by Matthew Peed
I nodded in satisfaction, then did the same inspection of the valley town. There were over seven thousand people now, and I wanted them all recorded in my mental systems. It wasn’t too hard. In fact, it seemed to be built into my nature as a dungeon, probably as a method to remember challengers who managed to delve too close to my core. My own personal nature just took it to another level by using it this way.
I noticed that the gold situation was getting out of hand. I had a tendency to use currency to reward adventurers because I felt any gear I made would be toward the powerful side and I really didn’t want that turned against me. I looked through the market, checking the going rate for things, and saw that the cost of living had gone up some.
I thought for a moment, then moved over to the casino to begin my adjustments. First, I changed the rates so that people didn’t win as often. When I’d set the casino up, I was pretty liberal on my rates, as I wanted to attract more people to the valley. Nobles, being my target, tended to be guarded by higher-tier people, and I wanted to get those people there. It was planned as a long-term project, but if every farmer who came there made it big, then it defeated the purpose.
Going through the dungeon next, I changed what the monsters dropped or what my traps were worth. The Greed trap, for one, was changed to less valuable silver coins, but I left the armor and weapons, only tweaking their worth. I left the boss rewards alone, as my bosses were over the top. I could see it in every adventurers’ eyes when they saw the bosses for the first time.
I couldn’t alter the mining floors without destroying the floor. It had something to do with the Create Mineral spell I’d used from the world. I wasn’t too worried about those floors anyway, as I didn’t want to stymie anyone from accessing materials to further their craft. Finally, I raised the cost of a few of the services I offered for gold near the dungeon. Mainly the restaurant, as I wasn’t charging anywhere near the real value of the food served there.
By the time I finished going through everything, my fleet had finally reached the next dryad. This time the tree was even bigger at nearly two hundred and fifty meters. I was surprised that nothing attempted to slow us down while we traveled to the location, but I figured I would find out when the battle started.
Chapter 22
Louella
I was sitting in my office. Tiny arcs of lightning flickered across my skin as I concentrated on my mana. Gulv rested around my neck at the moment, having disappeared for a while, making me worry about him. Now he acted like nothing had happened. I really didn’t have control over the little guy.
I would have liked it if he’d have stayed near me. I didn’t want to have to worry about some adventurer getting any funny ideas. Though, I probably didn’t have anything to worry about. Gulv was likely a match for most of the adventurers in the town. I shook my head. I needed to be able to protect myself anyway, not rely on help.
He appeared to be enjoying the few sparks that hit him every so often. I was trying to get to the level of maintaining it passively, but it was harder than I anticipated. Every time I felt I was close, I found some way to improve the spell, my mind almost coming up with the ideas before I thought them through. It was strange and made me feel I wasn’t fully in control sometimes.
At first, I planned to only maintain the current over my skin, but soon found that the clothes Regan had made for me basically negated the effect. From there I worked to make it more of an aura, but that ended in failure as well. A guard came in to report something, and the metal of his armor caused the lightning to strike him. Thankfully, he was alright. Most of the guards possessed armor made by Regan’s dungeon, which contained enchantments to reduce damage.
Next, I worked on a more focused spell that would attack obvious enemies. This was almost equally hard, as the spell relied on me to identify the target as an enemy. The problem being: there was still a delay before the spell could do its work. I just wasn’t sure how to address this problem.
I had even gone to Regan’s library to see if there was a book on rune-working. Fortunately, there was, and I was glad it existed. Only premium members, or people who had reached the fortieth floor in Regan’s trials, could access it, but the librarian made an exception for me. I hoped Regan wouldn’t be upset. It helped but it was mostly over my level. I was working my way through it, but it was going to be a while before I mastered it.
I moved my hand to pet Gulv. I always found this enthralling because of the energy that would flow back and forth between us. It was a very soothing experience and quickly becoming one of my top stress relievers. Plus, he had a unique texture, almost like fur.
“I bet you could watch my back without any problems,” I said, tapping his head. He playfully nibbled my finger in reply. That’s when I got an idea.
“Gulv, you don’t think one of your siblings would mind being part of my spell?” I asked with a smile, not really expecting an answer.
Gulv turned his head away from me, then opened his mouth. A small wave-like blast of electricity shot from his mouth, then traveled through the room until it collided with the wall. A few spots of light appeared floating through the room, then flew over to Gulv and circled his head. What looked like a silent conversation took place next.
The whole time I had to resist gaping at the occurrence. I’d never witnessed anything like it before, though I had only been at the Mages Academy for a few weeks before fleeing to Thonaca. Finally, Gulv finished his conversation, and one of the lights floated forward past the others. Gulv turned back to me, then used his tail to push the little light forward and nodded at me.
“Well . . . that was interesting, Gulv. Any more tricks I don’t know about?” I asked.
Gulv yawned, then returned to coiling around my neck.
“Fair enough,” I said, rubbing his head. I turned to the little mote of light that was still floating in front of me. I figured if Gulv was smart enough to understand me, then this sprite most likely was as well. “I’m going to create a spell that will have several functions—protect, attack, and move to name a few, if I can get it to work. I would like you to be the centerpiece of the spell to help control it.” If there was a mind behind the spell, then it could potentially grow in the future. The memory of Feuer popped into my head.
The mote of light just bobbed in the air. I would just have to hope it worked. This was a level of magic I’d never attempted before, but everyone needed to start somewhere. I concentrated on the structure of the spell as the matrix formed in front of me. I formed the runes I understood and some that had been explained only vaguely. I had a suspicion that Regan had been vague on purpose, and could only hope they worked the way I needed them to. A sphere of magic energy with lightning arcing from it formed in the air in front of me.
“All up to you, little guy,” I said to the floating mote.
It bobbed once, then moved forward into the sphere of energy. The sphere grew as more energy flooded into it from the ambient mana nearby. The sphere reached a massive size of nearly two meters in diameter before it stopped growing. A ring of mana formed around the sphere, then it started to condense. Another ring formed around the sphere that eclipsed the first ring and rotated around the sphere with the other.
Finally, the sphere was barely the size of a hand with the two rings of energy pulsing around it. It stopped condensing and floated to a spot over my head. I looked at it curiously and found that it stayed where it hovered. I stepped a few meters to the side, and it followed me. It sank a bit in the air and was only a few centimeters above my head. I concentrated, sending the image of it moving around my body, and it circled as I pictured it. I moved it in front of Gulv, and he hissed silently at it before turning his head away.
“Hey, this was your idea,” I said with a snicker.
The spell construct remained active no matter what I did, but if I wasn’t actively controlling it, the Helios, as I decided to call it, would always return to hover above my head. Now I just needed a way to test it. I could head to
Regan’s dungeon. I believed Izora was diving like crazy at the time. She wholeheartedly believed that Regan was a god, and I was inclined to agree with her at times. I just needed a little more proof, but it wouldn’t be the first time a mortal being had become a god. He was just so annoying that I didn’t know if I could stand it.
I moved over to the side wall where a crystal stood on a desk. It was a message crystal Regan had made for places in the town, its design based on a crystal he’d examined from Izora. It allowed me to connect to another crystal in town and talk to the person on the other side. I drew a rune that was Izora’s name on the surface of the crystal, then channeled some mana into the device. A moment later, Izora’s face appeared over the crystal.
“Louella, good day. What can I do for you today?” she said after the link was stable.
“I was wondering how far into the dungeon you are, and if I could tag along if possible?”
“We are on the fourteenth floor as of this morning,” Izora said with a wide grin. “We should be hitting the boss room later this afternoon. We could always use another powerful mage with us.”
“Excellent, I have a new spell I just finished, and I wanted to test it. Plus, I have to get used to my increased power somehow,” I said with a frustrated smile. I still found myself flashing across the room if I wasn’t careful. While it might appear to be a benefit, I knew that if I couldn’t control my strength, I might be a danger to those around me.
“We all have to start somewhere, and what better place than the trials that Lord Regan assembled for us?” Izora asked with a hint of zeal in her voice.
“True. When are you heading back in?” I asked quickly.
“In an hour. Some of the guards had their weapons broken. That’s why we were out right now,” Izora said, glancing at something in the background.
“Alright, I’ll be there,” I said and looked at the clock on my wall. This was good. No time like the present to get to work.
“Alright, I’ll wait for you at the entrance, then.” Izora’s image went away as the device on her end was turned off.
I was about to head out when I realized I didn’t have any weapons to use. When the horde had attacked, I’d incinerated the guns Regan had made for me when I went full lightning elemental. I could go in with just my magic. I was sure that I could channel more than enough for anything I fought in there, but Regan’s bosses weren’t something you fought without a weapon. I was confident in my new spell, but I preferred not to test it to that level on my first dive.
I stared at the Helios for a minute while I thought about the problem. I could ask Regan, but I felt like I should try something on my own before resorting to that. Plus, he appeared busy with his current task. I put my head in my hands as I thought about what to do. All I could do was sigh. Gulv suddenly jumped off my shoulders as he made for the window. I followed him and saw Feuer outside the window, floating as if waiting for him. I opened the window for him, and Gulv did a silent chirp before they shot off into the distance.
“See you later, I guess!” I called after him. I told him he was free to do whatever he wanted. I had no choice but to accept being his rest stop. Closing the window, I prepared to leave my office when I saw a pile of mana stones that some of the adventurers had used to pay their bills.
I reached over and picked one up and was struck with inspiration as I stared at it. I wanted to see if I could do the same thing Regan had done to make Feuer. I wasn’t worried if it didn’t gain sentience, but it would be a good conductor of my mana, being made from mana stones and my own personal mana.
I looked at the clock and I saw I might be pushing it, but if I explained to Izora why I was late when I arrived, it should be fine. I ran back to my desk and grabbed a sheet of paper and a quill so that I could draw it out. Glancing at Helios above me, I decided to model it around that. I tried to keep it simple, but I still ended up going a little overboard with it.
