Chapter 3
HOLE-STEADING
Igmail woke up from his creation coma sometime the next day. He knew by the brightly shining light crystals playing percussion behind his eyeballs. Their illumination level was tied to the time of day outside, preserving the circadian rhythm of the bunker’s inhabitants, and as such were good indicators of the time of day. Making a gorilla alway took it out of him, given that he quite literally had to break a chunk of his soul off to do it. It was one of the reasons Igmail was so nervous about his assignment, the fact that he’d have to make a lot of gorillas.
Igmail had no problem with most of the assignment. He was comfortable with enclosed stone spaces, wasn’t too bothered by prolonged solitude, and was actually quite excited to spend time around the dense environmental mana the dungeon produced. The pay was good too. Because dungeon suppression was usually a job for adventurers he got paid for every monster he sent back in addition to his regular salary. He just really hated having to craft his golems frequently.
Groggily sitting up with a groan, Igmail took a second to remember where he was. When he had refreshed his memory he waddled over to the faucet stone, nearly tripping over the debris left over from his newest golem in the process. He filled the basin using mana and dunked his head into it, though even this level of mana expenditure made his soul ache.
Afterwards, Igmail freed the transport hoop from his finger and unfurled it. Setting it on the floor, it activated after a second, allowing a box to fall through shortly afterwards. And the box did fall through, as if it was simply sitting within the paired hoop in Flourish, waiting for his hoop to activate. Due to the fact that it was experiencing gravity from two different directions at once, simultaneously trying to fall through two different floors, it ended up in an odd limbo and Igmail had to pull it out.
Opening the crate with his hands Igmail was delighted to discover a week’s rations, several folded pairs of clothes, and a handful of hygiene items such as a toothbrush and some soap. The decision had been made to portal most of his supplies in rather than getting him killed trying to carry them through the rainforest, though he was a little late in receiving them.
He situated them around his new home, placing the toiletries in the bathroom and shoving the rations under his cot while still in the box. He took a long bath afterwards, though it remained luke-warm throughout because the tub lacked a heating element.
As for the rest of his day, Igmail had learned long ago how to best recover from using his golem making ability: yoga. It relaxed the body, soothing all the aches and kinks from the weird poses he took during the shaping process, it calmed the mind, sharpening the thoughts that exhaustion had disorganized, and it stretched the soul, slightly relieving the profound sense of loss that losing a chunk of your very essence creates. Each effect cascaded to the next, allowing simple physical movement to affect him in body, mind, and spirit.
In accordance with this philosophy of rest Igmail restrained himself to low intensity actions for the rest of the day. Once he had gone through his yoga routine he went through his spear forms at quarter speed, relying on muscle memory to guide his actions. Even when he was assigned to the wall he never stopped practicing them. He did some minor magic as well, the mental and spiritual equivalent of his spear forms.
His ability to alter stone was much weaker when he was not using it to actually make a golem, but he could still do it, so he spent a couple of hours smoothing out all the scratches and crumbly bits scattered around his new home, giving it a much cleaner look.
Additionally, he ventured into the dungeon for the first time. His golem should definitely have been able to clear the first room; he could tell that it wasn’t dead, so he was confident he wouldn’t need the spear he carried. He discovered a pile of monster bodies sitting at the bottom of the stairs, usually killed by a single thrust of a spear. There were several of them, almost a dozen, with large hairless moles comprising the majority.
Igmail could already tell that he would be asked to do this again, he was simply too efficient at it. He was literally killing monsters in his sleep. Not just any monsters either, but specifically dungeon monsters, who were extra valuable for their monsters cores. Monster cores were chunks of crystalized mana that dungeon cores used to control monsters, and they were the main reason dungeon suppression duty was the thing, whatever Deborah said about “reducing the pressure on the wall builders.”
He gently tossed all the valuable corpses through the transport hoop, his gravity problem from earlier having been rectified on the other end. The army logistics staff had probably mounted their side of the hoop into the ceiling or something. With nothing else to do Igmail went back to bed.
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The gorilla was in danger. He was cornered by three of the large mole creatures. He had been exploring down one of the last tunnels of the first floor when he realized that he hadn’t found any monsters for at least an hour, much longer than usual. His posture straightened in alarm, the situation calling to mind all his knowledge on dungeon tactics. As if his realization of foul play was the signal three large moles rushed around the last bend in the tunnel to attack him.
If the gorilla had time to think about it, he would have realized that it probably was the signal. Dungeons, after all, were run by dungeon cores, and they were omniscient within their bounds. They were intelligent too, maliciously so. For all that dungeons improved the quality of the ambient mana around them, making it easier for living things to grow stronger, they also wished to grow stronger by killing intruders.
Taking this into account, it's pretty obvious that the dungeon was quietly collecting the moles the gorilla would have run into and saving them for an ambush. When the gorilla grew wise to this dastardly scheme, the dungeon sprung the trap early in hopes of maintaining the element of surprise.
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That was the right move, seeing as how the gorilla was now pinned in by three monsters and a wall inside one of the dungeon’s smaller rooms. The moles were taking it slow, probably at the behest of their master, testing out his defenses. Potentially, they were also stalling him as reinforcements came.
The golem decided not to let them. He juked towards the mole on the left, making it rear up on its hind legs, before he suddenly changed directions and charged straight at the one on the right. He disregarded all elegance and spearmanship and instead simply bowled it over, using one of his brawny arms to swing low and knock it to the side.
