A sleepy Windemere opened her eyes and found that everything changed overnight. The dwarven secession was considered by the masses as just a rumor, a bad joke, or one terrible prank. The Dungeon vanishing overnight wasn't. The V-shaped valley and its tall mountains created a perfect echo chamber. The entire country heard the rumble of the Black Dragon Dungeon dying. The total absence of the stout folk in the city didn't pass unnoticed. Only dwarves unrelated to Vugh Tarim remained behind. After my time working at the smithy, I discovered that most of the dissidents immigrated to Cymeria when Snowdrop visited to recruit them a couple decades ago.
One event triggered another as if in a chain reaction. People with long-term plans accelerated them out of fear of being left behind. Merchants hastened their purchases and put their wares on a sale, wishing to protect their business, cut their projected losses, and avoid the conflict. Maybe bring the news elsewhere and sell the information. But that was for the first to come. Nobody would pay for yesterday's news.
And the merchants wouldn't be the early birds in this matter as several spies fled Windemere in the wake of the Dungeon's destruction. With the dwarves on the warpath, it was first-come-first-conquered. Or second, if you were hoping some fool would distract the lamia knights on one side before invading from the other. Sadian readied to march. Leondirac prepared their armies just in case Sadian decided that our walls were too much of a bother. And in Lonid, things were murky. Not many reports came from there as no merchant or traveler was coming from the north.
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My first stop was Marlowe's office. I mean, Headmaster Marlowe's office. He heard me clad in sepulchral silence. I almost forgot who was the boss in our relationship and fully embraced the schoolgirl demeanor. My knees shook in fear of a scolding for skipping classes, but I think there should be a wartime provision excusing students from attending.
I blame the raging teenage hormones. There must be a deeper reason why puberty is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Besides the biological ones.
"The Academy will be safe. With me here as a deterrent and fifty million MP at my disposal, nobody will invade here unless it's you or someone your level. The students and faculty will receive orientation on what to do in case of war. I think our priority here should be to guarantee our own safety. Maybe we could create temporary facilities for family members but that's a slippery slope."
"Right, because we don't have how to prove kinship. We could ask them to register their family beforehand. Maybe it isn't too late. But do we want to turn the Academy into a shelter? When people see others taking shelter here, it may cause a panic. It's better to stop them outside the walls."
The silk golem laughed, his diamond eyes sparkling. "Maybe if someone had the power to crush armies with but a thought," then he stared at me seriously. "You're playing games with people's lives. Your people, Your Majesty. You can take over and reform Windemere from within. You have me, Vanagon, Ashshield, and the love of the people."
His statement hurt more than getting beaten across a city by Bundeus.
"I promised Wisteria I would come forward if something threatened the people's safety," I was unsure of my own words. "The [Saintess] in Rosebush."
"I know who the [Saintess] is and your relationship with her, Miss Stouthammer," he stated Headmasterly. That disarmed me and I chuckled to calm my nerves. "Queen Snowdrop would've caved in the heads of a few crowned fools and cemented Windemere's position in the region already," He pointed out, quite not finished. "At least you got rid of that hideous undead Dungeon. Nothing good would ever come from there. That thing was… how did you say once? Ah. A ticking time bomb. Is that some gnomish contraption?"
I remembered the puzzle I got at the Abode of War and never even tried to solve.
"Sort of, but it is from my world and we had no gnomes."
"A very dull world, with only humans and no magic."
"And no cranky cloth monsters either," I pouted.
He changed the subject. "Work on the cathedral is going steady. We expect to finish it next week if we get more materials to work with. Did you prepare the enchantment?"
"No," I assumed he was talking about Vukdon's quest. "I didn't even accept the quest yet."
"Pray tell, what's your reason not to?"
I explained it to him.
"Of course Vukdon is expecting to profit from it in the long term. But let me point out that you are already leeching the MP in Cymeria. How hard is it to raise your [Spellcaster] proficiency through training?"
