I had been waiting for that ever since she told me I was only 300 feet from the surface. I started digging a tunnel in the direction I needed. Despite the boost from the sprout I still ran out decently quickly, and had some time to think about the entrance. The first room was built to look like a natural cave, but I didn't really want a 300 foot natural looking tunnel as the entrance. The entrance, I decided, would make it very obvious what they were getting into, then the first room would just be a complete reversal back to natural. The mobs dropping loot would also probably be a bit of a giveaway. Still, that meant I had to decide what I wanted for the entrance tunnel. I looked around my dungeon. I noticed the soil mice in the first room and got an idea. Curl up and don't move. It suddenly looked like an empty room with a few small piles of dirt on the floor. I grinned internally as I told them to return to their previous commands.
I created a new mob. I'd noticed that the mobs changed slightly based on my desires, so I wanted to test the limits of that. I made a snake out of clay, and focused on strength above everything else. I wanted this snake to be strong, and it didn't matter to me if it was fast. When I formed it, it was a bit more expensive than the ones formed from leaves, but my focus on lowering agility and the bonuses from the sprout made it pretty manageable. Move to the far wall. The snake was super slow. I looked and it had a DEX score of 1. But the important thing was that it was strong and still pretty durable. It wouldn't take too much to kill it, but a firm pull wouldn't be enough. It wasn't dangerous if in a large room, the adventurers would easily stay away from it and attack at range.
Still, that wasn't the plan for this snake. I created a tube of clay, identical to the snake, in everything except it wasn't a living mob. I then infused it with my essence like I had with the string. Again, the essence resisted, but not as much as with the string. I had one of the mice come over and try to damage the clay. To my dismay, the mouse still was able to damage the clay. As I looked, I realized why. Unlike stone, where it's all one solid mass, the clay just squished around the claws of the mouse. I had the mouse try the same with the snake I'd made. The clay of the snake resisted in a way the tube hadn't.
I sat, stumped. Or, well, floated, stumped. I'd thought strengthening the clay would make it hold its form, but apparently not. I looked at the snake. What was it that made the surface of the snake firmer? I had noticed that the same was true of my other mobs during their fight with Night, which was why I'd hoped this would work. The leaves of the snakes and the dirt of the mice resisted damage more than it should, almost like it was one piece. I looked closely at the surface of the snake. As I looked, I saw tiny strands of essence running through the clay. They seemed to be what kept the clay together when the mouse tried to scratch it.
I had a feeling that there had to be something I could do to the clay to do the same thing. I watched the strands of essence. Soon I started to see which strands were the life-force of the snake and which were actually animating the clay. I looked over at my tube. Could I … copy it? I didn't need the life-force strands, but the others … they were my essence. I had the snake slither up next to the tube I'd made. When they were motionless next to each other they were completely indistinguishable. I looked closely at the snake, then switched and made a single stitch of essence on the tube. As soon as I stopped focusing on it, it puffed into nothing but a dim glow that lasted for a second before fading away. If I had to focus on holding the essence in place as I worked, this would be far more difficult, but my stubborn streak kicked in and I started again.
I managed to get four or five weaves before I lost concentration and one turned into light. This made me lose concentration on the others and they all dissolved. I tried again. I got 5 weaves in place, then as I felt them slipping I focused completely on preventing them from dissolving. Soon I had all five super solid. I looked at the snake again. I added another one, then I started to lose them again. The first one puffed into light, then another two, but I managed to save the last three.
I continued. Soon I could manage ten. Then fifteen. Then thirty. I didn't know how many strands I needed, and I no longer cared. I was going to do this. I focused everything on the two tubes of clay. The rest of my dungeon faded into the background. I knew it existed, I was still aware of it, I just no longer cared. Hour after hour, weaving essence through this tube of clay.
I soon lost track of time. All I saw was the clay and the essence. I lost track of how many times I tried, how many weaves I created, how many puffed into light, and how many times I completely lost control and fell back to ground zero. Finally I had all of the weaves in place. I held it for a second, then released. It stayed.
