Chapter 596 - Lifebringer (Patreon)

A tidal wave of green was surging towards us. Down the mountains and through the valleys, it moved at about half the speed of sound. Iona and Nina stepped up next to me, and Fenrir came down to land near us.

My eyes could pick out dewdrops on leaves from several miles away, and that’s exactly what I was seeing.

Life.

Hundreds of trees, thousands of leaves, and millions of blades of grass unfurling in the green wake. Animals of all shapes and sizes appeared. A swirl of ashes had a parrot appear in its wake. The bird shook itself off, looked around confused as several dozen more appeared near it, then they took off in flight together. A light breeze moved some ferns, and a pair of dimetrodons were sniffing each other curiously. Tigers prowled through the woods, woods that looked like they’d been there a century and yet hadn’t existed three minutes ago.

With all that, it was nearly impossible to see the Classer responsible. There were two of them, elves both, and the first was much easier to see than the second.

[Ranger - 1536]

For a brief moment I thought the elf was the only Classer, the way he blended in with the flowers and leaves, the way the animals parted around him. His clothes and outfit flickered as petals bloomed and bees buzzed, perfectly melding into the background. Horns like a regaliceratops crowned his head, two small and stubby ones flanking a magnificent central horn.

The second one was far harder to see.

[Ranger - 3626]

He - or she - wasn’t blended into the green wave, they were the green wave. They were the sprouting bamboo, they were the freshly-turned soil, they were the pollen on the wind, they were the explosion of life, the embodiment of Gaia. No worshiper, no priest, had ever shown such devotion to Aion, goddess of life. 

My eyes flickered back where they came from, expecting to see a wave of ash or destruction in their wake. Solid “old” growth trees blocked my sight.

We could see them redirect slightly towards us, and the five of us braced for impact. 

I found myself unable to properly evaluate what would happen if it came to blows. I made us close to unkillable, and if anything could fight a living forest, it would be Auri and the utter insanity that was a phoenix.

At the same time, that was over 2000 levels on us. I’d beaten enough people by pure tyranny of stats to know the same could be applied to me. Heck, the level differential was large enough that they could possibly transform me into a twig, and that’d be it. 

Kudzu grew and choked ferns, and freshly made beetles did battle with ants as the living forest stopped before us, a tall elf man stepping out with savage elegance and perfect poise. His horns were that of a great stag’s, and he seemed completely unconcerned about being as naked as the day he was born. He tilted his head at us, then beckoned the lower-level regaliceratops elf forward with a tilt of his head. 

The elf coughed once before slowly speaking, like he was talking to a child who hadn’t unlocked their System yet. Fair game in most settings, but Nina was the lowest leveled of us in the 400’s.

“We are the [Lifebringers]. Our congratulations and condolences for having survived in these conditions so far. If you have a settlement here, please, take us to it and tell us your needs. Otherwise, we will simply make a grotto here that should ease your discomfort for a season or more, should proper care be taken. In either case, we offer you the gift of new companions, men, women, and children of your species to help repopulation. Please decide quickly, as we have many places to visit.”

Lifebringer, lifebringer, where had I heard that before… I quickly delved into my [Astral Archives], rapidly finding the answer.

Duh.

He - they, clearly - were literally legendary. I’d read about them in Legacy of the Lifebringer, and they were the subject of dozens of stories, children’s rhymes, poems and plays. Not usually as the central focus, more of a force of nature than anything. Heck, until now I’d thought them allegorical, not real, living and breathing people.

If my Medical Manuscripts had saved millions of lives, the [Lifebringers] had created billions. Given that there were two of them in - I assumed - a master-apprentice relationship, with one uncapped towards the final levels, I was extrapolating that they were a legacy, more than a single person. [Druid] after [Druid] taking up the mantle. 

The stories had them sweeping in after a disaster or ‘imbalance’, plowing civilization under and letting nature loose, fresh and free. 

I didn’t like the idea of created people at all, plus there was the one big glaring issue.

“What about the conjur-” I got halfway through my question before getting interrupted. I clearly wasn’t the first person with the question, and the stag-horned [Lifebringer] looked endlessly amused at the lower-leveled elf’s visible frustration.

“We are using no conjured material.” He explained with tired roteness. “We are transforming and transfiguring existing material into the plants and creatures you see today.”

The elder elf was boring a hole into the skull of the younger elf, who sighed.

“None of the creatures created today or by us will have a System, due to the nature of such things. Their offspring, however, will have a System. If you should ask for companions to join you, they too, will be lacking a System, but their children, grandchildren, and so on and so forth will.”

