Blue Core Week Seven (Patreon)

Day 79 - Ansae

The guiding intelligence had really taken her experiment to heart.

Mana made mana, which was the only reason injudicious mages and profligate Powers (and, she might admit under pressure, careless dragons) hadn’t sucked the whole world dry of the stuff by now. But it wasn’t as simple as that, and actually creating a mana dynamo was tricky to impossible. In pragmatic terms, only natural processes cycled mana enough to produce excess, where it often gathered in points of stillness.

Like, say, under a mountain.

But the flowers seemed to generate enough of it that she thought it worthwhile to try. Her initial waving about was interesting, but then the mana had rearranged itself and snapped into place with breathtaking precision. And it provided just enough excess that she could absorb it without disrupting the cycle, which was better than slowly siphoning off elemental earth mana that trickled down toward its roots.

Then it had decided to do a larger one. She was fairly certain this was the work of some local spirit, rather than a mage, since it happened in real time, as if it were observing her. Or some intense, near-intelligent phenomenon, since the mana flow was immediately followed by more spatial workings, the power in them so damn pure it was almost invisible even to her.

That was enough to make her curious, so she rolled out of the ever-so-comfortable bed and shook herself, reverting to her lesser, more tunnel-friendly form. She had to see this for herself.

The doors were the same as before, but the tunnel outside had been worked more finely, the stone firmer underfoot. She hummed to herself, a tune twice a thousand years old, letting her claws trail the abstract patterns, wondering what long-dead or newly-born culture inspired them. Closeting yourself off for a century or so meant that you lost track of who was doing what outside.

Then she stopped as she spotted someone approaching with her more esoteric senses. It wasn’t quite a normal mortal - there was too much of the oddly crisp mana about it. But neither was it something pure spirit. She grinned wide and toothily. It was a mystery, and she loved mysteries.

She even got to watch as the corridor bulged outward, a small room appearing between them. By the time the door opened ahead of her, the room was furnished with a table, two chairs, and a bowl with a few odd blue fruits on it. Waiting for her was someone that looked like fox-kin, but wasn’t.

What she was, was nervous. “Welcome, Lady Ziir.”

That stopped her dead. Her given name was buried under three thousand years and an ocean, half the world away. There was no possible way this fox-kin could know it without an incredibly powerful divination, and she would have noticed that. Her grin widened. “I take it that this place is your work?” Her voice wanted to be hungry, so she let it.

“Umm no?” The fox-kin took a step back, and the larger, Ansae-sized chair slid out, as if offering her a seat. “Kind of the opposite?” Then she recomposed herself. “The dungeon thanks you for your gifts of knowledge and asks you to be seated.”

“The dungeon?” Ansae strode easily to the her-sized chair but didn’t sit yet, eyeing the skittish pseudo-spirit. “I have seen many, many dungeons. This is not one.”

“He says he’s pretty sure he is. His Status says he is.”

“Oh, really?” By now her grin showed all her teeth, so she took a seat and picked up one of the fruits, inspecting it. “This...dungeon of yours has a Status. And enough wit to argue? And, it seems, learn from watching me?”

“Blue says yes.” Her expression struggled, ears flicking as she clearly listened to something. But a discreet scan with an actual divination spell, rather than just her natural senses, still revealed nothing.

“Blue?”

“Yes, he’s a Blue Core dungeon. Also he’s curious as to what you cast. He doesn’t want me hurt.”

“Oh, a little divination, nothing to worry yourself over.” Ansae leaned forward, studying the woman in front of her. She was nervous, creeping into terrified, but far from terrified enough to be someone who actually knew who Ansae Ziir was. Almost certainly a servant.

The question was, a servant of what?

“Tell me girl, what are you? You look fox-kin, but you surely are not.”

She blinked. “I’m a Blue Core Fox Spirit, but I was fox-kin, which is why I look like one.”

“...oh my. Do tell.” What was euphemistically referred to as necromancy did not touch the soul. It merely animated that which was once animate, reminding it, forcefully, of the past. So what this girl claimed was a very rare thing indeed, a transmigration of the soul that did not mangle it.