For a few seconds. Then it puffed into the brightest light I'd made yet. I didn't understand. What did I do wrong? I looked even more closely at the snake. I noticed something I hadn't seen before. I had been staring at this pattern for so long I had it completely memorized. As I followed the weave, I noticed something I hadn't before. There was a secondary, dimmer weave. I started again. I practiced forming the brighter weave first until I could hold it with ease. Then I started working on the dimmer weave.
Again the hours passed. More and more weaves formed on the clay. The detail I was achieving was something that would've been impossible for anything but a dungeon core. Soon I could hold all of the weaves I could see. I looked again at the snake, extra close, just to see if I'd missed anything. I had every weave in the exact right place. I released the weave. It stayed!
The lower weave supported the upper, and I watched as it stayed steady. For a few seconds. Then I noticed a twitch. I stared at the two clay tubes, and I saw that one of the underlying weaves had shifted off slightly. Then another. And another. Soon one of the primary weaves lacked the needed support, and it vanished into light. With that weave gone, the entire pattern collapsed.
I wasn't discouraged. I was so close. I formed the weave again, but this time held it and watched the two to see if there were any minute differences. I could sort of tell there was something different, but I couldn't really see what. I stared longer. Minutes, hours, even days could have passed while I stared at the two, I wasn't sure. Slowly, I started to notice the difference. The essence in the snake was slowly moving, while the essence I'd put in the tube of clay was completely still. Slowly I tried to make the essence move. Almost immediately the essence became unevenly spread and collapsed.
Confident that this was the final piece to the puzzle, I rebuilt the weave. Again, I tried to slowly start it moving. It lasted a bit longer this time. Again the hours blew away like leaves on the wind, but soon I was so close. When I released the weave, it would stay for a solid minute before destabilizing. I knew I was close. I couldn't quite get the essence to flow willingly through the paths. I was so close.
Suddenly the essence seemed to just jump to follow what I wanted. Where before I'd been herding cats during a thunderstorm, now it was like leading a professional show horse. It made completing the weave a piece of cake. As I stopped focusing on the weave as hard, I realized the strangest thing. I had been giving my complete focus to the weave in the snake … at the same time as I was giving my complete focus to holding the new weave together. I wasn't multitasking, I was actively focusing on two separate things at the same time!
As I returned my attention to the dungeon at large, my attention snapped back into a single focus. I wasn't sure what that had been, but I intended to ask Ari. I looked around my dungeon. Everything looked pretty much like it had before I started concentrating on the essence weaves. My first room … exactly the same. Room two? No difference. In room three the plants looked a bit thicker, but nothing else was changed. Night's room … no difference. Then I looked in the core room. If I'd had eyes they would've popped right out of my head. Ari was sleeping on my core, but that wasn't what surprised me so much.
"Ari. Ari!"
She jolted awake. "What? What?"
I gave a mental prod. "Look at the mana tree!" It was far bigger than before. Where the sprout had consisted of a single stalk with a single leaf, now there was a thin trunk, a few branches off of it, and a bunch of leaves. Before there'd been a few roots, now there was a mass of roots spreading a good foot from the base of the tree before it even entered the stone.
Ari chuckled. "Just noticed that? That's been like that for a few days."
I stared at her. I knew I'd lost track of time, but I'd been working on that for days?!? I examined the tree. The description was the same as before, although I could tell the effect was stronger. After all of my practice, I could easily see the essence moving around and through the tree. I looked at my bond with the tree.
That … was great, but also a bit foreboding. When I'd started working on the clay, the tree hadn't been even close to reaching the next stage. Also, the tree reaching the next level must have been when controlling the essence became so much easier. If that had been a few days … "Ari? … How long was I working on that tube of clay?"
Ari thought for a moment. "Somewhere around … six months."
Six months?!? How? How had I lost track of time that badly?
Ari chuckled as a bit of my surprise leaked over the bond. "It's actually pretty common for a dungeon core to get sucked into a single project for days, weeks, months, or even years! I was actually surprised that we were going to open your dungeon without you having a single lapse like that. If I'd needed to, it's pretty easy to get you out of that state, I just have to catch your attention. Still, did whatever you're working on succeed, or did you eventually have to give up?"
