Say elec-tro-mag-net-ism
“Ewectromanemism!” Betsy’s eye stalks stuck straight out as she struggled to pronounce the difficult word.
Still too many teeth...
“Noooooeeewwww.....” Betsy wailed, her eyes drooping as she dashed away twisting in higher dimensions to contort her body through the tunnels of her main chamber. My cilia were everywhere here though, so it was no trouble for me to reach out and dissolve a few more of the needle-like teeth as she traveled. “I wike my teeeeeff!!!”
Say elec-tro-mag-net-ism please
“Electromanemism...” Betsy’s eyes drooped as she sulked, running her thick tongue over her teeth in a vain effort to find the missing incisors.
There, better. Don’t worry dear, I’ll give you retractable teeth soon.
< Warning core instability detected: -15 mana >
< Mana: 2,989/3,327 >
I dismissed the errant notification as my attention drifted to the surface. I was getting better at forming messages from mana though the interface still bugged me no matter how I did it. Manamessages themselves were safe enough and despite the cost, I had more than enough mana generation from my trees and the humans to fuel the indulgence. It was time, however, for the humans to leave.
It felt like an end to an era when the last Guard stepped out of my domain. The company of soldiers, led by Captain Arcturus, had remained on my outskirts for a week. There had been some small hiccups early on, but by now my forest had grown to be a fine-tuned training grounds. I was honestly proud of the soldiers. They had started as arrogant buffoons who folded at the slightest hint of trouble but had grown since. Now, they reacted quickly and with poise to ambushes and setbacks. I was confident that they would serve their community well and live a long and fulfilling life in this dangerous world.
I did have a small worry that they would come back sometime and use the skills I helped teach on me, but after observing them for a time my worries were alleviated. There were a few bad apples in the bunch, but the Captain had fostered a good community overall. If anything, the Guards appreciated the training I provided and couldn’t wait to bring more of their colleagues here to train against my Treants. That, if anything, reassured me the most. No one in their right mind would intentionally squander a unique resource such as myself.
“Don’t worry guys! I’ll hold down the fort while you’re gone.”
I turned my perception in distaste to the only human who had stayed. Christina Liashen, former Guard and now my permanent guest due to an unfortunate kerfuffle with a slave collar artifact that had bound her soul. The event had nearly killed the girl, and it was only my timely intervention with Cortana — a titanic invisible floating eldritch tree with hundreds of eyes — that had recovered the girl’s autonomy. Unfortunately, she was restricted to my second floor due to Cortana’s limitations as my second-floor boss, but the idyllic forest wasn’t such a bad place to be. Christina’s burgeoning mood reflected my opinion.
She waved at the edge of my domain to the retreating soldiers with uncharacteristic cheer. Once I had installed Cortana, she had acclimated rather quickly and for that I was grateful. I hated that through my actions I had condemned someone to eternity in a box. It was a big, nice box with lots of trees, but still a box. I don’t think I would be able to live with myself if she was in a constant state of misery.
“Great Dungeon. May your slumber be calm and your dreams pleasant. Amen.”
Instead, I had to deal with this shit. The girl had taken it upon herself to become my...handler. The self-imposed job essentially amounted to acting like a priest. She prayed to me daily. Wishes and appeals to be calm. Don’t go crazy and kill people. Be nice.
Bah! I’ll show you calm, you infuriating flesh sack.
...breathe...
In...out...in...out.
The gentle breeze from my annoyance ruffled the girl's hair. She smiled at that, closing her eyes and raising her chin to breathe in the sweet springtime air. That spiked my irritation, but I suppressed it and let her be. Despite her outward happiness, I could tell from her quiet moments and distant looks that Christina was still emotionally fragile. It wasn’t every day that you nearly die, lose your freedom, gain an imaginary best friend, and have to watch all your old friends leave you in an unfamiliar forest for reasons that you don’t totally understand. I understood, and I wasn’t so desperate for company that I’d force the issue.
I watched the girl hike along a game trail towards the small cottage I built her at the base of the great mural beneath my cave entrance. Inside were all the necessities I could conjure with my limited access to technology. Beds, couches, and tables were easy but fabric and cushions were more complicated. I ended up harvesting a Treant for fibers that I could weave, but the result was just a hair tougher than the pillows I was used to back on earth. Still, Christina seemed satisfied and the convoluted hoops of logic she jumped through to rationalize it all amused me greatly.
Other necessities turned out to be surprisingly simple, while others were deceptively hard. Plumbing was easy, and though it took me a bit to remember how a toilet worked, I had the house ready with modern-ish facilities within hours. Lighting, on the other hand, was a right bastard to figure out and I opted to just have large windows until I figured out a proper solution. A steady source of electricity was beyond my ability even if I could create an incandescent bulb. While I could create momentary static bursts containing shocking power, I lacked a magnet to form the heart of a generator.
That was...I lacked one until now.
I rippled in satisfaction as Christina entered her home but paused at the little sculpture I had placed on the dining room table. It was a simple stone platform with an engraved center portion housing a torus of black metal. Above the black ring, a jet-black pen hovered vertically a hair's breadth above the base.
“Another puzzle?” Christina inched closer, studying the contraption with the skittishness of a deer. “You don’t recognize it either Cortana? I see...”
Cortana moved two dozen eyes closer, blinking rapidly and gesturing to me impatiently. I ignored her attempts to get me to explain, despite how I knew she loved whispering the answer to her charge. Instead, I watched the human girl gather her courage and step closer. She reached out and swiped her hand under the pen, but when nothing bit her, she tried again.
“Cortana, it’s floating,” she murmured. Cortana shifted her branches and the human nodded. She reached out and touched the pen. It tipped over and thunked to the wooden table. Christina squeaked and lunged for it, catching it before it slipped off the table and jabbed it back into place. Unfortunately — or fortunately depending on your point of view — the magnetite I used for the base was weak. Just strong enough to support the pen but no more. As soon as the human let go, the pen tipped over.
“I broke it,” she whispered, horrified.
Cortana said something which made the girl look out the window, where the forest danced in tune with my laughter.
“Oh...that’s good I guess,” Cortana said, the familiar fragility returning as she clutched the pen to her chest.
I turned away satisfied. Each bout of nervousness was getting shorter and shorter as she grew more comfortable with me, and I felt fulfilled with my social interaction of the day. I had shared with her my discovery of magnetite in the depth of my maze and had given the girl a little gift if she ever figured out that the cylinder in her hand was a pen. I’d make some paper soon and hopefully, she would be able to send letters to her family. I found that this was all I desired from the interaction; sharing of discovery coupled with a hint of amusement.
Many of my other projects required my attention. My Ceiling Horror had acquired a total of two hundred additional eyes, but due to the rate of my expansion, only the first floor of the maze was densely populated with eyes. The other layers had a few here and there, but it wasn’t comprehensive coverage by far. My maze was also steadily expanding and was where I had found the vein of magnetite. It was up to nine total floors, each larger and deeper into the earth than the last. If an adventurer were to try and get to my core now, they would have to traverse miles of tunnels for days.
I was getting better at making glass, and the lenses in the sky had increased to slightly over forty-five thousand. It was at the point where clouds slowly burned away under the god ray produced. If I focused the light onto a single point, I had no doubt I could play the largest game of burn-the-ant, but while cool, that had never been the purpose of the massive array.
My enhanced trees were flourishing. I had tripled their number to fifteen and given them additional soul enhancements where necessary. They towered over the rest of the forest, and their viridian leaves absorbed the might of the god ray such that only dappled sunlight cavorted on the forest floor. Their growth rate was spectacular but paled in comparison to their water consumption. The little rivulets I diverted from the river to the north drained into the soil as if there was a drought, and I had to periodically bring up more water from the water table. At times, I could almost see a heat haze above the leaves as the water drawn from the roots vaporized up into the air. If I kept this up, I wouldn’t be surprised if the mother of all storms hit the area.
I didn’t mind the task of bringing water up manually. The task was trivial and the trees gave something far more valuable to me than my time: Insight into what tiers were. I could only guess as to the trees’ exact level, but conducting a comparative analysis between the various souls that had traversed my domain placed them somewhere in the late second tier or the early third tier at most. Their bark wasn’t thicker, but it was tougher with what I estimated to be a fifty to eighty percent increase in compressive strength. The wood had similarly increased in hardness to the point where I would seriously consider the material for weaponry. I hadn’t done it because I didn’t want to mutilate one of my precious trees, but a blade made from heartwood had a fair chance of scratching — if not puncturing — steel.
