I had to move my core... again.

These Ermine were absolutely vicious. This first one tore through my lizards with almost no effort. It was almost impossibly fast and incredibly accurate. It didn't even stop to try and eat my defenders; it just ran to the next one and ripped it apart before continuing on again.

It took Veldrann working with a couple Orioles to take it down. The birds flew in to distract it while Veldrann set up. It actually almost got one of the Orioles, too. The little murder machine could jump impossibly high for its short little legs.

But the distraction was enough.

Veldrann darted in while it was airborne, giving it no time to react. Even so, it was a brutal fight. The Ermine did not go quietly or gently, and Veldrann was sporting some new scars for his efforts. Thankfully my lizard Scion had begun to grow in some hard and sharp teeth and was no slouch in the power department either. He had initially grabbed it however he could, latching on to its leg as it landed and tried to jump away from the new threat. Once it realized it was caught it turned on Veldrann with an unmatched fury, trying desperately to claw at his eyes and bite the nape of his neck.

Thanks to the growing scaly armor Veldrann was sporting, it wasn't able to get a kill bite. But it did rip into him regardless. Hurt and tired of getting torn up, Veldrann had peeled the ermine off his neck and pinned it to the ground with a front foot before biting down on the creature's head.

Still the thing had struggled, its body clawing madly and spinning like a tornado to get free. But Veldrann was not to be robbed of his victory. Slowly, its struggles got weaker and weaker before it finally expired. Just to be on the safe side, he ensured that it would not be getting up again.

Afterwards I was worried about my Scion’s wounds. I didn’t want him bleeding out or suffering some sort of debilitating injury. But my worries were for naught. He healed quickly, with almost minimal bleeding, and his wounds soon scabbed over.

That experience had started some major changes. First, I began consolidating my Mana to upgrade my spawners in search of a counter of some sort. Doing this did yield a new option for me. I had the opportunity to choose a path for my lizards: Venomous Lizards or Camouflaged Lizards.

This would have been a far harder decision if I’d had the chance to make it a few days prior, and I am not entirely sure if I would have made the same decision then. But, with the advent of a new and particularly voracious invader, the choice was clear.

My little guardians no longer needed to win the fight individually. They just needed to bite them.

In addition to their new capabilities, the lizards and birds had begun altering their roles. The birds took over the majority of the bug hunting, while my lizards began forming swarms now that their Spawner had been upgraded to a lair. This, combined with their new venom, made them rather effective against the encroaching ermines.

Since I was upgrading both of my primary spawners at around the same rate, I also came across a choice for my vines: Mobile Vines or Thorned Vines.

Unfortunately, this was again going to be a decision made based on my immediate needs. Thorned sounded pretty obvious to me and promised all sorts of pain to larger creatures that got caught in them. But, aside from the occasional and very rare Coyote that wandered into my zone, there really wasn't much use for that kind of vine for me.

After selecting Mobile, my vines definitely became faster and more in tune with my defense. I even saw them catch an ermine long enough for my lizards to eliminate it. Once I even saw a cluster of thick vines drop from the wall and crush one of the weasels when it climbed them in an attempt to get at my core.

This was promising. My vines were definitely... aware of what was going on. I still don't feel like I can really say smart, but they were absolutely reacting to the world around them without my direction.

Which brings me to the other reason why I chose the Mobile path for them. That ermine that got squashed came really close to my core. I need to figure something else out for my protection.

These little weasels, in addition to being homicidal maniacs, were incredibly adept climbers. Which meant I really only had one option available that I could see.

I made sure there were no threats nearby and began moving again. I kept the protective layers of vines that I was currently nestled in, but moved the hammock to the center of the ceiling. There I deepened the pocket I was in until I was hidden inside a dense ball of vines. Around the outside of that ball, I stationed counterbalanced layers of large sundews to catch anything that tried to land or climb on me.

This new home made it far harder for anything other than possibly large birds or very large land animals to get at me. The ermine could still climb to get at me, but doing so would leave them vulnerable to my lizards, who could also climb, and attack runs from my birds. Any that did somehow manage to get to me would then be caught by the sundews. Currently I had the sundews with two origin points, one cluster on the top of my ball, and the other on the bottom. Once one dew frond became curled up in the process of absorbing one of the invaders, the other would unfurl to take its place from the opposite direction, ensuring that I had coverage as often as possible.