She didn't seem to assume either way, and I realized I didn't even know. I told the mice to come try and damage the tube of clay. Nothing. They couldn't even scratch it. "I succeeded. I'm just not entirely sure what it is that I did." I realized I didn't know what changes the weave would make in the tube. Still, with no way to figure it out, and with six months having passed, I figured I'd better check my menu to make sure nothing had changed.
That was … a lot different. First, I'd passed a few subtiers and my essence capacity had expanded a ton! My generation hadn't improved that much, which made sense. I hadn't expanded my influence, so while my stronger core could pull on the essence better, it didn't have additional area to pull from. There were two other obvious changes. There was a new dungeon action available and a whole new area.
"Ari, my menu changed quite a bit during that time. What is 'animate object' in my dungeon actions?"
Ari's eyes widened. "You unlocked animated objects? What were you doing?"
I explained what I'd been doing. "I wanted to make a strong cord of clay, but when I filled it with my essence like the stone, I strengthened the individual particles, but not their cohesion. I noticed that my mobs resisted things piercing their outer skin in a way the simple essence-reinforced clay didn't. So I looked closely and saw a weave of essence woven throughout the mob that the clay lacked. So I copied it. Apparently it took longer than I thought." I was still a bit sheepish that I'd totally ignored everything for six months.
Ari paused, like she didn't know what to say. "There are … so many things in that explanation that don't make sense. First, you can't reinforce anything but stone and sometimes wood with your essence. So whatever you did with the clay to begin with was something different."
Now I was confused. "What? I've infused all sorts of things with my essence to strengthen them."
Now Ari looked even more confused. "Like what?"
I thought about it. "I guess, just the clay and the string when I made the fire."
Ari paused. "You strengthened that?" At my mental affirmation, she dropped to the ground. "Do it again. Make one normal, and make one that you then reinforce."
I did so, making them both in front of her. She grabbed the first one, and with a bit of effort she snapped it. Then she grabbed the second one. She pulled as hard as she could, nothing. She quickly flew it to Night's room. "Have him try to snap it."
I made a small tube of rock with a hole in it and had her tie the string to the tube and the other end to Night's tail. Walk forward. Night tried, but try as he might he couldn't snap the thin string. He gave an especially hard pull, and jolted forward. I assumed he had snapped the string, but as I looked, the string was fine, the rock tube had snapped. Ari stared, obviously speechless. I told Night to go back to the normal routine, and absorbed the string and stone tube, returning the room to pristine state. Ari sat there for a bit longer before absent-mindedly flying back to my core room. "This has some interesting repercussions. I'll have to think about it. Next you said you 'saw a weave of essence' in the mob. What exactly do you mean?"
I thought for a second. "Well, I looked at the mob and saw little … I don't really know what they are, but they reminded me of threads, so I called them weaves, made from essence. They were all along the snake, and I guessed they had something to do with it staying together. I could also sort of see the ones I think are giving it life-force, but those were more complicated, changing, and in general just way hard to copy, so I stuck with just the outside ones."
Ari shook her head in amazement. "Most dungeon cores can see essence to some extent. For most it is just a dim glow around things with high amounts of essence or mana, like strong enchanted items. Some dungeons are better than most, they see it more closely linked to the object and can see lower amounts than normal." She paused. "I don't think I've ever heard of a dungeon seeing anything like what you describe, let alone on a mob as weak as that snake is."
She thought about it for a moment. "Really, though, this doesn't have much impact. Unless what I think might be next is what I think it is. What did you mean by 'I copied it.' in your explanation?"
