Part 1 - Blood Mage

 

Giving a yawn and a stretch Urist felt refreshed waking up this morning. Man does it feel good to wake up in a new bed and no one's smelly foot hitting my face. Only what’s on my chest?

Confused at the weight his eyes wandered to his side and dug into the ground and pulled out an oxygen crystal. Giving a few breaths to the crystal, the dim room became brighter allowing him to see who was laying on top of him. Flaming red and brown hair and cute pinchable cheeks who else could it be. Uria was holding onto him in a gentle hug, which made him confused.

The girl's dorm was finished so why was she sleeping with him? This warmth and softness were overloading his brain with her so close to him. 

Before I do something unthinkable I need to getaway.

Trying to move out of her embrace he became surprised at her power. It felt like he was a  tree and a powerful bear was hugging him not intending to let him go no matter what. Giving a few more tries to get away he gave up defeated.

Guess I’ll just have to wake her up despite how I just wanna watch her sleeping face we still have things to do today. After all, tomorrow is the day when the event will descend upon us and we have to get ready for anything that comes our way. 

Heart steeled one of his hands reached up and pinched Uria cheek. The pain awoke her from slumber as her eyes slowly fluttered open. 

“Mu? Ah. Good Morning.”

“What are you doing here?!”

“Eh? It’s cause I couldn’t get to sleep dummy. Is there something wrong?”

“My heart isn’t ready!”

He blurted out crawling away from Uria, standing up putting his hand over his chest. When he did, he noticed that the wound didn’t ache anymore which surprised him. Taking the light stone closer to his wound he moved the bandage slightly and noticed that his wound thin scabbing.

Eyes wide he didn’t know Uroa’s medicine would be this effective, if he was in this condition then it would be fine to start learning how to fight. Uria also leaned over and saw the progress of his recovery making her happy. Then a sudden sadness filled her knowing that he would start to work his hardest in learning how to fight.

As usual, he got everyone up and ready for work and then went to the back with Unicy as back up to meet the new dwarfs. What he saw made him raise an eyebrow, there was a standoff between three of the dwarfs.

Weird shouldn’t they be in a daze? How are they arguing? Did something change? Just when I thought I’d pretty much figured out the summoning.

Shelving that thought for later he decided to get a gist of what was happening. After a bit, a conclusion was drawn that it was a verbal fight between two commoners and a dwarf in blood rad clothing that smelled of blood. The other dwarf was pretty much avoiding the group like the plague wishing to have nothing to do with them.

“Oh come on, it’s just a little bit pretty please?”

“No, we’re not giving you any of our blood. Get away from us you creep.”

“I don’t need much, just a little drop is all.”

Unicy was instantly put on guard, but Urist eyes widened with surprise focusing on the topic of blood. He walked right up to the dwarf that smelled of blood and asked the man with curiosity.

“Hello, my name is Urist, correct me if I’m wrong but are you a blood mage?”

The dwarf that smelled of blood turned to Urist with an eyebrow raised. Now that they were so close Urist could clearly see the features of the man standing in front of him. His eyes were a fierce brown contrasting his blood red hair and devilish facial features.

He wore a blood red robe that matched his hair and pale skin. If he didn’t know better Urist would have assumed this man was cosplaying as a vampire. 

The cosplayer eyes widened at Urist’s remark before smiling, to which it made Urist’s skin crawl, this was indeed a strange man.

“That is indeed my occupation my good sir Urist, my name is Vlad I deal with the magic of blood. Alas, I lack the blood to perform my art which is I asked these good people if I could have a drop.”

Urist grabbed Vlad by the shoulders and looked at him with bloodshot eyes making Vlad a little weirded out.

“Do you know how to make magic Items?!”

Vlad wide eyes returned to its devilish appearance, “Ah. So that’s the reason your so intense. Why yes I do know the basics of creating magic equipment unless you have a Blacksmith and Rune Smith my hands are tied.”

“One second.”

“Eh?”

Urist went straight to the market and selected a Rune Smith paying 500 points up front and also grabbed a point generation design for 200 points. The dwarf and the design appeared in front of Urist with the dwarf bewildered wondering where he was.

