create, and he couldn’t deny that it was more beautiful than he ever could have expected. For years, he’d traveled the desolate terrain of the excised planet, and in that ti, he’d grown quite accustod to the dreary hopelessness that ca with it.

But now?

Now, he saw greens and reds, yellows and purples – and every other color of the rainbow. They were the hues of nature, and what’s more, he felt their aura of vitality like a solid thing. It hugged him like an old friend, enveloping his body and comforting him in ways he couldn’t truly articulate.

However, his job was not finished.

He could see that now. Not only was the vast majority of the planet just as corrupted as before, but even the areas he’d terraford lacked sothing he’d never quite understood. Now he did, though.

As he flew, circling the hundred-mile stretch that had once hosted a tumor upon the planet, Elijah felt sothing building within his chest. It wasn’t painful. Not like compounding spells. Instead, it felt more like taking a deep breath, though far more aningful than that could ever be.

He held it for a few minutes, feeling the energy compound. It was combined ethera, vitality, and so epheral ingredient that he couldn’t identify, but defined its aning in a way the other two couldn’t. It built upon itself, growing no denser, but becoming more profound with every mont he held it within his chest.

And then, at last, he opened his draconic mouth and let it free.

A web of green lightning erupted from his mouth. It was fast but not violent, and it spread below him in a swath nearly a hundred yards wide. At the sa ti, a mist of verdant energy – like fungal spores – spread from his outstretched wings. The two forces mingled, condensing into a localized cloud.

In so ways, it was like Blessing of the Grove. However, comparing the two was like likening a sumr mist to a raging thunderstorm. The two were clearly related, but they were not even close to the sa thing.

Rain fell, and each drop served to cleanse as well as revitalize.

Ever since he’d begun his project, he’d likened the result to cultivating life within a terrarium. Everything was strictly controlled, but it lacked a certain, unidentifiable sothing that left the results feeling sowhat hollow.

Elijah’s dragon’s breath filled those gaps, providing a profound aning to the life that had managed to take root. Alone, his breath could not create a lasting ecosystem, but once life had already taken hold, it could connect it to the wider concept of nature.

Once, when he’d first begun his cultivation journey, Elijah had nearly lost himself to the call of nature. Back then, Nerthus had referred to it as the Mother. And in a lot of ways, that characterization was accurate – especially for Nerthus. However, Elijah now understood it as the conceptual ideal of nature that connected all living things. That was what his breath provided, and it was just as necessary to the environnt as water, nutrients, vitality, or ethera. Without it, Druhmor – and the rest of the terraford planet – would remain entirely disconnected and wholly hollow.

In his wake, a storm of life and nature followed until his breath was spent. From what he’d seen, it wouldn’t be available again for another day or so. How often he could use it tended to vary based on factors he didn’t quite understand. Perhaps it was dependent on his diet. Or his actions. Maybe it was based on his environnt. All Elijah knew for certain was that it was variable, and it felt a lot more like a bodily function than a spell. There was no strict cooldown. It wasn’t listed in his normal ability list. It was just part of him.

For a little while longer, he continued to fly around Druhmor. Treebie’s limbs stretched far above him, spreading over the entire area while the verdant terrain passed underneath. In the week since he’d taken the Erald Archon evolution, he’d managed to cover a few square miles with his breath, but it was beginning to beco apparent that it would take years to revitalize the entirety of Druhmor.

Much less the whole planet.

Still, Elijah wasn’t disappointed. Far from it, in fact.

Part of that was simple relief at reaching demi-god status. He’d even gained his first level, putting him at two-fifty-one after inflicting a massacre upon a monster surge. More, he’d spent so ti inspecting each of his forms, and he’d found that they were all far more powerful than they’d been even a level before.

The most obvious difference ca from his dragon form, which had grown by around twenty or thirty feet. Not a huge difference, but the change was far more extensive than simple size could convey. His body felt heavier, and it was. But only part of that feeling ca from his increased weight. Instead, it was taphysical, and he took it as evidence that he’d fully left the realm of mortality behind.

He hadn’t completely subrged himself in divinity, but he’d definitely dipped his toes into that ocean.

To put it simply, he just felt better in every single way. His spells were more effective as well, and his cultivation system no longer felt like it was bottlenecked by his progress. Before, it was like putting a Ferrari engine in a Honda Civic. Sure, it would make the car go faster, but there was a limit to what it could handle.

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Now, it was like he had all the benefits that ca with driving a supercar. The better suspension. The ticulously engineered transmission. The aerodynamic body. All of it.

And he could now go so, so much faster.

The difference was not subtle, and now that he’d felt it, he had trouble rembering how he’d managed to ignore the lopsided nature of his cultivation and lack of progression.

He’d tried to explain it all to Treebie, but he had difficulty understanding the taphor. Or anything that didn’t concern being a tree.

For a while, Elijah just enjoyed flying around Druhmor. He’d co so far, and he took the distance he’d traveled as proof that nothing was out of reach. When he’d arrived to Gorveth, he could barely survive. Now, he’d managed to terraform thousands of miles’ worth of territory and advance to demi-god.

Sure, it had taken years. More than a decade, in fact. But in that ti, he’d remade himself multiple tis. And he’d grown significantly stronger.

