Zack wasn't too surprised when Iris turned him away at the door to her library. She valued her privacy, and by her own words she was busy with some reconstruction of her room. He couldn't blame her for not wanting to be disturbed, he behaved the same whenever he was in the process of creating a new space. With Alex in bed recovering from his trip and Archie still away, that left Glitch as the only other being in the dungeon capable of holding a conversation.
Well, Glitch and Ember.
Zack mentally sighed as he weighed the two options before deciding that speaking with the latter was likely to be less stressful than the former. He wasn't entirely sure he was ready to deal with Glitch and their missing parts just yet—especially since Archie had some of the pieces. And anyway, he had promised to give Ember a room to call her own. It was time to make good on that promise.
Zack found the stone drakonid sitting passively at the forge, staring out into the distance as though she wasn't a living creature. A quick check of the environment told him that there was nobody around for her to stare at. She was just blindly observing the space before her.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Zack asked.
Ember's attention immediately snapped to where Zack's disembodied awareness hovered above the lobby. Her ears flicked curiously, her neutral expression not once changing emotions. "Master?"
"Please don't call me that. I know you're technically part of me, but I don't like the idea of being somebody's master." Zack mentally shuddered, and further down the hall a sleeping Jean-Claude physically emulated the action. "Just call me Zack, okay?"
The drakonid cocked her head curiously before nodding slowly. "Very well, if that is what you wish. I am a tool at your disposal, Ma—Zack. How might I serve you?"
Zack had to stop the mental command to make Jean-Claude face palm. It seemed that either Ember was messing with him, or this level of subservience was hard baked into her personality. Rather than force himself to think about it, he skipped right past the faux pas and got right to the part he'd come to discuss. "I think it's finally time we got to work on your personal space," he declared with false joviality.
Ember's ears perked up, though the rest of her face remained placid. "I would like that very much," she said slowly. "This forge, as good as it may be, does not contain all that I require. There are not enough materials for me to work on personal projects, nor is there room for me to sleep."
Zack noted the chair that Ember was sitting on. It was one of Greg's reinforced seats, design to hold the weight of an orc. There was a noticeable bend in the steel, evidence that Ember's rocky form was too heavy even for this chair. Zack made a mental note to absorb and replace it with one that might better suit her weight after he got her out of the lobby.
"I've already set aside some space for you under the forest zone," he explained. "The portal network isn't yet set up, so you'll have to walk there, but that shouldn't be a problem, right?"
Ember nodded slowly and rose from her seat. "I shall head there now."
As she turned to lumber away, Zack quickly got to work hollowing out the space under the forest. He hadn't quite been lying to her about his intention to bequeath it to her, but he'd been so busy throughout the day that he hadn't really had time to start on this project. Still, absorbing dirt was as easy as breathing for him, and he had a network of tunnels cleared long before she made it to the end of the forest zone.
Despite his plans of giving Ember her own space to live and work, Zack was still a dungeon. He fully intended this area to be her new home, but also a functional wing of the dungeon. If she wanted to help him design it, he was happy (reluctantly) to allow her to do so. He made sure to connect this space with Archie's burrow, using the boss room as a connection to the new wing. There was probably some trickery he could pull that would allow Glitch to portal delvers from one wing to another without giving away that they actually ran backwards, but that was a problem for later.
When Ember descended the newly created stairs into the lower level, she was met with tunnels of dirt and damp darkness. Zack noticed her shivering quickly, and spawned some fires to help light and warm the space.
"So, tell me honestly, what do you think?" He asked her.
Ember's placid face shifted through a bevy of emotions before settling back into a neutral expression. "It is all wrong for my needs. It lacks the warmth of a forge, or the stone of a mountain."
Zack's mind made a sound like shattering glass, though he was careful not to project it for his mobs to hear. He was still getting better at accepting criticism of his work. To hear so harsh a critique from what was essentially an extension of himself rubbed him the wrong way. He counted to three in his head, sucking aether into his core before projecting it out as mana again.
"Well, let's fix that, shall we? Do you want the caves to feel like a natural formation? Or maybe something closer to a man-made space?"
"Man-made is preferable. I wish it to be a forge," Ember declared.
Zack spun up a wisp and had it bob in mid-air. He could work with that. Already a design was starting to take shape in his mind. He started by reshaping the walls from rounded tunnels like the burrow and into sharper shapes. He made sure the rectangular stone walls were spaced far enough apart that adventurers could walk two at a time and still leave enough room to swing their weapons. This part was easy for him, as it was essentially just removing vertices in the world to smooth out the shapes.
