I was on the second floor of the Arnar’s dungeon and wondered why he couldn’t have spawned those new mushrooms at the grootslangs’ floor. It probably had to do something with me being his official spokesperson. Nothing but an excuse not to deal with those freaking druids. They have arrived a week after the blackguard did. I actually had no idea how Nicolas managed to convince the Emperor to send them but they arrived two days after Arnar told the Council he had absolute nature affinity. It was a month since then and I still wanted to pulverise his mind. I even had a spell for the occasion that wouldn’t leave any permanent damage.
I also was a member of that stupid council, Arnar’s idea to make us recognised as a proper race instead of monsters. I would be even grateful if it wasn’t a ploy to push all the boring work at someone else.
We were promised the magnificent dungeon core, our creator to awake and take care of us, instead, we got Arnar. He was great, and made an effort but had the attention span of a demented butterfly. Sometimes I just wanted to scream at him for hours. We had collected information about the majority of the affinities and could have shared it with him. If he picked nature affinity after that we would be fine with his choice, we were supposed to serve him not rule or limit him. But he picked it blindly! I guess it could have been worse, he could have picked nothingness and destroyed quarter of the continent after losing control over it. That was not the point, though! HE SHOULD HAVE ASKED!
I still had half the floor to go through so I thought back to the first time I spoke with him. A few weeks earlier we have detected a new dungeon core being born only seventeen kilometres to the north. We usually killed all the dungeons in the 200-kilometer radius unless the guilds managed to get to them first. So far we only failed three times. There was something strange with this region as the new cores appeared every two or three years, we had so many stored for Arnar that we stopped picking the common ones. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was Arnar’s fault as well. He attracted troubles like a magnet.
This time everything went flawlessly and my reward for good leadership was to look at him sleeping. I worshipped him then. I still did but nowadays I was too irritated with him to notice. He created or actually resurrected our race and gave us purpose. He gave us our history and legends or as much of it as he could. My favourite was our progenitor hiding from our actual creators afraid of our power.
She was a divine creature of untold power, but I admired her intelligence the most. She hid for thousands of years and when she was forgotten she started her brood. She was the last of her kind and she refused to mix her blood with lesser species. So she laid the eggs on her own, fertilising them with her own power, mana and dreams. It had weakened our bloodline and reduced all her offspring to mythic creatures.
When Arnar recreated us he managed to make queens into only an ancient race. We didn’t hold that against him, he actually did a marvellous job with how little information he had. The first generations were common monsters, intelligent but lesser shadows of current grootslangs. As the Queens grew and passed their knowledge to their heir's, the fourth generation of Queens reached the peak of ancient creatures’ potential. This allowed them to create us, barely qualified to be called Ancients but ancients nevertheless.
When I saw the weird flash my heart stopped I was terrified something has happened to him so I called to him. He was so different from what we expected. He lost all the knowledge he passed to the first queens. I felt guilty as I suspected the effort to create us must have taken a toll and was a direct cause. I gave him the weakest core we had stored hoping that it wouldn’t cause him any harm. He absorbed it as if it was the easiest and most obvious thing to do.
Then he tried to name me. I was ecstatic, no grootslang ever had a name. I felt a minuscule pang of regret as this was most likely going to make me unable to progress considering how weak a core he currently was. And then something that had no right to happen happened. I was slammed with more power than any Queen had. I was confused and then furious when I realised what he was trying to do. He must have passed out as he didn’t hear my protests but more and more power was poured into me. I was sure I would be ripped apart.
I had no idea how I survived but had no time to celebrate, that stupid floating gem went dormant again. I wanted to smash it to pieces. That was just to not think how terrified I was for him and for me. I had no idea how to explain what happened to my Queen.
It turned out they all already knew. They told me to check my stats and I was speechless. He did what we always hoped for, I was a legendary creature and the way to mythic, maybe even divine was open. It would take millennia but there was a glimmer of hope for us. The queens needed a week and they elevated their bloodline to legendary as well. This would do nothing to the already laid eggs but all new ones would be much stronger. Compared to this me reaching epic-ranks was nothing.
Next come the bitter-sweet part, I lost my command and become a glorified babysitter. When he finally awoke two weeks later I wanted to have eggs with him. Well, not literally but I dreaded he will take another thousand year nap. I chided him properly and believed all will be glorious from now. I should have eaten him right then.
He refused to make an entrance, he refused to make another floor instead he spend a week making seven additional rooms. In that time he could have made seven floors. But nooo, he said he had no idea how to design that floors so until he knew what adventurers wanted he would stay as he was. No arguments were good enough. He always could have remade that floors, he could have made one more so he hadn’t have spent an entire week making seven stupid rooms.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
When he gave a freaking skill crystal, the great secret of grootslangs to random adventurer as if that was a common rock I went to the hatcheries ready to activate legacy bestowal, let some other poor soul deal with that maniac. I was so done. My queen somewhat convinced that this would be inhumane to stuck a newborn with such responsibility. The fact that he awakened when I entered his room was fate at work and it was my destiny to aid that glittering gem. I am still convinced she used her psionic powers to make me buy that bullshit.