This I was most excited to share. "Well, I started using essence from my core to make similar weaves in the inert clay I'd made. If I made just one and released it, it would vanish into light. So I had to hold them all there. At first I could only manage like five strands. Over time, as I practiced, I can now hold …" I glanced at the tube. "Probably somewhere in the thousands. I don't really know. Anyhow, when I had the whole weave, I released it and it didn't stay. So I looked closer and saw a secondary weave supporting the first one. So I copied that too. At that point I was close, but not quite there. I noticed the essence was actually flowing along the weaves. What I'd seen as threads were actually more like veins for the essence. I was getting super close to having the essence flow when the tree grew bigger, giving me a boost to 'essence control' from my bond. That made the last bit super easy." I glanced at the tube. "And now it's staying just fine without the slightest sign of decay!"
Ari shook her head in disbelief. "You … I can hardly believe it. I think you must've copied the essence that animates the clay. This makes the clay a single entity, which would provide the cohesion you wanted, but more importantly, it will also obey your commands like your mobs."
Again, my figurative eyes were wide. I glanced at the tube. Curl up. It did! It curled into a little coil! "Ari, is this how my mobs are made?"
Ari shook her head. "There are some differences. The biggest one is that when you build a mob, you actually only create the life-force, it then animates the matter built to match it. This has a few repercussions. First, your mobs are living beings. They can grow, learn, and evolve, albeit to a limited extent due to their lack of a soul. Second, it is far less expensive in terms of essence to create a mob than an animated item. Finally, a damaged mob will slowly heal itself if it has access to essence and materials."
I was a bit disappointed. Was the thing I'd worked so hard to create useless?
Ari continued. "Still, most dungeons eventually use animated objects to some extent. I've never heard of a dungeon making an animated object the way you did, let alone this early, but there are spells to animated objects, and most dungeons learn one eventually." She paused. "Actually, I don't know how expensive your way of making an animated item is, I know the spell is more expensive than creating a mob. Anyhow, animated objects have a few advantages over mobs. First, because a mob's animation is linked to its life-force, if killed the entire thing falls apart. For example, if you were to cut off the arm of a stone golem mob, then crush the body, the arm would fall apart. Not so for animated objects. If you were to remove the arm of an animated stone golem, then absolutely crush the body, the arm would still try to follow its commands. Second, you can make animated objects in shapes you don't have available as a mob. For example, if you wanted said golem to have swords in place of arms, you would have to gain the pattern first to make it as a mob, as an animated object you just build it that way before animating it. Finally, some objects simply don't exist as a mob. For example, a door could be animated, but there's not any known 'door' shaped mobs. Really, most dungeons just use normal doors and let the adventurers open them themselves. Still, occasionally a dungeon wants requirements before the door opens and doesn't want to use basic keys and locks."
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Now I had a question. "Ari, I thought you said I needed an unbroken path throughout my dungeon so essence could flow properly. How could I use doors?"
Ari nodded her head. "Good question. For whatever reason doors don't block the essence nearly as much …. Assuming there's a way to open it by the adventures. If you build a locked door with no key, you might as well have built a wall, but if there's a key, even a hidden one, on the adventurer’s side, then essence will flow through the door fairly well. And essence will flow through an animated door even better, which is another reason they use them."
These animated objects sounded cool. I looked in the 'Animate object' area of my menu.
Looks like I had options following my mobs, as well as one for "basic objects" that I figured encompassed things like doors and things like that that Ari had mentioned.
"I can make animated versions of the patterns I have available for mobs, as well as 'basic objects', whatever those are."
Ari nodded, before she suddenly cocked her head to the side like she'd thought of something. "Alex, was the tube of clay still reinforced when you animated it?" At my mental confirmation she shook her head in disbelief. "Animating dungeon reinforced stone is incredibly difficult, but also very worthwhile. The stone itself resists the animation. If you'd started with a new tube of clay, you probably would have finished weeks or months ago." At my shock, she smiled slightly. "But! Now you can animate essence-reinforced materials. Since you can reinforce things other than rock." She shook her head, still obviously trying to come to grasps with that. "Those things will be practically invincible. Most dungeons have to choose, for example, between reinforcing their doors or animating them. Only the strongest dungeons have the power to animate the essence-reinforced stone. Golems made from essence-reinforced stone are bosses in some of the most powerful dungeons." As she felt my excitement she stopped me before I got too excited. "You're still a long way from the essence capacity to make one of those, but it may happen down the road."