Stone of a mountain was a bit harder of a request for him to fulfil. Replacing material wasn't exactly a quick process, so he slowly got to work replacing the dirt walls with black rock. He even made sure to weave veins of metals into the materials, mostly silver and iron. He could probably include gold in the mix, but he wanted to keep a consistent theme with the space. Silver and iron gave the walls bands of white and grey to accentuate the black, creating a swirling gradient.
As the walls changed around her, Ember finally took a few steps forward into the floor. She moved slowly and purposely, running her fingers along the rocky walls as she walked. When her claws snagged against a silver vein, she pulled them away to lick the metal, before nodding in approval.
"It's going to take me some time to fully transfigure the entire floor into this design. Is there anything else you want me to add that's top priority?" Zack asked, dividing his focus between modifying the wing and speaking with the drakonid.
Ember nodded slowly. "I will require a forge and smithy to work with, as well as materials with which to practice my art."
"Right, you've mentioned that a few times. It's on the list but it might take me a little while to get to, since it's going to be your boss room—"
"Boss room?" Ember interrupted, cocking her head curiously.
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"Well, yeah. You're one of my talking mobs. Like Archie, that means you'll need to be the boss of your wing."
Ember's placid expression turned into a frown, and she shook her head. "No. I don't want to be a boss fight. That would take away from my craft."
"Pardon?"
"I am not a fighter. I am a smith," Ember explained, in a tone that implied she thought Zack was slow on the uptake. "My place in the dungeon is in the lobby, providing weapons and armour to those that have none. I do not wish that to change."
"But… I'm making a whole floor for you. The plan was for you to be the boss of it…" Zack started, mentally frowning.
"Then perhaps it is time to change plans. Surely you will come up with another idea for a boss that suits this place, no?"
Zack tightened the wisp that hovered over Ember's head in frustration. There really was no reason he couldn't do that, but to suddenly have his plans unceremoniously rejected stung a bit. Still this did mean he got to retain control some measure of this wing's design. That was vastly preferably than simply giving Ember free reign.
"Alright. I'll make your personal space in this wing a forge and smithy. Do you want your bedroom to also be in there?" he asked, creating a hallway that splintered off from the rest of the floor. If Ember wasn't going to be a fighter, there was no reason he needed to make her room at the end of the floor. He could simply connect it near the entrance, or even close it off and leave a portal the only way in.
"Yes, I would like my bedroom to be connected to my forge," Ember confirmed. "It does not need to be fancy. A simple bed and an ice box to store food will suffice."
"At least you're easier to entertain than Archie," Zack mumured, already getting to work.
He started by clearing out a large circular room and replacing the walls with his metal and rock mixture. He made the ceiling a dome shape so that heat from the forge could collect and warm the chamber. The actual mechanism of a forge was a rather simple one, and rather than create a new one from scratch he simply added a copy of the lobby version to this room. He did take the time to model out a new anvil, though. He wanted to make sure it was sized enough for Ember to use. He also took the time to design some new tools, all the better to fit in her large hands.
He also created a few stacks of materials. Ingots of various metals, tanned leather ready for cutting, and even wood. Ember noticed their addition and reminded him that she would need tools with which to work everything, so with her instruction he added a manual saw table and a leatherworking bench.
Once Ember was satisfied with the layout and collection of tools, Zack finished off the room by creating a moat of lava around the edge. It wasn't real lava, of course, but rather just rock infused with a lot of fire-aspected mana and set in motion through a combination of mechanism. Once again, a lot of dungeon crafting was smoke and mirrors to make a thing appear to be something else.
Satisfied that the room was up to her standards, Zack got to work on Ember's bedroom next. He created a room attached to the forge and filled it with the meager furniture she had requested. A stone bed extruded from the floor, and an ice box built into the wall. Unlike Archie or Alex, whose rooms were large and filled with accomodations, Ember's chamber felt depressingly spartan. Zack added a hearth in the middle of the room so she could cook meat and light her home, but other than that couldn't think of much else he could add to make it better.
"This is perfect," Ember finally declared, sitting atop the flat rock that was to serve as her new bed. She lay down on it, and Zack noted that her feet didn't dangle off the end. He had done a good job building it to her measurements.
"Would you like a blanket?" Zack offered.
"No, although I would not reject a stone pillow," Ember said, sitting up.
Zack was all too happy to oblige, spawning a long rock to serve the requested duty. Ember tested it out, gesturing in approval as it supported her neck and shoulders.
"Anything else I can make for you, Ember?" Zack asked her.
"No. This is more than sufficient for my needs," she declared, swinging her legs off the bed and rising to her feet. "Thank you for taking my desires into account, but if you don't mind I would like some privacy."
"Oh, of course," Zack chuckled. "That's something I do for all my… tenants? Inhabitants? The people who live inside me. Anyway, you all get privacy as part of the deal. I don't barge into your private quarters. Although your smithy is fair game."
"No. Please include that in my request for privacy," Ember declared.
"Um… Why?"
"Because I do not wish to be disturbed while I work on my projects. Also, I would like my work to be a surprise." The stone drakonid gave Zack a toothy grin but refused to elaborate any further.
Not wanting to argue, Zack acquiesced to her request. It wasn't like she had much of a room to begin with, so it wasn't too big a stretch for him to include her workspace in her request for privacy. He dissolved his wisp and shot his awareness back out into the rest of the floor. Already he was fomulating how he would use this space, since it seemed Ember didn't want to make use of it the same way that Archie had with his own environment.
Still, the floor already had a pretty solid theme developing. There was a definite mountain keep vibe building, and that was something Zack could definitely work with. He wouldn't get to include any of the new monsters he acquired from helping the adventurers, but that didn't mean he couldn't populate it with something fun.
Taking a cue from Ember's design, Zack started crafting drakonids and kobolds with rocky skin to serve as this wing's main force. The drakonids were large, so he left them few in number just in case they proved too strong for the average customer to handle.
"To be fair, I don't think an average customer would even get this far," he mumbled. "Most of my customers are NPCs who just want to have fun. They never make it past the meadow, let alone into the forest."
Despite his own assurances, he decided it would still be best to leave the drakonids at one per pack of mobs. He instead gave them command over a group of stone kobolds decked out in mining gear. If the drakonids were the strong fighting force, the kobolds would serve as the grunts. Their bodies were brittle and frail, meaning Zack could throw a large number of them at groups of adventurers without having to worry about whether or not they'd be too strong. Even better, the fact they were so weak meant Zack could change the number of kobolds in each pack to better suit the needs of different customers.
He did so love his variable difficulty scales.
Unlike the burrow, Zack didn't bother designing this wing to be a winding network of tunnels. Instead, he created a single main path that led from the floor's entrance all the way to the boss room. He populated it with mob patrols, as well as created chambers off to the side that mirrored Ember's own private quarters. These rooms, however, weren't always smithies. Some of them were refineries, where kobold workers worked under the watchful eyes of their drakonid leaders to turn ore into smelted bars of metal.
The refineries would serve a similar function to the mine in Archie's burrow: delvers could engage the mobs if they wanted to, but leaving them alone would allow them to finish their work and leave treasure tokens behind instead. It was just another way to reward players who explored his environment.
All that was left was for him to create the boss to this floor. He cringed as he realized that he was out of boss flags and wouldn't get another until level twenty. That meant he couldn't assign a full-fledged boss to guarding this level.
"Well… Maybe I don't need a full-fledge boss?" Zack mused.
His original plan had been for Ember to serve as boss for this wing, the same way that Archie stood in for a boss in the burrow. Using talking mobs as bosses meant he got to save a boss flag, but since that wasn't an option here, he would have to rethink his plan.
Zack opted to use three stone drakonids to serve as the boss of this level. He gave them many of them same powers that Ember had, as well as some of the abilities of his other mobs. One drakonid had a hammer and shield, another wielded a towering two-handed axe, and the final one a staff topped with a glowing crystal.
"There, a party fight," Zack declared happily. "Drakoknight, Drakozerker, and Drakomagus."
He would need to see how this encounter performed against a test party before tweaking their behaviours, but this was already a unique boss fight compared to the rest of his dungeon. He mentally nodded his approval, and set them to stand guard over the final room in this wing. All that was left was to connect the floor to Glitch's portal network, and give it a name.
He was just about to settle on calling it the Dragon Forge when he felt a familiar presence slip back into his influence. He breathed a sigh of relief as Archie's mind reconnected to his own, and excitedly shot his awarness up to the lobby in anticipation.
The hare walked in with a downcast look on his face, and Zack's excitement instantly turned into concern.
"Archie? What happened?"
Slowly, the rabbit's gaze lifted until he was looking into Zack's disembodied awareness. "Alex told you about the fairies, right?"
Zack spawned a wisp and bobbed it in midair.
"Then you're half caught up on what happened to Matt. You're not going to like the other half."