by Dakota Krout
“We’re right next to a portal.” Dale glared at the knife-twirling ex-assassin. “If something goes wrong, please feel free to get me healed. I’ll pay you back when I’m able to move.” With a deep breath, he forcefully activated the Rune on his battle gauntlet and squeezed.
*Bamph* The Core shattered, sending out a halo of multi-colored light. Dale screamed as his pinky finger was torn off from the concussive force.
“You son of a- Oww!” Dale gripped his hand as Adam stepped forward and healed the energy burns and lacerations from exploding crystal.
“Well, the finger is gone, but the rest will heal up.” Adam pronounced after a few minutes of triage. The cleric wiped his sweating brow as he leaned back. “If we can find the finger, I may be able to reattach it. If it hasn’t already vanished.”
“Cal, what the shi-” Dale kept shouting stuff, but now his group was just sitting around being boring, so I had already moved on to other things. Now Dale will have to come up with his own ideas. If he can. Pff. Anyway. What was I doing? Oh, right!
My idea for searching for Dani was ready! That is probably why I was in such a good mood. I’m sure messing with Dale had something to do with my joyful outlook on life too, though. I had been searching for a way to send out creatures that would seek Dani, and an idea had come to me after watching an anthill for a few hours. Bugs! Why did bugs do what they did? Why did they look for certain things or follow the same paths over and over? They were looking for something. In the case of ants it was a small chemical trail. Others were looking for food, some for mates. I had no idea what wasps were looking for; as far as I could tell they were just assholes. I liked wasps.
After some, um, minor modification and a few days of altering what they quested after, I learned how to force them to track a specific Essence signature. Now, no matter where they started or how well I hid their target, the bugs always found what they were supposed to. There was another advantage to this method: who looks at bugs and gets worried? Even I couldn’t deal with all of the insects in my dungeon now that I had created them for Bob. Their population grew too fast, it would take way too long to micro-manage them, and they didn’t really have great combat potential. But! They could be seekers. I knew it was a long shot, but if I put enough bugs out there, they should eventually converge on a single location. Hopefully, Dani would be there. No… she will be there.
To that end, I had been growing all sorts of insects and modifying them with Essence. They were a bit larger than their natural counterparts, and their shape was a bit… off from what is found in nature. This was because I had been mixing and matching to make the most versatile creature that I could. All of them could fly, and I had grown them in a low-Essence environment so that they could survive outside of the dungeon. Their survivability was actually surprisingly high in all the climates I had tried out.
Now that I was thinking about it, I might as well let the first batch out. It was getting pretty crowded in the incubators, and it sounded like the Mana storm was abating. With less people playing defense above, I hoped that more bugs could slip away without accidentally being squished. After opening their pens, the swarm of thousands began buzzing into the dungeon, moving toward the exit. They were only trying to get out, but the adventurers seemed to think that they were a new type of threatening Mob.
“Oh, God! Flying spiders!”
“Look at the size of those claws! Run!”
“Ahhhh! They have stingers!”
Well. I may have made them a little too versatile…
“That one is the size of a dog! How is it able to fly?!”
“They aren’t attacking! Just get down and they ignore you!” Finally someone noticed!
Hmm. Was the size difference really that important? I thought that a larger version of something they saw all the time wouldn’t be too noticeable. Humans are so strange! They scream like children over a few bugs but go running at the Cat Boss–Snowball, a steam variant Beast- looking for a fight? Bizarre, I tell you.
The last of the swarm was flowing out of the dungeon entrance and were scattering into the air. Hopefully, I would be able to find where they converged in the future. Good luck, love-bugs! I gave them a tearful farewell; it was always difficult to see your creations go off into the world, or so I had heard.
An hour later, after the great excitement of the morning, I was starting to wish I could fall asleep. I was working on mind-numbing tasks. Create a bird. Do it again, slightly different. Again, slightly different. Make a bug. Grow a tree. Grass. I’m starting to hate grass. Do you know how annoying it is to grow each individual blade of grass? They aren’t even actual blades, just blade shaped! Boo! I started getting antsy when I was planting raspberries and may have accidentally gone off on a tangent and made a new Mob. Making harmless things is just so… bleh!
Bob called my attention to a trap he had come up with. He made me promise not to look at it before it was sprung, but I didn’t need to wait long. Some bleary-eyed adventurers were happily approaching a treasure chest, and after thoroughly checking it for traps, they threw the lid open. Boisterously collecting the silver coins and assorted goods inside, they stood straight while chattering amongst themselves.
Bob rubbed his hands together. “Shh. Here it comes!”
With a scream, a dagger wielding Goblin was thrown out of the chest, a spring loaded trap door on the bottom had concealed his hiding place. He impacted the standing human, his weight bringing them both to the ground. The adventurer took a half dozen stabs to the abdomen before the others–who seemed to be in shock–tried to attack the Goblin. Not sticking around to die, the Goblin jumped back into the large chest and slammed the lid shut, slipping into the tunnel underneath and sliding away down an incline. Even if a human found the tunnel under a chest like this, they couldn’t follow.
