A Jaded Life

Chapter 1333

Somehow, enchanting small channels through the stone to carry the necessary air into the prison below was much more interesting than conjuring and enchanting windows. I had no real idea why; neither task was particularly engaging after having it done a few times, so it couldn’t be the actual difficulty. Maybe it was because of the sense of progress I had working on the prison. My current plan had only a handful of cells, maybe ten in total, nicely spread out so that none of the future inmates would be able to communicate with one another. The small number also meant I could readily expand the prison; there was more than enough space down below ground, but, for now, I just didn’t need more. Just these few were enough, so every cell I completed gave me a sense of accomplishment. It represented a chunk of the job being completed, while the hospital felt like a never-ending story, as if there would always be another room to finish, another window to enchant, or some other tedious task to be done. Maybe that seemingly endless scope was the reason working on the hospital was so exhausting, the knowledge that it would take days, if not weeks, until I was finally done with it all.

Or it might be the proximity to other people. The knowledge that I was never fully alone, that somebody was always within a few hundred metres, while here in the shelter? The closest humans were probably in the valley on the other side of the formerly burned land, several days' walk away. Even my scrying constructs would need hours to get there, to say nothing of the fact that I had an entire mountain above me, shielding me from anyone who wanted to disturb me. Hel, even counting animals, nothing beyond a few worms was anywhere close by, and even for those, I was too deep. Here, I could enjoy all the peace and quiet, the perfect solitude I could never find anywhere else. Maybe I should look into a way to dig into a glacier somewhere close to the Nexus Tower, setting up another shelter of solitude, or whatever I wanted to call this place.

Something more my style compared to the rocky cave I had here, something carved from nice, soothingly cold Ice. The rock around here wasn’t bad; it wasn’t too hot, but it also lacked the soothing chill I preferred. So, something different might be nice.

Especially if I had prisoners stashed here, that would likely ruin the peaceful vibes the place had now. Their despair would likely seep into the earth around us, tainting it forever, and it wasn’t as if the people I was planning to imprison here wouldn’t be desperate. People who got tossed into a dark hole in the ground were generally, and this was exactly what it was. Dark, with only a few conjured light crystals shedding just enough light to let me, with my incredibly high affinity to Darkness and racially innate ability to see in the dark, navigate the place. Humans wouldn’t be able to see beyond their own noses.

Eventually, I was running out of ideas for how to make my little prison more secure. There were undoubtedly things I had missed, forgotten or simply failed to consider due to my ignorance, but without knowing about the weaknesses, I could hardly fix them. Maybe I would have to ask Lia to try escaping from the prison, just to see if she figured out a way to do it, so I could block that avenue, but that was something I had to consider later. For now, the prison was just about finished, meaning I was essentially done in this area.

Out of curiosity, I stopped in the primary chamber of my shelter, sitting down on the throne I had created there a while ago. Then, I conjured up a few scrying constructs and sent them out, investigating the surrounding area. I was curious how the Burned Land had fared after the dungeon at its centre was conquered.

Most of my scriyng constructs were flying across the open area left behind by the burned land, noticing just how utterly flat everything was. It was hard to tell, mostly because it was all covered by snow, but there didn’t seem to be anything here. Neither trees nor shrubs managed to peek out of the now, but there didn’t seem to be any animal footprints either. Just a void left by the dungeon disaster. It was, quite frankly, a somewhat horrifying sight, making me worry about other places that might suffer from the same condition. Or at least a similar one, I didn’t want to consider how big and how troublesome an overflowing dungeon would be after years of expansion. Probably as bad as the worst man-made disasters, or even worse.

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Shaking my head, I directed some of the constructs flying above the Burned Land towards the settlement to the east, curious to see what they would find there. Those people had been quite hardy, so, hopefully, they were doing alright. If not, I might be able to lend a hand, just to keep them from getting into too much trouble. And it might allow me to learn more about my divinity, as there was that one woman who had gained abilities drawn from the Pale Lady, inflicting massive pain on me if I encountered her up close. It would be interesting to see if the separation between the Mother and me was enough to shield me from that, though, given that the two deities were separate, I wasn’t sure I wanted to test that. Even now, a few months later, I vividly recall the brutal headache I suffered back then, and I was no masochist. Well, mostly, and certainly not with anyone but Sigmir, but that was an entirely different thing.

Through my other scrying constructs, those that flew away from the Burned Land, I could see that animals had taken some time returning to the area. Numerous plants were visibly overgrown, making it obvious that few critters had nibbled on it recently. What’s more, I couldn’t see any tracks while looking from above, no recent kills, nothing but snow and plants.

It took some thirty minutes of flight to detect the first signs of animal life, though I might have missed something earlier. These signs, however, were impossible to miss. It was a massive herd of caribou, and even from above, counting them seemed to be impossible. There had to be thousands of them, maybe even tens of thousands, given that some of them were hidden between the trees. They were stripping a stretch of forest off its bark, some digging in the snow to look for leaves or maybe even roots; it was rather incredible. The sheer number was intimidating, especially when I noticed that some of them had subtly glowing antlers. I had no idea what these critters might do with that power, but I was glad that I was far away from them, just in case they could somehow pool their power.

If they could, getting struck by the combined power of twenty, maybe thirty thousand caribou would almost certainly kill even me, unless I got lucky and avoided the blow somehow. At least if the potential combination attack was somewhat efficient, which I considered likely. Just because an animal was supposedly a prey animal didn’t mean they were harmless. More often than not, it meant the exact opposite: that they were exceedingly dangerous because they had to be on guard against predators at all times, ready to fight or flee at a moment’s notice.

With this many caribou, fleeing would be difficult; their numbers needed time to start moving. That, and the glowing antlers I was seeing, told me that these critters wouldn’t flee, at least not all of them. The males with the glowing antlers would likely strike any predator, making me wonder just how they attacked. It was a different type of magic, something I hadn’t seen yet.

Driven by curiosity, I had one of my ravens drop down, landing some distance away from the herd, and then I got to work. While the raven didn’t contain a lot of Ice Astral Power, it was enough to get started, and I could channel the rest into it from afar. Sure, it was inefficient, but I had no dire need for my power, so I could be wasteful.

With that Ice Magic, I pulled up some snow from the ground, forming it into a roughly canine body, not quite matching a wolf, but it was close enough. Then, I had my newly created construct stalk towards the herd, keeping low and moving slowly, trying my best to avoid detection, just as a hunting predator might.

When the construct got close to the herd, I could see the moment one of the caribou on the edges of the herd detected me, thanks to my scrying constructs above. One of the male caribou made a soft noise, and, suddenly, the glow around the antlers of all other caribou faded, and only that one caribou had glowing antlers. At least for a moment, until that glow was unleashed in a flare of coruscating power, utterly annihilating my construct. I had no idea what it had been, but my construct was just gone.

Curiously, nothing else was destroyed, making me wonder how that worked. I might have to investigate, though I didn’t think I would get far. Understanding attacks merely by looking at them was… Well, it was nigh impossible.