Path of Dragons-Chapter 58Book 8: : Progress

Elijah staggered through the gate, then collapsed in exhaustion, slumping against the wall. The gate slammed shut behind him just in time to stop the monsters from invading the city. It had happened before, and Elijah had seen only a few creatures kill dozens before the soldiers were able to respond. For his part, he didn’t think he could have moved even if one of them tried to eat his face.

He’d barely even made it back inside.

“How long was it this time?” he asked, glancing up to see a very worried Eres standing nearby. The Vey’thaalians weren’t the easiest people to read, but over the last few weeks, Elijah had managed to get a handle on interpreting their emotions. Mostly.

“Seven hours, thirteen minutes.”

“New record,” Elijah breathed. He weakly raised his hand. “Yay.”

He extended his hand, asking Eres to help him to his feet. The Vey’thaalian complied, and soon enough, Elijah was once again upright. Barely. His legs were wobbly, and he struggled to keep his shoulders from slumping. Not surprising, considering how hard he’d been pushing himself.

He certainly didn’t know how many monsters he had killed. He couldn’t even estimate it. All he knew was that he’d finally reached his goal and achieved level one-sixty. It was an incredible accomplishment. Anywhere else, and it would have taken months to gain that many levels, if it was even possible. But if nothing else, the endless hordes of monsters were good for progression.

The only problem was that if he let himself make more than a couple of mistakes, he’d have died. Over the previous few weeks, he’d come incredibly close on more than one occasion, and yet, he’d managed to push through.

“It’s all dried up,” he said as Eres escorted him to one of the barracks embedded into the wall. The Vey’thaalian soldiers couldn’t afford to live too far away. Otherwise, an emergency might end up overwhelming the people on duty and invading the city before they had a chance to respond.

“That is a shame,” Eres said.

The Vey’thaalian didn’t agree with Elijah’s insistence on using the monsters to grind levels. It was an unnecessary waste, as far as he was concerned. After seeing Elijah in action, he’d obviously allowed himself to hope – even just a little. Yet, he was also well aware of just how easily things could change. One wrong move, and that hope could be destroyed. Instead, he wanted Elijah to embark on his quest as soon as possible.

Of course, Eres couldn’t force him to do anything. Even if he was capable, he never would have gone down that road. The Vey’thaalians revered Elijah, so one of their head priests certainly couldn’t justify using force against him.

But it had obviously crossed Eres’ mind, at least early on. For the past week, he’d resigned himself to supporting what he considered a pointlessly dangerous endeavor.

After taking half an hour to bathe, Elijah found himself sinking into cold, red sheets. The Vey’thaalian culture differed from humanity’s in a lot of ways, but both societies seemed to appreciate a comfortable bed. Maybe that was universal. In any case, Elijah was thankful for that similarity, and he allowed himself to drift off to sleep. For the past few weeks, he’d taken to snatching a bit of rest here and there when he returned to the city, but he’d been so driven that he never allowed himself to sleep for long.

This time, though, was different. This time, he didn’t wake up for almost sixteen hours. Thankfully, because of his Constitution, his muscles were only a little stiff as he rose from the bed and enjoyed a couple of Grove Fruits. There was a time when he could sate his hunger for a week with only a single berry, but now, the larger fruits couldn’t even satisfy him for more than a day.

Still, at least they were tasty.

After eating, he sat on his bed and turned his attention to the reason he’d been working so hard. He had two notifications awaiting his attention. The first was:

Congratulations! You have achieved the requirements for the evolution of the ability Aura of Renewal. Please choose a path:

Grove Conduit

Boon of the Wild

Nature’s Resurgence

Evolve Aura of Renewal by focusing on your connection to your grove, channeling the additional ethera and vitality into your immediate surroundings.

Evolve Aura of Renewal by sacrificing a personal increase to Regeneration to vastly empower your allies.

Evolve Aura of Renewal by focusing on an increase in Regeneration when you need it most.

Elijah had already read each of the descriptions, and he’d given the choice a little thought. However, because he was wholly focused on the task at hand, he’d neglected to make a decision favoring one or the others. The fact that he still wasn’t certain which direction to take the spell’s evolution probably hadn’t helped, either.

After giving it quite a lot of thought, the choice seemed to come down to three distinct differences. The first, Grove Conduit, seemed to be a complete deviation from the spell’s original purpose. Maybe it would still provide him a Regeneration buff, but the primary purpose seemed like it would be similar – in nature, at least – to what he did with Blessing of the Grove and Nature’s Design.

And Elijah had to admit, that seemed very attractive for a variety of reasons. The problem was that it might not have combat applications, which was an issue with his archetype he’d been trying to fix ever since he’d taken the Animist class so long ago. Taking Grove Conduit felt like it might be backsliding a bit.

The description of Boon of the Wild seemed to imply that it would benefit his allies far more than it would him. Considering that Elijah was currently alone inside a Primal Realm from which he could not escape without conquering it, that didn’t seem like a great choice. Sure, he intended to group with other people in the future, but basing his spell evolution around that felt like the wrong decision. So, he eliminated that choice.

That left Nature’s Resurgence, which sounded a lot like it would only be useful in emergencies. Perhaps it would maintain the previous spell’s buffs – none of his other evolutions had backslid – but thirty Regeneration points really didn’t make nearly as much difference as it once had.

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He sighed.

The choice was still a difficult one to make. Elijah was torn. Nature’s Resurgence or Grove Conduit.

