-Xania-
The place we call the 'cursed fields'... This region of the demon wasteland used to be all fertile farmland where the minotaur tribe grew their crops.
However, just over 700 years ago there was a battle here, the gray demons fought against the minotaurs. My ancestors attempted to cast a combined spell far beyond their capabilities and accidentally cursed the land itself.
All the plants that attempt to grow here end up melting into black goo, and a strange purple smoke comes out from the ground, making anyone who breathes it feel sick. Needless to say, nobody has been able to grow anything in this land ever since.
After the loss of such an important source of food, not only the minotaurs but also the tribes that used to trade for it have been holding a grudge against the gray demons. Well, that is only one of the many grudges that each tribe has against the others here in the demon wasteland, but it's still shameful to think that my tribe was responsible for creating a place where nothing living can grow.
Yes, this is a place where nothing living can grow... Or at least it was, until an hour ago.
"Ah!, looks like this worked better than expected."
I can hear the voice of my new queen, but I cannot see her, the grass that just grew here in a matter of minutes is taller than me and it's blocking my vision in every direction...
I thought that I should tell Luna about this place. The curse here was supposed to be equivalent to dark magic of rank 13, so even her rank of 20 would not be enough to take control of it. But since she's such an expert when it comes to dark magic, I figured that she should still be able to do something.
And as soon as she took a look around this place, she said that she could try 'reversing' the curse. What is 'reversing' a curse even supposed to mean? I've never heard about anything like that before. And yet, it didn't take even an hour for this place to become a jungle of grass and weeds.
"Every time I think that your magic cannot get any more ridiculous, you do something like this..."
"Hahaha. Well, the curse was very old, and it was made by accident so there was no willpower behind it, it wasn't hard to modify it."
Ugh... She's always so irritating. This curse has been a thorn on our side for over 700 years and she just came here and fixed the problem in an hour. And she's talking about it like it wasn't a big deal, this is so frustrating...
"So... Is all of this sudden growth a result of 'reversing' the curse?"
"That curse had been stealing energy and earth mana from the plants that tried to grow here, so there was a lot of it stored, that's the reason for what just happened here. I'm sure that any crops that get planted here from now on will grow bigger and faster than normal, but first, we'll have to get rid of all of these weeds."
At this point there's just no denying it anymore, she's a god.
Even if she's just a 'normal' mage that 'just happened to become very good at magic', what she did here just now is a feat that only a god should be able to do.
That said, we should not have needed the help of a god.
What makes this such a godly feat is the fact that she could do it by herself in a mere hour. But we didn't need to do it with only one person, we have had plenty of mages that should have been interested in getting rid of this curse. And we didn't have an hour to do it, we had 700 years...
We should not have needed anyone's help, but we all kept trying to throw the blame on someone else or pretending that it was not our problem, doing nothing to actually fix the issue. And it got to the point that we needed a god to come and fix all of our problems for us... Are we really that pathetic?
Yes, I think that's the reason why Luna always makes me feel so frustrated. She keeps making all of my flaws so obvious...
I was angry because I knew that other countries look down on us, and I thought that if someone like Kalroth made us 'stronger' we could get back at them. It's frustrating to think that I never did anything to solve our actual problems.
"We'll take care of the weeds, I have some of my underlings here with me, and we brought a few hundred zombies with us."
"Eh? We're going to take care of this field?"
One of those underlings of mine is apparently nearby, not that I can see him with all of this grass.
"Yes, we are."
"But I thought that this was part of the territory of the minotaurs, are we going to take it from them?"
"No, we need to do this to start paying our debt back to them. And more importantly, we're all part of a real country now, we should help each other when we get the chance."
"I see..."
"Xania! I'm so happy to hear you say that! I knew that you could become a good person. Anyway, if we need to get rid of the weeds, then I could-"
"You 'could' nothing!!! WE are going to take care of this!"
"Eh? But I have a spell that-"
"JUST LET US DO SOMETHING USEFUL!"
"Uh, ok then. I guess I'll be going back to the castle."
From the dark mana I sensed and the fact that she seems to have disappeared I assume that she used that 'black gate' to go back, another crazy spell...
Just what is going to happen to the demon wasteland? She already said that she wants to change our name back to manaborn, and if she keeps doing stuff like this, it might actually stop even being a wasteland...
