The logistical endeavor of moving the Cynocephali corpses back home continued on uninterrupted until they were about halfway through. Because that’s when Shigaraki suddenly lost his mind.
Or, to be exact, a significant part of his mental faculties, which was bad as in Izuku’s opinion he didn’t have many of those to begin with. He was agitated, and extremely bad at communicating what was the problem, at least without using about three game metaphors each sentence.
Game metaphors that meant exactly nothing to Izuku. Who wasn’t a gamer (with maybe an exception for some Hero Agency Sims).
Given no other choice, he decided that needs help.
Yaoyorozu-san, I need your help.
Shigaraki is acting more annoying than usual and I have no idea what it is about.
Could you please help me?
“I can definitely try.” Yaoyorozu replies, but it’s clear from her tone of voice that she doesn’t have high hopes in that field. Then again, if he’s to be honest, neither did Izuku. “Shigaraki, what is it?”
They were walking towards the mine at the time, Monoma close by with her, the two were busy talking about something they read in the books when Izuku interrupted them.
We were playing the wrong fucking game the whole time
This isn’t an RPG/Dungeon Management game
This is an RPG/Dungeon Management/RTS mix
And that little shit Midoriya doesn’t get it
“Uhm, could you please elaborate on this some more?” Yaoyorozu asks. It’s clear that she, too, doesn’t get it. Izuku feels vindicated in his own lack of understanding. If she didn’t figure it out on the fly, no one (normal) would!
Have you ever played any of the old Total War game series?
“Yes.” Yaoyorozu replies immediately and without batting an eye. “Mostly all three pre-quirk versions of the Shogun: Total War, but I’ve also played the second Rome one. What about it?”
Wait really?
Wait, really?
“I think that I’m allowed to have a hobby, even one that doesn’t seem to fit my character very well.” Yaoyorozu appears vaguely insulted by their reaction. “I always enjoyed conquering the world, you see.”
Monoma gives her a very concerned look from the side.
(-_- )
I, errr, don’t know how to react to that discovery, so I’ll do what I usually do with complicated issues in my life.
I’ll ignore it until it suddenly crushes me under its weight.
And I’ll be there to throw a few more rocks on top you so that you get squashed like a bug
Anyway
Have you played any of the Total War: Warhammer games?
“Yes, although rather briefly and…” Yaoyorozu starts to reply before she almost trips. On her look, a shocked realization. “Wait, you don’t mean… oh. Oh. It really is an RTS game in the making, isn’t it?”
Fucking
Finally
Someone with a brain.
Yaoyorozu-san, could you please elaborate?
I don’t exactly know what the games in question are about.
“Midoriya-kun, consider this.” Yaoyorozu replies, having clearly composed herself. “Is there a single downside to clearing out this mine while having more people on our side?”
Well… not really? I mean, aside from logistics of feeding them all.
“After we finish moving the corpses from the mine to the Dungeon, you’ll have sixty nine Cynocephali that you can order around.” Yaoyorozu replies. “Sixty-nine Cynocephalii that, if you make them manifest physically, will be able to leave the Dungeon.”
And now Izuku’s brain finally connects the dots. And judging from the look on Monoma’s face, he isn’t the only one.
Those creatures might not be the strongest ones around, yes. And deploying them anywhere outside of the Dungeon would be a problem, as to avoid the same problem that once knocked out Uraraka so much they’d need to provide them with some appropriate accommodations outside of the Dungeon.
And Izuku was ready to guess that they needed a lot of meat to not turn against each other or their handlers just so that they could eat them. Meaning that they’d need to establish logistics for the entire operation, just like they’d need if they were operating a real army.
We could just… spend some time and resources manifesting them physically and then guide them back to the mine, point at the lower level and tell them to go and kill everything that moves down there.
And if they die, it’s only a temporary setback and a minor waste of resources.
Which we can almost immediately repeat.
“Precisely.” Yaoyorozu nods. “I think that what Shigaraki was trying to convey to you is that Dungeons can easily balloon in strength to almost ridiculous proportions, with people like us used as field commanders for small armies of physically manifested spirits.”
And yes, now it really started to make sense to Izuku. They’ve been thinking about themselves and this universe on a completely wrong scale. Most of the enemy forces that they would encounter would politely wait for them to reach them. There is no clearing an abandoned fortress room by room.
Any abandoned fortress inhabited by something spooky had to be assaulted with a small army, if not straight up besieged. And that required raw numbers. Even local adventurers - aside from super-badass ones - probably gathered up in dozens if not hundreds to do a proper sweep of some region or to combat a threat they found there.
