Emiri was all smiles now. “I can actually use Essence Magic to determine the baby’s health, and yes, I know he is growing well.”

  “You said he. So we are finally gonna have our perfect little family with two boys and two girls. Have you told Mira yet?”

  “No, I wouldn’t tell her before you knew. And I know you are going to be worried about me and my ‘condition,’ but the elven women were not lying to you. I feel stronger than ever before. It is almost like the rush I felt when I crossed into Tier 4, but I feel it all the time. I could get addicted to this.”

  “Well, we are just lucky that you were able to get pregnant after my vasectomy,” Dave said.

  “I can’t believe I get to finally do this to you. You realize that we aren’t on Earth anymore, right?” Emiri asked.

  “Yes, of course, why?”

  “Because it was your Earth body that had a vasectomy, not this one. We all got new bodies here, and unless the Watcher did some surgery on you, we really should have been aware of this before.”

  “Doh… I’m so stupid. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.”

  “Probably because you were busy trying to protect your family. Let’s just be happy.”

  From there words faded, and they simply held each other. Holding gave way to more closeness. After a while Dave snuck out of bed once he was sure that Emiri was sound asleep. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to sleep by her, but he still needed to spend an hour studying the Tome of Mystical Enhancement.

  As he sat down and opened the book, Dave felt more right with the world than he could recall. He had the powers he had always daydreamed about, the family that he loved so much was getting bigger, and he was finding his stride between confidence and arrogance. The only thing that remained was the goblin army, but honestly he felt like that was an afterthought. He was truly content with the life that he had. He still didn’t know if Shanelle was the same God that he had sung about at church growing up, and didn’t know if he should be thanking her or Mishpat or the unknown Watcher for this opportunity, but he was glad for the life he had now.

  Focusing on the words of the page, they seemed to make more sense than ever before. It was almost as though they had been helping to guide him to this place of understanding and contentment. He knew his place in this world. He was a nobleman with people beholden to him, but he would do his duty by them too. He was a father and a husband and felt fulfilled in those roles.

  Now he was excited by an unplanned but very welcome addition to his family. This new child made his connection to Eloria all that much more real, and that was where it all clicked for him. The book had been trying to fix the weakest link in him. It probably worked on something different for each person, but for him that was his connection to Eloria. It now made sense why the book operated the way that it did.

  If it simply told Dave what his greatest weakness was, then he would not have fully appreciated it. Instead the tome led him on a journey of self-evaluation. It forced a level of introspection on him. Now he had a sense of belonging on Eloria. Before his powers had run through a connection that the Watcher had forged for him with the system here.

  That artificial connection, no matter how powerful it made him, could not make up for having grown up in an entirely different world. More than just that, as Emiri had just reminded him, this body was not a natural body but one that had been created for him as an imitation of his body from Earth. Now, though, more than ever, he felt that Eloria was his home. It was refreshing. Then exciting as the notification popped up.

  Congratulations! You have successfully mastered the Tome of Mystical Enhancement.

  Normal duration for completion is 14–21 days. It has taken you 107 days. This has been the result of a greater disparity in your nature than the tome has ever encountered before.

  Your diligence is noted.

  As a reward for a greater than ever before displayed diligence, you will receive more than one benefit.

  Stat benefit: Had you grown up on Eloria, your type of diligence would have resulted in the opportunity to gain additional stat points as you have from other various quests and actions. Now you are awarded +7 to each stat.

  Magical benefit: Had you grown up on Eloria, your type of diligence would have resulted in the opportunity to learn more spells. Now you are awarded 3 additional spells that help to shore up three of your greatest weaknesses. Learn from this and continue to develop yourself.

  Eloria is conflict, and the path of personal improvement is its own conflict.

  As soon as he finished reading the notification, the book in his hands turned into motes of light and sped off in a cluster that phased through the ceiling of his house. Certainly not something he would forget, but for now he wanted to look at what he had gotten.

  Dave took a quick look at his stats. He had done some significant leveling in the past few weeks. The survival run he had done with Mira had become a weekly event, and while XP was not always as generous and 90% of the gear ended up being things that he passed on, he had found a couple of pieces of gear and had nearly reached level thirty-eight. This had allowed him to add five points to Charisma and twenty points to Intelligence. Then with the seven points added from the tome, he was feeling very impressive.

