“Grand Roba,” my aide said, stepping into my office. “Hunt Leader Ma-umo Quil has returned.”
“Send him in,” I said, looking up from my work and leaning back in my seat.
I sat at a large stone desk, covered in various-sized pieces of truly abysmal quality parchment. Our ink was also still pretty terrible, but I needed some way to record information, so I made do. Thanks to stone construction, we didn’t need as much hide for structures, though a lot of it was needed for clothing and boats. A small amount went towards record-keeping and trading information between our various settlements. It didn’t last as long as carved stone or bone, but it was much quicker to write with, and better for recording information that would change regularly.
Picking up a piece of parchment with the current active expeditions written on it, I quickly scanned it for the name Ma-umo Quil, and found that his team had been on one of our inland expeditions. After years of pushing back the uqandu, we started making good progress towards uncovering new resources further from the coast.
One such resource was a small, skittish herbivore, its population starting to rebound now that their natural predator was being killed off. They were decent game, and we had a breeding program already underway to try and raise them in captivity. If they calmed down a bit, they could be the Uli’s first domesticated animal.
Of course, some escaped captivity and began repopulating, and now they needed to be hunted regularly so they didn’t completely strip all the minimal plant life around. That would ruin our attempts to domesticate them and keep them long-term. Expeditions inland reported vast swathes of land that were mostly barren of plant life, the ground cracked from recent desertification. If I had to guess, that drove all the herbivores away or sent them into population decline, and that was why the local uqandu had migrated towards the coast and started hunting Uli more aggressively.
I didn’t know how to manage that. Uli didn’t rely too much on plant life directly, and we had the ocean to fish from, but the declining flora would halt our domestication attempts and drive the mirulu and other herbivores further away. We could try replanting, but without water, transplants would just die off. If it was because of the slow march of changes to the climate as we got further away from the last ice age, I wasn’t sure it was even a solvable problem. This part of the world just might not support much plant life in the future, and in turn, might grow hostile to everything else living here.
Before I could start dwelling on that too much, a big male Uli entered the room. He stood tall before me, his arms folded behind his back at attention.
“Grand Roba,” he said with a brisk nod. “Reporting in.”
“Hunt Leader,” I responded with a nod of my own. “Find anything interesting?”
“We dealt with a few packs of uqandu, but they were smaller than usual, so we were able to go further.” The Uli stepped forward and placed something on my desk. “One of my hunters found this. It isn’t the stone’s blood or black rock you had described, but he thought you might be interested in it.”
I picked up the greenish stone, which was quite heavy for its size, and turned it over in my hand. My eyes widened, and I sat up, moving some papers aside so I could quickly rub the stone against my desk, burnishing the surface. When the green oxides were scraped away, the surface beneath was a deep, familiar orange. Copper, I thought excitedly, as a grin split my face.
“This is stone’s blood—of a sort,” I said. “There are different types, depending on location. This is an excellent find, Hunt Leader. Commend your junior.”
Ma-umo stood taller, puffing his chest out. “Yes, Grand Roba.”
I rolled the chunk of copper ore over in my hand, considering it. Copper might even be a better find than iron, for the Uli. It would take much less heat to smelt, and could be cold forged, to a point. If we could find tin as well, that would be even better, I thought as I brainstormed what we would do with this.
“We will have to send you back out, with some additional teams, to further survey the area,” I said after a moment. “For now, get some rest. Dismissed.”
The Uli nodded, exiting my office and leaving me to my thoughts.
Despite the lack of progress towards iron and coal, our development was coming along well. I now oversaw a half dozen different “permanent” settlements that were transitioning to stone structures after learning to rely on fishing and adopting the Bond into their way of life. The structure of each settlement was slightly different for each, overseen by their own Roba, but all of it was trending in a better direction.
The increase of boats traveling up and down the coast between settlements has also become impossible to ignore for the tribes that hadn’t entered the fold. That made approaching them slightly easier, since they were seeing the results for themselves. There was still some conflict from the villages that were staunchly traditionalist and refused to change, but others were starting to accept trade, which was usually the first step towards becoming open to trying out the Bond.
Generally speaking, the healthier the tribe, the stickier that was, but most tribes that were weakened and struggling were willing to try something new to avoid dying out entirely. It was easier than migration, and the benefits were fairly obvious.
The roving tribes were still another matter. A roving tribe was naturally strong, because those that were weak died out very fast. The survivors, therefore, tended to be a cut above. They weren’t too interested in changing their way of life, yet, but we had negotiated with those that claimed territory nearby to allow our expeditionary teams to pass through in exchange for fish, at least. Maybe in a generation or two, things could change between us, but that was outside the scope of what I could do myself.