When I hoped for some normalcy he babbled all his secret to Mythic Mage and invited him to the partnership. Then he picked the only affinity that guaranteed the most unreasonable people in the Empire would start to worship him. The fact that all his insane ideas worked was no excuse. They shouldn’t have worked!
Kaeden and Maisoon weren’t that bad, even Nicolas was tolerable. Ordia turned out to be just young, not stupid. Little difference it made at this time but at least she would grow older and hopefully wiser, stupidity was incurable.
The druids were the problem. One such idiot got shot in the face by the itching spores and had fallen on the second mushroom. He then spent four hours in complete agony not daring to move or even scratch himself and this is a quote “to not disturb any plan the divine dungeon could have by his unworthy existence daring to defile his sanctuary”. Arnar got eventually tired of his screams and had me remove him from the dungeon. I hit him with the cleansing spell and got called “the holy avatar of the divinity the mighty and omnipotent Arnar created to interact with those unworthy to hear his holy voice”. After five minutes of the uninterrupted prize of my divine attributes I “accidentally” dropped the idiot on the head. It couldn’t possibly do any more damage to what was supposed to be his brain and silenced him.
The druidic leader, archdruid GentleOak was a petite woman that seemed sane at the first sight. When I learned he turned a man into a tree for a week for overhearing him wondering how much grootslang’s scale may be worth I was forced to reevaluate my previous assumption.
The elves appeared two days ago and so far seven of them tried to kill me, one was Gold-ranked and actually managed to injure me. Arnar went ape-shit after that. It was kind of cute actually. He ordered Azure Queen to teleport the local elf leader into the maze and heal him every time he was about to die.
After ten hours the council appeared and the poor fellow was given an ultimatum. If one single elf ever tried to attack a grootslang again all elves would be banned from the dungeon, if any managed somehow to enter they would be teleported out. He even pledged he would personally request druids to close all elven forests in the Expanse and trap the inhabitants inside for hundred thousand years. He managed to scare poor sun elf shitless. The druids were crazy enough to actually go through with that and there was no greater dishonour for the elf to kill a clansmate. Something they would be forced to do with their insane population growth if trapped within communities.
After that, the druids made proclamation that anyone who would hurt a grootslang would become their personal enemy. I guessed if I wanted I could march straight into the palace and sleep on the imperial throne now. No one even the Emperor would dare to harm me. This proved if you were insane enough no one would dare to mess with you. If I actually tried to kill the Emperor that would be a different story. But for something as minor as occupying the throne no one was willing to risk having and imperial grove instead of an imperial palace.
Maisoon actually came through and convinced tree huggers that Arnar’s divine plan was to test adventurers and it was their holy duty to help with the trials. So we would get regular adventurers with the occasional druidic party.
When I wasn’t pissed at Arnar which sadly was a rare occurrence I was amazed by his ingenuity and perseverance. He would pick at a problem until he solved it. When he actually included me in his creative process it was the most exciting I ever felt and I didn’t let the fact that he included me only to kill his creations if it proved too dangerous to bother me. Lately, he was asking me questions out of his own initiative, something about talking with other being allowed him to see the problem from a different perspective.
There were also amusing situations. Both druids and emperor gave him gift packages containing rare and obscure materials, that the guilds wouldn’t have access to or couldn’t justify using due to their prices. The emperor even sent the shards of the gem used in teleportation gems. Arnar still had to create his own mini network as there were few quirks to work out but in the meantime, he learned how to manipulate the space. Due to his nature, he couldn’t do anything crazy to his dungeon, the most he managed was to make a room twice the actual size.
That didn’t stop him from doing crazy shit to the two sub-dungeons he created. He picked two of the shards that split when he named himself. He fashioned them into dungeon cores and made them into dungeons. They had absolutely no intelligence and only followed his commands but he could create a set of behaviours for them which was perfect for the mine and herbalist garden. He also applied his newfound understanding of space and fit a tree floor dungeon into a single room.
The expression of the council when I explained the concept to them was priceless. I was also used by now to daily screams of outrage followed by the head scribe storming to the dungeon to discuss one of Arnar’s ideas. I was sure he was doing this on purpose to lure the old man into the dungeon and feed on his mana. He couldn’t actually have planned to put third tier materials on the third floor of the mine.
I think Maisoon was just a step from killing Arnar once, the sentiment I understood perfectly. After five hour lecture about the currency in the Empire, Arnar’s response was: “Oh what? Yes, yes, no creating imperial coins due to infraction”. They had a lot to learn, firstly you don’t try to talk with Arnar when he is experimenting, and secondly he has no interest in “unimportant” details like inflation, economic stability or Empire’s policy. You had to be clear and precise. No imperial coins, no tier two materials on the first floor, no perverted trees. Although I was sure that the last one was an accident.
I just made it into the room with the new shrooms. First I got hit with new spores to be immediately assaulted by psychic attack. ARNAR! NO APHRODISIAC SHROOMS! AND EXCLUDE SEXUAL DESIRES FROM THAT TEMPTATION SHROOM!
I. AM. GOING. TO. KILL. THAT. STUPID. CORE.