Blessed Time: The Complete Series: (A LitRPG Adventure Box Set), page 24
Micah flopped onto his back with a smile. Maybe there was a way forward that didn’t involve going to the Royal Knights after all.
THIRTY-THREE
FORGING FORWARD
This is a book that you should not be reading. The knowledge contained within is dangerous and forbidden for good reason. Summoning daemons from Elsewhere, while a potent art, cannot be done with any measure of exactitude. Even the most talented of ritualists could easily drain their entire life force by accident or fail in binding a daemon that they summon. For those brave enough to actually use this book, many of them will die at the hands of their own creations.
Nevertheless, the reason why you have received this book is simple. My path has always been one of discovery. My brother Luxos believes that mortal society will evolve together, slowly achieving the perfection needed to rise above the nursery that is Karell. Ankros believes that conflict is like a whetstone, sharpening the best amongst you. As you seek to overcome progressively more difficult challenges, eventually, you will grow past your humble beginnings and join us in the heavens.
For me, the answer has always been knowledge. Only through learning more about the world around them can a mortal purge their imperfect bodies and join us. Unfortunately, this is a project that by any rights should take several lifetimes if each mortal has to gather the necessary knowledge on their own.
This is where Luxos has the right of things. Society protects people, but it also protects knowledge, almost never for purely altruistic reasons. No, the rich hoard books to give them an advantage in their petty little games with their rivals, and spellcasters create esoteric traditions to curate and protect the handful of secrets they manage to wrench from the cosmos in their short lives. Still, it builds up over time as individual grains of sand gather to form a desert.
Ankros, on the other hand, makes his own compelling points. Luxos’ pawns are too worried about their rules and games of power. They amass knowledge, but first, they ensure that it’s safe, preventing anything with a modicum of risk from becoming publicly available. Without occasional existential threats to their very existence, most mortals would happily go about their everyday life without ever making major changes. That path is a dead end. If mortals are to make the leap beyond their station, they will need a kick. A reason to risk it all.
The path forward lies in giving mortals the tools they need to make something of themselves as well as the motive to use it. If you’ve received this book, it is because I foresee dark times ahead of you. Daemon summoning won’t necessarily solve your problems—in fact, it might very well multiply them—but I suspect that you are running low on options.
Remember, no knowledge is truly forbidden. Feared and respected? Yes. You should fear and respect your magic just as your enemies fear and respect you. Forbidden? That is failing the fundamental task that we, Karell’s Pantheon, have laid before you as mortals. You must learn and grow or die. Ultimately, stagnation is just as fatal as an arrow or disease.
-Mursa, Goddess of Moon and Magic
Micah closed the book thoughtfully. Even after reading it twice, he kept returning to the foreword. Both Intermediate Daemon Summoning and Temporal Power were very clear about what they were: a dangerous lifeline thrown to a drowning man.
He sighed. Theoretically, he should be grateful that Mursa was this blunt with him. Of course, that didn’t change the fact that her “brutal honesty” was arriving in his third timeline. Maybe he’d give the fickle goddess more credit if she’d actually hinted at what was in store for him his first time through.
Of course, Micah thought as he massaged his temples and continued musing, he probably wouldn’t have been desperate enough to use the books if she’d given them to him in his first or second iteration. Sometimes there was nothing to do but shake his head at the bright and cheerful version of himself that had joined the Lancers, sure that he was destined for an ordinary life full of ordinary adventures.
He’d been almost as naive when he threw himself at the mercy of the Golden Drakes. The implied promise of fame and security were all he’d needed to sign away his future, sight unseen, to a bunch of strangers that turned out to be calculating sociopaths. Even now, his reliance on the books provided by Mursa was probably the same brand of naiveté.
Through everything, his abilities were just too perfectly tailored to his circumstances. Hells, Mursa had laid it all out in her foreword. Her plan was to give him the power and knowledge he needed to succeed, and then force him into impossible circumstances until he surpassed them or broke.
The time travel, his affinities, the Ageless Folio—everything slotted together too neatly, like the brightly colored puzzles that woodworkers sold to children at the market. Mursa was giving him choices, but so many of them were such obvious dead ends that it would drive Micah to madness if he dwelt upon it.
He stood up and strolled out of the cave, pondering the books. Really, they were too good to be true. Intermediate Daemon Summoning contained the theory and basis for rituals summoning Brensen and Luoca, the fourth and third tiers of daemonkind, respectively. Before he’d acquired the book, he’d only heard rumors of the Brensen, great clawed vultures that tore through veteran adventurers with ease. The records didn’t even mention Luoca beyond speculating that higher tiers of daemon likely existed.
As far as he could tell, each Onkert was more or less the equivalent of a level 20 human with a standard class. Brensens were roughly as powerful as a level 40 human, putting them around the level of most of the guildmasters in Basil’s Cove. In theory, that meant that Luoca were as strong as a level 60 human, putting them on par with full Royal Knights.
Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be summoning a Luoca anytime soon. Micah was skilled enough to summon an Onkert without too much difficulty, but the complexity and reagents needed for the higher-tiered castings were on another level entirely. Theoretically, he might be able to summon a Brensen, but he still wasn’t entirely sure of the formula. Of course, the cost in life force to summon any of the higher-tiered daemons was astronomical.
That was where Temporal Power came in. Micah quickly learned that the temporal ritual that he’d used, steeped in years of experience transferring temporal power, was nothing more than the fumblings of a dabbler. The book contained no rituals or formulae itself, instead focusing on theory, but it opened doors to Micah that he hadn’t even known existed.
All ritual magic tapped into another place, helpfully referred to in the texts as Elsewhere. Whatever Elsewhere was—besides the home of the daemons—the fundamental laws of magic and reality there differed greatly from those of Karell. Unlike Karell, where the deities created and regulated magic to make it safe for mortals to use, the magic of Elsewhere was borderline infinite. So long as you created the right spell form, you could theoretically do anything.
By carefully and methodically organizing and aligning Karell with Elsewhere inside a ritual circle, a caster could use primal energy to bridge the gap and use the untamed raw magic of Elsewhere. The trick was imbuing the circle with the right spell form, as any accidents could lead to dire side effects.
Apparently, the anima usually used in ritual casting was actually the primal energy of order and chaos. Temporal energy was similar enough to be used as a substitute, but a proper ritual utilizing temporal power would be designed to do so from the ground up.
In the week since he’d gotten the books, Micah had already managed to increase the efficiency of the transference ritual fivefold. Even that increase just felt like a step along the path. He could almost sense further refinements, just out of reach, that could improve the ritual. With a little more effort, he could strain the ritual further, wrench a few more dregs of effectiveness out of it.
With a proper source, he’d be able to summon daemons that would exist for months or years at a time. Maybe Micah didn’t have the power to stop the Durgh on his own, but with an army of daemons at his beck and call, he would bury them before they managed to crawl out of their holes.
Even if by doing so he made himself the marionette of a goddess, dancing at the ends of her unseen strings.
He sighed and exited his cave, carefully hiding both of the books. Given their value and the forbidden path they represented, he didn’t dare keep them in Basil’s Cove. Having his mother or sister find them while sweeping his room for risqué pictures or folios would be intolerable—both because it would spell the end to his plans and because it would simply be too ironic an end for him to bear contemplating.
The stag padded up to him, lowering its antlered head for him to scratch it behind the ears. Micah’s hand sank into its fur while he pondered his next steps. Tonight was the night of his sixteenth birthday. Once he was done burning the midnight oil in his cave, he’d have to return to the city and make up some story about his blessing.
With a snort, the stag pushed its muzzle demandingly into his forearm. Chuckling, Micah turned the entirety of his focus on it, smoothing its white fur with both hands.
“You want me to pay attention to you and stop moping, eh?” He smiled as the soft fur tickled his fingers. “I have been brooding more than usual of late. You do have a point.”
The stag chuffed in exasperation, pointedly lifting one hoof before tapping it on the ground. It turned its head theatrically and stared to the northeast.
“You want to visit the grove?” Micah questioned the stag, his fingers still rhythmically massaging its scalp. “We’ve been meaning to go there for a while, and tonight’s as auspicious as any other time.”
It nodded its head, leaning its broad shoulder into Micah’s side. Once again, a smile flickered across his face. No matter how dark things got, the stag was always there. Sometimes supportive, sometimes insistent, it nevertheless provided a foil and counterpoint to his often morose reasoning.
“Let’s head out, then.” Micah picked up his spear and trekked away from the cave, the stag following him. “I’ve only got a couple of hours before I need to return home and get some sleep.”
The stag snorted behind him.
“Of course I’ll support you while you deal with the guardians,” he replied without looking back at it. “You’re getting close to your evolution and I want to see what you turn into as much as you do. Plus, I’m more in this for access to the trees. You’re too young for me to safely draw temporal energy from you anymore. Those six old-growth trees have been there since before humans settled in these lands. I’d bet anything that I can draw enough temporal energy from them to power an army of daemons.”
Micah glanced up at the stars as he walked. He was tired of repeating the same five years of his life. He was tired of playing into the divine hands of his patron. He was tired of the only real option laid out before him likely being a trap.
Even as he marched to summon the daemons he would need to fight back against the Durgh, he knew it was a poor choice. Mursa herself had warned against it. The ritual could go awry, shattering his mortal form. A slip of a word or a misplaced reagent and he could easily age himself to death as he tried to siphon the weight of time from the trees. Worse, the daemons could be summoned unbound. They’d eat him alive before murdering their way across the countryside.
Still, what choice had Mursa left him? He could try the summoning or he could pick death or slavery. There really only was one path forward.
THIRTY-FOUR
EVOLUTION
Micah touched the craggy bark of the old-growth tree, his fingertips trailing across its rough and damp surface. Even without casting a spell, he could feel its age, the gravity, and presence behind the giant. Its branches spread out over a wide, mossy glade, practically touching those of its sisters. The six majestic giants towered over the clearing, only allowing a small amount of the sun’s light through their leaves to dapple the moss and grass below.