“Um. It was because of my Bargain with Blue.”

Instead of replying, Ansae picked up one of the fruits and bit into it. Subtly sweet and tangy, but most importantly, full of rejuvenating energy. Barely enough to touch her debt, but still refreshing. A Bargain that could touch soul and body enough to transform a species was that of a Power. Assuming this ‘Blue’ was not one of the ones she knew of, and part of the reason she’d come here was specifically to get away from them, a new Power had emerged. And nearby.

“Lucky girl. I will speak with your master directly, then.” She schooled her voice into politeness. Mostly because she had just realized she’d accepted the hospitality of a Power, if one ever so much lesser than her, and there were some customs you didn’t break.

“...I’m the only one who can hear him,” she replied, a bit helplessly. Then her eyes widened, her ears flicking again. “Oh. I never introduced myself. My name is Shayma Ell.” She bowed, a curtsey being out of the question with the red leathers she wore.

“I see.” She was considering the claims more seriously now. If this Blue was a dungeon, and a Power...well, it’d be the first she’d heard of it, and she was going on five thousand years old. On the other claw, it neatly wrapped up all the mysteries into a single delightful package, as well as giving her something she’d never heard of. A Blue Core dungeon. “Let me see your Status, Shayma.”

“Ah…” Shayma’s ears flicked again, then she held out her hand. A moment later, a brief flicker of obsidian black appeared there, then vanished to reveal a rune-covered stone. Ansae squinted at it. The stuff was from one of the Great Dungeons, but the runes were of human or demi-human make. So it wasn’t conjured, which made the sudden appearance without any apparent spellcasting very interesting.

Then Shayma channeled mana into it, and words floated in the air between them. Ansae didn’t even make it past the first entry.

“Immune to Depletion? How?” She demanded, a little bit of a growl leaking into her voice. The walls shivered.

Shayma blanched, the words vanishing. “I don't know! He can fix depletion somehow!”

“Fix? Do not mock me, mortal!” She roared, pinning the girl against the opposite wall. Shayma gasped, then flickered and vanished from Ansae's grasp. Her head swiveled, tracking some sort of tangled spatial and illusion magic before it faded. Along with all the other mana flows. Some sort of high-powered warding, blanketing the area.

She stood and breathed, surveying the room. The table was powder, floating in the air. The chairs were shattered against the walls, which themselves had a web of cracks from the force of her anger. It was a disaster.

Not that she couldn't have broken the warding and tracked Shayma down, but she was too mad, and mostly at herself. She'd assaulted the the only mortal conduit of a Power. A Power whose hospitality she'd accepted, however tacitly, which itself was the sort of insult she had killed for, in the past. A hospitality that she had no complaints about at all. And if this Power really did have any ability to deal with depletion, she'd made any sort of accord that much harder.

If not impossible.

She growled again, stone dust drifting down from the ceiling, and stalked back to her lair. Not the one Blue had provided, but the original one hewn from the mountain. She had to think.

Day 80 - Blue

Ansae stayed closeted in her old lair like a sulky teenager. I wasn't sure what to think of that, and honestly I wasn't sure what had set her off before. Given her Status, though, all I could hope for was that she'd leave us alone.

I had given Shayma the rest of the day off after some profuse apologies on both sides, and she'd returned at a somewhat slower pace to the living area to reconnect with Iniri and de-stress. In the meantime, I had things to do.

The three-layer stack was a resounding success, but it was horribly unfinished. Mostly due to the fact that after the expansion the layers had a hundred times the surface area and a thousand times the volume. Magma and ice were slowly filling themselves out, as the vibrant flowers produced more of their respective elements, but the middle layer needed help. Unless I wanted lichen and moss to cover most of it.

I poured out biomass like water to create a layer of dirt, adding little hills and gentle slopes, pulling channels off the main rivers to make more lakes and wandering streams. A few extra trees and patches of grass locked in the mana flow and started the greenery spreading across a mostly brown landscape.

