The two Guardian Treants moved. It was a geological event. One hundred feet of woven vine, iron hard bamboo, and armored gourds shifted weight. The ground was pulverized.
They took three massive strides, crossing the no-man's-land in seconds. They pulled back fists and slammed them into the main gate of Grand Rapids.
The sound was deafening, a crack of thunder that rolled backwards over our army.
But the gate didn't buckle and the stone didn't crack.
Instead, a shimmering white barrier flared into existence. It covered the entire city like a dome, rippling with geometric patterns that absorbed the kinetic force of the Treants perfectly. The massive fists rebounded as if they had struck rubber.
Frank, standing next to me with a pair of binoculars, let out a low whistle.
"That’s Grade 4 Array work," he muttered, adjusting the focus. "Maybe even Grade 5. The geometry is recursive as it feeds on kinetic impact to strengthen itself. We’re locked out, man."
"Fall back!" Bells shouted. "Form a defensive line! Don't let them flank the heavy units!"
The Treants stepped back, their movements lumbering and confused.
Then, the counter-attack began.
Five smaller service gates along the base of the wall slid upwards.
"Movement," Joakim called out. "We've got hostiles. Looks like... infantry?"
I squinted. It looked like water spilling out of a dam. A white liquid pouring onto the earth.
It wasn't water. It was people.
Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. They wore simple white robes, stained with dirt and grease. They didn't have armor or tactical vests. They carried rusted hunting rifles, machetes, kitchen knives taped to broom handles, and lengths of pipe.
They poured out of the five gates in a screaming and chaotic tide.
"Numbers," I demanded.
"calculating..." Goros’s voice was tight in my head. "Density suggests one hundred thousand per gate. Total hostile count: Five hundred thousand."
I froze. "Half a million?"
"If they can field half a million soldiers this quickly," Goros continued, "the population inside that barrier is at least three million. This is a hive."
My army—my expensive, well-equipped and decently trained First Division—numbered ten thousand men.
We were outnumbered fifty to one.
"They're rushing us!" Bells screamed, his composure cracking for a fraction of a second. "Archers! Free fire! Do not let them touch the line!"
The white tide screamed. It was a sound of religious ecstasy. They were running toward salvation.
I looked at the sheer volume of biomass rushing toward us.
Panic flared in my chest, the old instinct to run, to hide in my garden. I crushed it. I wasn't a gardener hiding in a hole anymore. I was a gardener who had brought the world to my garden.
"Turn," I ordered calmly to the treants. "Ignore the wall."
"Face the crowd," I said. "Harvest the crop."
The meat grinder began.
The First Division held the high ground. My ten thousand soldiers, clad in Grade 3 Verdant Jade Bamboo armor, formed a shield wall. Behind them, the archers drew their bows.
"Loose!" Bells commanded.
A cloud of bamboo arrows blotted out the sun.
They fell into the white mass. There was no need to aim. Every arrow found a mark and sooner then later the front line of the Cloud army evaporated, turning into a slurry of white robes and red mist.
But they didn't stop or even slow down. They climbed over the bodies of the fallen, their eyes fixed on us, their mouths open in silent screams of devotion.
The Treants waded in.
It was horrific. The massive constructs simply walked and every step crushed dozens. They swung their arms low, sweeping hundreds of fanatics into the air, breaking bones like dry twigs. The Sky Piercer turrets on their shoulders shot rhythmically, firing stakes of hardened wood that punched through ten men at a time.
"They have no discipline!" Bells shouted, firing wind blades that decapitated lines of attackers. "They have no strategy! They're just throwing meat at us!"
"Attrition," I whispered. "Qolius doesn't care about them. He's trying to drown us in blood. He wants us to run out of ammo before he runs out of bodies."
"We have infinite ammo," Joakim reminded me.
"But we don't have infinite stamina," I said.
I watched the battle unfold. My soldiers were efficient machines of death. Their bamboo swords shore through the rusted weapons of the cultists effortlessly while the enemy’s bullets bounced off their jade armor. We hadn't lost a single man yet.
But the white tide was endless.
An hour passed. Then two. The pile of bodies in front of our line was becoming a physical obstacle, a ramp of corpses that the enemy used to climb higher.
"Flank!" Joakim’s voice cracked. "Left and Right! They opened more gates!"
I looked to the sides.