I started to think about all that while the second elf turned to the first one.

“You know I’m right, not giving all the details shaves off an average of a tenth of a second on introductions and the information given, by the questions unasked.” He said.

The near-elemental grunted with his arms still crossed. The dinosaur-horned elf threw his arms up in frustration.

“Well, I had saved a tenth of a second per encounter until we had to discuss it!”

The stag-horned elf smirked, still wordless.

The five of us traded quick looks, all of us doing some hard thinking. With the possible exception of Fenrir, who was looking at all the tasty prey running right there and practically drooling.

A small herd of hadrosaurs burst out of some trees, a pack of wolves slinking through the undergrowth as they stalked them. Interestingly, there were a number of young and juvenile hadrosaurs with the herd, and cruelly, some of them were clearly sick, old, and injured. It was a rough twist, and brutally unfair. Created with a broken leg, just to be food for a predator minutes later? I understood the logic and the necessity, the balance of nature and the circle of life, but [Druid] was plummeting on the list of jobs I wanted to try out at some point. Not that I’d be a particularly effective druid, lacking classes that let me manipulate nature, but even the low level ‘is the local ecosystem doing well what can I do to help’ type was less attractive. None of the creatures had a level, none of them showed up to the System. I thought of the elf I’d helped, the Mirror-clone that my skills hadn’t been able to help. 

I imagined a few hundred or thousand people who my skills would be utterly ineffective on, and the innate horror of conjured people. Like, was he copying someone? Making a person wholesale? I was reminded of Night’s story of creation, and how similar this seemed on the surface. People would be created out of ash and dust, memories and knowledge stuffed into their head, thrust into a new and dangerous world. It felt wrong to me.

The thought sparked a second one, and I realized how similar what the [Lifebringers] were doing to creation. They were, more or less, wholesale creating life across vast swathes of Pallos, if not all of Pallos. Given the speed, levels, and area of effect… they very well could recreate entire biomes, ecosystems, and food chains.

I let part of my mind continue to explore that idea, while another section of my mind shook my head.

“I respectfully decline the offer for more people.” I said, Iona speaking a heartbeat behind me.

“I would enjoy the company of more people around us, a community to shelter and grow.” She said. The two of us traded shocked looks, quickly and rapidly communicating silently, through long years together of knowing each other intimately. We shrugged in unison.

“Vote on it.” We both said. There were five of us here, and while it was massively unfair in many ways for the five of us to decide something this large for the community, it was what it was. The druids were asking us, not Skye, not a council of the heads of households - us. 

“I vote no.” Nina said, right as Auri furiously nodded her beak. The baker-brain’s logic was obvious. More people meant more civilization, civilization meant bakeries, bakeries meant she could get back to that full-time over farming. I was equally sick of pulling a plow, no matter how satisfying growing crops was and how tasty teleporting food out of the ground onto my plate was. 

In a bit of a surprise, Fenrir was the tie breaking vote. He scanned the herds of animals, and Iona’s shoulders slumped as she knew his answer.

“No.” He growled out the single word, launching into flight. The tall [Druid] watched Fenrir’s flight, then turned to the younger one again.

“Unusual apex predator in the region, change the predator-prey mix to accommodate.” He answered the unspoken question. Definitely a master-apprentice relationship. I was questioning how and why it was a master-apprentice with the levels involved - wouldn’t he know everything he needed to know by 256, 512 tops? - but hey, I wasn’t in the business. Maybe they traveled as a pair for safety, companionship, or some other reason. Maybe the ‘questions’ and answers were to reinforce each other’s company, to break up the potential monotony. I had no idea, although I was as curious as a bee about it. I let part of my mind speculate wildly on various ideas, some outlandish, some entirely plausible.

Wasn’t going to piss off the person who could potentially turn me into a tree by asking too many questions though.

A little down the hill, a herd of water buffalo were reconstituted from ashes, built up in moments as tall grasses sprouted all around them. The ground shifted, a small spring burbling to life under my feet, and started to flow down a channel carved into the side of the hill, ending in a depression, soon to be a watering hole. 

The [Lifebringers] didn’t spare a look for what creations they were making behind them. I supposed I didn’t always look at the people I healed. The two of them surveyed the other side, the side with Orthus Town and all our farms. We could see our farm from here in all its segmented glory. 

“Let us move on.” The elder [Druid] finally spoke, and the two took off again. Nina and I both opened our mouths, but were stunned silent at the wave of green that overtook our home and lands.