Still, that was exciting news. I was having fun thinking of all of the ways I could use animated objects in my dungeon. It was usually annoying how little I knew, but sometimes I didn't know I shouldn't be able to do something, so I just did it anyway. Before I thought of too many ways to use animated objects Ari stopped me in my tracks.
"But you definitely shouldn't use animated objects any time soon."
I stared at her. "What? Why not?" The clay tubes were still critical to my plans for the entrance, which I still hadn't forgotten.
She looked at me. "Remember? I said only very powerful dungeons have animated objects. If you have one at this level, the adventurers won't know what to think, and they'll probably just kill you to be safe."
I thought for a bit. "What if I never tell them to move? Then the adventurers would just think it's normal matter somehow fused into a single whole."
Ari thought about it for a second. "That could work. But you would have to be incredibly careful not to have any of them move, because if the adventurers think you're trying to hide something it would be even worse."
I could do that. I knew how to make my entrance tunnel now, but I had a few more questions for Ari first. "I also got a new area in my menu called 'mind shards'. What are those?"
Ari clapped her hands and fluttered up to sit on my core. "Ooh! You unlocked mind shards. I had hoped you would based on how long you had been out, but I wasn't sure. When you go into the area, how many rows are there?"
I selected it.
"Uh, it has four rows not counting the title. Wait, I thought you could see it!"
Ari shook her head absently. "I can only see what you are currently looking at." She shook her head vigorously, shaking herself out of her shock. "OK, first I'll explain what mind shards are. I'm guessing at some point during the process of copying the 'essence weaves' over to the new tube you felt like you were focusing on both at once?"
That had been my final question. "Yeah! What was that?"
Ari smiled. "That was you creating a mind shard. Almost all dungeons eventually develop the ability to create additional copies of their brains, although with far lesser levels of intelligence. This is how they can manage a massive dungeon all by themselves. And there are different levels of mind shards. Depending on how well you split your attention when you gained the mind shards, you can get several different levels. And while you can increase your level later, it is hard because they've already become familiar with the mind shards they've had access to. Also depending on your level of access and your strength, you can have more shards at once.
"Lesser mind shards are the most plentiful, and frankly pretty easy to unlock. Most cores accidentally unlock those if they try to multitask even a little. Which is why I didn't tell you about these before, you would probably have tried it on something you weren't as invested in and just gotten lesser shards. The lesser shards have about the intelligence of a mob. They can watch for a single item to occur, notifying your main brain if it does. For example, most dungeons have one on the entrance to notify them when each new group enters, and on each staircase to notify them of each group that makes it to a new level.
"The next level is greater mind shards. These are significantly more intelligent. They can make some deductions. Most dungeons have one of these watching over each floor, set to notify the main intelligence of anything that needs attention. The shards are lesser pieces of the core's intelligence, so they usually think the same things are important, although the greater shards aren't foolproof and can miss things if they would have to connect a few dots to see something.
"Only a few dungeons unlock master shards. These have a decent portion of the core's inherent intelligence. The cores that do have these shards usually only have access to a few of them, and usually set them to roam the dungeon and deal with the notifications from lesser shards, only dealing personally with things forwarded by the greater or master shards. This gives their main intelligence time to study or work on creating new things. Because even for master shards, they lack any creativity and can't really learn to improve the intelligence of the main core."
Here she paused. "I've … never actually heard of a true shard, but based on the (1/3) I have a hunch. I think those might actually be exact copies of your current intelligence level. The impacts of this would be … insane. They might be able to actually be creative and learn new things for you. This would be a major help to you." She paused, then added an afterthought. "Also, you have an insane amount of shards available for your strength. A hundred lesser shards? That usually doesn't happen until you are of a far higher tier."
These mind shards sounded super useful. I assumed I'd created a true shard when working, and that's why I'd unlocked them. The two focuses had seemed equally powerful when I was working on the essence weaves, I couldn't tell a difference. Then I thought of a problem. "Ari, what if the thing the shard alerts me about is something that only lasts a moment? Then by the time I looked it would be too late."
