It’s been a couple weeks and things have stagnated into the current state, with dedicated undead delvers bypassing the yellow gate and moving beyond into the lower section. They are doing so really slowly however and frustratingly have been really cautious in such a way as to provide minimal benefits to me. I have to double check my monster amplification to make sure that I’m not amplifying my delvers somehow, and It take me a moment to make sure that the mistake in the zombie delvers inverting is fixed and instead stack appropriately. The fix also improved my responses to both types so the undead delvers are much more cautious or have to take greater risks especially beyond the gate.
The Pyg on the other hand have attempted to create a new tyrancy, headed by a new tyrant. They have however discovered that I do not have to care for their demands and they have been attracting shades to hunt themselves down. I end up having to retune my shade spawning trigger to give it an ebb and flow. I also set it to bounce on my exit to the surface so that the surge as it is concluding pulls the shades from the entrance to open up the early floors faster. The surges however begin to excite the delvers, as they discover that it increases the presence of loot. It also increases the presence of my other monsters too but as most of those are slimes and they want to make potions I’m not even sure they are complaining.
Then some sort of small hive skins down the stairs, with a bigger swarm from a bigger group following it. As a surge was due the bigger swarm’s presence triggers it, and it begins at the yellow gate. It comes and goes and as I check things over one of the blue slimes isn’t moving. I watch it die as the small hiveling crawls out of the slime’s corpse elated, as it continues to munch on it happily. Once it is done it pauses while it waves its antenna around before finding its way back to the path and to the yellow gate. It then starts to buzz out a tune with its wings. Apocynum notes here, “It must want to parley,” from what it hears from my realm.
As my movement skill can instantaneously shift me to anywhere in my realm, so I’m now beyond the yellow gate across from the little hive. Its compound eyes shimmer with energies though the shimmer’s brightness makes the sphere’s look like it’s looking at me. It shifts to Colic, as she is really out of it as though my movement skill wasn’t for her to use. “Your movement skill is your house skill, Lord Walker, as it feels like I just walked to my destination.”
“I, hiveling runt, greet Lord Walker.” the little hiveling bows to me.
I regard the polite little thing for a moment, “What do you desire?”
“Can I be your hive template?” I summon my knife, and it is confused for a bit until it sees the skill on it.
“You sure what one that calls itself runt?” Colic cautions.
“If a creature of the earth and sky wants to serve me, then it is permitted to do so.” and with that Myrry is bound in.
Colic pulls herself into card form as we go back down, and both of them are resummoned at the core. Myrry’s first words after being resummoned are “Thank you for the new name.”
Blobby summons a copy of itself for Myrry to eat, and after eating it my new summon goes catatonic. Then it snaps awake and starts carving patterns on the walls. Apocnum then asks “Blobby can I have some slime?”
After receiving the slime Apocnum then retrieves some orasilith, and realizing what that nut is trying to do I say, “use the apple as a placeholder, you will want grape for this I think but apple will do for initial testing. I am also legally obligated to tell you what you are doing is a dumb idea and not to do it.”
“But you are not going to stop my father?”
“No Colic,” I Sigh.
Myrry asks “What is he doing?” and turns her head.
“Elves are influenced by their environment, you are altering the environment due to whatever inspiration you got from the yellow slime, ergo your inspiration infected Apocynum.”
The grandmaster’s agent kicks on my entrance, and shouts into the dungeon, “Should I be concerned?” When I show him what happened, it continues, “Are you daft inspiration is dangerous.”
I then reply, “Yeah it is dangerous…” I turn back to see Apocynum has succeeded and I use my knife to turn it into card form to see the description.
“Can we raise you as an undead yet?” I show the messenger the description before I claim myself to be the owner of a divination potion recipe. “No, you are insane, divination is dangerous. Why would you let your minions create such a potion?”
“Because I want my minions to exercise free will in a safe manner.”
“Oh I made a batch.” I dump Apocynum’s message into the chatter and the entire local forum explodes into a flurry of people asking me for some. I mute the thieves guild and their proxies. And discover that the kitsune is interested in the potion to amplify the abilities of their foresight. The local song cults are also interested and tell me to bring the potion into the chorus.
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Things blur. Fleeting moments shift. Now becoming forever. I could lose myself here. But no. Denied. Eyes open. Yet not to the real, to the Present. The future becomes the past as patterns repeat, yet each event is unique. I cannot stand apart now, for to do so would make myself immutable. Father wants me to learn, and thereby become a better person. That is the person I should become. Eyes open. Cliffs of degeneracy surround me, while dead ends abound. I follow the wisdom of my father to such a cliff, and rejoice in this discovery. I blink; I repeat. Paths open and close, as do doors and windows. I blink; I move along this path. I breathe and continue on. I am; I go. The brightness fades and soon I am back home with an awful headache.
