Chapter 8
HOW TO BUILD A DUNGEON PROOF BUNKER
Igmail was a bit of a work-a-holic. Just a bit. So when he found himself alone with abundant tasks to occupy his time of course he went completely overboard in tiring himself out to a dangerous degree everyday. He finished compressing all the walls in record time, finished making the second small room, and even shaped a bed frame purely out of stone. It had no mattress at the moment but that could be solved.
He could use furs, but that wouldn’t be very comfortable. That was something he missed. Sophie had the most convenient ability to tan furs over his stove top, something about smoke being a tool or some such nonsense, but he now had a limited supply.
By the end of his second month in the bunker the main room had an extra foot of room in every direction, a whole new room just as large as the main room, a new set of hyperdense stone weights, and the above mentioned new bed that actually fit Igmail in his entirety. It was astonishing, really, how much can change in just two months, though several things stayed the same. The still limited supply of light crystals meant he could still only light one room at a time and the still limited supply of people had Igmail still feeling rather unsatisfied.
He had sent a note through his now unused transport hoop for more of the former but had yet to receive any. He’d sent for a lot of things, actually, including a mattress he had yet to receive, a table he’d yet to receive, and some chairs that he had, surprise surprise, yet to receive. Igmail started work on forming the latter two out of stone, but the mattress would take him much too long at his current strength and catalysts he couldn’t get ahold of.
Versatility and power had an inverse relationship in terms of abilities. The absurd amount of things that Igmail could use his power for meant that it could not do those things quickly or efficiently. For example, a standard tier four with a standard stone manipulation power would have been able to form Igmail’s bonus room in a couple days instead of a couple weeks, but would be completely unable to reinforce the stone. Igmail’s strength was spread out in comparison.
In addition to all the work on the bunker Igmail had been doing he had also been making more golems as frequently as possible. The strain on his spirit meant he could only realistically make one a week, but that was still four extra gorillas running around the dungeon. He had the capacity for a couple more golems soul wise but not the resilience to create them without getting hurt. Soul damage was a pain to get healed, as Igmail learned early in his life.
One interesting thing that had happened in relation to his gorilla golems was the formation of basic funerary rites. The chunks of a golem that had died had been brought back to him in a rather large box shaped out the high quality stone found deeper in there dungeon. Naturally, Igmail decided to incorporate the shiny reddish stone into the new gorilla, but he was surprised by just how easy it was.
The animating soul that the gorilla had possessed had yet to completely reintegrate with Igmail, so it was significantly less traumatic to place it back into the stone. Additionally, the stone of the gorilla already possessed all the most tricky qualities that a gorilla needed to function such as muscle elasticity, so all Igmail really had to do was repair its body with the new stone and place in another mind structure. His energy had already attuned to the stone he was using as well, so even that was easier.
Doing like this meant that the gorilla was cheaper than a new gorilla while also being stronger. However, it was dumber than the original had been, with fewer learned experiences to expand and improve upon Igmail’s design for its mind. Not that Igmail ever saw his newest creations’ minds in action, he simply went right back into working on the weights he was making at the time.
Igmail’s daily routine had started to shift with this new burst of productivity. He woke up to the first light of the light crystal dawn, then spent an hour with his weights and his spear followed by half an hour of yoga. Those two events swapped whenever he made another gorilla. Afterwards he went right into working on the bunker itself, either expanding the new room or on the walls of old rooms. He would spend several hours doing that before shifting his effort towards making amenities.
At this point the floor was as soft as a training mat, the water basin had become an actual sink, and the metal stove had been replaced with a stone one, the heat crystals switched to a different container. The stone was better at insulating and containing heat, minimizing the stove’s impact on the already warm room’s temperature while also being better at grilling.
On the topic of temperature, Igmail also made the front wall a better insulator, so as to keep the warmth of the jungle outside. At this point, the place was getting pretty comfy. The bunker couldn’t really compare with the average apartment in Flourish, but Igmail had lived in worse military installations.
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Champion was somewhat regretting bringing along Artisan. His actions had set a precedent. Now, every time a new gorilla came along, the gorilla he had guarding one of the boss floors would foist their duties onto the newbie and head down until they reached the next boss floor, and so on and so forth until Champion had to deal with directing the three oldest golems as they reached the eighteenth floor of the dungeon. The other three golems were securing the boss rooms that occurs every five floors, keeping the dungeon from filling back up.
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Long gone were the days of Champion simply setting out to eviscerate a floor by himself, no, even with the most useless of his brethren guarding every fifth floor he was still stuck with Artisan, Scholly, and Gar. Champion lamented that he could no longer fight with as much savagery and glee as he had before. Now he had to think about things like tactics.
