CHAPTER SIX
Another Thirty Hours later.
JESSIE’S POV
Another thirty hours, and another full mana pool. This process is getting kinda boring. I start to dig another ten meters, only to come out on the surface after five meters. It's wet. A puddle forms in the entrance. I'm not liking wherever this is. The water starts to disappear, and a message comes up saying that I've absorbed water, and can now use it for building, or in traps. Sounds interesting, But I don't really have anywhere to actually put a new trap. For now, I'll go surprise James and place a little spring or fountain in the second room. Heading over there I notice that the center of the new room has finally been cleared out. I put a fountain in the center of the second room and smiled as the water came out, pooling in a little bowl at the bottom. I'd leave the decorating to James. I open up my stat screen to see when my next level would be.
Core Name:
Jessie
Level:
2 (125/200xp)
Core Type:
Dual Ruby
Core Partner:
James
Core Integrity:
100%
Mana:
50/150 (6MP/hour)
Intelligence:
30
Wisdom:
10
Perception:
10
Charisma:
15
Strength:
LOCKED
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Agility:
LOCKED
Seventy-five more experience points then I level up. I guess, for now, I should watch the entrance.
JAMES’ POV
I've dug out the room some more. It's not much, but at least it's progress. Suddenly I feel a chill I look out over to where Jessie was working. She opened a tunnel to the outside world. Looking through I see trees. And a puddle is forming in the doorway. I sigh. I hate the rain. I move my view back to where I was building, only to notice a fountain in the second room. I feel the need to decorate it, but I'm fully out of mana. Having a limited mana pool sucks. I really wish I had higher regen. Maybe that's one of the bonuses for the quest. Thinking of the quest, we only need to get some creatures now, and then we will be done. I honestly cannot wait.
Chapter Seven
About Ten Hours Later
JESSIE’S POV
Something has come into the dungeon. It's a little critter. No larger than a human head. It looks like a large spider. I immediately dislike it. On top of that, it's way too tiny to trigger my traps too. Maybe I can make it go into the fountain. Drown it. Unlikely that would work. Maybe I could place a new trap. I try opening a hole in the wall. Only to find that I can't place anything in that corridor. Ok… what to do, what to do. I open a hole in the entrance of the first room and fill it halfway with water. I smooth the walls of the hole to the best of my abilities as the spider finally reaches the room, blocking my access from modifying it. I tell James, and we both look at the hole to see what the spider would do with this new obstacle. It tries to jump but falls a little bit short. I sigh with relief, as I watch the spider struggle. After ten minutes it stops moving and sinks into the water, And within five minutes of that, I get a burst of mana, and a message appears in front of me.
Congratulations
You defeated a Tarantula You gain;
* 10XP
* 5MP
* The ability to spawn Tarantula
I fill in the hole. The system asks if I want to save 'Drowning Pit'. I tell it no, preparing a new trap to deal with some little creatures. I have about thirty mana now. I start by digging a hole in the side of the corridor. That takes ten mana, and clears one and a half meters below the floor, with a half a meter opening to get in. I smooth the edges of this hole, taking two mana. I open a half a meter tall hole, that is one meter wide, and goes back half a meter. It takes only three mana for that part. I dig a three-centimetre deep channel across the center of the floor, put a water source in the smaller opening. I put a thing to absorb water if it goes over a third of the hole on the opposite side, and in the end, I have used a total of twenty mana, leaving me with ten mana. I swear to never put down a single tarantula in our dungeon, and look at my experience. I now have one-hundred-seventy-five experience points out of a required two hundred. At least that is going well for me.
James’ POV
A spider. Jessie freaked out because of a spider. She made a hole in the floor to drown the spider because she was scared of it, and her other traps wouldn't work. Now, after the fact she's built an ugly little water thing across the path to wipe out the smaller creatures. I sigh and decide to use my mana to pretty it up. I start by putting a nice floor in that corridor. I make the floor into tiled basalt, tiling it only for the purpose of better hiding her pressure plates. Which I also turned into basalt tiles. That takes a whole twenty of my forty-five mana. Twenty-five mana would probably get me one of the walls, or the roof. Which wouldn't work at all. So I choose to make the starts of a doorway at the front. I put in a lovely arch, and spots to attach hinges into. That might convince Jess to remove her water trap some point in the future. The door frame, an arch, takes a whole twenty mana, even before I could detail it. I put a little-carved message above that reads ‘Dungeon’, and with that, I'm completely out of mana yet again.