Without knowing how far away the settlement the shepherd came from was, and what kind of terrain was outside, I couldn’t precisely predict when how long before someone else would come. Three days was by best-case guess, but one or two were more likely. With that in mind, I needed a plan.

I don’t know what search and rescue looks like here, but it’s safer to assume it’ll be a group of people. Combat potential is impossible to know, but it would be best to assume that they would have some ability to defend themselves. Maybe with a person or two who’ve been trained to fight somewhere in the mix. With the potential for more than one person, I should focus on summoning more monsters. I only have six and I’m pretty sure that won’t be enough, even if the entire group is only as capable as the shepherd. I can’t focus only on monsters, though. More traps to slow and wear them down would be make my monsters more effective. And I’ll need more space for the additional monsters and traps. Let’s do one Essence towards traps, four towards expansion, and a full ten towards monsters. As for what monsters, this is supposed to be a mine that’s infested with spiders, and I only have two so far.

Now, I could summon another Cave Spider, but a million of the same creature is boring, and limits what I can do. When I killed the lamb, I got the schema for sheep, not for a lamb. So shouldn’t I be able to get spiderlings from the Cave Spider?

I focused on summoning a Cave Spider spiderling and started the summoning. The Essence flowed out of me and towards the complex pattern that formed the spider. I pushed at it with the thought of summoning a spiderling. The Essence wiggle a bit, but as soon as it touched the pattern I could no longer do anything to it. My Essence finished filling up the schema and a brand new, normal Cave Spider popped into existence. I sent it to patrol by the edge of my Domain and waited for enough Essence to try again.

So that didn’t that work? Why? I felt the Essence move a little, but as soon as it touched the schema, I couldn’t do anything to it. Maybe I could try looking at the schema itself? That could have answers, and I don’t think I’ve done that yet.

I popped back to the core room for this. I didn’t need to, but it was quieter and felt more private. Once situated, I pulled up the schema for the Cave Spider.

Dungeon Management System

Monster: Cave Spider

A species of large spider adapted to living in shallow surface caves or large subterranean caverns. These Spiders are non-venomous but are relatively strong for their size. Their vision is excellent in the dark but degrades rapidly in the presence of bright light.

Cost: 30 Essence

Beyond the system description, the schema just felt dense. There was a lot of information and I could understand none of it. Not because it was in some exotic language, though it could have been, or that it was supper technical, which it probably was, or that it was super esoteric, which it almost certainly is. It was more like all if the letters in a book were constantly rearranging themselves to stop me from reading it. And if the letters did somehow make an actual word, I wasn’t able to connect the word to any kind of meaning. Like I could see that “b”, “o”, “a”, and “t” make the word boat and I could speak the word boat, if I could speak anyway, but what a boat I was, was beyond me.

Maybe if I’d learned how to read wingdings this would be easier to understand.

I tried examining it for a short while longer but, after the first few minutes it started hurting to look at. The longer I examined the schema, the more the pain grew. I tried to push past, but I had to stop. Once I did, though, the pain only got worse. It felt like something was cutting into me. I only managed brief glimpses around me through the pain, but it was enough to see that there was nothing near me. Thankfully, the pain subsided not long after.

What in the whatever counts as a hell here, was that? That fucking hurt.

I took a moment to gather myself and discovered something. I couldn’t remember the last several minutes. The entire time I’d been examining the schema, I think. The last thing I remember was popping into the core room and looking at the description of Cave Spider. Or... maybe that’s not quite correct? I couldn’t remember examining the schema itself, but thinking about it, but a handful of small points of order were floating around within the nebulous and chaotic schema. It was like trying to understand what a puzzle was going to look like from only a couple of pieces, but it was a start, I guess.

Hmmm. Well, that wasn’t nearly as productive as I was hoping it would be. But why can’t I remember anything? The only other time my memories were messed with was because of a god. Are they behind this time too? Clearly, learning too much about schema is a bad thing. Why though?

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

I spun around to clear my head

Trying to guess the reasons behind why gods act the way they do sounds like an excellent way to go insane. Unless something goes very wrong, I should have more than enough time to ponder that later. Right now, though, I think examining schema more deeply is off the table. At least for the moment. Getting spiderlings, though, is not. If I can’t use the schema to figure it out, I’ll just have to keep trying different things to see what works.

I watched my spiders while waiting for more Essence. Currently, they were webbing up my dungeon. While most of the webbing stretches partially or whole across the mineshafts, I had them lay some webs across the floor, walls, and ceiling as well. All while splitting up the larger sections. I don’t know how flammable the webs are but, on the probably very good chance the answer is “very”, I didn’t want one torch or fire spell to take it all out. The webbing on the floors, wall, and roof would hopefully dissuade parties from just burning the webbing. If not, then to at least force a party to think a bit if they didn’t want a bunch of burning spiderwebs falling round them. Despite the risk of fire, I also had the spiders lightly cover the skeletons with spider webs, with the goal of making them stand out less without restricting their movement. One spider was also currently covering everything inch of the core room, including my alcove, with spiderwebs.

