Path of Dragons

Book 6: Chapter 80: Thorn

Elijah couldn’t stop grinning, and for a variety of reasons. The first was the most obvious – they were finished. The Trial was done. Sure, they still had to decide whether they wanted to embark on a quest to slay the Lightning Emperor – which seemed like an issue that was well above his paygrade. He was all for fighting for truth, justice, and all that, but going up against Yloa seemed a lot like a suicide mission. Someone else could worry about Transcendent threats to the multi-verse. He had all he could handle with Earth’s problems.

So, functionally, they had no other challenges before them. Now, all they had to do was wait until the end, collect their rewards, and go home. With how much Elijah missed Earth – and everyone in it – the notion of a homecoming definitely came with all sorts of good vibes.

The second reason for the smile on his face was a little closer. Kurik kept muttering about piles of crystals while fiddling with his key. It was a decidedly human – or dwarven – moment that reminded Elijah just how close he’d come to his companions. They’d spent months together, and he’d learned most of his friends’ quirks. And they’d accepted his as well. It left him feeling warm and fuzzy in a way that very little had since the world’s transformation.

Finally, Elijah’s happiness could be attributed to the fact that he’d made significant progress regarding his progression:

Looking at his status left Elijah with a sense of serious accomplishment. The Wild Infusion upgrade hadn’t just combined three buffs into one, but it had also increased their potency by a significant degree. It was a long time coming – the previous Essence line of buffs had become almost negligible in their effect – but that didn’t mean an additional fifty points in Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution wasn’t an enormous boon. He only wished his Regeneration and Ethera had experienced similar growth.

Of course, his Connection specialization continued to show benefits in that he received two points every level to each of those last attributes. So, in the past five levels, he’d gained ten points to Ethera and Regeneration. In all, his attributes had reached a very acceptable level, though he wasn’t certain just how much of a benefit they offered.

That was largely because, as he’d established before, it took time to acclimate to the infusion of power. Ethera, Regeneration, and Constitution were pretty static, and Elijah wasn’t sure if he could control them at all. However, getting the most out of his Strength and Dexterity would require a lot of practice. That factor meant that his effective attributes were probably lower than the numerical value, just because his continued progression meant he never quite had an opportunity to settle into his new power.

He intended to change that when he got back to Earth.

But then again, he expected that he’d be even busier then than he was within the Trial. Not only did he have responsibilities at home, but he’d also promised to help in Hong Kong. And he hadn’t forgotten that most of the world’s population was still balanced on the edge of a knife.

No – he probably wouldn’t have much time to train and acclimate to his attributes. Instead, he’d have to get used to adjusting on the fly.

In any case, as happy as he was with his updated status, Elijah was far more interested in the next notification:

Elijah’s smile fell away – mostly due to the last warning, but also because he had no idea which path he wanted to follow. The choices seemed pretty self-explanatory. Shape of Thorn would probably still be very defensive in nature, but with a lot more attention paid to controlling his enemies. He had no idea what form that additional control might take, though.

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The second option, Shape of Nature’s Bastion, would lean hard into the defensive abilities. And Shape of the Ravager would focus a little more on offense. Beyond the basics, he was a bit lost, save that he didn’t particularly care for the wording of Shape of the Ravager. He wanted to control his rage, not embrace it.

Still, he had to admit that it probably fit his fighting style a little better than the others, if only because the lamellar ape was less of a defender and more of a durable offensive fighter.

And finally, the warning at the end worried Elijah. He didn’t have enough information to know what spells might be merged into the new form, but if it was something he relied upon in other situations, things might get a bit dicey.

“What’s up, bro?” asked Dat.

The group had chosen to rest a bit before leaving the challenge and heading back to the Nexus Town. None of them were injured, but they were all worn out by the constant fighting while they’d crossed the Academy Aracana. A few hours of rest would help with that.

“Spell evolution,” Elijah answered. “And I’m not sure exactly which way I want to go. I want to make the choice before we leave here, though.”

“You’ll still have to do a quest, right?”

Elijah shrugged. “Mine usually auto-complete,” he answered. “I barely notice them.”

“You must have a lot of Feats of Strength.”

“I guess so,” Elijah admitted. In truth, he’d kind of taken it for granted that he would immediately complete the quest. The only time that hadn’t happened was when he’d upgraded Ancestral Circle to Roots of the World Tree, and he suspected that was only because the spell simply wouldn’t work without his dolmens.

“What are your options?”

Elijah briefly considered keeping that information to himself, but he was surprised to find that he’d grown to trust the other members of his group. Not only with his life, but with the details of his class as well. He’d never been particularly secretive, but even he could predict that he didn’t want to go shouting that kind of information from the rooftops.

Regardless, he trusted Dat. Sadie, Ron, and Kurik.

So, he read the details of his evolution to Dat, adding his own commentary before ending with, “I’m just not sure. If I had a little more data, I could make a more informed choice. But I feel almost like I’m flying blind here.”

