It had slipped my mind but now looking at my core’s info I have amassed a fair bit of XP from the fight, and am now level 12, four levels from three people, well, three and a half levels. The group didn’t particularly strike me as “high tier”, but then again I never considered using discern on them in the heat of the moment. If they were high levels, however unlikely that seems, then what exactly is the difference in the power dynamic between people levels and dungeon levels? Hmm, I should also discern my two ants soon. I haven't checked either of them since before they had been bonded to me and I’m sure there have been some changes such as visible levels and such.
I turn my mind from the idle thoughts and decide to go shopping for attributes, but first I want to do a little experiment. And I need to blow some mana so I can have it refilled when I grab the next mana attribute level, of course that is a gamble on IF there is another level. Entering my mindspace I turn to the filing cabinet and open the second drawer, The bottom is wood, so I enter my avatar. I can’t enter or leave while in my avatar but it gives me a better estimate as to the size of things I’m creating compared to my physical body.
I reach inside and knock on it, a muffled, hollow echo sounds out so I push on it with a little force and it creaks, then snaps and falls away making me stumble forward. catching myself on the cabinet before my arm goes too deep, the part of my arm and entire hand inside the void is more of a mist than a solid arm and tingles slightly. When I pull it back my arm resolidifies and glows slightly but that fades rather quickly, I feel a small shiver run through me as the bottom of the drawer passes whatever invisible threshold causes the reaction and then I form a very large Lumen crystal that costs about nine points of mana, and is very bright, granted, the thing is about the size of my leg. I prop it over the opening and watch as it slides into the inky blackness. This time when it passes the shiver line I get a very strong feeling of ice being dragged through my spine and then shoved into my skull. I fall to my knees gasping for air with the worst brain freeze I have ever felt, definitely not sending anything bigger than a hand down the drawer void again.
Satisfied, if not still slightly reeling from the experience, I shut the drawer and stand, turning back to the resource shelves and empty space for crafting. I feel it's a little… lacking. I form a simple workbench with a wooden vice and a backboard to hang tools, under the forward lip I form a couple small drawers.
I know that I don't need any of the extra things like the vice and such, and will probably never use them. But actually fleshing out my workshop spends some mana and as an added benefit makes it more pleasing to the eye. I’m down to 57 mana, so I add yew flooring with a fox fur rug. Obviously, if it was from one fox as my rug would suggest, the thing would have had to be the size of a cow. But that’s just part of the perks of being a magical crystal I suppose. After making my workshop more aesthetically pleasing I begin working on actual things I can use outside my mindspace. 43 mana, I start with the shoddy little flashlight, It was particularly useful but could be better, I did make it on the fly and now that I can think straight I can refine it further in case I need it again.
I take it and make the lumen crystal a little bigger, more light wouldn’t hurt. I then form the ant chitin grip to fit my fingers better and remove the slit opening from the front, folding it backwards into a shallow cone and embedding a polished brass ring into the concave surface to reflect light forwards giving it a weak but directed focus. On the back end I make a metal cap I could use to bludgeon with if needed and form a small loop on its side where I thread a leather strap and tie it making a lanyard. To finish it off I make a shallow leather bag with a drawstring and tight copper bead to hold the drawn string from loosening. I fit it over the head of the flashlight, the rim of the bag only reaching the median where the taper of the cone meets the body of the grip and pulling the string closed I have effectively made a way to “turn off” my flashlight since there is no on-off switch.
31 mana, I think for a moment, and remove my knife from its sheath. Turning it over in my hand I try shaping the metal and adding the high carbon steel to my resource shelf, but nothing happens. Maybe I can't form parts of my kit from Earth? No, that doesn't seem right, I was able to change my uniform’s color patterns, I’ll leave it be for now I guess. Sheathing my knife, I pull a bar of iron off the shelf, an identical copy of it phasing away from the original, still laying in its spot as if nothing happened, and becoming solid as it drifts down onto the new workbench. I draw it out into a cylinder then flatten it making a long thin bar. Not able to think of anything to craft I walk over to the filing cabinet and grab the stone tablet I had placed on top of it that morning, It was a crafting to-do list and was rather short so I didn't feel it needed an entire drawer to itself, seeing as it was likely never going to get longer than a single tablet’s worth of space. skimming through the list I fill in the the beveled words 'flashlight upgrade' since I had just finished that one, returning it to smooth stone and continued reading.
