“You always seem to be preoccupied with sothing. You should take a break and lie back for a little while, do sothing less stressful! And also, you won’t be getting away with not starting a family with for much longer, Honey”
As Leton sat in his office deep underground, Gallilah’s words echoed inside his head. His monsterfolk wife was often correct when it ca to such things… As for what she had said last, Leton was split.
Naturally, he wanted to have children of his own soday, and thanks to his close relationship with the king, this was sothing that could be achieved despite the radical difference in species between him and his wife–However, he did not believe himself to be capable of being a good father.
Everyone always told him that he was a good person. He had contributed heavily to defending Rootriska and its allies, and was often coming up with great inventions that could help countless people, and he was doing it all because he believed that it was the right thing to do. Nonetheless…
…How could he be a good father when he was such a terrible brother? Being a good person and being a good brother felt mutually exclusive for him… He could never have pretended to be good while truly remaining his sister’s brother.
Then again… It felt hard to call himself a good person now, despite knowing what sort of person Mara had been all this ti. He didn’t know if he would be able to refuse returning to the forr status quo. If right now, a genie were to appear and offer him the chance to get back to how it once was with Mara, he didn’t trust himself to refuse, despite knowing the sort of things she could and would do.
Leton sighed and rose from his seat, his cane in hand. He stepped out of the office and into the wider underground workshop. The entirety of this space was humming with machinery of all kinds, all sorts of work-in-progress creations were to be found, many currently paused due to Leton having to pour his focus into sothing else in particular…
The public was mostly unaware of it, but the incidents with unusual creatures being spotted had never truly stopped. They hadn’t increased, but the severity of the encounters had been getting worse.
For one, a certain abyssal creature had been running amok, pretty much uncontested. It was frighteningly smart and seed to be able to sll danger from kiloters away. It never allowed itself to even be spotted by anyone who could actually hurt it, but as dangerous as this sounded, the abyssal creature was not a powerful mber of its kind–Or rather, it wasn’t problematic in the way people imagined an abyssal being to be.
It lacked the ability to properly spread abyssal corruption. It only seed able to infect other beings, but not the soil or water, and even then, the success rate was about fifty per cent. Thus, it was a low priority amidst the vile beings wandering the continent.
Leton had been paying close attention to this phenonon. He was aware of how bad it could get and how quickly things could occur in quick succession when dealing with so of these creatures.
So, as much as he would like to seek out his sister, who he was certain was still alive. He had retrieved the footage recorded by SHLAD-01 when the robot had returned to him, and Mara had very clearly just disappeared out of thin air. She hadn’t been defeated, and chances were that she was still roaming sowhere…
Unfortunately, as ridiculously dangerous as she alone was due to her absurd mastery of so lethal nightmares–She still wasn’t as dangerous as what he was currently dealing with.
The range of abnormal creatures prowling in places where they had no business being was large…
Hell-Scorched Creatures, Erald-Blessed Creatures, Gravity Spawns, Obsession Fiends, Devil Beasts… This was only a handful, and despite the frightening nas and real damage they could be capable of, they were the least dangerous of the bunch, and most of them could be dealt with without even fighting.
The real issue ca to the creatures associated with Great Realms. The Abyss was one of them, but the only known abyssal to be wandering around was thankfully not capable of propagating the Abyss on its own, but that wasn’t the case for all.
‘Great Realm’ was a sort of catch-all term used to describe special realms that were said to be more akin to different worlds entirely. They were said to link and connect all of the different worlds in existence. The most trusted source that Leton had found had described Great Realms as infinite spaces that existed within the hollow portions of the very fabric that made up the Cosmos.
…He would be lying if he claid to fully understand what this ant, but he got the gist of it. In short, a Great Realm could be understood as exceptionally bad news, but amongst them, the corruptive ones were the worst. It was complicated to find proper records about Great Realms, as so realms tended to swing back and forth between being supposedly ‘great’ or just being the normal kind of realm, just nasty.
So sources Leton found listed literally hundreds of them to the point that the nas sounded more and more like they were made-up. For now, he focused on the ones he was certain were the real deal, and which he had evidence of having reached the continent.
They were as follows: The Abyss, The True Void, The White Bog, The Fungal Tide, The Nothing, and The Dredge.
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Already, there were way too many of them. Not too many of them present, too many in existence. Leton hadn’t been aware of this before beginning his research, and it had thus consud way more ti than expected to learn about them and figure out how to create inventions capable of locating and dealing with them.
They each had their specificities, but all of them were of the corruptive kind. If a rift connected them to this world, they would seep through it and infect anything they ca into contact with.
