52 – Artificial Paragon Energy

What once was called the White City by many, and the City of Light by others, was now nothing more than a crumbling sad shadow of its former self. The streets were swept by raging winds, pelted by incessant rain and snow that never seemed to end, and entire buildings were flooded because they had never been built with any fluctuation of the weather in mind. The hanging gardens, with their many flowering plants that once fell towards the streets below like a waterfall of green, and the fruit trees at the sides of the roads were wilted. Dead. And their leaves had been scattered through the deserted streets, making small mounds of wet decaying plant matter. They too, like the citizens of the city, had never experienced the destructive power of the environment outside, protected as they were by the shield created by the Paragon Stone.

When Julian arrived at the city, he found the gates wide open with no man on the ramparts and on the towers that defended it from possible outsiders, and from the ever-looming threat of the kingdom of Evil. As he strolled through the deserted streets, he began to fear that it was too late now, that he was too late, and that there was no city to save anymore. However, hiding in some of the sturdier houses, behind makeshift walls and dams to stave off the water, he found people clinging to what was left of the city.

“We cannot leave,” they told him. “Only the fools have left. Even though the city is crumbling, all that awaits us outside is certain death. We have nowhere to go.”

It was true. He had experienced it himself the first time he arrived on this floor. Yes, the reason he fainted and almost died was because of his own oversight, his hurry to reach Carl, and his cockiness. However, despite all that, he had been way better equipped than any of the civilians here. How could any of these people survive out there? He wondered about the people who had fled the city. He remembered seeing a long trickle of them escaping before the failure of the protective shield was even evident, simply trying to get away from the rebellion. Were they trying to go to the Kingdom of evil? Julian had never seen any indication that the Kingdom of evil was close enough to reach on foot. He had wandered that the plains far and wide while he hunted for beasts and monsters in search for cores, but all he could see through the rain and the snow were just more plains and lakes and bogs and marshes and just an endless field of grass that extended all the way to the far horizon.

There was no safety and no redemption for whoever tried to escape the city. Only the false promise that at the end of all the suffering, in the distance where the always setting sun sent its few rays of light through the thick clouds, a promised land awaited.

I’m not even sure this Kingdom of Evil even exists.

“I think I can help you,” he told the people hiding the minor noble’s mansion.

They were the first people that he found in the city, and it was them who told him that there were many other groups hiding in other houses, up in the hills and on the slopes of the mountains where the flooding was less severe.

“Who are you?” One of the men asked him. He seemed to study Julian with careful interest, keeping his distance. “You are different from us.”

Julian looked at the ashen man. His skin was darker than most others’. In other times, a statement like that would have caused him to burst out in anger and violence, but not this time. He realized now that he was not that kind of person. He had been forced to become one, sure, but he didn’t have to keep being one. There was another, better way to do things here. Having power meant that he could afford to be patient and altruistic.

“Yes,” he said, “I am a traveler from far away. I know what happened to this city and I think I can help.”

“You can help?” The man’s voice was of disbelief, not of mocking. “How do you mean to defend the city from the wrath of the gods themselves?”

“It's not the gods,” Julian said. He did find the thought of gods irritating, but ignored it. “There was an artifact defending your city from the weather outside. It projected a shield that kept the elements at bay.”

“An artifact?”

Julian nodded.

“Is it broken?”

“It was destroyed,” Julian said, feeling a pang of guilt.

“Was it because of the rebellion? Was it because the king died?”

Julian took a deep breath to steady his voice. “Yes, that was part of the reason. There was a noble, Methias… he stole the Paragon Stone, the artifact, and tried to use it for his own benefit. I had to stop him.”

If anything, having power meant that he could be perfectly honest and candid to these people, and he found that being honest was harder than he thought. It wasn’t like just speaking his mind, like he used to do. It almost crushed him with the weight of fear, the fear of what the others might think about what he said and did. He found that he had a desire to be liked, and appreciated, even though it brought him no personal gain. And the thought of these people hating him now, after he told them that he had a part to play in what had become their ruin, made him want to come up with all sorts of excuses as of why he had to do it. But he also knew what that desire, and the fear associated with it was, and how unhealthy it was. What he did, he needed to do for himself, and not so that he could raise his self-esteem through the way others looked at him, but to become a better person.

While Julian did his reasonings, a murmur went through the crowd. The mention of the name Methias seemed to have an effect on the people, and they were now looking around with scared faces as if waiting for something bad to happen.

“He's dead,” Julian assured them. “I have killed him myself.”

“Oh, thank the gods,” a woman said from the crowd. She was holding three children tied to her chest.

Julian felt heat spread through his chest.

“He conspired to take the power after the king died,” another man said, “and they locked us in our homes, and we couldn't get out for weeks while he killed anyone who dared oppose him.”

