Both red rock mountain cliffs were soon bustling with so many Mudcloaks that the ones on the edge struggled not to fall. Bits of rubble and loose stone under their feet rained down as the ones at the front attempted to hold back the surge.
The excited chorus of shouts from the Mudcloaks as they tried to push their way toward the beacon that was their king was deafening, and Ashlock was starting to wonder where he would even put them all, assuming he could bring them back.
"There must be a thousand of them," Ashlock mused as he inspected them through his spiritual sight and noted that the general strength of these little guys was less than Douglas. The average seemed to be around the first stage of the Soul Fire Realm. There was also no way to tell their age or gender as they were all around three feet tall and wore the same tattered black cloaks with only their glowing blue eyes within their large hoods as defining features.
A sudden shriek drew Ashlock's focus to a Mudcloak pushed off the eastern cliff and plummeting to the ground while flailing its limbs. Before it hit the ground, Stella manifested below with Spatial Step and caught the little guy in her arms.
"Woah there," Stella said as she carefully set the still-screaming Mudcloak on the ground. Only once its feet were on the ground did it stop flailing around. It looked around and then up at Stella with its glowing eyes and joyfully squealed.
"What an odd creature," Stella laughed and looked at Douglas, "Why does it remind me of you?"
Douglas clicked his tongue, "Funny."
"I can see the resemblance," Elaine nodded seriously as she crouched down to inspect the Mudcloak that was busy looking up at Stella as if she were some divine being.
"Since when did you team up with Stella?" Douglas grumbled as power flowed through his walking stick, making the ground tremble. With a twist of the walking stick as if it were the key to a door, the ground began to rise into a slope that met the top of the cliff. Due to the trembling, a few more Mudcloaks lost their footing.
Ashlock and Stella created portals to catch them, but due to the dense earth Qi swirling around, they required more Qi than usual and were unstable.
"So {Dimensional Overlap} can actually be disadvantageous to me," Ashlock noted as he saw a few Mudcloaks tumble down the freshly raised slope like pandas. "Good to remember and means it's probably best used in unison with {Progeny Dominion} so I don't weaken myself when fighting within a different type of Qi."
Perhaps in revenge due to the earlier remarks from the girls, Douglas raised himself up on a thin pillar of stone above the Mudcloaks to avoid being swarmed while leaving Stella and Elaine down below.
Diana spread her wings, grabbed Kaida under his arms, and hoisted him into the sky. Which looked rather funny due to how big Kaida had gotten, and the Lindwyrm hissed happily in Diana's embrace from above.
"Can you shrink your size?" Diana grunted as her wings flapped and emitted demonic mist. "You're too heavy like this."
Kaida hissed as his long tail, draped down to the ground like a rope from a helicopter, began to retract into his body. It reminded Ashlock of watching rainfall on a window in reverse as Kaida's ink tail rippled upwards. His torso and legs also shrunk, and within a few moments, he was more manageable to hold like a large dog.
"I guess Kaida pulled the ink making up his body and is storing it in his soul." Ashlock hadn't realized having your body made entirely out of a Qi type would have such an advantage. "Considering he isn't getting any smaller means his Star Core must have reached maximum capacity. So there is a limit."
Stella became swarmed by excited Mudcloaks, but surprisingly, she didn't seem bothered as she crouched down, shook their hands, and entertained them. "My name is Stella," she told them seriously, "I am your friend."
"Friend, friend, friend!" They cheered. "Stella is friend!"
While chanting, they ran around Stella in circles and began handing her moss clumps as friendship offerings.
Ashlock had to admit these Mudcloaks were far different from what he had expected. They seemed pretty harmless and were even quite funny. It also helped that they could be taught language, as shown by them repeating Stella's name.
"I wonder what would happen if I gave them a language comprehension fruit?" Ashlock mused.
Stella gathered the moss offerings and stowed most away in her spatial ring, as there was simply too much for her to carry.
Meanwhile, Elaine was dutifully studying the Mudcloaks before her and even tried to gently pull back one of their cloak hoods to see what they looked like underneath, but the Mudcloak quickly pulled down their hood and ran away while howling.
"They also ran from me when I tried to get a better look," Stella laughed as both women stood up and conversed away from the Mudcloaks swarming around them.
"They are fascinating monsters, though." Elaine replied, "I wonder why they seem so friendly. We don't even have the crown."
"Yeah, it's strange. Although they are rather shy," Stella agreed as she held up some moss. "They handed me a lot of moss."
Elaine took the clump of moss and inspected it, "This must be the moss that Douglas mentioned earlier," she brushed her fingers through it, and tiny glowing blue spores flaked off, "I suppose this is the source of their glowing eyes if this is all they eat."
It was all fascinating, but Ashlock was expending ten credits a minute to keep this pocket realm open, so he decided to hurry things along. One thing that he had noticed since the Mudcloaks arrived, and it was growing stronger the more they appeared, was a faint connection to them. Which Ashlock found... odd. How could he feel a link to monsters he had never met until just now.
Pulling on that faint link, Ashlock soon found the source: Douglas. The chain of loyalty wrapped around Douglas's soul that bound him to the Ashfallen Sect, and ultimately, Ashlock was extended to those under his rule.
"Does this mean Douglas is like a noble with his own people, and I'm the king? If Douglas is loyal to me and the Mudcloaks are loyal to him. That means the Mudcloaks are also devoted to me via Douglas as a proxy."
This was great news. So long as Douglas retained the crown and ruled over the Mudcloaks, there should be no issues.
"Are the Mudcloaks so friendly to the other Ashfallen Sect members because of this?" Ashlock wondered but had no idea. Diana wasn't bound to him through any oaths, and they didn't seem too fussed about trying to hurl pebbles at her.