From hidden sally ports in the distance, two more armies had emerged. But these ones weren't wearing white. They were clad in black robes.
"Two hundred thousand more," Goros reported. "Moving to encircle."
They were moving fast, trying to wrap around the Treants and hit my archers from the sides.
"Division 1, pivot!" Bells ordered. "Protect the rear!"
"No," I said. "Hold the line."
"Kaz!" Bells yelled. "If they flank us, we're dead!"
I stepped forward, walking past the command tent to the edge of the ridge.
"I am the flank," I said.
"Expand."
I dumped 500 Qi into the earth.
A wave of Verdant Jade Loam Soil surged out from my feet, racing down the ridge, spreading left and right to intercept the black-clad armies.
"Wall."
I visualized the barrier.
Massive walls of Heavenly Bamboo grew from the ground, ten feet high, growing with violent speed. I built a funnel and walled off the sides, forcing the flanking armies to squeeze into narrow kill zones.
The black-clad soldiers slammed into the bamboo and hacked at it with axes, but the wood was harder than steel.
I didn't need soldiers to man these walls.
"Sky Piercer."
The walls themselves bristled and thousands of hollow tubes formed along the surface of the bamboo.
A rain of wooden missiles launched from the walls, firing point-blank into the massed infantry. It was a massacre. The flanking armies stalled, pinned down by the very terrain they were trying to cross.
But they kept pushing. They were climbing over the dead, climbing over each other, trying to scale the bamboo.
"Tenacious," I muttered.
"Corrupted," Goros corrected. "Look at their eyes. They aren't afraid or feel pain. Qolius has removed their survival instinct."
I looked closer. A man with a missing arm was still trying to climb, using his teeth to grip the bamboo.
It was sickening.
"I’m ending it," I said.
I focused on the ground beneath their feet.
"Razorgrass."
The soft loam I had spread suddenly shifted and the grass blades elongated, turning rigid and serrated. They lashed out like whips.
I added Mandrakes on top of the walls for anyone that got any ideas and got too close.
The screaming started then. It wasn't the scream of devotion anymore. No. It was the scream of shredded meat as the Razorgrass grappled them, pulled them down, and turned the ground into a blender.
"Goros," I commanded. "Pacify."
I planted seeds near the front lines—hundreds of them.
Goros clones sprouted instantly, their yellow eyes blinking open.
"Pollen," Goros said.
Yellow clouds of dust exploded from the plants and drifted over the battlefield.
The numbing pollen worked fast as the cultists who breathed it slowed down and their weapons dropped from limp fingers. They stumbled, their eyes rolling back, and collapsed into the Razorgrass, paralyzed but alive.
The momentum broke.
The white tide faltered while the black flanks were trapped in a cage of spikes and sleep.
"Retreat!" a voice wailed from the city walls.
The horn sounded—a dissonant note.
The Cloud army broke and the survivors turned and ran, trampling their fallen comrades in a desperate scramble to get back to the safety of the barrier.
I stood on the ridge, watching them flee.
The field was a landscape of horror. White and black robes were stained red. The air smelled of blood. So much blood.
"Status," I asked.
"Cloud casualties estimated at 400,000," Goros reported. "Dead or incapacitated."
"And us?"
"Eden casualties: 1,024," Bells said. "Most were trampled when the lines pushed too close."
I closed my eyes. A thousand men. Mechanics. Teachers. Men I had promised a paycheck and a future.
"Set up camp," I ordered. "We aren't leaving until that city falls."
The week that followed was a test of sanity.
We established a massive siege camp just outside the range of their archers. I grew bamboo barracks and laid down moss carpets to keep the soldiers warm as I handed out Heavenly Potatoes, Cucumbers and Tomatoes by the crate, using the healing properties to knit broken bones and soothe the trauma of the massacre.
But the smell... the smell of the battlefield was inescapable.
The barrier around Grand Rapids held. It shimmered in the sunlight, mocking us.
Frank and Sal worked in shifts, analyzing the energy signature, trying to find a frequency to crack it.
"How long?" I asked on the fifth day.
We were sitting in the command tent. Frank looked exhausted, his eyes bloodshot.
"A week," Frank said, rubbing his face. "Maybe two."
"Take your time," I said. "We have food. They don't."