Tired of thinking about it, I set down the piece of copper and my records, and stood to stretch. I left my office, telling my aide the rest of my small “government” to finish up their work and take the rest of the day off. Calling it a government was a stretch, but it was a first of its kind, the small collection of people who were in charge of managing the Uli at a scale larger than a single tribe.
In some ways, what I had done to the Uli had pushed them ahead of the Sheowon. Their elders were still quite limited to a single village, and there wasn’t really that much exchange or communication between villages, at least when I was there. That was probably intentional, to avoid conflict, which the Sheowon were quite good at.
Multiple groups of people needing to work together naturally involved conflict, and the Uli weren’t afraid of that. At first, it was by the strength of Blood and arms, but we were slowly moving towards economic power as trade showed its use. Not that there wasn’t still a lot of physical conflict, but for that we still had Bloodied, traditional tribesmen, and hybrid Bloodied-Bonded Uli as well.
Maybe it was just my human background, but it was, well, familiar. I wasn’t in favor of violence, but I knew it had its place. The Sheowon’s village had been almost utopian, but I wasn’t sure it would survive at scale.
I missed it, though. I missed it a lot.
As the Uli responsible for making all this happen, I was still earning a lot of goodwill and respect, which was good because there were a number of people who were passing by me in strength. I hadn’t Bonded with any Uli, myself, and didn’t plan to. My blessing kept me competitive, at least, and fortunately, the strongest Uli were those that had taken the Bond, which predisposed them to not wanting to break the peace or fight within their tribe. Had they been the most power-hungry and eager to take over, they would never have had the mindset to Bond in the first place.
Walking through the settlement—the village we had rebuilt on the site of my original camp, which I had named something that more or less translated to bay home—I received several waves and greetings from the people. Bayhome, being a new settlement with no existing population, was the least traditional of all the settlements under my purview, and almost all the people here were orange-skinned and unmarked. It was very clearly not a Sheowon village, given the size and features of the populace. All of our Bloodied had come from other villages, and most of their work was in expeditionary forces, led by my Hunt Leaders.
Here, children weren’t restricted to creches, and new families were being formed by choice rather than claimed by force. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, but we were working out the kinks, like developing a school, of sorts, to wrangle the kids during the day so that people could build and fish and work.
Admittedly, the schools heavily leaned towards religious indoctrination, but that was the lesser of two evils, in my opinion. Hopefully, secular ethics would follow, but I was willing to wield the cudgel that was belief in the All-Bonded to get there, especially since that was the deal I made with the admin.
I found my feet taking me towards the statue of the All-Bonded that my people had carved, standing near the water, her back towards the ocean and facing the village and its people. Her visage was a lot more stoic, as crafted by Uli, and she was larger and more muscular, with prouder features. That made sense, since they had never seen a Sheowon, and she was sculpted in their image. She still had sixteen arms, even though most Uli were only Bonded in pairs.
Stopping before her, I closed my eyes, and found myself in the metaversal borderlands.
“We found copper ore,” I said. “Any chance you’ll give me a lead on tin?”
The admin snorted. “Find it yourself.”
I sighed, figuring as much. At least she didn’t ignore my prayer outright this time. Still, if she wasn’t going to help, I wondered why she answered my call, so to speak. Her next words answered that question, to my surprise.
“You’ve done well,” she said.
“Oh. …Thanks?”
“I’d say you’re past the point of no return, now. They’re no Sheowon, but I don’t think the Uli can shake off the Bond now that it’s this established. Barring a cataclysm and total extinction.”
I had wondered that myself. If traditionalists did want to stamp out the Bond, they would face the same issues that had prevented total war from happening between Uli in the past, in that Blood retaliation would cripple the fighting and open them up for a return strike. And, as I had unfortunately discovered during a conflict in one village, the effect from killing a Bonded pair was even more severe to an Uli, as they were hit with twice the retaliation. On the other hand, the retaliation for killing a single, traditionalist Uli was somewhat weakened for a Bonded pair, shared across the Bond.
Between that and how widespread the Bond already was, the genie could no longer be put back in the bottle. My blessing was still active, since there were still Uli to convert, but it had been a while since I had last headed out, kept busy by running what I had built so far. But from the sounds of it, the core of my mission was done.
“So… what now?”
The admin shrugged dismissively. “What do you want to do?”
