Owyn found himself scowling again. And for once, it didn’t have to do with the enigma that was Lucid, or his crazy ideas. Although, watching Damian breathe a little fire didn’t help. The demons ‘flamethrower’ magic went a pitiful half a foot in front of his face, and seemed to only last a quarter as long as he could breathe out. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t produce more after that first little spout. It seemed like his supply of flammable breath was limited, at least until he refueled somehow.
No, what Owyn was more concerned about was what the cardinal mentioned. He doubted it was a simple slip of the tongue, and even more doubtful was that any of the villagers present missed it. The church, at least the church the cardinal and the knights outside served, claimed they served a God.
Yet everyone else worshiped a Goddess. The church, supposedly, included.
Owyn didn’t know what Lucid knew, and his knowledge seemed rather spotty. Owyn decided he needed to let Lucid know. It wasn’t like there was risk in talking to him.
Owyn trotted up to Damian, who had brought out the pouch of pacified cores from his pocket. He picked out a few and started snacking on them while they walked.
“What does Lucid know about the Goddess?” Owyn asked.
Damian held a core gently between his teeth, listening to Lucid. “Nothing.” He leaned his head back and swallowed the core whole.
“Okay, what about the God the cardinal was talking about?”
“You heard that too.” The Baroness said, approaching Owyn.
Owyn started, surprised for half a second before remembering that she was a thrall too. “Yeah, it’s sort of hard to miss.”
The Baroness tilted her head to indicate she was listening to Lucid. She spoke her response aloud, probably for Owyn’s benefit. “It’s important because everyone worships the Goddess. There are minor Gods or other Goddesses, but the church mainly advocates for the Goddess. Of course, many don’t believe in any, and those that do believe haven’t been able to produce evidence of any particular holy existence.”
Owyn caught on to her intention. “So for the cardinal to mention meeting their God, yeah. Something’s up.”
The Baroness listened for a second longer. “Lucid mentions how he doesn’t like the church’s arrogance, to assume that he’ll automatically align with them over childish threats.”
The villagers behind them muttered to each other, obviously overhearing their conversation. Owyn frowned. He put a hand on the Baroness’ and Damian’s back, urging them to move faster. He briefly paused to take off his helmet, handing it to one of the enthralled villagers.
“We’re going on ahead. Just follow the others. We’ll catch up when we’re done.”
Damian rolled his eyes, the last thing Owyn could see before being led into the dark. The Baroness held his hand, guiding him behind Damian. She could see perfectly well in Lucid’s territory, since she was his thrall.
He eventually heard them walk into Lucid’s old core room, apparent by the sound of flowing water supplying the pond encircling the room.
Some gentle lights began to glow. Hardly enough to make out details, but enough that Owyn was able to see rough shapes of things. Two lights protruded from the water, hanging on some weird line. Owyn approached it, curious as to what laid beneath the dark waters.
“I see you’ve made some upgrades.”
“They bite.” Damian mentioned, with a hint of a smile in his voice. He upturned the pouch of cores over the waters, inciting chaos beneath the waves. Owyn spotted a very toothy fish attached to the glowing orb leap and snap at the cores, eager to consume more.
“Right…” Owyn acknowledged, still looking into the waves. “Anyways, what’s the next thing to do?”
“About the church, or in general?” The Baroness mentioned, remaining a distance away from the frenzy.
“Setterton is safe.”
“The village?” Damian picks out one last core he must have saved for himself. “Thought there was a bunch of church guys in it?”
“The people.” The Baroness said patiently. “And while that’s true, Lucid does intend on returning them to the surface. Eventually. For now though, the cavern needs clearing in order for it to be truly safe. We’re maintaining peace right now by virtue of having the strongest defensive force. The villagers will defend Lucid, so long as he protects the young and elderly, which makes their combined forces far more powerful than any attack that can be sent our way. Even though the other dungeons can build forces faster than we can, the downtime between attacking us and building up their defensive forces will be their downfall.”
“Alternatively, we can’t attack them either.” Owyn pointed out. “None of the villagers besides the adventurers and apparently Mr. Vernant have combat experience, and we don’t have good weapons or armor. Leather can protect us from the smaller monsters, but not the larger ones.”