Ari smiled. "That's another benefit of unlocking mind shards. Even if you only unlock lesser shards, you develop a perfect memory. Not only that, but it's retroactive to everything you've experienced as a core. Try to remember the first time we talked."
I tried to.
Fortunately, once I hit accept, nothing happened, except I felt the strange pressure peak for just a second before fading away. I stayed on my guard, but nothing happened. Ari was just floating there, waiting expectantly. I figured I might as well try it. "Hello?"
"Hello!" Ari beamed. "What's your name?"
"My name is Alex. I'm confused, I seem to be stuck in this rock."
"Whoa!" It was like I was there experiencing it all again! I still knew I was just watching a memory, and I could stop at any moment, but it was an absolutely perfect copy of everything I'd been experiencing! Vision, sound, emotions, everything! "That's insane!"
Ari smiled. "Yep! And you can re-experience it far faster than it happened. Watching an hour of memories takes about a minute."
That sounded extremely useful. As did the other things my project had unlocked. Realistically, it was a pretty useful six months, although I still had trouble grasping the fact that I'd just worked on the same project for six months straight without getting bored.
Now that I'd looked at everything I had gained during the six months, it was time to finish revealing myself. I looked at my essence, which was almost full. That made me think of something. "Hey Ari? Did I just waste six months of essence?" While it would still be worth it, that would be a bummer.
Ari tilted her hand in a so-so motion. "It's no longer accessible by you, so kind of. But you actually used quite a lot during your project, and when you had excess some was sent to the mana tree and some was used to strengthen the walls of your core room. They are mostly essence-reinforced now."
That was good. I knew I probably wouldn't be able to use it, and I was glad it hadn't just been wasted. Now it was time to try out these mind shards. I selected a lesser mind shard first, figuring it would be the least strange. I suddenly was aware of all the lesser mind shards in my dungeon. All zero. But I somehow knew that if I'd had one I'd be aware of it. I wanted my first one to be something simple. I set it to watch the room with the snakes and tell me when one went over a pit trap. I then looked at my core room. It wasn't long before I felt a mental nudge, kind of like with the mind-to-mind link with Ari, but somehow far more personal. I glanced at the room. There was a snake just coming off of the pit. I tried to remember the last few seconds in that room.
I watched the snake move over the pit trap. I was supposed to alert Alex when that happened. I sent a ping to Alex.
That was … strange. I felt so … limited. I understood now what Ari meant by the intelligence of a mob. The brain I'd been sharing was … incredibly … not stupid, but just didn't make connections. I knew it could still do math, for example, but if asked to make a conclusion based on the answer? Nothing. It actually reminded me of a computer. Relatively good at simple things, but unable to make new connections or solve a complex problem.
Next I tried a greater mind shard. This one I wanted something a little harder, since Ari had said they could make deductions or understand whether something was important. I set one to tell me when two of the mice in the first room got close to each other. Again, it wasn't too long before I felt a mental nudge. This one was actually another one from the snake mind shard. I absorbed that one, as I didn't need it anymore. Then I felt a ping from the one in the first room. I watched what it had seen.
The mice walked around the room like Alex had told them to. Occasionally two of them would come closer than normal, but I still wouldn't call that close. Then two of them walked directly towards each other. They passed within about a foot of each other, and I figured that was close enough. Time to ping Alex.
This one was much more intelligent. Still pretty simple, but able to judge based on "close", where I knew a lesser shard wouldn't be able to. Next up, master shard. I made this one watch the entire dungeon for anything important. I didn't really know what this one was going to find. I waited a couple of minutes, but nothing. I realized there probably wasn't going to be anything in here I needed to know about until adventurers showed up. Still, I watched the memory of the last few minutes from the viewpoint of the master mind shard.
I examined the dungeon. Everything seemed normal. The mice were running around, the other mobs were doing their things. In the boss room, Ari was sitting on Alex's core. The mana tree hadn't changed since Alex had seen it. I watched the dungeon, waiting for something to happen that I would need to alert Alex about.