At its core, I was looking at a generalized density increase. This had all sorts of consequences if the phenomena occurred in humans as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if human society here never domesticated draft animals for example. The increase in general strength and toughness from a tier-up made such mortal concerns obsolete as a tier three human could pull a plow themselves. Likely, better and faster than any animal could.
There was a darker side to this as well. I had very little data at the moment, but if the toughness increased linearly then a tier four or five had nothing to fear from a tier one. Perhaps a dagger to the eye might do some damage, but trying to push a dagger through a tier five’s chest would be like pounding a nail through stone. Possible with a sledgehammer and a well-made nail, but for the average person? Not possible. Such a disparity between the members of society guaranteed segregation and immoral policies such as slavery.
It was a problem I wasn’t well versed in tackling. Politics had always eluded me, and even with my power, I didn’t have an inkling of how to begin enacting change for the better. I could only do what I knew how to do, and what I knew was science.
That led me to the next project that had captured my attention. [Refine Transparent Alumina Ampoule] behaved similarly to a summoning skill, but instead of creating life, it created stuff. The small oblong ball of material created was clear as glass but rang like ceramic when tapped. Its impact resistance was extreme, reminding me of bulletproof glass, which coincidentally wasn’t glass either. When I dropped a half-tonne pillar of stone on a thin sheet of the stuff, it stopped it cold with a spiderweb of internal detonations frosting up the glass in a way that reminded me of how tempered materials absorbed shock.
I was intrigued. It was a material I had never heard of and was almost certainly not pure aluminum despite what the interface was telling me. Perhaps it had some aluminum in it, but the way it reacted to impact was too similar to tempered crystalline solids to be a coincidence. Whatever the case, the stuff was hard as a coffin nail and inert as a urinal. There were a hundred and one things I could do with such a material, but only one thing I wanted to do.
I wanted to see the stars.
With exacting care, I ground the ampoule of transparent alumina into a series of transparent discs that I placed into a hollow stone tube. A paused for a second, then tripled the size of everything just to be sure. At the end of the stone tube, I took my dwindling pile of copper coins and molded a few such that the copper conformed to the back of the precise hyperbolic shape of the alumina. I had run out of steel from creating Cortana, and the Guard hadn't been considerate enough to leave any of their weaponry behind. I polished the copper until it shone, then fine-tuned the shape until it focused all the light onto a second mirror which I placed higher up on the tube. That mirror directed the light to the side where I crafted a special lens to blow up the image onto a gray canvas I made from stone.
I rotated the apparatus to the sky and...
I could see.
The setup was shit, and the fact my mirror was copper-colored distorted everything but by god I could finally see.
There were two suns, a large red star with a smaller blue one beside it. They were very close to each other such that their light merged to a gentle golden yellow that bathed the landscape. Before my eyes, the smaller blue sun moved beneath and around the red star in a wobbling rhythm that I couldn’t believe didn’t cause visual distortions to the land beneath.
I couldn’t see any stars as it was daytime even when I dragged the telescope to the upper atmosphere, but I was sure they were amazing here where there was no air pollution.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
It struck me how lucky I was that I was a dungeon. A regular human would fry their retinas several times over staring as I was at the suns. The thought gave me pause and made me turn the telescope on the land around me.
I sat nestled in a small valley with a huge mountain range to my east. To my north the river I was leaching off of spawned from one of the mountains and meandered its way westward until it dispensed into a great body of water shrouded in mist. My forest hugged the mountains and followed the river, but thinned into a vast plain the farther from the two it went.
Various human settlements dotted the land. Two to the north and several to the west and south. I could only presume that the closest city to the west was Krimta but had no names for the others. Krimta was medieval-esque, with a large stone wall around the city with packed tile-roofed buildings inside. Any more detail was impossible to discern as my telescope didn’t have the resolution at that distance.
That made me look down on myself and I got a pleasant shock. My pillars of stone jutted out of the lush forest like sore thumbs, but the life packed into the area was obvious. The combination of Treants using [Nurture Flora] and [Eternal Spring] had supercharged my little area of forest. It was as if a god had opened the landscape in an image editing software and upped the saturation just in my area alone. Christina’s little cottage was the only blemish of humanity in what was very obviously a wild jungle.
A wind ruffled the canopy and a notification flickered into my perception.
< Mana 3,327/3,327 >
< You have leveled up! >
< You are now level 16! >
< Mana 0/3,916 >
I paused my survey of the environment and pulled up my upgrade options.