“Technically Mr. Mayflower is a knight but he has… let himself go, since moving to Setterton.”
Of course, no mention of Mr. Vernant, since he’s a thrall now. “Again, drawing back to the whole ‘we don’t have weapons’ argument.” Owyn’s leg started bouncing. He wanted to mention guns in this argument, but Lucid had informed him to keep the topic quiet, even to his own thralls. Owyn would have to work with Lucid personally if he wanted to get something moving in that aspect. He was granted a few blank passive cores to experiment with, but for now, he was sort of stuck waiting on Lucid’s orders. “Knowing that we need to clear out the cavern is nice and all, but I’d still feel better with a strategy in mind.”
The Baroness tilted her head slightly. “Lucid says if it makes you feel better, he can capture more bats and we can use them for… bombing runs?”
Owyn nodded. He didn’t know what a bombing run was, but knowing what Lucid supposedly knew, it was probably very powerful. It felt strange, to have seen all the knowledge of this other world, only to have it stripped away as soon as he returned to his own body. Owyn was probably going to go mad if he didn’t understand everything there was to know about this other world.
Damian seemed to agree with the sentiment somewhat. “Air superiority was what the previous master managed. It wasn’t really effective, since when flying, we’re susceptible to projectiles. Bats normally have so little in the way of defense.”
“But you’re different.”
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Damian thumped his chest. “I am nearing my peak of evolution!”
Owyn raised an eyebrow. “Really? But you’re… small.”
“Rab’s strength is his size.” Damian countered. “The master has other purposes for me.”
“Ah.” The Baroness seems to have understood something. “Lucid says the bats will carry heavy rocks and drop them on the enemy.”
“That seems like it’ll take a lot of evolution.” Owyn pointed out. “To be able to do that in any significant manner, he’d need to both have the numbers, and those numbers would need the strength to carry the rocks.”
Damian looked in the direction of the pond and grunted. “Too late to use cores.”
“How long can the people last down there?” The Baroness asked.
“If we’re talking just food, probably a week and a half. Mentally though, I’m not so sure. I don’t know what the long term effects of mana sickness can cause. Since most people aren’t actively using magic, most of them can last about sixteen hours before they can’t stand any longer. Mostly, we take breaks every few hours, plus we sleep outside the dungeon, but the sleeping quarters are crowded. We’ve started taking sleeps in shifts, which is making people grouchy.”
“Leave the management of people to me.” The Baroness said. “So long as Lucid can solve the food and protection problem, I can handle that much myself.”
Owyn started to say something, but the Baroness raised a hand to stop him. The villagers wandered through the room, swinging their light over Owyn. Owyn held up his hand to the light, which seemed to make Mycroft think he was waving. She chittered, waving a claw from the back of the group.
“Lucid says he can convert the upper caves to a safe farming area, for what it counts.”
“It really doesn’t.” Owyn shook his head. “New crops would take too long to mature, regardless of a dungeon's accelerated growth. The only reason we haven’t starved so far is because Depths held so much territory, and it was mostly for farming to feed its own troops. We humans are much larger than dungeon monsters. Even though we number fewer, we eat far more. Lucid’s already ran out of food in his domain, so we’re taking to scavenging outside.”
“That’s news to Lucid.” The Baroness said. “He’s not omnipotent it seems.”
“I know.” Owyn bit his tongue after he said it. “Regardless, the villagers need protection if they’re going to go out further.”
Damian jutted a thumb out over the pond. “So more land troops?”
Owyn smirked. “Well they’d be pretty useless being stuck up here in the pond.”
The Baroness nodded. “Lucid agrees. He’ll create a number of guards, knights, guides, and whatever else is needed. He’ll also create some farmers to leave up here. Just in case.”
Owyn could agree with that. “So what now then? It’s going to take time to accumulate enough mana to do anything.”
“Agreed.” The Baroness began leading them down to the cliff where the other villagers were no doubt anxiously waiting for them. “In the meantime, if we’re short on food, we’ll see about antagonizing this ‘Lefty’ dungeon for meat. Lucid says it’s the dungeon in the most precarious position, especially since its defenses are so low.”
“It only has versatility, which it won’t get to keep if we pick it off slowly. Safely.” That was still important to Owyn.