Casual clothes
Metal cookware
Ranged weapons(s)
Ballistic gear (me)
Ballistic gear (ants)
Misc. loot items
I read and reread the list and, frankly, wasn’t sure what I could craft that would use up the majority of my mana but not send me into sleep. Ant armor was off the table, I didn't have a material light enough that they could wear and fly while still being protected, not to mention I wasn’t too sure what their proportions would be yet. In theory I could use Ant carapace for it, being light and durable, but there was something morbid about using the dead shells of their own species for armor that I disliked, it carried a macabre feeling, like marching into combat wearing human-skin boots and gloves.
Casual clothes wouldn’t take enough mana, metal cookware was going to be very, very expensive, even though I had metalworking-I it was still strenuous on my reserves and I wanted metalworking-II before I did anything too extensive, I guess the first level just allowed me to manipulate it at all. That leaves loot items, a ranged weapon, and ballistic gear, which seemed a little useless here for the most part, I just felt naked while fighting without some kind of armor, I suppose It would help against arrows and light melee strikes though. And possibly magic.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
I decide to go with a simple ranged weapon and if there is anything left I could create some basic loot to stuff my coffers with. Back at the bench, I begin compressing the bar; making it maybe a foot and a half long and then pull a block of oak, molding it into a body and stock. Next, I carve a channel into the top of the body to act as a rest and guide for the bolt and I seat the newly shaped crossbow limbs in front cutting away a U shape into it where said bolt will pass through and out of the crossbow. I hollow out a thin rectangle into the bottom of the stock where the trigger and sear will be housed, the mechanism itself is rather simple, the trigger is held in place by a pin for it to pivot on and the connection between the sear and the trigger is an angled hammer shape that rocks forwards as the trigger is pulled with a small iron leaf-spring to reset itself, the sear is just a meal rod connected to the trigger via another pin to allow a small pivot and a shallow loop at one end that's slotted around a bar inside the cam at the bottom, the cam itself holds the bowstring with a pair of lightly angled raised lips that dip into the frame when it rotates and prevent it from releasing without the trigger, then after firing the spring resets the trigger, sear and cam, ready to be strung again.
In theory, it should work, pulling the trigger with no bowstring and using my other hand to push on the cam from the top the whole contraption does as designed. The bowstring I made from Cardinals silk, I don't have many choices aside from sinew and hemp, but I don’t know how to process the sinew into usable material for bowstrings, and hemp just seems too weak, so silk it is, and it seems to work beautifully but I think the tension is a bit too tight for the limbs. I’ll adjust it later.
Next, I make a simple bolt, the Iron tip is the armor-piercing one from the medieval era on Earth, I can't remember what it's called, bonkin, bodkid, something like that, it starts with a ‘bo’ but that's all I can remember. In essence, it's just a drawn out practice tip with a sharp point and square edges instead of being circular about as long as my thumb, the shaft is yew, as it's a little lighter than oak and I'm hoping that will give it a flatter flight path, I don't have any feathers so I opt for paper thin leather half triangles that I fuse straight into the wood although they seem a little flimsy compared to what I've seen arrows and bolts on TV look like, finally I carve a simple nock into the back.
Leaving the mindspace with my new toys and a low mana pool I make my way outside in my avatar, the flashlight is dim but works like a charm, and the leather hood I use to block the light doesn't let any leak through when I want to stop using it. Out in the fresh afternoon breeze, I look up to see Onyx has made a fair bit of progress on his outdoor hive, although from down here it looks a bit like white cotton candy caught on a tree branch.