Summon Zorethan Hulk:
+3 to maximum creatures
500 minute cooldown
Summon Darkscorn Kelpie:
+5 to maximum creatures
300 minute cooldown
Summon Artifice Legion:
+4 to maximum creatures
400 minute cooldown
Three, four, five. How familiar. I chuckled and pulled open my monster manual and skimmed through the index for similar entries. To my surprise, only the last option was in the monster manual. The others had similar entries but no exact matches.
Artifice Legion:
Damage type(s): Physical, Lightning
Creature type(s): Golem
Durability: A
Danger quotient: B
Special: Horde
Artifice Legion is a strange monster type first discovered by the great Artifice Necromancer Vi’intral. Each Artifice Legion contains anywhere from five to twelve golems that work in perfect sync with each other. The legions often contain specialized golems (tank, DPS, support) which make battle with one a difficult challenge. In addition, damage across any member of the legion is shared amongst the others. Do not attempt to focus down individuals as such a tactic is not more efficient but more dangerous than attacking available targets.
Golem cores can be harvested in abundance from Artifice Golems and some variants carry human-usable weaponry.
Artifice Legions are not vulnerable to any element though have trouble against area effects that restrict movement. Splitting a golem from the Legion’s main body will effectively destroy the golem and should be considered as a primary strategy in their defeat.
The Artifice Legion does not perform well when submerged.
That was kinda fun. It reminded me of the other horde option I had been offered but didn’t get the last time I’d been offered. This time, however, the monster seemed far more normal with fewer ‘conquer the world’ undertones. Overall a much safer choice though I didn’t know how I would incorporate them into an environment should this option be chosen. Maybe a castle?
Moving on, I found two entries that were similar to Zorethan Hulk:
Zorethan Ravager:
Damage type(s): Physical
Creature type(s): Humanoid
Durability: D
Danger quotient: S
Special: Shield Breaking
Little is known of Zorethan Ravagers. They are small-headed humanoids with some reports mentioning longer than average ape-like arms sporting a variety of weaponry from claws to halberds. Reports vary on whether the weaponry is part of the creature or held in the hand. Do not rely on disarming as a strategy. Universally, Zorethan Ravagers are found deep within the frozen wastes of the far north. Despite the frozen environment they call home, Ravagers do not deal cold damage, and do not possess a greater than average resiliency to the cold.
Little tactical information is known about Zorethan Ravagers. Their frankly ludicrous damage output is almost entirely precipitated by their shield-destroying special ability that triggers on melee-hit. Do not engage a Zorethan Ravager of equal tier with less than 80% physical resistance and a reliable method of peeling for up to three consecutive minutes.
No drop information is known of Zorethan Ravagers.
No Dungeon has ever been recorded to spawn a Zorethan Ravager.
The second entry:
Worldbreaker Hulk:
Damage type(s): Unknown
Creature type(s): Mountain*
Durability: S+**
Danger quotient: D***
Special: Immortal****
The great Worldbreaker Hulk is a unique monster that lies dormant on the bottom of the Ortegan Sea and hasn’t surfaced or moved for at least 700 years. As a level 63 creature, it is well within the ninth tier but possesses durability far beyond its level. The myths indicate that the Hulk does not deal exceptional damage however as one of the few still living ninth-tier monsters it is not advised to engage. It is unknown how the Hulk was created, but all the myths agree that it was an engine of war. Barely sentient, the creature was designed to break down mountains and there is direct evidence linking the creation of Durham Pass with the Hulk’s passing.
*The Worldbreaker Hulk appears as a small self-regenerating mountain. It is unknown if there is a core underneath.
**The Worldbreaker Hulk is capable of withstanding continuous attack from the Black Brigade, a tier eleven party.
***Danger is set to D, however, the true value is unknown.
****The Worldbreaker Hulk regenerates very quickly with some speculation that it can regenerate even if destroyed.
Well...That was kinda interesting I supposed. If I had to extrapolate the type of creature a Zorethan Hulk was, I’d imagine it to be a type of giant gorilla thing with high tankiness and maybe the ability to break shields. Honestly, I doubted I would be able to summon something on the level of the Worldbreaker Hulk anytime soon, so at most I should expect a larger than normal creature. Not something on the scale of mountains.
What struck me most was how both options so far revolved around war. The Legion for obvious reasons, but the book specifically mentioned the Hulk was an engine of war. That was just a hair worrisome as I appreciated being prepared for a coming war, but war was never a pleasant experience for any side.
