Well that was concerning.
No time to dwell on it I had a day to prepare for whatever was going to happen. It didn't sound like the delvers were here to kill Cores. That might just be when you are a good little dungeon that lets them harvest all your hard work every month. It would be best to err on the side of staying out of the way and hidden.
Five vitapygmy stumbled back into the cave and followed the shortest path back home painting back over my Domain with their own. They didn't have their hammers with them, In fact only two of them still had their weapons on them. One of which was by necessity since they were missing a leg from just below the knee. As they limped and stumbled their way down the corridor I was able to monitor the absolutely ridiculous rate at which they healed. I could swear the one missing half its leg had regrown a few centimeters of shin by the time the cleared my Domain from that side of the dungeon. With the excitement out of the way I sent one hare out to monitor the entrance from hiding and another to watch the vitapygmy.
I turned my focus to trying to find out what other options I had, what untapped tools I might have. Mana Mana seemed like an odd redundancy but with how shiny the pearl was I guessed it was probably one of those highly esoteric mana types that was way down the list. I wondered if I could maybe gain the affinity by moving it to the other Mana Well but after a bit of effort it didn't seem to be that simple. I did conclude that leaving my other chamber undesignated was a problem and the thing I was missing most of compared to my enemies seemed to be manpower.
I set my focus on my Null chamber and just like when I gained Cloud Affinity I pulled the mote of Cloud Mana out of one of my pearls and affixed it to my empty room. The change was sudden and dramatic. The floor shifted like kneaded clay forming six misshapen stone lean-tos. The humidity levels in the room spiked and slowly a layer of mist formed along the ground clinging to the walls. Lastly a wiggly nose poked out of one of the new abodes sniffing the air with interest before fully emerging and my fifth Mist-walker Dire Hare had joined my ranks.
Congratulations Achievement become
Chamber Designator [https://i.imgur.com/Deiy3Ez.png]
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Chamber Designator
Achievements Effect Chamber Designator [https://i.imgur.com/Deiy3Ez.png] Option to apply an additional chamber bonus to your core chamber
That looked interesting. Adding a chamber bonus to the Core room might be useful but you really didn't know what would be the best course of action. Converting it into a Sand pit might help in a last line of defense sort of way, but it might also attract more combat to the chamber which you wanted combat in the least. It also didn't seem to be easily reversible since the Cloud Mana was now intrinsically linked to your new Habitation room.
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Another thing you could investigate to try and increase your tactical options was to pull apart the hammer. Tasking one of the dire hare to the task made short work of the 'enhanced' hammer. The head popped free with a few heavy kicks in the right places while a second hare held it steady. A bit of gnawing and scratching later and they were able to free the green resin like substance from where it was still adhered to the wooden handle.
Firing up my Domain I got a pretty basic return from the first item, a Stone. It seemed to be made of a similar material to the corridor walls. and with the odd shape and location of Lucian's Null chamber that was probably the source.
The handle was whimsically called a Braided Vitavine Handle. The woody vine was a grey-green color with deep green veins running through it. It was surprisingly stiff seeing as it was supposedly a vine but I guess that might be due to the braiding process or they did something else to it during crafting to make it resistant to bending.
The last part was the resin like substance and clearly the reason for the special properties that I had seen and the delvers were investigating. It was called Caramelized Life Mana according to my Domain. It was a hard green translucent resin that didn't seem that interesting on its own. As a material resins were extremely versatile but without access to Life Affinity it didn't seem to be any more then that.
This exercise didn't end up giving me any new tools and quite a few more questions. It also made me wonder if I could make Caramelized Cloud Mana somehow or if it was something special to Life Affinity. For that matter how could I get more affinities to begin with. Maybe I could try and use my new senses to try and pull out another affinity in the way I gained access to Animal Affinity for my monsters. It was worth thinking about.
Setting my idle monsters to continue to dig out pits and further secure my Core chamber I set to watching the clock as morning arrived It I anxiously awaited mid day knowing that at any time the Delvers could come down and completely upend any possible sense of planning for the future.
With a little effort and a bit of hope that future would come.