I looked at the city with three million people trapped inside. If they were desperate enough to charge a tank column with kitchen knives, how much food could they possibly have left?
The atmosphere in the camp was tense. The soldiers didn't celebrate the victory. They cleaned their armor in silence and looked at the mountain of bodies in the distance wondering if they were the monsters.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
I walked the perimeter every night, reinforcing the bamboo, expanding the soil.
"You are brooding," Goros said from my pocket.
"I'm thinking," I said.
"You are wondering if it is worth it," the plant guessed. "You are wondering if you have become the villain."
"I killed half a million people, Goros."
"You defended yourself against half a million brainwashed zealots who wanted to eat your liver," Goros corrected. "Perspective is key and you provided the mercy of the pollen. White Hill would have used napalm."
"It doesn't feel like mercy," I said.
Day seven arrived with a change in the wind.
The barrier flickered.
I was standing on the forward observation platform with Bells when it happened. A ripple passed through the white dome, like a stone thrown into a pond.
A side gate opened up.
"Movement!" a sentry shouted.
Bells drew his sword instantly. "Here they come again. Second wave."
"Hold fire," I ordered.
It wasn't an army.
A single man walked out.
He was unarmed and wore robes. He held his hands up, palms open, showing he carried no weapon and walked slowly and deliberately, toward our lines.
"One guy?" Bells lowered his sword, confused. "Is he defecting?"
"I come in peace!" the man’s voice said. "We wish to negotiate! The High Priest has heard your message!"
The Eden generals relaxed and I saw shoulders drop. I saw smiles break out on the faces of the soldiers.
"Finally," Bells breathed out, sheathing his weapon. "They surrendered. Thank god. I didn't want to kill any more of them."
Sal clapped Frank on the back. "Looks like you don't have to do the math after all."
"Stay back," I said.
The command tent went quiet.
"Kaz?" Bells asked. "He's surrendering. This is what we wanted."
"It's too easy," I said, staring at the lone figure. "They lose one battle and surrender? After throwing half a million lives away? Fanatics don't surrender."
"They're starving, Boss," Sal argued. "You broke them."
"I don't like it," I said.
"It's one guy, Kaz!" Bells snapped, his patience fraying. "Look at him! He's skinny, he's shaking, he's wearing a bathrobe! What is he going to do? Bite us? We have an army of ten thousand and two giant tree monsters! Take the win! If you don’t go then I will!"
I looked at Bells. He was desperate for this to be over. He was a tyrant, but he wasn't a butcher. The slaughter had rattled him more than he let on.
"I'll meet him," I said. "Alone."
"I'll come with you," Bells stepped forward.
"No," I ordered. "You hold the line."
Bells frowned but nodded.
I jumped off the platform.
I walked out into the field, the mud sucking at my boots, the smell of death clinging to my nostrils.
The man stopped halfway between the gate and our lines and waited for me.
As I got closer, I used [Root Sense] to scan him.
He was... empty. No weapons or hidden artifacts. His bone density was low and he was malnourished. He was just a man.
I stopped ten feet away.
"Name?" I asked.
The man smiled. His eyes were clouded with cataracts.
"I am Jeffrey," he said softly. "A humble servant of the Cloud."
"Where is Qolius?" I asked. "I negotiate with leaders, not servants."
"The High Priest is in prayer," Jeffrey said. "He has seen the error of resistance and acknowledges the strength of Eden. We wish to join you as a... Subsidiary."
He knew the terminology.
"The terms are unconditional surrender," I said. "Qolius steps down and we take control of the city. We distribute food and dismantle the cult."
Jeffrey nodded eagerly. "Yes. Yes, of course. We only ask for mercy and food."
He took a step forward, extending his hand.
"Do we have an accord, President?"
I looked at his hand. It was dirty and trembling slightly.
It felt wrong. Everything felt wrong. But my sensors were clean. My [Root Sense] showed nothing.
If I shook his hand, the war ended. The killing stopped and I could feed the three million people trapped inside.
I reached out.
"We have an accord," I said.
My fingers brushed his.
Jeffrey’s smile widened and stretched and kept stretching until the skin at the corners of his mouth tore.
"The Cloud welcomes you," Jeffrey whispered.
"NO!" Goros screamed in my mind.
Jeffrey’s Qi flared outward and his very soul imploded, triggering a biological cascade failure. The corrupted Qi that Qolius had planted deep inside his cells detonated.
