Standing on a ledge of rock that overlooked the passage into the huge cavern, Carmack watched as the procession of refugees passed through—his earth elemental, Tark, standing at his back and the High Priest at his side.

  “It will take some time to move everyone through such small passageways,” High Priest Managra mused, stroking his white beard. “The caverns beneath our city may have been dormant, but I have read the words of many scholars who have traveled the Undercavern. Monsters and even settled races abound down here. I fear our people are vulnerable. What difficulty would an attacker native to these halls of rock have ambushing trespassers like ourselves?”

  “None,” Carmack grunted. “But unlike you, I am not a denizen of the surface. My eyes have adjusted over generations of darkness, and I see better down here than I do above ground. But most importantly, the rock speaks to me through my mana.”

  “Oh?” Managra turned to Carmack with a raised, wiry white brow. “Is that how you found this passage and allied yourself with a living rock?”

  “It is. And my mana tells me there is a land of opportunity down here. I can feel it ahead. This is where we shall build a new city and reach a level of prosperity your people could only dream of.”

  “Ah, such grand plans. As one would expect from a great hero,” Managra nodded, but Carmack heard the doubt lingering on the edges of his words. “But I should warn you, not everyone will be so eager. They will miss the sky above their heads, the grass beneath their feet, and the soothing crimson of the waning sun.”

  “Worry not, old man, I do not make such plans without forethought. If my hunch is correct, there will be enough wealth down here to say even the most hardened critics.”

  “The spell led us to you, and because of that, I shall trust in you.”

  “Good, now we must focus on our passage through these tunnels. I must direct my attention to my task, as I do not take the lives of your people lightly. I shall go ahead and scout. I shall erect walls to guard our flanks at every off-turning tunnel. However, I do not have the mana to strengthen them. Have your sentries ordered to guard these walls, which I will mark with a handprint. But order your guardsmen to remain strictly defensive; might we otherwise bring hostility down upon ourselves.”

  “Wise indeed,” Managra agreed.

  “If danger is spotted, I am to be called to assess and deal with it if necessary.”

  “Ah, and how are we to do that if you scout ahead?”

  “I will leave the earth elemental to watch the vanguard and keep you safe. If you have a message for me, let it know. You may not be able to discern its intelligence or whether it can understand you, but trust me, it can. As a magical entity of the earth, it, too, can send its mana through the rock as I can, allowing us to converse over great distances.”

  “Impressive. I shall see your orders fulfilled. But please, hero, do not hesitate to direct our leaders yourself if need be.”

  “Call me Carmack. And perhaps I shall do just that once I return,” Carmack nodded to the High Priest and strolled down toward the narrow, zigzagging path connecting them to the lower platform where the refugees were gathering.

  Passing through the cavern, Carmack soon discovered that many of the glowing lights were distant mushrooms. Some he encountered towered multiple stories high and puffed glittering spores into the musky, subterranean air. He knew he would have to navigate around those ones, his instincts telling him it was best not to breathe in the spores.

  It seems the environment in this so-called Undercavern is not so different from Avalock.

  Passing the gathering crowds, Carmack walked up until the stone platform where the refugees gathered ended abruptly. Stepping up to its edge, he stared down nearly vertically into a shadowy abyss that not even his trained eyes could see the bottom of. However, walking along its edge soon took him to a narrow ledge that traced the cavern’s wall, providing a path around the ravine. It was about two meters wide, and while it was perilous, he could feel that the earth beneath it was strong and would not crumble underfoot.

  But that wasn’t what concerned him. The threat was the openness of it. He was new to this world, but Avalock had many flying creatures making homes in its underground caverns, and he had to consider the chances that this world was similar in that regard.

  There is no means that we move so many people across this ledge quickly and no method of defending them against winged creatures should they attack.

  The wall that bordered the ledge climbed straight to the rocky ceiling far above their heads. It was the only way across the ravine unless he found another way.

  He had already seen too many similarities between the worlds to risk this route.

  There’s no alternative—we need to find a way around this.