Lastly, the Darkscorn Kelpie with only a single tangential entry.
Kelpie:
Damage type(s): Physical
Creature type(s): Plant/Horse
Durability: B
Danger quotient: C
Special: Shapeshifting
Kelpies are masses of animated seaweed found in lakes, oceans, and swamps. They can change form at will but generally take the form of a horse for reasons that are poorly understood. In the wild, they are known to mimic voices and even take the form of beautiful maidens to try and drown the foolish. They generally avoid direct combat, but when backed into a corner will wield their tendrils with precise skill. Expect a long drawn-out engagement with attacks originating from every direction.
Kelpie seaweed is a delicacy as higher-tier variants are known to grant health benefits including but not limited to clear skin, an improved figure and minor temporary shapeshifting capabilities. These effects are greatly reduced when burned so avoid using fire magic if there is intent to harvest. That being said, fire is an effective element to stop the plant monster.
Kelpie variants exist which dramatically change their abilities and weaknesses. See Manamusen’s Monstrous Guide to Plants for more detailed information.
The entry provided almost no workable information. I did not have Manamusen’s Monstrous Guide to Plants, and the primary benefit of this type of creature was negated because my minions turned to sand when they died. A shapeshifting creature sounded very useful to me as I was sure I could incorporate it into my monster designs, but it all depended on what ‘Darkscorn’ meant. The prefix sounded vaguely evil to me, bringing up thoughts of demons or maybe undead, but if I interpreted the name literally it could mean ‘scorning the dark’. Instead of being dark and evil themselves, this Kelpie variant would be holy aligned or somesuch.
The issue was, Kelpies didn’t match the war theme that the other two options elicited. Perhaps the Darkscorn were warhorses of some sort and I could mount my Nothic on them somehow? Unclear. Not to mention all the whacky options that would abound if the options were fus—
A soul pushed against my domain in an area it really didn’t belong.
I froze, not understanding how something alive and strong could arrive at the bottom part of my maze without me noticing. I rushed my attention down deep into the earth and found the source just as a pickaxe shattered my carefully crafted wall.
“What in Hoth’s hairy arse?”
“Oi! Burdo, stahp slackin’!” a distant voice echoed from behind as a bearded face poked its way into my tunnel. A huge nose poked out from above a bushy beard as two dark beady eyes squinted into the Deep Dark.
“Ain’t slackin’ Ironfoot. Found me a hole,” the bearded man said. “Dark as shit in here, tho’.”
“Bah,” the second voice descended into a fit of coughing. “Why’d ya have to break into a gas pocket ya dumb lump? I can’t breathe outa me ears now can I?”
A heard uproarious laughter followed by a curse and a thump from the tunnel. Burdo expanded the hole with a skill that obliterated the stone and stumbled through with watering eyes. He touched the far wall and looked back the way he came with a grimy hand covering his nose. I immediately noticed that the dude couldn’t be taller than three foot five but was as broad as a barrel.
“Oi! Warn a feller ‘fore you rip one out.” Burdo choked, fanning the air as another dwarf flew through the hole in my wall and slammed into the far wall with an audible crack. A bow with arrows clattered to the ground as well as a polished pickaxe with a stylized insignia impressed on the haft. This dwarf also had tears streaming down his face but it took me a second to notice the guy was laughing rather than crying through what looked like a very broken nose.
“Totawwy wurth eading Marge’s cookin’ fer dat!” the fallen dwarf chuckled, raising two thumbs up.
A wave of white spread out of the hole in my wall and Burdo relaxed as whatever smelled was destroyed by a skill. A third bearded face poked into my tunnel and squinted around. Each time he sniffed, a pair of delicate spectacles shifted up and down on the bridge of his lumpy nose. He was similarly armed with a bow that didn’t look like it had as much tender love and care as the pick.
“Hold up, this don’t smell like Rockwood Dungeon to me,” Ironfoot grumbled.
“Innit? I can’t ever tell the difference. Feels old to me.” Burdo shrugged, pulling out a blue vial from his pack and chugging it all in one go. His eyes gained a pearlescent quality, but a second later he frowned. “This dark be stubborn as snot, innit?”
