CJ Fielding

Chapter 36 March 407 AD Paulsland-More Assassinations

                   After hearing the news of what happened to King Shimbir, Wauta got an idea. Maybe, just maybe, this awful war could end, and he could finally go home if Kingsminister Jinka died. Seven years ago, just half a year from the time he could leave the military and start his life, this never-ending war started because the Kingsminister ordered an attack on Rome.

   ...

Chapter 35 February 407 AD Paulsland-Assassination Attempt

            When Michael, the Bishop of Rome, told Emperor Trajan about his plan to create turmoil in Paulsland with political assassinations, he wasn’t telling the Emperor what he was going to do; he was telling the Emperor about a plan that was well underway.

            Across Paulsland, several agents of the Universal Church were attempting to make attempted assassi...

Chapter 34 January 407 Rome-The Emperor’s Plans

            Michael, the Bishop of Rome, had a large smile on his face as he made his way to the Emperor’s office, with four servants following close behind, all carrying large cases filled with documents.

            When Michael entered Trajan’s office, the Emperor saw his smile and asked, “What’s the good news?”

       ...

Chapter 33 January 407 AD-Trade Alliance

            Muuza’s time with the Merchant Guild was interesting and longer than necessary. Heading north from the Cuban lands led his small fleet to a massive landmass, and the locals were all too happy to send him in the direction of the Merchant Guild’s settlement, a city called Itsu. From what Muuza could tell, the people he met were not technically Merchant Guild citizens, but somehow they were beholden to the Merchant Gui...

Chapter 32 January 407 AD-Negotiations

            Osroes IV, King of Parthia, had a very difficult decision to make since the Romans took the city of Dura. Dura gave the Romans the ability to march into Parthia’s heartland, which meant that Osroes needed to focus all his armies on the west side of Parthia to combat the Romans. Unfortunately, Parthia was also fighting a war with Kushan on the eastern side of their empire. Fighting a war on two fronts was difficult, bu...

Chapter 31 November 406 AD Dura-Capture

            As the trenches grew closer and closer to Dura, Julius grew more nervous. He had received word from his father that capturing the steam weapons was more important than capturing the city. Although Kush had captured steam weapons from Paulsland, they had not yet allowed Romans to examine them, and perhaps they were not able to make their own yet. In fact, the only reason why Parthian had steam weapons was because Paulsla...

Chapter 30 October 406 Cuban Archipelago-Trade

            Muuza waited eleven days before a long ship arrived from the Landowner’s Meet with instructions for Muuza’s fleet to follow them. As they followed Muuza couldn’t help but notice that other longships steered clear of their little fleet as soon as they noticed them. Muuza was glad that their reputation was already making its way across this little island nation. Despite that Muuza had his ships keep the fires of the...

Chapter 29 October 406 Cuban Archipelago-New vs Old

            Muuza’s ships waited nine days for the Cuban fleet to arrive. Although they waited, they were not idle in the least; they couldn’t be. Muuza fully recognized that the Cubans were decent warriors. In their last conflict, he had more than a hundred casualties. Furthermore, the Cubans liked to attack at night. To combat this, Muuza kept his ships moving at night, scattered buoys with lanterns in wide arcs, and sent his...

Chapter 28 October 406 AD Cuban Archipelago-Right of Passage

            The last few months had been very busy for Muuza. Originally, he was sent out to the Western Sea to find the Merchant Guild. Instead, he found two groups of people. The first was a rather primitive group of people who lived on a massive river called the Casarabe. They were very happy to trade with Paulsland, although the only thing they had to trade with were people. Despite that, the people, who were legally freed imme...

Chapter 27 September 406 AD Flattop Mountain

            Three weeks after gaining his freedom, and things were calming down. Two days after the traitors were killed, detectives showed up and took the bodies, and asked questions for days. They attempted to take Shimbir back to the capital, but Shimbir refused. The detectives tried to insist, but Shimbir had several hundred guards around him at all times, and with just sheer weight in numbers, they could insist much harder tha...

