Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO ON KINDLE SEPT. 2)

Elijah stood in front of the tree, unsure about his plan. In his head, it all made sense, but now that he was looking at the thing, he doubted it. Not the viability of the intended product – he felt certain he could do something worthwhile – but rather, his doubts centered on whether or not he had the right to destroy something so vibrant. He wasn’t so deluded that he equated killing a tree to murdering a person, but there were notes of that line of thinking in his mind.

It would be so easy to ignore them, but he was a Druid, wasn’t he? Didn’t that mean he had a duty not to do that?

“This is acceptable,” said Nerthus.

“Huh?” asked Elijah turning to see the spryggent standing behind him. “What do you mean?”

“I can sense your doubt. These trees were created for this purpose. There is no shame in using them,” he stated. Indeed, Elijah had asked Nerthus to grow the trees to his specifications, using acorns from the trees that ringed the grove. They’d marked the original boundaries of his Ancestral Circle, and as such, they were infused with more potential than any other trees on his island – excepting the ancestral tree itself. And their progeny was almost as special. “If it still worries you, know that this will not kill them. So long as their roots remain, they will grow once again.”

Elijah sighed. That was true, too. Still, his doubts remained. He’d once grown angry just looking at the deforestation associated with Ironshore, and now he couldn’t help but feel like he was on the verge of doing the same thing. It should have disgusted him. And yet, it didn’t.

And that was worrying, largely because it signified that he wasn’t really sure what being a Druid meant. Maybe the answer was that it didn’t mean anything. Perhaps all the influences he thought he’d felt in the past few years were in his head.

That frightened him.

But the reality was that the moment he’d asked Nerthus to nurture the trees, he’d become committed to using them. Because if he didn’t, Nerthus would doubtless rip them up by the roots just because they didn’t follow the pattern he wanted the grove to follow.

So, without further delay, he knelt before the trees and got to work cutting them down. The trio had grown around one another, their white-barked trunks inextricably intertwined and nurtured on a steady diet of ethera. As a result, they pulsed with energy that exceeded that of any other tree in his grove – again, excepting the ancestral tree at its center.

The trunks themselves weren’t large, only reaching a diameter of a few inches. Yet, they were harder than they had any right to be, so it took Elijah nearly an hour to fell them. When he finally did, he saw the thin, blue veins running through them, linking each of the three trunks in a way he didn’t truly understand.

But he knew enough that he could work with it.

The trees were somewhere between being saplings and reaching maturity, so they were around eight feet tall. That would be enough for Elijah to work with. So, once he had them in hand, he headed to a spot within the grove that Nerthus had made for him. The spryggent was nothing if not anal about what grew within the grove, so given that Elijah meant to consistently flare One with Nature as well as Nature’s Bounty, he’d made a place just for that.

Settling in, Elijah got to work.

The first step was to remove the limbs, which he set aside for later. One day, he’d use them to create lye, which he hoped would make for better soap. But for now, he only wanted them out of the way.

Gradually, Elijah kept working, stripping the bark, then sanding the intertwined trees smooth. Altogether, they were more than six inches in diameter, so he had a lot of work ahead of him to pare it down to size.

Days passed as Elijah sanded and whittled, eventually coming up with a straight, white staff that was about two inches thick and six feet long. Thankfully, he didn’t have to go through the effort of straightening the shaft, so the next step was carving it. Using a series of small knives and files he’d bought for just that purpose, Elijah did just that.

Along the way, he lost track of time, though on more than one occasion, he took breaks to either repopulate the cultivation cave or help Miguel with his training. Eventually, Miguel took the next step in cultivation, attaining what Nerthus referred to as a Guardian Core. It wasn’t as powerful as Elijah’s Dragon Core, but it was one of the best paths Miguel could hope to take without getting outside help from an elder race. After that, Miguel headed to the mainland to begin his leveling process.

Meanwhile, Carmen kept at it with the Great Forge, throwing herself into her work in order to distract herself from the fact that Miguel was going off into the wilderness where he would be forced to risk his life. That wasn’t what any mother wanted to deal with, but knowing that she couldn’t stop it, she had chosen to focus on her work. Judging by the conversations she and Elijah shared during that time, it didn’t work.

Day by day, Eliijah’s staff took shape. He didn’t dare think too much about what he was carving, but he couldn’t ignore the designs that took hold at the end of his knives. Still, he did everything he could to keep his influence out of it. It was better to let the process dictate what it would be.

In the end, it took five weeks for Elijah to finish the carving, and even then, he thought he’d rushed it. If he’d had another couple of months, he would have not only been much more meticulous in his efforts, but he would have further infused it with his ethera.

Still, he was happy with the design.

The staff was straight, ending up at a little less than two inches thick. The design made it look like a Celtic weave, which bared the glowing ethereal veins. At the top was a coiled dragon, with an intricately carved head that was as detailed a piece as any Elijah had ever created.

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But the staff wasn’t finished.

He still needed to seal it.

Fortunately, he had plenty of wax from Nerthus’ apiary, so after cutting it with some mineral oil he’d bought in Ironshore, he went to work sealing the staff. The process wasn’t a short one, and it required him to leave the staff for as much as twenty-four hours while each coat of the sealant soaked in and dried. During those times, he finalized his preparations for the Trial.

He visited Argos to collect his pork jerky, and while he was there, he met with Sadie and Dat. They both had been occupied with their own preparations, but Elijah was surprised to find that Sadie had spent quite a lot of time healing people at the Temple of Virtue.

He also stopped by to talk to Delilah, where he learned that both she and Isaak intended to participate in the Trial as well. Elijah didn’t much care for that, but he knew better than to try to talk them out of it. As it turned out, Atticus was going, too, though he made it clear that he had no intention of fighting.

“If things get rough, I’ll be out of there in a hurry, my friend,” he assured Elijah, clapping him on the shoulder with a laugh.

Soon enough, though, Elijah had done all there was to do. He had all the supplies he could carry, and he’d even broken in his new armor. All that was left was to complete the staff, but even as the day of the Trial crept closer, Elijah refused to shortchange the project.

It was only on the day before the Trial was supposed to commence that he finally finished it, getting the following notification: