Finding a rock that wasn’t covered in bat guano was impossible. But finding a rock was easy. One for the core to sit on that he had wiped some of the encrusted stuff off and one for himself to use.
He then cut himself by scraping the rock against his hand and dropped some droplets of blood onto the core. But not before wrapping the core in part of his shirt that he had ripped off. There was no way he could trust Gves not absorb it all so had to use the shirt as a barrier to that. He also held the core in place so it didn’t try and move and gobble up the prize.
Then he waited still as he could until the fated moment when a visitor arrived.
A bat landed on the blood spotted rag that was his shirt and finding it could not simply lift it away due to Jack holding it still. It started to lick, bite and then scratch and scrabble at the rag to get it free or at least devour some of the blood.
Intruder had been detected Sir
Jack brought down the stone with glee eventually smashing bats head in.
Nothing! Jack checked the system notifications but there was nothing. He wondered for a moment if he could have somehow damaged the core despite Gves assurances that it was almost as hard as diamond. And that it was laughable that Jack, a human at his level could break it.
So he checked the system information.
Level 1 MP 12/64 Domain: 0.02
No change!
Why hasn’t the core levelled up Gves!?
The core will level up once mana reaches its maximum Sir.
Well get on with devouring this dam bat Gves!
Absorbing but as you wish Sir
Next time I don’t expect to have to ask! I’m going to repeat the process
I rather think your blood would be better spent on improving the core than feeding to rodents Sir.
Just do it!
Very well Sir.
At least Gves could not directly evade his instructions but he would have to watch this guy like a hawk. If he lived that long that is.
[Level up!]
[Level 2 MP 64/128 Domain: 0.04]
Thank goodness! Jack felt the relief wash over him and as increasingly was becoming a habit found himself laying down.
At least the bats managed to supply enough mana to max out the pool but he could see immediately further level ups would become an issue. He would need bigger prey down the line. He noted that the core was growing in size with each level up which actually made it easier to bash things onto it.
Jack had an idea for now though and while he rested for a moment, sitting panting by the wall next to the cave entrance. As that small bashing session had almost caused his already strained body to faint.
He got Gves to absorb anything he could find while he was pausing to get his breath back: earth, rock, moss from the cave walls. Gves said the blood had really boosted the cores absorption allowing it to max out the mana pool in only a few minutes.
Yes Sir’s blood allows for the absorption of every conceivable mana, even the affinities of gravity, space and time can be absorbed.
He might have thought this interesting if he did not have bat number two, to think about. Thus painfully Jack got up and repeated the process.
[Level up!]
[Level 3 MP 128/256 Domain: 0.08]
As the information suggested the core now had a domain of 8cm and looked about 3cm in diameter now. Still not big enough for any plans he had in mind to stop the clansmen from killing him by trampling him into a squelchy pancake on the cave floor. So he continued. This time at least he did not need more of his precious blood as the mashed up remains of bat number two had drawn a crowd. And as soon as Gves alerted him that there was an intruder he let loose with his trusty rock.
Stumbling back onto his butt in the goop he soon got another notification:
[Level up! Level 4 MP 256/512 Domain: 0.16]
Then when Gves absorbed some more over a few minutes to max out the pool.
[Level up! Level 5 MP 512/1024 Domain: 0.32]
Ok maybe he could do something with this. What’s more he knew he would soon be out of time as he had already been pressing his luck. If this didn’t work he would just have to try and limp for it.
---
Laying in the muck of the cave his mind clearly had drifted off thankfully not into oblivion but merely into a mundane dream about being late for work. Strangely peaceful. The idea that work from his previous life was equated to a peaceful existence made him laugh a bit too manically for his liking. He knew he was now becoming increasingly unhinged.
Then he heard them coming, running full tilt, crashing along the tunnel sending his synapses into a flurry of action firing much needed adrenalin into his system.
He rolled out of the way just in time to see a large section of the cave floor near the entrance disappear causing the bats in the cave to explode like a swirling tornado. The hole that had appeared caused three of the clansmen to vanish completely from view. While the other clansmen looked on in disbelief.
How did he do it? When it took Gves 2 weeks to make his first trap.
Simple he wasn’t simple.
To make a collapsing trap doesn’t require all the earth and rock to be removed. Just enough to cause a collapse. Removing layers that will concertina into a collapse is far more efficient when time is short. And if you have the mechanical means to do it, of course.
He had four advantages that helped make this a plan that actually worked. One the clansman were a whole lot heavier than himself. Two Gves’ core could move sixteen times faster and clear sixteen times as much space as the level one version. Thirdly Gves was ideally suited for the task of evaluating rock density and composition when doing the excavating due to his mana sensing abilities. Lastly, he was a very different Gves from the one of six hundred years ago with rather more experience of creating dungeons and alike.
Of course they weren’t dead.
A roar erupted from the bottom of the newly installed trench and a stubby arm slowly reached up over the edge.
Ok, here goes nothing
Jack ran towards the figure that was lurching ever higher from the pit. Smashing his own hand against the dinner plate sized one, giving it a high five of sorts.
Intruder detected
Eat him! Said Jack contemptuously. He was fed up with these games.
Gves had the sense not to correct him this time and just went about his business. The clansman however had another trick up his sleeve and as Jack watched in horror the hand changed moulding round his own. Trapped he was then hoisted into the air.
Not only was this unexpected but the clansmen evidently had effective teamwork as those on the other side of the trench took aim.
But before he was about to be flambéed there was an ear splitting sound then the clansman fell back into the pit dead.
Of course Jack was pulled right back with him before Gves had the decency to sever the arm. This still however caused Jack’s arm to be dislocated in the process.
The only conciliation was seeing another level up message a few seconds later when sufficient parts of the clansman had been absorbed.
[Level up! Level 6 MP 1024/2048 Domain: 0.64]
The torrent of flames from three clansmen still came his way singeing his hair in the process. Fortunately the blast did not damage the core but was so intense that the three were now classed as intruders.
Jack saw that the other two realised that they were clearly out of their depth with this unseen attacker and started to clump their way back down the tunnel. However the core now had quite the range. Jack was interested to find out how exactly it was moving so fast now. As Gves had said moving through earth and rock was fairly slow.
This did not seem slow at all as the nearest of the two clansmen was downed in a couple of seconds as his tree trunk sized left leg gave way underneath him.
[Level up! Level 7 MP 2048/4096 Domain: 1.28]
Now the size of the domain has increased it is possible to teleport to the domain boundary and then repeat the process. This is not too mana intensive and is very effective indeed for apprehending such fleeing invaders as these. Of course this would not be possible for a stationary core but all sorts of possibilities come to mind now for a mobile core such as ours. Gves added.
Jack was just glad Gves seemed to be acting for his benefit for the moment. Maybe he had seen that Jack’s chances of survival had risen and was now bettering on a better return for his investment so to speak. Whatever Jack was glad. And also Gves was acting strategically as no sooner had he downed the first than he went after the last one, incapacitating it also before going back to finish off the first.
Now to finish off the ones left in the hole or maybe just move on rather than get a face full of flame.
However, the larger the domain size the greater his chances of survival. Though talking of survival he really could do with something for this battered body of his. So he sent Gves on a mission to salvage anything the clansmen might have.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Gves was able to absorb the two health tonics that had been in Jack’s supply pack, glass bottles and all. And then return to his side.
Jack held up the core that was at least five centimetres in diameter. He could see hiding it might prove more difficult as time went on as he held it up to his mouth so that Gves could empty the health tonics into his mouth. After this he laid back listening for any sounds of trouble nearby while Gves did his thing.
Gves thing was making more traps all around Jack’s current position. Traps that would again only activate if someone considerably heavier than a normal human stepped on them.
While Jack rested and his shoulder eased up, he thought of his most imminent problem. Which was Gves. Although he seemed to be on his side. How long before the guy decided to change his mind? Also more pressingly what would he decide about Sal? A far more tempting elf to absorb than himself, he felt.
No he would need to deal with Gves now. And so he tried accessing the system and it was not long before he was greeted with the expected prompt requesting an administrative password.
Now assuming everything had been planned very meticulously by someone up to this point. Someone he felt he knew intimately. He concluded the password must be Elli.
*Password invalid*
Ok to simple. Must be a word and a number. Elli120424. The day they met.
Well that confirmed his suspicions even more. It worked like a dream, he had got into the system and now had administrative rights to do whatever he wanted.
And what he wanted to do was see what programmes were loaded onto the system.
He found what he thought should do the job almost immediately in a folder full of MODS.
What he just needed was to choose something that would not be too heavy.
---
Gves was proudly surveying his handiwork and had just passed the core back to Jack for safe keeping.
The whole floor of this cave was now a death trap except for the small area around his master. And he was glad now that he had decided to protect him. Of course the highest priority was always the core. The sacrificing of a minion of the core was a daily occurrence and not something to be thought too much about. It was the very purpose of having a minion, for it to die to protect its host the core.
Suddenly Gves found himself experiencing a very strange phenomena. He was outside the core!
And as he looked down at what were clearly hands, that he was a skeleton of some life form or other. Quite extraordinary!
Then he was struck by an idea. It couldn’t be! He checked his status or rather he went to but couldn’t find anything but this:
Name: Gves, Skeleton minion Level 1
HP: 25/25 MP:0/0 STR: 5 VIT:7 INT:67
Then before he even had a chance to finish reading he felt the weird sensation again.