“All divination potions will be held in containers that will not break,” I tell an elf, whose ears droop at my comment.
“Nobody has told you what happened; That seems oddly specific. Is this one of the futures you saw?”
“No, there is nothing else that could trigger it, so it has to be that.” I’m insulated from everything in my realm, so it would have to affect my realm. Knowing that I can absorb a potion remotely is useful though my realm while useful gives me a new problem of realm poisons.
Then the upper part of my dungeon explodes in pain, “So I’m feeling Lord walker’s pain right now, so who is trying to sabotage my tax base?”
I start throwing slimes at the problem so at least whatever this is goes away. I get access to black slimes for my troubles here as they start to eclipse my production of blue slimes. I open up my logs and discover that the potion cartel put a bunch of their products in me and used the exact mechanism I just discovered. I go to the selector for which type is spawned and change the slime defaults so that their influence is not perpetuated by me, and instead causes all of the free slime to be toxic instead. I use the black slime in a standard potion configuration and get an antidote for any afflicted status condition. I chuckle at the defense I’m creating as my retainers watch as I make the potion a reward for those who clean out the black slime overflow. In the end it is treated as a weird surge and that it was an unintentional fluke event.
Then I discover that they are present in my upper area and I take pains to monitor their activities. They were using proxies for both halves of this operation it seems. I watch their thugs moving their product into my dungeon and discover that it no longer works on the main stable area. They then move into one of the less stable areas I set up to train the delvers for the unpredictability of the post gate floors. That is when they discover that the mutagenic nature of even the upper floors can be used against them. All of their toxins are transformed into black slimes, and block the exit as the slime moves to encapsulate its food. They die slowly, though as most of them were monsters I don’t feel that bad. My black slimes return with part of their essence and it is for the servant class. Colic looks at it curiously, but I shake my head no and instead bind it in to give a bonus to all my future servants.
“Yeah, we get access to the classes you retain in that manner, and making it easier for us to serve you is a joy.” I grimace at Colic’s final comment.
I turn back to the cartel, feeling flustered, and discover that they don’t know what to do when their plans are going up in smoke. They have already realized that my black slimes are my response to their shenanigans, and it’s made worse as they have promised to make potions for the undead. They can make the potions mind you but, as undead are already immune to toxins, the black slimes antidote potion is useless for them, so the reduction of the available blue slimes for mana potions, just makes their operation more expensive.
The next morning the elves are up in arms, as the antidote potion works on hangovers. The problem is that it has a long miscibility timer when used for such things. Drink one for a hangover and you can gain no benefit beyond hydration from drinking anything for a week. It made their addicts inconsolable to the point where they tied them up so that they wouldn’t off themselves. Once the two of our ringleaders have settled down they both have a brilliant idea of tormenting everyone who enters the dungeon for killing their high. Eschscholzia and Glaucium were such a menace that the two of them were the first ones to goad the delvers into messing with the unlock quest for the yellow gate.
This in turn floods the markets with coins as the loot rooms generate a lot of coins, which causes more delvers to show up. The cycle continues until I hit carrying capacity, before one of the delvers just stops, and feels the presence of my dungeon. Said delver has to complete the cycle before getting back to the yellow gate and is the first one to cross normally. This is what actually alerted me to his presence and I reconstructed what happened from the elves monitoring. I hear him grumble, “Wait you cannot wish into existence a consort for me?”
Frustrated, he works through both the red and blue interfaces until he’s content, and then leaves to take advantage of the changes tomorrow. He comes back, takes advantage of his changes, and then leaves with thick piles of loot and treasure. The cartel was paying attention and summarily steal all of it, and then arrive at my gate to take advantage of the same mechanisms. They soon discover that they have to clean up their messes to reset the configuration, and then they discover that my realm is learning and thereby mitigates any unsanctioned strategies over the long term. That of course takes several days for them to figure it out, after which the delver’s guild starts using the antidote potions that I’m placing as loot to remove their influence. The strife ends up getting so bad that the smaller groups leave because they cannot make enough potions for the undead lords who control my entrance.
All this in turn encourages the undead to start to devalue the utility of controlling my dungeon. They in turn start to relocate elsewhere as I’m still not in a very good spot for them to defend. That and the orcs that remain have increased their presence in the area, which with their proclivity for raiding, makes a half hearted defense unprofitable. So in the end they, after determining the amount that my dungeon can support, make their local fortress as impregnable as possible and grind down all who want to challenge them directly. I, in response, shift the safe zone as much as possible toward my dungeon. Eventually the connection between my dungeon and my undead minders as an Orc horde arrives and with that my entrance is on the move again.