Chapter 26 September 406 Dura-Rebuilding an Image

            Julius had no choice but to rebuild his image, or he was as good as dead. After his disastrous loss in Paulsland, where he lost an entire army to their new steam weapons, he brought news of the defeat back to his father, Emperor Trajan. There were serious discussions about whether he should fall on his sword or not. If he was viewed as weak and became Emperor, then one of the many leaders in the Empire, perhaps a genera...

Chapter 25 August 406 AD-The News

            At four sixteen in the morning, a loud banging was heard on the door to the male dorms of the Believers Church in Paulsland’s capital. The dorm was filled with addicts struggling with addiction, alongside a few men and their families who ministered to them. The loud banging woke up half the dorm, and Pastor Humbra went to the door in a bit of a huff. Nine times out of ten, a loud banging on the door in the middle of t...

Chapter 24 August 406 Flattop Mountain-Security

            When Shimbir, Busara, and the King’s guards reached the bottom of the mountain, the officers of man camp greeted him, and one said, “We have done as you asked, and separated the men based on their family’s employment.”

            Shimbir asked, “How many men have parents or siblings that work directly for one of the corporations?”

 &nbs...

Chapter 23 August 406 Flattop Mountain-Hall of Mysteries

            The parade grounds surrounding Flattop Mountain were in chaos. Between the deaths of the traitors that had controlled the King, the King’s order to separate soldiers based on their parentage, and the various military officials who had to take responsibility for the needs of the soldiers, the people surrounding the mountain were confused and worried about their future.

Many of the military officials had family me...

Epilogue-The Great Black Tree Dungeon

            The dungeon felt incredible relief as he traveled faster and faster through space. Due to his nature, he was actually able to sense the outside of the folding space bubble. He couldn’t technically see in the distance, but he could sense gravity, which came as a pleasant surprise, as he had no way to test that before he was in space. The dungeon didn’t know how fast it was going, but he was certain that he was going ...

Chapter 22 August 406 AD Flattop Mountain-Cause and Effect

            As the young soldiers surged forward to protect their King, Shimbir couldn’t believe his nightmare was about to be over. He felt like he must be dreaming. When he fired those rounds, he hoped that perhaps he could be set free from the gilded cage he was trapped in, but as he watched the young soldiers charge at his order, he thought perhaps he would really become the King of Paulsland, not just in title, but also in a...

Chapter 75 Magical Space Battle  

            As the labyrinth flew through space, traveling faster and faster with the help of nuclear fusion bombs, the dungeon carefully watched the area of space where the immortals were vaporized. The dungeon was hopeful that immortals couldn’t survive being turned into plasma, but his hopes were dashed as their bodies were rebuilt in space several seconds after being vaporized. It was odd as there appeared to be a delay for t...

Chapter 21 August 406 AD Paulsland Capital-Leaving the Cage for a Display

Authors note- Thank you for your patience, had a good time with my mom lost week, even though I had to navigate work and spending time with her it was good.

            Shimbir was playing with his monkey one day when the nameless manager came into his room and said, “We have an event for you to attend, and a speech for you to memorize.” As soon as the manager spoke, the monkey fled, as the manager once had the guar...

Chapter 74 Struggle

            After killing a tier-three mage, the mage’s tier-three familiar, and the imp, who was a tier-three entity, the dungeon had a massive amount of mana fueling his growth, and so the dungeon focused on growing straight up. Vacuum dungeons were evolved wind dungeons. There were seven on them on all the moons around the gas giant. The smallest labyrinth created by a vacuum dungeon reached a height of three hundred miles, wi...

Chapter 20 August 406 AD Paulsland Capital-Reaction

            Malkia was sitting in her office when a messenger brought her the news that would be printed in the next day's newspaper.

When the news of the iron horse powered by steam reached the editor of one of the Pauslon family newspapers, he immediately sent a messenger to Malkia. The particular messenger wasn’t anyone important, just a random apprentice learning their trade at one of the many Paulson family newspapers....