"Douglas, they seem loyal to me through your oath to the Ashfallen Sect," Ashlock informed their king as he stood on his pedestal. "Although the connection is far weaker and relies on you. So you better not die or lose that crown."
"Yes, Patriarch, I will make sure to never betray the trust they placed in me as their king," Douglas said earnestly as he gulped another Mind Fortress fruit. Even with his increase in cultivation, it would seem that the illusions caused by {Abyssal Whispers} were still far too much for the man.
Ashlock was just glad to finally have a labor force. He had been overworking Douglas simply because he had warranted trust issues with random rogue cultivators working too close to him.
"What should we do now?" Douglas asked, "Are we taking them back to Red Vine Peak? I fear if I leave them here unattended in the mines, they will be attacked and killed before I can see them again."
"Didn't you wipe out the kobolds that were their predator?" Ashlock asked.
Douglas nodded, "That I did. But there were more tribes deeper in the mountains. In fact, I believe that is why they gave me this crown in the first place. They entrusted me to protect them."
"I see. Well, we can try and bring them back," Ashlock replied, "Honestly, I have no idea what will happen if I collapse the bubble. There's a good chance they are sent back to the Dragonite Mines."
"So what should we do?" Douglas had concern written on his face as he looked over the crowd of a thousand Mudcloaks shouting, "King, king, king," at him.
"Don't worry, there's a simple way around that," Ashlock replied as he manifested a large portal with a considerable amount of Qi to keep it stable in the earth Qi-heavy environment. Through the still slightly wobbling portal was Red Vine Peak, which lay just beyond the bubble.
If Ashlock could make portals inside pocket dimensions, he could also make them here in a dimensional overlap.
"Tell the Mudcloaks to go through the portal and wait on the other side," Ashlock told Douglas, "Once they are all through, we can figure out what to do with them."
Douglas nodded and raised his hands, "Mudcloaks! By the grace of the Ashfallen Sect's Patriarch, you have been granted salvation! Head through the portal and await further instructions on the other side."
All the thousand Mudcloaks threw their arms up in the air in cheer, with most of them wielding a tuft of moss. They then ran through the portal and out into Red Vine Peak. Only when the last one had gone through did Ashlock cancel his {Dimensional Overlap} skill.
The earth Qi bubble collapsed, and it was strange to see two giant cliff faces be erased from existence while the raised slopes Douglas had made remained. It would seem the terrain didn't transfer.
"So that confirms I can't dimensional overlap the pocket realm containing the ink sea for a single minute and then collapse the overlap and be left with loads of ink Qi."
But that raised another question. What counted as terrain? Would a looted book from the Azure Clan library vanish with the collapsing overlap as well?
"What a strange skill with so many unknowns," Ashlock mused, quickly checking on his credits.
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"That turned out to be a more expensive endeavor than I had anticipated," Ashlock thought as he gazed over the thousand Mudcloaks curiously examining Red Vine Peak with their giant glowing eyes from within their black cloaks. "But for these guys? A few hundred credits is well worth it."
Now the question was, what the hell did he do with them? There clearly wasn't enough room to build rooms for them all here on Red Vine Peak, and even though Ashlock preferred them to human cultivators, he still appreciated his own space, so he would rather them be close but out of sight.
"I doubt they would want to live above ground anyway," Ashlock mused as his sights drifted to the hundred-meter-wide hole that went all the way down into the mountain's depths. Long ago, he had thought of building rooms in the mountain for his sect members to cultivate away from the craziness of life.
"Alright, Douglas and everyone else, listen up," Ashlock said as he cast {Abyssal Whispers} on everyone simultaneously, "The Mudcloaks will live down in the hole, which for ease will now be referred to as the Citadel. Have them build the staircase all the way to the top. For food, they can cover the walls and the obelisk in the center with moss, and assuming they drink water, they can drink from the troughs that contain the Starlight Lotus."
"Got it," Douglas nodded. "What about housing for them?"
"I want rooms created throughout the mountain linked via tunnels. However, reserve the top half of the Citadel for our personal use, and then the Mudcloaks can have the rest. Also, instruct them not to enter the cavern where Stella performs alchemy, and I have plants growing."
"Douglas said they were quite smart and could even make cannons," Stella tapped her chin, "I wonder if I could train a few to be my alchemy assistants."
"Great idea," Elaine pushed up her glasses, "It will be a perfect way to document their progress and intelligence."
Stella turned to Elaine, "Yeah... say, why do you still wear your glasses? Do you still have problems with your eyesight? Isn't that something only mortals have to deal with?"
Elaine seemed embarrassed as she stepped back and raised her arms, "No... nothing like that. I just like them, is all."
"Hmmm," Stella squinted at Elaine and didn't seem convinced.
Elaine glanced over her shoulder, and after confirming that Douglas was busy relaying Ashlock's instructions to the Mudcloaks, she pulled Stella in and whispered, "Douglas also said I looked smart when I wear them."
"Eh?" Stella seemed even more confused, "Why would that matter? You're smart even without them. Are they an artifact or something?"
Elaine blinked and gave Stella a knowing look, "You might understand one day... or maybe not." She chuckled and stepped away to follow the swarm of Mudcloaks being led by Douglas. Leaving Stella standing there, totally confused.
Diana landed beside Stella and placed Kaida down. The Midnight Ink Lindwyrm began to rapidly expand in size and soon matched Diana's height.
Kaida lumbered over and rested his head on Diana's shoulder. She scratched his chin while looking directly at Ashlock.
"Say Patriarch... while in the sky, I noticed something strange." Diana pointed to the east, "Why is there a floating island with a demonic tree on it?"
That reminded Ashlock that not everyone had seen his new {Skyborne Bastion}, and he had intended to make a new one out of the ink affinity tree.
