First, I could use essence. A couple of days ago I had been left with 85 essence points after creating Rusty, Peach the jelly, and Death the fire beetle. Enough time hadn’t passed for my essence to regenerate fully, but I was back to 498/615 points. What could I make with that?
A couple of bogbadugs. A bone guy and a sinister owl. Three sinister owls, if I was feeling in an especially aviary mood.
But nothing that was especially effective against werewolves.
“Wylie,” I said, casting out my core voice.
“Wylie busy,” came the reply from across the dungeon.
“Wylie is going to be fed to the werewolves currently rampaging through the dungeon unless he listens to me.”
I used my core vision to see him now. Wylie opened his mouth to say something but stopped. He gestured to Karson, who was hitting a nearby wall with a pickaxe. Wylie soundlessly traced a sort of diamond shape in the air with his finger, which was clearly meant to symbolize me. Then, he pointed to his forehead and made a sort of weird gurning face.
“I can see you, you scoundrel,” I said. “I see everything. I even see the gesture you’re making with your hand in your trouser pockets, Karson.”
I heard a series of muttering.
“What want, Dark Lord?” asked Wylie.
“How much silver do we have in the storeroom?”
Wylie took only a few seconds to think. Say what you will about his intelligence, but he knew his job inside out, including the full inventory of our storeroom at any given time.
“Three silver swords. Got from dead heroes. Eight silver ores found by Wylie.”
“And Karson and Tarius and poor Dylan too,” said a voice.
“And Wylie’s crew,” said Wylie, correcting himself.
“Good. Give a sword to Shadow, and I’m going to need a volunteer to equip themselves with another one.”
“A volunteer to hold sword?”
“Yes.”
“Hold it why?”
“To fight a werewolf,” I said.
“Wylie finds motivation of team by giving praise. Not sending to fight werewolves. That not motivate.”
“Ah, since you became the mining supervisor you know all there is to know about leading people, eh? Okay, General Wylie. Put this in your pipe and see how you like it; whoever volunteers to pick up a silver sword becomes Wylie’s boss.”
Wylie stared up at the ceiling with a worried look on his face. I have no idea why he always does that when I talk to him using my core voice; I suppose he thinks that I’m projecting it from above.
“Wylie will do it,” he said, finally.
“And that’s how you motivate someone,” I replied, not bothering to hide a trace of smugness in my tone. “You just got played, my lad. Bring the third sword to the core room, please. Shadow, meet us here in precisely four minutes. Karson, Tarius, take the silver ore to the alchemy chamber. I want it there in three shakes of a mermaid’s rump.”
“Got it,” came the reply.
I turned my attention back to the core room now. “Gulliver,” I said. “I want you to watch this carefully. Note down everything you see. You’re about to watch me destroy three werewolves. I’m hoping this will boost my reputation.”
“You don’t have a reputation.”
“And this is where I get one.”
CHAPTER 16
Sider and the Four versus Core Beno
Ah, alchemy. Considered a branch of philosophy by some, a science by others, and an excuse to spend hours in their garden shed away from their wives by a select few husbands.
There was something about playing with chemicals, dangerous materials, and the very essence of life that really thrilled me. I liked to think that I was an alchemist in my past life. After all, there was a reason I had been selected for resurrection as a core. It’s not as if corpses are rare; if being dead was the only core prerequisite, the academy could find a hundred candidates in the various battlefields and hospitals scattered around Xynnar. No, there was a reason I was chosen, and alchemy may well have been it.
It was in the alchemy chamber that I waited for Karson to join me, and while I was alone, I checked my core vision to see how the poison chamber situation was progressing.
Damn it.
The werewolves were ripping the walls to pieces, and it wouldn’t be long until they broke through into the tunnels. If that happened, things would be way too unpredictable. At least if I had them trapped then I could enact a plan.