I just sighed. Almost impossible. I had to be nuking cities with new spells to get any. If it weren't for the automatic gains upon leveling from the [Master of Magic] Perk, it would be stuck there forever.
"Vukdon needs help. He's weak after all this time. Do us all a favor and accept the quest. You are too paranoid. Maybe that's the explanation for your behavior, Haru. You are seeing monsters where there's none. Get over it and don't squander your gifts. Accept the quest, enchant the cathedral, earn your due rewards, then fix the issue with the dwarves before other opportunists take advantage of the chaos. It is your duty to your people whether you do it from the shadows or not. Don't be greedy. You can survive without leeching from this enchantment or even sell it to others. The proficiency bonuses are harder to come by."
"Thanks, Marlowe," I grumbled and accepted the Quest.
> Enchanter[ 446 / 456 ]. Your Ability was automatically selected because you have an active Quest that depends on it.
>
> * Enchant Perks: You can create enchantments that emulate one of your Perks. The effect is (Proficiency/5+2*Rarity)% of the actual Perk. The cost is (100*Emulated Attribute*Perk Rarity^2). For Perks without Attributes, this value is 50.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
{Mana Wellspring} was a [Very Rare] Perk, that gave it a numeric rarity of four. That gave me a point value of 160,000 for 100 Soul and two kilometers of range. Less than a fifth of what the same enchantment cost back in Cymeria. You could do stuff without System aid, but it was ridiculously difficult. I could turn people into SIlk-Folk before but that cost a permanent sacrifice of SP. Now, it was just a very expensive reincarnation ability.
Now, I could pick my Technical Proficiencies and gain a 41 bonus with {Cross-Proficiency Sinergy} or wait until I reached 483 for one more point. Or I could be smart and talk to my father before committing.
"Okay. Do you want me to give you some materials to finish the construction? I have some temples to Bundeus with marble, gold, and other fancy stuff."
"Yes. Please do. And remember to be proactive. If you want to play the shadow game, you have to be one step or two ahead of all your adversaries. Are you? Don't answer, think about it."
I curtsied. "Thank you for your kind advice, Headmaster."
I took a few of the newest storage rings I made with eighty cubic feet of space (about 2.2m3) each and passed chunks of material from my storage to them. I left about thirty rings with Marlowe filled with church debris. Waste not, want not!
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"The lamias are ready to march on your command," Nenandil told me. "But they have this weird legend where I bond with a few chosen ones. That's the best explanation they came up with as to how I showed up with both Locksley and Lakerta. And now they think I'll bond with one of them."
"Did you explain it to them?"
"No. I don't think they know Lakerta was Locksley's reincarnation, or even that Locksley never existed, to begin with. They think one of them will be the chosen one. I was waiting for you to contact me… To be honest, I was rather mad you took so long, but with how dire things were back with the dwarves, I think I can excuse you. Just don't go on more adventures without me!"
Maybe that's why Phyllis was so overeager that night. She might've just received news that "Lady Nenandil had returned." At least this fairy wasn't running a bargain sale of swords out of a pond. But if the lamias were talking among themselves of such an omen.
I bet everyone has eyes on the lamias. If that's true, everyone that matters already knew of Nenandil's return. Another reason for them to speed up their plans. I had to act, like now.
"Okay. Let's go on an adventure. Deep in the Dungeon."
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This world was bigger than Earth but had a similar composition and gravity at the surface. The underground, however, was the love child of Swiss cheese and an ant colony. I had no idea how the physics worked but those were the facts. The Dungeon probably connected the whole world, only surfacing in some spots. These points of access became hubs of trade because of the valuable materials Adventurers extracted from the monsters.
Travel between access points was extremely dangerous. You never knew which tunnels to take and how deep they would take you. The depths with a bigger magic density had stronger monsters, with too many "u-ded' powers. I think a band of crazy people did make it from Perenneth to Windemere, but they emerged too crazy for their own good. Whatever they met in the depths scarred them forever. That was centuries ago.
