Dungeon Life

Chapter Two-Hundred Seventy-Six

My ratkin and spiderkin enclaves have peeked in on the magmyrm as they work, but there’s not a whole lot of new progress to be had there yet. They haven’t progressed enough that I’m able to notice much in the way of physical changes yet, either. They’re still pretty low slung and have graspers more akin to scorpion claws than hands, though now that I look closer, I think they’re starting to get proper fingers and thumbs. They’re not super dexterous with them yet, but I know they’ll manage.

Which means I can take some time to get started with my forest of four seasons. I’m not going to buy the entire thing all at once. While I probably could, I don’t want to drain the ally pool like that. And I want to take a bit of time to set things up properly. I’m planning to go really big here, too. I think the footprint will be close to a square mile once I’m done, and if the tree works how I think it will, it’ll probably be close to a cubic mile of room, which is nuts.

The true upward expansion for the tree will probably come at or near the end. As with a lot of other expansions, a bit of prep work will make things a lot less expensive. I don’t need a mile-tall tree right this instant, so I can pay a bit of time to nurture one for the role. I might even use multiple trees and wind them together. From the outside, it’ll look like one huge tree, but if I can technically have it be four different ones, it’ll be easier to specialize them for their specific season.

I had considered having the seasons rotate around, but I’m ditching that idea now. I don’t want to have to keep moving spawners to stay in their season, and though I could use shortcuts to get the denizens where they need to go, it’ll just be more hassle that doesn’t accomplish anything but look cool. And… I mean it would look cool, but it’ll be too annoying to be worth it.

I plot out my first section for the forest of four seasons, which I’ll be splitting into thirds. I’ll have one wedge running along the cemetery wall and claiming a lot of the area just outside Fourdock, with the tip pointing out into the forest. I’ll also take a large circular area from the tip of the wedge, before extending out another wedge. The whole huge section looks like a two-blade propeller from a plane from above. The far section will be winter, with summer being the one closer to Fourdock. In the circular section, I’ll start growing the tree. But what kind of tree?

When planning out a huge tree, it’s easy to think of something like Yggdrysil, but I don’t think I want a world tree. For starters, I don’t think it’ll be big enough to hold worlds in the branches, nor would I want it to be, even if that was an option. For more mundane huge trees, a giant sequoia would certainly fit the bill, but they tend to grow straight and tall, where I want something that will be branching and kinda bushy. I want my delvers to have a chance to run around in the canopy, and a sequoia just won’t fit that.

Thankfully, magic should help bridge that gap. I think it’ll be much more feasible for me to take a bushy tree and scale it up, rather than try to make a sequoia have the kind of wide reach I want. Oaks and such are pretty bushy, but I feel like I can do better. I go through the different seeds I got from the Southwood, wondering if any of them would work for this.

Most of them are not for trees, and most of the ones that are, aren’t very inspiring. There are two that stand out, though: yew, and willow. They both have nice wide canopies that should be able to utilize the full space. The yew has great twisting branches that I can easily picture delvers running along, while the willow has the long drooping branches that remind me of vines. The drooping branches could be a great way to give access to the canopy without forcing everyone to use the main trunk.

The yew also grows slowly, while the willow is quick, and though the yew is an evergreen, the willow seems to like cold climates, and is one of the last trees to drop its leaves come winter, and the first to bloom in the spring.

So which to go with? Could I try twining them together? With the difference in growth rates, probably not. Can I make a hybrid? I’m pretty sure a suggestion like that would get me laughed at back on Earth, but with magic, maybe it can happen? The problem is that Coda and Queen have moved a bit away from just dealing in plants. But if they aren’t really cut out for that, who would be? I’ll probably need a new scion… but they also might not have to figure it all out on their own. Those two might have drifted away from tending plants, but Grim definitely enjoys a bit of gardening. I think making a hybrid would be beyond him, but he could definitely be a helping hand for a new scion to work with.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea. My Groundsreaper helping with the central tree in my Forest of Four Seasons just feels right. I can feel Grim’s curiosity as my intentions percolate through the bond, and though he probably doesn’t get the full picture just yet, he seems pretty interested with what he can get through the bond.

That’s good enough for me. I solidify my intended area in my mind and spend the mana for it, taking a good chunk from the ally pool as I do. The new area feels… fresh and clean, a brand new canvas to work with! My first order of business is to move the wolf spawner to the far section. It costs a little mana to move it, but nothing too bad. The stranded wolves in the cemetery jump the fence and make their way toward the far wedge, and I take a close look at the other two sections and consider what spawners I want to put in.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

While I definitely want foxes and bears from the Southwood, the summer and tree sections are practically begging for different things. Or it might just be all the shiny new options dazzling me. There are just so many cool things to choose from! I stop myself before I can get lost swimming through the options, and remind myself of my goals: big tree, dungeon crawl.

