Jeeves nodded and lifted a small rock from the ground to reveal the entrance to his tunnel. He smiled before sliding into the tunnel and covering its entrance back up behind him.
I spoil him, Breck thought as he returned his attention to his entrance. A tall man in robes was stroking the venomous opening. Hehe. Never touch another man’s stone, it could be deadly. As the sword wielder reached out to touch the entrance, the robed man grabbed his arm to stop him. “You can’t do that! That’s cheating!”
“What’s wrong, Sir? I don’t see anyone.”
“One of them figured out my venom trap in the entrance. Now they’re arguing about whether or not to come inside. They’re talking about a quest to search me? Do you think the last adventuring group created a quest to delve my depths?” Breck asked as the adventurers entered the first room.
Jeeves shrugged. “I’m not sure. I don’t know how quests work in this world. It looks like they’re starting the fight,” Jeeves responded from his hide-out.
The pair of them watched the duo adventurers clear the first room with ease. After clearing the beetles, they continued down the hall and, to the great annoyance of Breck, easily discovered and dodged his traps. Before they entered the spider’s den, they stopped, and the debating continued.
“Just go in!” Breck screamed in futile protest. He had no mouth or vocal cords and thus no way to be heard.
Jeeves shook his head. “Sir. You know they can’t hear you, right?”
“I know Jeeves… But they destroyed my traps, killed my monsters, took my loot and left me nothing in return. This was the worst dungeon run ever,” Breck complained.
“Can’t win them all, Sir.”
Breck shrugged and watched as Zach and Droknal debated whether or not to continue into the dungeon in order to fight the spiders. Come on… you can do it… fight my spiders. The conversation didn’t last much longer and both of them ended up leaving his dungeon.
Jeeves walked back through his tunnels before sitting next to Breck’s opal on the ground. “That was exciting, Sir. I know it didn’t go as you planned, but I enjoyed watching and I’m ready to discuss strategy.”
Breck was about to respond when he felt a new presence in his domain. He focused on the area and saw a small army of creatures heading for his dungeon. As the adventurers left, the small monsters entered. Breck panicked and frantically summoned beetles into the first room.
“Jeeves! There’s about fifty creatures heading down my stairs.” Breck sent him a mental image of the invaders. “What are they?”
Jeeves reviewed the photo closely, but it didn’t help. He had no idea what the creatures were so he sent a question mark to Breck in response.
“Ugh. You’re no help.” Why are there so many? Do they plan on destroying me? Breck summoned additional beetles until the shadows of the first room were full. If they want to fight with an army, so will I.
The kobold-clan leader was the first to enter the room with an armored warrior on either side of him. They stepped slowly into the room’s center. Looking around, they did something that surprised Breck. They threw their weapons down, got on their knees and bowed low to the ground.
“What the hell are they doing?” Breck questioned.
“It looks like they’re praying, Sir,” Jeeves responded.
“Praying to what?”
The kobolds all chanted in unison, but it sounded like unintelligible grunts to both Breck and Jeeves. That was until his tongues ability kicked in. The crowd was chanting the same phrase over and over: Dungeon Spirit.
“It would appear they are praying to you, Sir.”
Breck inspected the creatures before him. They were thin, short, and scaly. They had impressive teeth and claws but overall looked weak and their ranks were in the low beginners. Their numbers were impressive, however, and a few looked powerful, but most of them looked to be on their last leg. The creature who entered first raised from his lowered position and pulled a knife from his belt.
They’re making their move. Breck sent a mental command to his beetles for them to get ready for a fight.
The kobold-clan leader took his knife and held the blade with his free hand. Pulling quickly, the creature cut a deep slash in his hand. Blood poured from the wound as he sheathed his blade. Dipping a finger in the wound, he used his blood to draw symbols on his bare chest, all the while continuing his chant.
Breck noticed that the symbols were glowing. The more symbols the creature drew, the brighter the glow appeared to get. When he finished drawing on himself, he drew more detailed markings on the ground. He didn’t draw these in blood. Instead, he carved them into the ground using his claws, leaving deep gouges in the stone. The whole process took roughly thirty minutes and Breck’s beetles were ready to attack if any of them showed signs of aggression.
“Great dungeon ssspirit. Chieftain need speak with you.” The creature who drew everything pointed to one of the tougher warrior types as he shouted.
The warrior stood and walked to stand infront of the artist. Pulling his blade again, the kobold-clan leader plunged it into the heart of the warrior. The kobold fell to the ground, closing his eyes as both his essence and life left his body.
Blood drained from him, filling the gouges in the ground. As the blood flowed across them, they too illuminated. With the raising of his fist, everyone’s chanting stopped.
“What the hell are they doing?” Breck questioned Jeeves but before he could answer, the pair heard a new voice echo in their collective mind.
“Ssstrong dungeon ssspirit. Can you hear me?” a reptilian voice called out, reverberating inside their minds.
“Sir… Did you hear that?” Jeeves asked.
“You're not going insane. I heard it too.”
The kobold-clan leader sat in the lotus position on the ground and closed his eyes. “Ssspirit?”
Is that creature talking to me? More importantly, can it hear me? “Umm… Hello?”
The kobold smiled, pointed teeth breaking through clenched lips. “Yesss ssspirit. It’sss I, Chieftain.”
“Hello Chieftain. How can you hear me? Better yet, what are you?”
Chieftain smiled, clearly happy with getting a response. “I do ritual. I talk. You hear now. I kobold.”
Not the best speaker, but he seems to be responsive. “What do you want? Have you come to fight me?”
“No, no, no!” Chieftain waved his arms defensively in the air. “Chieftain wantsss be friend. Chieftain wantsss join dungeon tribe. Pleasss take usss. We make contract.” The kobold chieftain got into a grovelling position, flat to the floor, and his entire tribe mimicked his movements.
Breck’s jaw dropped, or rather his mental jaw. “Can you excuse us for a moment? I need to speak with my… assistant for a moment.” Digging through his mind, he found his connection with Jeeves and put a barrier of essence around it. “Ok, Jeeves. I think I’ve protected our connection so we can talk in private. What is this guy talking about? What does he mean by making a contract with us and joining our dungeon tribe?”
“I’m not sure, Sir. I think he wants us to take in his tribe and add them to the dungeon. I would assume the contract is the terms we agree upon to make that happen. But again, I am just assuming,” Jeeves added.
“I can’t create bones though. I wouldn’t be able to remake them if they die. Honestly, what do either of us have to gain?”
Jeeves’s golem body cocked its head to the side. “Isn’t that a question for him, Sir?”
Breck removed the barrier blocking their thoughts. “Chieftain.”
The kobold raised his head. “Yesss ssspirit?”
“Let’s address this spirit thing first. My name is Breck. What’s your name?”
Nodding his head, Chieftain responded. “I Chieftain. Thisss tribe.” He gestured around to the other kobolds. “More tribe in mountainsss.”
“How many are in your tribe?” Breck questioned.
“Many more. Kobold breed quickly. We want fight
for you. You protect tribe.”
That’s not a terrible idea, Breck thought. I have a limited number of patterns and my boneless trait makes it harder to create more. “How do I know I can trust you?”
Chieftain bowed again and pressed his head against the ground. “Chieftain never hurt ssspi… Breck.” He stumbled when pronouncing Breck’s name. The word was foreign to him and he wasn’t exactly a linguistic master. “Chieftain make oath.” He sat up and raised a hand. He shouted at his tribe to follow his actions and they all repeated his next words along with him. Chieftain said them aloud but he repeated himself to Breck. “We swear on livesss, never hurt Breck. We bind oath in essence.”
The entire tribe shimmered for a brief second. Thin strings of essence spun out of each kobold’s chest and flew toward Breck. Each string wrapped around him like a cocoon before fading.
“What the hell was that!?” Breck shouted.
“Chieftain make tribe promisss. We want hurt you, we now die.”
“I believe it was some form of essence bound oath, Sir,” Jeeves interjected. “It appears they are bound by their essence not to harm you, or even attempt to harm you, by penalty of death.”
That helped to settle Breck’s nerves a bit. Maybe an alliance, or contract, with the kobolds wasn’t a terrible idea. “What can you offer me and what do you want in return? What are the terms of this contract?” Breck questioned.
Chieftain smiled. The great spirit seemed to be pleased, and Chieftain had hope of a future. “Koboldsss promise fight. Koboldsss protect. Koboldsss bring ssshiny to Breck. Ko…” The chieftain continued.
The conversation lasted many hours, partly because Breck had to pseudo-translate everything Chieftain was saying. Teaching the Kobolds better English was the first thing Breck wanted to do after forming the contract. The whole process was painful and gave Breck a migraine, but they eventually came to an agreement.
Chieftain would bring his entire tribe, that he described to be large and many, to live inside the dungeon. Breck would provide them beetles to hunt for food, give them equipment to fight with, and, most importantly, provide them a safe place to live and develop away from the hatred of the other races.
In return Chieftain promised to fill the first floor, excluding the boss room, of the dungeon with kobolds for adventurers to fight, let Breck keep everything they found on the adventurers, never hurt him or Jeeves, protect them if invaders came in, and they would venture outside the dungeon to bring Breck new patterns to absorb. This gave Breck a unique opportunity to get a wide variety of new patterns he wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to obtain.
One major point that Breck made painfully clear for Chieftain was that he couldn’t create kobolds. All the kobolds fighting in the dungeon would have to be a certain rank and be willing to risk their lives. If they died, they would stay dead. Chieftain was hesitant to agree to this. Kobolds thought dungeons could create anything they wanted and that Breck would create kobolds to fight, but ultimately he agreed to the terms. He explained that supplying new warriors to fight wouldn’t be an issue. The essence rich environment inside Breck’s area of influence would only magnify the kobold’s natural ability to breed and mature rapidly.
When all the finer points were hashed out, both parties swore on their essence to uphold their end of the contract. Strings of energy shot from Breck’s core and the Chieftain’s chest. They collided with one another to form an essence oath.
With the contract formed and oath sworn, Chieftain left. He was returning to the mountains to collect the rest of his tribe and escort them to their new home. After exiting the dungeon, he turned to face the staircase and addressed Breck.
“Breck. Chieftain pledge fealty of tribe. We are yoursss.” With that, he bowed and meandered off.
“Well. Today’s been eventful,” Breck jested.
Jeeves nodded. “Yes, Sir, it has. Do you think letting them in was a good idea?”
“I do. The contract is heavily weighted in my favor. Not only do I get all the essence and patterns that adventurers leave behind, I don’t have to waste my essence creating all my own monsters. I mean, I have to create some beetles to feed them, but that's nothing in the long run. I’ll just create giant fat beetles at a low beginner rank. On top of that, I now have intelligent monsters that can form plans of attack on their own and learn from their mistakes. My dungeon just got a great boon from this, you’ll see.”
“If you say so, Sir. What’s next then?”
“Next, I need to build them a home and I know just where to put it.” Breck moved his focus to the large open space below his first floor. He used a ton of spare essence to carve out a massive empty cavern before discovering how to rank up into the basic ranks. Unsure what to do with the space before, he now had a game plan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Building a Kobold Home
“How long will they be gone, Sir?” Jeeves inquired.
Breck mentally shrugged. “I’m not sure. They said they live in a nearby mountain, but there aren’t any mountains in my area of influence. They’re also moving an entire tribe’s worth of people. That isn’t a simple task by any means. I would say a day at least, but more likely two.”
Moving his focus to his open second floor, he thought of what kobolds needed. What does any living thing need? Food, shelter and water would probably be a good start. His second floor was large enough to house fifty or even a hundred kobolds comfortably but not large enough to house, as Chieftain explained, many, many more. Breck started by expanding his floor until it was as large as a football stadium back on Earth. That should be good enough for now.
Checking his energy reserves, he still had plenty of essence left to work with. Next up, water. He carved out a large bowl on one side of the room to act as a massive pond. Wanting to make it look more flashy, he added underwater vegetation that mimicked his swamp above. There were wiregrass, phragmites, and saltwort. He also added some plants he wasn’t familiar with. There were things called oozing rose, fire foil, and marsh drop to name a few. Breck absorbed their patterns from his surface and recreated them, but they were complex and it was hard to understand their purpose. They sure are pretty though, he thought as he added more into the mix.
He was getting ready to move on from water to food when he had a thought. Why don’t I kill two birds with one stone? I can’t create the fish in the waters outside, but who says I can’t move them? Breck bore a series of tunnels leading from his newly formed pond to the various fish filled ponds on his surface.
How do I get the fish to move down here though… I wonder if this will work… He flooded his pond with essence until it became so essence rich that it was shimmering slightly. Then he filled his new tunnels with water and opened them. Nothing happened at first, but as soon as the fish sensed the essence-rich water, they came crashing toward it. In a matter of minutes, the fish population had all migrated below.
“Hey, Jeeves, look. I made a fish tank.”
“Good work, Sir,” Jeeves genuinely praised. “If Chieftain’s claims about essence-rich areas being great for development and breeding were true, those fish should be able to reproduce and help sustain the kobolds.”
I forgot about that. “Exactly... That's precisely what I was thinking.”
Breck quickly moved on to his next task, shelter. He didn’t know the exact number of kobolds that would come, but when Chieftain explained their living conditions, they sounded horrible. They were worse than what most of the people had back home. The kobolds were living in cramped, rough stone caverns, often having ten or fifteen sleeping in a space the same size as Breck’s apartment bathroom.
That simply won’t do. Instead of just stacking stone or wood patterns ontop of each other to craft crude homes, Breck used his specialized living earth essence for the second time. Pulling up his patterns brought a familiar galaxy into his mind. He created a new blank pattern and drew the design he wanted.
Single homes were too inefficient for the nu
mber of kobolds that would be staying there, so he went for a long house design. He started by drawing a trapezoid with long walls meeting at a point in its triangular ceiling. Large barn-style double doors adorned each side, and he ended up making the structure two stories tall with staircases next to each entrance. In the center of each floor, he created a large stone circle to be used as a fireplace with a connecting chimney. Last, but not least, he stretched the pattern so it could accommodate sixty or seventy kobolds per floor. The creatures were fairly small and didn’t need much space. If worse came to worst, they could easily house over a hundred per floor if they crammed in.
Breck placed the massive pattern around the empty room. He stopped when he had six long houses surrounding the lake. There would be enough space for nearly a thousand kobolds to sleep and live comfortably. The only thing left to do was feed the patterns with essence and watch his creations come to life.
Living earth essence felt completely different from traditional raw essence. Breck felt more connected to it and invested in it somehow. It was harder to create but more rewarding when he did. When he poured the specialized energy into the patterns, they didn’t just form from thin air like normal patterns. Instead, the glowing mixture of teal and aquamarine coated the large runic symbols sitting on the floor. The patterns glowed and spun before strings of essence shot out in all directions.
The strings attached to various things in the room, while hundreds more shot into the stone below. Some wrapped around the vegetation he created, others sat in the water, and some even shot upward to connect with his spiderwebs and the trees growing outside. Then the living essence really showed what it was capable of.
The buildings began to grow from the ground. They didn’t just appear. They grew like a building shaped tree made from the various materials that the pattern had attached to. It grew the main structure from the stone below, but the floors were wood. It left several holes on each wall open to act as windows, and wooden shutters slid into slots on either side. It made the roof from sections of vegetation stacked ontop of one another and it made the fireplaces from a brick material. Breck searched for the source of brick essence and found that a handful of the essence strings shooting into the ground connected to large clay deposits.
Rebirth Page 15
