The group that arrived with Akahana also brought with them the final results of the trade Mordecai had arranged earlier: three enchanted staves of spiraled metal and wood, originally crafted by Mordecai, and one decanter enchanted to supply an unlimited amount of water, up to a geyser level of pressure.
One of the staves was a bo staff etched with runes to give its impacts crushing force and another set enabling it to fully interact with incorporeal creatures. It had also been enchanted to compress down into a disk that Moriko would be able to quickly snap out to its full length, a trick useful for a variety of reasons. Moriko might prefer to use her fists but she was well trained in weapons too, and sometimes there were things you really did not want to touch with your hands.
Kazue’s staff was sturdy enough to be used as a quarterstaff if needed, but its primary purpose was as a reservoir of spellforms and mana. While Kazue had developed fairly potent casting ability under Mordecai’s tutelage, psychics were only capable of holding a relatively few spell forms in their minds at a time, and relearning them was a time-consuming effort. The staff would enable her to have a selection of rarely-used spells attached to it, and it was capable of holding a charge each day as well as letting Kazue channel her mana directly into it. The selection of currently imbued spellforms went well above what Kazue or Mordecai was capable of casting right now, but given the unique properties of the staff, it seemed better to future-proof instead of trying to get a new staff later.
Mordecai’s staff was the most expensive of the trio but with good reason: He was the only one capable of using all of its properties. In addition to having all the abilities of the other two staves, he’d made sure to modify its form with some modularity. It was longer than a normal bo staff and had notches in each end that could be used to string it into a bow or as attachment points of some spearheads which he intended to make by hand using the raw materials the dungeon had received. Mordecai was also going to make an attachable hand grip with a rest for the arrows. The final piece of the increased cost was that it had two sets of runes: One set identical to Moriko’s bo staff, and one set to take advantage of a spearhead or arrow to increase bleed-out. They weren’t particularly nice effects, but if he was trying to use them, he was intending to kill someone.
Only one set could be fully activated at a time, a given item could only hold so much magical charge, but just having both sets was excessively costly. Combined with the potency of the enchantments, some of which were well beyond what Mordecai could currently craft even given the tools, materials, and time, these were very valuable weapons. And they were in debt to the Azeria clan for them even with the value of the staves he’d created. Fortunately, that debt was rather easy to pay down over time as Mordecai sent more mithral and other requested materials back with each group that came from Azeria on top of whatever they won as delvers.
Hypothetically Moriko could take advantage of the modularity of his staff, but she hadn’t trained in archery beyond the basics nor did she know spear forms, so she’d be treating it like a staff with sharp points which wouldn't be a very effective use. She also wasn’t strong enough to quickly string the metal and wood shaft nor tall enough to fire it unless aiming at a fairly steep angle up; for all of the flexibility of the spiraled wood and metal design, it took a lot of force to make it bend enough to string and even more force to bring it back for the relatively short draw given the length of the shaft. It was a weapon design that only really worked because of the height and strength of his avatar.
It was going to take a few more days for the caravan to arrive, so in the meantime, Akahana taught some druid craft and herbalism to the bunkin, with Kazue’s avatar in tow. This also meant she was producing plenty of mana during her demonstrations and the dungeon cores were quick to take advantage of it and their recent visitors to begin work on the sixth floor, and Mordecai’s avatar began working on analyzing the decanter’s enchantments and designing the final product of the experiments he’d been running involving water pressure.
Since they were already working on the same concept and had a path forward completed for both routes they started off piecemeal. Mordecai’s first step was to help some of his river drakes grow stronger and migrate down to the larger river on the lower floor while Kazue started working out the details of her skill challenges.
It was mostly a series of skill challenges. Every part of the waterway teemed with edible aquatic life, making fishing and aquatic trapping appealing, as well as harvesting of various aquatic plants. But doing so in some areas would be harder than others.
There was a length of the river that held small sandbars and hidden cross currents, forcing explorers to use long poles or magic to navigate around them lest they be repeatedly grounded, potentially damaging their boats.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
In another section, the tunnel widened and the river spread out until it was too shallow for any sort of boat or raft, requiring that a party either figure out how to carry or drag their vehicle to the other side or to make a new craft from the plants growing along the edge when the cavern began to narrow again.
