Blue core, p.16
Blue Core, page 16
part #1 of Blue Core Series
"So how exactly are you going to do this teleportation thing?" Shayma asked, flexing the hand that I’d covered in stone before.
"Probably just have you sit somewhere and put your hands on the ground. I don’t imagine growing stone out of your palms would would be comfortable, so I’ll just use boring tendrils to take over some ground and grow it from there."
"That doesn’t sound much more comfortable!"
"At least you’ll be sitting down! Besides, it shouldn’t feel too different from manifesting things from my inventory. That’s not like your [Phantom Pocket], it actually uses dungeon-stuff to transport things."
"I hadn’t even noticed." She flicked her tail, looking out over where a swarm of children were being bustled into the central square by, presumably, grandparents. "You know, I’ve seen dungeons in action, in the cities the mage-kings took, and you’re a lot better at manipulating your...stuff."
"Thank you! I’ve worked hard to become so." Given that I had [Customization], I should be better. It bothered me that the Skill wasn’t ranked, though, so I was stuck with what I had until I could merge it with another Skill. Which Skill in particular it could be merged with hadn’t occurred to me yet, but maybe the next time I got some Skills I could figure it out.
Glenn came by to pull the sentries from their posts, and nodded to Shayma. "We’re ready. What should we expect on the other side?"
"I’ll put them in the middle of town, in front of Iniri’s manor."
"You’ll come out in a lakeside town. Queen Iniri’s dwelling is the three-story manor with her flag, but I cannot guarantee she will be there to greet you." She hopped down and followed Glenn to the center of the village before settling down cross-legged and putting her palms on the packed earth of the road. "All right, Blue."
I pushed Boring Tendrils out through her hands and made the surrounding area mine. First came a stone circle to act as a foundation, then a series of pillars to anchor the mana wrap I needed to do in order to confine the teleportation effect. To the villagers, it appeared as if it had simply risen out of the ground, though the stone came from my stocks. Back in the living space, I flickered the ceiling to get people’s attention, and then ran lights around the receiving area. Without Shayma, that was about as much as I could do to keep them informed.
"Merciful gods!" Someone said. Children pointed. Glenn growled about Classers under his breath. For the heck of it I decorated the pillar and the pedestal, abstract spirals and designs, so it looked more like a proper magical artifact than just a partial gazebo. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it actually glow, though that might have been a touch overboard.
"This tickles!" Shayma hissed under her breath. "Hurry up!"
I had to laugh. Of all the reactions, I wasn’t expecting that one. It was made even worse by the mein Shayma had adopted, where she couldn’t even fidget. "All right, tell them to get going." Inside the living area, some of the mid-range Classers had joined Joce at the edge of the light ring I’d made, wary but not panicked.
To make the teleportation field large enough to transport the carts and wagons and beasts of burden, as well as establish it so quickly, sucked up something over five thousand mana. And that didn’t count the upkeep. Unless I was being horribly inefficient, this wasn’t something even a Classer could do on the spur of the moment.
"Proceed," Shayma instructed them, and Glenn was the first to step into the circle. He vanished with a faint shimmer of blue, appearing on the other end at precisely the same moment.
"Identify yourself," barked Taln, a thirtieth-level [Captain].
"Glenn Weald, [Ranger] for Anton Village." He glanced around spotting Iniri’s flag hanging from her manor. Two kirin rampant, a tower between them. "The village itself is coming behind me."
"Ah, so Shayma found you?" Taln relaxed, though I wasn’t sure why he expected me to dump an enemy into town. Better safe than sorry, I supposed.
"The fox-girl? Aye. Hell of a Classer you sent us."
"..ah, yes indeed."
The rest of the village started appearing as they stepped into the field on the dais, flicking from village to town and looking about with wonder as they appeared under the pseudo-sky. A child, predictably, escaped from her mother to run down to the lakeshore, and I was glad it wasn’t my job to try and wrangle an extra two hundred people. I was glad I didn’t have to wrangle even two.