  There were many tunnels and passages around, but he needed one that would take them in the right direction. Focusing his mana, he investigated the alternative routes.

  Moments later, Carmack’s eyes flung open. There was one promising passage. It veered away and in the wrong direction, but his mana told him that it would lead them where they needed to go.

  Sighing, he decided he needed to scout it out. It was simply too dangerous to attempt crossing here. If there were a better alternative, they would have to take it.

  As Carmack walked around, slate rock paved the ground like natural stairs, tunneling deeper into the earth, and natural vents spilled hot air into the passage. He knew to be on his guard. Such environments invited creatures of the underground to take nest.

  He looked down at his empty hand and mused at how shameful it was that he had been dragged to this world with nothing but the robes on his back. His staff and the invaluable magical gemstones encrusted into it would have greatly magnified his power and likely trivialized many battles found down here, even in his weakened form.

  Some magical items will be needed. Raw strength alone will not suffice, especially not in my current form.

  Sighing, Carmack continued. For now, he would just have to be a little more careful than usual.

  Glancing around, he eyed spikes of stalagmites and stalactites lining the widening passage, obscuring the walls from view and creating cover for hunting beasts.

  Perfect place for an ambush.

  Rock crept across his skin as he summoned his geomancy spell, “Stoneskin.” Although the spell was only the second circle, it used a significant amount of his current mana reserves. Countering this limitation, Carmack scaled the spell back to coat himself in barely an inch of rock. This way, the rock would still protect against most weaker attacks and conserve mana, a feat only possible due to his intimate understanding of geomancy.

  Stepping deeper into the tunnel, Carmack could sense the beasts before he could hear or see anything. They watched him with bated breath and hunger. Unfortunately for them, creatures of the dark could not hide from him, at least not as long as they shared that same rocky surface.

  Under normal circumstances, he might have paused to study the battle ahead, not knowing his enemies properly. However, the narrow passage was small enough that he could block it with stone if needed.

  No need to slow our journey more than necessary. The longer the people remain in these unfortified caves, the more danger I expose them to.

  Slowly, he cast his gaze straight ahead, feigning ignorance in the hope that his stalkers might launch their attack prematurely. Unfortunately, the spying creatures remained in wait. It seemed they would not surrender their ambush spot so easily. They intended to wait until they surrounded him. But Carmack wouldn’t allow that, not even against a weaker foe. It made no sense to put one’s self at unnecessary risk.

  Without turning his head, he focused his concentration on pinpointing the nearest creature.

  There!

  He counted eight of them hiding among the stalagmites. Their pose remained the same—they hadn’t realized he had detected them yet.

  In what seemed like a blur of action taking place in seconds, Carmack sent out a tiny ripple of seismic energy toward his attackers and shot forward. Containing so little mana, the spell posed no real danger, but in a small tunnel passage like this, a seismic tremor sent terror echoing through his enemies, who had evolved to be wary of quakes and tunnel collapses.

  With his attackers off guard and distracted, he launched into his attack. In barely a second, he moved around the stalagmites, the very earth beneath his feet moving with him to increase his speed. Revealing his attackers from behind their cover, he fired spikes of rock from his palm, littering their scantly furred bodies with stone stakes.

  Almost as soon as the battle had started, three of his attackers were dead.

  But it was clear that the remnants did not respect a human in their territory and were not ready to back down despite Carmack’s display of power.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Lunging out from their hiding spots, the blind monsters, their impressively long whiskers twitching, attacked as a pack.

  The beasts wore patchy fur, exposing the milk-white skin beneath it. Their claws were long and sharp, and they sported prominent fangs and gnarled, stumpy noses.

  But leaping out to attack only exposed the creatures to Carmack’s stone stakes that shot through the air.

  They might have stood a chance had they surrounded him and attacked from all angles, but in the open, they were massacred. Had these beasts turned their fangs against the unarmed refugees, they likely would have sown great death and chaos.

  8 x Stalking Mole Rats Slain

  Bonus experience rewarded for killing beasts beyond your level!