This arrangement also wouldn't last. At the very least I would eventually get too big and heavy to hang out on the ceiling. At the worst something would come along and knock me down. My hope was that with the sundews wrapped around me, whatever it was would get too caught up in the stickies to be able to finish me off, letting one of my defenders abscond with my core.

A long shot, to be sure, but at least the thought was there.

The war with the ermines and the bugs continued through the days and nights. The ermine weren't nearly as frequent as the bugs, but they were still a persistent threat. The coyote seemed to have learned quickly that my entryways weren't worth the trouble, but I did manage to catch an errant raccoon with my traps.

Hmmm, speaking of traps.

That Rockfall trap in the back of my ruins wasn't really going to be doing much from here on out. It was now inside of the outer walls, and the only way to access it was to go through the other rockfall trap and the entirety of my core ruins. With that in mind I dismissed the trap, reclaiming the mana I had spent on it.

I revisited the part of my consciousness that governed my traps and found that I had some new options.

I now had pit traps available, in assorted varieties. These likely came about due to the upgrade on myself making things more stable. While they might one day be useful, they weren't particularly relevant now with my current threats. Ermine would never be able to set them off. Coyotes could, but they were now staying away from the insides of my ruins.

Small victory?

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I also have a selection of poisonous traps available, through the manipulation of various types of highly toxic flora. Now those were certainly interesting, and I considered them strongly before ultimately dismissing them... for now. I knew where the ermine were coming from and how they moved about my ruins. Planting poisonous traps in those places would ultimately result in them simply moving their tracks and paths to a new location. Which meant I would either need to create new traps to cover those places, or move the existing ones.

Neither of those options were really sustainable in the long run.

Which now leaves me with the final new option, and one that is strongly tied to what I already have...

Snare traps.

These looked like they were either extensions off the Tripping Vine traps, or available because of my Mobile Vines upgrade. Either way, they were my best bet for minimizing the threat from the ermine.

I chose to make three, immediately upgrading all of them to the next level and placing them in strategic positions.

Snare Vine Trap II

Detectability: very low to moderate

Chance to activate: moderate

These traps are as the name implies, snares made of thin, yet strong vines. Depending on their placement they can be used to delay, harness or kill intruders caught in them. The greater the desire to cause harm, the higher the detectability due to the placement required. Upgrades increase the concealment capabilities, the durability of the snare and create multiple snares. When one is activated, it pulls its victim away from the origin point so that a new snare can take its place.

Perfect.

I placed the new traps in the high traffic areas for the ermine, a narrow tunnel through some rubble, a drop-down point that they love to jump from and the hole in the wall of my room that they run through.

My lizard swarms, birds and individual lizards were still going to be running interference, but hopefully this would take some of the pressure off of them. They had been working so hard, they deserved to be able to take a breather.

Now then. I still had some mana to burn. I certainly wasn't ready to upgrade myself again, nor was I ready to take any of the new options to upgrade my reach into the surrounding areas. But I could create some more resource nodes.

I decided to keep with the theme I had going currently and stick with the enhancing and magical herbs and such. I picked out two more options that I wanted to use on the outside of my ruins, burn berries and antidote flowers. The first of which were a large, deep purple berry that formed from a bright yellow flower on a high bush, and the other was a series of small, baby blue bell flowers on a stalk.

Of course, like my other resources, that isn't what they were really called, that would be Stone Berries and Bonnett Flowers. But I liked my names better because that is what their benefits were and it made things easier to understand. The berries could be used to heal burns and protect from burns, and the flowers were used to cure poison or venom.

I made two of each and placed the berries around my immediate perimeter and the flowers out by each of the outbuildings.

This led to an interesting interaction. My Orioles, for some strange reason, absolutely LOVE the berries. The birds claimed that they were both sweet and spicy. Unfortunately, I got no mana for them eating the things, so I made a compromise with them. I would make a third bush that they could eat from, but they had to leave the other two alone.

They whined and complained, but eventually they agreed to it. The discussions also gave my bird Scion, who I have decided to name Tanael, a chance to act as intermediary. Ultimately, we all knew it was going to be the way that I chose, I am the dungeon after all. But it gave us a good dynamic and let them know that I appreciate them and am willing to work with them.

Sometimes we all just need to know that we are appreciated.