“When I make choices like that, I usually just trust my gut,” Dat stated. “I think that’s how some of this works. Intuition isn’t just some vague, poorly defined thing anymore. It’s a real sense of what fits you best. At least that’s what I think. It’s probably based on our attunements and aspects. Actions too, maybe.”

That made sense, after a fashion.

So, he looked inward and tried to determine which one of the options best fit him. That’s when he realized something important. Each evolution of his spells – like his specialization and the upcoming evolution of his class – represented an opportunity to steer his development in a specific direction. In the past, he’d only considered that fact in the broadest sense, as it affected his overall progression. The Druid archetype was a slightly non-combat skewed jack-of-all-trades that had a wide variety of abilities at its disposal. He’d long since resolved to push it toward more of a combat role.

Yet, the choices weren’t as black-and-white as all that. Sure, he could take the Shape of the Ravager, and it would probably be powerful. But that could be said for all of the options, he was certain. The problem was that Shape of the Ravager would steer him into territory he’d actively tried to avoid so far.

It had been quite a while since he’d lost control of himself and fully embraced his animalistic tendencies, but the memory loomed large in his mind. And Shape of the Ravager would almost assuredly make that more difficult. So, despite his instincts nudging him in that direction, he ruled it out.

So, it was a choice between Shape of Thorn and Shape of Nature’s Bastion.

“I wish I knew what they’d look like,” Elijah said. “That makes a difference.”

“Do you want to know what the ghosts say?” Dat asked.

“They can help with that?”

Dat shrugged. “It’s a weird spell. I’ve gotten more control over it lately, so I think it would work.”

“Go nuts, then,” Elijah responded. Any additional information would be welcome, and Dat had proven multiple times that the ghosts associated with Hex of Scrying were accurate enough to trust.

A slight surge of ethera announced the activation of the spell, and Dat’s brow furrowed. He didn’t say anything for almost ten seconds, but finally, his expression relaxed before he said, “The first one is some kind of lizard-like creature covered in roots and thorns. The ghosts called it the thorned sentry.”

“Bipedal?”

Dat shrugged again. “Didn’t say. The other one is called a groveshell titan. I got the impression that it was kind of like a turtle, but the ghosts didn’t say anything else about it.”

That was enough information to decidedly skew Elijah’s choice. He had no problem moving on all fours – both his draconid and blight dragon forms were quadrupedal – but he’d gotten used to being upright in his guardian shape. On top of that, he had to admit that the notion of being a turtle wasn’t really appealing, and for a variety of reasons. The first was associated with that option’s general description. Being devoted to pure defense sounded great on paper. But the more he thought about it, the less it made sense.

After all, his group already had a defender. And once he and the others parted ways, all defense with no offense seemed like a bad combination for self-sufficiency.

He made his choice, resulting in another notification:

As was the case with his last few spell evolutions, he’d already completed the requirements. That notification was soon followed by another:

But that wasn’t all. He quickly saw another notification that undercut some of what he’d just read:

“Damnit,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Some of my spells were just absorbed into the new one,” he stated. It seemed that Shield of Brambles and Snaring roots had been replaced by Natural Thorns and Domain of Vines, and he had to admit that the new versions sounded better – assuming they were just as strong. Often, he forgot to even use Snaring Roots because his enemies had outpaced the effects. The same was true of Shield of Brambles, which he always had active, but rarely had an effect. So those being absorbed wasn’t a huge loss.

Nor was Iron Scales, which had become progressively less effective as his opponents grew more powerful, a huge loss. Besides, Scales of Bark sounded like a straight upgrade, considering that it would always be active.

The big loss was Guardian’s Renewal, which had saved his life more times than he cared to count. Sure, Unchecked Growth seemed like it might be an upgrade, but it was difficult to tell for sure because of the different terminology. Guardian’s Renewal had – falsely, as it turned out – claimed complete healing. The new version would increase his Regeneration by a significant margin.

But it was too late to toss around regrets or second guesses. Every evolution of a spell was supposed to be an upgrade, so he had to trust that Shape of Thorn would follow that general rule.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Let’s see what this looks like.”

With that, he embraced his new spell. As was the case with Shape of the Guardian, Elijah felt himself growing. His arms and legs lengthened, and his musculature became more pronounced. When he looked at his attributes, he was more than pleased to see that his Strength and Constitution had increased by an additional fifty points compared to Shape of the Guardian. In addition, his Dexterity and Regeneration had grown by twenty-five each. He couldn’t stop himself from looking at his new status:

Before, the Shape of the Guardian resulted in an increase of forty-five points to Strength and forty points to Constitution. Shape of Thorn sent that number skyrocketing to ninety-five and ninety points respectively, adding the bonuses to Dexterity and Regeneration on top of that. It was an incredible amount of attributes, and Elijah immediately felt the difference.

“Bro.”

“What?” asked Elijah, his voice rumbling.

“You look…awesome.”