Bloom

Before I can get to Wen’s memory crystal mail messages, a squeak from my alarm system notifies me that someone is entering the entrance of my lair. Considering my lair is in the middle of the Flame Domain of the Eight, I’m slightly confused. The memory of this being a Cultivation based planet though quickly snaps me out of it. Any decent fire cultivator probably thinks my Flame Domain is a holy land. It would aid with cultivation speed, insight into the Laws, and a host of other things. Without a doubt some of the resources within are either unattainable on this planet, or guarded by entities of extreme power, like, me.

I open up my energy senses, narrowing in on several figures standing at the entrance to my lair. They are all wearing robes of various scarlet, or red shades, and have a host of differing weapons. Since there are only five of them, I really am not that worried. After checking their power levels though, I become slightly more interested. One of the cultivators is concealing his power level to appear far weaker than the rest. On a planet like this there are only two reasons to conceal your power level, one betrayal, and two better betrayal. Another, one of the females, is most definitely not human. I feel like I’ve seen her type somewhere before, but I thought they sparkled more?

Flaunting power is a symbol of both status, and a way for both parties to accurately judge the strength of the other. Accurate strength judgements allow both parties to understand the boundaries of negotiation, and successfully conclude all types of transactions. While most of the stories I read from our previous world talk about how people throw their weight around, here it doesn’t happen. Simple survival dictates that you would never do such idiotic actions. The beggar you disdain could turn out to be an Overlord for the Godly Gardener’s sake. It would be nothing short of suicide to treat people with contempt, disdain, or apathy. The exception to this rule is of course when you are so far above others that the distance is like between heaven and earth. Even then most people would say it pays to be cautious, and leave arrogance at the door. In fact, from my observations over the last two and half centuries, people are pretty polite. Politeness costs nothing, can get everything, and best of all keeps everyone from clan destroying bloodbaths.

Clans are something I discovered when I was studying the humanoids that had invaded my territory. Essentially everything sentient seems to be part of a clan, and if not a clan, a hivemind that might as well be a clan. If it thinks, it clans, that’s pretty much what I see so far in this world. Rare exceptions might be limited to beings of Divine level or higher power, such as me.

Or maybe Dragons.

I hear they exist in this world, which made me a bit nervous.

Not like I’m still suffering millennia later from being dragon-napped from my nap in the Colosseum by the Green Lady.

Not me.

I’m normal as can be.

The heck, who lit that workbench on fire?!

Anyways, I move my attention from the melted workbench that I’ll repair later, to my guests.

I cannot move from my current lair without effectively wasting the past centuries I’ve spent digging towards the core of this planet with my roots. Everything I see so far tells me it could be awhile before I manage to get there. If I’m not there in at the halfway point of our two millennia meetup, I may have to rethink my plans.

This planet is big after all.

This means of course that I really don’t have the patience to entertain guests.

So entering my lair is well, if not a death sentence, certainly life imprisonment at the bare minimum.

As I watch the five intrepid fire cultivators start the maze portion of my lair, I watch the older male of the group pull out a complete cartography set. Pencils, maps, you name it, this guy has it all. There is even a book labeled in runes that say ‘World Map’ to me.

Would be kind of pointless to be able to create Runes if I couldn’t read anything I come across after all. Since runes are formed from the understanding of the multi-verse and the intent of the user, no two runes might be the same. My rune for Immortality could look totally different, and act far stranger than another person’s. However, both runes would be read as Immortality if seen by different creators of a high enough understanding.

Long story short, unless the Rune is above my level of understanding, I can read it. Elven moon runes are nothing to me, a mere Chaos rune is above them by several orders of magnitude. Much less mortal runic languages, those are like children’s scribbles to anyone with decent runic knowledge.

Oh? A few hours later, it looks like the female I noticed earlier is starting to act. The group is made of three females, and two men. The oldest female appears to be the leader, while the oldest male appears to be her partner.

The young female, who was the one I noticed from before that isn’t human, is currently luring the older male off from the group at the moment.

They appear to be engaging in mutual mating practices, before the young female takes a bite. For brief moments the older male struggles before his expression changes into one of absolute bliss. I watch as the younger female milks him both of blood and other fluids before finishing him off. She grabs the pouch at his waist, searches the body before stripping it of everything valuable, and then turns the corpse to ashes. Since my energy senses are watching the other group, I see the change in expression between both the younger female, and the older female leader of the group with my abilities to multi-task. It looks like there is a solid conspiracy going on, most likely the older female takes a cut of the kill. A common practice among many types of humanoid hierarchies, and this makes the inclusion of the young male hiding his power level even more interesting.

I bet the females are a group that prey on others, and the young man is hunting them.

Hours later my idea bears fruit as the youngest female is mercilessly killed by the young man when she lures him away from camp. The killer of the old man, and the older female immediately flee deeper into my lair. Most likely they had some sort of connection that allows them to know when another dies. Common talismans with a trace of soul or some such probably.

I trigger a switch, and the maze they are in changes. Now they will be unable to use teleportation, as the time surrounding the inside of the maze is frozen. A true master of space and time could get out, but these people are not that. Essentially the outer walls of the maze are now giant blocks that would require decent understanding of the Dao of Space or Time to bypass. Frozen time is harder than billion year old glacial Ice element after all!

The older female betrays her younger counterpart to die when the young man reaches up with them both. Lucky for me, he ignores the dying younger female to chase the older one, who is apparently more evil, or wanted for greater crimes.

As soon as they both depart the area I reach outward and pull the young female to me. I may not be able to manipulate space, but simple teleports are still well within my power.

My branches move downwards doing a variety of tasks. Time is slowed around the young woman so she doesn’t die from blood loss immediately. A set of branches is tasked with healing, while a set of roots is tasked with inking her bones in runes. I have come far since that experiment on Sam back in Durant. My research has taken me to wonderful places!

As I finish work on the young woman I reach outwards into my maze where the other two are currently in the last rounds of combat. As soon as the older female is killed I reverse time around her letting her rise once more.

Just because you kill someone in my lair, don’t think that means they're dead, boy.