I digested his words sourly. A flash of inspiration struck me. I focused on her, doing my best to interact with her at this distance.
After a tenuous moment, her voice reached my mind. Her words were faint, but understandable. “Cal! I heard you were attacked! I’m on my way back now, but the portal Guild is refusing to allow me to skip the queue! It could be days!”
I shouted along our connection.
“Got it! Do you have any specifics as to where she might be? Since that city is built from the slave labor of an entire nation’s men, it is truly massive,” Minya informed me regretfully.
She was going to go! Yes! I thought about the information I had and came to the most logical conclusion.
There was silence from her end. I almost spoke again, when her wry words tickled me, “You always send me to the best places. The black market, the sewers, what next? Undercover at a brothel?”
Minya was confusing. Did Dale have a brothel? Did he need one? Was it some kind of soup?
“... Just try talking to me again in a few days. I’m going.” Her voice abruptly stopped coming to me.
I joyfully informed my now-somewhat-willing minion.
Dale had fallen asleep, but he cracked an eye open when I spoke at him. “Lovely. Now get out of my room,” he muttered tiredly.
I left, quietly fuming. Dale had been able to blackmail me into making promises to him. For Dani, I would do anything, and he used me! He would have withheld information about Dani. The next time he stepped in my dungeon, he was going to have a rough day. For now, it was time to prepare weapons. I swore aloud. A band of Mana wrapped itself around me, as my law acknowledged my oath. Good.
~ Chapter Thirty-Two ~
It had been two weeks since Dale told me about Dani, and I had been throwing myself at my various projects. I was almost ready, but I needed more power than I currently had if I wanted to be able to retrieve Dani by force. I was also beginning to become worried about Minya, as she hadn’t reported in when she was supposed to. My attempts to contact her were met exclusively with silence.
“Arsenopyrite,” Bob’s words blared into the air, startling me from my current brooding.
I awkwardly tried to figure out what he was saying.
“Arsenopyrite. Chalcanthite. Cinnabar. Torbernite. Heliodor… opal.” Bob’s grin stretched, as did the silence.
I looked at him, waiting to have the joke explained, when the last word he had spoken allowed me to make the connection. I gasped in shock and wonder.
“All of them.” With a flourish, he produced a sample of each of the minerals he had just named. “At least we know why no one has found that these are the strongest conductors of their Essence type. These are unbelievably toxic. To my point, I am very dizzy and think I am dying.” He swayed, collapsing to the ground.
The stones clattered away from him, and I ate them all by reflex. While Bob was unconscious, I looked at the damage in him and winced. I was amazed he had lasted this long. While I fixed him, I made sure to catalogue the effects each stone created. Arsenopyrite, or iron arsenic sulfide. Air Essence and corruption absorbing. How strange, I have no idea how it damaged his lungs so badly.
Chalcanthite, or water-copper as it is known. It was in his blood, and killing everything. Blood cells, bacteria, nutrients. Left behind was pure water suffused with the mineral. I had seen this material before, but it had never had this effect!
Cinnabar, an amalgam of sulphur and mercury. Fire corruption and chunks of stone were coating Bob’s hands, and rapidly burning through the muscle. I absorbed it, and cringed at the damage that had been done to my Goblin from a simple touch.
Torbernite. Torbernite? This was all over the place in small amounts! Well, to be fair it was only in the granite portion of my surroundings, but there was a lot of it around. With earth Essence swirling within it, the mineral released a soft green glow. The light that touched Bob was making his skin decompose, so I quickly removed him from contact with the stone.
I looked for any damage that had been done by the Heliodor, but as far as I could tell it was just yellow beryl. No damaging effects that I knew of. Having fixed everything I could find, I gently woke Bob up.
“Huh? Whazzat?” Bob blinked sleepily as he stretched. “Oh! Right! I need to get these stones to… the stones are gone!” He burped upon saying the final word, robbing his statement of any tension.
I allowed him to become more fully awake and could practically see his memory of the situation coming back.
“Ah yes!” He stood, then leaned on his staff. “It seems that these will absorb corruption for a time, but once they are too full of the taint they begin amplifying the dangerous and harmful effects they contain.”
I was already growing a woven rope of these minerals toward the surface. Thanks to my experiments with opal, threading this rope would only take a short amount of time before it was fully set up.
“Excellent news!” Bob happily chattered, waiting for instructions..
I was watching him carefully, but even if I hadn't been, it would have been hard to miss the flinch.
Bob squirmed, then sighed. “They aren't ready for you. We have been working tirelessly, and the extra dozen Bob’s you made have helped, but… they aren’t ready.”