The Abyss was the most common one to breach into the world, but alas, it was currently the least dangerous of the bunch… Nonetheless, Leton had done his howork and learned that, although highly dangerous, abyssal corruption was slow as it spread in the form of a gooey liquid. It was the easiest to contain when detected due to its slowness and the fact that it needed to make contact to infect sothing.
Since it was visible to the naked eye, anyone with a brain would be able to keep their distance.
The Abyss only beca a huge problem if left unchecked, or if it ca accompanied by so of its residents, especially the kind capable of spreading the corruption themselves.
In this regard, The White Bog was actually very similar. In fact, with the limited amount of intel available to Leton, both kinds of corruption were actually identical in how they functioned and how they were dealt with.
The only real difference was that The White Bog had, during the handful of tis it had ever appeared in recorded history, always first taken over a body of water, from which it would begin spawning swarms of monsters. Abyssals were twisted beings, while bog-spawns were simply masses of white, mud-like matter. They could take form from the mont White Bog took root.
Thanks to a machine Leton created, a rift was located a few weeks ago and successfully closed before a breeding ground could be created. Unfortunately, the rift had spat out a creature as well, and it hadn’t been willing to fight to the bitter end and had run away.
The supposedly serpent-like creature had since been engaging in guerrilla-style warfare, attempting to outmanoeuvre its hunters while trying to corrupt bodies of water. Even now, it was still managing to remain elusive, but the hunters on its tail were successful in harassing it enough to essentially make it harmless.
Leton was a bit nervous about sothing like this being allowed to live for so long, but he couldn’t do anything about it for now…
The True Void and The Nothing were as odd as they were dangerous. Their creatures did not follow much logic and seed to force their will upon their surroundings as though they believed themselves to be gods. In fact, their denizens were truly what was most dangerous about them.
Although unpredictable, their corruption was slow and seed unable to actively affect most living beings. Even small insects seed to resist just fine, the corruption only ramped up when entities were involved or generally present. A rift opening to either of these Great Realms was easy to deal with as long as it didn’t spit out anything native to it.
Nonetheless, due to having the ability to be far sneakier than the others, they were treated with extre precaution.
Leton arrived in an area where dozens of similar-looking experints were stacked up in piles. His idea to deal with these rifts was very simple… Leton sought to invent a machine capable of absorbing any rift and keeping them contained within it.
Of course, it would be too risky to hope that they wouldn’t be able to break out eventually, so he also aid to invent sothing that would connect to one Great Realm in particular–The Dredge.
Unlike the others, it was far less aggressive and wasn’t actually very corruptive normally, and not in the sa manner as the rest. It also had a very clear… ‘Personality’, The Dredge, as the na implied, had to do with the accumulated things on the bed of a body of water.
Rather than seek to clear them out, however, it sought to pile more and more. Much like a hungry beast, if fed things of interest, it would not only stay calm, but even sotis extend a helping hand.
Leton had been able to confirm that it quite enjoyed chanical parts already, but he planned on feeding it the construct that would contain rifts to it. While Leton didn’t have a single clue how strong one Great Realm was compared to another, it seed like the nature of The Dredge was that anything that fell into its ‘water’ was dood to sink and beco a part of its ‘bed’.
It would act as a trash can for the rifts.
…This all still left one of the Great Realms he knew for a fact had so form of presence on the continent. In his eyes, the worst of the bunch.
The Fungal Tide was, as its na spelt out, about mushrooms. It travelled through spores and only needed to make contact with sothing to begin its corruption. Compared to the others, it could spread incredibly quickly.
It alone was why Leton couldn’t spare any ti seeking Mara out. It was just far too dangerous. He needed to create sothing to combat it. So far, only a single rift had opened, and they had gotten lucky since it had opened inside a mine, where it wasn’t able to travel far, allowing several fire mages to work together to cleanse the entirety of the mines with excessive firepower.
A closed environnt was ideal, but was unlikely. Therefore, Leton needed to prepare sothing else.
“Mmh… Master…?”
“Oh, I didn’t notice you here, Heldion. What is the matter?”
“I wanted to show you this”
“Ah, if it isn’t a chanical clock. I didn’t show you how to make this one, very impressive. How did you do it?”
Heldion rubbed his shoulder.
“I took apart another one, and recreated what I saw in reverse…”
He answered as though believing that it was a bad response.
“Reverse engineering is a good skill to have, and I only gave you a chanical clock a week ago. This was quite fast. I think you might just be ready to move to sothing more substantial… You’ve watched build quite a lot of automatons, yes? Why don’t you try making one? You can use the workshop opposite to the one you usually work in”
“Un-Understood, Master!”
Indeed, Leton had taken an apprentice under his wing. Heldion seed to have a knack for working with machines. He certainly seed to have better predispositions than any other chanist he had ever encountered.
“Mmh… I think I know what I need to deal with The Fungal Tide…”
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