This new dwarf had runic characters branded along his face and arms making him look quite fierce. His hair color was black and braided, his skin was tan making his green eyes stand out and shine. He wore loose-fitting leather clothing that resembling North American Indians that fit his style quite well.

“Where am I?”

“Welcome to the mountain home. My name is Urist and I am very sorry for selfishly summoning you here.”

“I see. So Morkia does not exist anymore. I guess it’s better this way… Tell me Urist what is it you require of me? Oh pardon me, I forgot to introduce myself. I am known as Ajan.”

“Ajan we need Magic Artifacts.”

Ajan turned his attention to Vlad, “This is the blood mage I assume? Then let’s go meet the smith we have much to discuss.”

“Alright, Unicy will lead you to Hot, but first you should activate your skills on the armament stone.”

The three dwarfs left with Vlad being confused at what was happening. This left Urist to settle the three other dwarfs that came. 

 

Part 2 - The Hidden Spearman

 

Shifting his attention to the three, Urist found that they were giving him weird looks. With them acting this way he had no choice but to ask.

“What's the matter?”

“Why are you treating a devilish man like him so well?”

“Even devils have their uses. I am Urist, may I know your names?”

Although wary the three dwarfs spoke up, he found out they were two commoners and a tailor. The two commoners names were Fatty and Usbian, Urist really wanted to laugh at their names but held himself back keeping a straight face made of steel.

Amongst the dwarfs, Fatty had a large build compared to other dwarfs making him look chubby. If Urist didn’t know any better he would think that he was a human instead of a dwarf by his size. With his small eyes and cheerful attitude, he seemed like a gentle giant, but Urist could tell that the man was strong like an ox. 

The girl next to him had a piercing gaze and half a shaved head. At first, he thought she was a man, she spoke like one, looked like one and acted like one. Having raven-colored hair, and black eyes she felt like a total hardass. 

Urist decided not to dwell on such a minor matter and went up to the last dwarf that was a female named Xasta. He found out she was a basic tailor that knew her way around needle and thread. She seemed more distressed being here than the other dwarfs before her and it took him a bit to calm her down.

She had average brown hair and brown eyes and looked pretty plain next to the other dwarfs in the mountain home. If Urist had to put it she looked like a book worm that never left the house, a real shut-in not used to the wilds.

It seemed this summoning was full of real eccentric dwarfs compared to the other batches. Oh well, it mattered not to Urist if they were weird or not as long as they were useful. He checked over their slots and found that the two commoners had most of their slots for body and the tailor had a head alignment.

Urist figured that the two commoners were suited for farming, building and expedition work. He’d have the tailor start working on making clothing out of the leather they have been getting. With that, all dealt with he led the new dwarfs out of the cave.

Talking with the two commoners Urist found out that they wanted to join him in training. It seemed the life of the exploration team filled them with excitement. This made Urist stop and puzzle over the exploration team, what exactly was he trying to accomplish with it.

Sure medical plants and metal gathering drove it forward, only what else could I use it for? 

Dropping off Xasta with the tag team Ormila and Urmom, Urist headed over to the forge to see the new pair of dwarfs getting along with the two metalheads.

He had forgotten to hand over the design to Unicy beforehand, so he felt a little time was wasted in that. The four took the design away from him and handed Urist over his new bronze knife if you could call it that at all.

The thing was too long and thick to be called a knife, it was more like a well-made shortsword. Even though it was a short sword, he didn’t mind the length since it felt right to hold. He walked away with the two commoners in tow and went up to Unicy who was talking with the expedition members of their path today.

“Hey, Unicy I think the expedition group should train for today instead of going out.”

“Oh? Why is that? Besides that one tiger, there hasn’t been beast I’ve seen that poses too much danger.”

“Well, I want you to sit back so everyone can get the basics of training with me. Although it’s a little selfish of me since I want them to suffer with me.”

With a laugh, Unicy looked at her rugged batch and frowned. Urist was right that except a few warriors these dwarfs didn’t know how to carry a real fight.