  Calculating Experience…

  Ding!

  Level 5 Achieved!

  Hmph, at least these levels are coming along quickly. With that thought in mind, Carmack placed his new stat points into mental, further increasing his mana supply.

  “Huh, what’s this?” Carmack murmured as his thoughts drifted to the corner of his status page. “One development point?”

  On Avalock, he simply unlocked new spells once reaching a certain level; this was new.

  Mentally focusing on the development point, Carmack brought up a new page that scrolled on and on. The list was filled with purchasable skills, all of which were grayed out with plus icons enticing him to purchase them.

  This seems similar enough to Avalock, but where is geomancy?

  It didn’t take him long to find the magic section, and when he expanded it, he found a bunch of skills—destruction, Illusionist, Witchery, and so on. However, he found none of the elemental commanding mage disciplines known to Avalock.

  Something is wrong… how can this be?

  Scrolling down, he spotted a transparent tab almost blending into the background.

  Hidden Skills?

  Curiously, Carmack expanded the tab. There it was—geomancy—and all the other elemental skills: pyromancy, aquamancy, and so on. Expanding the geomancy tree, he then found that all of the spells and bonuses associated with geomancy were highlighted, and interestingly, they were all marked as purchased.

  Even though I never leveled up using this world’s strange system, it seems to have taken my previous knowledge of geomancy into account—fascinating. The hidden tab was what really interested him, though. Was this why the old priest didn’t know anything about geomancy? Furthermore, did this mean that the spellcasters of this world had no access to the elemental mage classes?

  I will have to find answers to this.

  Returning to the task at hand, Carmack considered his next step. He was a geomancer at heart, and he had no interest in changing that. However, if those skills had already been completed, he might as well spend his points elsewhere.

  But what would complement me now?

  An intriguing thought arose. Scrolling down, he found pyromancy and expanded the skill tree.

  “Wait, this can’t be right.”

  Carmack had expected to see the beginner skills and spells available to him, but the tree expanded outward, every option labeled “Cost: 1 DP.”

  Confused, he backtracked and reopened his status page.

  “N/A?... is that the reason for this?” Stroking his chin, Carmack considered the possibilities. Before, he had been quite excited about the possibility of combining geomancy and pyromancy, but now he realized he didn’t need to narrow his options.

  “This… this changes everything.”

  Returning to the skill list, he scrolled to the top of the pyromancy skill tree. There were options unavailable to him, like archpyromancy, which required eighty percent of the skill tree completed to unlock, along with a few other powerful top-tier skills. However, most were available.

  What caught his eye was a simpler spell—Fireshaping. There were better choices if he was looking for more power, but that wasn’t what he needed. He had plenty of power in his geomancy; he just lacked the mana to use it. Fireshaping, however, would give him basic control over the element, which was exactly what he wanted.

  The echoes of scuttling footsteps running along the deep tunnels beneath him brought Carmack out of his musings and reminded him of the situation he was in.

  That’s enough of this for now. I must get these people to safety.

  Glancing down at the partially furred mole rat corpses scattered across the cave floor, he felt thankful. Their sacrifice had bestowed new powers, and for the first time in centuries, he was excited to see the heights that they could take him.

  No weapons or armor. These beasts are without intelligence. Carmack grunted; they were of little threat but potentially good hunting.

  Unfortunately, they were also weak—too weak to have formed a monster core.

  What a pity, still, one can’t complain.

  He was not particularly concerned with unintelligent beasts, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t threaten the commoners. He could hear them moving below, which wasn’t a threat that could be left unattended.

  Inspecting the sides of the passage, he spotted several small tunnels delving deeper. The air blowing from them was warm, too warm for a human. These were likely the source of the mostly hairless mole rats.

  Carmack could easily and quickly cover them over with a thin layer of rock, but he had a feeling the mole rats were competent diggers. The people would take many hours to pass through this passage, and he couldn’t babysit them the entire time.

  No, I have to do this right.

  Kneeling down by the tunnel holes, Carmack carefully and slowly used his magic to backfill each of them with at least a meter of rock.

