As usual, Aby felt the influx of knowledge and memories invade its own consciousness almost immediately after the invaders fell. First to fall was the siren, the mind numbing noise of the rifle shrimp taking on a more literal meaning for her. The core was surprised when, despite being much further away from the shrimp than is typically lethal, she simply went limp after it snapped its claw, and then dissolved into the waters.
The core put aside reviewing her information until later, making sure that the rest of the shrimp it had ordered to the floor were busy moving themselves into the places they needed to be, spreading out throughout the small tunnels throughout the early portion of the first floor and being ready to act if and when they had the chance.
Moments after the siren fell, another bang resounded throughout the dungeon, then a second, a third, and more after that, all in quick succession. The merman fell not long after his siren compatriot, succumbing to the barrage of sound and pressure shortly after he leaned onto the wall for support.
Aby was still left with a problem, however. The elf was sitting in the middle of the corridor, unmoving and inattentive to the chaos aimed at her. The core was certain that she wasn’t doing very well, judging by the blood streaming from her ears, and the dribble running from her nose it was plain to see she was in a precarious position. Yet the core was making little progress towards actually breaking past the multiple defensive items on her person, applied carelessly to her armor or even one being uselessly and even painfully woven into her hair.
It was a tactic the core had dealt with in the past, a frustrating method to say the least. Unfortunately, it seemed she was using rather high end artifacts, and to have them last almost twenty seconds under the duress of a dozen rifle shrimp was bordering on ridiculous in the core’s opinion. The only consolation for Aby was that the item was added to its collection after one of them broke under the strain, despite being of a sort it had little use for beyond its kobolds, and even then most of them didn’t enjoy using them.
It was only towards the end, when Aby was beginning to consider simply having all twelve rifle shrimp fire at once in the same manner as they had at the morgen, that the elf seemingly woke up. She blinked a few times, her eyes gaining a bit of clarity she hadn’t had upon entering, and then looked around frantically. After breathing rapidly for a few short moments, moments in which the core had to withdraw a few of the shrimp which had begun creeping up on her, she scrambled to her feet just as the swine grouper meandered into view with his herd of boar.
Deciding that she had overstayed her welcome, she stumbled her way the short distance leading towards the dungeon entrance with as much haste as she could manage, apparently realizing the error in her strategy. Aby was loathe to allow her to simply come in, scare Sela, and leave, and the core did its best to prevent exactly that. A loud squeal could be heard in the pauses between shrimp, and the din of many more such squeals was soon to follow.
The elf practically fell down turning the corner to the entrance hall, only to be entirely knocked down by the charging grouper. She groaned in displeasure, hobbling to her feet in the span it took the grouper to start repositioning himself for another strike. Unfortunately for him, she was deceptively fast, and by the time he charged again all his impact had done was propel her the remaining two meters into the shaft leading to her escape. Aby had one last volley of shrimp fired at her, a useless effort in the end, and her form clumsily rose outside of its influence, leaving Aby with a distinct sense of frustration.
But alas, Aby was forced to accept it, and it hadn’t suffered too much beyond the fear and uncertainty they had forced onto it with their arrival. That was about when the core began to go over the information it had gained from the two fallen, and from the bits and pieces of information it could piece together it could tell that they weren’t there for its crystals like so many others were. This was the third time the core had run into a group that was apparently paid by the Fae, if the gem had managed to interpret those greed-tinted memories properly.
This frustrated Aby quite a bit, and it knew of no reason why they would be targeting it so aggressively. It felt helpless at it all, and tried hard not to dwell on what it could mean, turning instead to the only creature injured that night. The rifle shrimp which had protected Sela was still hanging from the wall, though the ice spear which pinned it there was very quickly melting in the warm waters of the dungeon. Aby sped the process along, widening the hole in the wall the icicle had gouged out and letting the shrimp float to the bottom, now with its claw almost entirely removed. As soon as the magically hardened ice melted free, Aby healed the hole in the shrimp’s claw.
As usual, the claw began to glow and then close up, only moments after being freed the scarlet red claw was once more whole, though there was a noticeably pink mark on either side of the appendage, one which appeared slightly sunken in. The shrimp waved around its newly mended limb, opening and closing the pincer before trying to snap it shut. A problem presented itself, though, every time it tried to do so there was a hitch in the motion, one which crippled the noise produced. The unfortunate shrimp was barely as loud as a pistol shrimp, and any form of force it produced was immediately dispersed.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Aby watched the critter crawl away dejectedly, ignoring the rest of its own kind as it trekked deeper into the tunnels. It quickly turned its mind away from the crippled creature and to someone much more important to it.