"Shield!" I screamed, but I couldn't form the bamboo fast enough.
Jeffrey exploded.
It was a wave of pure, white, corrupted force.
My vision went black.
Silence.
Then, ringing and a high-pitched whine that drilled into my brain.
I couldn't feel my legs.
I opened my eyes.
I was lying on my back.
I tried to sit up but I couldn't.
I looked down.
My armor was gone. Vaporized.
My legs were gone.
My left arm was gone.
My torso... I could see my own ribs and the pulsing of my heart, exposed to the open air.
"KAZ!"
The scream came from far away. Bells.
I rolled my head to the side.
There was a crater where Jeffrey had been. I was lying on the edge of it.
Bells, Sal, and Frank were running toward me, screaming. Their faces were pure horror.
"He's dead!" Sal wailed. "Oh god, he's dead!"
"Fuck!" Bells roared. "FUck! FUCK!"
I tried to speak, but blood bubbled in my throat.
Calm, I told myself. Panic kills.
I focused on my heart. It was beating. Fast, erratic, but beating.
Green steam erupted from my wounds and hissed as it hit the cold air.
Pain tore through me as my body remembered its blueprint.
Bone knitted together with the sound of grinding stones and my femur shot out from my hip, lengthening, hardening. Muscle fibers wove themselves around the bone like rapid vines. Nerves sparked and reconnected, sending jolts of agony to my brain.
"Stay back!" Bells yelled, stopping the others. "Look!"
They watched in stunned silence.
My liver regenerated. My stomach reformed. Skin sealed over the raw meat.
My left arm grew out from the shoulder, the hand forming last, the fingers snapping into place.
Legs. Feet. Toes.
It took thirty minutes.
Thirty minutes of writhing in the mud while my allies watched me grow myself back from a piece of meat.
The steam faded.
I lay there, naked, panting. The new skin was sensitive to the cold.
I pushed myself up as my new arms held my weight.
I stood up.
I looked at my hands. They were clean.
I looked at Bells.
He was pale and looked like he was about to vomit. He had seen me regenerate a cut before. He had seen me regrow a hand. An arm. But this? This was resurrection.
I walked toward them with steady steps.
The silence was terrifying while the entire army was watching.
I stopped in front of Bells.
He flinched.
"Kaz," he whispered. "I... I thought..."
"You are relieved of command," I said.
Bells blinked. "What?"
"You are done," I said. "You wanted to rush and accept the surrender. You dismissed the threat because he was 'one guy in a bathrobe.'"
I stepped closer, invading his personal space.
"If I had listened to you... if I had let you come with me... you would be mist right now. You cannot regenerate from that. You would be dead."
Bells opened his mouth, but closed it as he looked at the crater. He realized the truth of it.
"You do not give orders," I continued. "You do not move. If you speak out of turn again, if you question my caution again, you are fired. Do you understand?"
Bells swallowed hard and looked at me—at the fresh scars fading on my chest, at the monster who refused to die.
He nodded. "Yes… Yes, sir. I understand."
I turned to Frank and Sal.
"Finish the siege," I said.
"On it!" Sal squeaked, running back to the walls.
Qolius is willing to spend human lives like ammo. He detonated a minion just to take out a leader. That was a biological nuke. He has weaponized his own population. He is dangerous.
That wasn't the most dangerous part, however.
The most dangerous part is that it almost worked.
An hour later the white barrier around Grand Rapids shattered and fell like glass, dissolving into light before it hit the ground.
Frank and Sal opened the main gates.
The city was exposed.
"Stay close," I ordered, my eyes fixed on the darkness within the gates. "It's time to take the city."
Name: Eden
Rank (Local): Major
Rank (Global): Minor
Capital: Eden City Hall, Southfield
Demonym: Edenite
Government: Corporate Democracy
Area: 68.01 km2
Population: 82,674
GDP: 6.6 billion
GDP per Capita: 79,831
Detailed
- Government
- President - Kaz Kaaz
- CEO - Grace Beckenfein
- Chief of Staff of the Army - Bells Ruper
- General of Second Division - Joakim
- General of Third Division - Frank
- General of Third Division - Sal
- Chief of Medicine at Southfield General - Siegfried
- Governor of Adam - Mayah
- Governor of Eve - John
Territories
- Southfield: Eden’s capital. Supplies labor and workforce.