“Dark Magnificence,” wheezed Karson, who entered the alchemy room and was struggling under the strain of the silver ores in his arms. “Here…I am, having just…carried all our…silver across the…dungeon. Just a normal, safe workplace thing to do. My back’s going to be a mess after this.”
“Put four ores within the red runemarks,” I said, nodding at the marking on the alchemy chamber floor. “Leave the rest on the ground.”
With the silver ores set within the runemarks, the alchemy chamber whirred to life. A second later, after a flash of light and a smell like burning magnesium, the silver appeared in the blue runemarks adjacent to the red ones.
Now, the silver was stripped back to its essence, presenting as a pile of powder.
Karson has performed [Minor] alchemy – 1% toward alchemy class specialization.
I made a mental note to return to the notification later, perhaps when there weren’t any bloodthirsty beasts tearing my poison chamber apart.
“Good, Karson,” I said. “Bring the silver to my core room, please.”
“Go here, go there,” muttered Karson, his topknot bobbing along with his head movements. “I bet Core Jahn’s miners don’t get this treatment…”
Having no time to listen to the whining of a kobold, I pedestal-hopped back into my core room, where Gulliver was waiting alongside the newly arrived Shadow and Wylie.
Both kobolds held silver swords that we had looted from heroes. Nothing special; just silver blades full of nicks, with wooden handles once held by heroes who’d barely posed a threat to me. We would put the swords to better use now.
“They’re almost through the stone blockade,” said Gulliver, nodding at the core-vision image I had left displayed on the wall of the core room. It showed the werewolves – did they never bloody tire? – still working away at the stone.
“Take note, Wylie,” I said. “This is how your miners should be laboring. See them? They don’t take tea breaks or complain that it’s too cold. Now, Shadow my chief scout, I need you to do something.”
“My whole existence hinges on fulfilling your every whim,” she said, pressing the sword tip into the ground and leaning on the hilt.
I quickly brought up Shadow’s skill list, absorbing its contents within a millisecond. With the werewolves almost free to rampage through my lair, I felt my core reactions kick in. I suppose this would be my version of anxiety; my brain narrowed down a precise line of focus, and masses of information, options, and potential problems swirled through my head, crisscrossing like flies above an unattended pork pie.
Shadow
Race: Kobold
Class: Scout Lvl7
Skills:
Scout Tippy-toes
[The most basic form of sneaking available to a scout. Allows them to pass by most people undetected, except when in the presence of a fellow scout-like class who are at a higher level.]
Backstab
[Cause 3x as much pain and injury when attacking something from behind.]
This gave me a millisecond of pause.
Would a backstab from Shadow, using a silver blade, be enough to kill a werewolf? Risky, but it could work. Then again, even if she killed a wolf, she’d give herself away and then she’d have two angry beasts to deal with. Was sacrificing a scout to kill a werewolf a good bargain? Nope, that was a no-goer. Not while I had other options.
“Shadow, I need you to sneak into the poison chamber and put this silver dust into the poison convertor.”
“Sneak into a smal
l room filled with werewolves with only one way in? I told you that reading too much bloody Soul Bard will muddle your head.”
“There’s a hidden entryway, Miss I’m-So-Clever-That-I-Think-That-I-Am…forget it. There’s a hidden hatch just here, see?”
Shadow stared at the projection of the poison chamber, where the werewolves were still smashing against the stone. Damn it, not long now. On my core vision projection, a secret hatch, which looked like the rest of the walls, glowed yellow.
“Isn’t that room full of poison?” she asked.
“I’ll flush some of it before you get there,” I said. “There’s a vent leading to the surface. Get in, add the silver to the converter, then get out.”
“I won’t be poisoned. Okay, I’m sufficiently reassured on that point, my Dark Lord Duke of Mischief or whatever moniker you go by these days. But what about the werewolves? If one spots me…”
“Would I leave you completely unprotected? Brecht,” I said, casting my core voice. “I want you in the tunnel outside the poison chamber. The tunnel on the opposite side of the poison convertor.”