The top had four clawlike crescents that Helios would float between. From there the four crescents connected into circle that angled down into the staff. I had enough mana stones to make the staff quite dense. I imagined lightning designs to mark the surface of the staff. It would match my own markings nicely. Finally, the staff ended in a point that could easily stab through armor or thick hide if it came to close combat. I figured I’d likely have to get it sharpened later, but it would more than work as a staff for the time being.
Now came the hard part. I’d only seen Regan do it once, but I felt it was straightforward. I started by channeling my mana into the first stone. It filled up much faster than I anticipated, and the stone started to glow a little too brightly. That was the sign that I should have stopped, because a moment later the stone exploded and vaporized.
“Little girl! Are you being attacked?!” Wrakras shouted as he rushed into the room a few moments later.
“No,” I said, coughing from the smoke. “Just a test that went wrong.”
“That’s good. I don’t think Master would be too happy to have to deal with an attack twice in the same week,” Wrakras said, rubbing the back of his head. He turned and walked back out into the hall. “Ugh, I could go for some food right now.”
I picked up another mana stone, then began channeling my mana into it. This time I stopped when it was shining brightly. I did this to all the stones I had because I wasn’t sure how much it would take. Even after filling nearly three dozen mana stones, I still felt like there was plenty of mana in my pool. The pile of glowing mana stones made the room quite bright.
I laid the stones out in the pattern I wanted for the staff, then considered how to go about the next step. Regan had liquified the stones somehow using his dungeon abilities. I needed to find a way to get around that, preferably without them exploding. I thought about how Lightning spells could be several times hotter than some of the most powerful Fire spells. I just needed something to use as the anchor for my spell to attract the lightning through the mana stones.
I checked the pile of stuff used by townspeople as payment and found several ingots of metal, but nothing ever really struck me as right. I did find an ingot of silver and was about to use that when I found a small sliver of mithril that was barely the size of my thumb. I decided to use that for the tip with the silver around it.
Moving to the end of the pattern, I began to channel mana into my spell. Just to be sure, I added magnetics to it to keep all the energy of the mana stones contained. I focused on the mithril, then released my spell. The energy flowed through the mana stones and collided with the mithril and silver. Everything turned a bright blue white before the light seemed to vanish. It was good I’d added the attraction force, as it allowed the liquified stones to flow together.
Suddenly, I was blasted backward, but Helios saved me by causing my movement to stop. The staff started floating in the air as the floor around it caught fire. The liquified stone and metal stopped flowing and hardened into the staff. I grimaced, realizing I should have done this outside. Arcs of lightning started flashing between anything metal in the room, and me, but it didn’t really bother me.
“What did you do n—” Wrakras shouted as he ran through the door, but he was blasted back out into the hallway by a massive bolt of lightning.
“Sorry!” I yelled out after him, but I was sure he was alright.
I looked back to the staff, then walked over to it and grabbed it. All the arcs of lightning began striking me rapidly. The staff seemed to be resisting me, but I moved Helios into the spot I’d planned for it, and the aura coming from the staff reached another level as the lightning gained strength.
“Calm down!” I yelled, then formed my mana pool into a whirlpool. I forced all the lightning into the whirlpool, then almost five minutes went by before the lightning calmed down. I wasn’t sure if it was running out of mana or just accepting that I was its better, but it finally stopped resisting me. “That’s better.”
I waited a moment but didn’t get a reply, like Ezal said she g
ets from Feuer. I took a moment to admire the new weapon. It had come out like I’d designed, with a blue-white surface. It was a tad bigger than I expected, but that only added to its might. I was just short of two meters tall, and the staff was taller than me from where it stood planted on the ground, which put it around two hundred and nine or so centimeters.
I walked out into the hall and found Wrakras embedded in the wall with a few of the other guards standing around him. One was trying to use his spear to pry him out, as he didn’t seem to be conscious. His body was smoking from multiple places, but he was still breathing.
It looked like his barrier had activated at just the last moment to reduce the damage, but I was happy to see that I could get through it if I tried. Wrakras was growing on me, but there were plenty of other necromancers out there that needed a good cooking.
“Wrakras! You still alive?” I asked when I neared him.
He opened his eyes and looked around him. “Technically?” he asked sarcastically. “Girl, I’m going to have to ask the master to put me somewhere else if you keep using me like this,” he complained as he broke out of the wall without much effort.
“I can’t have that! If you leave, I have to deal with Julie,” I said with real panic. I much preferred him to the psychotic woman.
“You’re not paying me enough, then,” he retorted.
“I thought Regan was paying you . . . by not blowing your head off or something?” I grinned.
Wrakras frowned and said, “That’s between the master and me.”
“Mistress, would you like us to hire someone from the guild to repair this?” one of the guards asked from next to Wrakras.
“No, it should fix itself soon, just leave it,” I said with a shrug.
“Yes, ma’am!” The guard saluted, then walked back to his post a little farther down the hall.
