Dragonheart Core

Chapter 28: A First, Again

I'd finished evolving my creatures, choosing my schema. Repairing my walls, healing my creatures, settling the water level. All the standard steps I always completed when I was invading, perhaps with a touch more repairing than typical, and now I should have started on figuring out what I'd make with my fourth floor.

Instead, I had settled a point of awareness over my third floor and was merely watching the empty water.

Empty, because it definitely was—only a few brave silverheads were swimming around, free to nibble at the algae without worrying about being killed by a silvertooth hungry for a meal; because there were none of them. My one surviving armourback sturgeon had fled back to the comfortable canals of the second floor, Seros had stayed curled around his evolving kobold, the greater crab was still hunting for a nest for her eggs, nursing her missing claw. They'd nearly not made it.

If I wanted them to actually survive this, I couldn't just rebuild. I'd have to remake.

Two people had escaped from my halls, making their way out into the wider world where Calarata could properly learn of my existence and come out to squash me like the bug I'd so well proven myself to be. Gods.

It'd been easy to handwave away my weaker floors, brimming with pride as I was about my mangrove canals and the underground lake; but I was a dungeon. Most races didn't see me as an oasis from the Otherworld, a saving grace to Aiqith bringing all manners of new mana in to heal the world from the scars of mages. They saw me as a battery. I didn't have the luxury of only building powerful levels when I felt like it. Invaders would murder me whether or not I took my time to make sure every plant and creature was arranged in an aesthetic pattern.

The thought was painfully harrowing. How many wake-up calls could I afford to keep waiting for? The original attack had told me to start actually acting like a dungeon, the second reminding me to dig deeper, and now this one telling me that I was a fucking idiot who had been so determined to stay alive by not defending myself. Gods.

I kept the melancholic points of awareness above the third floor, some sort of reminder, and dove to the corpses of the merrows. With their deaths and souls I had almost full mana, and I was saving dissolving their bodies until I could actually use the mana I'd gain from that. But they did have other things I could take from them.

All the merrow held various weapons, and I nipped and dug into the metal that made up their blades; most of what I already knew but with the addition of some… crystalized sand-based metals? I didn't fully understand how it was made but as I dissolved through its core, I could pick up faint memories of gathering sand from the sea floor, wrapping the particles in boiling water, and shaping the molten glass alongside a mixture of bits of iron. Impervious to rust, unable to dull, but prone to shattering. Interesting. I saved the metal for further study.

Unfortunately, no merrow wore clothing beyond sheaths, so no further schemas for me—with the notable exception of the Priestess.

She had been bound up in all manners of jewels and artifacts, ones I hadn't yet had the pleasure in obtaining; diamonds and sapphires and rubies, carved in all manner of pleasing shapes and half-bursting with mana. Used as some sort of mana battery, I could guess—I gave a mental frown and poked around some aquamarine, the pale blue of its surface flickering faintly with leftover ice. She'd used this mana for her freezing spell, and… I searched and managed to find a garnet on one of the strands Seros had ripped free across the room, also empty but with a lingering warmth. This for her fire spell.

Gems stored mana, I knew that—but could I use that? Something to keep me from worrying about invaders stealing all my ambient power whenever they used spells? And storing specific types of mana as well; a trap I could leave maybe, building patches of citrine into the wall just waiting to explode into lightning the second they were mined.

But the Priestess had another prize. Some sort of a mark of pride, easily over a dozen on her body; little strands of fossilized kelp.

This time, I wouldn't let it take three days.

I felt my Resurrector title flare to life as I reached out, digging little needles of mana into the white strands. A point, three; the fossil shivered once, twice, and unfurled back to life.

Bloodline Kelp (Uncommon)

It grows in massive forests that have no limit, with every strand connected by a greater awareness. Endlessly it grows, searching to overtake the oceans it exists in, and the forest never forgets those who attack it.

It was a beautiful amber-gold, with long, flowing fronds like willow leaves and a thick stem studded with gas bladders to help it float. Not the deep emerald green variant I was used to in the open ocean, but I imagined they were similar, able to grow to impossible heights and form an underwater forest of mystery. If I could gather a few polyps from the outside cove, I could stitch them all together to form a proper coral reef for my fourth floor, full of mystical colours and hidden predators–

No.

I gritted metaphorical teeth and let the idea slide away, releasing my hold on the kelp. It drifted away, grasping in vain for any sort of ground, but I had the schema. I'd help it adapt to its new life later.

For now, I turned my attention to the first floor.

After days spent on my third, this one felt properly cramped, barely three hundred feet long and half that wide.

More creatures for later, but now I needed to make sure that the floor holding them would actually be worth it. I sat there, spreading my points of awareness around; where to start from? If I was an invader, where would I go?