Name: Gves, Bat minion Level 1
HP: 25/25 MP:0/0 STR: 5 VIT:7 INT:67
W-What has Sir done? Gves mentally projected towards his master.
Jack just let the accursed thing flounder for a while.
---
Jack found he could only make minions for things that had been absorbed by the core and that creating them used mana based on their composition. He noted that there were twelve souls residing within the core including Gves and presumably the others were the bats and clansmen. Kind of creepy but more worrying was the fact that his own soul was also listed.
Slight problem there. As presumably if said core was destroyed it would not bode well for his soul. He decided then and there to use the creation magic available to sculpt a rough harness to contain the precious core.
The core could create things using any material it had absorbed and therefor had a kind of blueprint for. He chose bone as it was lightweight. Which was the same reason he chose to make Gves a skeleton using the minion mod he'd found. It might have been just as easy to use the core’s innate functionality but hey, who doesn’t like a new MOD?
He then decided to change him to a bat as a skeleton would do nothing against the clansmen and stuck out like a sore thumb. Whereas at least a bat would have some kind of stealth ability or even surveillance possibilities.
In answer to your question, I just thought it would be safer this way
Safer how Sir? Gves felt an urge to attack this minion that threatened the core but now also felt a restraint as this entity was far above a normal minion of the core. As the new rules came into force he found himself saying.
Very well Sir. Demoted to a bat.
---
Elsewhere in the cave system, Sal found herself at last exiting her soul space. This meant this area of the cave or at least this tunnel was free. She noted unsurprisingly that her pack had been taken.
Her pack! With her supplies and the upog in it!
She immediately used her seemingly upgraded finder senses which locked onto the upog within seconds. And she was not just a finder now but a fully fledged Summoner as well.
She pulled the ethereal threads and felt the upog rush towards her. Again she had no shard to store it within and so it entered straight into her soul space. Maybe not the best of ideas but she was still new at this game.
Oracle, what new soul is this? I can detect draconic affinities but it is not draconic. It is a hybrid. What an accursed race!
I like it and I hope you two can get alone fine
Making her way back the way she’d come Sal beheld a strange sight. In the middle of a cave where the entire floor appeared to have been destroyed by some kind of cave in, stood the lone figure of her brother John, standing a top a promontory of rock, laughing.
[Level up! Level 8 MP 4096/8192 Domain: 2.56]
He had worked out another way of maxing his mana pool out for the next level up. Having used shards collected from the excavation of the cave to store mana ready for when needed. How he could keep sufficient mana shards on his person for this purpose was down to his unlocking the bread and butter of all good adventurers, a loot bag or in his case a dimensional storage. It was of course the main storage which being a dungeon core allowed rather a lot of space as it was really meant for storing large quantities of building materials for the dungeon.
And so after taking out all the stored mana shards and absorbing mana from every one of them.
[Level up! Level 9 MP 8192/16384 Domain: 5.12]
Now he was seeing a problem that was of course becoming exponentially harder, levelling up. He had found mana shards to level up this time but for the next level up he would need twice as many. These were mana shards that had absorbed mana over possibly hundreds of years to grow to this size.
He wondered to himself, whether five meters, was a long enough distance, to safely avoid a fire attack from the clansmen. He strongly doubted it. Even if you were running in the opposite direction or not. He had seen their flame attack first hand and it was no joke. One advantage he had over the clansmen was speed as there size made them comparatively slow. But if he got trapped again he would be a gonner.
--
Actually when Sal looked there was one clansmen left chasing around what looked to be a skeleton. It was kind of a pity the cave they had played in as kids had been decimated to such a degree. But that was indeed a childish fantasy to think such things could stay the same. Thinking about it she decided it was probably one of her pursers. And so was glad to see it mysteriously succumbing to something before shrieking and falling still.
John, what’s going on? Sal shouted hesitantly across the void.
Quite a lot, I’m relieved to see that you’re ok though. Even if your not supposed to be heading back. Jack had a double take as he realised he’d just respond as John and not Jack. Clearly her brother was very protective indeed.
Sal stuck her tongue out then made to climb down the slope into the pit below.
Wait! shouted Jack.
Sal did so only to find a bridge of earth and rock slowly materialise before her, stretching out across the divide between them.
Ok, that’s new thought Sal guessing John had been through some changes of his own. She was not totally surprised as Travar had explained to her that this was all the workings of her mother the Oracle. And that major events must be a foot and they were to be part of them. As long as they involved finding her mother she didn’t really mind.
Jack had decided to be upfront about his true identity and was very much relieved to find this was the right course of action as one Sal seemed un-phased by such a development and two he would have found it hard to stomach pretending to be someone who he was not. Unless it was a straightforward scam of course.
