“Right, up, counter-right, up, and right again?” Christina stared at the contraption in her hand with more than a little skepticism.
“Then up twice, counter-right again, and then up one more time, sister.”
Christina glanced up at the small little fairy that called herself Cortana, then turned back to the puzzle cube that had appeared on her nightstand two days ago. The cube had nine different colored segments on each of its six sides and each side could rotate about the center axis which moved the position of the different colored segments relative to each other. The cube had appeared in the solved position, with each face a solid color, but after playing with it for a bit, the sides had gotten hopelessly mixed up. She and her new companion had worked together for the last couple of days to get the cube to the point where all but the last face was complete and now were struggling to solve the last face.
“Oh! Hey, it worked!” Christina grinned, holding up the cube to the little fairy who pirouetted in the air.
“We are getting so close. I estimate only around five more hours plus or minus fourteen percent and we should have it solved,” Cortana replied in her sing-song voice. The fairy sank down onto Christina’s shoulder and pointed out the window. “But, we are going to have to stop for now. You have company.”
“Who is it?” Christina placed the puzzle cube on the table and got up to put away the dishes from lunch. A smile rose unbidden to her lips as she looked forward to speaking to other people. Cortana was great, but...she was not human.
“It’s your captain and several caravans of people consisting of one hundred and seven adults and five children. Your squad is busy setting up tents on the outside of the dungeon’s domain, but it looks like Gella escaped and is making her way over here now. She should arrive in about forty-five seconds.”
Christina smiled as she finished putting away the mess. Cortana was a cute little Dungeon Fairy who had found her not long ago. She was eternally grateful for her presence because, without Cortana, Christina wasn’t sure she would have been able to handle the abrupt change to her entire life. But that didn’t mean she didn’t come with quirks. Her focus on calculations and providing every possible detail, no matter how irrelevant, usually went right over Christina’s head.
It wasn’t that Christina was uneducated, but rather she had no interest in knowing that putting on one boot, tying it, then doing the same with the other was six percent slower than putting on both boots and then tying them one after the other. Of course, the factoid had changed how she got ready to go out in the morning, but it was such a small detail that she never would have thought of herself. That was just an example and there wasn’t a single aspect of her life that the little fairy hadn’t analyzed to the extreme. For such a small creature, the Dungeon Fairy Cortana certainly saw everything.
“You sure you don’t want to reveal yourself to them?” Christina said as she moved to her front door. “None of them are going to do anything untoward. We have laws about Dungeon Fairy treatment, and the Captain would never stand for it.”
“I’m good, sister. Thank you, but people are scary.” Cortana wilted and vanished into Christina’s hair. Her ephemeral voice radiated from right behind her ear in a whisper a second later. “You have about seven seconds before she knocks, by the way.”
Christina grinned and counted down the seven seconds. All the numbers and estimates that Cortana gave could get tiresome at times, but it was times like this when it was all worth it. Christina yanked open the door with a shit-eating grin and revealed a startled Gella in full camouflage standing with her hand raised to knock.
“Oi! How did you know I was here?” Gella huffed, as she let her stealth skills fade.
“I have my ways,” Christina waggled her eyebrows and gestured for the other woman to come inside. “Come in, come in. It's so good to see you. A lot has happened since you left, and I’d love to show you some of the new stuff the dungeon has given me.”
“Uh, sure. I can take a look real quick,” Gella replied and stepped into the main room. She looked around the room, but then leaned forward and placed her hands on her knees, huffing. “How you look so chipper while living here full time is beyond me. I’m already out of breath just running here. I am glad you are feeling better though even if you still have that collar on.”
Christina paused and raised a hand to her throat. The cool metal of the collar almost seemed to burn as its dreaded weight multiplied a hundredfold at its mention. Dark thoughts bubbled up, and a familiar ache of stress in her chest returned.
Breathe sister. You are never alone.
Christina sighed and felt a tiny pair of hands hug the back of her scalp. Her bright smile returned and she turned back to Gella. “Yeah, I’m doing great. I realized that being stuck here isn’t such a bad thing and it means that maybe I can use the position as a way to check the dungeon. Besides, if the dungeon keeps expanding maybe I’ll be able to visit Krimta soon, you know? Enough of that, I have stuff to show you.”
Christina led her guest to the sunroom and gestured grandly at several objects arranged neatly on the desk.
“What am I looking at here?” Gella said, leaning in to stare at the array of nicknacks.
“This is a puzzle box and— Don’t rotate the sides! I’ve been trying to get the sides to line up for a while. Here give me that. Also look at this, a floating quill!”