The resources that they can obtain from us is just one part of the goods that the beastkin want to get from us
The bigger thing is probably the small armies that we’ll be able to eventually lend them in exchange for some further stuff that they can give us and so on
“In hindsight, we should have realized that it worked like this earlier.” Yaoyorozu continues. “The Occasa cult attacked us with a small army. And despite us being a very small and young Dungeon, they were wiped out. Do you want to guess how one attacks a more mature Dungeon?”
With an army.
If they want to kill it, that is.
As otherwise, they only have to deal with some random patrols and wandering creatures, which is enough to make it an economic boost to the area while also keeping things balanced, preventing sudden changes in value of things suddenly made much more common.
“Yes, it seems that the Dungeons are pretty well-designed to fit their own niche.” Yaoyorozu agrees with him. “But the thing is, for as long as we’re ‘civilized’, the local civilization can easily obtain a vast array of ‘mercenaries’ in the form of spirits that the Dungeon has either recruited or subjugated.”
Now that Izuku thinks about it, he can imagine a city being built around the Dungeon’s entrance. After all, getting a few hundred (or even thousands) of fighters flooding out of the Dungeon itself when someone is threatening it should definitely improve security.
Especially as you didn’t need to feed, house or pay them. Within the Dungeon, they could live comfortably on just mana-filled air alone.
Of course, that help wouldn’t happen because of the Dungeon being particularly generous. To them, such a city (or a village/town, depending on the development level) was a crucial part of their petty empire. They were alright with some of the people downright dying within their domain, for as long as the greater deal remained strong.
Especially with the Dungeon Lord being limited to staying within his domain, they would never be truly integrated with anything, only being able to interact with things outside of their confines through their servant proxies.
And they’ve brought us the stuff we’ve needed for Shrine of Saevius, to hopefully obtain some daemons of their big divine daddy
so that they can unleash them upon some losers and pretend that they’ve summoned them themselves if someone asked
“Yes, that makes sense.” Yaoyorozu agrees with him. “And thus far, even if they asked, we could only provide a few dozen Cynocephalii. Hardly a valuable addition to one’s army. But in the future? Things might change. They probably will.”
Which implies that they’ll have to make even the upper Levels big. Then again, it made sense - it’s not like there’s any limit to that, right? The only limit they’ve seen thus far was about placement of [Node Rooms].
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
They could, theoretically, expand those levels into a truly gigantic size. Which would make it easier to do some larger scale mining for the outsiders. If they had the time, patience and Residual Mana to do it. For now, they didn’t.
“So what you’re saying is that eventually we’ll graduate from operating like adventurer parties… and move over to acting like a small army?” Monoma decides to join the talk now that he finally digested the new perspective.
“I’m not even sure how common ‘adventurers’ truly are.” Yaoyorozu replies. “At least in the meaning of the term that we know from RPG games of our world. It’s entirely possible that such small groups only deal in reconnaissance.”
Looks like Izuku figured that out before Yaoyorozu. Or maybe she was just yet to mention it. Huh.
You forget about that Salvia Aurelius person
the one that got to the lowest level of the largest Dungeon ever
It was either entirely civilized and lacked killzone or she brought in a giant army or she brought in a small party of one-man-armies
So I guess that the only option to go anywhere with like 5-6 folks in your party is to be absolutely godfucking broken and be able to massacre a small army by themselves
Good to know
And aren’t we supposed to defeat such a group of people by ourselves?
Yeah
It’s like trying to kill All Might again but you’re on my side
…
I hate you.
“Fair point.” Monoma replies. “I guess we should have realized that from Yanagi-san being able to, theoretically, amass a small army of undead on her own. It’s all a matter of the availability of corpses to her. They don’t need maintenance after all.”
The real question is whether she can resurrect everything.
I just had a mental image of a giant army of undead deers emerging from the forests.
Or an army of undead squirrels coming down the trees in the middle of the night to bite your or wrists out.
Ugh.
“I believe that it requires a certain quality to the corpses.” Monoma replies. “Did some testing and animals, at least normal ones, don’t work. So it’s either physically manifested spirits or mortals.”
Well, at least they know that much.
***
It takes them quite a lot of time to move all the corpses back to the Dungeon, even with their decision to indulge in some grizzly and gruesome decapitations and logistical necromancy (which was now an actual term for them, thus proving once again that their life was spiraling off in some weird direction ever since they landed in this world) just to accelerate the whole process.
There were just so many corpses to be moved.
