Chapter 6 - Dragging Them...
At the makeshift table, the atmosphere is a little cold. Actually, it's freezing.
The girls I chose all came back with a weapon in hand. It made it clear that seven of them (and a baby) would follow me to Hell if I asked them to. Tenka relayed my message perfectly, and then she asked the big question: would they follow me?
Matema, surprisingly, is the first to grudgingly come to our side. She might hate my guts, but she is old, she is smart, and she knows the truth: if they stay here, they are dead. She can tell from the look in my eyes that I won't hesitate to leave them behind. She also knows that once we are gone, I will send Red to clean up our trail.
(I can't create a panic by telling them that part, though.)
If I told them I was going to use Red to scatter their scents and mislead any pursuers—potentially using the stay-behinds as bait, but they would die and they would hate me for it. And, honestly? I would feel a little bad. Not that much, since I don't know them, and their stupidity would only hasten our doom by telling the enemy we fled and where to. It's cold calculus, but survival usually is.
All of them came in the end. Only a few are against it, mostly the ones too scared of the forest, but they don't want to be left alone to die, either. I ask Red to be wary of them. We pack all the necessary stuff—food, skins, seeds—and burn the rest.
We stack the refuse and the old huts into a nice pyre. I light it up, creating a massive column of black smoke that will be visible for days. It's a final middle finger to this place, and a signal that we were here, but now we are gone.
I grabbed the swords from the village armory, but only for the metal. They are soft in my hands, made of some garbage alloy that bends if you look at it wrong. The girls would only hurt themselves with these things. I'll melt them down later.
These women are primitive. Truly. They live on plants, nuts, berries, and fruits. They don't even know how to dry some of it for winter preservation. Lucky for them, this forest is really lush, providing food year-round, but it's also dangerous. That makes them very good at avoiding danger, fleeing, and hiding.
("They look like squirrels, don't you think?")
I project the thought to Red, watching them scurry around.
Of course, I enticed the inner circle—my generals—to eat meat. Just a bit at first. Their stomachs aren't used to it. With the energy I injected into them, they can digest it better, but they get full fast. It's a process.
To the inner circle, I gave an entire power circulatory system, just like Tenka's and mine. It adapts to them slowly, fusing with their biology. It makes me think of that old anime story, the "Otsutsuki" clan and the Senju/Uchiha lineage.
(If I think about it, I'm technically the alien invader here. I came from "outer space"—or another dimension—and I'm distributing my chakra... err, power... to the locals to uplift them. If this happens to someone else, the feeling and "color" of the inner power would probably be different. But because it comes from me, it's all uniform.)
The trip is boring and as long as Hell.
The older people are slower, dragging their feet. It seems like the men from the enemy tribe came some years ago and took a batch of the young, pretty ones. The current age range of this group is mostly younger than twenty-five, or the women above that age who weren't considered "beautiful" enough to steal.
The men should have been here to take away a few this time, too. I've got to admit, I subconsciously did the same thing with the weapons. I gave the spears and training to the pretty youth.
(It was subconscious, I swear! I'm not shallow, just... visually motivated.)
We have to hunt and forage along the way. Because of the group's size and the slow pace of the elders, the trail we leave is obvious. A blind tracker could follow us. This is dangerous, but it also gives me time to create and train my generals.
I establish a routine immediately.
Light physical training in the morning to wake up the muscles. We eat, then advance and hunt at our fastest pace until the mid-afternoon. Then, we prepare the night camp before the light fades completely.
Red stays with the other group—the civilians—to keep the predators away. There are many kinds of beasts out here, things with too many teeth and not enough fear. I take point, leading the way and keeping an eye on things.
In the evening, after dinner, the atmosphere lightens slightly. We play chess or cards, which I drew on dried skins with charcoal. Then, we transition to meditation and power wielding before sleep.
I made dice for the others and told the generals, Tenka, and Tali to never gamble or play games that rely purely on luck.