It wasn’t all bad, though, having others with him. The floors had been getting more dangerous as they went and more hands sped up progress. Take for instance their current obstacle, an underground mushroom forest. It had tons of small but dangerous monsters in it, and half the glowing mushrooms were trying to eat them too.
If it was just Champion clearing the room he would have had to slowly cut through the forest, mushroom by mushroom, to make sure he got everything. With his brothers by his side Champion instead got to watch as Artisan shook the room with explosions.
Artisan had learned how to make stones that were combustible on impact, something about sulfur powder and flint, and was currently abusing that ability to clear the room of vegetation rather rapidly. As the crafter’s attacks continued monsters would escape from the underbrush and rush at him, which is where Champion and Gar came in. Gar kept the monsters away from Artisan and Scholly with his large stone shield while Champion slayed all which dared to approach the party.
For his part, Scholly was calling targets and directing firebombs. It was Champion, as the eldest, who decided on their overall strategy for the room, but Scholly had the best communication abilities of the group so he was in charge of directing the execution of that strategy.
A room which would have taken Champion days instead was finished in mere hours, quite the accomplishment when the average room had grown to be half as big as the entire first floor and the average monster was stronger than the fifth floor boss. Scholly, as the gorilla least likely to break it, had ended up with the transport hoop, and he was quite happy about those facts.
More than any of his brothers Scholly was most aware of the value they were providing their Master by sending the bodies through the hoop. He delighted in having everybody shovel what must have been ten tons of mushrooms through the portal, though the others were not quite so happy about all the work.
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Samurthabec was not happy. In fact, she was quite frustrated. Not only were these intruders killing her defenders, they were also blocking her reinforcements! And now they spent a whole day shoving mushrooms through a portal just to spite her?! If she wasn’t already, Sam would’ve started sending the most powerful monsters she could to kill them just for that slight. Sadly for Sam, even monster cores can only influence the behavior of monsters so much, and monsters inherently want to be deeper within the earth where the mana was more abundant.
The Dungeon Owners Association also mandated connections every fifth floor, guarded, of course, and the mana suction from those certainly weren’t helping either. She was practically throwing her mana at the problem, hoping to increase the ambient mana on the upper floors enough that she could finally convince something to kill those pests.
‘It's unfair, that's what it is,’ thought Samurthabec in the rare break between swear words. ‘Though, at least they respect my less alive decorations.’
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Toto’s month had been interesting. One day during his standard loop a logistics officer approached him. The woman had ordered him to follow her and they rode a slowly hovering wooden sled out the east gate. Toto suspected that the sled was for the benefit of the officer more than himself; Toto could run faster than the fled could fly.
He was taken to a small hill of stone that was being guarded by at least three tier fives. It seemed to shift and rumble randomly, the spots that did being very quickly smashed by various element blasts. As Toto’s transport came to a halt a man in the formal garb of a first sergeant quickly approached him. He had a bald head and stiff posture indicative of a person who really cared about formalites, as well as a gem tipped staff slung across his back. His formal armor was shiny and well cared for, and his physique showed clear signs of extensive exercise.
“Private Golem Class Toto, welcome to the outer wall,” the man said. “I am first sergeant Stevenson, and I am in charge of the construction of this portion of the wall. You have been called in to pacify this pile of stone. The scouts who found this deposit apparently failed to note that its animation was an inherent property of the stone itself rather than an elemental possession, which is a problem because we are stuck with it now. I need you to edit away the animation of this stone,” Stevenson said in a firm but not quite impolite tone.
Toto simply saluted in response, lacking a voice with which to talk.
“Excellent,” said Stevenson, “we will bring you a chunk of the stone. When you are satisfied that it will not compromise the strength of the wall or regain its animation, please signal Corporal Albright for another. This will be your assignment until you are done or another solution is found. Dismissed.”
It was in this manner that Toto ended up sitting on the trampled fields outside the walls wrestling with rocks. Over the course of his decade Toto had become quite used to the standard range of properties that stone held. Different types of stone had different quantities and qualities of said properties, but they were all formed by a combination of the same handful of properties. This living stone, however, had an additional property which Toto would describe as will.
The stone had a primitive consciousness that was capable of mentally directing the stone in a telekinetic manner, which Toto determined he would have to remove to make the stone safe to use. First, he had to subdue the will of a piece of stone before he could saturate it with his mana. Then he would reduce the rate that it generated whatever telekinetic power it held until it was inert, such that it could not regain the limited resource that allowed it to move.
It took him nearly the whole month to make sure that the stone stopped wiggling, but was rather confident in his success. He would of preferred for the First Sergeant to find a different solution; his perception was demonstrably not perfect, but he couldn’t see anything wrong with the stone after he’d fixed it.
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The progenitor was laughing evilly in its deep under lair, running its proverbial fingers through the fur of its prince of beasts. Those pests wouldn’t see it coming.