  STRENGTH: 58 (20% bonus)

  Bravery: 17.4

  Regen Rate: 5.8/hour

  Melee Damage: +116%

  DEXTERITY: 15

  Ranged Damage: +30%

  Rogue Skills: +30%

  AGILITY: 36 (30% bonus)

  Movement Rate: +72%

  Defense: +180%

  CONSTITUTION: 47

  Health: 1640 (470)

  Regen Rate: 11.4/hour

  Fury: 14.1

  Regen Rate: 4.7/hour

  ENDURANCE: 46

  Stamina: 28.2

  Regen Rate: (9.4/hour)

  Needed Rest: -75% (max)

  INTELLIGENCE: 117 (20% bonus)

  Mana: 1640 (300)

  Spell Damage: +234%

  WISDOM: 48 (30% bonus)

  Mana Regen Rate: 1,410/hour

  Faith: 14.4

  Regen Rate: 4.8/hour

  CHARISMA: 33

  Social Skills: +66%

  Teamwork: 9.9

  Regen Rate: 3.3/hour

  LUCK: 15

  +15% chance to avoid catastrophic effects

  +15% improvement on chance of loot drops

  +15% improvement on quality of loot drops

  Glancing at his sheet showed him that he still had banked up almost all the character points that he had saved since leveling up. He was holding them, waiting for Tier 5 before spending them, as he was pretty content with his build now. He did notice, though, that 20 points were gone, leaving him with 368 unspent character points. Dave just shrugged. If the tome’s rewards cost him 20 character points, that was a small price to pay.

  In looking at his sheet, he couldn’t help but admire the ring he had been able to create with the ring fuser he had previously won in the dungeon.

  Epic Ring of the Healthy Leader

  Quality: Epic

  Weight: 0.1

  Passive Effect: Health +300

  Passive Effect: Social Interaction +50%

  Active Effect: Charmed Friendship—1/moonrise you may attempt to befriend an individual. If the magic is not resisted, then they will perceive you to be their best friend and react accordingly. Anytime that you do something unfriendly to them, there is a chance that they will resist and shrug off the effects of the magic. The better you treat them, the less likely that is to occur.

  The effect will naturally wear off. Duration is determined by how well you treat them but will normally be at least 24 hours.

  From there he looked at his new spells and immediately understood that the twenty extra character points had gone into Divination Magic to grant him access to a Tier 4 spell.

  Wizard’s Eye: Creates a semi-invisible oval-shaped eye, which is two inches across and one inch high. It is made of magical energy and very difficult to physically harm. It can move at 30 mph. The caster is able to see and hear anything that occurs within normal sight or auditory range of the construct as though the caster were there themselves. The caster may cast any Divination spell through the eye but no other forms of magic.

  The eye can only be seen by magical detection or by exceptionally close perception. Duration: 1 hour. Mana Cost: 40. Cooldown: 2 hours.

  So that spell made sense to shore up one of his weaknesses. He didn’t have any reliable way to gather information on the enemy. This only made him more interested to see what the other spells were.

  Enhanced Flight: Grants the user the ability to move through the air currents at a rate equal to twice their movement rate.

  Maneuverability is greatly improved over normal flight spells, and the caster essentially has the same ability to move on the ground. Duration of the spell is reduced by a factor of 10 if using it in combat. The spell may only be cast on any given individual every 12 hours.

  Duration: 10 minutes +1 minute/level. Mana: 80. Range: Touch. Cooldown: 30 seconds.

  Another fourth-level spell. Dave was thrilled. This one would aid his mobility. The final spell was interesting in that it wasn’t so much meant to shore up a weakness as much as to enhance his class.

  Damage Mirror Zone: Creates a 10-foot-radius sphere around the caster. Any damage the caster takes is duplicated as generic force damage to any creature within the sphere other than the caster.

  The damage projected is 50% of damage received. This spell does not reduce damage that the caster takes and only reflects damage that the caster actually takes. Damage against shields or other protections does not count.

  Duration: 2 ticks. Cast Time: 1 second. Cooldown: 2 hour -1 minute/level. Mana: 100.

  Dave felt even better prepared for the mission ahead. This would be fun, but now he had a wife to cuddle up with and a few hours of sleep to get even if his Endurance made it so he didn’t need more than a couple of hours.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “In the day of our death let us hope we go with a belly full of mead and our love’s kiss upon our cheek.”- attributed to the Dun’hagar, a dwarven battle master.

  Murkwood- David Nelson

  The next morning saw the mission team out. Dave said his goodbyes to family in private and gave final instructions to those who would be the military commanders while he was gone. Then they were off. The first sun had not even fully risen before they were riding.

  They only rode the horses for the first couple of hours, and then the forest became too dense. The lumberjacks had started to clear a road but eventually stopped, as at least for now they didn’t want to make it any easier on the enemy. Once the horses were tied up and a few extra hands that came for this first leg of the journey prepared to guide the horses back, they headed off.

  The planning estimated that they could make it to the enemy in three days on foot. Some of them could have made it much faster, but some didn’t have much skill in moving through the woods and hadn’t put enough points into physical stats to make up for that. Still, Dave was happy with the pace that they were setting.

  It was late on the second day that their scouts, two of the forest wardens, first ran into goblin scouts. They made short work of the enemy but then reported back.

  “It is unfortunate that they had to kill the two goblins because now the enemy will know something is wrong,” Dave said that evening as he, Eisuke, Fumihero and Derrick Mun Hagen sat around a campfire.

  “Perhaps, but I think it was better than letting them see us and escape. Goblin scouts die all the time and are notoriously unreliable. Eventually it will be noticed that a couple of them are gone, but hopefully by then we will be able to make our first attack,” Eisuke responded.