Listen. You are leaders now. Leaders rely on strategy, not chance. Leave the dice to the others. -
I don't want them to waste the time they could spend getting smarter. The others can play; it keeps them distracted. It's the civilian side of things—bread and circuses, minus the bread, plus dice.
There is not much deeper meaning behind this decision, except that I don't have time to put attention on the civilians for now, and it's easier to control them if they are simple. Anyway, except at night, they don't have much time to play. The night is long here, so we generally sleep twice. The deepest part of the night brings a heavy unease through the people. It's pitch black. There is absolutely no light. It's a primal, human fear—the terror of the unseen.
I ask Red if he can get some wolf mounts for the girls while we walk.
("Go check the pack. See if any are useful.")
Lucky for us, not all of his old tribe came to attack me that first night. Only the Alpha's hunter pack came to die. But with no Alpha male or female left, the remaining wolves must have gone hungry for a while. If they are still alive, they're desperate. It should be easy for my generals to go subjugate them now.
Tenka managed to tame a Howl on our way.
It's a massive, wolf-like creature, but with denser fur and a broader chest. Since she has more power now than I had when I tamed Red, she didn't get any drastic physical mutations, except for her eyes.
She can alter her vision to see colors or switch to grayscale thermal. She can adjust brightness to see perfectly at night. When she uses her power, the pupil dilates vertically until you only see a thin, glowing, emerald line for an iris.
Her power is soft, almost imperceptible compared to my raging river. It's quiet until she locks her eyes with yours. Then, it feels like she peers right into your thoughts, dissecting your intentions.
I tried to show her my energy perception, but it seems her ability is related to another organ. Maybe the power itself acts as a new organ. This is a bit troubling. I guess energy poisoning or mutation can exist if not carefully monitored.
(Another thing on the list to do. My "To-Do" list is getting longer than the Bible.)
Finally, after days of trekking, our team gets home.
We break through the tree line. The place is transformed. It's full of neat rows of veggie crops, bursting with unnatural vitality.
Whistle! -
I let out a sharp, piercing sound.
The girls pale a bit as they can feel the ground trembling. Thump. Thump. Thump.
It's the vibration of something heavy moving fast.
We can see him rushing full speed, destroying everything in his path—my poor fences, some bushes—lol. He stops right in front of me, skidding to a halt that tears up the turf. He takes a good, deep sniff and then snorts.
He blows my hair back with a forceful blast of air and a bit of warm snot.
The girls are all gasping, backing away in terror. Can't blame them, really. Berth is taller than me now. Only two more months have passed since I found him, but his growth seems to have restarted entirely due to his inner power.
His upper tusks are one meter long and twenty centimeters wide—absolute ivory scythes. The bottom ones are half that size but just as sharp. He looks like a prehistoric tank wrapped in bacon.
Damn pig, don't blow your snot in my face! -
He just blows again beside me as acknowledgment, shaking his massive head.
Look at you, as big as a mountain now! Hahaha! -
He is literally as big as my cabin. I turn to the girls, who look like they are about to faint.
This is Berth! Berth, this is... the herd. -
I pat his giant, wet snout. He gets closer to the women, sniffing loudly. He nudges them a bit, probably memorizing the smell. Or tasting the air to see if they are edible. Once he decides they aren't snacks and goes back to his crops to root around, they all breathe in relief.
That's when it really hits them.
I stand there, looking at them, smiling with the golden afternoon sun in the background. A huge, cultivated field stretches behind me. The landscape itself is not "natural" anymore. It's ordered. It's dominated.
All by myself, I alter everything around me a lot, usually without even realizing it. Still, I'm careful of nature; I try to work with it. But to them?
They look at the giant boar, the flourishing crops that shouldn't exist in this season, and the comfortable cabin. They can see an unfathomable future ahead of them. And for the first time, they realize I wasn't just dragging them into the woods to die.
I was bringing them to a kingdom.