The Baroness listened to Lucid. “Lucid says to hurry back. He’s eager to get to prototyping your project?”
Owyn’s face split into a grin. If it wasn’t for these two slowpokes holding him back, he would have sprinted through the darkness just to get back to Lucid’s core a little bit faster.
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It felt slightly surreal to have just finished a large-scale rescue of the village, only to get straight into a project with Lucid. Owyn was used to starting something, finishing it in the same day, and then leaving whatever came next for tomorrow. Regardless, the surrealism wasn’t nearly strong enough to overpower his curiosity. He sat in Lucid’s core room, next to Mimi, so she could still be near the core.
Hello! Lucid greeted. So, you remember how a gun works, right?
Yes! Your explanation was very thought provoking! Goddess above, he sounded like he did when his mother was trying to teach him stuff. But how are we going to get the metal to build one? More than that, how are we going to shape it?
Hm? Oh yes, I suppose that is a small issue. I was more concerned about our memory sharing sessions. I was worried that you’d forget how a gun worked after a while away from me.
How would that work?
Well, I knew how a gun worked long before I operated one. Lucid said. And yet, you didn’t when you left my memory. So I was worried that some magic mambo jumbo was blocking me from telling you about it. Explaining it without showing memories seems to stick with you better though, so I doubt I’ll be doing that from now on.
No! Owyn almost begged. I mean, wait! Hold on! Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, I can still learn a lot from your memories!
Lucid smirked. I’ll still share them. I just won’t use them to teach you stuff. He huffed. As for our creation problems, I wouldn’t worry about that. Even if we can’t get the metal, I can shape something out of stone. It won’t be good for long hauls or practical use, but as a sniper, it’d probably work. If nothing else, we scale up and make a cannon. Regardless, have you given any thought to our propulsion dilemma?
Last they spoke about creating a gun, Lucid was worried about this thing called gunpowder. Theoretically, he could apparently make some from nothing, but that didn’t seem reliable, especially when he’s so low on mana all the time. Owyn could theoretically do the same using his own cores, but the problem laid within the fact that neither of them knew what gunpowder was made of. It wasn’t a single element, like water, although Lucid claimed to have choice words about that that he wouldn’t mention yet, since it supposedly wasn’t important.
The alternative, was for Owyn to decide upon a magic spell that would result in an explosion. Plain and simple, supposedly. The problem with that laid within the fact that any explosion within proximity to the core would most likely result in the fragile core breaking apart. And with limited cores to work with, creating a good spell was paramount.
Well, magic can’t go through things, like a gun barrel, so having the core outside, but the explosion happening inside wouldn’t work. And the cores need to be exposed enough to let me operate them. So I was thinking we could have two cores sitting back to back basically, separated by some metal or whatever. The cores would be at the back of the gun, exposed to me, and also to the back of the inside of the barrel.
Lucid seemed to understand the rest intuitively. One core to create the explosion, and the other to protect them both?
Yeah!
That seemed to satisfy Lucid. If creating protections is so easy, why doesn’t everyone have a spell to shield them from everything?
It’s better to sell the core and buy armor for the same effect really. Besides, armor doesn’t run out unexpectedly.
Lucid chuckled. I suppose not. Speaking of which, what’s the lifespan of a core? What should I be expecting here, I’ve never found the time to ask.
As a dungeon? Owyn didn’t even need to think about this one. As far as I know, you’re immortal. Or well, you’re mortal, but old age won’t kill you.
Or disease. Lucid chuckled again.
Or that. As for magic cores, it depends on the spell, as well as how often you use it. Light is an easy spell, so the core will last for many many months. The create water spell is less simple, but it’ll still last for months. My necklace I don’t use often, so it’ll probably last my whole lifetime. Powerful magics though? Like, uh, Lady Bellamy’s fireball? She’d need to replace the core every month or two, depending on how often she uses it.
And I assume bigger cores mean more power?
Exactly. And the more intact they are, the more stable they are too. More efficient.
Well we’re just prototyping! Grab some cores, I’ll set up a barrel made of stone, and we’ll see if we can push a rock a few inches or something! Who knows, maybe we’ll invent power bowling!