Returning my gaze to the actual tree line, I pull the string back on my new crossbow, and just before I can lock the string, the right limb snaps sending a very angry piece of metal into the side of my head. I can feel it as the jagged, somewhat sharp limb pierces my temple and I keel over onto the dirt and budding grass, my body dies. Now in my ethereal form floating in my sanctum immediately afterward, I am utterly dumbfounded at what just happened. Turns out, I can watch my death unfold in my mind, in slow motion if I want to, presumably help me learn what happened and prevent dying in the same manner. rushing back outside I find my body disintegrating into dust, Onyx is standing there looking very worried with one of the larvae in his jaws chittering happily to be getting a field trip outside. He must have heard the metal snap, as it wasn’t exactly quiet, and came to investigate.
“Don’t worry, I’m alright” I say to him as he notices my presence.
“What happened my lord? I don't sense any intruders.”
“No, no intruders, just... good initiative, bad judgment," I say with a sigh. "I made a very poor miscalculation in my abilities to make a crossbow.” He seems to consider this and then turns in my direction.
“How?” is all he said, and to my great chagrin I told him what had happened. He once again considers my words.
“Why not create one of your metal weapons that spit thunder and fire?” Honestly, the thought had crossed my mind early on, but without metal or a source of propellant, as well as not liking the idea of a granite gun, I promptly forgot about it, but now...
“Perhaps on my next attempt.” I say trying not to allude to him that I'm definitely going to take his idea and run with it.
“That would suit you better than a crude stick thrower, I think.” Onyx says as he flutters his wings, shooting off into the air, towards his pet project, the grubb in his jaws chittering loudly.
“Yes, yes it would.” I finally say to myself as I watch him land on a branch above. I head back inside, but not before grabbing the strange orange gem lying where my body once was and the flashlight that was in my pocket but didn’t dissolve with me. I left the now defunct crossbow to rot under the sun as I had some very strong feelings towards it at the moment, and was not about to waste the five seconds to dissolve it sheerly out of spite. Back in my sanctum, mana dwindling dangerously low from telekinetically dragging the softball sized gem and flashlight all the way back, I hung the light on my tool rack and focused my attention on the crystal. The gem is shaped like a twenty sided die, a dodeca-something-or-other. It’s translucent and the edges are a solid glowing orange, Inside is a swirling sphere of mana mist. “Discern.” I say looking at the gem.
“Engram, uncommon, level 12. This is an Engram, a mana infused construct of unstable matter, Engram’s are dropped by dungeon avatars and named creatures after death, regardless of cause. The level of an engram is tied to the level of what dropped it and its quality is tied to the length of time the creature was alive since it last dropped an engram, once dropped the engram needs to be opened within 24 hours as the engram will dissolve once the dungeon avatar or Named creature respawns. Once opened the mana held within will manifest into an object of value or piece of equipment equal to the quality of the engram, the level will determine the quality of miscellaneous embellishments or traits held by the manifested object. The object will always be influenced by the dungeon avatar or named creature in some way, being of some significance to their character or will. If the engram is not opened before the avatar or creature respawns the quality timer will resume where it had stopped before the drop occurred.”
“Now that’s interesting.” I muse in my outer thoughts, It doesn’t say anything about me not being able to open it myself, but then again, from what I've gathered every other dungeon has been some kind of animal, what's to stop me from just offing myself and getting powerful gear? Other than the psychological factor I suppose, hmm. a shudder runs through me as I shake the thought away. That was quite the morbid line of thinking, and I decide to let my engram run its twenty-four hour timer on my desk and keep building in quality, what's more important, is that now I know I will respawn, and so will my ants, which is a relief.
The main reason I told them to stay back in Cardinals chambers last time was that I didn’t want them getting hurt, and I suppose I still don’t. Cardinal is like a little sister at this point, which would make Onyx my brother-inlaw? Even weirder is that it makes the grubs my nieces and nephews. Another shudder passes through me. Yeah… I'm going to just ignore that little line of thoughts for now. I think Idly as I use discern on my core
Level 12 Unnamed Rare Dungeon Core — Aspects: Terra II, Ignis I, Vitas II, Mors I, — Mana Volume: 6 of 75 Mana Density: 50 of 100 — Attribute Aether: 7 Attributes: Avatar Form I, Mana I, Metalworking I, Gem Crafting I, Alchemy I — Bonded Creatures: 86, Named Creatures 2 I have no mana and seven points, I feel a spending spree coming