And yet, the much bigger issue was moving the smelter, which required them to disassemble it bit by bit and then move over. And yes, as one can expect, the bulk of it was made of solid metal, because that’s what you need to do to make a furnace.
In short, even with two ogres and two mages capable of using [Float] spells it was an absolute hell to move. In fact, it was so bad that they simply had to risk using the elevator, as otherwise there was no telling what could have potentially happened.
It was, in short, an absolute mess.
They were rewarded with unlocking [Metalworks], a brand new [Room] that like [Library] seemed to be a more ‘utility’ focused [Room]. Those didn’t have a lot of uniqueness in their design, being pretty much a completely normal room of the Dungeon that could be more easily furnished.
They just knew where to put what to make it work. Look, it just did, alright? Being a Dungeon was pretty confusing and neither Izuku nor Tomura had a good way of describing a lot of it to people.
They could also put those smelters elsewhere, and they did seem to operate purely on mana from their surroundings. Or, to be exact, you were supposed to supply your own mana to make them work, but in a Dungeon they could operate freely.
Yaoyorozu was curious as to how they worked but also admitted that to figure out such things, they should have considered bringing in Hatsume.
However, none of them were quite ready to unleash Hatsume Mei upon a fantasy world filled with thousands of magical metals, alloys, crystals, chemicals and who knows what else.
And it also wasn’t anything very time-sensitive, so they could ignore it for now.
And no, they didn’t put the smelter anywhere close to the surface. They don’t want the beastkin to ask questions about the origin of all that intriguing stuff that they didn’t give to the Dungeon themselves.
At least for now.
It’s also when Uraraka had a sudden moment of realization. She was just told that they were going to be playing an RTS game eventually, and that’s when she realized that the beastkin whose skills they inherited must have been pretty much a regular grunt.
“I’m a dumbass.” She downright facepalms. “I just realized that the Lesser Thrust, the Barricade Shield and so on are too weak to be considered special moves. Lesser Thrust is literally just my default attack. I’m not even supposed to be attacking enemies without it. Nor am I supposed to take attacks on my shield without Barricade Shield on.”
Well, it’s… better late than never, right?
“Yeah.” Uraraka sighs. “Yeah, I guess. I gotta go and find Tokage-san so that we can get some additional combat training with this new information in mind.”
***
The next step of their grand expansion plan involves another visit to the elven mine in order to look for more things to kill/unlock. After all, they might have gotten a lot out of it, but surely, there had to be more down there.
And so, they gather up and have their entire party depart, heading to the elven mine once more.
On a sidenote, they’d really like to know the ‘official’ name for the mine so that they could stop calling it just ‘the elven mine’. This would get especially awkward if they ever find another elven mine, which would also be lacking its own name.
For now, they return to the mine, once again inspect it for potential signs of Rampant Bloom presence (they find none), and then they carefully descend to the lower level, finding themselves once more in the place of their past battle.
And then they head deeper into the mine.
Almost immediately they find themselves in another large room, with tightly locked large doors on the other side of it, with the minecart railway going under them. There were four side tunnels, two of them on every side wall, their position perfectly mirroring each other.
No signs of enemies. Then again, the enemies that were filling this room earlier were already a part of the Dungeon.
There were signs of life here and there. Signs of previous life, for the record. Some broken bones here and there, a whole pile of them close to the door. The Cynocephalii must have been feasting here.
They could see scratches on the door.
There was only one conclusion to be drawn from the situation.
Was someone… feeding them?
It looks so to me
Someone beyond those doors
And they probably know that their canine fiends were slain, so they’re probably waiting for us
“Let’s make sure that there’s no one left in this area before we even approach those doors.” Uraraka replies. “I’m almost certain that we’ve cleared this area of creatures, so let’s do it quickly. My party goes left, your party goes right. We meet here once we run out of places to scout or once we decide that it’s too lengthy for it to be safe or if we encounter anything alive, alright?”
“Alright!” Tokage replies with a surprising enthusiasm in her voice. “Alright, fellas, we’re moving out.”
“Who put you in charge?” Monoma grumbles, but obediently follows her.
Ah yes
The world where dogs are in charge
Truly the best one
Huh?
Look, both Uraraka and Tokage seem to be in charge of their parties, and both of them are wolfkin
COINCIDENCE? I think not.
And I think yes.
***
image [https://images.squidge.org/images/2024/07/07/image00f4dc78c73d933a.png]
The right tunnel didn’t have a lot for Tokage’s party to explore. The past miners quickly struck gold, hitting a large iron vein that they spent who knows how much time exploiting.
