Chapter 157 Return to the Fort

It was a very hectic morning, a complete contrast to when he first had his breakfast. It seemed that the plan was to wake up early and get to work in ordering everyone to evacuate, with all the paperwork and managing that it entailed.

But no one expected the party to last all night long, particularly in his room… all the would-be leaders were off in a little cum coma and woke up late for their duties. So despite what Van was thinking at the time, everything was actually running late, and it all caught up at once when everyone finally woke up.

Which he supposed was why all that breakfast was prepared well in advance. No doubt the chefs and servants were expecting everyone to come earlier than they did. Though the reason why they simply just didn’t wake everyone up was because they thought it would be very rude. Considering it was just the wedding night, plus everyone seemed to be having a good time and looked like they needed the sleep.

Or more accurately, they couldn’t really wake anyone up because they were too knocked out, a combination of all their last night's exertion and all the heavy drinking they did. In the end, the servants had to leave them as they were for a few more hours before trying again.

But it wasn’t completely bad, at least Van was able to get some time to rest and relax. Which was a good thing because the next thing he knew he was being sent back to the other side of the fairy gate to help supercharge it. Something he wasn’t really looking forward to…

Before he left, Xenith asked him for a kiss goodbye, which he gave. After all, they were just married and already they were being sent apart. But that’s what happens when they have people to save. The kiss of course ended up as a blowjob of epic proportions, leaving a very satisfied Xenith and a somewhat relieved Van.

He wasn’t entirely against leaving though, if he had to be honest, despite his dislike for being used to help keep the gate open and the strain that put on his body. Already he was beginning to feel like the fort was home, and he really needed to meditate and focus on his soul realm to see what he needed to do to properly incorporate the two new souls inside him.

They travel back through the portal was also uneventful, other than the creepiness of it all that he still had a hard time getting used to. He had a sinking feeling that the subspace between the gates didn’t like him, or perhaps a better word for it was that it simply had a hard time handling him. Due to his soul realm being so large and no doubt affecting the subspace on some level or another.

Either way, once on the other side, he went to work on keeping the gate open to allow the passage of all the refugees making their way to the fort and then to his soul realm. And as the day went by, he was beginning to feel somewhat bloated with all the people making their homes inside of his soul realm. Thankfully, just as they planned, the soul-bonding seemed to have lessened the worst of it. Though this was still just the third or fourth day in the evacuation process…

Once done, he was on his way back to his tent for a well-deserved rest and with a plan to check up on Ren and his soul realm in case there were any changes he should be concerned about. Only to be intercepted by Kella and Isa, who had important information to pass along to him.

“Van, we need to talk,” Kella said, approaching him. “Can you come with us for a second?” Though she was asking politely, it felt more like an order.

Van did so, wondering what was so important that Kella had come to him. He then followed them back to the command tent where the map of the forest was laid out, displaying all the villages they have saved so far and all the ones they were too late for. Plus some paperwork on the number of refugees and the resources they needed to sustain them.

“Van,” Kella said, turning to look at him with a strange mix between a serious and relieved expression. “We finally got word from the outside. It seems we don’t have to worry about figuring out a way out of this forest. Your parents have formed a subjugation force, with the help of the environmentalist guild and the hunters and ranger guilds, plus a few others. They plan to come and burn a path towards our fort and then from there, they will burn the entire forest down before the infection spreads too far and mutates out of control.”

“All we have to do now is make sure we sit back and survive long enough for rescue to arrive. They should be here in four days' time, though an advance party will arrive in two days time consisting of elite rangers sent by your father and mother to protect you while we wait.” Kella finished.

“Wait… you mean they're coming here?” Van asked in disbelief, he knew that they were worried about him, but didn’t think they would go through all this trouble for him… but then again… this was a pretty serious situation… he supposed it would make sense that they would do something like this…

“This… changes things…” Now in deep thought about how plans will have to change to accommodate the arrival of his parents and the rangers. “And are they really going to just outright burn the entire forest down?” Looking at Kella with a mixture of concern and disbelief at the somewhat extreme action, but inwardly not faulting them for it very much. More worried about the innocents still left that needed saving.

“Unfortunately so,” Kella said in answer. “No matter how you look at it, the forest is beyond saving. In just a few days, the red knives have spread to well over sixty percent of the forest. Of course, not every place is heavily infected, but that doesn't change the fact that they are infected. And with how dangerous this biological weapon is, and its propensity to mutate. It’s safe to say that burning it all down is the very least that they could do to make sure it doesn’t spread out from the forest. If that Saline character was still alive, she would have been put on trial of the highest order for her crimes.”