“My songs won’t affect werewolves, I don’t think,” he replied. “Too tough.”
“Just bang your cymbal really, really loud.”
“Tambourine,” he corrected.
“I swear the next kobold to correct me will be roasted over a…Anyway, make a loud racket and draw their attention to that side of the chamber. Shadow will only need a second or two. When the converter starts pumping out poison laced with silver, it won’t be long before the werewolves drop. It’ll be like the mass fainting at a duke’s ball when someone announces that the caviar has run out. Even if the converter runs out of poison before that, they’ll at least be as weak as kittens. Big, muscled, seven-feet, kobold-eating tall kittens.”
“Got it,” said Brecht.
“Rusty?” I said.
“Yip yip. Ready for your orders. Ready to kill, maim, punish, slaughter or just hurt a little bit. Whichever the Dark Lord prefers.”
“See, everyone? Here’s a kobold with class. Rusty, I want you to get over to the other side of the tunnel that the werewolves are trying to claw through. We need a totem setting up…”
*
The werewolves were too busy to notice the noise of the secret hatch opening. As quiet as it was, it sounded louder than the footsteps of a thousand elephants to Shadow, who was trying to sneak out of it.
With her tippy-toes skill activated, it took just a few minutes for her to set the silver essence dust in the poison converter. Then she began to sneak back toward the hatch, satisfied with how easy it had been.
A chunk of rock suddenly dislodged from the ceiling and crashed onto the ground.
The sound was loud enough to alert the werewolves, who all turned as one.
They focussed on the noise but quickly saw that the fallen rock was of no consequence. More important was the female kobold now backing toward the wall.
A kobold made of meat, one that would taste amazing and perhaps even regenerate the werewolves more than a puppy would.
*
“Peach,” I said, my core instincts flaring. “You’re poison resistant. I need you in the poison room right now. Draw their attention away from Shadow.”
The jelly, I saw, was floating by himself in a tunnel in the east of my dungeon. Peach was the nasty jelly, which is their default state to be fair to him. I had a more pleasant jelly, one rendered docile by using the alchemy chamber to take his anger from him, but he was too far away right now.
Peach continued floating through the tunnel. “You need me to help, huh? I suppose I should just give up all my plans for the day and do whatever you want. Drop everything because King Beno needs an itch scratching or his pillow fluffing. Is that it?”
“That’s exactly it. I need you in the poison chamber right now,” I said, wishing that all angry elemental jelly cubes were just elementals jelly cubes. “And you’re a jelly, so the poison won’t hurt you, before you start crying to me about that.”
“If the glutinous blob is impervious to poison, why didn’t you send him to put silver in the converter, instead of Shadow?” asked Gulliver, with his quill in his hand and poised to write down whatever I said.
“Simple. Blobs of jelly don’t have hands. Next question? No? Brecht, make a noise. Bang your drum. Sing stuff. Sing anything, sing about your favorite side accompaniment to a baked potato for all I care, just sing!”
In the poison chamber, the three werewolves had dropped to their haunches and they faced Shadow in a triangle formation, with one ready to pounce and the other two defending it.
The air filled with the sound of tambourine beats, and a kobold voice rose above it.
“Hush, little dog, it’s time for sleep.
Quiet, little dog, don’t make a peep.”
One wolf growled, while another edged forward. Watching them keenly, I saw their thigh muscles twitch. They were ready to leap.
Shadow, pressed against a wall and holding a silver sword in her hand, glanced at the hatch. It was too far away. She’d never make it.
I brought up my map and saw Peach, the jelly, still making his way through the tunnels. He was going to be too late!
“Shadow, run for the hatch,” I said.
She took a deep breath, glanced at the hatch, and then sprinted.
A wolf leaped with its claws outstretched. It missed her as she ducked, swiping the air just inches above her head.
Another wolf read the path of Shadow’s sprint, and instead of attacking her directly, it leaped toward the hatch and blocked it.