Well. I created a pair of points of awareness and glued them together in the style of primitive eyes, floated them a few feet above the ground, shoved them towards the cove entrance, and looked out upon my floor like an invader would.

It was beautiful. I purred.

But it was straight forward; literally, in the sense of what they had to do. I could see directly to where I needed to go, the pale algae-light illuminating my path like a rolled-out red carpet. There were no blockades, no secret passages or tunnels beyond dens, just forward with a quick hop over my rock pond before they were at the tunnel down to the next floor. Not particularly dungeon material.

I wrenched up a slope of stone, tugging up the entrance so there was a sharp decline right when they entered—although I didn't raise the actual tunnel. Let them crouch when they entered. I'd take pleasure in making it as uncomfortable as possible while still letting wild creatures wander in.

Actually—I swiveled my points of awareness up, as if standing up after being crouched; they'd pick their way down the main entrance, avoiding a bunch of jagged stalagmites and sudden drops to avoid stabbing themselves, but I'd love if I could get them to look up. All the better to trip them with.

And the Priestess had been kind enough to bring me not only jewels, but coins.

I tugged down a stalactite, large enough to sprawl in front of both entrances; basic silver-flecked limestone beneath, but I ringed it with great loops of gold ore and clusters of crystalized diamonds. Gods if creating diamonds didn't take an exorbitant amount of mana—I kept shaping more until it looked like a proper chandelier, faintly glowing in the green algae I shaped around its base to reflect up onto the precious materials.

And then, right as they would presumably pause to stare at the unfathomable riches overhead, I carved out a six foot deep pocket in the stone and filled it with jagged spikes of iron. No protective layer of stone that could potentially hold if someone light enough stepped on it; I pulled up a patch of billowing moss instead, rooting it deep into the surrounding dirt so that its gently waving feelers extended over the hole, hiding it from view. A proper little spike trap. I created a mirrored one in front of the entrance deeper into the mountain. And then, around their metaphorical ankles, I spun dozens of dens into the stone of the incline and surrounding bottom. Anything to keep them from leaving like those before.

Alright, so if my faux invader both managed to get down the incline and avoided the pitfall, what next? I angled my points of awareness back at the floor.

A perfect straight line to the tunnel down. There was a reason I was trying to fix this.

I didn't have enough time nor mana to fully expand my first floor, although the thought definitely lurked in my mind—instead I just grabbed a stalactite and stalagmite roughly in the middle on the path and tugged them both down, spooking the poor cave spider who'd been using it as a nest as I wove the two around each other into a perfect pillar. Not enough to really stop any invaders, but hopefully enough to make them pause and think about where to go—I flew to each of the side walls and carved dark pockets with subtle hints of going down, extending deep like tunnels. Hopefully any invaders would be foolish enough to mistake them for the exit; I worked a little more magic and conjured up soft beds of algae and a trickle of water. Perfect dens.

Now they'd walk forward, unsure of which direction to go. I left the ground around the main pillar relatively clear, the better for them to let down their guard, and wove more veins of gold into its silver-flecked surface. Maybe they'd pause and start mining, and my creatures would happily correct that mistake.

But the smart ones would continue forward and find one final obstacle in the rock pond. I paused. It was maybe four feet deep and ten across, enough for a few silverheads to nibble on algae scraps and keep a population surviving. Only enough to make invaders have to rub their two brain cells together to remember how to jump.

No longer. I dug my mana into the surrounding stone and ripped it to dust, expanding it into a sprawling mess easily thirty feet across and ten deep. Water gurgled and sloshed as it was merrily reduced from a placid pond to a lump of a puddle, the algae wall spilling droplets to help it rise back up. I could wait. The silverheads, the great bloody cowards who hadn't mustered the courage to go to the second floor, abruptly disappeared into their one tunnel den in fear. At least they were consistent.

Though it would probably erode before too long, I tugged up limestone spikes at the bottom of the pond, as sharp as I could make them. Something to regret for those that tried to just walk across.

But I was able to look out and see a newly remade floor.

Time for creatures.

I woke the various survivors, mostly stone-backed toads and burrowing rats, alongside the dozens of webs spanning over the ceiling. The cave spiders could continue as they had. It pained me but I couldn't think of anything different to do with them; even with the webweavers having some sort of liminal connection with them, they were just too small with too weak of venom to do anything at the moment. I asked them to spin more webs, to fill the ceiling with endless silk and strands, and hoped that would be enough.

The stone-backed toads; nothing for the moment, being the apathetic little bastards they were, but the ironback toad would be their inspiration. He was still sitting his ass in front of a burrowing rat den on the second floor but I'd get him up here soon enough, ready to lead all his little brethren into becoming proper dangers in my dungeon hall. Their earthen mana was perfect for deflecting blades; I just needed them to know that.