“Alright, fellows we are going to train today.”

“Even me?”, said Ormila.

“Even you, prepare yourself!”

…

And so Unicy and the few warriors in the camp began their instruction over the newbie dwarfs. They tested the batch through tests of strength, speed, and eyesight before truly beginning. Driving Urist and co. to the bone, even Uroa couldn’t escape the grueling training the warriors put them through.

Though there was one odd thing that happened mid training when the fishermen came back with their spoils Mo stopped and stared at Urist having trouble with his spear training. Shaking his head he handed Rork his catch of the day which was a whopping fifty fish and walked over to Urist.

By now Urist was breathing rough, his heartbeat could be heard in his ears, sweat and dirt caked his body. He stabbed forward with both hands trying his best, but every time he tried to attack he wasn’t feeling it.

Unicy had tried to explain and show him how to strike with a spear but no matter how he tried he seemed to always get it wrong. It frustrated him since he knew with his short size that only short swords and spears were the dwarfs best weapons.

The hammers and large battle axes you saw in fantasy were a joke with the size of dwarfs to use unless you used a strength skill. That would be fine in short fights to use, but in long fights, it would be dangerous since you’d run out of energy fast.

As he tried to stab the air again with his spear Mo walked next to Urist and waited for him to finish. 

“You are not striking correctly, move your legs like this, and your arms like this. You have to use your whole body to strike instead of just your upper body.”

Urist stopped what he was doing and watched what Mo was doing. Mo stood in a neutral stance and slowly moved his body intentionally for Urist to see. Eyes closed, muscles relaxed, breathing clear and fluid.

He watched wide-eyed as Mo’s eyes snapped open, muscles tense, and expel all at once. Gripping his spear, he moved his body all at once and struck while spinning the spear. He caused a screeching sound through the air and at the end, a crack could be heard.

 

Part 3 - A Growing Fear

 

The crack resounded in Urist’s ears from Mo’s spearmanship who then inhaled shortly before turning to Urist.

“Do you understand boss?”

“You’re not a fisherman are you?”

Seeing Urist’s questioning eyes, Mo smiled aware that his new boss had put his guard up now.

“My father once was a master spearman, when my mother gave birth to me he gave up the path of the spear to help raise me. When I grew up, he taught me his spearmanship while we were fishing along the banks. Of the seven strikes, he taught me I only mastered the first three, other than that I’m just a regular fisherman.”

Hearing Mo’s reply, Urist felt more at ease, since he could see the genuine gaze the man held. Now that his skepticism had been cleared he wanted to learn Mo’s technique and its name.

“Mo what did your father call this technique?”

Being asked the name Mo felt kind of awkward to be asked, “The name? It’s pretty plain called the seven strikes. The move I showed you is called the first strike.”

From the exchange, Urist stopped training with his short sword and decided to work on his spearmanship under Mo’s guidance. Blowing through exhaustion, he brought forth newfound energy and began training anew. 

Mo gave a faint smile and a few pointers before leaving to do more fishing. Afterall he didn’t have a warrior spirit and would rather enjoy the regular life of fishing. Like that Urist spent most of the day training the art of the spear taking breaks when needed. As for the rest of the expedition group they already finished training and were now doing chores around the base.

One of those chores being finishing the wall and gate allowing them to now breath safely as they were protected from the outside. The pit around the wall was also finished and was layered with spikes. They also dug out the dorms so now no one had to sleep in the hallway. The smiths were working hard on getting the bronze smelted up for magic items and weapons.

And although Ajan mostly made Rune carvings in his old life, he also knew how to handle a hammer well enough. The blood mage Vlad was draining the blood away from the creatures the dwarfs caught. Urist was fine with it since it made draining quicker and the blood he drained turned into hardened crystals. He stored all the pea-sized crystals in a pouch Urist bought for him.

The base was looking good in shape by Urist’s standards. Looking around, the food source was being kept in check since Mo was a fishing professional. Rork and Rat told him that each time his spear flew the man would land a fish.