“But still… to burn the entire forest down…” Van said, still trying to wrap his head around it. “The forest comprises almost a quarter if not more of our barony’s income… without it, we would be forced to use the reserves in our treasury… it could take decades if not longer for the forest to recover…” Worried about the future of his home.

“That may be the case,” Kella said with a small shrug. “But look at it another way. If we don’t do it, and it gets worse. Then it would cost far more down the line than just burning it all down now. Your parents are making the right decision, trust me, they are acting swiftly and concisely as a true ruler should. Doing what they can to avoid future heartache from lives lost, plus headaches from potential damage to farmlands and other areas if it were to spread.”

“I suppose you're right…” Van admitted after a few moments of thinking about it. “Just wish there was another way…”

“All we can do now is continue with what we are doing in saving as many people as we can,” Kella said, trying to make Van feel a little better about the whole ordeal. “And you have also acted as a good ruler should. Saving as many of your subjects as possible. Even though they are technically not your people, they still belong to the forest that by right belongs to your family. And you have done much to save thousands if not tens of thousands of them. Maybe even more. You should feel proud of what you have accomplished.”

Van was touched by Kella’s attempt to make him feel better. “Thanks, Kella… I’ll take your words to heart.” he said, “but I better tell everyone of what’s happening as soon as possible, they need to know about this. You do too, just in case, I want to make sure everyone knows to prepare to leave in four days.”

He then turned to leave. “Now if you excuse me… I have more work to do,” he said with an inward sigh. Any hopes of sitting down to rest were dashed with the news given to him.

Walking back to his tent, he sat crossed-legged to prepare to enter his soul realm.

Once he opened up his eyes again, he was back in his soul realm, he flew up high to get a better view of the place, finding two new islands making their way to his own. One was an island with a giant tree that spilled water from high up to the vegetation down below, filled with many beautiful colors, predominantly green. The other was very unique, a bluish-white tree that looked crystalline, floating on an island above a slightly larger island filled with other crystals that created bolts of lightning, and viney blue vegetation.

“Hmm… so it will be Agnès’s island to the east… Lyn’s domain to the west… Amie’s island will be somewhat to the northwest… and Xenith’s island will look like it will end up in the southwest… that’s not too bad… but perhaps I should extend the plains a bit around my town. I do enjoy the view after all, and don’t want to feel smothered by the tall trees and everything…” Van thought as he surveyed everything.

All and all, everything seemed to be looking alright, it looked like he would also be getting some unique resources in the future once everything settled in and some time passed. The only worry now was how to make sure everything fit perfectly into each other, and if his soul realm could handle all this change all at once. Not to mention all the refugees that showed no end in sight of.

He was also a little concerned about how this might look. He was beginning to feel a little like a devil, or monster, eating other’s souls to feed his own soul realm and make himself stronger at the cost of others. He knew that the others wouldn’t think it like that, but he couldn't help himself considering how close to the truth that may very well be…

Putting such thoughts out of his mind, he quickly descended to talk to Ren and Kassandra to see what has changed and for a summary of everything that has happened while he was away. Walking into this throne room, he saw the two as busy as ever, looking at panels and quickly typing up commands or answering prompts to help stabilize everything that has recently happened.

“Ah… the man of the hour… how was the wedding?” Ren asked somewhat sarcastically upon noticing Van, looking like he hasn’t slept in a few days. “You know… technically speaking when someone soul bonds a person… They have to meditate for a few days to make sure everything is properly connected. But since we're here, you can just goof off or something…” sounding a little sour about it.

“Oh come off it,” Kassandra said with no real feeling behind her words and almost just as tired. “You're the one that asked him to soulbond a few more people to make it easier on yourself. And don’t pretend you're not happy that he’s gotten stronger because of it. You're just annoyed by all the tweaking you have to do.” she said rather flatly, still focusing on her panel and making a few changes. “And if you had really cared, you would have told him that stuff at the beginning, instead of trying to take care of everything yourself.”

She then turned to give Van a small smile. “Nice to see you, Van. I hope the wedding was everything and more you wished it to be. Though I am aware it might have come a bit out of left field… you rolled with it well.”

Van thanked her as Ren mumbled something or another under his breath. He then asked for a rundown on everything that has happened since he was away and if there was anything he should worry about.

“Nothing on our end,” Ren answered. “Agnès’s soul realm was a bit of a problem at first, but we quickly were able to handle it. These two though are completely mature, so it’s not as hard, even if they come with their own sets of problems… it’s nothing that a little smudging of lines can’t fix. The real problem will lie in how long it will take for everything to settle… you're not some sort of eating machine after all, so we’ll have to work each soul realm in one at a time. Till then we will have to figure out a method to shunt all this excess spiritual energy out of you.”