“Too many Runes and effects.” Bob rubbed his head as if he had a headache. Impossible, since he was at peak health right now. “We keep dying. Even the small-scale effects are so draining that we cannot fully activate them. Keeping them active would be too much even for you.”
My voice trailed off a bit as my mind was already deeply engrossed in the issue.
“Realistically, I don’t even know how you are able to keep your ley-line ritual going. Every second, every day, it is growing and carving Runes farther and farther away from you,” Bob scoffed at the sheer amount of resources that were being invested into the ritual.
Returning to my task of replacing all the stone in the dungeon with pumice, I continued speaking.
Bob nodded and walked toward the hidden room behind the workshop walls. There were always a few Bobs in there recording information, taking notes on projects, and trying to replicate the effects themselves. I could duplicate a completed potion, weapon, or Rune, but right now there was nothing I could do to experiment. It isn’t like I could mix up a potion, or… wait a minute… I could
make potions and experiment! All that was needed was the ability to stir and add ingredients over heat! I was intrigued by this idea, but quickly frustrated as I remembered how little time I already had to devote to my current goals. I’m bad at delegating; I always feel that other people work too slowly. I can work for weeks straight, but there is only one of me.
I had tried to make another of me–a second Core with my memories–but when I tried to copy my thoughts to another Core, either it did nothing or tried to pull everything out and leave nothing behind. I would most likely ask Bob to become a dungeon Core eventually, but I was leery about sharing my territory. I was pushed from my thoughts as a rainbow lit up my room. What was going on? I almost lashed out, but luckily I realized it was condensed Essence and corruption. I watched in awe as the taint remaining in the dungeon disappeared faster than a chubby knight falling into a pitfall trap.
Everything in the dungeon took on a crisp look, coming into better focus. With every breath, my Mobs became stronger. A few half-forgotten advanced Bashers–who had been flooded with Essence when I shouted at Minya a few weeks ago–started evolving! An Oppressor and an Impaler, respectively the wind and infernal type Bashers, grew larger. The Impaler grew claws on its feet, which became sharper and even sturdier after a few minutes. Its horn also grew and curved, gaining a decidedly sword-like quality. The Oppressor now had wind swirling around it constantly, albeit gently, and every move it made was enhanced. I watched it run around, no longer needing to jump off of walls in order to turn sharp corners.
Both were quite large at this point. They could look a young child in the eye while on all fours, and would be able to look a tall man in the eye if they stood on their hind legs. There was an interesting side effect of a second evolution; they were hungry. No longer were they prey animals as they hunted and ate meat. They left their fellow bunny-type Mobs alone, but everything else seemed to be fair game. I pointed them at an adventuring party, and watched as they charged in.
“Look out! Extra-large dinner incoming!” One of the invaders made his last joke, and the others chortled as they prepared for an easy fight. Normally, they would have been correct to assume this, but today was not their lucky day.
The… Oppressor–I’ll need to rename them to keep them separate in my mind–accelerated to triple its previous speed. He was behind the adventurers even before the stupid grins were off their faces. The bunny jumped an impressive height into the air, before contorting and releasing a howling gale. While this didn’t have the same cutting power as its previous form, it had a much wider area of effect. The compressed air knocked three people off their feet, and staggered the other two. The Impaler charged at the downed men, using its horn-sword to great effect. To be blunt, with a quick flick the men’s heads were parted from their bodies. Three strikes, three kills. It then jumped onto one of the standing men, raking him with his claws before slashing him with his horn.
The Oppressor wasn’t idle during this time and was attacking the final man with blistering speed. A hit, and he was already gone by the time the human could try to muster a counterattack. The human fell after the third attack shattered his knee, and he was quickly finished off by the Impaler. The Bashers swiftly fell on the humans, devouring them like starving animals.
I stated flatly. I thought about where they would fit in and struck upon an idea. Raile had turned into a joke, with his easy to read attacks and ponderous movement. I would place them in with him and let them be a group. That would make the challenge much greater.
Thinking about the battle that had just happened, I smiled and nodded to myself.
~ Dale ~
Dale smiled as the roof of the final building slid into place. Dwarves had an unbelievable connection with–and understanding of–the earth. The sheer size of the academy would put a palace to shame, yet had been completed in just over two weeks! Now he knew why everything they built was so intricate; doing things on a large scale was easy for them. As a nation they could likely hollow out a mountain range in a few years! The intricate work though, that took time and dedication.
