by Hugo Huesca
“Won’t he suspect, anyway?” asked Ed. “He must’ve seen us carry her away, after all. And it’s not like he would forget that you care about her.”
“I doubt he saw anything more than the dust of his boots,” Kes said. “He was busy running for his life, which was very smart of him. Remember that, by the way, if you hope to survive in Ivalis. The warrior that lives to old age is not the strongest, but the one that knows when to run.”
“I have no problem with that,” Ed said.
Together, they carried Alvedhra into the forest, with Kes leading the way and saving Ed all the stumbling onto roots he would’ve suffered otherwise. The mercenary carried most of the Ranger’s weight, but she did so without complaining. Her Endurance and Brawn were quite higher than Ed’s, and she had improved metabolism, which added to her stamina.
All in all, they reached the side of the road in a couple hours, after stopping several times to catch their breath. Ed suggested a couple times that he summon a pair of drones to help them, but Kes refused, on the argument that it would give them away as Dark-aligned to any onlooker they came across.
“She’ll be safe here?” asked Ed after they had placed Alvedhra atop a tangled bush.
“Yes. We’ll wait by the treeline until the apprentice comes.”
Ed left the mercenary to give her goodbyes. He hoped Kes’ fears wouldn’t have to be as real as she thought, that the Ranger and her could reunite once again.
Kes was back by his side soon enough, and they waited in silence until the Sun was well past midday and Ed’s stomach was roaring with hunger.
The apprentice appeared past a curve of the road. She was a portly woman who was whistling some happy tune—quite loudly—as she strolled by, stopping here and there to examine herbs and roots along her way.
“Let’s go,” said Kes.
They didn’t speak on their way back.
They returned to happy news. The batblins had managed to hunt a pair of horned rabbits while they were out, and the drones had finished the tunnel and three small chambers and were awaiting new orders while half of them reinforced the cave’s structure and the others gathered wood.
The sight of the dead rabbits, which had been mauled by some blunt object, made Ed’s mouth water. Still, it seemed like too little food for everyone.
“We saved some for us,” Drusb revealed when Ed asked him. “The best stuff, humans don’t like, so we…forgot to mention it.”
The best stuff was a bucket-load of living insects, shaped like fat beetles crossbred with mantises. These, too, Ed noted, had tiny little horns. The insects were sprinkled with juicy pieces of an acidic-smelling fruit that had spent way too much time in the sun.
It didn’t look edible at all, but the batblins stared at them with greedy expressions, so Ed was all too happy to keep the rabbits for the humans.
“I’ll cook,” said Kes who, besides her gloomy mood, appeared as hungry as anyone else. “No offense, but you look like you’ve never skinned anything in your life.”
Ed nodded and had a drone bring her a pile of wood to start a fire, then ordered the drone to use another pile to transmute into wooden utensils. When Lavy realized he intended to use the mystical powers of the Lordship for cooking, she started cursing in Lotian and went to keep an eye on the food—she didn’t trust the batblins to keep their hands to themselves.
Ed left them to go check on his drones’ progress on the new chambers. They were smaller than the current Seat chamber, but he was going for practicality, not luxury.
The only problem was, the new tunnel led well underground, past the hill’s height and below the forest’s ground. It was dark, and damp, and very cold, and the ley lines indicated he had only a few rock formations to work with. A wrong dig and he would hit dirt, which would make securing the base even harder.
“This will have to do,” he said while using his Evil Eye to survey the building options he had.
The first chamber, the one connected to the tunnel, would become the new Seat room, so he left it alone. The second one, he divided into different living quarters, using his drones to add rock and dirt to improvise thin walls.
Doing this, he discovered a new aspect of his Dungeon Lord’s powers. He didn’t need to use his drones to create the quarters—he merely needed the appropriate materials. The drones had gathered a pile of branches nearby, and that was more than enough.
The wood was consumed by tendrils of mist that floated out of the walls and floor, but felt to Ed as if they were an extension of himself. The tendrils followed the layout of his Evil Eye’s design and manipulated dirt and rock as they passed, changing the shape of the quarters, adding details, crude furniture, even small oil lamps that allowed Ed not to have to rely on his Evil Eye for illumination.
Five different quarters were left, each so small they were barely more than protrusions in the walls fitted with a wooden bed and a straw mattress. They had hemp curtains for privacy, because the walls were too flimsy for doors.
His small apartment on Earth was a mansion by comparison, but he eyed his hole in the wall with appreciation. This one was his, he wasn’t renting it. And if he really wanted to, he could build a bigger one at any time.
He was vaguely aware that the living quarters weren’t finished. He needed to add air shafts, baths, and latrines, and the last two had to be separate constructions, since he lacked the designs to create water pipes. He thought it over for a second, decided that having latrines inside an enclosed space would be a stupid idea, and chose to build them outside.
That left him with the last free chamber, which he used as a storage for the wood and the small pile—a mere fistful—of useful minerals his drones had found. He wasn’t scared that anyone would steal his half-rotten pile of wood, but having the materials close at hand would make constructing things on the fly easier. For example, he added a rough door to the chamber, with a hemp cord to keep it closed. Once again, his Lordship powers created it through the dungeon’s misty tendrils, Ed only had to will for it to come to life.