At the halfway point there was a lake with an occupied island and a barrier preventing transit past it. The bunkin occupying the island charged a mildly outrageous sum to retract the barrier (which was variable based on what Mordecai and Kazue judged the group should be able to just barely pay, whether in coin or goods). Alternatively, if the group could beat three of their champions in various athletic or skill-based challenges, the barrier would be withdrawn for free. Of course, this was the real intended choice, but they were willing to let people buy the occasional skip here as both options benefited the dungeon in different ways.
The most dangerous part of her river was going to be a short white water section that ended in a small waterfall, with plenty of warnings ahead of time. She also made sure that the waterfall was an overhang, leaving nothing but void behind it. A couple of river drakes and bunkin with healing skills were on standby here, but the white water section was navigable with sufficient skill, and the best option at the waterfall was simply to bail out of the craft or use magic, depending on one’s capabilities.
The lake beyond the waterfall was officially the end of the level and held campsites to let groups gather and recuperate. Once a campsite was chosen Kazue would also create a treasure chest there with performance ratings and rewards, with buying one’s way past the barrier counting as neither a bonus nor penalty to rewards given.
The lake was also a ‘hidden’ challenge, containing rare fish and aquatic plants. At least, that was the idea, but honestly, none of their samples had contained anything particularly precious in this regard yet. And while the water flow would push people away from the waterfall, if one made their way to the inner edge of the lake and hugged the wall on the thin ledge of rock there, they could get behind the waterfall and into a cave. Kazue hadn’t populated it yet, she wanted to see what Moriko brought with her, but there would be some nice things growing there and she was thinking maybe some outcroppings of easily mined raw gems. Nothing too fancy, but something that could make a person a small profit.
The village at the halfway point was unoccupied too. While the dire rabbits had a reproductive rate only a little bit slower than normal rabbits at a gestation of about 39 days instead of 31 (though with mana expenditure they could cut that down to about 20 days, or even less at ever steeper costs), the laganthros had a longer gestation period and a smaller litter. By default, the bunkin had a gestation of about 4 months, which the dungeon could also reduce but at a much higher mana cost than with the dire rabbits, and usually had no more than three kids compared to the full dozen a dire rabbit could have. They would also reach full maturity at a pace only a little faster than an orc, being a young adult at the age of 10 (compared to an orc’s 12), whereas an unaccelerated dire rabbit reached adulthood at about 2 years of age.
The most mana-efficient path was to just let the bunkin have their children normally and not interfere with their growth, while the fastest path was to accelerate dire rabbit pregnancy and development, and then evolve them into laganthros. They had been using the faster method until now, but now that the dire rabbits had fully formed minds it didn’t seem right to speed their way through their childhood and adolescence. After some discussion Kazue and Mordecai settled on a compromise: They would speed up pregnancies of both bunkin and dire rabbits but leave growth rates alone. This also meant that their bunkin would have to shuffle about and play more roles for a while but the next generation will have the advantage of having grown up in a more normal manner.
There was another option however. They had tapped less heavily into their rabbat population, having only a few locations where the bat-winged version of the dire rabbits had been used. The bunkin provided a great template, and after some careful evolution the laganthro genus had two species: the bunkin and the rabkin, with the only visible difference being that the rabkin had bat wings. For now they were mingling with their brethren and learning, but they would be able to fulfill many of the same roles before long.
Kazue suggested they consider doing the same with the dracobits, but Mordecai dissuaded her by pointing out that if individuals grew strong enough they would be able to develop the magics to transform into humanoid forms much like many adult dragons could.
Speaking of the dracobits, once Mordecai had the river drakes settled in he started creating caves and overhanging growths for both them and the feathered serpents to start expanding into. He also had some ideas for a new creature or three, but he wanted to see what the caravan brought as well as let the dire rabbit population begin replenishing.
By the time they’d finished making all their changes, the caravan wasn’t all that far away, Moriko could dash from their most recent campsite in less than an hour, but she felt it would be rather rude to leave her father-in-law like that, so she would be patient and meet them in the mid to late morning; the caravan was going to break camp at dawn.
Mordecai appreciated how easy it was to communicate with his wives, it brought a sense of comfort to always be able to check in with Moriko like this. Sure, there were magic items that could be used for much the same effect, but they were far less reliable and much more blatant.