Chapter 162 |
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The Creator, Occupied Atlantis, The Kalenic Sea
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After my monsters pulled back to prevent further unnecessary losses, the Templars and Heroes went about harvesting the corpses of my fallen defenders. They were smart about it, with most of the force on lookout in case I decided to force a second assault. I was both pleased to know they were sufficiently paranoid about me and pretty damn annoyed. It would be so much easier to deal with them if they were more arrogant about their capabilities.
Regardless, I'd already transported most of the remaining monsters to the Eleventh and Twelfth, leaving enough to repopulate and potentially perform some guerrilla strikes. What I was more interested in, however, was what the crusaders did after they finished looting.
"A Space manacore?" One of the heroes, a dark-skinned man in glasses, commented with interest I couldn't help but mirror. "What's it for?"
"Resupply and backup," the templar in full plate armour responded as he pulled premade parts out of a pack and assembled what looked like an open doorway, with a semi-circle top. Glowing lines and runes were scribed along the entire finished product, which only lit up when the fist-sized spherical gemstone was placed into the setting for it at the top. Through the eyes of one of the few remaining seagulls on the surface, I spied another gate in the middle of the occupied port town, overseen by the life mage and the two heroes she'd taken with her.
There was a wind-up period with the manacore, then, with a flash of deep indigo magic, the life mage stepped through the portal and frowned at the clearing of corpses. "Urgh. Disgusting." After her came a column of guilders, mostly Gold level. The group spread out, establishing what was, essentially, a camp. They cut down trees, expanding the clearing, and created walls. While irritating, I was far more focused on the honest-to-god portal in the freestanding frame. Guilders poured out on both sides, proving both planes worked just as well. Space magic, huh?
I wanted that manacore. It was almost like manacores I'd made on the Eleventh and Twelfth; totally saturated with mana, nearly to the point it became self-sustaining. From what I could infer from the intent in the runes, it would draw just enough from the core to upkeep the portal, and the rest would stay stored, keeping a reserve for the next time a portal needed to be opened. It was remarkably efficient and obviously the product of thousands of years of refinement.
The hero who'd spoken earlier obviously had the same thought and repeated my thought almost verbatim.
"Space magic is among the rarest affinities in the world," Mr Laser Eyes informed the summoned heroes in a lecturing tone, as the rest of the Templar directed the guilders. "We only have one mage capable of creating space manacores, and their skills are far too valuable to waste. If all they did were charge cores like this one for their entire life, they'd make maybe twenty, total. And that's not counting the enchanted frames and the rare metals needed to make them. Yes, portals like this could revolutionise transport and travel the world over... but they would not be sustainable. The space mage will eventually die, and another might not appear for decades or hundreds of years. What are we to do in the meantime?"
His rhetorical question stumped the heroes, and they shuffled awkwardly. Mr Laser Eyes sighed. "Well, come on, we've got work to do. And keep your guard up; the dungeon will try to interrupt the portal or steal the core. It's too valuable a resource to leave alone."
He was right, but man, it was annoying having my thoughts predicted so easily...
I couldn't let this stand. It was worse than the teleport crystals the guilders had abused when they first started delving my dungeon. It was a moving checkpoint, making the crusaders capable of resupply, healing, rest and letting guilders skip entire sections of my dungeon. Only the one transporting the portal actually needed to make it to the next floor and establish a toehold, and the rest could pour through.
One part of me thought up a plan, and another moved assets into position. A third stream of thought monitored the surface through hundreds of rats, birds and other tiny animals. A fourth piece of attention coordinated the slow sinking of the docked ships through enhanced shipworms and the drill-footed barnacles. My fifth facet poisoned and spoiled the crusader's food storage, while my last piece coo'd over the Wave and Taura's Wyrmlings.
They were so cute! Small enough to sit on my shoulder, even if they couldn't fly yet. Though she'd only laid six eggs, seven wyrmlings crawled about and explored the cave. Like their parents, the wyrmlings were amphibious. However, their colouration, the exact placement of their horns and the pattern of their scales were unique. One was pink, another purple. One was teal and another a bright orange. The one pair of twins, two wyrmlings born from the same egg, were smaller than the others, like Yin and Yang; their black-and-white patterning was mirrored, making them easy to identify, at least.
They were just as cute exploring as they were when they tore into their first meal, a Jackalope Taura hunted from the mountains. Their tiny toothed jaws pulled little strips of meat from the dead rabbit, and spent an inordinately long time chewing each piece to mush before swallowing. Fed, sated and tired, they proceeded to dogpile each other and slipped into a very satisfied food coma. The four of us, still awake, slipped out of the cave and to the valley's overlook.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
"These crusaders are more prepared than I gave them credit for..." I admitted to Wave and Taura as Cadmus launched themself into the air.
"They're that dangerous?" Taura asked, a note of worry in her voice.
"Of course," I said, offhandedly. "These warriors are the pinnacle of what humanity can accomplish. If they tripped at the first hurdle, I admit, I'd have felt a little disappointed. They've made it to the Third floor in a single day and keep pulling enchanted items designed to counter all my advantages, as if they've planned for everything."
"Then that's your answer," Wave countered, lying down next to his mate. "You must do something they couldn't plan for."