Yri’s farm was doing well with everyone giving a helping hand every so often in the work, the warriors helped out as a form of training. They were quite clumsy, using the hoes so Yri had to fix a lot of their form. When the farm got to producing they would have an extra food source to rely on.

Everything was looking pretty good, only something was nagging at the back of Urist’s mind while eating dinner. 

This Bamboo Seed event, why did it feel it’s dangerous? It makes no sense why I fear such a thing. It’s just seeds right? What harm could they do? It’s almost as if something within me is warning me of dangers and driving me to become stronger. Am I crazy?

Eating his deer meat, Urist kept thinking to himself silently as the rest of the dwarfs were chatting around the fire. The subjects in the discussion were their admiration in the completed wall,  creating the furnace and praising Hot and Baikm on their craftsmanship. Seeing how carefree everyone was acting Urist wanted to join them in the merrymaking.

However, the sense of danger kept growing, like he was forgetting something about the bamboo. He just couldn’t think for the life of him what could be so dangerous, since he couldn’t think of it he decided to just keep it in mind. 

“Hey what’s wrong? Are you feeling well?”

This time Uria was watching Urist’s expression intently seeing the confusion on his face. Urist had half a thought to tell her nothing was wrong, but it wouldn’t be good to hold this in.

“You know I told you about the bamboo seed timer right?”

“Yeah, you said it’ll start tomorrow. What wrong? It’s just the bamboo making seeds, what’s so wrong with that? Seeds can’t bring us any harm. Heck, I wonder if we could gather the seeds and eat them? I wonder what they taste like?”

Seeing Uria’s eyes sparkling with excitement about the seeds made the sense of foreboding lessen in Urist mind. 

“Right, its just seeds what harm could they do? I feel a little stupid for worrying about such a matter. We have such a strong defense and weapons what this there to worry about?”

WIth that Urist got into the spirit of it and started to enjoy himself with the rest of the group. They ate their food, joked with each other, and grew closer as a whole.

It’s just me after all, we have a week until the rat tide appears, so we can train well enough against the small creatures. If we can eat the bamboo seeds then we can eat well, heck at that point we might not need to spend points to eat!

Urist thought while sharing a drink with everyone, he brought more cheap wine since they finished the construction of the wall.

…

Time passed and it was time to sleep, the people were picked up for first watch and fire duty. Urist had to remind himself that they needed to make some watchtowers soon so they can oversee the wall.

Tucking himself in, Urist closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep. Only that nagging sensation came in the back of his mind again. This time it was stronger almost screaming at him to remember.

“Just let me sleep brain nothing is going to happen. It’s just bamboo seeds, they can only be eaten nothing is going to happen-”

And like that everything clicked.

 

Part 4 - Emergency Night Meeting

 

A vague memory from the static and clouds surfaced from his locked memories. It was a simple memory about one of his friends showing him a printed out of an interesting article. A new piece about the rat swarm of a legend that happens every fifty years in India. And what followed afterward was a great famine and starvation of the population. 

At the time before science could document it, it was treated as a myth until one year the bamboo bore seeds. Scientists watched astounded at the number of rats flowing through villages destroying crops on the level of a large scale natural disaster.

If would be fine if it was just that, but Urist knew he wasn’t on earth anymore. They had come across strange plants, fish, and even the oxygen crystal wolf these past days. If the event was important enough to get its own timer then it should be treated with the utmost care.

Would the bamboo seeds be regular? Would the rats be the same old rat? The more he thought about, the more he feared that he had underestimated the Event. Making up his mind, Urist decided to tell everyone his thought, he also wanted to ask if they ever faced strange creatures before.

He had forgotten that these dwarfs were people that had lived lives in different worlds. Although most of them had memory loss, they might remember something important. Digging out his oxygen light crystal he started to blow on it brightening the room.

The light seemed to agitate some dwarfs enough to awake them making them rub their eyes and look at Urist. They didn’t complain since this was their leader, he must have some reason to wake them when they were sleeping.

Seeing them get up Urist started speaking.

“Wake everyone and meet at the civilization stone, we are having an emergency meeting.”