Colonies
- Adam: Supplies stones and Wilds items.
- Eve: Houses 24/7 Mart
Subsidiaries
- Crisbol
Diplomacy
- Seaside: None
- White Hill: Unlimited Heavenly Tomatoes for 6 months (1 months left)
- The Cove: Plants for potions
- Government: None
Military
- First Division (Army)
- General - Bells Ruper (Relieved)
- Soldiers - 10,000
- Second Division (Recon)
- General - Joakim
- Soldiers - 50
- Third Division (Engineering)
- General - Frank (35)
- General - Sal (15)
- Soldiers - 50
Eden Train
- Colony Route
- Adam
- Eve
- Subsidiary Route
- Crisbol
Objectives
- Race of the City States: Annex Michigan (Franchise Model)
- Win the war: Take Grand Rapids and defeat Cloud
Name: Kaz Kaaz
Age: 37
Birthday: April 30th, 1988
Path: Heavenly Gardener’s Path
Cultivation Realm: Sprout (Stage 3)
Qi Capacity: 2000 / 2000
Domain Stats:
- Soil: Verdant Jade Loam (Grade 3)
- Ambient Qi Generation: 192.8 Qi/Hour (via Heavenly Moss Verdant Jade Loam Grade 3)
Skills
- Gathering: Extract Qi/Materials from plants.
- Nurturing: Infuse Qi to accelerate growth/mutate plants.
- Swordsmanship: Proficiency with Spirit Bamboo Sword.
- Dominion: Mental control, teleportation, and acceleration of plants within the Domain.
- Alchemy: Refine plant matter into consumables/artifacts.
- Awaken Plant Spirit: Grant sentience to a plant (Cost: 25 Qi).
- Seed Identification: Analyze mundane seeds to reveal hidden magical potential.
- Root Sense: A Qi sense. The user can feel Qi, water, structures, and energy signatures through the earth. Range increases with cultivation level.
Dao
- Growth: Photosynthetic Regeneration. The user’s body heals at an accelerated rate. Severed limbs can be regrown as long as the heart remains intact.
- Expansion: Botanical Garden. The user’s Dominion is no longer tethered to physical proximity. If the user owns the soil, the user can access the Domain from anywhere.8
Active Plants (Grade 3)
- Tim (Awakened Heavenly Tomato): Sentient. Cures all non-magical diseases and purifies moderate poisons. Permanently boosts Constitution by 100% and increases natural healing rate by 10%.
- Goros (Awakened Heavenly Toothache): Sentient. Produces pollen that numbs and eye for reconnaissance.
- Heavenly Bamboo: Indestructible wall. Active Defense: Thorn Reflex.
- Heavenly Moss: Bioluminescent (Gold). Generates 192. Qi/hr.
- Heavenly Mandrake: Sentry. Psychic scream.
- Explosive Heavenly Squash: Explosive impact grenade.
- Heavenly Tuber: Increases food yields by 200%.
- Heavenly Cucumber: Quenches thirst for 1 week and restores moderate Qi.
- Heavenly Potato: Wards off hunger for a week and increases density of muscle fiber.
- Heavenly Filter: Purifies contaminated water.
- Heavenly Whispervine: Dampens sound and energetic signatures.
- Heavenly Gourd of Holding: Grows a gourd containing an extra-dimensional space.
- Razorgrass: Becomes monomolecular knives on command. Can grapple and shred.
- Sky Piercer Bamboo: Surface-to-air missile battery. Launches hardened bamboo tips at high velocity.
- Grounding Vine: Absorbs/drains electricity (anti-tech).
- Voltaic Vine (Special Grade): Generates electricity
- Bioluminescent Bulb (Special Grade): Generates light
- Glacial Gourd (Special Grade): Generates cold air
- Eden Guardian Treant (Special Grade) (Transport Variant): Organic bullet train.
- Eden Guardian Treant (Special Grade) (Tank Variant): Organic bipedal tank.
Inventory/Equipment
- Verdant Jade Loam Bamboo Sword (Grade 3)
- Verdant Jade Loam Bamboo Armor (Grade 3)
- Verdant Jade Loam Bamboo Bow (Grade 3)
- 260,724,918 Spirit Stones