He landed at Treebie’s base and let himself retake his human form. Unlike his dragon shape, it had not grown any larger. However, his striped scales had beco far more prominent. Oddly, his eyes no longer glowed with the sa fervor. Instead, the power contained within them was more subdued. Noticeable, certainly, but only as an erald glimr.

His other forms followed a similar pattern. The Shape of Spores was slightly stouter, and its fungal flesh had beco even more durable. Shape of the Scourge grew a few extra spines, while Shape of Embers beca a little more willowy. Shape of the Sky’s scales were even more vibrant, while Shape of the Sea grew a much thicker shell.

In short, everything beca more of what it already was.

But now that Elijah had beco a demi-god, he couldn’t help but wonder what form any evolved spells would take. A few were long overdue for an upgrade, but given that most of them were still effective at their given purposes, Elijah couldn’t predict which ones might evolve first.

Nor did he know what interval his spell upgrades would follow. After all, he didn’t think it was reasonable to expect a new evolution every ten levels. Not anymore. From the guides he’d read, he reasoned that the interval would be at least twice that. Maybe more, depending on how his class was structured.

And considering its rarity, Elijah didn’t think he’d find much specific information on Erald Archon. Or any at all.

Not that that was possible, with Treebie still lacking a complete connection to the World Tree. When Elijah communed with the tree, he felt a thin thread leading off into the distance, but from everything he could tell, it wasn’t connected to anything. Not yet, at least.

Perhaps that would change as ti went by.

Or maybe there was sothing missing.

For now, Elijah could only keep going the way he’d been progressing. The only difference was that he was now free to level, and he had plenty of fodder upon which to farm experience. After all, there was no shortage of monsters out there, and they had the convenient habit of coming to him. All he had to do was wait for their attacks, and he had all the fuel for progression he would ever need.

Until he started to hit diminishing returns, at least, but he didn’t expect that to happen anyti soon.

With his path forward being as clear as ever, Elijah established a rhythm to his schedule. That first week soon stretched into months, and most days saw him continuing to terraform Druhmor’s surroundings. His latest circles had already been completed, and Treebie’s roots had begun to creep out into new territory. However, Elijah still had a lot of work he could do by guiding the growth of vegetation, fungi, and bacteria into living runes.

That was the shape of most of his days. When his breath beca available, he returned to Druhmor to breathe life into Treebie’s surroundings. During those trips, he took the ti to commune with the tree and monitor his progress.

Even as months passed, the connection to the World Tree remained tentative. The features – like the communication hub, the Bank, and the travel – were still unavailable.

But Elijah didn’t let that get him down. Even after the excitent of evolution began to wear thin, he still felt content with the progress he was making with each passing day.

It would take centuries to complete the project, but that was okay. Now that he was a demi-god, his lifespan had increased significantly. He wasn’t going to keel over from old age anyti soon, so he could take his ti and do things properly.

Still, he couldn’t escape the quiet monts when he found his thoughts drifting to his friends. Not the clay statues he spoke to when he visited Treebie. No – the real people like Sadie, Miguel, and Carn. Kurik and Biggle. Ramik. Atticus. Elijah even thought about Delilah and Isaak and a hundred other people he’d encountered in the years following the touch of the World Tree upon Earth.

But most of all, he wondered about Benedict and the people back in Dravkein. More than once, he considered traveling back to the other continent and offering them a place in Druhmor. Doing so would significantly improve their living situation.

He hesitated, though, and for a multitude of reasons. The first was that, despite wanting company, he was terrified of upsetting the balance of Druhmor. The ecosystem had grown much firr, but it was still vulnerable. And Elijah had seen just how much damage people could do to any environnt.

Second, he knew just how difficult the journey would be for those people. As far as he could rember, there was only one demi-god among them. And Zek wasn’t that strong, as demi-gods went. Expecting an entire population to make the journey was a fool’s hope. Most of them would die before they even reached the Restless Sea.

And finally, he worried about how the Synod and the rest of Ithalon might react to the existence of Treebie and Druhmor. Rationally, they should rejoice, if only because the tree’s existence suggested that Gorveth wasn’t completely irredeemable.

But Elijah had seen enough of Ithalon to know that wasn’t how they would react. They couldn’t abide the existence of any resource that wasn’t under their control. Most likely, they would try to take Treebie – and Druhmor – for themselves. And when that failed, they would attempt to destroy everything.

Because that was their nature.

Often, Elijah had wondered if it ca from growing up surrounded by corruption. But in the end, he knew better. They were just petty people who didn’t want to give up control. It wasn’t any more complicated than that.

Either way, Elijah decided against heading back to Dravkein and leading the residents back to Druhmor. Instead, he continued on his path, even starting a new set of rings that extended nearly three thousand miles outside the outer circle.

Like that, more than a year passed until he found himself building a trilithon – nearly three-hundred feet tall – upon the cliff abutting the Restless Sea. From there, he could see the massive, frothing waves like a never-ending mountain range.

And then, he caught sight of sothing glinting in the distance.

At first, it was barely distinguishable from the surrounding waves. But over the next few hours, it drew closer until, at last, Elijah decided to use Eyes of the Eagle.

He dropped the stone pillar, and it toppled over the edge of the cliff. He barely noticed it. Indeed, he could only gape as a fleet of odd-looking tal ships, each one featuring wide outriggers, sailed closer.