“Glad you liked it!” Bob chortled, “I’ve been trying to find a way around their trap detection, but any wires or pressure plates are always detected by professionals.”
I was smiling now.
~ Chapter Six ~
I’m bored again. Digging is boring. That is, it is dull. Not to be confused with boring, the act of digging a hole. Which, I suppose, it also is. I was at a bit of an impasse right now, to be frank. Digging was time consuming, more so since I was starting from near the top of a mountain. It was harder to do the further I moved away from myself and thus slowed down progress and increased energy consumption. Luckily it didn’t take much concentration, or I would have gone as crazy as the council on the surface seemed to think I was.
For the first time in a month, I had decided to take a hard look at what I was doing. Minya–abyss take her–had scored a point in our last conversation. Dani wouldn’t have wanted me to ignore my upkeep and get lazy; she has always been a proponent of hard work and judicious rewards. When I looked at a few treasure chests lying around on my second floor, I was shocked to find them stuffed with gold of all things!
I didn’t give out gold on the second level! What had I been thinking? ...The short answer was: I hadn’t been thinking. At least not clearly. High rewards on an entry floor made for less people continuing to the deeper floors! I deactivated the Runes I had been using to generate treasure in the chests throughout my body, and felt a wave of nausea as I noticed how much Essence they had been sucking up. All they were doing was generating coins and bottling health potions. Unendingly. They had been ceaselessly producing gold
for a month. I recouped some of my losses by reabsorbing the metal, and tried to think of a way to fix this situation. I liked the treasure chests, because they made for a convenient distraction. People could waste hours looking for the hidden boxes, and I didn’t have to worry about generating rewards for each individual Mob death.
I didn’t want to go back to trying to make rewards for each individual person. I had way too many things to get done. How could I solve this problem? Quickly getting frustrated that I had no one to talk to, I... wait. Bob!
Bob slowed his writing and carefully finished pouring some blood into a long stripe. He stood and stretched before answering. “Sorry for the wait, but if I did this wrong it would backfire quite terribly. For you, Great Spirit, I will always have–or make–time.”
I was touched, and it threw me off a bit.
“Understandably so. What can I help with?” I explained my situation and how I was having trouble finding a solution. He scratched at his leathery hide, considering my words. “Well. Too many adventurers to give exact rewards for? That is a good problem to have, I think. Let me ask you this, how many groups have those bags that are larger on the inside?”
His return question caught me off guard.
He nodded. “So then the groups without them can only carry what they can fit in the sacks they carry around or in their hands?”
“I think you need to play on their greed a bit more.” He grinned wickedly, and since his mouth was twice as wide as a human’s and filled with jagged teeth, it was a truly frightening visage. “How about this?” Bob started talking, and I started getting… excited.
~ Dale ~
“Stupid dungeon. Stupid me for listening to it,” Dale muttered as Adam reattached his finger.
“At least you didn’t start with a Core from the Cat.” Adam patted his hand. “I’d say you got lucky.”
“Question!” Hans raised his arm into the air and waved it around.
Dale rolled his eyes. “Yes, Hans?”
“Did it work, at least?” He looked at Dale’s slightly off-color flesh. “The intent was to allow you to gain Essence from crushing the Core, correct?”
“Yes it was, and yes, it did work,” Dale grudgingly admitted. “There was a slight side effect of losing a chunk of my hand though, if you didn’t notice.”
“I don’t think you realize the potential here, Dale.” Hans was being serious again, which was always a nerve-wracking experience. “Outside of your normal cultivation, you can gain Essence from Beasts. Beasts will always have large amounts of Essence in their Cores, and no-one has found a way to directly extract and use it before, outside of using it in Rune scripting. I think you should try again, more carefully.”
Dale was stunned at the earnestness of his friend. “Is it really going to be as useful as all that?”
Hans shrugged. “It could be, but that depends on if you can make it work or not.”
Dale sighed and pulled out another small Core. “I really don’t want to do this.”
“Please try not to lose another finger,” Adam muttered as he looked at the recently reattached digit on Dale’s hand.
“I think it’s fair for me to say that I’m more nervous about losing appendages than you are,” Dale grumbled, pulling on the cloth of his cursed battle gauntlet. He wrapped the Core tightly and squeezed.
*Bamph!* The Core shattered with a muffled explosion, but the fragments were stopped by the tough cloth surrounding it. There was a bit of light, showing that there was still Essence escaping the cage of his fingers. However, the vast majority of Essence was sucked into the Runed gauntlet and soon flooded into Dale’s Chi spiral.
Dale opened his eyes, which glowed an electric blue as the Essence moved through his meridians. “Oh, yeah,” he breathed the words in a husky tone, “it actually worked!” The corruption was separated out, moving into various corruption Cores surrounding his Center.
“This seems like an expensive way to cultivate,” Rose mentioned carefully. “While I am glad that it is making you stronger, I hope you also know that every Core you use is going to have to be your share of the loot?”