In the end, the decision came down to two factors. First, Elijah knew that if his plan to use the ancestral tree seeds to manage the Primal Realms, he would need as much help as he could get. That pointed to Grove Conduit. And second, Nature’s Resurgence didn’t seem all that much better – on the surface, at least – than his heals. Sure, it would probably supercharge his ethera regeneration, but Ethera was rarely his biggest issue.

So, with all that in mind, he chose Grove Conduit.

Grove Conduit

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Increase Regeneration by a moderate amount based on Core cultivation. Current: 35

With focus, become a beacon through which the power of your grove can be channeled, increasing ethereal density and vitality in a given area. Radius based on Ethera attribute. Potency dependent on Core Cultivation and grove’s stage of development.

It was more or less what Elijah had expected, though he was happy to see that he’d still gotten an increase to the buff. He didn’t intend to test the conduit portion of the spell while in the city, but the moment he had some peace and quiet, he would definitely give it a go. Already, he could imagine how it would help with his dolmens.

In the end, Elijah was fairly happy with the choice. Hopefully, when he understood the full scope of the spell, he wouldn’t regret it.

Regardless, he was far more interested in his next notification. He’d hoped to get it at one-fifty-five, but as he’d already expected, the interval between spells and evolutions grew wider after one-fifty. Thankfully, it wasn’t quite as bad as it could have been, though. He’d read multiple guides that said that some classes only had new spells every twenty-five levels.

Elijah would have gone crazy if that was the case.

Sure, he didn’t want to overload himself with too many abilities or anything, but they represented a nice incentive to level. Not that he needed it. With that in mind, he looked at his status:

Name

Elijah Hart

Level

160

Archetype

Druid

Class

Primal Lord

Specialization

Connection

Alignment

Empire of Scale (Dragon)

Strength

388

Dexterity

374

Constitution

397

Ethera

376

Regeneration

402

Attunement

Nature

Cultivation Stage: Expert

Body

Core

Mind

Soul

Bronze

Drakyn

Jade

Student

He truly had made incredible progress in only a few short weeks. When he’d first evolved, he’d been a little disappointed not to receive any immediate benefits. However, the increased attribute gains that came with each level had truly begun to set him apart – at least as far as he could tell. He didn’t know what other people could expect, but he knew that he was laying the foundation for something special.

All he needed was to keep going.

Unfortunately, the system had stepped in, and the experience he got from farming the monsters outside the city had begun to dwindle after only a week. He’d continued to push through it, but even getting to one-sixty had been like pulling teeth. He suspected that even if he continued on like he was, it would take almost the same amount of time to go from one-sixty to one-sixty-one as it had to get fourteen levels.

Which was a shame, considering he would have preferred to keep farming levels until he reached demigod status. Not that he’d ever expected that to work, but in the beginning, he’d hoped it would net him a few more levels. Now, he felt lucky to have gotten what he had.

Because it had given him another spell evolution:

Congratulations! You have achieved the requirements for the evolution of the spell Soothe. Please choose a path:

Wild Resurgence

Overgrowth

Grove Echo

Evolve Soothe by enabling its use in bestial forms.

Evolve Soothe by focusing on healing a group.

Evolve Soothe by focusing on healing a partner.

The descriptions were shorter than he’d expected, but he had to admit that an upgrade to Soothe had been a long time coming. It was still a very useful spell in its current incarnation, but it had definitely begun to lag behind. He had a few other abilities that were similarly outdated, and he hoped that they would soon evolve as well.

Of course, he wanted new spells too.

“Everyone always wants new toys,” he muttered to himself.

Still, he was happy with how things had worked out so far. In any case, he focused on the options. They all seemed fairly self-explanatory. Wild Resurgence was attractive if only because it wouldn’t force him to shift out of his animal shapes just to heal. He’d learned to manage it well enough in its current state, but he couldn’t deny the convenience that came with being able to cast a heal in his bestial forms represented.

So, it was definitely an option.

The second choice, Overgrowth, was easiest to dismiss. If it came down to people depending on him to heal a large group of people, they were probably already dead. Sure, it would be useful in a small number of situations, but none of those were time sensitive enough that he couldn’t accomplish the same thing by using Blessing of the Grove. So, he dismissed that option.

Finally, he looked at the third choice. The description of Grove Echo was the most unclear, but his instincts told him that it meant that he would be able to heal himself and another person at the same time. Immediately, he thought of Sadie. If he could keep them both alive with one spell, that was a definite win.

But did that outweigh the ability to heal himself in his bestial forms?

Elijah knew the answer before he even asked the question. He’d made Soothe work in its current form so far, but he could already imagine how much more efficiently he could fight if he didn’t have to shift out of his bestial forms in order to heal.

However, he was afraid that if he didn’t take Grove Echo, he would regret it sometime in the future. More than anything, he wondered if he’d had it when they were in the Desolate Reach, if maybe Dat would have survived.

He couldn’t answer that question, but that didn’t matter. In the end, though, it couldn’t matter. He refused to let himself choose his path of progression based on guilt. With that in mind, he picked Wild Resurgence.

Wild Resurgence

Heal a large amount of damage over a short amount of time. Duration of heal depends on Ethera attribute. Current: 68 seconds. Potency of heal determined by Core Cultivation. Usable in all forms.

Elijah pumped his fist. It was precisely what he’d wanted it to be. In fact, he’d half-expected there to be some hidden restrictions. The fact that there were none made him feel like he’d taken the best option. However, only time would tell.

And now that he was rested up and had tapped the horde for all the experience they could give him, Elijah knew it was time for him to move on and get down to the business of conquering a Primal Realm.