After making the undead work all day we're still not close to being done, this place is quite large and the grass is tougher than I thought.
"Hey, boss! Someone is flying over there!"
"Uh?"
I can indeed see the figure of a man wearing a long gray robe flying in the sky, and he's coming down to us. Now that he's closer I can see that he looks a bit old and his eyes are closed, is it safe to fly when he cannot see?
Wait, he's flying with wind magic... And he cannot see... Don't tell me that he is...
"All of you! Get away from here!"
"Eh? You want to be left alone boss?"
"I know who that man is... This could be dangerous. Go away, now!"
By the time he lands in front of me, my subordinates have already left.
"Good evening. Sorry for appearing without any warning, but as I was flying I couldn't help but notice the jungle of grass right where there used to be a curse stopping plants from growing."
"You... You are Alber, the 'Grand mage', correct?"
"Oh! It always feels nice to be popular with girls. And if I am not mistaken, you are Xania, the current high necromancer of the gray demons."
Uh, it really is him, and he even knows who I am.
This is bad, this is the guy that killed four of the rulers of the demon wasteland that wanted to invade the rest of the continent, he's a symbol of terror around here.
The pressure that I'm feeling from being near the greatest enemy of the demon wasteland is... almost nothing. After getting used to my new queen, everything else seems tame.
"Well, there's nothing for someone like you to do here, our new queen is not planning to start any wars. In fact, she just fixed this field so that we can take care of ourselves."
"It's a bit mean to assume that I could only be here because I'm expecting a war. I only wanted to get permission for an official visit from the second prince of my kingdom."
"An official visit? Since when do you guys treat us like a real country?"
"Time will tell if you can become a proper country. For now, this is just an excuse to allow me to meet your queen and figure out what she's all about."
"You sure admitted that easily...."
In any case, I can breathe a sigh of relief. It doesn't look like he's planning to kill me.
"And what is your opinion of her? All the rumors and testimonies I have heard are... contradictory, to say the least. Is she as evil as people say?"
"No, she is scary, but she's not evil in any way. If anything she's way too nice for her own good."
"Is that so... Well, figuring that out is the second most important reason why I want to visit this place. Some people tend to lose their rationality when they are scared. And some other people are really bad at causing a good impression, like you, for example."
"Me? What's that supposed to mean?"
"You were worried when you saw me and tried to cause a good impression, but you didn't attempt to get those undead out of sight. Are you not aware of what most people think of undead?"
"I know that they hate that we don't 'respect' the dead, but a dead body is nothing more than a tool that's no longer being used, so why should I be ashamed of making them useful."
"What you just said is what gray demons are taught since childhood. But for someone who is not used to it, seeing a walking corpse will cause a natural reaction of fear and revulsion, and that includes the rest of the demon wasteland. Tell me, do you want the customs of your tribe to be accepted by the others?"
"Yes, obviously."
"And what have you done to achieve that?"
"Why would I need to do something? Being afraid of the undead is stupid, they are the ones that need to learn."
"See? That's the problem. For people to understand each other requires effort from both parties. The tribes of demons often complain about not being understood, but they do nothing to explain themselves or understand the others. If you want to become a proper country, this stubbornness is the biggest obstacle you will need to overcome."
"What do you care if we can be a country or not? Are you not supposed to hate us?"
Everyone knows the story of his village being destroyed and his family being killed by demons from this wasteland when he was a child. Why is he trying to give me advice?
"Hahaha, I guess I did, for a while, but my mentor taught me the folly of that way of thinking."
"Your mentor?"
Looking at this guy, you'd think that he should be the mentor. I guess even he was young at some point.
"She taught me a lot about wind magic and rationality. She understood better than anyone the way that people think and the pitfalls that often lead them to evil and misunderstandings, and how to lead them to become better versions of themselves. That's why I found it so strange that she..."
"That she what?"
"Nevermind, let's just say that finding out what happened to my mentor is the number one reason I wanted this visit. Tell your queen to let us know if we're allowed to come, if the answer is yes, we'll be here a week after receiving it."
And he left just like that. Flying back the way he came.
Well, that was not someone I was expecting to have a conversation with today. I wonder where all of this is going...