In all, it took no more than twenty or so minutes for the entire caravan to pile through, by the end of which Iniri herself made an appearance. It was actually pretty strange to watch all the villagers kneel, and even stranger to watch Iniri receive her due and give them a little speech. For some reason goblins and teleports were easier to swallow than actual monarchy.
James the retired [Soldier] was the last one through, and with that I dispelled the teleport field, pulling everything back through Shayma’s link. The stone teleportation circle melted away, finally freeing her to stand up again.
"Why does it have to tickle?" She grumbled, smoothing out the fur of her tail. "That’s just cruel."
"Was it really that bad?"
"Not after you finished building. But being stuck like that was just strange. It was like my hands were just too heavy to lift."
"To be fair, it was a half-ton of stone or so. That’s kind of heavy."
"It is!" She stretched, shaking her hands as she looked around the abandoned village. "This place seems all forlorn, now. How are they doing?"
"They’re getting a speech from Iniri. They’re fine. I’ll just have to keep an eye on them for a while to figure out what changes I need to make to the farms."
"Oh, right. Well, hopefully we got them close?" She eyed the purpling sky. "You know, I think I’m going to go ahead and stay here for tonight. Tents are fine, but nothing beats an actual roof."
"I would agree, but only when I’m the roof in question."
Shayma grinned suddenly, a flash of teeth. "Don’t tell me you’re going to be jealous of a building."
"Hush, you."
Day 91 - Taelah
The dungeon was monstrous.
She didn’t even realize it was a dungeon at first, since on first sight she just thought the walls were cliffs. The sky was quite convincing too, with the occasional cloud scudding past the mountain peak rising to the west. It was the sun that gave it away, since it shed no warmth even at the peak of the day.
Once she noticed it, the signs were everywhere. The temperature, just this side of cool, didn’t match the season. The faint wind, coming from all directions with no apparent source, had no relation to the visible weather. She’d never been in a dungeon before, as [Herbalist] was not a combat Class. Not that some adventurers couldn’t use a good [Herbalist] to find which plants they should scrounge from inside dungeons, but actually delving wasn’t appealing.
Of her whole family, only cousin Venn had aspired to be a Classer, officially getting his second-tier combat Class shortly before going missing near Wildwood. Which was exactly why the Marn clan was entirely content with the soil of low-mana areas where they didn’t have to worry about shadows with teeth or whatever other horrors lurked where the mana grew thick enough to taste. Actually being inside a dungeon was a worrying prospect.
Except that none of Iniri’s people seemed to be worried at all. The town had no defenses, and to be fair, there was no hint of monsters anywhere that she could see. There was just a large expanse of grass, a few trees, and nothing else. It seemed more unnatural the longer she looked at it, so she left the milling and confused crowd of her fellow villagers to investigate. [Herbalist] gave her enough skill to appraise both of the only two plants she could see.
Tayan Grass - This grass is ordinary dungeon grass has been altered to grow from the mana of this particular dungeon. Other than its blue-green color, it has no unusual properties.
Tayantan Tree - This tree is unique to the dungeon in which it grows, with a hard wood that is well-suited to channeling mana. It bears a fruit that restores small amounts of health, stamina, and mana.
Despite the appraisal, she thought the color of the grass was unusual enough a property to remark on. If it ever grew taller it could be woven into a number of interesting things, something especially important given the lack of decent cordage otherwise. The trees though. The trees alone could establish an orchard that could support a family for generations. At least, a family in a low-mana area.
Going to farm resources in high-mana areas was more lucrative, yes, but restricted to those with at least a dabbling in a combat Class, given the danger of even normal vermin there. While everyone wanted icefruit, what everyone actually ate was apples and potatoes. There were no monsters or mana-beasts here though, or so she was assured, and in that tree danced visions of a long dynasty and comfortable evening years.