“So?”
“Well, it isn’t spelled. The quill is floating all on its own.”
“You sure?” Gella leaned down and scrutinized the thin rod gently spinning on its vertical axis. “Oh wow. I don’t know about the cube, but Mom is going to love this. You are going to have to show her some of this stuff later. For now, you should come. Mom said they are going to do an Appealment Ceremony soon, and I figured you’ll want to be there.”
“What monsters are they going to use?” Christina replied, putting on her boots and shutting the door after them. The two set out through the forest towards the sounds of human activity in the distance.
“Mom really wants to impress this dungeon, so I think she is planning on using slaves.”
“Gella...” Christina wrinkled her nose as she slowed down.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Ever since this,” Christina gestured vaguely to her throat. “I realized how much soul burn hurts. Don’t you think doing the ceremony on people is a little...I don’t know. Cruel?”
“I mean sure, but it heals up in a day or so, and it's the best way we know of to get on the good side of a dungeon.”
“Wait,” Christina paused, grabbing Gella by the shoulder to make her stop as well. “You healed in a day? I’m still afflicted by soul burn and it hasn’t been getting better.”
“Really? Maybe you just had really bad soul damage?”
“Maybe...”
“Well, never mind that. We aren’t going to convince Mom to stop the ritual so we might as well enjoy the fireworks. Come on hurry.”
Christina reluctantly followed Gella to the caravan. On the way, Cortana’s small voice whispered behind her ear.
Hey, hey! Hey, listen! What’s an Appealment Ceremony?
“You’ll like it I’m sure,” Christina replied under her breath, with a small amused grin peaking through her gloom. Cortana’s almost manic desire to know things was just funny. “Just wait and see, it will be good for your dungeon, I promise.”
Hmpff
Just then Miranda’s sonorous voice rang out and a spray of gold, blue and red sparks flew up into the sky before exploding into a million embers that rained down all over the forest in slow motion. The phenomenon was so large that even the dense canopy couldn’t block it all.
“Damn it, quickly!” Gella shouted, breaking into a sprint towards the nearest clearing.
But Christina didn’t follow. She couldn’t. She fell to her knees as Cortana wheezed a series of expletives in her ear. The collar around her throat warmed and she felt a great force pull on her trachea. Deep within her chest, her heart stuttered as a system notification popped into her blurred vision.
< Your Soul Burn affliction has worsened >
Then a feeling crashed into her mind and wiped out all reason. It was a feeling she had felt once before. A godly voice that spoke not in words but feelings. Emotions. Intent. And all it conveyed was:
Disgust.
----------------------------------------
< You have partially absorbed a mana burst: +58 mana >
< Mana 1,431/4,596 >
< You have partially absorbed a mana burst: +69 mana >
< Mana 1,500/4,596 >
< You have partially absorbed a mana burst: +39 mana >
< Mana 1,539/4,596 >
The third slave slumped onto the crude altar as the fireworks exploded above him. I could practically see the runic circle beneath the three slaves tear chunks out of the slaves' souls and convert it into an undirected burst of mana in the air. The slaves appeared to shrink as the magic took hold. Their skin loosened over their sallow complexion and dark bruises appeared under their scrunched-up eyes. Universally, they clutched at their chest and moaned weakly as if in great pain.
Goddamn bloody backasswards barbarians. That was some vampire-level shit right there.
I forced myself to relax as Cortana flailed her many limbs in distress. My momentary lapse had allowed the Collar and Dagger to pull on Christina’s soul and now she was injured. Just great.
“Mama! Mama! What happened? I wanna see!” Betsy bounced up and out of the golden fountain in the base of her chamber, causing some of the precious liquid to fall wastefully onto the stone floor.
The humans are back dear, and they are torturing their own kind for personal gain.
“Monsters!” Betsy gasped and her eyestalks stood ramrod straight in shock. “Show me, I want to see! I want to see!”
Hush now dear, you must try and ask only once or others will find it annoying.
It took but a couple of minutes to excavate a thin tube to the surface and shift my telescope to beam an image of the ‘Appealment Ceremony’ to my excitable little daughter. She placed her largest eye directly on the hole and her mouth opened wide in wonder as she beheld Miranda bloody Mier bring another sorry slave to the crude altar.