I’m definitely going to need some kind of life affinity scion to help with the tree. Sure, Grim has it, but he’s more about it being a balance or cycle. I think I’ll need one who’s all in on life for this to work out. Hmm… maybe even two who are all in on life. I have summer and the tree section, why settle for only one scion?

That doesn’t really help me narrow down the choices, though. So… what should be disqualified? I think I’ll start with eliminating all the other beast choices. I have a lot of beasts, and I’ll be getting two more with the foxes and bears. I don’t care how tempting the skunks are! Maybe if I expand somewhere beyond the forest eventually, but not for this. Second… I should reject the dragons. They’re even more tempting than the skunks, but the magma dragon spawner is a ridiculous mana hog! I don’t need another one that will happily drink in all my mana, even if they’re cool.

Elementals I won't fully cross off the list, but a lot of them are complete non-starters. Fate elementals sound cool, but I suspect that would be even more of a mana sink than dragons. Life elementals could be cool, or maybe water or wind, so I’ll keep them in mind. Primal spirits could be neat, especially if they’re aspected for life, too. There’s two other categories that are pretty hard to ignore, though.

First is the fey. I could get little bark pixies for a life affinity spawner, and if I don’t get dryads from that eventually, I’ll have to lodge a formal complaint with Order! The other major type I’m considering is plant. There’s a lot of interesting things, but I’m liking the living vines the most. They have a lot of options, seems like, and though I’m probably going to specialize the plants and fey for resources once they’re upgraded enough, I think they both have the versatility that I can give them combat specializations if I find I need to, once the time comes.

Yeah, I think fey and plants are the way to go. I set my fey spawner about in the center of the summer wedge, and the plant spawner just slightly offset from the center of the forest as a whole. I think my plants are going to want to stick close to the growing tree, at least for the foreseeable future.

And, of course, I spend the mana to make two new scions. The first one out is my new pixie scion, who has a lot less bark than the normal bark pixies. She and her brethren all flit around, curiously poking at everything they find, often breaking off into other groups to explore or play. The bark pixies look like tiny wood carvings with a flower on their head, instead of hair, and butterfly wings. My new scion, though, has more ordinary skin, with bark at her hands and feet, which also coils up her limbs to cover her indecency. Instead of a flower on her head, she has vines thin enough to look like grass, and innocent pink irises in her large eyes, and large pointed ears at the side of her head.

I watch her and the others flit around as I consider what to name her. Calling her Tink would just be asking for trouble, same with Puck or Mab. Man, most pixies are little terrors, come to think of it. Mine looks a lot more innocent, or she’s already a good actor. Considering I feel mostly joy and wonder through the bond, she’d have to be a really good actor. Are there any other good fey names I could pick, hopefully with less mischievous baggage? Well… yes. I’m a bit hesitant, after seeing Nova labor under the weight of her name, but I think she’s come into her own now and isn’t so worried about trying to live up to it. I’ll have to trust my pixie is just as strong.

Have fun playing for now, Titania. Grim will be by soon to help you and your sister with a major project I have. Don’t worry, I know you can handle it. I can feel a little uncertainty through the bond, but then she spots something and is off to explore before it can settle in. I smile and turn my attention to the other spawner, where my living vines are starting to spread out.

They’re really weird as they don’t seem to have normal roots. Instead, they burrow around like a mix of snake and mole, with little tendrils that seem just as good at climbing as digging. For now, most of them are climbing the nearby trees to get at the sunlight, but my vine scion herself is situated near the spawner, with only a little bud above the surface.

Already protective, hmm? I think you’ll like what I have planned, little one. I can feel happiness through the bond as her bud expands into what I think is a little orange poppy. A couple other potential names for her drift through my mind, but I think Poppy will fit her just fine. She also makes me very optimistic about the chances of making some kind of willow/yew hybrid. I’m pretty sure poppies are not grown on little vines.

I let my attention wander to check in on the wolves, and they all seem to be having a good time settling in, too. The winter wolves are relaxing their control over their ice mana, lowering the temperature already in the area. They won’t be enough to make the whole wedge feel truly wintery, but they’ll probably help out with the maintenance for the area after I get the climate control.

I sit back and take a few minutes to just watch my denizens and scions in the new expansion, all of them settling in in their own ways. Soon they’ll be busy as I put in resource nodes and get the interesting seeds planted, but for now, I let them just take everything in. The forest is nice and peaceful for now, and even though I intend to make it a good place for a dungeon crawl, I think I’ll have enough room here to keep some of that tranquility, too. It’ll be difficult to balance, but balance is a big part of the theme I’m going for. The cycle of seasons has a lot of change, but there’s also a sturdiness to the balance of it. It’s like a spinning top, where the balance looks delicate and precarious, but the constant motion is precisely why it’s so stable. All I’ll have to do is make sure I can keep it spinning.