  “I guess that is true. My view of goblins is a bit slanted because I tend to think of them as being like Krinnk and the way he is devoted to my daughter.”

  “Your daughter’s pet or friend is most definitely an exception, m’lord. I have fought on the western border before, and goblins, while dangerous in large numbers, are bizarrely selfish and unreliable, to the point that I don’t understand how a group of them can even function,” Sir Mun Hagen said.

  “Then we should talk about what we can do to best disrupt their camp,” Dave said.

  “In my experience, the only thing greater than goblins’ fear is their greed. So you would need to appeal to that,” Fumihero suggested.

  “What about poisoning food? Would that work?”

  “Yes, m’lord, but the problem is creating a setup where enough of them could be drawn to it. Otherwise if it was just a few at a time, why wouldn’t we just kill them?” Eisuke answered.

  “Then I guess what we need to do is set up a trap where we can get enough of them to chase after us to make it worthwhile. Or find a way to sneak into their camp and poison their food supply. We will just need to improvise based on what we find,” Dave said.

  “Okay, m’lord, we have arranged for watches so you can sleep. Those with higher Endurance will keep watch,” Derrick said.

  Dave fought the urge to say something about there being no need for titles, but ultimately it was just easier to go with it. He thought about it, and somehow it just seemed right, anyway. He was the strongest, so why shouldn’t he rule? “Good, then let’s plan on leaving early.”

  “The entire team knew what they were volunteering for. Give us five hours of sleep and we will be ready to go, Consort. Er… sorry, Baron Murkwood,” Fumihero said.

  Dave saw red and felt a great anger surge through him at that hated term. All he could think about was how it demeaned him, and he shouldn’t be considered an attachment to anyone. It took him a moment to get control of his thoughts. He recognized that his emotions had been nudged from outside, but had a hard time separating his thoughts from the ones being pushed at him.

  He stood up and nodded at everyone before simply walking over to his bedroll. They didn’t set up any tents. It was cold, but each of them had a heat stone that the researchers and craftsmen had been able to create. It was only a temporary measure in Dave’s mind until they could create a reliable electric power source and then heating coils and the like, but they worked for now.

  The stone could be produced fairly simply, and once created, anyone with sufficient control of their mana could recharge them, even if they didn’t know the original fire spells that had been used to create the stones. The original versions suffered from some difficulties related to the release of the stored heat. They would either release it too slowly to be useful as anything other than a hand warmer, or worse, they would release it explosively fast.

  Now the third generation of heat stones had three settings. They could be used as a grenade of sorts. They had the explosive power of a Tier 2 fire spell with a range of about ten feet in all directions. The medium setting put off the heat of a good fire that could warm one of their small homes for about eight hours, and the lowest setting was good for keeping a tent or bedroll warm for up to twenty-four hours.

  It was just one of the many improvements that their teams had come up with. The builders made them a standard feature of the most recent homes that they built. The military, of course, found them to be very useful as weapons, which led to the creation of chill stones and shock stones as well. The chill stones also got incorporated into some of the buildings, and now the mess hall had their very own cold boxes for keeping supplies better, both as freezers and refrigerators. Apparently one of the researchers had even tried to convince the cooks that they could create ovens powered by heat stones, but the cooks insisted that food cooked with real flame tasted better.

  The heat stones were one example of Eris’ Rise apparently reinventing the wheel. Both the elven and human nobles apparently had access to such things, but they were very expensive and in short supply. They could be made but were considered a Tier 2 creation, so especially the humans had only a few craftsmen capable of such things. Since nobles were never craftsmen and typically the only humans in Albia who leveled other than the nobles were soldiers, it was just another example of shortsightedness.

  As he lay there in his sleeping bag, Dave started to get a sense of how the voice in his head worked. It couldn’t force him to do anything. It only nudged his own tendencies. That was scary in one sense because it implied that those arrogant, aggressive thoughts were a part of him. It was also a relief though because this was something he could learn to overcome. He also decided that protections from outside influences would have to become a primary research topic for further spells. Although he admitted that anyone who Seimion called Master was probably on a level of power that they hadn’t seen yet.

  Dave’s sleep had been a bit fitful, but he woke up to the sounds of his fellow team members. He was eager for the day. If all went well, he would get to launch his first attack against the enemy before he went to sleep again. It was an empowering feeling.

  During the morning before they broke camp, Dave cast the Wizard’s Eye spell. It was a bit disconcerting to receive the input from the spell. The eye went rushing ahead of him, and about sixteen miles ahead, he found the enemy army. It was larger than he had expected. The scouting reports just hadn’t really prepared him for it. Still, he didn’t lose focus.

  The giants were every bit as massive as had been indicated, and the various fiends were just as creepy even if he didn’t see the stalk fiend. But something struck him as he was scouting. There were a half dozen large iron pots spread around the camp. Each of them had dozens of goblins asleep on the ground near them. The pots must have been cooking pots, and the imagery ticked a memory in the back of his head. With that a plan began to form. He would fill them in on the trip there.