< You have partially absorbed a mana burst: +111 mana >
< Mana 1,650/4,596 >
Hmm, that one must have been at a higher level. Regardless, what a shit ceremony. I’d be happier if Miranda ran a few laps around my forest, or if she was determined to use the slaves, have them do the laps. After a couple of days of hard exertion, I would gain more mana from each one, plus I could keep gaining mana from them. Scarring their souls like that and releasing the mana into the air all willy-nilly was about as inefficient a process as it could be. Not only would it take a long while for the slaves’ souls to recover, but I’d bet more than half the mana released just vaporized before I could grab it. It was a goddamn waste.
Luckily, Christina recovered enough to stumble up to the witch and put a stop to the ‘ceremony’.
Bah!
To get my mind off things I ushered a distraught Betsy away from the telescope and dunked her gently into the Fountain I had acquired from [Tears of Gold]. The ability read that I had to ‘steep’ items in the waters, and it wasn’t joking. Betsy had been percolating in the water for hours, and I was eager for her to complete her transformation. The fluid acted as a sort of hidden experience source and as more was absorbed by the item — or in this case, Beholder — the more levels were gained.
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The long amount of time to up-tier an item was a bummer but not wholly unexpected. Everything in this world was rate limited, so why shouldn’t this be as well? In this case, it wasn’t a static cooldown but simply the physics of the fountain. It only produced water at a certain rate, and items needed to absorb what I calculated to be two point seven two times their mass to up-tier. Why that number I didn’t know, but it meant a small dagger would up-tier quickly, while Betsy with her huge bulk would take longer. I shuddered to think how long it would take to upgrade Cortana in this way.
Betsy jittered impatiently in the water with all her eyes laser-focused on the little spyglass contraption I installed just now. She still needed a little more time in the water though, so I patted her head as my thoughts turned back to the Appealment Ceremony.
Why did it bother me at all? What did it matter how I got that mana, or what cruelty the humans inflicted on their kind? It didn’t matter to me and I was gaining mana through the process, wasn’t I? I was a Dungeon and it was almost inevitable that some of my mana would come from pain. Hell, the basic premise of my existence was conflict. Cooperation may be optimal but relying on humans for that seemed like a sketchy endeavor at best. Besides, I already had that with my trees. They were growing up so well and providing me with a steady flow that rivaled what I got from a single tier three going on a gentle stroll through my extremities.
Perhaps it was just the wastefulness of it all. I needed -- no, I appreciated -- the humans for the mana they provided, but man was their involvement messy. All this talking and hurting and talking and back and forth stirred up so much conflict when a better solution was so obvious. The issue was that the individuals involved acted as if they weren’t aware of the tragedy of the commons. I wished they all just relaxed and worked together for once. It was a childish desire at its core, but no less real for it.
I knew I could just give the lady what she wanted. Use the soul-enhancing ritual on some of them and admit that it had a high failure rate. But I didn’t want to. I knew what would happen if I did. They would ask for more, and if I provided more, they would ask for more yet again. It was a cycle hinging on greed that I didn’t have a clue how to bypass.
At the end of the day, I was scared. I hadn’t spoken a single word to another human for weeks on end, and then the first time I had, said person collapsed and nearly killed themselves. My minions could handle my strange form of speech, but even they held me in such respect that it just wasn’t the same. What happened if I reached out to the people and they didn’t like me? Or worse, they faked liking me just to get what they wanted out of me?
I didn’t have an answer, so instead I focused on what I was good at. Betsy’s transformation finished and I released her from the fountain and she rushed headlong towards the spyglass.
Multi Crafted Nothic (Betsy)
+146 life
+169 Radiant damage
Level: 22
Level Acquired: 1
Life: 1234/1234 (2361/2361)
Resistances: 30%
Rend: 231-471 Physical Damage
Rotting Gaze: 173-353 Chaos Damage
Molten Gaze: 92-188 Fire Damage
Frost Gaze: 92-188 Ice Damage
Darkness Gaze: 92-188 Shadow Damage
Slashing Gaze: 92-188 Physical Damage
Radiant Gaze: 92-188 Radiant Damage
Petrifying Gaze: slows targets
[Spin Dash]: Dash forward bouncing and damaging anything you hit
115-234 Physical damage
Cooldown: 25 minutes
[Ethereal Shell]: Gain a shield that increases resistances by 30% and maximum resistances by 5%
Shield breaks after taking 338 damage
Cooldown: 3 minutes
Shield duration: 40 seconds
Betsy was looking radiant in her new tier-four body. The Fountain had increased her effective life pool from just over 1,700 to nearly 2,400. A 40% increase in life. Her damage stats had also increased and I took note that they seemed to be scaling faster than life. I would need to make sure my minions had capped resistances soon or their combat effectiveness would suffer.