"Miss Marn?" One of the queen’s lieutenants accosted her, politely, where she was contemplating the tree. "We were told the other elders wanted you. They want your opinion on the farming area."
"You’re not putting fields around the town?" Taelah lifted her eyebrows. She’d seen only a footpath leading out into grass, nothing that was appropriate for all the wagons they’d brought. They could manage a longer trek, but it’d be a slog. And it’d be a slog every trip until they trampled down some roads or one of Iniri’s Classers made some for them.
If they had to make that slog they would, because they were Anton’s Village and they wouldn’t just vanish into a larger town. Admittedly, a larger town that seemed mostly deserted. Despite the fact that it could probably house five hundred there only seemed to be Iniri’s men and women, settled into the manor and the few buildings around it.
"No, Blue has a farming area set up for you."
"That’s thoughtful of Lord Blue, but with all respect it would be far easier to provide for the town if we use the fields outside it."
"Lord…? Shayma didn’t tell you anything, did she?"
"She told us we’d be going to a secure holding," Taelah said, suddenly wary. That was all that had been important at the time, and yet, it seemed the girl had omitted some details. She’d known the offer was too good.
"Well, yes, it is that." The armored man looked down at her. "This dungeon is...aware. It’s a Power by the name of Blue."
She blinked at him. "I...what?" Gears spun in her head, refused to catch, and then she decided they didn’t matter. "Look, it doesn’t matter whether or not we have a god watching over us, logistics are still more difficult without roads."
He laughed. "I’m sure that will amuse him. No, there are roads, but not here. There’s a permanent teleport to the farms."
"...what." This time she couldn’t ignore it. The teleport to get to the town was bad enough. Not that the experience had been negative, in fact it had been utterly unremarkable in every respect but the change in location, but nobody had permanent teleports set up. Especially not for farms! She wasn’t that familiar with high-level magery but even she would say pouring an ocean of gold into a shortcut for farmers was too much.
"You’ll get used to it. This way." She followed him, half-suspiciously, along the clean cobbled roads to a broad square with a circle inscribed in it. The rest of Anton’s Village was there, guiding their wagons into place as they were directed into the circle, where they vanished. Glenn waved at her, and she strode forward to meet him.
"There’s another one of these through there," he said, waving around. "Not exactly the same, but close. It has barns and fields and such though. Get this - fields are already ploughed."
"I see." She was still suspicious. When something sounded too good to be true, it probably was, and Anton’s Village hadn’t survived the Great Drought and the Borenath Uprising by being careless and stupid. She scowled at the circle and then stepped into it herself.
With a flash of blue she was elsewhere, still in the dungeon as far as she could tell, but now there were fields. Barns, silos, even houses, too. All of them laid out and scattered like some children’s idea of farmland, without any regard for how beasts of burden would have to travel or, for that matter, the farmers themselves.
Stepping outside the teleport circle as more people came through, she scooped up a handful of the soil, feeling the texture. At least the dirt was good. "Well, this is a good start," she admitted grudgingly. "But we’ll have to rebuild everything. Just for starters half those silos and barns should be near the teleport. These fields are all over the place, too. You want to mix the -"
She broke off as before her very eyes buildings started rising from the ground nearby. The only time she’d seen such a conjurer’s trick was when Shayma had produced the teleporter for the village. This was on an entirely different level, and she watched as in less than a minute, half a dozen storage buildings appeared in a neat row. She was speechless. There was nothing to say to that.
For about five seconds.
"Get the rest of the elders," she told a passing child, sending her scampering back into the crowd. It was time to teach a dungeon how to farm.
Day 94 - Blue
Although it wasn’t surprising, it was a little depressing how many changes I ended up having to make to the farming areas. Nothing particularly major, nothing that necessitated structural changes, but it was the little mistakes that really annoyed me the most. Inefficient paths, too-small or too-large field areas, and poorly-designed barns or storage. It was actually embarrassing. [Tempered Wisdom], unfortunately, didn’t seem to extend to agriculture.
