Did Elijah like his new circumstances? Not in the slightest. Was there anything he could do to get out of it? Also no. His current situation was being forced upon him and the group with iron chains, and there was little chance they would be released before it was finished.

  It had been going fine. They met with the dwarven diplomat, discussed current affairs, and ate and drank without any offenses being made. Elijah had been able to explain his confrontation with the strange minds inside the leyline to Grace, Aleksi had been able to sample just about every type of meat that the dwarves harvested from Darim’s dungeon, Sasha had been left alone, as she had requested, and Jack… Jack, the man of the night, had been granted the privilege of bombarding the dwarf with questions.

  Most had been inane, but Hafrad Silverstone had taken to them well. The patience of the dwarf had outmatched that of the elven diplomat, and the rounds of questioning had continued for much longer than Elijah had anticipated.

  It was certainly longer than it should’ve been. If either of the two parties had announced that they had grown tired, maybe this entire ordeal could’ve been avoided and Elijah could’ve relaxed on their way back.

  But, instead, Jack just had to screw it up.

  He could’ve waited until after.

  Impatience had made the young man reveal his cards to the wrong foreign party. If he’d shown off his abilities in private, to those only affiliated with Serenova, it would’ve been a delightful discovery. Even if Mithril was outside his realm of study, Elijah knew just how incredible a revelation this was. To transmute any metal into mithril was unheard of, and Jack’s ability to do so had just turned the market for the white gold on its head.

  And he’d done it in front of a damned dwarven diplomat.

  We can’t change the past.

  Elijah was annoyed. Not angry. If he allowed every stupid thing young people did to get to him, he would’ve been a red mass decades ago. But, still, he was annoyed. The consequences of Jack’s actions were destined to be unfolding for months to come, and even in the short term, they were apparent.

  “What a small boomstick,” Hafrad commented, as Jack showed off the newest iteration of his pistol. “Barely any weight to it as well. Is it not at risk of shattering when used?”

  “It might not weigh much to you, but this here is a very decent weight for what humans are used to,” Jack explained. The man took apart the top of the weapon with ease, showing the barrel’s rifling along with the single bullet loaded as an example. “From how you’ve explained it, I think you guys focus more on close-range power rather than medium-to-long-range. I don’t think my version could blast through the armor of some monster with an inch of stone instead of skin, but this could still pierce through a person’s leather armor from fifty yards.”

  “Must be human leather, if it can,” the dwarf countered, studying the weapon with what seemed like genuine curiosity. While the short folk didn’t carry that same level of arrogance that the elven people made clear at all times, Elijah didn’t doubt that they thought their own ways of crafting to be superior to most of anything else.

  Though, that wasn’t to say that the dwarf wasn’t interested. While different from the diplomat’s own experiences with crafting ranged weaponry, Hafrad was more than happy to hear every detail that Jack would give about his pistol. From the way that the assembly was optimized for cleaning to how Jack was still fine-tuning the rifling to increase the accuracy beyond ten feet, there was no end to the questions.

  And it only worsened when Grace grew tired of listening in from the side and interjecting with her own ideas.

  “If the sound when firing is that big a problem for stealth, why not silence it?” she questioned. Elijah had quietly predicted that a rant about ‘silencers’ would erupt from the curly-haired man in response, but the chance of that had vanished at her next words. “If you isolate the frequency of the shot, any Sound Mage worth the title could reduce it to a whisper.”

  Was it truly so? To a point.

  Elijah’s ears had certainly been spared from the loudest of the blasts, although they were most certainly still there. Quieter by the day, but noticeable regardless. Quiet enough to let him focus on his own discoveries.

  ‘It’s changing again,’ Dawn dutifully reported while chewing through another day’s worth of expensive meat. ‘It’s blue now.’

  Removing his eyes from the pages of the tome, Elijah inspected the flowers again. They were a shorter variant from the Goldenrod family, the same height as the tall grass to reduce damage from wind, and, as the name implied, known for having a beautifully golden color.

  Right now, however, they were a bright pink.

  ‘Close to blue,’ Dawn insisted.

  ‘If I were to ask Grace, I believe she would say the opposite,’ Elijah replied, brushing his hand against the tiny flower heads. They were soft, offering no resistance. ‘Try to focus on something other than the color. The flexibility. Imagine something more rigid.’

  No direct orders for the flowers to change, no intentional signaling that he craved alterations to the world around him, and yet… It took less than ten minutes of reading before Dawn interrupted him again.

  ‘They’re swinging around.’

  Looking over, he saw she hadn’t lied. Even with only a mild wind from the east, the stalks of goldenrods were swaying far more than the grass that surrounded them.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Tilting to the side, but without any bend in the stalks.

  Impractical. There was no reason for this, other than to comply with external demands. Elijah’s demands, to be clear, no matter if he’d intended for them to be demands. Odd thoughts about the variety of the foliage, a need to eat, mutterings about the sharpness of the sun while resting, and anything else that could be in any way interpreted as a command to change the world around him was taken as an order.