  This should keep them busy for a while.

  There were dozens of holes, and it took over an hour and drained much of his mana to properly fill them all, requiring him to rest several times to recover without the process. But if he was going to rule these people, he was going to do it right.

  That should do it, Carmack mused as he finished filling the final hole and turned his attention to where his mana directed him.

  The passage forked in two ways. One path continued much the same, more slate rock heading downward. But another passage veered rightward, passing through strange, porous rock that looked like calcified coral.

  His mana directed him toward the porous rock, so he walked. As with all smaller passages he came across, he closed off the passage that forked downward with a rock wall and stopped to recover some mana.

  As he caught his breath, Carmack called Tark through the stone, letting the earth elemental know it could move up to the bigger cavern but remain at its entrance to avoid danger until directed otherwise. The High Priest and his followers knew to follow Tark as he moved up.

  Feeling his mana return to him, Carmack walked for an hour or so as he passed through the coral-like tunnel and exited into a spiraling web of crisscrossing earthen bridges connecting countless passageways.

  Looking around, he knew this was a problem not easily solved. There were far too many tunnels for him to block them up with his current mana reserves. And he couldn’t just destroy them. The bridges might not only prove useful in the future, but would stir a horrible ruckus as they crashed to the cavern floor below if he collapsed them. Neither option was suitable since he didn’t want to alert the entire Undercavern to their presence.

  However, guards could be placed tactically across the bridges. Since the bridge they would have to pass over to cross into the following tunnel was short, it would still be safer than crossing the ravine in the enormous cavern.

  Passing over the bridge with a glance down into the darkness below, he continued into the adjoining tunnel. It was not long, a few minutes at most, and he exited out and into another vast cavern.

  The pulse of his mana called to him more urgently now, and he knew it wasn't far now.

  The tunnel he had passed through opened onto a rock platform and a moderately steep ramp of loose, rocky debris down to another, much larger platform. From there, he passed into a narrow corridor that looked as if it were cut straight into the platform itself and continued into the tunnel that followed it.

  Several minutes passed, and finally, the tunnel opened into another cavern.

  Immediately, warmth hit him. But not the overbearing heat of the tunnel where he fought the moles. This was comforting. It fought away the chill of the underground and put him at ease.

  Staring out across the cavern, he realized that the narrow ledge he was on dropped down into endless darkness only a few feet from him. The depth of the darkness was given away by the tiny figures of illuminating mushrooms deep below.

  But the perilous fall barely registered in his thoughts. His sight was entirely captured by what lay before him.

  Within the cavern’s center was an island of stone, a huge pillar of rock that spiraled up from floor to ceiling.

  That’s it, isn’t it? It’s marvelous.

  The rock spire was a defender's dream. He spotted a few natural rock bridges connecting it to the surrounding cavern walls, but they would be easy enough to fortify. Of course, the spire itself adjoined the cavern’s floor and ceiling, but they could also be fortified easily enough.

  Due to its sheer size, once he dug chambers into the rock, he knew that it could house thousands. The natural warmth that no doubt flowed up from a volcanic vent somewhere below would keep the frost away and save on heating.

  Not only that, but through his mana, he sensed resources nearby. His spell had led him true, far more than he had even imagined possible.

  Turning to his side, he eyed the ledge that ran around the cavern’s wall, some four or five meters wide, and followed it until it reached a natural rock bridge.

  The thought of flying beasts lingered in his mind, a fear that had seen him avoid the ravine in the other cavern. But nothing was perfect. And he had little doubt that whatever weaknesses this new home possessed, it also possessed more than enough strengths to make up for it.

  Walking around, he approached the natural bridge and walked across to the stone pillar. The bridge continued until it reached the spire’s vertical wall of rock, but that meant little to Carmack.

  Placing a palm against the wall, he hollowed it out several meters in seconds, creating the first room in their future home.

  With that, he sent the message to Tark. He warned the elemental of the dangers he had seen and how to reach him.

  Now, it was time to complete the migration.

  Their new home awaited.