Risen World

Chapter 402: Releasing the beasts inside the Garden

Joshua and Lilly both exited a portal that took them back to James Town. It was already starting to get late, but they planned to head over to the garden to finish the day. They still needed to bring all of the beast they had tamed to the garden to let lose while also giving the different medicinal plants they had found while taming creatures all over the place. Even though they were both stepping out of the portal their minds were still preoccupied with the conversation they had with the giant snake.

In Lilly's case she was surprised by all of the things the snake had described when it came to things it had done in the past. It had told them about its encounters with Tank and his friend from time to time. During that period it was survival of the fittest without all the system rules that were in place at this point. Due to that there was always constant conflict. The only reason Tank had survived any conflicts with the powerful snake was because he had his friend with him so they could fend off the snake together and the fact that they always fought near water. Tank was intelligent and used water ways to his advantage against predators that were more powerful than him at the time, while his friend could always escape to the air if needed.

The snake told them about the encounters she had with Cinder's mother in the past. At the time the snake had no problem handling the powerful spider. Although the snake didn't get mad whenever Tank called her a granny it was clear that the snake was just as old as the turtle if not a little older. At the time Cinder's mother was still young. Although the spider was powerful it stood no chance against such and old cunning foe that could handle two powerful beast such as Tank and his friend easily. Apparently Cinder's mother would always come back to challenge the snake as often as possible while the snake didn't ever kill off the spider since she found it amusing to see it grow stronger with each clash.

Eventually the snake decided against becoming a guardian of the planet and hid away waiting for her partner to find her. Cinder was excited to hear stories about her mother while Titus was just excited to hear about fights between such large titans. Titus hadn't met Tank's friend so this was the first time he was in the presence of such a powerful creature outside of some of the elderly members of his tribe.

After the snake had finished telling its stories about the past it focused on the other thing that it had mentioned to Joshua. About the fact that he had been marked by the wolf mother. The snake knew that Joshua had to have met the guardian wolf at some point since it was impossible for him to get the mark otherwise and she explained to him what that meant. The mark was there for two reasons. The first was the fact that it was proof that Joshua was a friend to the mother wolf and her family. This would get other intelligent beast that new of the guardians of the planet to avoid trying to hurt him. Of course bosses in dungeons wouldn't hold back, but out in the wild it was likely that other powerful beast would at least talk to him first before trying to attack him.

The second meaning of the mark was to show all wolves that Joshua was a premier candidate to be bound to. That meant wolves were likely to either help him if they ever came across him or challenge him in an attempt to become his partner. It was too bad for them that Joshua already had a partner in mind and he already knew where to go to meet such a partner. He still remembered the door with the giant eye behind it and still felt a connection to the place.

In the end they had learned a lot from their meeting with the snake. They now knew that outside of just taming a random beast they came across in the future there was a way to find a partner that was destined for you if you were lucky. It was a shame that the beast that decided to partner up with their destined ones in this method would have to greatly weaken themselves to become a beast companion, but in the future they would regain all of their strength and more. Plus since they were destined to match up it was likely that their soul beast would match up as well making it possible for the beast to gain some of the traits of their partner's soul beast as they evolved in the future.

Joshua was already imagining Madalyn having such a powerful beast as her partner in the future and it sent a chill up his spine. This was the second powerful beast that they had come across that seemed to be willing to partner with a member of their group. Joshua was going to have to let Madalyn know about all of this the next time they all met up.

After reaching James Town Joshua quickly made another portal that took them inside of the garden and the first thing he noticed about the place was how it shifted to a nightly environment with the light glow from the large sphere in the center of the dungeon illuminating everything slightly. Then he noticed all of the changes that had taken place in the dungeon since they had left. All the forest were the same some of the open areas near the lakes had already been changed greatly by the two doctors. At the moment Joshua could see his mother looking over a screen poking at different pop ups. Whenever she touched something a plot of land would shift into perfect terrain for planting new plants. There were rows of such areas aligned all over the areas around the nearby lake.

