The fighting was still going on days later, and even if it had died down for the most part, I could still peak at snippets of brawls or the occasional stabbing from the entrance, but overall things had calmed down.

A success I’d say.

But our work wasn’t done, and Arthur was already cooking up some plans. From what he had shared, it was still in the works, but he’d need some monsters from me that could leave the dungeon. The answer though, wasn’t any of the existing ones from the first or even second floor, but instead from one I hadn’t thought much about since getting it.

I decided to use the hobgoblins.

They’re far from my best monsters, but their unique ability gave them a dangerous edge if used properly. What we had so far was that we would start drawing both their attention and each other away from the mountain. How this would happen is by using an apparently ‘overlooked’ hobgoblin nest that formed from the mana I‘m putting out.

But these wouldn’t be any regular hobgoblins though, no, these would be dangerous ones I cultivated on the fifth floor. I achieved this by creating a few of them without a node, a more expensive and less beneficial way of making monsters, but it worked for what I needed. And as they shambled out of the dungeon I could feel them march down and out of my ‘vision’. From there I could still ‘feel’ them but only faintly, the plan was to seed them a ways from the mountain and grow them enough to start putting pressure on those of the mountain.

The hope is to draw out the weaker members in the camps, letting my monsters drain their strength until the strong stood alone, unable to ask for help but came with the problem of their stronger members dealing with them before the monsters could grow big and strong enough. My idea was that we could go even a step further, something from Earth, a game or something I couldn’t remember, had a goblin-like character assassinating people left and right, I couldn’t remember the name but that was the idea I had. Additionally, I could do something similar to the young champions plan, the kids made amazing progress during the six months but they mainly only trained on my weakest and smallest level since getting booted out. If I were to train my own group of monsters that could leave the dungeon, I could do all sorts of things, not least of which would be assassination or theft.

And speaking of things, I found them, things that is to say. To be precise, it was one of my critter rats that found a shiny in some rubble, its limited intelligence said that it had found it in some rubble near the castle, surrounded by other knickknacks and garbage, and after having chef give it a treat, looked it over. It was a small, intricate thing, with lots of filigree and gilding, it was shaped like a key with a star pattern at the end. The reason I’d say it’s ‘key-shaped’ rather than just a key was cause it was far too small to be a key, and was equally too flat to be one either. Nothing about it seemed all that great, it was an attractive piece but that was about it, I couldn’t feel or see anything.

Perhaps a magic key? Something that needs some convoluted ritual?

Let’s try using the system.

[The Old Key]

The Old key that opens the Old Lock.

Well, that was helpful.

Sigh, still, I guess that does answer the question, more or less, guess I’ll have Bellona hold onto it for now.

Hm, what to do now?

It’s not that I have nothing to do, per se, it’s just that at the immediate moment, I’m essentially waiting for things to click into place.

Well, not entirely untrue, I can start working on [tinkering], it’s not something I’ve looked into yet.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Wandering down to the fifth floor I had my kobolds assemble some metal and parts from around the room.

[Tinker]!

Note: Verbal requests are unnecessary.

Yeah, but it’s more entertaining this way.

Form Type(s): Mound Primary Structure: N/P Secondary Structure: N/A Material(s): Bronze, Steel, Iron, Copper, Gold

Energy Provider: N/P

Energy Storage: N/P

Non-Essentials: Assorted Parts Device(s): N/P

Primary Movement: N/P

Primary Manipulator: N/P

Expected Result:

Wandering Rubbish.

That is… certainly something, mind telling me what all of this is?

Acknowledged

Form Type: The overall shape description of which the creation is formed.

Example: Humanoid, quadrupedal, Avian.

Material: The ingredients that compose the creation, the best for a particular purpose will be used.

Examples: gold for wiring, steel for chassis, and copper for thermal applications.

Devices: The list of already assembled devices being utilized.

Example: Excavation limb, Bladed Limb.

Primary Structure: The main structuring of the creation.

Example: Primarily humanoid, primarily quadrupedal.

Secondary Structure: The secondary structuring of the creation.

Example: Uses elements of the humanoid form.

Energy: The method by which the whole creation generates/stores power to function.

Example: Steam Power, Electricity

Non-Essentials: Additions that are not necessary to the creation's function.

Primary Movement: The method by which it moves:

Example: Legs, tentacles, treads.

Primary Manipulator: The method by which it interacts.

Example: arms, tentacles.

That’s quite a bit, but it was what I asked for.

From all of this, I’m assembling the machine’s parts and then putting them together, and whatever comes out is based on what I put in.

Neat, but first I wanna see it in action.

Pressing ‘yes’ on it, I saw many parts and sheets of different metals fly around in a mini tornado, eventually forming a round ball. It was a mashing of different pieces and parts, none of which seemed to be used properly, but it worked all the same. From there it just kinda, rolled around, occasionally bumping into a tree or rock.

Not the smartest of things, but I could hardly blame it, maybe it’ll clean up some of the rat piles, they are getting out of hand.

But, it did mark an exciting turn, while I could make monsters, I was limited to what I had available, and while I could buy more from the shop, I didn’t want to. With the ability to purposely make machines though, it gave me an incredible amount of freedom to work with. My only fear was that now I had such an incredible tool, my weird dungeon brain might go crazy if everything I was making wasn’t some hyper-optimized killing machine that occasionally serves coffee.

Messing around with it some more did however clear up some fears about it. As the system said, they don’t count the same as regular monsters and despite being of magical origin, acted similar to how something of its composition would work. Essentially, while some monsters like the clockworkers lacked any sort of ‘brain’ part, they could still move and do things as if they did. But that was not so for the tinker monsters, they could only do what the physical mechanics they were built with were capable of doing. For example, the rubbish walker I made was a rolling ball type thing, but it couldn’t do much else besides roll around randomly, it wasn’t patrolling, nor was it cleaning, it was just rolling around aimlessly. In contrast, a more complex one I designed called the ‘simple stomper’, a torso with legs that I attached something the system calls a ‘stomper command’, a small foot-shaped plate that slides into the torso. With this module, the walker could, if it encounters something, stomp it.

What this meant was that I could work around the limitations on what they could do but it would be a resource drain since the module used a few pieces of deep steel my rats swiped from the guards. It would mean that I needed a source of special materials, which I strictly already had in the form of Arthur, but the situation as it was, it would be difficult for him to devote time to such a thing.

For now, I’ll side-line tinkering, but I would still keep a few designs in mind, I did still have some deep steel left over, enough for two or three modules.

Perhaps I’ll mull over what I’ll make as I work on the hobgoblins?