I had to delve. I had to find a suitable soul, and I had to find it now. Down I went, bravely descending as a ghost in a straight line. The Dungeon walls were resistant but not impervious and I could freely walk inside the stone as a fish swimming in water.
I let myself be guided by my Detection Perks and {Estimate Threat}. Anything that didn't trigger a warning could be safely ignored. At a depth of about a mile, I finally found something worth fighting.
I crossed into the tunnel and found a cloud of gas floating a dozen meters below. Without light, I felt only something wriggling inside, as if a thousand tiny worms and several bigger ones were attached by their ends.
Damn, a sentient monster. {Appraise} was blocked by the cloud. I couldn't get a read but I felt it was dangerous. I revealed all my tails, wings, and horn. No use hiding these appendages in a place this deep. I also turned on all my auras and the manastorm. The Dungeon distorted it and greatly reduced its range, but I would not hold back against an unknown monster.
I conjured a massive gust of wind and pushed. The cloud hiding the monster was shoved away and quickly dissipated once it was away from its creator, denouncing its magical nature. I lit up my body and what I saw almost made me retch.
The floating monstrosity had its whole body covered in a carpet of wriggling sparkling cilia. It looked like the skin of a gigantic paramecium. Its body was composed of two parts, the torso of a man, with two muscular arms a meter and a half in length but the lower body of an octopus. The neck was a long tentacle with an elongated mouth that ended in a set of six bony jaws filled with long fangs slanted inward in a full circle, giving it the aspect of a hexagonal beak when closed. Above the eyeless head, a fleshy trunk with about three meters of length gave the impression that the head was stuck in the middle of the neck-tentacle. All of its eight tentacles below and the trunk above had a khopesh-like blade.
Its tentacles had tentacles.
> Level 178 Kythaurpódi [Abomination] [1]
>
> HP ~33,000,000
>
> Dexterity ~ 130 (-71)
>
> Appraise Proficiency went up by 1 point.
Its tentacles shot at me, the rubbery appendages stretching beyond what should be possible. {Prescience} warned me but there was nowhere to escape to. I dodged most of them but the cilia had the same blades as the tentacles. As the appendage neared my body, all the cilia also stretched tenfold and slashed at the same time, overwhelming my ability to dodge, destroying my clothes, and covering me in hundreds of small scratches that failed to break my {Titan Skin}.
With each strike dealing a few thousand HP of damage, I'd lost several million HP on the first exchange. It was literally death by a thousand cuts.
"Force Skin!" I conjured a malleable sheet of Force that molded and flowed around my body. With my tail focus, it was inexpensive to maintain. The base damage of each cilium was too low to break the Force barrier. While it would be Energy-costly to withstand the blows, it was better than dying.
Each tentacle, each cilium moved independently and counted as a separate opponent for defense purposes. I was harried and surrounded, my ability to Dodge plummeted.
Shapeshifting my wings into arms ending in cat's paws along with my own hands, I struck back. {Vorpal Claws} severed these outreaching tentacles easily as it wasn't even attempting to dodge. A smug grin stretched in my mouth. This was an easy monster to kill. I clawed its tentacles off, heedless of the hundreds of small bladed cilia slashing at my shield and draining my Energy.
The severed appendages kept wriggling and slapping inefficiently against the Dungeon cave floor. I paid them no mind. If the Kythaurpódi was bothered by the loss of its appendages, it didn't show. Excited, I closed in and cut all of its eight tentacles and the head-trunk. As I went for the tentacle-neck, {Prescience} warned me of attacks from behind. I used {Flash Blink Step} to go thirty meters behind the Kythaurpódi and turned.
The tentacles I'd severed grew and morphed. Nine new but thankfully smaller Kythaurpódi were rushing my way, while the old one stood still as it floated behind them, slowly regrowing its tentacles.
> 9x
>
> Level 138 Kythaurpódi [Abomination] [1]
>
> HP ~12,000,000
>
> Dexterity ~ 90 (-74)
>
> Appraise Proficiency went up by 2 points. You can learn a new Ability.
Shit.
[1]: (pronounced Kite-Our-Pod-e)