Thaumivorous Cave Crawler [Extremely Rare]

A mutant form of the Voracious Cave Crawler, the Thaumivorous Cave Crawler is a lethal foe to wizards and Dungeons alike. Its skin and carapace directly absorb mana, robbing all spells of their potency, allowing the Thaumivore to grow stronger and tougher the more it absorbs. Its acidic blood and bile make it a dangerous enemy even in death.

You may now spawn Voracious Cave Crawlers and Thaumivorous Cave Crawlers.

Argent remained standing with perfect poise before me while I read my overdue alerts. I could now create not one but two new beasts...if my mana pool was significantly larger. The Voracious Cave Crawler cost 300 mana to create and had an upkeep of 1.2 mana a second - six times my capacity and four times my regeneration. The Thaumivorous Cave Crawler I had seen to be truly ridiculous, a stupendously lethal foe. Not simply invisible to my sight but also able to soak in the residual mana of recent creations as well as presumably being immune to any spells.

Still, the cost of 1,850 mana and 25 mana a second upkeep was ludicrous. Even if I took it as a second schema, reducing all costs by 90%, the Thaumivore would still clock in at over four times my capacity and more than six times my regeneration. I began to realise that my decisions on schema were not limiting so much as they were liberating - they allowed me to afford anything. I had been reserving my second schema slot, not processing any of the myriad fungi, algae, insect life found in my domain through some misguided attempt not to limit myself. In reality I had been limiting myself. If I had taken the Plump Helmet mushrooms I had created for the extinct Sundered Hold Tribe as a schema I could have fed a tribe in the hundreds for a negligible fee, created variants of it to serve as traps, distractions, and simply decoration. As it was, creating the simple bed of compost and fungi that had filled almost an entire room had cost me 43.8 mana and would have struggled to feed more than the dozen goblins I had made.

It still seemed a waste to take that simple mushroom as a schema of course, the same going for the other flora and fauna I had encountered thus far, as I could currently create them without requiring a reduced price. It was a worthy lesson nonetheless and perhaps in time a Thaumivorous Cave Crawler would make a suitable Floor Boss.

Congratulations! You have levelled up!

Your mana capacity increased by 50. Mana regeneration increased by +0.2/s.

You may now create an additional floor!

As a Level 2 Bastion of Artifice, you may now select up to 5 deployed simple traps to maintain upkeep free.

You may now select an 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.

Defeating the Thaumivorous Cave Crawler had apparently given me enough Dungeon Points to level. I felt myself grow, an additional layer of crystal welling up. My form changed from a rough, unworked stone to a smooth, polished cabochon. I was gladdened that my rutile rays grew with me, fully incorporated into myself. The extra mana capacity and regeneration were nice, as was the ability to maintain a few traps for no upkeep - once I had created new minions to make them anyway. An additional floor would put me up to six, a ridiculous number for a Dungeon as weak as I was. I was truly coming to realise my limitations - even with a total regeneration of half a point per second I could barely sustain fifty goblins without falling into the negatives. If that were to happen I would be forced to reduce upkeep if I could not consume enough gems, metals or better - lives - to offset the cost.

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Those new abilities were as nothing compared to the new choices I had gained. I chose the mana pool expansion without hesitation - as powerful as new schema were, I already had an empty slot and my recent overflow had shown me an increased capacity would be required. As useful as this gift of Foresight might be, overflow robbed me of agency. I would need to expend a lot of mana in the near future to make myself safe once more.

Mana Expansion (I)

Mana pool increased by a factor of five.

New mana capacity: 500.

Current mana: 48.3/500

If I'd had lungs to sigh, I would have. Foresight was likely a worthy trade but still...if I had simply made this choice at the time instead of setting the level up aside I would have been able to reserve my newly-gained mana for my own purposes. No, it was definitely a good trade. My haste had granted me what I needed to realise the risk not just to Argent but myself. Without that brief glimpse into the future I might never have noticed the acid fog. I checked the sealed room, the fog had mostly expended itself now. Heavier than the air above it had not escaped significantly up the shaft through which I had dropped my guillotine, simply burned itself out on the scarred basalt.

Now...Attunements. The possibilities were literally endless. It was like choosing a branch from a schema. The world disappeared from around me, replaced by bubbles and clusters of choice. Proximity here indicated compatibility, the Attunements of Gleam and Gloom orbiting some middle point like a binary star system. The former lent hypnotic glamour to light sources, the latter deepened shadows and granted them hallucinatory power. Taken together a Dungeon would shred the sanity of invaders simply by existing.

Some Attunements were of immense size, attempting to examine them caused me to be repelled with only the most basic impressions. These lay at the center of swirling galaxies of opportunities, grand things like Fire, Science, Gravity. Presumably by focusing my attunements within one galaxy I would eventually be able to choose the Mastery that lay at the heart of them.

There were so many tempting places to start, so many things to try and work towards. Some seemed purpose made for me, others I could discard offhand. The Attunement of Parasitism would lead to evolutions and techniques that consumed invaders from within, a path I had no affinity for. The Attunement of Resilience would lead to my creatures becoming tougher, my devices and walls harder to damage and destroy. It was incredibly tempting. There was no amount of added resilience that would make a goblin truly hard to kill however - though perhaps my Attunements would affect my inhabitant's creations.

In that timeless space I poured over my myriad choices. I weighed options against each other, sorted by categories, utility, single purpose. I spent actual thought on each option I immediately wanted to discard, examining it for unexpected versatility. I debated the merits of a magical focus - I was after all, a creature of magic myself and without it there was no way I would have survived the encounter with the Thaumivore. I pondered on traps and misdirection against the merits of sheer overwhelming force. It was artifice that had truly saved me however, that combination of magic, device and devious thought that had provided the solution. Above all, it was Argent. A lesser, a minion. She had seen what I had not.

The choice was clear.

Attunement of Collaboration (I)

Residents of your Dungeon gain an affinity for working together, leveraging their strengths to a greater whole.

I returned to reality, seeing Argent's eyes widen fractionally as my new Attunement took hold. She bore scars, small things, places where her attempts at healing had not been fully successful. Her wardrobe was ruined, I spent a couple of points restoring it. I sent waves of gratitude and relief, unable to find the words to express to her my thanks, my acknowledgement of her solution. I would have to find them soon, find my ability to communicate and coordinate. For now, we simply began in silence, Argent raising a hand to begin the first of many repairs to my broken fountain, onyx emerging in staggered crystals at her direction from the shattered stone.