“Aye, this ain’t Rockwood. Must’ve taken a wrong turn somewhat. ‘Nother dungeon’s spawned ‘ere recently.” Ironfoot raised his nose and took a deep snorting breath. “And someone’s bin feedin’ it.”
The as-yet-unnamed dwarf rose to his feet and popped a stone sphere into his mouth and crunched down. A moment later his broken nose popped and straightened. He spat out a red-tinged loogy then gestured down the way they came but slightly to the side
“Aye. Rockwoods thataways ‘bout a sniff or two.”
“Well, what’dyou know. Change of plan? We figure out what resources this dungeon drops or mosey our way back to Rockwood? I’m feelin’ like beatin’ somethin’ up,” Burdo said, squinting harder into the darkness. He pulled out a short stick which he snapped in half with a crack. A second later, the stick released a powerful glow that illuminated the area around them for a couple of meters. Burdo grinned through his beard but deflated a second later when one of the tangible tendrils of darkness reached out and snuffed the artificial light. “I don’ like this place one bit.”
“Shh! Incoming,” Ironfoot grumbled, turning to the left and hefting his pickaxe. One of my Nothic had found the small party and was stalking closer. It was slouched forward in its typical hunting stance which raised its back spines and lowered its singular half-lidded toxic green eye closer to the floor.
“What? I don’ see nuthin’.”
“‘Course ya don’t, slate-brain. Just raise your axe,” Burdo hissed to the other dwarf as he followed his own instruction.
Ironfoot raised a fist and a golden wave flew down the tunnel. My Nothic hunched to weather the attack but the wave passed harmlessly over it. A second later, it became clear that the wave wasn’t so benign my Nothic looked up with madness in its eyes.
It charged with a subsonic growl. Ironfoot slammed his foot down and slashed with his pickaxe which pulsed with a dull yellow glow. A pillar of stone shot out of the floor and impaled the Nothic from crotch to sternum in a gruesome detonation of gore. My shadow-infused monster snarled, phasing through the obstruction but not before Ironfoot twisted his foot, and the stone pillar shattered into razor-sharp shrapnel.
The battle didn’t last much longer after that, as the dwarves’ pummeled my Nothic. It collapsed to sand but then surprised them by rising again and landing a few good hits before they dispelled the stone golem.
“Shadow and chaos,” the third dwarf cursed, nursing his wounds. “We’re not prepared for nothin’ like this, boss.”
“Shut up, Stench,” Burdo crowed. “That was fun! It jumped back to dodge and everythin’. Plus take a gander at this sand! It's so sweet. I changed me mind ‘bout the darkness. Let’s go collect dinner.”
“You’re slate-brained, Burdo. We retreat, and we ain’t coming back here for at least a season. Rockwood ain’t gunna be happy a new dungeon’s spawned so close, an’ we don’t wanna be anywhere nearby when that happens.”
“A whole season?” Burdo exclaimed.
“Aye, dungeon wars be worse than a slave war with them stinkin’ humans.”
“Bloody humans,” Stench grumbled.
“Bah!” Burdo threw his hands up. “I ain’t waiting that long fer two rocks to beat each other up. Ya think ol’ Wraithhorn’ll let us expedite the process a wee bit?”
“That be between you and the Chief,” Ironfoot said, his focus still on the dark tunnels for more of my minions. I could have spared him the effort. My closest minion was the Ceiling Horror whose nearest eye was around the far corner to the left.
“If you’re man enough to ask.” Stench snickered from the side as he shoveled the sand from the stone golem into a pack. Burdo spun on him, affront written all over his face, but was blocked by Ironfoot who whacked him upside the head.
“Naw! Shut yer trap and move your beard,” Stench snickered again which cause Ironfoot to turn on him. “You too ya lump. Leave the sand and move! I ain’t staying here fer a wave of ‘em creatures to rip us a new one.”
The dwarfs grumbled and cursed plenty but allowed themselves to be herded out of my tunnel. Ironfoot brought up the rear but paused just before he left my domain. He took one last look at the dark tunnel and glanced at where my Nothic had fallen. Then he made a gesture with his free hand that looked suspiciously like the sign of the cross. He first brought his hand to his glasses, then his crotch then to either side while whispering. “Spectacles, testicles, pick an’ beer. Right, off we go.”
He gave himself a little nod, then vanished down the tunnel he came down.
I watched them leave with more than a few questions in my head. I suppose it was time to meet the neighbors. There was much I would ask this...Rockwood.