She also confided in him that she and her mother were what was called an oracle. Or at least one or the other were as only one could hold the power, which was divine in nature, at a time. This made events so far make at least a whole lot more sense.
Jack was currently feeling not exactly undefeatable as though he had some rather effective underhand offensive capabilities he had little in the way of defensive ones. This was something he needed to work on moving forward. He could of course tunnel himself a hole to escape but this wouldn’t really allow him to take full part in a battle. And until he got sufficient minions and could sit back and watch the fights this would not be an option.
Armour was something that immediately came to mind but without some kind of template he felt he would only create a fashion monstrosity. Something that would end up as more of an encumbrance than a boon. And more than likely end up getting him killed during a fight.
Then he remembered the MODS he had looked at before. DOMINION he had already used to easily create minions on the fly. There were some others like BIOMES that were still pretty useless as a dungeon core on the move. But the MASTERY MOD was what he was looking for. It allowed for creation of armour, weapons and artefacts without the need of a blueprint to work from.
He again praised his not so mysterious benefactor for installing all this stuff for him. There was also a MOD simply called ARCANE that he was dying to delve into but knew he couldn’t afford the time right now. So instead settled for creating some bone armour from all the clansmen that had been absorbed. MASTERY allowed him to tailor it to his body and alter the thickness with just a thought.
Again he could have just used the cores creation magic to do the same thing but looking at the instructions gleaned from the helpful help icon:
To create armour using creation magic, follow these steps:
1. Focus your mind and energy on visualizing the type of armour you want to create. Imagine every detail, from the material to the design.
2. Channel your magic energy into your hands and start shaping the armour out of thin air. Visualize the armour materializing and taking form in front of you.
3. Finally, don the armour and feel the power and protection it provides you as you go into battle.
Remember, creation magic is a powerful and complex form of magic, so it may take time and practice to master the art of creating armour. Practice regularly and continue to hone your skills to become a formidable mage on the battlefield.
He decided that the mana and time expended getting a piece of armour that wasn’t totally shit, would not be worth it. Maybe fun for later or a rainy Sunday afternoon. But not today. And not when he had to make every bit of mana count. He needed all the levels he could get under his belt before something came along to cut his holiday plans short and kill him. He knew he had been more than lucky so far and didn’t want to test this luck anymore than he needed to.
Using the MASTERY MOD again, he also moulded a socket for the core to fit into. This served two purposes, one he would not lose it and two if he ever was attacked at close range it would trigger the intruder flag allowing the core to be used to defend him. Not that was what he wanted as it would risk the core but it was better than nothing.
Remembering how Gves had utilised the core’s ability to effectively teleport to the edge of its domain repeatedly, creating a very neat movement skill. He really wanted to see if he could make use of this in some way. But as he didn’t know for sure how exactly this movement was implemented he didn’t want to risk even experimenting with it yet. He felt teleporting into something that was at those coordinates and insta killing himself was a real possibility. As it would be like driving down a freeway with brick walls at random intervals. Due to the fact that the world had annoying obstacles like trees and rocks to contend with. So he finally decided it was something to be considered later.
A movement skill that was far safer was hole creation or to put it simply tunnelling. He left Sal and Gves was reabsorbed back into the core. He found that minions would die if left outside the domain. Well skeletons did anyway. Maybe if the minion could sustain its own life somehow it could survive. This made Jack feel really weird as he remembered how he had just sent Gves off with the core to follow his instructions without worrying about himself being outside the domain as a result. What would happen to him? He did not know and sure did not want to find out. But this was sure one hell of a good reason to keep the core on him whenever possible.
While practising tunnelling under the caves, he used the core’s mana sensing abilities combined with his finder skill to pinpoint mana shards. After only about twenty minutes he felt pretty competent at tunnelling and had managed to collect seventeen shards of varying sizes. He had also found some interesting things as he had been able to descend far further than ever before. Hopefully Sal would let him investigate them on their way back. He said way back as Sal had informed him that they needed to go to the Deadlands as part of their quest.
He then got back to Sal as he knew she was desperate to get back to the village and find out if her father was ok. Exiting the safe haven of the cave he quickly created 5 bats that he would send out to the edge of the domain as scouts, while using the other souls to make a few skeletons. He didn’t consider the skeletons useful as anything but a distraction but armed them with bone knives all the same.
His last minion was of course Gves who he gave a full clansmen makeover flesh and all this time. He clumped along before them the DOMINION MOD allowing him quickly to rename the minions to whatever he wished. Thus a little label could be seen by Jack and the other minions, over Gves head now saying Lurch. He thought it fitting due to the fact that the big brutish things did lurch as they walked but also of course because he was still a butler at heart.
They were greeted by shafts of daylight as they reached the exit to the cave system and also a new experience for Jack since coming to this world, fresh air.