This one seemed relatively intelligent. Like Ari had said, it seemed to be fairly close to my normal in terms of intelligence. I could tell, however, that it had no creativity whatsoever. I made another one with the command to create a pretty statue. It formed a block of stone. Then it started removing pieces, and I got excited. Maybe my mind shards would be better than normal! But then I realized it was just randomly removing chunks because it knew that was how you made a statue. Eventually there was nothing left of the original block, and it made a new block and started again.
I absorbed all of the shards and tried a true mind shard. I just told it to work on the dungeon. Soon it started digging the exit tunnel. It continued until I was getting close to the exit. It wasn't the same as what I'd done while working on the clay, I wasn't aware of both viewpoints at the same time, but it seemed somewhat similar. I was getting ready to tell it to stop, I didn't want to break through just yet, but then it stopped. I watched the time through its perspective.
I knew I was a mind shard, but it felt exactly the same. I knew I was supposed to work on the dungeon. The last thing I'd been doing was digging the entrance tunnel, before I'd been distracted with the clay. I started expanding the tunnel. I stopped a bit before the tunnel reached the surface, I wanted to prepare just a bit more before I actually emerged.
Wow! That really had felt just like a normal memory. It even had something I now noticed all of the other shards lacked: emotions. I could also tell that it was just as creative as I was, and that learning something new through a true mind shard would work just as well as doing so with my primary intelligence.
Well, since that was all figured out, time to finish making my entrance. I had a greater shard create holes in the ceiling of the entrance tunnel, the perfect size for the snake's head. I then made another greater shard in charge of creating tubes of clay like the first one, except that instead of a head, it just had a ball of clay. The head wasn't really necessary for what I needed. I then created two master shards in charge of adding the essence to the tubes, one to strengthen it, then the second to animate it. Pretty quickly I ran out of essence. Those animated tubes really did cost an arm and a leg, even with my improved essence. Still, I had all the time in the world, and I wanted my entrance tunnel to be perfect.
A few weeks passed. It was insane how expensive those tubes were. Still, I had made up my mind, and it wasn't like I was short on time. Soon I had a big pile of tubes wrapped up in the corner. Once I figured I had enough, I told them to go put themselves in the ceiling of the entrance tunnel. They slithered out, then helped each other get into the holes in the roof of the tunnel. The ceiling of the tunnel originally looked like Swiss cheese, but soon it looked like a wall of vines. Vines of clay. I had the clay tubes leave holes every once in a while randomly. By the end of the nearly 300 foot tunnel, I had about forty holes left unfilled. I then summoned my clay snake mob into those holes. The first one just fell out, so I lifted it up with my essence and had it open its mouth so it wouldn't fall out.
Ever since I'd become so much better at handling essence, I'd discovered there were actually a lot of things I could do with it. Creating simple things like fire or wind was easy, and I now had a replacement for the hands I had missed so badly while my dungeon had only mobs with no opposable thumbs. And Ari, I supposed, as I glanced at her where she was sitting on my core.
With a few last commands, my entrance tunnel was ready. The animated tubes were to act like normal tubes of clay except resisting damage. The snakes were to wrap up and hold anything that touched them, hanging perfectly still until they did so. I did instruct the snakes to avoid wrapping up any vital areas, as this was before the resurrection tokens, and I didn't want any permanent deaths in my dungeon. Anyone walking into my dungeon would have to brush past the tubes. And for the first thirty feet or so there were no snakes, so I assumed the first person grabbed would receive quite the scare!
With that done, I announced to Ari that I was ready to break through. She smiled. "Perfect! I'll go out and collect patterns for you. We don't know how long it will take the adventurer’s guild to get someone out here to test your dungeon, so I'll need to get you as many patterns as possible before they do."
I wasn't so sure about Ari leaving my dungeon. I looked at her apparent fragility and lack of teeth or claws to defend herself with. "Uh, are you sure you should be going out there? You don't seem like you'd do too well in a fight." I didn't want to offend her, but it was true. And I had come to really enjoy her company, I wasn't sure who I would talk to if she got captured or killed. I'm pretty sure talking to mind shards counted as talking to myself, and I didn't want to be insane.