“Is all that… spiritual energy… really all that bad? Can’t it be used to help empower the soul realm and make it better?” Van asked, not sure if what the problem was.

“Sure! We’ve already been doing that.” Ren said. “But the problem… as I just said… is that you're not an eating machine. There’s a limit to how much you and anyone for that matter… can handle… and while you have a bigger mouth and stomach than the average person, that doesn’t mean that after your tenth slice of cake you wouldn’t start to feel full… and the real problem is when you already have ten other cakes lined up for you that you have to eat. You need time to digest it all… otherwise… POP!”

“But soul-bonding them all would help right?” Van asked, now a little nervous.

“Well… ya… kinda…” Ren said, sounding like he was trying to dodge the answer.

“Just tell him.” Kassandra harrumphed.

“Okay…” Ren said, looking a little unhappy. “The truth is… soul-bonding those two and by extension linking yourself to all their subordinates, plus making more followers, doesn’t really lessen the amount of spiritual energy they produce…”

“What do you mean…” Van asked, now staring Ren down, both a little worried and feeling a little angry that he kept something from him.

“Well… while it is true you don’t have to worry about it as much… as time passes by, instead of being inundated with a large quantity of spiritual energy, you will just have a large quality of spiritual energy flowing into you,” Ren admitted.

“And why is that a bad thing?” Van asked, now a little confused.

“It’s not… but it’s more like pushing a problem down the line for a bit. You're still accepting thousands of refugees, and by the time we leave, whenever that might be, there could be hundreds of thousands if not millions of them in here. No matter how you slice it, your soul realm won’t be able to handle it. What at first was used as a method to kick the problem down for later allowing you to grow and handle it on your own, might now bite us in the ass if you keep over accepting so many people inside of you. The issue is… you’ve eaten too much, and you're still eating… and the temporary measure to make you slim down, might now increase the density of the spiritual energy inside of you, making it harder in the long run to accept more.” Ren said somewhat seriously.

“We’ve already started to put all that excess energy to work in helping grow plants and fill in cracks and all that other stuff. But all the problems we had that we could throw it at are now depleted. And while at first, it would be nice to have some excess spiritual energy to help fuse the soul realms together, once that’s over, they will be producing their own amount of spiritual energy to add to the amount you already generate already… it’s a situation where we are producing too much money, and the vault is overflowing… or something like that…”

“Can’t we make a bigger vault or more vaults? Van asked.

“The vault is your soul realm, while we can make say… places or things that would help concentrate that energy, it will always just be a temporary measure… though there is one good news out of it all,” Ren said, looking thoughtful, making Van perk up.

“With all this energy, we can increase the size and power of your soul realm rather swiftly… it just takes time for it to grow…” Ren said with a sigh.

“Well…” Van thought about that, and then decided to explain everything he learned from Kella. “Would it be possible if we simply don’t accept everyone? If my parents come, they can make a pathway out of here for all of us.”

“Hmm…” Ren thought about that piece of good news. “It’s not a bad idea… but the problem still lies in trying to get everyone out of the forest. That’s still millions of people they would have to escort out before they burn the place down. I think you should talk to the others about this, they should know that there's a limit to how much you can handle and what your parents are planning to do about it. There’s also the issue about if your parents are even allowed to do this, technical owners or not.”

Van nodded in agreement.

“Oh, and one more thing.” Ren said, now looking at Van. “make sure you take a walk around the area. No matter how good I am at this job, it’s still your soul realm. If you feel like there’s anything off, tell us and we will do our best to fix it.” he said seriously.

Van sighed, but nodded in agreement once more. “Alright, but later make sure you tell me more about all this spiritual bullshit and how to handle more about my soul realm. I don’t like the fact you keep me in the dark and seem to run my own soul realm without me,” he stated, putting his foot down on the matter.

“Don’t worry,” Ren said, handing Van a large book. “I don’t mean to feel like I’m just trying to boss you around. I’m just so busy that I don't have the time, and you and I don't’ follow the same schedule, so when we do have the time, we don’t use it at the same time. So with that in mind, I made this book with a few instructions on how to operate your soul realm.

“It’s… an instruction manual?” Van asked, taking a look at the book.

“Yup. Hopefully, it will prove helpful. But if you want, I can try and teach you now?” Ren asked.

Van sighed, he would actually like to take him up on that offer. But now that it was put in his head, he wanted to look around to see if there were any hidden problems in his soul realm. Not to mention he was already tired as it was. “Maybe next time…”

Ren shrugged and went back to work, somewhat expecting the answer.

Van left, somewhat annoyed, but at least determined to make sure everything was operating smoothly.