Intruder Alert!
I barely needed the popup. Whatever had just come in, it itched. It itched something fierce, and it tasted like meat marinated in citrus. My attention snapped to the dungeon entrance, where my bees were engaged in battle. Whatever they were fighting, it was fast and maneuverable. The intruder swooped in and out of the swarm, and with each pass a bumblebee vanished. It wasn't untouched, though - my swarm was giving as good as it got, it seemed. The enemy was slowing down and staggering in the air, dropping and working harder to lift itself back up again.
I got a look at it. That had to be the fluffiest bat I'd ever seen. It was covered in welts and, as I watched, it misjudged its attack and one of my bumblebees managed to sting it in its eye. Another crawled into one of its ears, and that was the beginning of the end. It crashed to the ground and my remaining eight bumblebees swarmed over it, stinging again and again. The itchy feeling went away and I was left with only the warm, meaty flavor of what I had to assume were bat impurities.
People ate bats, right? It was less gross than bees, and the meaty flavor was great.
Minion Template Acquired: Mountain Bat.
Oh. It was dead. The bat corpse sank into the stone floor and the citrus-meat flavor faded to a memory.
I inspected my bumblebee swarm.
Minion: Bumblebees, Small Swarm: 8/20 Bees; 1/1 Queen; 20/20 Eggs; 15/20 Larvae; 5/20 Pupae
● Bumblebee Queen Lays 1 Egg per 20 Minutes
● Maintenance: 3 Dungeon Mana per Day
● Home: Pine Needle Decoration
● Food: Edelweiss Nectar; Edelweiss Pollen
● Status: Angry
It looked like something was still missing from my bumblebee's lives. That, and I definitely needed more defense - I was down to less than half my forces after a bat came in and started snacking.
Create minion: mountain bat.
Select Compatible Impurities.
I inspected the dropdown list and picked out a life impurity.
Creating Minions...
Refining Impurities...
1 Life Impurity Refined to 10 Dungeon Mana.
I wasn't sure if the burst of elation I felt was from impurities turning into mana or from summoning another minion. My bat was super fluffy looking. I took a look at its stats.
Minion: Mountain Bat
● Maintenance: 5 Dungeon Mana per Day
● Home: Not Assigned
● Food: Not Assigned
● Status: Lonely
Lonely? Did it need to have other bats around to feel happy?
Find somewhere comfortable, I ordered it.
The bat flew around squeaking, investigating the ceiling of the entrance tunnel before flying into my core room and poking around there, too. It kept looking for something on the ceiling, and it kept moving on without finding it. I took a closer look at the ceiling myself.
It was completely smooth.
Take a rest, I told my bat. It landed on the floor by my pedestal.
I opened the dungeon map and focused on the ceilings. I wanted them to have texture - stalactites, cracks, bumps and grooves and things, maybe some little holes too. Once I was satisfied with the texture, and had changed the settings so that future rooms would be similar, I started the changes.
Spend 7 Dungeon Mana to Complete Changes Immediately? Y/N
I was reminded of pushy mobile games and the nightmare of micro transactions they enabled. No.
It took a while for the texture to finish spreading across my ceilings, but when it finished, the mountain bat fluttered up and hung from the ceiling. It was still lonely, but I didn't want to summon more bats until they had something to eat. Five mana per day seemed a bit expensive for one minion, even if it was almost as good as twenty bumblebees.
I mentally highlighted a stretch of ceiling near the dungeon entrance and connected it to my bat. It flew to its newly assigned home, grabbed on, and fell asleep. It shivered a little while I watched, and I silently promised that I'd figure out the bat food situation as soon as I could, so I could summon it some company.
My front hall was looking pretty good. I had bees (recovering), three decorations, flowers, and a bat. My core room had... me, the pedestal I was on (which had quartz rings going all the way up; I'd definitely used up that space), and five gemstone bumblebees sitting around me in a circle. It was kind of dull in here. I didn't want any minions living in my core room, though. That felt like it would be wrong, like "toilet in the kitchen" wrong.
Open Templates.
S://Dungeon/Templates/
Open treasure.
S://Dungeon/Templates/Treasure/
Show files.
Bumblebee_Feldspar_LifeSize; Coal; Iron_Ore; Sweet_Nectar
Copy Bumblebee_Feldspar_LifeSize.
Select Compatible Impurities.
So I needed to spend impurities any time I made a new template, even if it was just a copy of one I already had. I inspected the associated dropdown list and selected earth impurities.
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Error! Insufficient Compatibility!
What. Maybe earth and insect? I plugged earth and insect impurities in.
Copying Treasure Template...
Refining Impurities...
Treasure Template Acquired: Bumblebee_Feldspar_LifeSize_Copy!
1 Earth Impurity Refined to 10 Dungeon Mana.
1 Insect Impurity Refined to 0.5 Arthropod Impurities and 0.5 Invertebrate Impurities.
I willed the template editor open and pulled up the copy. I played around with it for a while, tweaking colors, changing feldspar to quartz and back again. The yellow and black quartz bee looked great, but I ended up settling on a feldspar bumblebee with mica flecks all over it. Save.
Saving Treasure Template...
Select Compatible Impurities.
The only thing in the dropdown was mica. I selected it.
Saving Treasure Template...
Template Saved.
Refining Impurities...
1 Mica Impurity Refined to 0.5 Stone Impurity and 0.5 Earth Impurity.
Rename Bumblebee_Feldspar_LifeSize_Copy to Bumblebee_FeldsparMica_LifeSize.
I selected my newly renamed template and went to create. Use an earth impurity, and put them evenly spaced between the figurines on my pedestal.
Creating Treasures...
Refining Impurities...