This time, he had to stop to contemplate the possibilities of this magic.
Did Ivalis have masonry guilds? He could put entire cities out of business by producing furniture! He was his own assembly line. He could make a fortune, and not by raiding anyone, but by out-producing everyone else. He could be the IKEA of this world. Were all the other Dungeon Lords insane? Screw Murmur and his plans, he could build entire cities using this power, if he was patient enough, and if he had enough gold.
Which didn’t seem like a hard thing to do. From what little of Ivalis he had seen, Ed was sure it was medieval-like in technology and society. No stock market, yet, no banking, no industrial revolution.
And here he was, with the perfect set of powers to abuse it all.
He felt the overwhelming need to burst out laughing, and an urge just as strong to proclaim that no one would be able to stop him now. He resisted both, but was left smiling like a maniac in the solitude of his tiny, miserable dungeon, cold and damp and badly lit, and oh how he loved it already.
He dealt with the air shaft’s issue by summoning a drone outside the dungeon and having it dig a tiny tunnel into the new Seat chamber. He made the hole even smaller by using the drone’s powers to fill it with rock until he was reasonably sure that not even spiderlings would fit through it. Once that was done, he walked back out of the tunnel and into the old chamber.
He ordered the other drones to move the Seat down, which they did by eating it and waddling their way into the new chamber with their bellies and cheeks full of rock. The lasershark on their tunics looked like a fat dolphin with their belly bulges pushing him forward.
Ed had no idea why he had to use drones for the Seat, but not for anything else, though he discovered that he could not build anything by himself until the drones had finished replacing the Seat. This took longer than he expected, since the drones needed several trips. Once they were done, the ley lines of the cave shifted slightly, relaxing
their focus on the former chamber and concentrating more down below.
By that point, the rabbit’s smoke filled the air, and made his stomach rumble while he worked. Since the room was exposed to the outside world, he wanted to heavily trap it, but he also wanted to avoid having any of his creatures activate the devices by accident.
He decided that concealment was even better than a strong defense, since it would save him the need to defend in the first place. He had the drones go outside and work on the face of the cave. He had them use the same spit they had used to polish the Seat and reinforce the cave walls to sculpt the exterior.
He added a fake rock face that covered the entrance and left only a thin aperture, disguised by an extra couple of inches of rock protruding to the side that was in the direction people would face if they came from Burrova’s road.
This way, the entrance would be invisible except to someone coming from the right direction.
And probably the spiders. So, the next order of business was having his drones create long, sharp spikes of wood. He would’ve loved to create a pit with them at the bottom, but he was hesitant to create them inside his cave, where his own minions would live, and he was hesitant to trap the exterior, since being so close to Burrova would risk harming an innocent villager.
Instead, he set the spikes along the tunnel’s entrance, tied to the walls with hemp rope. They would become makeshift spears, and in the case of an attack it would be easy to use spears to defend the entrance from enemies, since the enclosed space would force them to file into a single line.
He spent a couple lumps of iron—and his own knife—and had his drones transmute a small bell. He simply hung it a couple feet after the entrance, at head-level, and tied a thin hemp strip to it, leaving it dangling in the middle of the tunnel. It was almost impossible to see in the low light, and it would hopefully make enough noise to let his minions know if someone was coming.
Finally, as a way to deal with spiderlings, he used a lot of hemp rope—consuming half of his meager wood and foliage transmuting it—to secure several lumps of rock dust, which he set at the ceiling of the former Seat chamber—now serving as the cave’s entrance hall. In the case of a spiderling invasion, he would summon a drone to the ceiling, bring the dust down, and use a lamp to ignite it. He employed a lot less dust than last time, to avoid roasting his own people by accident.
After that, he was done. The statline of his cave reflected the improvements in real time.
Cave System
Dungeon Lord Edward Wright.
Drones 9
Dominant Material Cave Rock
Threat 45 - Local - Represents how aware the outside world is of the dungeon and how willing / able / ready they are to do something about it. A 100 indicates imminent destruction.
Offense 850 - A representation of the strength a dungeon’s forces can muster during an attack (raid or invasion) outside the dungeon itself. It represents the experience they would award, as a group, if they were defeated (but not absorbed).
Defense 1100 - It represents the defensive capacity of the dungeon, The experience the population of a dungeon would award if they were to be defeated during the defense of said dungeon. It’s multiplied by a percentage given by the dungeon’s upgrades and defenses.
Magic Generated 1 - Measures the magic created by the Sacred Grounds that can be put to use in different endeavors or to power dungeon upgrades.
Magic Consumed 0 - Measures how much magic is consumed.
Population
4 adult humans.
17 batblin combatants.
Areas
Living Zones:
1 Living Quarters
1 Storage
Military Facilities:
1 Batblin camp - hidden.
Research Installations:
0
Sacred Grounds:
The Seat.