Julian hummed, trying to return to his usual cold and calculative self. He needed to think clearly. “Oh, so he did take power after all. Damned liar. Good thing he's dead.”

“You said you can help us?” The first man said.

Julian nodded. “Yes, what is your name?”

“Marcus.”

“Ok Marcus: listen to me. You need to gather all the people that you can in the town square. I know there's a big square at the center of town, I want everybody there as soon as possible.”

Julian then turned to the other men and women in the crowd and selected those who didn't have any children or elderly to protect. “You, you and you, get everyone who can leave at once and tell them to go to the other groups and have them all come to the center square. I can protect them there while I work on a way to fix the shield.”

Marcus crossed his arms. “The square is too exposed. How do you mean to protect us there?”

“I have this device,” Julian said, materializing a small machine that stood on three tiny metal feet. It was made of five triangles encased in a metal frame, rotating in opposite directions to each other. They seemed to crackle with electricity, and small blue streaks of lightning jumped from one triangle to the other, charring the orange paint on the metal frame for just a moment before it repaired itself back to new, as if nothing even happened.

“I made it on my way here, but it’s just a small version of the device that I mean to install where the Paragon Stone once was. Look.”

He pressed his finger on the device, and after the device confirmed his fingerprint, it activated. The final design would have Marcus’ fingerprint or the fingerprint of someone who could be trusted to operate the machine. The triangles suddenly stopped spinning and aligned themselves so that they all pointed up, and all the crackling electricity gathered to the tip of the topmost triangle until it erupted into a beam that shot towards the sky. A dome of energy came to be around the house, and suddenly the temperature went from freezing to almost pleasant and the wind stopped completely. There were gasps in the crowd. What to Julian’s eyes was simply a projected energy emitter, a trivial thing that he only needed to modify a bit so that it could run on magically-generated electricity, was utterly fantastical to these people. Julian didn’t revel in the feeling of superiority, however, despite the looks he was getting.

“You can make something like this?”

“I can but,” Julian began and suddenly the device stopped working and the protective dome dissipated. The temperature fell again, and the wind picked up, penetrating deep inside the house through the wide-open windows that were never made to keep the outside air out. “As you can see it needs a lot of power to operate even that these small scales. It just consumed an F rank Crystal in the few seconds it was active.”

He didn’t feed it a stronger crystal because he only had a limited supply of them. For all the treasures he looted both here and at the elves, there never were any crystals and he was always running low on them, as they were the basis of his technology and the only way to reliably generate the enormous amounts of power that he needed for his machines to work.

“A whole crystal?” Marcus asked with disbelief. “How are we supposed to keep it running to protect the whole city?”

“You're not.” Julian said. “That's why I intend to install the bigger device where the Paragon Stone was. I suspect there's a ley-line or something there, that was originally supposed to fuel the Stone.” Before it got tampered with, he thought. “As for protecting yourselves in the square… I have more than enough crystals to run this device it for a couple of days. And I have food for all of you.”

Julian smiled at the man. He was feeling good, proud of himself. He had gained no runes and yet, why did this feel better than leveling up? It was a less intense sensation, maybe, but it lasted and lasted. Leveling up was like a jolt of pleasure, as was gaining runes, but it lasted a mere moment and every time he needed more to reach the same high. This? This was completely different.

“Alright,” the man said. “I believe you. I don't know why you are doing this to help us, but I will not question you or your motives. I will just accept this gift you're giving us. Thank you, from all of us.”

Julian fought back the smile. Perhaps he was doing it for himself, perhaps he was doing it for Cal’s legacy, he didn’t know either.

“Don't worry. I have my reasons, and you need to concern yourselves with it. Now go and tell the others to bring their own supplies, plus firewood and water. I only have raw frozen food that needs to be cooked from the monsters that I hunted outside.”

***

Julian was doing trips in and out of the Oasis when the first few dozen people began to trickle into the square. They crossed the boundary of the shield without problems and immediately when they felt the warm and pleasant air of the inside on their faces, most of them smiled or cried in outbursts of emotions, and a few even went to Julian to thank him profusely for all the help that he was giving them. Every time somebody approached him, he put down the boxes that he was carrying out to the Oasis with all the supplies in them - frozen monster meat, a few crystals to feed the machine to keep it going and to keep the freezers going as well - and spared them a few seconds to exchange pleasantries. However, no matter how many of them came, he felt horrible. The menial task allowed him to reflect on the situation the city was in, and it was not good. These people had suffered. Just by looking at them, and how few of them there were, was enough to know. It was a constant reminder that his actions had consequences.

He shook his head when he thought nobody was looking at him and refocused on his current work. A new quest had appeared, and he was thankful for it and for its very convenient timing, that allowed him to distract himself from the dark thoughts that were gathering in his mind.

“Fuck”, he said. “I still need to fix the lab.”

“Well,” Julian said. “Now I'm motivated.”