The drowsiness they had was washed away when he told them it was an emergency meeting. They didn’t know what it was, but those awake started waking their fellow dwarfs. Urist left them to the task and headed out of the cave where the guards were watching the fire and the area.

“You two, come inside, we are having an emergency meeting, follow me to the civilization stone.”

Without another word he turned around, focusing on what he was going to say to the dwarfs. He needed to make a sound speech where they needed to speed up spear production and improve the wall's defenses by adding stone and watchtowers. They also needed to modify the walls to have openings to allow them to kill the rats coming at them.

If his theory was right, then there wouldn’t be your average run of the mill rats. Taking Reaver’s skill that allowed her to tame animals and increase their growth. Why couldn’t the rats gain an innate talent from eating the bamboo seeds and grow in numbers exponentially?

What if that wasn’t the only thing that happened? What if the rats would somehow grow larger from eating the seeds becoming massive masses of flesh? What if the rats could eat others that had also partaken in the bamboo seeds and grow even stronger? 

He felt crazy for thinking of things like this without proof. Only, his soul screamed that his theory was correct for some reason, he felt that his current thoughts were on the money. 

Maybe I’m paranoid and if so well shame on me. But what if I’m right? Then it would be better to prepare for a bitter fight to the death. 

He didn’t know which he wanted more, being wrong or being right. 

No matter, even a leader can make mistakes. If it comes down to it he could apologize to everyone, for his weird paranoid thoughts.     

Strengthening his resolve, he waited in the civilization room for everyone to come. Soon the room held thirty-one dwarfs within the room, they all looked at Urist in bewilderment not knowing what was going on.

He looked at every dwarf in front of him with a serious expression, by now he figured out what he wanted to say. Closing his eyes he took a breath and began to speak in a grave tone.

“In my other world, whenever bamboo started to seed rats would increase in an explosive rate. It didn’t hit me until now that this isn’t Earth, meaning that this event won’t possibly be just us facing small rats that could be easily handed. 

“In theory, I’ve thought up and hope I’m the wrong mind you. Is that I assume that the bamboo will accelerate the growth of the rats, increasing their size and numbers throughout the seven day period. If this is true I expect seven pulses or less to hit us until the rat tide is over.”

“My theory is this event is tied to the Bamboo seed event. I expect that in the next seven days this will be the most dangerous enemy our home has ever faced. Therefore I wish to strengthen our defenses in preparation. I want the smiths to work on making spears with many spikes on their heads.

“Warriors will be training and helping to build the new walkway along the top of the wall. Earth mages will be covering our wooden wall with hardened earth and stones. Besides covering the wall I wish to open entries to where the spears can settle.  

“I have other ideas for the wall, but I will touch on those later. Next order is that we will still be running expeditions just until the outside becomes too heated, and people fishing will only be allowed to do so if guarded by warriors. This will only be in effect if my guess is correct, if not we won’t have to worry about the rat swarm until seven days from now.”

Finishing his long announcement Urist looked the dwarfs, nay his people’s expressions while awaiting scorn from them.

Some were confused, others serious, scared, bewildered, and relaxed. But no one showed him scorn which made Urist baffled. He expected to be laughed at, taken lightly, or even stripped of leadership.

It was until Rat spoke up and broke the silence, “Um, boss one question. Where did this feeling come from? I believe you’re too smart to be insane and you care for us well enough not to jump at shadows to scare us. Don’t get me wrong I believe you I just want to know.”

Urist looked at Rat in the eye and was scratching his head in confusion.

“I don’t know. It’s just that my mind seems certain about this issue as if… Never mind. I told you what I feel and that is all. If you wish to ask me any more questions I am open to answer. If not let’s get some rest, we’ll have a long day ahead of us.”

A silence filled the hall, and so everyone except for the guards went to sleep.

Bamboo Seeding timer activated 11 Hours 32 Mins

Rat Tide timer activated 7 Days 11 Hours 32 Mins

Beast Swarm timer activated 15 Days 11 Hours 32 Mins

Point Amount:  4917