Dale winced, but nodded. “I understand. Luckily we have a fairly large surplus of gold right now. A month of coin-stuffed chests has really helped with the bills.”
They had proceeded deeper into the dungeon only a short way when Adam pulled the group to a stop. “Wait, listen! Listen to all that noise!”
“Sounds like a normal forest.” Tom shrugged expansively. “What is the issue?”
Adam locked eyes with his hulking friend. “The issue is that we aren’t in a forest. We are in a dungeon.”
Hans peeked around the corner. “Uh-oh.”
Expecting the worst, the rest of the group tentatively looked inside as well. Still, they were stunned as they stared into the noisy and brightly lit room. It was lush, full of life. Normal, non-mutated flora and fauna abounded in the room, creating a cacophony of sound. Chirping, squeaking, and rustling in the long grass pervaded the entirety of the floor.
Birds flew from nests burrowed into the stone walls, insects moved between various plants, and water burbled down the walls in a small stream. Dale looked around and saw huge Cats rolling in patches of mint, crushing and chewing on it.
“What’s happening?” Adam asked, unable to see around his taller teammates. They shuffled a bit, and he looked at the room. Frowning, he questioned the others, “Did we step outside? Are we on the wrong floor? Also, why ‘uh-oh’, Hans?”
“It looks like the dungeon is building an actual ecosystem.” Hans sighed deeply. “This is ‘uh-oh’ for a few reasons. Firstly, it makes it harder to determine what is a threat to us. If all sorts of animals are moving around, we may get used to the motions and not see the ones that are actually dangerous.”
“This could be an issue,” Tom agreed stoically. “If our constant vigilance would allow us to be caught unawares, which it will not.”
Hans waved a hand at the redhead. “I’m not done! The biggest issue that I see right now is those birds. They are flying all over the place without any kind of pattern.”
“So?” Rose glanced at him askance. “Far as I can tell, they are just birds, right?”
“Yes, Mountain Chickadee’s to be specific, but what do birds do when they fly over you?” Hans nodded grimly, reaching for throwing knives. “Use you for target practice.”
“...This is about bird poop?” Adam made a calculated guess.
“Yes. That type of bird has a nasty habit of staining clothes irreparably.”
Rose glared at Hans until he looked her way.
“What?” His eyes were clouded, without a hint of laughter.
“Are you sure you aren’t a child in an adult’s body? Go fight a Beast. Here, I’ll get you started.” Rose pulled out an arrow and sent it at the rolling Cats. A deep roar in return caused dust to fall onto them from the ceiling. It did also get the birds to hunker down in fright.
The group got ready for the attack as three Cats ran at them, one limping heavily. The limping Cat was a Flesh Cat; the other two were Coiled Cats.
True to their name, the Coiled Cats sprang a great distance, covering the ground in huge, leaping bounds. Tom roared at them in return and took a few steps forward, settling into a good position for hammer swings. Dale bounced on his toes a bit, dancing in place to warm up his legs and arms. Adam stood just off-center behind Tom, while Rose stood to the side firing arrows. Hans leaned on the wall.
“I don’t wanna fight,” He muttered petulantly. “I like Cats. You know all the different words that have ‘meow’
in them? Meow, meows, meowed, meowing, homeowner. I don’t want to kill Cats right meow.”
“You are a total child!” Rose growled as she released another arrow. The Flesh Cat fell, blood draining from its torn neck.
Tom swung his hammer in an arc, somehow missing the lunging Coiled Cat. It knocked him to the ground and tore a strip of flesh off of him with its razor-sharp claws. Dale was busily engaging the other Cat and didn’t notice his friend's predicament.
Adam stepped forward and attacked! His staff came down and… bopped the Cat on the head.
The Cat looked up at Adam and hissed.
Adam looked at the slowly growling Cat. “Tom… now would be a good time…”
Tom couldn’t move, pinned by the weight of the metal-laced Cat. The claws lashed out at Adam, striking him squarely on the arm and throwing him to the floor.
“Adam!” Rose shrieked, firing a fat-tipped arrow at the Cat. The projectile impacted its head, bouncing off and stunning the Beast momentarily. Tom used the opportunity to roll out from under the staggered Cat, bringing around his ingot hammer. With a muffled *clang*, the hammer struck the Cat hard enough to knock it unconscious. Rose quickly strode forward, drew an arrow, and pressed the tip against the closed eye, firing point blank. The Cat expired with only a slight spasm.
“Everything okay over there?” Dale had the hand with the Essence-absorption Rune pressed in the space between the eyes of his target Cat, swinging his other hand onto its skull whenever it stirred. The Cat was severely brain-damaged at this point, the blood in its brain being forced around mercilessly.
Rose rushed over to Adam, who was already staggering to his feet. Blood was dripping out of his sleeve. “Adam!”
He stepped back from her. “It is better and worse than you are thinking. The claws didn’t cut me; the robe wouldn’t let that happen,” it was lined with what was essentially Mithril chainmail, “but the hit broke my arm enough that there is a bone sticking through the skin. I can’t fix it alone; we will have to leave. Please check on Tom.”