The vitapygmy and Lu Xian disappeared into their corner of the dungeon for the rest of the night. Every so often I would see a few darting back and forth but overall they were all occupied. The only time any emerged was when one of the vytapygmy hearded a couple dozen Fleshborn progenitors out to be transferred to the Grange.
For my part I fiddled with ideas of brackets for the tournament, but outside of the most basic of setups. it was going to be a simple exhibition and was more a test of the Sand Pits functions then anything since the system still recognized our two Cores as adversarial. Most of my focus for the night was on how to get the Cay Hulk to work. I wracked my brain for every detail I had gained for how monsters were made and how the Mana Sea worked to work out how to get it to make what I wanted. The Cay Hulk was going to be a tall order but I was sure I could pull it off.
I started with prepping the room itself clearing it of any debris and brought in the materials I would need and set my Crabs to scoring the ground around the Mana Well. First with a pattern that matched the structure of channels that the vitapygmy had carved in the base of their altar room. Then over that pattern I carved the swirl I had seen in my short jaunt into the Mana Sea itself which I was fairly certain was caused by my Core from the other side. I knew I needed to take advantage of the little cheats I'd worked out since I was otherwise very restricted by my own limits of affinity and time. I also shifted the Vitapygmy skeleton into the room having its bones secured in their proper order with life attribute vines and gently placed it into the mana well. I wasn't sure if this would do what I thought it would but it felt right. Since Mana seemed to work on intent it could probably help jury rig sapience into the monster, I hoped.
I didn't know much about how magic worked but I had lived in a world with Google and Youtube providing me with otherwise useless knowledge at my finger tips. I knew things about theoretical and quantum physics that someone ten years before wouldn't have even thought about unless it was their field of study. The nomenclature they system had been using in reference to mana was Axis.
It made me first think of graphs having an x and y axis and then it got me thinking of how mana interacted with the world. It was an ever present thing but just out of sight, not because it was invisible but because it was out of phase with our dimension. Its usual state was the invisible ambient kind. Then with the influence of a Core it would be pulled and compressed into a pearl. While its seeming natural state was the strings of spaghetti that could be seen in the Mana Sea. But I was pretty sure that these specifically weren't different states of mana, those would be the mana crystals and caramelized mana. They were, in fact, all the same state but at a different dimensionality.
I was a three dimensional mind inhabiting a however many dimensional core and I was going to try and weave these extra dimensional noodles together. It seemed daunting but I had to take into account that I was already doing that on a smaller scale with Chamber designation and simpler monster creation. There was just one material I needed which was going to be annoying to get.
----------------------------------------
I set one of my crabs atop my core with a sharp piece of rock in one claw and a bowl in the other. Then it gave my Core a good rap on the ball and everything went sideways for a second. It wasn't exactly pain but it was sure disorienting. My focus was unceremoniously yanked to inside my Core and I could see in my sky a small spiderweb of angry light blue cracks.
I quickly jumped outside to make sure the damage wasn't too severe and saw a centimeter long chip in my surface. The crap had caught the tiny fragment in the bowl. I decided to emulate the Priestess a bit here and had it handed off to my other crab to make something with it for my Volpertinger. In short order a small loop of thin vine was made to hang the piece of me to one of their glowing antlers.
The prayer to Luciantisss had suggested that by channeling their spellwork through the fragment of core they were able to make caramelized mana. I hoped this worked because I wasn't planing on doing that again, at least not before this hissing tinnitus like ring stopped. My Volpertinger focused into the fragment of core and started to manipulate the clouds in my core room. they took the form of small dire hare and nimbus crabs zooming around my chamber, it was clear there was an increase in potency of their spellwork but a third of the energy it directed toward the spell was being lost in a waste byproduct, exactly what I was looking for.
The broken edges of the shard began to develop a sheen that slowly built up until it formed into a grey-white foam. My crab held up the bowl to catch the substance as it dripped off but once a piece of it finally did pull free it drifted sideways with a neutral buoyancy in the air. It was an easy task for my crabs to chase down the droplets. On my Core itself the missing chip had filled in with the foamy Caramelized Cloud mana and as it would build up past the smooth curve of my surface the crab perched on me would scrape the excess floating foam into the bowl with the rest I had collected. Once morning had come my Volpertinger was spent and I had collected enough for my current plan so I decided to bandage my core with a small patch of moss and get back to work.