"Well I didn't think you two would still be here." Joshua said as he walked up to his mother and Grace who both had their eyes glued on the system message. From Joshua's perspective it was like they were busy playing games or something rather than putting together a garden. "One hell of a way to spend a day off."

"Yeah, yeah just tell us you got all of the stuff we asked you to or this would have been a big waste of time." Joshua's mother said without even turning to look at him. "I'd like to get these things set up before heading home and getting a shower."

"Alright, but you're going to have to show me where you want everything." Lilly said with a smile as she tried to figure out what they were doing. "It looks like you two are playing some type of video game or something."

Grace chuckled before stretching a bit and moving over to where Joshua and Lilly could both see what was on the screen that she was using. "It is somewhat like a game of sorts. Kind of like a farming simulator. The system allows us to make all the changes to the terrain and environment here in section without forcing us to have to do the work ourselves, but we still have to design the layout and have the supplies necessary to grow the plants in the first place." She explained getting understanding nods from both Joshua and Lilly.

"Although we've been able to use the system functions to set up a good area for planting any medical herbs that you two have brought back we can't do anything else without the animals and the plants." Joshua's mother said jumping into the conversation. "We started out testing things out in an area further away from the lake so that we wouldn't waste any of the more precious locations. At first it was annoying figuring out how much we had to shift the terrain around but we eventually figured it out. This thing needs to come with a tutorial mode or something."

"Well where do you want to start putting all the animals at? Do you have certain locations in mind?" Joshua asked.

"Yeah, we need to keep them separated. The horses should stay in the grassland areas so they have plenty of food and are far away from our medicinal herbs. Don't need them trampling over all of them." Grace said before turning to look towards an area off in the distance that they had already shifted the terrain for. It used to be just a normal forest, but now it was like a small mountain. It didn't reach up to the sphere since the gravity would be reversed when it got to close causing the mountain to pull apart, but it was the best environment for the rams that Joshua had gotten. "Use that mountain for the rams that you tamed."

Lilly nodded before summoning Cinder and jumping on her back so that she could head off to the areas where they wanted to let lose all of the animals. "I'll go ahead and release the horses and rams and then you can show me where you want the bee colonies since we'll have to figure out a location where they can easily get to the plants and pollinate them." With that Cinder rushed off to the closest plains area to release the horses.

Joshua turned to look at his mother and grace to see the screens they were fiddling with and noticed a few things that were interesting. The first thing he noticed was that there was a huge map that showed a layout of the entire garden. He could see where parts of the map had changed with them messing with the layout of the dungeon. The area around the lake that they were all standing at was different from the other lakes. The map now showed the terraformed land that they had been working on all day. It was the same when it came to the mountain they had created for the rams.

When Lilly started releasing the horses in the plains Joshua could see icons of horses arriving in that spot on the map which brought a whole new level of detail to it. It also brought Joshua's attention to a gauge on one of the screens his mother had brought up that showed the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the garden. Adding the horses into the environment instantly started to help balance things out a bit more. Joshua imagined that keeping such parts of the garden balanced was how they were going to be able to maximize the potential of the garden in the first place. Soon Lilly had released the rams in the mountain area and came back to them ready to put the bees somewhere else.

"Alright bring the bees over near this forest. We'll only put a couple of colonies near this area and try to spread the other colonies near the other lake areas later on. It might take a while, but we'll eventually get everything sorted out." Joshua's mother said. "Josh you're going to have to get some of your guild members involved in setting up this garden. We might be able to help you out every now and then, but we've got a lot of work to do in the hospital and soon enough Grace is going to have to level up her combat job once she gets to the next level of her support job."

"Sure." Joshua simply said with a smile as they all went with Lilly as Grace and his mother pointed out some areas in different forest around the dungeon where they could put the bee colonies. Luckily they were able to take portals to all different parts of the dungeon making things go a lot faster.