Dale looked around his city, smiling at the result of his bargaining. There were six large buildings, each of them dedicated to one of the affinities. There had been a bit of pressure not to include infernal in the school, but the angry voices eventually acquiesced. Opposite the infernal hall was the church. Dale hadn’t even had to ask, Father Richard came to him and asked to be an official part of the academy. The buildings were evenly spaced from each other, with the walls connecting them forming a huge hexagon. There were inner walls surrounding the dungeon entrance as well.
Between each building was a courtyard spectacularly designed for the affinity type a student would be training and had specialized materials donated from multiple nations to help with focus and cultivation. The professors would all have a place to stay in the buildings, but there were large student housing buildings being added outside the walls. News of the academy had flown across the sentient nations, and offers for teaching and requests for admittance were flooding in.
Dale’s political power was soaring as well, to his great satisfaction. He had made a deal with the dungeon, and he was darn well going to honor it. Political power was going to be his contribution to the expedition, as he had already had his fill of being around Mages and the higher beings they had been fighting. He shivered as he remembered the lumbering mounds of flesh, the nigh unstoppable abominations. No, thank you. Convincing people to fight for him, sure.
Dale’s treasury was filling nicely as well. He was entirely out of personal debt and was finally saving most of the money that he earned. The city treasury was also doing well but was draining quickly as more and more buildings were added to the public domain.
“Excuse me, your Nobleness, we have a question for ya.” The Dwarven foreman strolled up to him with his customary disregard for rank. Dale liked him quite a bit.
“What can I do for you?” Dale politely smiled at the enthusiastic Dwarf.
“I was wondering if you wanted more space to expand. You have a fairly large area, but the rest of the mountain over there means that you can only expand down or up. It would take a week or three, but we could knock the top of this mountain off. Make this the summit, and give ya a much larger flat area. Now, that sort of thing is expensive, and not in the current contract but could be worth it. No worries about rockslides, lots of space…” The foreman trailed off, already knowing the answer he’d get.
“I’m going to give you a tentative yes, but this is something I need to discuss with the council before approving. I’m sure the city planner will lose his mind over… how much extra space would that give us?” Dale paused to hear the answer.
“It’d easily quadruple the space you have.” The Dwarf looked a bit pained for a moment. “Errr… that means it’ll-”
“Have four times as much space. Got it.” Dale’s face twitched as he saw the confusion on the Dwarves face. “Ah, right. I was able to get a memory stone with the Dwarven mathematical system in it.”
“Ah. Well. Let me know, we can start as soon as these buildings are done. We still need to finish a bit of Runework on them.” The Dwarf started to leave.
“Wait!” Dale called. “You are putting Runes on them? What will they do?”
The Dwarf shrugged. “Standard stuff. Connect all the stone with itself, so that if you try to break it you need to put in enough force to destroy the entire building at once.”
“You do that on all buildings?” Dale’s eyes were bulging. He was so glad this building was being donated by the Dwarven nation.
“We have a reputation to uphold! Can’t let the Elves be the only ones that use Runes on their buildings!” The Dwarf chuckled at the thought.
“Elves use Runes on their buildings?” Dale yelped. “What
do they do?” Now that he thought of it, he did remember… something.
“Forgetfulness. They use chaos-powered Runes to make people forget about their buildings and the locations they are in. Really useful to make people forget about them unless they really need something.” The Dwarf picked up the pace, obviously trying not to get sucked into conversation again.
Dale’s face turned red. “The Elves owe me technique memory stones!” He started to storm off, but changed his path toward a certain redhead walking toward him. “Tom! I’m going to see the Elves! When I come back, ask me if they gave me the stones I am due!”
“Uh…” Tom tried to answer, but Dale was already running toward the Elven embassy. About twenty minutes passed, and Dale was walking by with a happy expression. “Ah! There you are! Did you get the stones you were after?”
Dale looked confused, then angry, and finally resigned. “I’ll bring it up to her at the next council meeting, this is ridiculous.” Dale dropped to the ground as a knife soared above his head. “Speaking of ridiculous…”
“Oh? My training is ridiculous? It must be ridiculously easy then, as you have barely been paying attention to my attacks. Good to know.” A column of fire exploded upward, fully immolating Dale. He screamed, diving out of the fire, only to be met by a blast of wind. Dale slammed to the ground, bounced once, and screamed again as a stone spike slammed through his leg, pinning him against the road.
“You graduated from basic attacks to novice attacks. Feel pleased. Hopefully, you won’t get too bored with this.” The Dark Elf went silent and vanished, leaving only a shocked group of onlookers and a moaning Dale.
“You did kind of ask for that,” Tom admonished as he pulled the stone from Dale, needing to put in a bit of force to allow it to come free of the ground under him. “You are acting arrogant again.”
‹ Prev Next ›