"Well, they have extensive experience with dungeons," I wondered aloud, beginning to pace the rock. "They diverted my surface manastream in an attempt to starve me of mana; that's already been circumvented by just having the ocean current manastream and the volcanic manastream. They have a portal that lets them return to the surface at will, sleep for the night, then hop back down to the same floor they left; unless I eliminate that portal, I cannot starve them or wear them down as we did for Hallmark and his fellow heroes' descendants. The crusaders are a portal away from a resupply at all times... I'm already sabotaging their supplies en masse, and the knock-on effects will hit them eventually, but perhaps not quickly.
"Picking them off... I don't want to go too hard on the heroes, since it's not their fault they're here, but by being lenient on the heroes, I'm not putting enough pressure on the templars to eliminate them. I need to separate the crusaders from their supplies. Either by stealing them or destroying them..."
As I trailed off in thought, I heard a prayer... from the teen heroes on the fake Atlantis. I suppose I have been neglecting them slightly...
"I have some business to attend to," I informed Wave and Taura as my flying ship descended from the clouds to the outcropping. Cadmus flew back as soon as they saw me and hugged me. I hugged them back and smiled at them. "I'll be back soon."
I stepped onto the ship and it smoothly lifted off, heading straight for the entrance to the Eleventh. The Voice was now living amongst the Drake-kin on the Twelveth, so I needed to deal with this myself.
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"Atlantis", The Eleventh Floor, The Dungeon
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Tamesou Akio stood with his friends, the guildmistress and the Platinum guilders at the docks as a ship approached. It was small, barely a sloop, with a single triangular sail. A lonely figure stood at the helm and directed it into the port and alongside the docks. Like snakes, the ship's ropes animated, lashing themselves tightly to the mooring points.
The gangplank slid smoothly from a recessed space, and the figure strode across without a second thought.
Seven feet tall, with voluminous robes and golden scales. Bright teal slitted eyes scanned the crowd of guilders as the huge golden wings shifted against the being's back. "Well, it's nice to meet you all in person," the being said with a nod of its head. "I am The Creator, or the closest thing to an Avatar I'll have for some time.'
"Why bother with The Voice if you had an avatar of your own?" Guildmistress Layla Losat asked, her voice and body language carefully neutral. Akio thought she was pissed off, though.
"It was not fit for public use until recently," The Creator answered. "Though I would say it's been in development since The Gorge twins fell."
"There's a name I haven't heard in a while..." Isid muttered, crossing her arms.
"Perhaps we should continue somewhere more comfortable?" The Creator continued, waving a hand at the town behind them. "I saw you've made yourselves at home in the town."
The guildmistress nodded and turned, leading the group through the mostly-empty town. They were only a few minutes into the walk when Akio couldn't contain himself.
"Inspired by Dnd Dragonborn?" Akio prompted, getting a chuckle out of The Creator.
"Somewhat," He answered, waving a hand up and down his body. "I always wanted to make a Draconic Ancestry Sorcerer Dragonborn, but never reached the level where they'd get wings, y'know?. The Voice, and the rest of the Scaleborn, were my attempt at making a Draconic Ancestry Sorcerer, mixed in with some elvish features."
"How many ideas have you stolen from Earth?" Sophie prompted, with a head tilt.
"Too many to count," He admitted. "It's not like their copyright lawyers can reach me across dimensions, after all."
"I don't know," Bruce said, sounding doubtful. "Sometimes it felt like Disney or Nintendo would if they could."
"If they could," The Creator agreed with a smile. "But they can't. There are no laws against the Pokémon..."
The teens giggled, while the rest of the guilders in the group looked confused.
"Not that I've figured out pocket monsters," The Creator waved off. "But they're good inspiration for figuring out how to give animals magic, and I'll admit to some cribbing of their evolution system."
"So, technically..." Sophie started, before waving a hand down to Gobble. The little Kobold eeped and hid behind the dark-clothed girl's leg. "Gobble could evolve?"
"Of course," The Creator agreed. "Gobble was born after I imbued her mother with the evolution framework. After gathering enough mana, she will have a choice whether to become an 'adult' Kobold, or side-evolve into a 'Juvenile Drake-kin', or a 'Juvenile Snowbold.' Though, technically, to become a Snowbold she'd need to spend time in extreme cold and evolve there."
"Excuse me, but what's a Snowbold?" Haraldr asked, from where he was writing in his little book. The Creator rolled his eyes, but winked at Akio and turned to face the guilder.
"Ah, yes, you haven't met one yet," The Creator commented. "They are Cold-adapted Kobolds, hence the name. They used to live on the Eighth, but most now live on the Twelfth. I believe some live on the Eleventh, though."
"Could Gobble become a dragon?" Akio asked, regaining the Creator's attention.
"Only if given an appropriate Evolution Crystal, or prompted to by me." The Creator confirmed. "Some evolutions are powerful, and require much more mana to facilitate their transformation than the monster or Child could otherwise gather on their own. The crystals work as an extra battery, giving the change a bit of kick."
As He finished his sentance, they'd reached a house and were quick to file in. A maid took their coats and shoes, and they were ushered into a cosy parlor.
"Hmm. I hope I got the details right," The Creator commented as he sat down on the largest chair in the room. "It was such a chore remaking the entireity of Atlantis, I'm sure I missed details here and there."
"It's mostly right," Jerrard agreed as the maid re-entered with snacks and finger food. "The closet was a little smaller, and the flagstones the wrong pattern in some places."
It was then that Akio realized this was their house. Not just a house they'de moved into, but the same house they'd lived in on the surface. The Creator waved off the offered food, but leaned forward in the Gendo pose.
"So,' He started, eying the humans in the room. "You wish to be allowed off the island?"
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