Humans are neither inherently good or bad (in my opinion at least) but what they are is selfish. That isn’t inherently a bad thing as a “selfish” desire could be taking care of your livelihood, your family and loved ones, etc. Of course my definition of selfish is “something you desire or want” as opposed to “something you desire/want without consideration for others.”
Enlightened self-interest is the term I guess? Regardless, I don’t believe I have any delusions about the capability of humans to cause pain, kindness or nothing of consequence (at least mentally/rationally as I certainly haven’t experienced the full gamut of human evil and good and don’t think I want to if I can help it). Just sums up as “human.”
I'm in agreement. For better or worse, selfishness is a defining human trait. Shortsighted selfishness without regard for long term consequences, especially for purely psychological rewards as opposed to practical benefit, isn't necessarily the most dangerous of the human sins, but certainly the most common.
@scout821 Its not really a trait restricted to humanity though after all look into the animal kingdom or even beyond and shortsighted selfishness is the norm or default state among living things as a consequence of natural selection acting on individuals. At a fundamental level it comes down to a cell which replicates itself better is going to out reproduce other cells and the easiest way to do that is to dedicate all of ones resources towards that goal.
If anything social species like humans from an ecological perspective are significantly less selfish than our ancestors. As a particularly important consideration remember humans evolved within the primate clade which among all mammalian families is by far the most violent and shortsighted selfishness. One key example (which is more broadly found among mammals actually) is the high rates of infanticide within primates where males will kill babies in order to get their mothers to go into estrus and monkey tribes will regularly engage in territorial violence with high rates of murder rape and sometimes in the case of other great apes even collective violence though the latter is particularly rare. Humans and bonobos are to be quite frank the exceptions not the rule being among the least violent of all primates as among all extant primates humans are second only to bonobos in this regard.
More broadly we need to remember where life came from and its evolutionary history to put things into proper context in the unicellular realm its every cell for itself eking out to maximize the rate of reproduction in the near term. Usually this results in a boom bust cycle where every boom in population usually ends up as an evolutionary dead end but sometimes its a winning strategy as new niches and quasi equilibriums are reached population wise which means the behavior persists.
This actually seems to be one of the main factors limiting the evolution of multicellularity selfish cell behavior tends to limit cooperation to when its mutually beneficial and thus tends to be temporary. For true multicellularity to occur you need some ecological factors which force the coupling of reproduction to multicellularity. Recent lab experiments which artificially create these sorts of conditions seem to show it becomes trivially easy to develop multicellularity under these conditions the hard part is actually maintaining multicellularity. Animals as multicellular organisms are plagued by this condition since given enough time some somatic cells will become more successful than their neighbors out replicating them and causing havok.
Animal evolution has thus been largely driven by the need to expunge such "rouge cells" and this has been and continues to be one of the main roles of the immune system and other regulatory functions (i.e. programmed cell death or telomeres ) which constantly are tested by more and more rouge cells with mutations that make them far more successful than their neighboring cells which gradually over time cause these systems to be increasingly strained until things finally break down.
This appears to quite literally be the cause of what we call aging as well as the phenomenon/disease we call cancer. The big findings in aging research seem to show that most mutations involved are epigenetic i.e. related to the activation deactivation upregulation or down regulation of particular genes causing cell populations to diverge. Certain mechanisms such as telomeres limiting cell replication programmed cell death and attacks by the immune system counter this divergence but short of wide spread cellular genocide and or epigenetic reset (a.k.a. "the immortal jellyfish") this eventually collimates in the death of the organism.
Social species experience the same pressures as individual cells and not even eusocial animals are free of these problems for example ant nests are plagued by freeloader ants that pretend to be busy but never actually do much if anything except consume resources of the colony.
107 chapters in and we finally have the building part of the kingdom building
Thanks for the chapter.
that trope seems to be so popular in scribble hub
Haven't seen/noticed the "human suck" trope that often on scribble hub. Are you maybe just seeking these kinds of stories out too much perhaps?
Did Alber never fix his eyes because of a limitation in conventional healing magic, or had he simply gotten too used to being blind by the time he had enough money to afford it and figured recovering his eyesight would be too overwhelming?
Ritual magic can force ranks past their normal limits, I guess that's one way dark mages on the Silver Knight's side can still make themselves useful against the dark queen.
So Alber was apprenticed to Cureva's previous incarnation, interesting. As fellow archmages, Luna and Alber will have plenty to nerd out over void mana.