  It started a few days after they set out when they reached the areas where Elijah’s machinations had fully converted the greenery. The amount of Mana in the plants had increased just a little, which had been a curiosity, but it was the changes that came with his thoughts that were much more fascinating.

  The changes weren’t large and neither were they instantaneous. They were small, not too far from the plant’s origin, but they were likewise undeniable.

  Elijah personally thought it a quirk of his continued connection with the plains. To saturate it all with his own Mana for such a long time had to come with side effects of some variety, and, since he could already pull some amount of Mana from the wild plants, was this so surprising?

  Without a doubt.

  The book didn’t mention anything like this. Intentional modifications and bonds were the bread and butter of Biomancy, but there was nothing intentional about this. Elijah’s mere presence was enough to bring about changes.

  His heart rate increased a little.

  The pulses of the goldenroot flowers matched it. An instinctual reaction, but not one that came from the plant’s pattern.

  It was from his body if he could even distinguish it now. As he stood in the fields that permeated with his magical essence, Elijah doubted that his form could truly be said to end at the skin.

  One step further away from humanity.

  ‘That is good.’

  “Of course, you’d think that,” Elijah muttered, waving away the questioning glance from Aleksi. “Dungeon’s giving me its opinion of my thoughts.”

  “This far out from the city?” Aleksi commented. With good reason as well. They were still an hour of riding away. “Thought you needed to be just on top of it.”

  “Range must’ve increased,” Elijah supposed, a reason for the sudden boost forming in his mind. ‘I can feel your influence in the grass.’

  ‘I am in the grass,’ the dungeon replied. ‘Very strange.’

  ‘Why the sudden desire to leave your tunnels?’

  ‘Not leaving. Eyes travel further,’ came the instant correction. ‘You connected to me. Forced a bridge. Bad design. Made me curious.’

  Before he knew it, Elijah felt waves of minor adjustments to the grass’ structure flow into his mind. Improvements to increase efficiency, a better encapsulation technique to conserve long-distance signals, and a small list to handle edge cases that he’d never considered.

  Yet no forced changes. The dungeon didn’t go through with any of the alterations, despite an instinctual desire to do so.

  ‘Can’t,’ the dungeon explained. ‘Influence of the pillar. Close but still too far. Later.’

  ‘You think you can control the plant life I’ve converted in the future?’

  ‘Maybe. This is new.’

  An unprecedented discovery. Elijah could feel the edge of trepidation that came along with it, though he didn’t get to question the feeling before the presence of the entity vanished from his senses. Perhaps something else had become more interesting?

  “That stench. I see the rumors understated the truth,” Hafrad muttered loud enough for Elijah to hear. “To have leashed a tarrasque of such power… even without its aura, it inspires fear in me.”

  The monster in question couldn’t be seen just yet, though the tallest tower of the royal castle was just barely in view.

  “Please be assured that we know what type of monstrosity we’re keeping,” Louis attempted, falling into the diplomatic role that had been loosened up on these past days traveling. “Great care has been taken to ensure that the tarrasque is of no threat to the people of Seronova.”

  “Its mere presence makes it a danger to all,” Hafrad replied in a dark tone. “Alas, I cannot blame your choice to keep the creature under your command. It is undeniable that it stops any smaller force from ever successfully attacking your capital city.”

  “Our thoughts exactly.”

  Elijah noted the look that Fade sent towards the young prince. Silence came soon after, and it was kept that way as they rode closer to the city. The tarrasque was in full display by then, having its afternoon meal of meats that were being shoved into its mouth. It was obedient during the process, never moving its head as a dozen men worked in tandem to satiate its appetite.

  But those eyes were a different story, as the reptilian pupils shifted towards the small caravan.

  ‘—pillar?’

  What?

  For the briefest of moments, Elijah thought he’d heard a voice. A woman’s voice, with a depth that would make a grown man shake, but it was gone before he could say for sure that he hadn’t imagined it.

  He wished he had, but recent developments made him doubt it.

  “Elijah Caede, returning from an official expedition with Louis Newell,” Elijah recited once they reached the gate. “Accompanying us are our bodyguards, my pupils, and Hafrad Silverstone, the chosen diplomat from Darim.”

  “Another diplomat?” the guard murmured.

  “What do you mean another?” Aleksi questioned.

  “Uhm… We’re not supposed to say, sir.”

  “I’m the Royal Healer, young man,” Elijah countered. “Anything you’re privy to is within my jurisdiction.”

  “Right, sir. Sorry, sir,” the guard replied, eyes falling to the ground. Now that Elijah was thinking back, he had never seen that face before. A trainee, most likely. “Ethon’s diplomat, Lura Fadan, arrived twenty minutes ago, to speak with our queen. The captain granted her an immediate escort to the castle.”

  Since Harper appeared in the same minute, Elijah knew the day’s work had barely started.