At first thought, the implications of Melk’s meddling would seem to be show-stoppers. But upon further consideration, I may have a workaround.

Using the surface river to supply a current to my new aquatic habitat is not viable; the only way I could make it work is if I pumped the output from the cistern back up and downstream of the river. That would work, it’s true, but it’d be a huge waste of energy, to say nothing of the fact that I don’t know where I’d even source the energy from. After all, diverting a portion to drive waterwheels, or better yet, a series of inline impellers, would put me back to square one; relocating the output.

But I’m in luck! My recently filled reservoir’s location within my dungeon works in my favor! It is positioned at a slightly shallower depth compared to the large cavern, such that the various brooks filtering into it have sources above the cistern.

Well, above it at least as far as elevation is concerned. They have a horizontal offset of two hundred meters, at best. This is fine though; I can easily carve out a sloping aqueduct to carry water to the entrance of the cistern and then reroute its outputs back to the pond in the cavern. Easy!

Easy, but still less than optimal. Even if I redirect every brook entering the cavern to pass through the cistern environment first, the total water throughput will still be less than what I’d designed it for. Unfortunately, I don’t have a solution for this shortcoming, so I’ll just have to make do.

The cistern’s geometry was calculated to allow a specific volume of water to move through it at a precise rate, if I wish to achieve the desired flow speed despite the decreased input, I’ll have to make key sections shallower and/or narrower to reduce the cross-sectional area. Doable, but still a pain as I’ll have to manually levitate substrate there due to the inaccessibility to ant carts.

I can still breach the riverbed above at will for emergency flooding, Melk won’t react fast enough to get in the way of that failsafe.

To be quite frank, I’m a bit miffed. Even though I have a clear path forward, I was really hoping I could immediately move on to focusing my efforts on claiming new territory and resuming my research of the world.

It’s not so bad though, with my personal safety nearly secured to an acceptable degree, it won’t be long before I can refocus on the things which really interest me. And it’s not as if I came out of this latest situation empty handed, I’ve furthered my understanding of this world.

Melk is an entity, who I hesitate to call a ‘god,’ though I will admit the definition is subjective, that maintains the world. How ‘he’ goes about doing so is largely a mystery to me, but at the very least he prevents certain hydrological patterns. When I was first reading on the geography of the world, and especially its cavernous depths, I wondered how relatively dry caves could exist so easily below sea level, especially when considering how profusely they perforate the crust.

Now though, I have the answer; a conscious process maintains the status quo. A neat solution, to be sure, but doesn’t it seem a little…convenient?

I’ve already entertained this line of reasoning, but it still nags at the back of my mind; why am I here? Too much has gone my way for me to conclude that it’s pure chance. Are not my skills too well suited for my new existence?

There is little I can say with certainty, but I can say this; there is a connection between this reality and my original one. Besides the obvious information transfer from here to there in the form of fantasy creatures which exist here being known of in my old universe, there is also the fact that everyone here seems to speak English! Heck, even I am living proof of this; is not the very fact that my mind is here in the first-place proof of information exchange?

So, there is omnidirectional information transfer between worlds. I can’t say for sure, but I’m also reasonably certain these worlds don’t share the same universe; magic is simply too alien to be a feature of physics as I know it.

Can I use this knowledge to my advantage? Probably not right now, but who can say what the future holds? There is research to be done, but I doubt I can find all the answers I seek by myself.

I need influence.

Therefore, I must forge connections with others. To do that, I must tie our interests together. I can provide an indispensable service or commodity to realize this mutual connection.

Through the more careful exploitation of my situation, I can produce highly lucrative resources, use my knowledge and abilities to achieve my own ends, or find applications for the vast quantity of mana currently at my disposal.

With my security nearly established, it’s nearly time for me to start acting in these areas.

Am I getting ahead of myself? Probably, I never was one for long-term planning. For now, I’ll focus on culturing an aquatic environment and conquering the fantastic canyon and all its wonders. Baby steps.

I expand threadlike strands of my domain up through each of the passages carrying the brooks that cascade into my cavern. Thanks to my especially robust dungeon-neurology derived spatial awareness, I follow each one to the proper heights that will allow me to hook them into the aqueduct I’m about to set to work on.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Now with my endpoints established, I focus on the upper shaft leading to the front of my cistern. With care, I begin to cut a spiraling ramp into the walls of sheer vertical tube to allow my fleet of ant carts to travel to the mouth of the soon to be built aqueduct.

With everything in place, it’s not long before an unbroken line of ant carts is flowing both up and down the ramp to the site of the excavation to clear away the standardized rhyolite blocks I’ve become so efficient at producing.

The day stretches on and the aqueduct gradually reaches through the crust to connect with the lava tubes, each carrying their own brook. Just as I’m putting the finishing touches on the walls of the passage and preparing to make the final connections with the separate water sources, my attention zeros in on an unexpected event.

In the shaft which I’d wrapped the periphery with a spiraling ramp, one of heavily laden descending ant carts veers too close to the edge and loses purchase on the damp stone. The closest wheel, coated in wet mud from its travels through the rest of my dungeon, slides over the edge, followed by the rest of the cart and its helpless controllers.

Happening faster than I’d have expected, the cart, blocks, and ants alike, all tumble off the edge and plummet several dozen meters before colliding with the muddy stone floor at the bottom.

Crushed on impact, the mangled bodies of the thirty-two unfortunate dungeon helpers as well as the fungiwood cart are further bombarded by the heavy rhyolite blocks which followed in their wake.

While unfortunate, this occupational accident is far from the first of its kind. Despite having built out my fleet months ago, from time to time I lose equipment to unforeseen incidents and thus must continue to maintain my stock.

Ant carts, as it turns out, are not the most efficient means of transportation. They are versatile, yes, autonomous to an astounding degree as I’ve spent months making tweaks to the conditional behaviors of my designated porters, and easy to build to boot. But as I continue to expand, I’ve been left wanting. You see, they are not very scalable, as the ants pushing them are tiny and there are only so many I can place along its sides before the pushable capacity experiences diminishing returns.

This can, and has been, in part, alleviated by manufacturing a second generation of much larger super helper propelled carts, but still I’ve encountered setbacks.

Despite my ability to apply miraculously versatile adaptive compulsions to my dungeon’s inhabitants, sometimes the carts get in the way of each other and at best cause congestion, and at worst, spark disasters such as this one.

These issues have further been exacerbated by the uptick in hauling jobs. Now, I use the carts to distribute fertile soil to different parts of my dungeon and even to transport fungus food to ants at work.

I’ve been toying with the idea of implementing a dedicated network of railways to further facilitate throughput within my domain, but if I’m to do so, I wish to do it right.

The rope-driven carts are not tenable. They will always remain a gimmick. A fun gimmick, to be sure, as I’ve derived a lot of personal pleasure simply staring at the operating mechanisms. I require a new device which can drive heavy loads across any railway. Of course, I know my limits; a steam engine would be extremely useful, but I don’t have the means of producing such a device yet. No, what I have in mind is the little-known Impulsoria.

The Impulsoria was a machine presented on Earth during the Great Exhibition of 1851. Though it didn’t see much use due to competing with steam-driven devices. It was essentially a horse powered locomotive. In essence, the Impulsoria is a mobile treadmill atop which animals walk. With the help of gearing, a mechanical advantage is achieved allowing only a few animals to haul a load much heavier than what they’d be able to pull otherwise, albeit at a slower pace. This is especially useful for steep inclines. Horses can be unruly, but well-behaved enormous ants are arguably much better suited for such a machine as they can grip spanning poles with their mandibles to maintain adequate traction with the treadmill.

Thanks to my unique situation which would never have occurred on Earth, I have an actual application for this machine! The only trouble is building it.

You see, the mechanism isn’t really that complex, at least not for a hobbyist clockmaker of my caliber. Therefore, designing it isn’t the problem. No, the required materials are.

I can easily build the frame from fungiwood and also work with leather for the necessary belt drives, but the gear reduction and chains absolutely must be comprised of metal, preferably iron, if I’m to keep the form minimized.

I cannot work with metal and have not yet had the time to build out a suitable workshop. And as much as I’d love to drop everything and do exactly that right this moment, I know I have higher priorities. Don’t get me wrong, I do plan on eventually taking metalworking into my own hands, but now is not the time.

In any rate, Wes is right, I’d do well to rely on others.

I will write out my designs and specifications which will consequently mark the beginning of my very first outsourced project.

Before I set to work preparing my schematics though, I need to finish off the aqueduct.

Luckily it was almost finished before the recent accident, so with a few finishing touches, it’s ready to carry water.

Evacuating its length of all dungeon helpers, I tear down the walls separating the aqueduct’s five branches from the corresponding five streambeds passing through the tunnels which I’d claimed for my domain while I was digging.

In succession, water flows down each branch under the pull of gravity and converges at the central aqueduct. Carrying leftover dust and debris with it, the leading wave barrels down the remaining distance and cascades into the shaft which leads to the cistern.

As a result, the water in the cistern receives much needed freshly oxygenated water and the overspill enters the cavern and flows into the pond.

If my understanding is correct, Melk should not be bothered with this setup.

While waiting to see if he does indeed take issue with my adjustments, something tickles the edge of my awareness.

Popping over to the location of the disturbance; one of the entrances to the aqueduct, I realize I’ve made a grave error. I forgot to erect a new barrier further up the tunnel to account for the new entrance to my dungeon, and I haven’t been so lucky to avoid any repercussions.

Standing at the very obviously artificial entrance to my dungeon stand two ragged individuals who clearly belong to the same species as the mage who defiled my home so long ago. They are carefully inspecting the new feature while their long, scratched, and torn bat ears swivel atop their heads listening out for signs of danger.

This is the price of negligence.