Chapter Nine

  The gem was wondering what to do. The fact that more invaders similar to the first one came and tried to steal its flowers made the gem want to strengthen its defenses, but the gem didn’t know how. Using mana to strengthen its creatures was not showing much affect and using mana to strengthen its plants was more of a long term project. The gem could not think of any immediate solutions, so it shifted its attention to its injured wolf instead. The invaders had a weapon that could attack its defenders from a distance, and left wounds that were difficult to heal. The gem had been focused on the attackers, so it was unable to stop the wolf from pulling the weapon out of its body and causing more damage than the initial attack had. The gem didn’t know how to provide first aid itself, so the gem called for Snud and the drybold’s healer to treat the wolf.

  Soon Snud arrived, showing a drybold covered in unlabelled pouches the way through the cave. The gem directed them saying “Help defender” and then watched as they worked to help it. The gem continued to focus on the pouch covered drybold working until it heard Snud saying “Master? Snud recognize weapon. Giants kill many drybolds with these” This was even more interesting than the healer, so the gem communicated with Snud saying “Drybolds fight intruders before? What best way to fight giants?” Snud thought before saying “Giants too strong. Drybolds use traps. Must ambush or lose.” The gem asked Snud “What ambush? What trap?” and Snud responded “Err, trap spikes in hole covered in leaf. Ambush when prey no know you there.”

  The gem felt like it had been hit by lightning. It didn’t have to only use creatures to defend its territory. It could use its territory to defend its territory. The gem started going through its whole territory making small changes. It created small alcoves for defenders to hide in so invaders couldn’t see them, it instructed its fish to not go near the surface of the water when they were preparing to strike, and of course it made spike pits all over its territory. The dungeon felt like there should be more to traps than spike pits, but it now had enough work that this idle thought was quickly forgotten. The gem kept working on adding more spike pits and hidden alcoves to its territory, and then it realized something. Just a short conversation with Snud had given it so many good ideas. What if it interacted with the drybolds more? It could probably figure out even more ways to get rid of intruders.

  It went straight to Snud and started pumping him for new ideas. The drybold babbled on for quite awhile. Most of it was useless, but he did hit on one more good idea. He mentioned a replacement for the spear he lost when fighting against the giants and that gave the gem the idea to equip its defenders. It immediately made spears for the drybolds. It tried making them with stone since that was the strongest material available to it, but even the strongest drybold was unable to move it an inch. After that it started to make the drybolds wooden spears. The weapons were made of hardwood that was hardened even more by the good amount of mana pumped into it. The gem thought it could do better, but decided to wait until it captured examples from the giants to put more effort into its weapons.

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  Unfortunately, the rest of its defenders were not so easy to equip. The wolves, moose, and its bear were unable to use weapons like the drybolds, and even if they could, offense was not their main problem. This made the gem realize that if it wanted to improve them it would need another way. It thought back to the wolf that had been taken out of the fight after getting hit by just one attack and decided to strengthen their defense. It did this by making them bark. Its bark had made it able to withstand the claws of a bear even when it had just regained consciousness after the landslide. Now its bark was even stronger. It couldn’t find any way to add bark permanently to the wolves, so it copied the idea of clothing from the drybolds. It shaped wooden clothes for each of its wolves. They would not wear it most of the time, but if they were going to go to battle they simply needed to go to the tree it was grown on and the gem could lower it onto them. It increased the time it took for the wolves to respond to intruders, and it lowered their agility some, but overall the gem believed that it would make them much more potent defenders.

Once the gem was done with that it moved onto another drybold. The first one it went to was the drybold with the pouches that Snud had brought. Since Snud had to bring it to heal the wolves it obviously had knowledge that Snud didn’t have. The gem learned its name was Tedru, and was shocked by how much it learned from him. Tedru taught the gem about the uses of many of its plants. Some could heal wounds, some could put things to sleep, others could even kill invaders with just a little liquid. The dungeon listened to Tedru explain all of that, and then set about relocating nearly all of its plants.

  Before its plants had been grown based purely off of producing as much mana as possible. Now that there were consistent and serious invaders the gem was going to have to give up some mana production for security. The gem did this by moving useful plants back to the valley and to its island. After that it filled the gaps those plants left with all of the dangerous plants Tedru had pointed out to it. Both times the invaders had come in they had attempted to take its flowers, so the gem was highly optimistic about this trap.

  The gem talked to many other drybolds, but none of them gave it any insights worth using. There had been a few interesting ones, particularly from Mav. She told the gem about a new way to ambush invaders even if they already know you are there. She said “ Mav lure drybold to bed. Then Mav use stone and take drybold food. Work every time.” The idea of luring the invaders to dangerous areas was a good one, but the gem was not sure what could be used as bait. It seemed like they would be attracted to plants, but the gem wanted to confirm that before it put resources into that idea. With no other ideas coming from the drybolds the gem stopped worrying about new things and started putting all its effort into perfecting the defenses it just added.