I mentally waved the log away and checked on my very real bees instead. There were a few more of them flying around collecting nectar and pollen, and the queen was busy laying more eggs. A giddy wash of energy flowed through me - that would be the earth impurity turning into dungeon mana - and I thought hard about how I could improve my dungeon further while I waited for the next room to be dug out.
---
Taaku didn't break into a run until after he'd passed the tree line. The sentries wouldn't think anything of a lone hunter going out, but running out of the warrens would draw attention. Running once he was out of sight, though - that was just sensible. He was about a third of the way down the mountain, and starting to feel the fatigue of his flight, when a terrible roaring shook his lungs and his resolve. The master had realized that breakfast wasn't going to come to it.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, unsure if he was talking to himself or to those he'd left behind. "I'm so sorry."
Sorry as he was, he didn't slow down, even when his legs burned and he started to stumble over rocks and tree roots. By the time he reached the base of the mountain, he was covered in scrapes and bruises and was bleeding sluggishly from a gash on
one leg where a jagged boulder had torn some of his scales off. The sun was coming up and, panting for breath, Taaku slowed to a stealthy creep, sticking to the underbrush and trying his hardest to stay under the cover of the trees, hidden from the sky.
---
Maybe my flowers had unmet needs. They were minions, even if they just sat there and made bee food. I should take care of them the same as the others. I inspected them.
Minion: Edelweiss
● Plant Type
● Maintenance: 1.5 Mana per Day ● Soil Nutrition: A Little Low
● Light Level: Acceptable
● Water: Not Present
It needed water and fertilizer. It was probably a bad idea to just constantly soak them - I felt like I remembered something about that being bad.
I reviewed my memories and confirmed that. Too much water killed plants just as surely as too little water. These plants were dungeon minions, so too much or too little water wasn't going to kill them, but it would cause them to need more dungeon mana to compensate to stay healthy.
Now how was I going to manage an automated watering system? It wouldn't be something that could be removed from the dungeon, so that meant it would have to be a decoration template. I opened the editor. Water meant water impurities, so I plugged one in.
It gave me a pool of standing water. Make the water fall from the ceiling, I commanded. The preview changed to show a continuous rain shower. I rolled my non-existent eyes and got to work.
---
The mob chasing after him lasted longer than Greyex had anticipated. Most of his neighbors had never seen the point in building their stamina to run faster or farther, but they gave it a good shot, even encumbered by their weapons and having to slow down to pick their spears back up after they repeatedly tried and failed to hit him as he zigged back and forth,
ducking around trees and boulders.
They finally gave up when his frantic flight flushed a few birds out of the bushes and a spear clipped one in a spray of blood and feathers. The pack of idiots fell on the frantically squawking animal, pushing and shoving to tear off the better bits and shove them into their gaping maws. Rather than stop running to give in to the urge to join in the feeding frenzy, Greyex kept running. He'd thought Belka was a friend. He'd been trying to figure out courting gifts.
He'd been a fool.
---
It took longer than I would have liked, but I managed to make a satisfactory watering system for the low, low cost of one water impurity to save the template and another one to put it in my front entryway. When the Edelweiss minions had the dry condition, the decoration would turn on and create a gentle mist that collected on the walls and trickled down, giving the entire entryway a thorough dampening. It would stay "on" for six hours, and then turn off again until triggered by the flowers getting thirsty. Naturally, it turned on immediately.
I even had an idea about how to improve their soil quality while I was working on it. It was gross, but, well, sometimes gardening was gross.
How many dung impurities do I have?
Dung Impurities: 1.29
Use a dung impurity to create treasure template: dung.
Creating...
Treasure Template: Dung Acquired!
Refining Impurities...
1 Dung Impurity Refined to 0.5 Soil Impurities and 0.5 Life Impurities.
With a mental cringe, I placed a clump of dung on the soil decoration, between the flowers and the wall. I toggled the settings on it to stop repair over time and, instead, replace the "treasure" when the edelweiss reported low nutrition in their soil. Then I realized that I'd also hit upon the key to feeding my bat.
First, I made more soil decorations so that the sides of the entrance tunnel were lined with them, and summoned edelweiss flowers into the gradually dampening soil. Next, I created more dungeon treasures, one for every three flowers or so, up against the wall where it wasn't easy to see them.
How many fly egg impurities do I have?
Fly Egg Impurities: 1.03
It'll do. Create minion template: fly.
Error. No Compatible Impurities Found.
Okay... create minion template: fly egg.
Creating Template...
Minion Template: Fly Egg Acquired!
Refining Impurities...
1 Fly Egg Impurity Refined to 0.5 Fly Impurities and 0.5 Insect Egg Impurities!
I targeted the dung "treasures" and summoned a dozen fly eggs onto each.
Create Fly Swarm? Y/N
Yes.
Select Swarm Size.
I picked the largest size. One thousand sounded like too many flies, but I wanted my bat to be able to eat, and flies sounded like bat food to me.
Creating Swarm...
Warning! Swarm Will Take 8 Days to Reach Full Size! Continue? Y/N
Yes.
Creating Swarm...
Swarm Created.
I focused on my bat, and on my swarm of flies, and set the flies to be food for the bat. I also created a custom setting, to tell the bat not to eat flies if the swarm was at less than 25% adult capacity. Hopefully, that would be enough for my bat to feel full. If it wasn't, I'd have to, ugh, make another swarm, or wait for some other insect to fly into my dungeon and die.
Snow and pine needles blew in and melted into the floor, leaving me with the sensation of having licked a pine-flavored popsicle.
---
A tired clerk opened the weekly report from Surveillance Tower 27 on the eastern edge of the kingdom. She skimmed its contents, stopped, and read it again, slowly. Then she rolled it back up, slid it into a high priority scroll case, and carried it upstairs to her manager's office.
"This is above my pay grade," she announced curtly, and slammed the scroll case on his desk. "You deal with it."