While it would take them hours to complete everything, there was only so much webbing the dungeon could fit without it becoming completely ridiculous. So I spent a few essence to carve out holes in the roof, walls, and one in the pit trap for the spiders to hide in.

A couple hours later, once I had enough Essence, I tried summoning spiderlings again.

Last time, I tried to just force the schema to take the shape that I wanted. That was clearly the wrong method. I thought the pattern provided by the schema was more of a guide. Now I think it’s closer to a mold I just fill with Essence and get what pops out. What if, instead of trying to get a juvenile spider, I just try of a small one? What if I could shrink the mold?

That is exactly what I tried to do. I started summoning another Cave Spider. Once the Essence started flowing into the pattern, I focused on it and imagined compressing the pattern evenly from all sides. At first, nothing happened, then I felt a powerful force resisting me. I tried to push back. I redouble my focus, imagining the weight of my mind pressing down on it. If anything came of doing that, it didn’t show. The pattern filled up and I have myself a fourth Cave Spider.

Well, I’m getting closer, I think. I was almost able to do something. Next time, I’ll get it.

I didn’t, in fact, get it the next time. I didn’t get it during the second or third attempts either. For the fourth attempt, I was attempting a different approach. During my third attempt, I’d slipped up and my mental image of evenly compressing the pattern all at once skewed a bit, and I ended up trying to compress one part more than the rest. Interestingly, whatever was resisting me shifted to match the uneven pressure. I still summoned a normal Cave Spider, but now I had an idea.

I started the summoning process again. Once my Essence started flowing, I enveloped the pattern evenly. I didn’t stay that way, though. Once I felt resistance, I focused on creating a bump of pressure on one side. The force shifted as it did last time. I didn‘t keep the extra pressure around to meet it, though. I move the spot of extra pressure around the pattern, pressing in on it. The resisting force followed, but not quite catching up. The pattern was around half full when it started shrinking. It was only a bit, but it was changing.

By the time the Essence that was pouring filled up the now smaller pattern, it had shrunk by maybe a tenth. Unfortunately, the Essence did not stop once the pattern was full. It continued to force its way into the pattern, increasing the resistance I felt trying to shrink it. I couldn’t keep it at its new size, so I just stopped. The pattern ballooned to its normal size and my eighth Cave spider was soon scurrying away to find an empty hidey-hole.

Progress is progress. And Progress is good, even if it’s slow. I told myself. And because of progress, I now have an additional problem to solve. So how do I keep my Essence from over-filling the pattern once it’s smaller? I could try to just stop it. But I haven’t been able to get any direct control of my Essence yet. Can I compress it? The increased pressure resisting me caught me off-guard, so maybe I could fight it long enough to for all the Essence to fit into the pattern. It would be interesting to see what kind of effect it had on the resulting Monster. There is the problem that it was only slightly smaller than a normal Cave Spider, though, and I’m looking for maybe a fifth the size. Does the extra pressure increase as the pattern gets smaller? If it does, I don’t think I can handle it getting much smaller right now. That means I have to do something with the excesses Essence. What though?

I slowly spun around in the center of the core room while I rolled the problem around my head.

I suppose I could try diverting towards expansion, but I think I’ll run into the same issues with my lack of control over it. If I could just feed it into another pattern, that would be good. How would I do that? Trying to summon two at once would likely just summon two full Cave Spiders. So I would need a second pattern without a second summoning. Could I split the pattern? Or duplicate it? Try to keep everything except the size and number the same? That is an idea. I guess I’ll try that next, then.

Another few hours passed, and I had enough Essence for another summoning. Before starting, I took the time to focus myself and create a clear mental image of what I wanted and how I wanted the process to work. Maybe I could just cut it in half and the system would do the rest, but I don’t think that would work. I believe that for this to have the best chance; I need both resulting patterns to have the exact same information, with each pattern being half the original pattern’s size and mass. Just splitting the pattern would also split the information. There was a tingling at the back of my mind about this, but following it led nowhere. Likely a memory that got erased.

Anyway, the mental image I settled on was cutting a ring in half in a way that resulted in two rings. With that image and its related concept firmly in mind, I started summoning another Cave Spider. The Essence flowed, and I pressed my mental image into the pattern hard. There was immediate resistance. I pushed harder. For a moment there was a stalemate, then I felt the pattern give. The resistance was still there, but it was weakening, and I was gaining ground. It became a race between me, splitting the pattern and the essence filling it. I felt a dull pain form in my head. Not unlike when I tried to look at the schema. The pain grew the more the pattern split. It was enough that I’d lost track of the pattern. The only two things in my head were pain and the mental image. Right before the pain was about to overtake the mental image as the dominant thing in my mind, it stopped.

It took me a bit to realize that Essence was no longer flowing out of me. I gathered myself and looked at what I’d summoned. I found two, smaller, spiders standing in the core room.