While Kelter and his surviving apprentice fled to the barracks, I turned to the notifications I had been ignoring. With the glut of Dungeon Points gained from the slaughter of the first wave and the richer rewards of the warriors in the second, I had levelled not once, not twice, but three times. Even still maintaining seventeen Evolutions and having dug out the escape for Kelter, my mana reserves were ample, swollen with the rich mana of the fallen. It was past time I put my hard taught lessons to work, to stop reacting and start acting.
Congratulations! You have levelled up!
Your mana capacity increased by 50. Mana regeneration increased by +0.3/s.
You may now create an additional floor!
As a Level 4 Bastion of Artifice, you may now select up to 5 lesser Minions with an industrial class to maintain upkeep free.
You may now select a second Attunement. You will be able to choose up to five Attunements in total, one for every second level, choosing your fifth at level 10.
You may choose to receive an additional Schema Slot OR an expansion to your Mana pool OR an Inheritance.
I chose the Inheritance without hesitation. Leshalinod had not led me astray so far - or more specifically, they had and their aid was my greatest strength. Without the History they had shaped from what would have become my Guide I would not have had the schema I needed to defend myself or the realisation that I could create my own creatures. My own chimeric designs, meldings of natural evolutions. Both had defended me against the ratfolk incursion, the Frilled Sharks and my Viridescent Scincid Spiders. A new schema slot would be useful to hold in reserve but I would put my faith in Leshalinod for now and trust their generosity to be more beneficial. From my rutile bands silver motes of mana began to rise, rippling in an aetheric current that carried away from me to hover in front of my Fountain where they began to merge. Where the motes combined they became thicker, heavier, and gained a red tinge. The process was slow but in seconds I could see where a pattern was beginning to form. I turned my attention from it and began iterating once more through the timeless void of Attunements. Those brilliant galaxies of concepts were entrancing; a Dungeon could spend a mortal's lifespan in that instance and still not have fully explored a single one. Each radiant gleaming system of ideas encapsulated all it was to be that abstraction, to be what could be described by that single word. The interactions were infinite for the vocabularies of sapient races were infinite, preconceptions from one language separate from those of another yet both defined by the same word. All refined into the singular, inarticulate language of Dungeons.
As before however, I did not choose a solitary idea but something more conceptual. I had spent an eon pondering my first Attunement and what paths and combinations it would be best supplemented by. Collaboration was not an Attunement that provided an immediate, powerful boon. In the void it wasn't a solitary planetoid but a system, a governing set. Single choices seemed to more targeted and focused, taking a more distinct and powerful manifestation. I had no current use for them. Mine was to be versatility, my arsenal would be a toolbox - always a new device or artifice to face the foe. From the swirling stars I selected -
Attunement of Precision (I)
Residents of your Dungeon gain an affinity for accuracy, their every thought and action more exact.
From the Craftwind I could only choose the first two smiths for free upkeep, the miners apparently not counting as 'industrial.' While not immediately useful, I would be able to later create more smiths and artisans without draining me. I had a lot still to do and was still running a negative from the ongoing evolutions. Leshalinod's bequeathment did not seem to be imposing a further penalty upon me, a sign I had made the right choice in trusting them - the work and cost was all their own, no penalties foisted upon me. I began expanding tight corridors and tunnels around the battlefield, preparing to place my pieces where I needed them.
Congratulations! You have levelled up!
Your mana capacity increased by 50. Mana regeneration increased by +0.2/s.
As a Level 5 Bastion of Artifice, you may outfit your expeditions with devices you have personally created. You may maintain up to three devices personally created per Expedition.
You may now organise expeditions beyond your realm.
You may choose to receive an additional Schema Slot OR an expansion to your Mana pool.
At last, expeditions were unlocked - my creations could now venture forth from my domain. Another reward not immediately useful seeing as I was currently under assault. Most immediately interesting was the mention of being able to maintain devices I had personally created - not for a reduced upkeep or some such but simply to maintain them. The implication was that even at a distance and separate from my realm my mana could still flow. Fascinating as the implication was, it would have to wait. I began shaping great gears and cogs, manifesting the steel directly from the ether, slick with oil and spinning to my designs in the stone between floors. Beyond the walls, floors and ceilings my mana flowed unhindered by my fallen sibling. I could continue to prepare a bloody revenge. In the meantime, I took a fourth Schema slo-
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ÔTTHAT
Argent barked a word only I could hear, a word she should have no way of knowing. It tore soundless from her throat, splitting her tongue and blasting through her lips. It hung in the air, solid and immutable, nailed into time and space by her will alone. A word in the language of Dungeons, a manifestation of an ability I lacked and she should not have. She imposed her dictate on the Law of Gravity, redirecting it through ninety degrees so that the acid hurled by the mage fell back upon his own troops. He caught it in a hasty web of glyphs and sigils, trying and failing to throw it back at my minions. Argent's very life poured into her working, she was Dungeon-stuff, birthed and created by me and this magic was not that of mortals. She had learned it from the History, somehow. When we had read together I had seen her take notes in her own tongue, assumed she was reading in it as well. Perhaps she had but somehow she had seen or understood what really lay below. Words without pronunciation, words never spoken, words beyond words. The concepts and totalities of Dungeon thought.
I was scared. I was proud. I gloried in her spiteful refusal to die, watching her expend her mana to extend her life even as her very body came apart as fuel. I was horrified at her knowledge, jealous that I lacked it, furious at what she had been made to do. Against her even my brother's tumult couldn't penetrate and I was free to aid her, conjuring thick, mana heavy and oxygenated blood for her to siphon into her own body and perpetuate herself and her wroth.
Congratulations! You have levelled up!
Your mana capacity increased by 50. Mana regeneration increased by +0.3/s.
You may now create an additional floor!