I still had a lot I wanted to do for the Uli, things half-started that needed completion. There was too much built on my back, personally, which I still needed to teach and delegate. The more effort I put in now, the better for the Uli’s future, to ensure the least children died and the most peace and freedom for all. But if the primary goal was complete…
“I still need to get metalworking fully established here. The copper will help, once we get a mining operation up and running, but the Uli can develop from there on their own.” As with the development of boats, I preferred to stay pretty hands-off once my basic goal was accomplished, to see how the Uli would naturally develop the technology. My own influences were too human, and therefore, too limited. They were already coming up with ideas that I had overlooked, making use of things that were unique to the four-armed people. “And I need to figure out how to transition the power of the Grand Roba. But after that… if I wanted to head back to the Sheowon, would you guide me safely again?”
The admin smirked, and my heart fell. I had figured she would tell me off, since our relationship had been so contentious, but I had to ask. I dropped my head. Even though I expected it, I still held out hope I could see them once more.
“I suppose I can help you get back,” she said, causing me eyes to shoot back up to her and widen in surprise. After all these years, maybe she had warmed up to me a bit, after all.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
(Spoiler warning for the next chapter or two in the following author note!)
AN: Seems like we're coming up to the end of this life now. This third act of his life is only around half as long as the other two, which were more in line with the arcs of Tovar's life, and I could have more closely explored his development/uplift of the Uli, but... it kind of doesn't really matter? His success in this is so ephemeral, since he's going to die and reincarnate; getting deep into the nitty gritty of it now seems kinda pointless, compared to enjoying nice big strides through it. I dunno, you might disagree, but the way I envision this serial reincarnation story playing out, I just struggle to care about minutia the further and further he gets into each life, compared to the early days. Maybe that's a failing of my process, specifically, but in any case, I think we'll wrap this up and move on to something new.
Perhaps I should have given Mali some larger conflicts to face in this final arc, which may have lengthened it to match the previous two arcs, but then he probably would have died in the conflict, and... well, I guess I'm just not very good at being mean enough to my characters to deny him a nice Sheowon homecoming. He's more or less already conquered the "big bad" of this life, whether that was the former Roba specifically or generally the Uli way of life. And I've written myself into a hole a bit because the Uli don't really have war like humans do, so I can't really do a re-play of roving tribe conflict or the like, nor are there real monsters, so the only thing that would kill him now is if he were hoisted by his own petard and killed by his own Bonded people, which also doesn't really make sense. Since I lacked a clear vision for the end of his life, maybe I just wrote myself into a hole.
I also just feel like I've done all I realistically can in the timeframe of a single, primitive life, without it being completely absurd. Exploring something completely new, at this stage, would just be filler, in my opinion. The lives are naturally front-loaded. This is kind of the flip side of serial reincarnation across a multiverse, where our MC grows old and on the way to his natural death before we get to see some of the bigger worldbuilding developments can come to fruition. At least, while MC is limited by mortal lifespans. But once we break that limit, I absolutely will have to start killing him off violently, lest those lives become entire series by themselves.
Since this life has already been quite a bit more involved than I expected for Mali (as was the case for Tovar) I don't mind this race to the finish. I kind of feel like this life has already overstayed its welcome, personally. There are things I thought I might bring up in this life that I've cut, because I don't think they add anything at this point. We can glance at them in the final retrospective, or maybe bring them up as part of his history in memory during a future life (like Tovar's time suffering the boating-obsessed nobles, or his adult exposure to smithing as a sword fanboy).
But there is one thing I think I've done quite poorly in this life, which is his skill development. There's been almost none since his childhood, save [Smithing].
Given how primitive the civilization is, it's no surprise the skills they know how to teach are also fairly primitive, and he mastered those quickly... but there really probably should have been a few more skills trickling in over the years. I'm just not really seeing what those would be, given his current skills, without breaking the internal logic of this world. So if you have ideas for Blood skills that should be in his final loadout (whether something he picked up during his time as Grand Roba... or, small spoiler, skills he might learn in a Blood Bond with Ibriya and Shappi once he returns to live out his remaining years with them) let me know in the comments.
These skills shouldn't be world-shaking or logic-defying, and have to follow from the foundation built so far. I'm struggling to come up with good ideas myself (or I would have added them already). Problem is, so much of the stuff I can think of is already covered by [Blood Control] and it doesn't make sense as a new skill entirely. I won't mention what few ideas I do have, because it's more fun if it's reader participation. ;)
No one's particularly complained about this flaw of Mali's life, but I still think it needs a little something extra to round out his gains from this life. How and when he'll use such gains, like Tovar's expanded spell set, remains to be seen (as do other aspects of how MC's System and skills may evolve) but if there's something you think that would fit, share it in the comments. Depending on suggestions, I may retroactively add a skill or two somewhere in the last 15 chapters, as well, before it hits RR, to even things out a bit. Thanks!