----------------------------------------
Lu Xian and the vitapygmy emerged from their territory early in the morning and though the large avatar seemed mildly trepidatious the diminutive vitapygmy for the most part seemed excited. greeted by my Volpertinger they were guided to the Sand Pit where most of my own monsters were already waiting for them. My Volpertinger quickly joined my own forces and set up at their center and sat. They was spent already and regardless his opposing number on the vitapygmy side was a level six Priestess which I didn't want to fight. Not because I was worried she would beat me, but because I didn't want to risk our best medic during a fighting tournament. Yah, that sounded reasonable.
The Avatar took a seat with the Priestess in a similar position on the opposite side of the room.They were wearing a cross-collar robe made from woven vines and moss. As the vitapygmy got settled in the silver coin on their bracelets jangled as they clacked against a rougher wooden coin that had joined it depicting a roughly carved vitapygmy on one side and the broken core on the other. Once everyone one was settled it was time to begin.
One of my youngest Dire hare that was still level one took the stage first stepping into the stream of water that trickled along the floor. The scraping of gravel and the dripping of water was the only sound in the room as the lithe mist shrouded creature stalked forward. One of the Vitapygmy stepped forward planting its quarterstaff in the ground an uncharacteristic show of bravado. They squared off for a moment before, almost at once, the struck.
The fight was fairly one sided though the vitapygmy did get in a few quick taps the speed and size of the dire hare was simply to much for their opponent to handle. In a drawn out fight it might have been a different story but after a few quick nips and a leap it was done the vitapygmy pined to the ground and round of thumps from the Mist-walker side declared victory.
Another Vitapygmy stepped into the ring this one holding a hammer and baring the marks of previous battles. Her green leg held forward and hammer raised she issued a chalanging 'Haba'. One of my level two Hare entered the ring and as soon as it was in position the vitapymy leapt into action.
This fight went very differently with the vitapygmy being the aggressor using its Life Affinity nature to its advantage not needing to save energy in regards to endurance. It still didn't have the skill that the first vitapygmy I had fought had shown, nor the stoic collected nature of the veteran but it had worked out that if it held out its hammer and spun it would give the dire hare no opening to take advantage of. Either way the simple speed and strength difference was too much and the Vitapygmy was eventually pinned. The battle had been close and if it was a fight to the death it was clear the vitapygmy would have eventually won. This was evident from the way the mist-walker dire hare limped out of the ring and flopped down panting with exhaustion.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
Two wins in a row was starting to worry me, part of the reason for the tournament was to try and build bonds between our two factions. I was wondering if I should have one of my hare take a dive when the next vitapygmy stepped up. I recognized this one as the vitapygmy who had helped me experiment with my crabs so I decided to try and reinforce that relationship by sending out a dire nimbus crab as challenger.
I encouraged the crab to be as showy as possible and it swooped into the arena in a swirl of clouds gave a little wavy stick bug dance with its tiny claws clacking away while foaming at the mouth. I was a little worried that they had over done it as most of the other vitapygmy flinched back at the display. The vitapygmy in the ring, however seemed to get the idea and began waving its quarterstaff around shouting and stomping in the river. They both squared off and then charged at each other.
"Bonk!" The nimbus crab coasted through the air claws and pointed feet out stretched and as they clashed the room was filled with a resounding
The vitapygmys quarter staff made contact with the crabs wing sending it cartwheeling through the air. They crab being three times the size of the vitapygmy yet far lighter due to its near continuous use of minor levitation made the fight extra dramatic as their attacks were, by necessity, in slow telegraphed arks the results almost always being the massive crab being flung into the air giving the vitapygmy the appearance of having prodigious strength. Eventualy the dire nimbus crab ran out of juice and vitapygmy was able to pin it down by jumping on it from the branches of the mangrove tree.
Moral was restored and the vitapygmy champion was met with resounding pats on the back from their compatriots then everything went quiet. The Veteran vitapygmy stepped into the arena hammer held low and in a wide legged stance. The silence was a palpable tension having come off a dramatic victory now with their strongest warrior on the field everyone wanted to see what would happen. I sent out my eldest mist-walker dire hare the first one I made and they stared each other down. After ascertaining their opponents readiness they both moved at the same time.
A few aborted shouts reverberated off the chamber walls as the fight followed a different flow to the previous ones. Where the previous fights had been quick messy brawls these two combatants slowly circled each other. The veteran had a fighting stile that was a balance of the vitapygmys two preferred styles of fighting. Defensive attrition based combat coupled with sudden bursts of aggression that would usually cause any other fighter to tire themselves out. The dire hare was the opposite moving quickly in and out of the fight in moves that would be highly advantageous in a pack setting but was of less value in a one on one contest especially against an opponent that would not tire. They traded minor hits but ultimately the hare, even though they were dealing more damage, simply wasn't dealing enough to balance the equation. The hare changed tactics, possibly do to desperation, to pulling away and then delivering devastating blows adding its dash skill to the mix in exchange for the veterans lighter ripostes. This was also a losing endeavor as the vitapygmy could simply go even further onto the defensive to make up for the lost health.