The livestock was interesting though. They were clearly based on mundane species, but something along the way had been altered. There were things that had once been oxen, but they had pangolin-type plates over their backs. The chickens were still chickens, but they had an extra set of wings and extra-fluffy feathers, making them nearly spherical balls with beaks and legs. Horses, for whatever reason, were entirely unaltered.
Since, according to Shayma, mana tended to mutate or evolve things, these creatures were probably the result of ages of animal husbandry plus mana exposure. Now that they were sitting inside a dungeon, there might be other effects. Admittedly, my mana seemed invisible to everyone but Ansae, like it was slightly out of phase or sideways to the usual reality. Nothing outside showed any signs of strangeness despite me being around for three months and having a mana dynamo set up, so I wasn’t too worried about side effects.
But then, maybe it would be different if I actually ran my mana flow through something. As much as I wanted to hook in all the crops to make extra mana for myself, and maybe even resources, I’d have to leave most of it untouched. It wouldn’t do to accidentally destroy all their crops by trying to either help or take more advantage than I really needed to.
But most wasn’t the same as all.
[Anos Rice] discovered.
[Guran Melon] discovered.
[Kon Root] discovered.
…
[Tamac Leaf] discovered.
Interestingly, I didn’t actually get access to any of the crops until I linked them in, even after they were planted. Apparently that mana circulation made them "mine," and only then would the overlay deign to give me access to them. Which made me wonder what would happen if I could do that with people or animals. Would they instantly become monsters? Or was it just nonsensical to consider that? After all, at this point I was locked out from breeding monsters, no loss there, so maybe I couldn’t acquire them either. Or maybe flora and fauna worked differently and I couldn’t acquire animals for the same reason people didn’t photosynthesize.
Once I had the crops, I made some extras in a series of little test chambers, overhauled from the old and stupid box-farms I’d made. They were improved even from that method by using Expansion to make a large room and subdividing it, still using magma and ice to create mana flow. Following proper scientific method, I had a set of control crops, then ones with tayantan and chrystheniums mixed in. Since they could mutate, maybe there’d be some influence. Not that such a thing made any biological sense, but [Dungeon Ecology] seemed pretty sneeringly distant from actual biology.
I also built several more [Composting Chamber]s, putting raw Biomass into them to turn into [Fertilizer]. Between the farms and the test chambers, I was burning through my stocks pretty quickly with the [Growth] field. It was actually getting to the point where I was feeling the lack of any ability to script or automate things pretty keenly. Not that I couldn’t do it manually, it was just a chore.
During all this, Shayma continued south and east. Rain came in, turning [Ghost Step]’s fog into a featureless haze, prompting her to drop out of the Skill and fish a hooded cloak from my inventory. The sound of rain pattering on cloth through Shayma’s ears was intense. I wasn’t sure if it was the fox ears or the enhanced senses, but the fine, driving rain sounded like a deluge.
"Honestly, this is nice," I confessed to Shayma. "I like rain, but I haven’t seen a drop of it where I live. I could listen to it all day."
"But you’re not the one who has to deal with wet fur." She retorted, not that her fur was getting wet under the cloak. "Actually, what does getting wet even mean for you? You’ve got waterfalls and stuff inside you. Couldn’t you even make your own rain system?"
"I probably could and should! But it’s just not the same."
"Fine, fine. We’ll listen to the rain." She chuckled and ducked her head under a low-hanging branch, following a game trail through the wood. The terrain had gotten rougher and wilder once the mountain range turned west and she’d left it behind, mana densities slowly rising. Now, there were flowers that glowed at night and birds with wings made of flowing water flitting among the trees. Though it was still nearly a hundred miles away, the presence of Wildwood Retreat’s mana font was palpable. Or perhaps the font was just the recipient of hundreds or thousands of square miles of mana pouring into a single point.
Given how my own mana dynamo was set up, I would actually bet on the second one.