Production:
0
Defense:
Small dust trap.
Low-quality defensive spears.
Batblin sentries.
Dungeon Upgrades
None.
The high threat was worrisome, but at least the defensive and offensive ratings had shot up, probably in big relation to Kes joining the team.
Ed eyed his handiwork—or his drone’s, to be exact—with satisfaction, then hurried outside to eat. The sun was setting by now, and the sky was tinting in shades of red and traces of purple. Ed realized that he could already see the stars, which he didn’t recognize, and the moon’s outline—except this wasn’t his moon, but it was easy to forget—painted near the horizon. It was bigger than Earth’s, fuller, and he could see the gigantic craters that peppered its surface.
“You finished playing with your toy blocks?” Kes asked him while he approached the fire. She had skinned the rabbits, leaving the pelts extended close to the fire, while the meat itself roasted on spits atop the flames, charring slowly while the mercenary rotated them now and then.
As an answer, Ed gave commands to the drones to build the bath and the latrines far away from each other and out of sight of the cave, but not far enough that they would be overly vulnerable to an ambush.
“Yes,” said Ed. “I’m done playing. Hopefully, I played well enough that we won’t get killed in our sleep for a couple nights. How about some food?”
“By all means, grab a seat,” Kes said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in her voice while she pointed at the ground, “I wouldn’t want my new Dungeon Lord to go hungry, now, would I?”
Ed was in too good a mood to let the mercenary’s misery get to him. He flashed his Evil Eye to take notice of a small update, and sat next to Alder and Lavy to eat while he watched the night approaching.
Your skills have increased: Dungeon Engineering +2.
Not bad for a couple hours’ work.
There was something deeply satisfying about this life. He could live like this for a long time, building things, foraging for food, away from the rest of the world, only he and his minions and his magical powers. It was something he had never experienced back in the city—the chance to make something for himself. He grabbed a handful of steaming rabbit and ate under the stars, with the fire’s caress feeling like a lullaby to his tired body.
Yes, Ed thought, watching how the sun slowly disappeared and how the moon rose in its place, not bad for a couple hour’s work.
19
Chapter Nineteen
Night Dwellings
The meat was dry and lacked seasoning, but it was fresh and hot, and Kes wasn’t untalented. To Ed’s roaring stomach, it tasted like Alita herself had floated down from Heaven—or wherever the hell the Light goddess lived—and started feeding him grapes with her perfect fingers.
From Alder and Lavy’s expression, they were feeling the same thing. A few feet away from them, but still close to the fire, the batblin cloud devoured their bucket of insects, and even shared some with Klek without insulting him—thanks, Ed suspected, to Klek’s higher status in Ed’s minionship.
Water presented an issue. The batblins had brought a few hornfuls of it from a nearby stream, but it was dirty, and Ed had watched enough nature documentaries to know he wasn’t supposed to just drink it in its current state.
“So,” he asked, his throat thick with rabbit-fat, “Lavy, what would you say if I had the drones transmute this water into a clean, drinkable version?”
“Clean water is too far removed from a dungeon-building tool or resource,” she shrugged. “So you shouldn’t be able to, in the first place. Perhaps if you had advanced ranks in Dungeon Engineering and a slew of related talents, you could present your case to the Objectivity that you wanted to use it to make ice blocks, like some Dungeon Lords have in the past. But the ‘clean’ part, definitely not. Sounds like Healing magic, to me, and we can’t use it.”
“See? I’m learning already,” he said. “Just keep the knowledge coming my way, will you? Now, how about having the drones craft a filtering device? I bet
a few glass containers would do the trick.”
“Glass? Those imps of yours?” She actually mulled it over. Unlike Kes, Lavy’s full stomach had left the Witch in good humor. “Grind for more Engineering ranks. Your drones are too brutish for glass-making.”
“Hum,” said Ed. His next idea involved transmuting paper to use as a filter, but Kes sighed loudly and said:
“By the Light’s sweet mercy, do you always overthink things so much? Just boil the water!”
“Oh,” muttered Ed. “Yeah. That’ll work.”
He and Lavy exchanged ashamed glances, then the Witch scoffed at Kes and went back to her rabbit skewer.
“You should have let them keep going,” Alder told Kes after laughing loudly and almost choking on his rabbit leg. “At the rate they were going, they were this close to start their own water-filtering empire. The Lord of Clean Water, people would call our brave leader.”
“How do people do it in Heiliges?” asked Ed.
“Like civilized men,” said Alder. “The local priest or Cleric purifies water and food with their restoration magic each morning. Farmers who live far away from them just boil it, like Kes said.”
“Oh,” Ed said. He was expecting something a bit…flashier. “What about Lotia?”
Lavy shrugged and said, “We rely on herbs and concoctions to make sure our food is edible, or at least, that’s how we do it in the countryside. I’ve never set a foot inside a Lotian city.”
“Why not?” Ed asked.
The Witch examined the faces of Ed and the rest with a distrustful half-scowl, but before long, she shrugged and said, “I was born in a dungeon. Lord Heines’ domain.”