Ari smiled. "You're right! I'm not built for combat. Dungeon fairies have a number of abilities devoted to being unseen. None of them would work on you, as you are my bonded dungeon, but I could even hide from your mobs if I so wished." She smiled and patted my core before she flew out of the core room and down the tunnel. "It would take a high-tier rogue to see me, and even then they'd have to be looking. Let me go, this is one of the biggest ways a dungeon fairy helps his or her core."
I still wasn't sure, but if she wanted to that badly, I knew I needed to let her go. "OK, but if there's something that's going to be dangerous to get a pattern, take safety over pattern."
Ari smiled again as she reached the end of the tunnel I'd dug so far. "All right, Mr worrypants. I'll be careful."
I knew I was probably being a bit overprotective, but Ari was literally my only person I could communicate with. I made a small tunnel exit at first. Ari flew out of the tunnel into what appeared to me total darkness. I knew it was actually dark outside, because there was almost no light coming in through the hole.
As Ari left, I tried to find something to occupy myself. Before I had much time at all, Ari was back! That was nice and quick. I wasn't even sure what I'd been worried about. Then … I noticed Ari's face. And I suddenly became far more nervous.
Ari looked very worried. "Alex, there's a problem. Dungeons never emerge anywhere near people, the people have to come to the dungeon. But you emerged right next to a large village. The adventurer’s guild is NOT going to like this."
I thought about it for a second. "No problem! I'll just fill in the hole, I can even use an identical soil composition. Then I'll dig a long tunnel and come out elsewhere!"
Ari shook her head. "Won't work. The adventurer's guild has an enchanted map that displays all of the open dungeons. Someone has probably already noticed you open and they'll send someone to check it out. They would just assume you have something to hide. They'd definitely find you and kill you at that point." She shook her head again. "No, the best option is to make it blatantly obvious what you are. Then we hope they don't decide to destroy you anyway."
I didn't really like "We hope they don't decide to destroy you anyway", but it was better than the alternative. "OK, what do we do?"
Ari nodded, apparently making a plan was helping her keep it together. "Right. You need to give this dungeon a stunning entrance. I'll go out and find out what I can, and see if I can get you some patterns in case we survive." She flew back out of the tunnel.
This time I didn't have to distract myself from worrying about Ari, I was worrying for both of us! I needed to make an awesome entrance, and quickly. At first I was going to go with the classic skull, but I figured that was probably overdone. Plus, it was probably associated with death dungeons, and I wanted to be as clear about what I was as possible.
I hadn't thought of anything to use as my entrance yet. I made both of my true mind shards, instructing them to think of an entrance and notify me if they got a good one. After all, three heads are better than one! Pretty soon, one of them alerted me. I looked at what it had been thinking, and I smiled. It was perfect. I absorbed both shards again and started building the entrance. For some reason I couldn't push my influence out of the dungeon very well, it kind of faded away after a little bit.
Still, that wouldn't stop me. I fashioned a massive pair of stone arms in the ground next to my entrance. They were clasping fingers, making a giant arch. I then shoved them just above the ground using my essence. I made another pair, just after that one. I shoved it a bit higher. Then another pair, a bit higher. So on and so forth until the last pair was sticking up almost thirty feet tall. I then smoothed the ground beneath them into a smoothly sloping tunnel. The hands dropped faster than the floor did, so it gave the impression of being grabbed by the hands as I moved my viewpoint down the tunnel to experience what the adventurers would see.
Ari flew back in the tunnel. She smiled. "I have to hand it to you, the entrance looks great!" We both chuckled before she became serious. "I learned something new, and … I'm not sure if it's good or bad. We didn't emerge next to a random village. Your entrance … Alex, it is right in the middle … of an adventurer training fort."
Would you prefer a single long chapter, or would it be better to split it into multiple chapters on RR? If split, how long should each chapter be?