The way the monster screamed and mewled clearly indicated that it was hurt, but that still left two more for the gorilla shaped autonomous hunk of stone to deal with. The middle mole uses the opportunity to take a lunging swipe at him, the sharp claws of the monster taking a chunk out of the gorilla’s lower leg. As a result the top heavy golem toppled over.
The same mole used the opportunity to get up on top of the gorilla’s back, digging its claws in. However, it had forgotten one crucial fact about its opponent. The gorilla weighed more than a ton. He simply rolled over and made the mole a pancake beneath him.
The last mobile mole was more cautious, maintaining its distance. The gorilla couldn’t allow that, so he charged at it. The mole fled, the sheer audacity of such a move making the gorilla continue his pursuit right into the mole that it had injured earlier. Said mole latched onto his leg, digging into the gorilla’s foot and calf, once more bringing it to the ground.
Hearing the boom of the stone golem hitting the ground, the smart mole turned around and immediately transitioned into a powerful blow aimed at the gorilla’s head. Igmail’s construct just managed to shift his head out of the way at the sight of the descending claws, turning that movement into another roll which put the gorilla on his back. This violent shift also had the side benefit of tossing the injured mole away from him.
Using a single fisted hand he pulped the smart mole, smashing its head into the floor with an ugly crack. Using his other hand he speared the injured mole in its side and swiftly finished it off.
‘That… was close,’ thought the gorilla. ‘In the future, I will need more vigilance in dealing with the dungeon, and to make protecting my legs a larger priority.’ With his logical matrix readjusted, the gorilla immediately went about recovering the pieces of him that had been knocked off and putting them back.
Just like his master he had the ability to alter the properties of stone, so he used new stone from his surroundings to replace that which had been lost. The stone this deep underground was different from the stone he was made from but it still worked just fine for his purposes so he didn’t think about it too much.
It took him many hours to resume full functionality and he was attacked several times during his recuperation, lengthening his convalescence. By the time he was whole again he had created a pile of bodies not much smaller than the one Igmail had just disposed of.
He first hauled them all back to the first room, then continued to explore the first floor. He was never again able to catch a monster by surprise like he had on his first kill, with the dungeon now paying attention to his progress, but his power was sufficient to clear the first floor regardless.
It turned out that the dungeon only had one way down to the second floor, a staircase similar to the one that had brought him down to the first floor. Even as he was standing there considering his options three of the moles and a single bat ascended from the second floor, presumably to occupy the first. He killed them all, of course, but it verified his suspicion that this was a choke point in the dungeon’s design.
Personally, he thought it was stupid for the dungeon to pigeon hole itself like that, but dungeons were more concerned with the flow of mana in and out than they were with tactically sound layouts so he couldn’t blame it too much. The more entrances and exits and such that dungeons held the harder it was for them to purify their mana and grow stronger, so they tended to create a lot of choke points like this one.
Eventually, the gorilla decided it was more important to descend and deal with the stronger monsters than it was to hold the stairs. He very carefully started his trek and was fine up until he entered the first room of the second floor. Not only were there three of the moles, in and of themselves a major threat, but there were also a couple monsters of a new type.
Big, shadowy cats were prowling around the room. They were as tall as the gorilla’s waist at the shoulder, and they would’ve been nearly invisible to anybody relying on conventional eyesight. Even though the gorilla wasn’t too hampered by that specific aspect of their abilities, they were still some big dang cats.
Upon entering the room all eyes shifted to him instantaneously. All the gorilla golem could think was ‘Nope. I’m not ready for this.’ However, though his logical matrix was preoccupied by the inevitability of his death, the ingrained reactions the gorilla had inherited from his master already had him fleeing back up the steps.
His sheer desperation allowed him to reach the top before any of the monsters, giving him the high ground against his pursuers. He used his long spear to capitalize on this advantage, a swift thrust taking a mole in the shoulder and sending it tumbling back down the stairs.
The falling mole ended up taking one of its brethren with it, stalling them both, but the shadow cats nimbly vaulted the obstacle and continued on. He tried to intercept the lunge of the first cat with his spear, but it slipped around the weapon and tried to shoulder tackle him.
That was the wrong move for the monster, because not only was its tackle ineffective against the solid chunk of stone in the shape of a gorilla, but it also broke its shoulder trying. However, it had succeeded in knocking the spear out of the golem’s hand, thus allowing the second cat the opportunity to give the gorilla a deep cut across the chest with its claws before jumping away.
The gorilla stomped on the head of the downed shadow cat, killing it, and decided that rushing the other one before any moles showed up was the right move. However, the cat was too quick and it ran circles around the gorilla in the enclosed space where they were fighting.
The moles arrived shortly afterwards, one sporting a heavy limp. The other two rushed straight at him, hoping to give the big cat the opportunity to take his head off. The cunning gorilla golem spoiled their plans by jumping over them, twisting in midair to land facing the moles. He then grabbed the left one by its back legs.
Using his absurd core strength, the gorilla rotated at the hips and slung the mole at the panther type creature with ludicrous speed. This unexpected move caught the cat off guard, and both it and the mole ended up cracking their skulls against the unyielding stone walls. From there it was child’s play for the gorilla to clean up the rest of the encounter and drag all the bodies to the first room.
Afterwards, the gorilla rethought his earlier decision about clearing the second floor. ‘Yeah,’ thought the golem, ‘that seems like a great way to die quickly. I’mma cultivate a bit more first.’ So the gorilla maintained his vigil at the entrance to the second floor, killing any monsters trying to escape to the first while using his power over stone to enhance his own body. This was the state of things for quite a while.