Some of my guests paused in conversation or cooking or sparring to watch my work,their little mound of green shifting and rippling outward. Then I began to pull apart the buildings, reworking them to freestanding structures rather than the ring of stone from before. An actual town, if a small one, with paved roads and modern amenities like storm drains. Not that there was rain, but it was the thought that counted.

Once I felt I could leave things to their own devices, I nudged Shayma a bit as she practiced [Illusion] with Cheya and Iniri. I was horribly ignorant about the world, still, and Ansae’s unexpected response showed me at least one area I needed context for. Between those three I could probably get any answers I needed.

“So how big a deal is curing Depletion?”

“It’s impossible,” Iniri said flatly. “There’s nothing to cure. It’s just a diminishment. It’s like trying to cure your height. It just doesn’t make sense.”

“If the fact that you can gets out, there will be trouble,” Cheya added from where she was throwing needles at illusionary Shaymas, forcing her to keep them together despite the disruption. “It’s the reason we came here, in the end.”

“Speaking of, what would it take to cure mine?” Iniri asked, her suddenly rigid posture belying the casual question.

“Uh, well, I can’t right now. It’d take 22,000 mana and I just don’t have that much yet.”

“Twenty-two thousand mana?” Shayma choked on my reply. She looked over to Iniri, wide-eyed. Shayma’s mana pool had only climbed by five points so far, practicing magic, and Iniri’s was barely north of eight hundred, despite all her levels and skills.

“...how much mana capacity do you have?” Iniri asked.

“...not enough.” Thinking of Ansae's reaction, I was suddenly a little wary of giving Iniri and Cheya too much information. Shayma was mine, but they weren't, and there was no guarantee they'd have my interests in mind. “Shayma took a little over three thousand though.”

“That much might be within the grasp of a combined effort,” Iniri mused. “If we knew what we were doing.”

Given that I didn't really know, there wasn't anything I could say to that. Instead I changed subjects. “What can you tell me about dragons?”

“Not many on this continent,” Cheya shrugged. “Mostly they gather around really powerful mana springs, and stick to their own business. There's a lightning dragon lairing in the Karstag range up north but that's the only one that's talked to people recently. Other than that, basically, don't mess with them.”

It seemed that Ansae was in hiding. Why, I wasn't sure, but it seemed like it would be important to know. So long as I could do it without revealing her presence. “Do you know what a Primal Dragon is?” I asked, pushing my luck.

“No…” Iniri frowned. “Usually dragons are titled by element or location. Have you seen one about?”

Clearly I wasn't going to answer that question. It was actually a little bit weird to me that they didn't seem to know about Ansae. By her stats alone, which was still all I could see of her Status, she was a godlike force of nature. Just her growl was enough to pulverize a thin layer of Stonesteel.

In fact, I'd asked Shayma not to even tell Iniri about the meeting. Not yet, anyway. I could probably use pointers on diplomacy, but after the Bargain with Shayma I was a little leery of anything that might result in another one. Or void the current one.

And speaking of that… “What do you plan to do about your city?”

Shayma repeated the question for the benefit of the others, then answered it herself. “We can take it back if we get the other two city-cubes. Vok Nal has one, and the other one is in Duenn. Further east, but held by a different mage-king.”

“We'd actually intended to get Vok Nal's cube before leaving, but he pulled a lot of his levelled monsters back and had them sweeping Meil,” Iniri said wryly. “We don't have enough Classers to deal with that many high-tier dungeon spawn.” She paused for a moment. “No offense meant to you, of course.

“Now, though, it's going to be awful difficult to sneak back in if they keep up the scrying for us.”

“They were looking for Shayma, actually. And I can [Ward] her, plus [Illusionary Presence], so she should be able to stay under the radar.”

“...radar?” Shayma didn’t recognize the term, of course. I was actually surprised, then, I hadn’t run into the issue before. The overlay or something had to be translating things, and [Tempered Wisdom] gave me knowledge about the world, but nothing stopped me from using anachronistic euphemisms.

“You’ll be able to stay incognito.”