It was a formidable upgrade, but the more I stared at her numbers the more I felt something was wrong. They seemed...low.
An uncrafted, unenchanted Artifice Hulk at level seventeen had 1,298 life. A total that was more than my level twenty-two Beholder had when I discounted her totem shield. It stung since the gap between their life would grow if I upgraded an Artifice Hulk with [Tears of Gold]. It seemed wrong in a way, that my new creatures would be so much stronger than my old with no effort.
That made me curious. How big of a difference would there be once I properly crafted an Artifice Hulk? So far, I was only using regular variants since I was focused on building the castle. I grabbed some of the golden water from the fountain and brought it up to the floating castle. There, I located the boss Artifice Hulk I had chosen and formed a stone bowl with the liquid beside it.
So far the boss hadn’t spoken or behaved any differently to any of its brethren, so I let it be. I understood if the guy didn’t want to talk. I was the same a lot of the time. With a concise mana message I described to the Hulk how I wanted to upgrade it, and it laboriously nodded its small head in response.
With consent acquired, I reached out and shaved off the majority of the Hulk’s mass. I replaced the stone of its body with a small amount of Transparent Alumina and shaped it into the shape and size of an action figurine. Then, I dunked it into the pool of golden water and within minutes it had leveled up to tier four.
It was then a simple act to fuse to my third boss all my remaining Transparent Alumina — and some stone since I didn’t have enough of the super material yet — and enchant it with [Unstable Fusion]. As an additional measure, I brought my second Totem of the Roller Turtle and connected it to my new boss’ heart.
Transparent Alumina Crafted Artifice Hulk
+146 life
+45% Physical Resistance
Level: 22
Level Acquired: 14
Life: 1940/1940
Resistances: 75% physical resistance; 72% fire resistance; 30% to all resistances
Smash: 362-738 Physical Damage
Impact Absorption: Mitigate 217-443 physical damage when hit with attacks. This ability has 10% effectiveness against other damage types.
Reconstruction Protocol (channeling): recover 72-147 life per second. Gain 5% to maximum resistances.
[Spin Dash]: Dash forward bouncing and damaging anything you hit
115-234 Physical damage
Cooldown: 25 minutes
[Ethereal Shell]: Gain a shield that increases resistances by 30% and maximum resistances by 5%
Shield breaks after taking 338 damage
Cooldown: 3 minutes
Shield duration: 40 seconds
What an absolute unit. I think I’ll call him Tank. Fusing Tank with Transparent Alumina had removed its [Voltaxic Burst] and replaced it with [Impact Absorption]; a frankly disgusting skill against any form of physical damage. It made sense in a way. Transparent Alumina was an electrical insulator but incredible against impacts. With my current level seventeen item equipped, Tank was tickling the edge of two thousand life.
I was a little sad to see the lightning attack go, but I wasn’t planning on replacing all my minions with the special material, and it would make for a nasty foe that was practically immune to physical damage. Overall, looking at the status sheet reaffirmed that my Hulks were superior to my Nothic. That bothered me on a visceral level, but before I could delve into figuring out a workaround a notification pinged and I realized that night had fallen.
< Mana 4,596/4,596 >
< You have leveled up! >
< You are now level 18! >
< Mana 0/5,380 >
What the...What were the humans doing to give me so much mana so fast? Oh. Ha! The Captain had made his soldiers run laps around the forest. Ahh, amusing. But what was this? I noticed that they had placed fence posts every couple of meters at the edge of my domain for several miles. Each post emitted a small aura that distorted my cilia at around the same level as a tier-two lizard. If it emitted a stronger aura then perhaps it would inhibit my cilia from growing in that direction, but as it stood it was barely an obstacle. What they thought that would accomplish I didn’t have a clue.
I asked Cortana and she explained that the humans used the Dungeon Guides to show people where the dungeon’s bounds began but also to guide the growth of the dungeon away from population centers.
...
Were all dungeons in this world dumb?
Whatever, I had an upgrade to read up on.
Annihilation Beam:
Nothic gain [Charge Strike]
Charged Nothic eye attacks gain 20% additional damage per second charged
Charged Nothic eye attacks deal damage in an area
Charged Nothic eye attacks gain 20% additional area of effect per second charged
+4 to maximum creature count
Charged Reconnaissance:
Artifice Hulks may be charged with up to 100 mana
Artifice Hulks with mana do not disintegrate outside of their spawned floor
Artifice Hulks lose 1 mana per minute while outside of their spawned floor
+2 to maximum creature count
Cycle of Life:
Treants grant +100 experience to nearby plants upon death
+3 to maximum creature count
Ah, a minion upgrade again. Like many of the previous upgrades, there was an overarching theme to the choices. Each one buffed one of my minion types. I was sorely tempted by [Annihilation Beam] just because it would buff Betsy. Still, the rationalist in my head knew it was probably best to upgrade the minions which were already strongest. [Charged Reconnaissance] wasn’t a direct combat upgrade though, while [Annihilation Beam] would convert my Nothic into orbital bombers. As far as I could tell, there was no mention of a limit to how long attacks could be charged.