As a Level 6 Bastion of Artifice, you may now power an industrial process directly upkeep free.
You may now select a third Attunement. You will be able to choose up to five Attunements in total, one for every second level, choosing your fifth at level 10.
You may choose to receive an additional Schema Slot OR an expansion to your Mana pool OR an additional Expedition.
With my third consecutive level up, my plan was finally able to come together. My realm shivered, gently sinking deeper into the earth until the river was far enough above the entrance level to become a floor in its own right. So too did I deepen the divide between the entrance and the empty chambers that the last of the Crundles huddled in, terrified of the ratfolk intruders and powerless against them. Stone slid from the ceiling, clattering loudly upon the floor of what would become my breeding grounds where minor beasts would fight and die for my advancement. Carefully, I lowered my new device on a pane of solid emerald light, purple interference from my bound kin eating at it like the acid burning through stone on the floor below. Brass and steel, a great lifeless arachnid skeleton of gear and girder with a stone child. Atop it's thorax was a key, ready to be turned. I called for Kelter's attention, his aid required to steal my cousin so I could leverage my new creation to defeat the ratman witch, punish his hubris and devour his life. All the while I set green lights dancing across the key, all along one side of the bow. Hoping against hope that I could shave some precious seconds off the time the vermin would have to react, lure the simple mind of the adult Crundle that peered from behind a stone to begin winding up the spider.
I had been going to select either the Attunement of Concealment, to better hide my traps and disguise my minions as they waited in ambush; or perhaps Defiance to steel the spines of my soldiers. Argent inspired me however, illustrating perfectly how little Defiance was needed and allowing my mind's eye to see not a system but a galaxy, perhaps even a universe. A singularity so all encompassing I hadn't seen it in it's entirety in all my searching. Missing the forest for the trees.
Attunement of Order (I)
Residents of your Dungeon gain an affinity for systems and structures.
I watched my goblins' fire grow more accurate, their reloading become more consistent. Argent's great dictate held firm, imposing an Amended Law upon Creation against which the wizard simply couldn't appeal. Even when Kelter swung from the ceiling, the angle of his glaive was a perfect ninety degrees against the orb, a perfect tangent. Uller braced in the crawlspace, using the momentum of the dangling madman's he held by the ankles' swing to fling him up over the cohort. Kelter was saved from the acid by inches, both goblins burned by spatter but just barely escaping serious injury. Dodging a bolt of lightning, he took off running and dove onto the orb to contain it's mana with his own body. While rats screamed and cursed, my light at last cohered around them. My fury grew, a blinding wrath that jostled me on the flash-boiled steam of my fountain and I bellowed in every tongue I had learned.
I tore through time with the gift of Foresight, finally able to see. My first two strategies were countered, my third - The ceiling fell upon the cohort, caught by the ratman wizard. Uller clung to a slab, leaping up at my direction and running up the suspended stone to the third level. Puffer caps swelled and detonated, throwing their thick cloying spores into the air of the entrance level. I drew a great vortex, an artificial vacuum that pulled it all together with arrays of rotating stone plates and poured it down onto the rats. I hurled spear after spear of stone at the stairwell, distracting the witch and not allowing them a single second to recover. Crushing stone weight above, basalt javelins hammering at his shields from below and a fog of spores and acidic gas so thick he could barely breathe.
Step one.
While his warband melted and died around him, choking on their own vomit I released the mechanisms of great iron assemblies. Pendulously they turned, lifting rock and stone from their resting place of millennia. The ceiling of the blockhouse level pulled apart and lifted up in a fountain of dirt and gravel. A mighty lead hammer scythed through the fog, smashing into the shield with a force that drove every goblin to their knees and pulverised the surviving ratfolk. Warrior and elite alike simply stopped, ragdolled up the staircase with organs blasted to jelly or splattered by the hammer against the shield so thinly there was hardly anything for me to consume. I turned the gears once more, raising the hammer back into the mountain to prepare for another strike. With the basic knowledge I had of the lightning spell I wreathed the stairs in thunder, unable to cast or direct it but that was ample for my purpose. The rat had soaked in the mana of my kin for years, his reserves were ample and his spellcraft powerfully worked. Even seconds later it blazed a brilliant white that blocked my sight in a dome around him, not simply resisting the blow of my hammer but slowing it, taking the impact over a prolonged timespan. Blinded by spores, deafened by the hammer, wreathed in lightning, the witch tried to stagger back up the stairs. He was forced to make the same mistake as I had, pouring mana ahead of him like a torch. When Uller guided by clockwork spider to the head of the stairs and pulled the lever to release it's serpentine payload to hammer at the rat's feet and shins with brittle green rock too slow moving to trigger his shield, he fell. Bruised and bleeding, blinded by gas and spore, deafened. Kelter hunched desperately, bleeding from acid wounds and burst eardrums, the hollow orb that imprisoned my cousin itself being pulled towards its master. His feet were bare, toes dug into the gaps of flagstones with one arm latched onto one of the spider's legs. All his attention was on retrieving the orb Kelter so bravely protected, focused only on retrieving it to disrupt my light and protect himself from me, so thoroughly incapacitated he was forced to use his own magic simply perceive the world. A pale imitation of my own senses.
Brute force was not my strength. My mana reserves dipped appallingly low, still maintaining eight evolutions and all my efforts to disrupt and ensnare the witch. The clockwork spider blindly marched forwards into the shield, burning and spalling against it. Uller curled around Kelter, helping brace his master against the inexorable pull of the rat's staff. My strength was in cunning, in artifice and collaboration, I embodied and was attuned to them all and also precision and Order itself.
As did my creatures. When the Saurian Mage Eater crawled through arcane lightning and slithered through the shield, the witch didn't even see the void in his mana until it's jaws tore into his belly.