Shadow, trapped between one wolf and its brethren, gripped her silver sword tight. She mouthed something, but I don’t know what. The words weren’t for me or anyone else, I guessed. Facing her end, Shadow said something to herself only.
In the next split of a second, I took in a flood of information.
Gary, my spider-leech-troll hybrid, was standing beside Wylie in a tunnel near the chamber. Peach was too far away to assist. Brecht had no hope of taking on three werewolves.
Damn it all to the underworlds, there was nobody close enough to Shadow to help her. Nobody to…
Wait a second!
As I watched, part of the boulder blocking the tunnel archway exploded, sending fragments of stone into the chamber. As weak as it already was after the wolves had worked on it, the rest of the stone broke away, revealing the tunnel that led out of the room.
There in the archway, with a pickaxe in one hand and a totem in the other, was Rusty the shaman.
“Yip yip,” he declared, showing no fear of the werewolves. “Didn’t expect me, did you? Well, it’s a real shaman… that you’re going to have to die.”
As much as I enjoyed a play on words, especially one said in a heated moment when most people wouldn’t have had the gall to make one, I wasn’t happy.
For one, it was a crude play on the word shaman. If my dungeon creatures were going to start quipping to heroes, I expected better than that.
Secondly, Rusty had just served himself up as werewolf chow, while leaving them free to enter the rest of my dungeon once they killed him. If he survived this, we were going to have to talk about his foolhardiness even despite how much I liked his enthusiasm.
Before the werewolves could react, the kobold shaman planted his totem on the ground and spoke a shamanic word, something like takandra or librandra.
The totem, adorned with a griffin’s feather on top and a femur bone tied to it with dried intestine, glowed red. A circle of blood-red light appeared at its base.
“Takatana!” shouted Rusty.
The werewolf at the head of the triangle jumped, landing at the totem in one move. He raised a clawed paw to strike Rusty, when a sound came from the totem, like the rush of wind in a storm.
Fire shot from it, smashing into the werewolf’s chest and spreading across its fur as a zigzag of light, singing its torso and probably filling my lovely poison chamber with the stench
of burning hair.
Stumbling to the side and beating its chest to put out the flames, the werewolf turned just enough that Shadow, hugging the wall nearby, had a clear chance of a backstab.
The other wolves, witnessing the power of the totem, backed away a step, but that didn’t help. The totem’s range was too large, and pulses of fire shot at them at a rate of one per three seconds.
The problem was that I knew that the totem’s spell duration depended on the shaman’s mana, so that didn’t leave long.
“Shadow,” I said, projecting my core voice directly to her so that nobody else could hear it. “Gut the wolf while you can. Stick it before it has a chance to recover!”
Her eyes were wide with fear. I had never seen her like this. “But the others…”
“Fire doesn’t hurt them as much as silver, but they’re just as scared of it. Part of their instincts. Kill it while the totem holds them back, then you and Rusty can retreat.”
She didn’t move, except to fall into a coughing fit. Damn it all to the far reaches of the underworld – the silver-laced poison was going to kill her.
“Shadow, now!” I told her.
She didn’t move.
The totem continued pumping fireballs at the werewolves, who leaped this way and that to avoid each one.
She was going to lose her chance, and what’s more, if she didn’t move soon, the poison would overwhelm her. If she fell unconscious in the poison chamber, she was done.
Should I tell Rusty to drag her out, putting himself in more danger?
Should I send in Gary and Wylie and the others?
No, I had one choice left, just one ability I could use. But had it recharged enough after my last use? It didn’t matter, I just had to try.
I gave a mental command.
Core control activated.
My consciousness leaped from my core and into Shadow, and just a blink of time later and I found myself in the poison chamber in her body. I looked upon aa scene where great big werewolves were jumping all around the room to avoid getting their bums roasted, while a shaman watched from the archway and danced an excited jig.
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 48