“Sela, safe.” The core spied her still swimming briskly downwards, having emerged onto the fourth floor and looking around for a way further down amidst the colony of snakes on the floor.
Sela came to a stop almost as soon as she received Aby’s mental message, and the core could see the tension drain from her tiny frame. Not that it needed to confirm it visually, the relief it felt through their bond was overwhelming to say the least, and the core even felt a twang of guilt at leaving her waiting for so long, before it cast aside the thought.
“Thank you, Aby.” Sela said after a moment of silence, as a smile began to blossom. She began slowly swimming back in the direction of the upper floors, leaving Aby unsure why she was doing so, and more than a bit unsettled by this, worried that there would be more invaders tonight. Unfortunately, Aby both couldn’t and wouldn’t compel the behavior of its partner, and was left to wonder. Eventually, the core simply couldn’t contain its curiosity, asking “Why, up?”
“I want to finish looking around.” She spoke softly, as if embarrassed by the answer and wanting this to be over quickly, and continued through the main tunnels at a brisk pace. Aby watched her go, in a few minutes she’d managed to arrive on the second floor and ran into the moody group of sea-boars, all of which were still upset at the interloper who had escaped. Thankfully, she went by unaccosted, due in part to a warning by the already touchy Aby. She didn’t make it to the first floor, though, instead she was came across the handicapped rifle shrimp and rushed over to it. After a long moment of watching Sela play with the creature, only to start leading it away from the first floor by one of its antennae, Aby turned its attention elsewhere.
Specifically, to the twelfth floor. It hadn’t noticed earlier due to its attention being tied up by Sela, and then further needed for the intruders, but the water on the floor had gotten higher. Once it had noticed, this drew nearly its full attention. It hadn’t experienced something like this before, after all, at least not to this extent. To be more specific, the crater left by the drake and wyverns’ skirmish had an increase of almost five centimeters, and the number of Undines doing their strange ritual had doubled.
The creatures of that floor were slowly starting to investigate this, the aquatic critters overjoyed by the new territory for them to conquer, and the land based ones frantically trying to reclaim the lost shores. The drake had long since wandered off, and Aby was surprised to see him taking a nap, of all things. He was nearly as active asleep as he was awake, however, and after watching him toss and turn for a moment the core lost interest and returned to monitoring the waters, just in time to see another Undine race down from the eleventh floor and join the pack.
Aby watched on for a while longer, letting two more Undines do the same before its interest finally waned. It had seen the waters rise the slightest bit more in its observation, realizing at least part of it had to do with the spirits, but it couldn’t actually tell what they were doing and wasn’t able to piece it together. It even tried spawning another right in the thick of them, only for it to shiver and dart away from the rest of its kind, leaving the water unaffected.
It was about then that Aby decided nothing more would come of observing them, and it cast its gaze up a floor, very swiftly honing in on the kobold tribe. In the main residence, the two clutches of eggs sat, and Aby wanted to once more check on their progress when it had seen one of the eggs ever so slightly shudder. The purely kobold group looked almost entirely formed now, and only their slightly out of proportioned body would clue an observer into the fact that they weren’t simply miniaturized kobolds.
Aby watched as they each began to unconsciously move, twitch, or even hiccup in the case of one tiny coastal variant, and the aquatic kobold had actually opened their eyes and was looking around in the confines of its egg. One thing they all had in common, Aby found that they had begun strengthening their link to the core, to the point they truly felt like any other creature in its halls by now.
In contrast with the near-hatched kobold clutch, much of the group sired by the drake-kin looked only slightly different than its last check. Only now was the difference in speed of development apparent between the drake-kin and kobolds, and the latter did appear nearly the same as the kobolds had when they unlocked templates. Aby was unsure if it would get anything new from them, though, and wouldn’t be able to tell until a template was unlocked, or they reached the point one would otherwise be unlocked and it could get information on them. At least Aby could be certain that the developing drake-kin would unlock something, and it was looking forward to seeing exactly what that would be. And again, unlike their purely kobold counterparts, this clutch had yet to begin forming a connection to Aby, and it would be paying more attention to finding out exactly when that step would take place.
Its mind shifted gears, however, when it saw the aquatic kobold's egg give another spasm, this time finishing with a loud and clear crack.