[Charged Reconnaissance] was more of a scouting option, which I didn’t think I needed. As I thought about it, [Charged Reconnaissance] was a combat upgrade. On the surface, it implied that I could send my minions out into the wild and explore, but that wasn’t the only thing it allowed. If my minions could temporarily exist on other floors, it would allow me to field double my creature count against invaders. My relationship with the humans was peaceful so far, but forty minions would steamroll nearly any force I had encountered up until now.
The last option was boring, but at the same time invaluable. With the humans here, my Treants were dying on loop. Depending on the range of ‘nearby’, getting this upgrade would work in conjunction with [Eternal Spring] and make my trees level en masse. The additional mana would mean that I might not need humans to experience a level-up in a day. The option was also appealing as it granted three additional minions which put me at twenty minions.
Hmm...
Ow...What the?
I froze as a spike of pain shot through my dungeon. It was minuscule, like a mosquito bite, but persistent in that annoying way a fly buzzing in the ear was. I followed the pain to the source where I found something troubling.
In the base of my dungeon, in the small tunnel leading to Rockwood dungeon a pack of four spiky dog things with overlong snouts and four canted eyes chewed on my cilia. Despite the incorporeality of my cilia, the creatures were somehow able to touch and damage me. It was most puzzling, but not an issue since they were strange in the way that they didn't possess a soul. That was strange, but I didn't claim to know all the monsters in this world. In the end, it didn't matter why they didn't possess a soul, all that mattered was they didn't have one. And without one, they were vulnerable.
I reached out more curious than vengeful but froze when my cilia slammed into the dogs’ skin as if it were granite. The dogs growled ripping up more of me as I froze in shock. Upon closer inspection, each dog was covered in a mesh of slate-gray strands. Strands that covered them from head to toe and extended behind them in a leash towards Rockwood dungeon.
Wait...were these...Rockwood’s minions?
As I pondered the situation, four more dog creatures lumbered out into my domain and started to rip and tear. It hurt a bit, but more so because I hadn’t felt pain in weeks than because the pain was debilitating. The most troubling aspect was that with each bite, the edge of my domain retreated, and I saw the gray strands of Rockwood anchor themselves to my territory.
Filthy thief!
Just then, one of my Nothic came down the tunnel and froze as it saw the invaders. Instead of charging head first, or sticking back and using its eye as I expected it to, my Nothic howled. A subsonic growl rippled through my dungeon, somehow latching onto my cilia and strumming them like piano strings. My cilia carried the ‘sound’ throughout my first floor in seconds and for a brief moment, every single one of my minions froze.
“Invayers...” Betsy hissed, her lisp coming back as every single one of her eyes narrowed into slits. She dashed to the edge of her room but could go no further due to the winch system that allowed her flight. My other Nothic were not so limited. As a unit, they all sprinted through my halls, taking shortcuts and dodging traps by millimeters as they rushed as one toward the breach.
Huh.
“Mama! Let me go! I wanna go!” Betsy wailed, struggling against her restraints.
You can’t dear. You can only fly in your room.
“It’s not fair! Evy one else gets to go fight the invayers. I don’t wanna fly! I wanna fight! Gimme legs and let me fight!”
When I didn't immediately respond, Betsy spun back towards one of the side tunnels in her chamber and sulked. I watched her go with half of my attention as my Nothic crashed into the invaders. Claws rent and eyes glowed toxic green as the two sides clashed. With fifteen Nothic against eight dogs, the battle should have been one-sided, but because of the narrow tunnel, my minions couldn’t leverage their increased numbers. It also became clear that the dogs were of a higher level than my Nothic. Each time they bit down, limbs amputated, while my Nothic’s claws only grazed their tough hide.
I moved my last Totem to reinforce my troops and after fifteen minutes of brutal combat, two nearly dead Nothic roared victoriously over the corpses of the invaders. The victory was short-lived as another pack of four dogs appeared through the tunnel and ripped them — and my poor Totem — to pieces before setting about tearing at my cilia once again.