Chapter 73 Alric’s Toughest Battle

            After hearing the dungeon’s voice, Alric muttered, “So you are sane?”

            The dungeon responded at haste speed. “No. I am compelled to consume mana creatures like yourself. Fortunately, the compulsion is only particularly bad when mana creatures are in my area of influence. Beyond this compulsion, I refuse to act like an animal, and so I have k...

Chapter 19 August 406 AD Flat Top Mountain-A Whistle Heard Around the World

            At the base of Flat Top mountain, where a twenty thousand square foot factory, which was officially designated as a warehouse for experimental steam weapons, Busara watched nervously as his workers carefully maneuvered the steam shovel onto the back of a rail car, connected to the first steam locomotive built by the factory, which was finished two weeks earlier than the steam shovel.

The steam shovel was technical...

Chapter 72 Alric Returns

            Alric, the third-tier mage, was once again working on his familiar, a four-foot-long snake-like dragon, when a portal opened next to him and an immortal said, “When you get the chance, check out the Great Black Tree Labyrinth, we lost another group of tier-two mages.”

            Alric didn’t bother to look toward the portal; instead, he focused on the m...

Chapter 18 June 406 AD Paulsland Capital-Meeting of Stockholders

            Due to the changes in the Paulson Industries focus, where their factories stopped building a whole host of goods and started building steam weapons, alongside the need to rebuild a lot of factories that were damaged during the war with Rome, the insecurity as they continue fighting a Kush with steam weapons, among a whole host of other changes in the last year, a call was made for all major stockholders to come for a me...

Chapter 71 Mage VS. Sage

            Susan was two hundred and fifty-one years old, although she didn’t look a day over nineteen. She was one of four tier-two mages making their way to the Great Black Tree Labyrinth. Every one of these mages had every tier-two core, and they were coming to the Great  Black Tree Labyrinth to prepare for the Labyrinth of Force because the Great Black Tree Layrinth was considered the most dangerous tier-two labyrinth a...

Chapter 17 April 406 AD Cuban Archipelago-Explorers

Authors note- Earlier this year I had two chapters dealing with the Merchant Guild attempting to raid one of the Cuban Islands, this chapter takes place after those chapters. When I get a chance I will adjust the chapters on my patrion page, just super busy right now.

            Muuza looked over his fleet of four mother ships and wished he had been allowed to bring some trimarans, unfortunately, the Merchant Guild k...

Chapter 70 Squirrel Queen

            It took the dungeon nearly a century to figure out how to make an essence creature with a hivemind, and the dungeon was rather upset with the process. A hive mind creature had to develop the hivemind while its various bodies were embryos. The only reason why the dungeon learned this was because he was so frustrated with all his failures, he decided to see if he could produce a “naturally” occurring hivemind by makin...

Chapter 14 January 406 AD Paulsland Capital-Corporate Solution

            The news of Paulsland losing a half-million-man army was almost lost alongside the news that Kush had taken the steam weapons and would soon create their own versions. Only the families of those who were lost took note of their deaths, although just weeks after the news of their loss, and when much of the grieving was finished, letters from the Paulsland soldiers who were enslaved began arriving.

Kush had forced a...

Chapter 69 Sage Squirrel

            As the dungeon worked on its hive mind project, years passed. As time passed, the radio humans made faster progress than the dungeon. As the years passed the humans learned how to make televisions, which were a gigantic improvement over projectors. The difference between the two was that projectors could only show the film being fed directly into them, but televisions could show any data being fed into them. This meant ...

Chapter 13 December 405 AD Kush-Persistence Hunting

            General Alara’s plan succeeded beyond his expectations. After the three Kush armies wiped out the Paulsland baggage train supplying the Paulsland army, it took a week for the army to find out, and then it took them two weeks to make it back to the Kush army.

            While the Kush army waited for the Paulsland army, they were not idle. They were busy des...