Mage And Wolf
Chapter 116

Chapter 116: Chapter 116

"Kill a duplicate me?" The Vampire asks, not following the conversation. I explain all about dungeons, how he got caught in a time loop, and that we don’t know if removing him and his stone will cure the corruption in the area when the dungeon resets.

"And if it doesn’t work?"

"Then I’m going to send someone to burn the forest and kill you every morning."

"That’s a bit rude. But not unexpected of a Lycan. If you told me you would save me daily I would know you were lying though."

We lock him in his box, the cursed crystal now safely hidden in his storage ring. The moon comes up on our side as the portal resets. The moment of truth is here.

"I’ll go in first, if it didn’t work, we’ll burn the place down again." I inform the group and I can hear laughing from inside the sarcophagus.

"Don’t let the dryad hear that or she will be even more violent than if she was corrupted"

The whole dungeon has changed. It’s now green and vibrant, animals scurry about, the treants swing their branches at me, a huge white snake pokes its head out of the trees and hisses.

"Hey guys it worked. It won’t corrupt the outside anymore, but they’re still not happy to see us"

"At least they’re not giants. But it’s already dark, can we go back now?" Kel’Mira asks. The white robed Priestess really isn’t a fan of the dark, or monsters, or fighting monsters in the dark.

I suspect she only volunteered to heal a group because she didn’t want to see anyone die that could be saved.

The Vampire has a Travel token that can return him to his proper home world, away from the time locked area, so he will be going home after talking with the dryad in the portal, seemingly a friend of his.

A message awaits us when we return to the Adventurer’s Guild, mostly empty handed for once. The bodies mostly burnt, and we only grabbed the cores that were convenient, not even doing a full sweep.

The message is in Karl’s writing

’The first school term starts in 2 days. Hui’Jin is enrolled, please have her back on time. Karl’

I’m glad he remembered the little things, like education, finding managers for the city and such. I’ve left him stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare for months, surely there are enough people now that he can escape. I heard Lelou say that the Dean of a University is only ever in a few times a month.

"Party meeting before bed" I call, gathering everyone around.

"Young Hui’Jin here has school starting in 2 days. That was the message I just received. Now, that means we’re going back to Arcana, I’ve got unfinished business there, but do you want to stay here, or come with us and work out of there?"

"It’s a beautiful city, and they’re are plenty of teams to join, even teams of many species. You can hunt portals, patrol for loose monsters, or even just live a good life of quiet cultivation. Goddess knows you’ve got enough money and resources stay locked up for years."

The other 3 look at each other for a while, before nodding. "We’ll come to Arcana first, get settled in and then decide. Both cultivators and Adventurers are needed everywhere on this planet, so I’m sure we’ll do alright." Vinnie speaks for the group.

"Excellent, we can leave in the morning. Now if you’ll excuse me, I want to master a few more recipes in this cookbook ’Chef’ Song wrote."

The Guild doesn’t seem the least bit sad to see us go this morning. That might have to do with the massive bounties they’ve had to pay out, but they should be glad we kept all the monster cores. If we traded them off we’d likely have enough coinage to buy half the city.

Category 3 beasts have just started showing up, and the cultivator population is still mixed with the general population here. If they don’t cloister themselves, and soon, the city economy which is still based on US Dollars will collapse.

But that’s not my problem yet. I’ll just send a message to the city council giving them a recommendation to build cultivator specific communities and avoid driving up everyone’s home prices.

Word has it that Arcana has already done the same. Ignoring availability in the underground of the old base, which is mostly reserved for officials and VIPs at this point, the city had an ingenious plan to avoid disastrous housing prices for workers.

The floors all have Mana Gathering formations in the residential blocks. Every 10 floors the intensity of the formation doubles. So the highest floors are the prime location for cultivators, paying the huge amounts only they could afford, with traveling merchants providing equivalently expensive luxury goods to serve them.

Maybe I’ll set up a pill shop when I get back. Sell some of the excess I make while practicing and take in some of that extra money floating around the city. That’s where almost all of a cultivators money goes anyhow, to improving their cultivation.

The bottom floors and outdoor areas, which are really the only ones more than sparsely occupied so far, have more energy than outside the walls by double, but have the feeling of a blue collar working community, which I suppose they are.

Just being in the city is a luxury akin to being in the acolytes area of a sect. There’s hard work and missions to do, but there’s more resources to cultivate than outside.

Not nearly everyone in the city is a Mage or Cultivator, most won’t have the necessary talent, but should someone in their family show the ability, they’re better off just for living in the city.

We say our goodbyes to the Guild Hall staff and head out for the Travel Gate, joining the long line of merchant vehicles headed to Arcana for their daily deliveries or to set up shop. The gates really make commuting across the country a simple task, like we’re all neighbors of sorts.

We get a warm greeting upon arrival, the werewolves of Athena’s pack are working traffic control for the now much busier spire. I see that at least one of them has a fresh mating mark on her neck. Congratulations to her. Four of the ten available gate spaces are now operational, so traffic control has become a high demand job.

Jurgen and The Ramirez Brothers just missed us it seems, they’ve all broken through to Fortification Realm with the help of Karl and a load of pills, so they’ve gone to Houston with a Mage they met on patrol.

Using their in with Karl, they got ammunition creation and lightning penetration enchantment circles for their magic using member, giving them the ability to keep permanently stocked and fight the giant beasts at range. Good for them, we made a killing at it.