The result of it was an uneven, long hall with the ceiling supported by pit props, a lot of them carrying teeth marks that likely belonged to the now evicted Cynocephalii.
Uraraka’s party didn’t have a lot of luck either. Yes, their side went deeper, but was ultimately as empty as the other one. Maybe twenty minutes after splitting off they gathered up together, back in the door chamber.
“Well, that was disappointing.” Uraraka comments while shaking her head. “Nothing on your side took, right?”
“Yeah.” Tokage replies. “Just a lengthy iron vein, not fully exploited. So, the next thing we do is the door, right?”
“Aye.” Uraraka replies while glancing at the door in question. “But if someone did feed the dogheads, it means that they were confident in them not banging through the door and killing everything inside. So… it means a tough fight.”
“You could at least try to say that without grinning like this.” Monoma says dryly. He is, however, ignored.
“Sounds so to me, yes.” Tokage replies. “So, if we get swarmed by the enemies, we should make sure to get at least something out of this trip, right? So, if we see that we’re losing, someone grabs a corpse of one of the attackers and dashes back with it, right?”
“Sure.” Uraraka nods. “Though this is the worst case scenario. We fight to win, got it?”
“Manly.” Kirishima nods.
“Manly!” Tetsutetsu announces his agreement from the other side.
Are you sure that those two aren’t long lost twins
Yes.
Long lost half-brothers then?
I think that they’d know about it before us all.
Not if they are long lost half-brothers
Actually, you know what, I’ll ask
Kirishima, Tetsutetsu, where are you from?
“Eh?” Kirishima appears to be surprised by Shigaraki of all people asking him that. “I’m from Chiba.”
“And I’m from Saitama!” Tetsutetsu replies.
Two neighboring prefectures, huh
Your parents?
Are you seriously asking this?
I’m just curious
Right before a fight?
Yes.
“Well, I was brought up by my mother.” Kirishima replies, clearly unsure of why Shigaraki was asking all those questions. “Because my father disappeared from our life before I was born. In the most unmanly way he left the picture and we don’t know where he went.”
”Wait, really?” Tetsutetsu appears suddenly surprised. “Me too! I never mentioned it because it’s kinda a painful subject and a sore spot to me and my mother. I’ve decided to become a true man to never be like the person that couldn’t man up and take responsibility for their family!”
“Hey, I haven’t mentioned it for the same reason!” Kirishima replies while looking back at Tetsutetsu with a combination of shock and ‘holy shit, you too?! awesome!’ written on his face. “And while my decision to go that way wasn’t originally motivated by the same thing, I did promise to myself to never act like my father did, and when I find myself the love of my life, always be ready to take responsibility and be the best father and husband that I can be.” No one decides to comment on Ashido clearly blushing in the background. “Holy shit, we’re really similar, aren’t we?”
No.
Yes.
I will ask that question. Because I have to.
Was it your mother who had some sort of hardening quirk for you to inherit?
“No.” Kirishima replies. “My mom can only create small pieces of rock in her hand”
“Mine neither!” Tetsutetsu replies. “Her quirk let her tell what sort of metals were used in the creation of an object that she was touching!”
…
…
No way, right?
Yeah, I think that I was right in my suspicions.
So, both of you were brought up by a single mother, in a neighboring prefecture, at the same time, with your fathers having some sort of hardening quirk, which got altered in you depending on what your mother had
And both your fathers didn’t seem like models of virtue, meaning that it was entirely possible that they had two families at the same time, or just dipped from one prefecture to another when their girlfriend got pregnant and then did it again
It takes them a few seconds to digest - unlike most of the others who (judging from shocked looks and loud gasps) figured it out before them.
“Wait, so you might be literally my bro?!” Kirishima says, staring at Tetsutetsu in abject shock.
“And you’re mine?!” Tetsutetsu replies, his shock mirroring the one of his apparent half-brother. “Holy shit, we’re brothers!”
Then they grab each other in a bear hug, dropping down their combat logs in the process, and repeatedly calling each other their ‘bro’ in a frenzy of newborn brotherhood.
“I…” Yaoyorozu stares at the event in question. “... I have no idea what to think about it. But I guess that I’m happy for them? That’s one hell of a way to discover that you’re related to someone, I guess.”
“Ugh.” Uraraka groans. “I’m happy for them and I just can’t interrupt it, but it really is delaying my promised fight.”
This is the moment when you admit that I’ve managed to read those two better than you or their other hero friends
No. That was… errr… you were playing that on a very easy difficulty.
You just managed to approach the subject without the preconceptions that clouded our judgment.
Ha, loser