I stayed true to my word and created a third berry bush at the back of my central ruin for the Orioles, making them the happiest little birds. They even tried sharing with some of the more omnivorous lizards, who steadfastly turned them down.

Apparently, they don’t like spicy foods.

The vines were picking up the slack in so far as disposing of the bodies went. For each ermine that died, a vine would creep in and make off with it. I watched them for a bit to see where they were taking them, and the results varied.

In most cases, the bodies were taken to the Vine Lair, likely to be used as fertilizer. This made plenty of sense to me, I just hoped that it wasn’t going to stink the area up and make me smell like death warmed over.

I still had Delvers to attract after all.

The rest were actually taken out and tossed beyond my borders for something else to find and eat. I got an amusing visual with one vine in particular coiling itself up and rapidly unwinding to catapult a little furry body out of my borders, only to release it at the wrong time and spike it into the ground in front of it.

Like I said, very aware, but not particularly smart.

But it did give me an idea for something I wanted to do when I had more space to work with.

As the days went on my little snares worked wonders in controlling the access that the ermine had to my core. What they missed; my lizard swarms found thanks to my feathery overwatch.

I took the time to upgrade each of my resource nodes a few times. This increased both the growth and production rates of the resources. A boon by any estimation, and one that elated my birds, cause now they didn’t have to wait as long to have treats.

With those upgrades and my traps, the mana I was receiving became a slow and steady current. I did still occasionally catch something with my Rock trap. Usually that catch wound up giving a large enough mana donation to give me an option for upgrading something almost immediately.

I began perusing my options for where I wanted to place my mana. The biggest and most obvious options were the expansions. I could upgrade myself and expand out, up or down. They all had some interesting possibilities for me.

Admittedly this was mostly conjecture on my part, but I feel that it tracked pretty well.

By expanding upwards, I felt like I could solidify my ruins more and make them more complete while adding new levels.

I didn’t know what I needed new levels for, but that was something to explore when it happened.

By expanding downwards, I would likely get a cave or basement of some kind if the stairs that had partially formed were any indication. That would be potentially very good for hiding and housing my core.

It might also open up some more resource nodes depending on the type of structure I got, though attracting visitors there might be difficult.

Finally, by expanding outward I would get access to more land to work with and potentially more buildings. Not that I knew what I was going to do with them.

… maybe they were tied to the Up option too?

One thing was for sure though, any expansion I did was going to come with more spawners… and more invaders.

Expanding outward was more than likely to bring me into contact with the Coyotes and make me a target of theirs. Upwards I felt like would bring in some sort of avian invader. After all, my own birds showed up when I got a stronger and more defined roof.

Expanding down… yeah, I had nothing. Gophers? Killer worms? More Giant bugs?

As for what spawners I would get… I had no idea. My denizens were varied and eclectic, with absolutely no recognizable rhyme or reason to their placement.

I had the benefit of having a… mostly… enclosed space with which to base my defense from. However, that layout does not seem to include any sort of partitions, doors or actual windows. Which in turn meant that I was always going to have some sort of gap in my defenses that invaders could use to their benefit. My ruins were becoming more stable and grand in form, but they were still ruins and it didn’t look like that was ever going to change.

My other options were upgrading my spawners, nodes and traps or creating more of the same, spawners excepted. Those were certainly considerations and I was absolutely going to continue upgrading my spawners, but the rest seemed to have balanced out for the investment I have put into them at this point.

When I thought about creating new nodes, I got a feeling of lethargy and contentment. The sensation made me feel like I wasn’t going to be able to place too many more nodes before that stopped becoming an option. Again, it was something I wanted to continue doing in the future, but location saturation was a thing and I felt like the mana could be better put to use elsewhere.

My traps were managing just fine. The snare traps could be upgraded again with no issue, but I had no reason to so far. They were doing quite well in catching the ermine as they were. The rockfall trap could be upgraded again… but not yet. That option wasn’t quite available at the moment, leading me to believe I could improve it if I improved myself again.

As for my spawners, there was no question. I would be upgrading them as I go, as I had a strong desire to bring the Oriole spawner up to the lair option and at least the first upgrade path.

It would take some time to get there, and I think that is going to be my best option going forward. Get the Birds up to par, then worry about saving for an expansion upgrade and having some mana saved up for immediate responses to whatever came about because of it.

It was settled then.

Plan in place, I poured some mana into the bird nest to start the process and started to prepare for whatever may come.