The fight looked almost done as the dire hare seemed to be flagging and was protecting a lamed left front leg it kicked off with a powerful dash in an aim to bite at the veterans throat but the move was too telegraphed and the vitapygmy easly side stepped it and turned with its whole body to deliver a punishing blow to the now over extended hare only for his preys front half to vanish in a massive fan of kicked up water and pebbles as its forward momentum was stopped with its clearly fully functional front paws and delivered a devistating pair of back kicks caving in the vitapygmys chest.
The Avatar and Priestess struck the ground announcing their sides surrender. The veteran was down on one knee and looked up at my dire hare with a broad fierce grin as he wheezed out breath from his compressed chest cavity. I hadn't actually seen the vitapygmy smile before and I was glad that I hadn't since the rows of perfectly square teeth between their overly thin lips was quite disconcerting. With a pop the ribs and sternum of the creature began to shift back into their proper shape and with a quick cast from the Priestess he was good as new. With his lungs back in working order he stood and with a deep basso laugh patted my dire hare on the shoulder which elicited a slight flinch since the hare was indeed quite bruised after the fight.
----------------------------------------
The Tournament was a resounding success, the system registered the battle as a victory for me giving my hare not a hefty dose of bonus experience causing several of them to level up. It didn't seem to be a one sided affair as even losing the fight gave some token amount of bonus experience and the veteran vitapygmy had hit level five which seemed to be some sort of special benchmark since the burly vitapygmy had gained the Hammermanship skill according to my Domain. The vitapygmy all gathered into the altar room and performed their daily prayers.
While the tournament was going my second crab had been hard at work setting up the experimental chamber for making a new more powerful monster. I had worked out that the skeleton seemed to have a bit of mana I couldn't identify clinging to it but it was hard to make out with all the easily identifiable manas present. It shouldn't cause a problem since as I had seen with the formation of my other monsters there was a plethora of other minor manas involved in the process the system just focused on the major ones.
I set out a rim to the mana well using stone bricks then filled the gaps with dungeon moss so the chamber had a well defined center point. I then filled the previously scored patterns with Caramelized Life mana for the ones representing the Altar room and then the other with Caramelized Cloud mana representing a Cores magic gravity for lack of a better explanation.
I arrayed ten silver rings around the edge of the pool and then placed a pair of Life Mana Pearls into the eyes of the skull and a Cloud Mana Pearl inside the skeletons rib cage the Mana Mana Pearl in its mouth and the soul mana pearl rested on its sternum. For one last touch I had stolen a single glowing vigor crab roe on top of its head. All of them were secured in place with some moss. I then places some cloud mana crystal inside the Mana well as well as at what looked like natural intersections of the pattern I had carved.
One of the vitapygmy walked let curiosity get the better of them and followed my volpertinger down into the room. The berry it was holding in its left hand suggested that its true goal was to head to the storage room to watch the thing disappear into that rooms mana well but it had come at an opportune time. I directed it to the Mana Well and with the help of my dire nimbus crabs direction started stirring the enriched water inside.
I then cast a fog of War spell to fill the room with clouds and a Mistform Decoy spell in order to get all the clouds in the room spinning like a tightly warping water spout. My Volpertinger was present just too keep the whole reaction running for the duration. I peeked at my clock and knew it was almost time for turn of day and that I would have to be precisely on turnover to get the best chance of this to work.
3... 2... 1... NOW!
I had the vitapygmy and the crab step back and hoped there was enough spin in the pool of water for it to have some equatable effect to the stockpile well. The dire nimbus crab then flung a single silver coin in an arc into the swirling tornado and felt as the mana took form making new Mana Pearls and weaving together a third Dire Nimbus Crab. The silver coin pierced the wall of clouds and arced strait in, dead center on the Mana well turning end over end as I went over in my mind how I thought this all worked.
First dimension was intent or will.
Second was energy or mana.
third was framework or the patterns and forms.
and the fourth the time or the ritual.
I slotted in a cloud mana pearl to empower the room with the vague concept of the Altar room in mind but keeping my focus vague while at the same time using the same process trying to activate the Cay Hulk variant monster with the variant monster window.
At that very moment the silver coin made contact with the Soul Mana Pearl and the result was-
Congratulations Achievement become
Pack [https://i.imgur.com/6MoLeeN.png]
Gatekeeper