There was clearly more to being a [Druid] than ‘life and nature good, people bad.’ Crops exploded with growth, ripening in an instant and dropping their fruits, before withering away to nothing, leaving a perfect harvest on the ground. Fruit trees burst out of the ground, oranges and pears instantly ripening to various stages. Berry bushes went from dying dreams to full maturity in a moment, and the ashes!

The miasma we’d been living in since the cataclysm vanished, turning into new life. The haze that had overshadowed us and blocked out the sun, the omnipresent boot on our throat disappeared in a moment, transmuting into life and growth.

With the [Lifebringers] hard at work, I seized the moment as I spotted the fruit trees.

“A few mango trees please!” I asked in a hurry, getting my request out before they were done. 

They obliged, and I enthusiastically high-fived Iona, Nina, and Auri as a trio grew out of the top of the hill we were on. I’m pretty sure they had some fun at my expense though - they grew the trees large and tall enough that the lowest-hanging fruit was out of arm’s reach. Not that it could stop me from getting some from ways as mundane as jumping to weaving complex spells of my own… but the joke was clear. Iona casually grabbed a ripe one and tossed it to me, and I started to take a bite.

All the while, the [Lifebringers] continued working, finishing before my lips touched the heavenly flesh of the most divine mango.

It wasn’t just crops, fruits, and berries. The two of them grew great grain silos, and thick layers of kelp twisted and grew off the shore, making docks and piers. Wood twisted and grew to make fences adorned with flowers and leaves, and hives of busy bees were seemingly conjured out of nowhere. Chickens were created in roosts, cows found themselves in feed fields, already fenced in, and a trio of goats came into existence on top of our house, testing the construction of our roof. No two fields were the same - one farmer got psittacosaurus, famous for their eggs, and another got minmi, dinosaurs good for their studded leather hides. 

Two hundred years or more of growth and development in a moment. From choking on ash to the cleanest air I’d ever smelled, from a small handful of crops to so much variety we couldn’t sustain it all, from a lack of animals to hunt and husband to cows being plonked down in fenced fields, we suddenly had it all.

All praise [Druids]. All hail the [Lifebringers]. I was going to see that a thousand stories got written about them.

They didn’t stop at the farms. Vast forests sprang up around the edges, enough wood to build eight armadas, and fish were dense enough in the water that I felt like I could walk across the entire Sea of Stars on their back. A great whale breached deeper in the bay, and a sudden thought struck me, pausing the mango’s descent towards its inevitable yet tasty demise.

Were the [Lifebringers] the reason why I hadn’t seen a single extinction notification? I couldn’t imagine any of the huge sauropods surviving the last few years, not with the lack of green leaves, and yet there hadn’t been any extinction notifications. Rare to large, not a single species had gotten marked extinct.

It wasn’t just life they brought, although that was their name and title. Dead trees were created, a great source for fungus and other mycelium. Carcasses were created, and would soon attract clouds of buzzing flies and crawling maggots to swarm around them. Spiders and beetles, worms and moths, the entire range of life from great to small popped up. I wanted to curse as mosquitoes, bane of all living things, were made. They couldn’t pierce my skin, but the endless bzzzz in the night combined with my enhanced hearing utterly sucked. 

I hesitated over shooting a thick beam of Radiance through them and simply eliminating them all. It would keep us mosquito-free for years, if not decades, but the really strong Classers right there might object. As I hesitated, they scattered and dispersed.

Damnit.

I had to imagine things were happening on a micro level as well. Bacteria and viruses, all part of nature’s grand tapestry, had to be made. Joke was on them, I’d pit my healing against anything they created.

I was impressed. I’d thought I was a good biomancer, even lacking the class, but the casual display showed just how far I was from anything resembling mastery. They had to know every last detail. From the composition of cow’s milk to the mating cycle of every bug, from the range and territories of millions of creatures to geography and how it made each biome, then to which creatures in which ratios would thrive, from food webs to architecture and construction, the sheer range of skills and knowledge on casual display, worked out in moments, left me breathless. Transmuting ash into living beings? The complexity boggled the mind. I knew enough theory to be impressed.

Maybe the apprentice was still learning at level 2048. With such a massive range of things to know… gods, if I were a hundred years younger, I’d consider walking the path, simply for the knowledge.

Without fanfare, without a goodbye, without a word, the two [Lifebringers] sped away, a growing green wave mixed with a thousand and one species left in their wake - I even spotted a unicorn! Fenrir dove down onto a dinosaur as I finally took a bite of the mango, skin and all.

After years of deprivation, it was the sweet nectar that let the sprout of my soul unravel again and drink deeply, revitalizing and rejuvenating.

Mango.