Luminous constrictors were honestly doing a flawless job. In nearly every kill of my halls so far they had been involved, and their evolutions were only growing; I carved them more dens around the entrance and veins of precious metals, but let them be. They worked best when they stayed hidden to the shadows, striking only when their enemy didn't expect it, and they were very adept at that.

As for the rats, well. Maybe their digging ability could help them make their way past invaders armour, or they could serve as frontal attacks like the one kobold thought—but instead, I focused on their other trait. That of being vermin.

The merrow memories didn't exactly tell me anything of them, but Calarata natives had plenty to share; rats were inescapable monsters who stole anything they could get their claws on, ripped apart bedding and housing, contaminated food and supplies. The sight of them invoked a stronger reaction than most monsters.

So I would have them be vermin here, too.

Their twin-split tails were perfect for sensing approaching foes, and their large ears and nose only helped them more. So they could figure out when to attack, when to run away, and when to steal.

I shifted the surviving population to one spot of the floor, soothing the surrounding luminous constrictors to look the other way while their favourite prey meandered past their noses. They curled up, squeaking and trembling out in the open, but watched with ready eyes as I made a little lump of sapphire bloom from the stone.

Then I released my hold on them and waited.

Nothing happened at first, not that I'd expected it. They were still shaking off the fear of being prey. But one rat, whose eyes had gleamed the second I'd set the gem in front of him, inched forward. No one moved to stop him. He picked up the gem in his front teeth, glanced around, and scurried back to the group.

He didn't move quite fast enough to stop me from stabbing him with nearly a full point of mana.

Most of it went to waste as usual, filtering away in little explosions of power; but that was the point. Every other rat felt the mana go into him, saw him stiffen as more power than his little ratty mind had ever felt infused through him, the gem in his teeth flashing.

And suddenly they were hungry, too.

I used nine full points to create various gem nodes around the first floor, the larger tucked away in difficult places or even buried in the ground so the rats would have to live up to their burrowing name. Gems, moreso than any other substance, absorbed ambient mana like a sponge; they'd sit there and grow fat while the rats collected them. The rats would get some mana out of the deal, enough to excite them to keep collecting, and I would build an army of mana batteries that I could use whenever invaders tried their damnedest to steal my power.

And for any invaders who came in foolish enough to bear gems, well.

My rats would enjoy themselves.

Life scurried back over the first floor, darting every which way as they relished in the new jobs I'd given them; toads harrumphed and bitched about the new movement disturbing their precious lacecaps but I did see them pause at watching the burrowing rats move so freely. They were both the bottom of the barrel on the first floor and seeing their fellow prey abandon the cover of the dens to search for something was interesting. A few even poked their own heads out of their dens.

The luminous constrictors, as always, were there to punish the most foolhardy.

And then I really sat back and thought about it.

I'd created two twin dens on either side of the floor, what should have been just decoys for the real exit; but then I'd layered algae beds and dug through so that a thin trickle of water from the river pooled at the bottom. Dens of the highest accord, far too large for any creature already present.

But not for a bear.

It hurt, it really did. I wanted him to come back, to prove he was still alive and ready to laze about and eat whitecaps all day, but I needed defenders. I couldn't afford to wait around and be passive any longer.

So, with the last scraps of mana I'd gotten from the merrow attack, I wove together two juvenile lunar cave bears, one in each den.

They blinked to life, shaking their enormous, shaggy-furred heads and yawning their ivory fangs; the female, smaller than the male, poked her nose out of her den to survey her new territory with lazy eyes.

That laziness disappeared when she looked across the way and saw an identical face looking upon what he thought was his new territory.

They both narrowed their eyes.

The floor wasn't fully large enough for the both of them, but if they were anything like my previous denizen, they mostly just needed food enough to eat and a place to curl up in. It took almost no energy to grow mushrooms on my part and I would keep the whitecap population up, plenty to feed them.

Although mushrooms couldn't scream, I imagine they did at seeing their oldest enemy come back to life.

As for the carnivorous part of their diet, most of the creatures on the floor were too small. I would leave it up to the invaders to serve as that meal. And I wouldn't coddle them, like I had the one before; these would grow in a rivalry, fighting each other as they both learned combat. They wouldn't be caught unawares like last time. I imagined he hadn't known how to fight because he was still a juvenile, young and unafraid of the world around them—not this time. Gods, I'd drag Seros up just to teach them to fight. I wouldn't lose these as easily.

My newly remade first floor rumbled to life. I still needed to do more, increasing its size and coming up with more ways to prevent invaders from merrily skipping their way back outside whenever they felt like it, but it was success enough for now.

My other floors were next.