He turned from the tree, sighing. The stag was trying in vain to wipe sap from a slain dryad on the forest floor, but the stubborn ichor clung to its antlers, staining them a brownish green. The bodies of a dozen dryads littered the clearing. Childlike creatures made of knotted wood and leaves, Micah had been loath to kill them. Each one of them reminded him of Esther, from their diminutive size to their playful mannerisms. Unfortunately, those mannerisms had manifested as they attacked impishly, giggling when they inflicted a wound or dodged an attack at the last second.
Still, there hadn’t been much of a choice. If he’d been blessed as a fire mage, it would have been an easy battle. Instead, his only options were to compete with the dryads in his usage of Wood magic or try to use Air magic against the Wood-attuned creatures. Both were awful ideas. Air magic was notoriously weak against the Wood element; the spells just didn’t work as well as they should in the same way that Fire magic was extra effective.
As for Wood magic? The dryads had been born to it and lived their entire lives using it in every facet of their day-to-day existence. One casting of Plant Weave was all Micah needed to know that their skill levels were at least a dozen points above his.
Instead, he’d simply fought with his spear alongside the stag and his summoned Onkert, occasionally healing them when the dryads made it through their defenses. Glancing over at the Onkert’s shredded corpse, he pursed his lips. As soon as the dryads had hamstrung the daemon, they’d almost completely ignored Micah and the stag, focusing their efforts on tormenting the crippled creature. It gave them the opening they needed to pick off a couple of the shifty plants, turning the tide of the battle.
Without the Onkert, they clearly would have died. Even with the bonuses from the Thaumaturge class, Micah was only twice as strong and fast as the average human. The dryads, on the other hand, could literally merge with wood, making them as easy to fight in a forest as an individual wave in an ocean.
Almost every spear thrust was answered by one of the giggling dryads stepping sideways into the gigantic trees guarding the glade. Worse, the sweeping blows using the pole of the spear as a staff were simply ineffective. Micah had learned the hard way—at the cost of a bone-deep stab from a trio of wooden talons—that the wooden haft of his spear simply passed through the dryads.
Between healing the stag and himself frequently, and frantically fighting off the pesky creatures with his spear, they had barely managed to emerge victorious. The task had finally earned him the level-up he’d been waiting for since Mursa presented him with her challenge, but he was almost too exhausted to care. As for the stag? Micah glanced at it, a smile on his face. It had lain down and was beginning to glow, an aura of violet-and-gold lighting up the isolated glade.
He put his hand back on the tree, sinking his awareness deep beneath its bark. The stag would begin its evolution soon. There wasn’t much to do but stand guard, and he might as well make use of that time to inspect the temporal energy stored over centuries in the massive plant.
The sap and pulp of the tree sang to him, whispering stories of bygone ages before humans had settled the frontier. After years of using temporal energy, he could almost see the tree as it had been, from a timid sapling to its current mammoth state. His fingers tingled as he all but tasted the potential of the tree.
For some reason, temporal energy wasn’t just about time. Rocks were old, but they barely had any power in them. Same with people. You could take years from anyone, but with some people, their time just meant more than others. The important and famous people he’d met while working at the Royal Academy had been heavily laden with temporal energy, while an old peasant woman known by no one barely had enough to power a magelight.
These trees were important. Before humans settled the land, they’d been landmarks to the elves and beasts that dwelt in the forest. The elves had given the trees names and told tales of them to their young. He could feel their hands on his branches as they climbed above the canopy to survey the rest of the forest. Their voices whispered around him, giving thanks for his shelter from the elements. His roots touched those of his sisters, intertwining.
Micah pulled his hand off the tree, blinking rapidly. He took a deep breath and ran his hand through his leav—hair.
Trembling, he looked at his hands again. Covered in calluses and burns from constant exposure to the sun, they were still pink. Wonderfully pink. No brown at all.
He shuddered before returning his gaze to the tree with new respect. They were exactly what he was looking for, great batteries of temporal energy that could easily fuel dozens of great rituals. They were also a reminder. Once again, he was a child playing at understanding the games of adults. Rather than a grand match of false smiles and politics, Micah was tampering with the very forces of the cosmos itself.
For all of his mastery of ritual and Time magic, it was still a black box to Micah. He knew that when he changed some variables such as reagents, air pressure, and lunar phase, the results changed, but he didn’t have the first inkling as to why. That lack of understanding meant that he could easily make an accidental misstep that could cost him everything without even knowing that he was walking down the wrong path.
In all likelihood, there was probably a good reason why the average wizard couldn’t use temporal energy. It defied mortal comprehension and that made it dangerous. The tree had almost pulled Micah into its timestream and history. If he’d fallen deeper into its grasp, Micah had no idea if he would’ve been able to claw his way back out.
The scrape of a claw on bark in the otherwise silent clearing drew Micah’s attention upward. Barely ten feet above him, a grayish-white form clung to the trunk of the tree, its large, luminous yellow eyes fixed upon him.