“Why were they after Shayma?” Iniri looked faintly offended. “I thought they were after me.”

“They were after the ‘Depletion Anomaly,’ so it has to be Shayma. Meil’s dungeon core probably noticed she was Depletion-immune. I can see at least a partial Status, so I’m betting it can too.”

“That would explain...some things.” Cheya observed, unperturbed as Shayma’s illusions moved from two to three copies of the fox spirit. “It makes sending in a strike team difficult, though.”

“We may not need to, now.” Iniri said. “Building an actual force within the city was impossible, but here?” She gestured at the massive chamber. “We’re out of sight and well-protected, but still within reasonable striking distance of Meil. The only issue is supply. Blue, would you grant us additional land for crops?”

I was torn. Setting up another area for crops was no issue, and helped me level up. I needed the volume anyway. And it was entirely possible bringing in plants from the outside world would unlock things for me, so it was all to the good. But I didn’t want to simply agree.

Given what they thought of me, a gift would seem more suspicious than demanding a cost. And I was afraid that if I did start giving people things, they’d start to expect it, which was not a position I wanted to be in less than three months into things. Plus I didn’t know how it would interact with Bargains or what drove them. For all I knew, any actual attempt to gift people things would be poisonous. A small cost was the safest thing.

“Give me a few days and I can make another one of these areas for crops, but I will want the Status sigil.”

“What?” Iniri was startled. “Why that?”

“Just tell them I don’t want to disclose my reasons, please, Shayma.” Mostly because I didn’t really have a good idea why. It just occurred to me as a valuable thing that they didn’t really need, and maybe I could study it. Unless I broke it down, they could still use it anyway.

“...very well. But for two of these spaces. Just one won’t be enough to sustain a significant population.”

“I will accept that, on the condition that there is ongoing payment. From time to time, you will provide me with unique items.”

It didn’t take long for Iniri to do the calculus herself. “Very well, though any additional...unique items may have to wait until we’re more established. Where is the Status sigil anyway?” She was asking Cheya, but Shayma was the one who produced it from [Phantom Pocket].

I was entirely happy with the negotiation. The fact that she was haggling meant that Iniri was neither terrified nor contemptuous of me, though given that she was a [Protector Queen] it was probably harder to intimidate her than most, and I didn’t want to end up either god or tyrant to any of these people. It was best to be a peer. And the landlord, I supposed.

Plus, it’d given me the idea to get more things like the Status sigils. I wasn’t sure I could extract anything useful from studying it, but eventually I’d find something that’d give me new ideas. Or would just flat-out unlock something from the overlay. Not that it really had so far, but the only things I’d gotten were a few random pieces of armor and ancient artifacts. Neither of which seemed likely to lead anywhere.

Now, I could just copy the current sandwich for the other two pieces of land I owed Iniri, but that was boring. Plus, I didn’t quite have the resources to just do that without thinking. Yes, my stone and biomass income was vastly improved from before, but it still wasn’t quite enough to sustain Expansion on three large chambers at the same time, let alone six. So I’d have to do it slowly. Since that was the case...

“Shayma, would you like to help me design the new spaces?”

“Sure! But, isn’t it just going to be a room full of dirt?”

“Well, it’s not just the middle room...hang on.” I’d not really explored the whole “Shayma is part of the dungeon” too much. Mostly, I didn’t want to hurt her or upset her. Even if I could technically, say, cover her skin in Stonesteel, I didn’t imagine that would be pleasant. For this I had in mind sharing what I could see through [Genius Loci]. Not everything, but the way the mana flowed through the three portions of the stack and how it wasn’t just the middle layer. The magma and the ice, the way the mana curling through each extra bit of complexity improved the whole.

But I didn’t want to overwhelm her. I had been overwhelmed, twice, trying to adjust to what was a matter of course now. So I had to make sure she only got a small, small amount of the omniscient viewpoint [Genius Loci] afforded me. So to start, only the little bubble around Shayma, iniri, and Cheya, the circle of grass, chairs, and people.

“Oh...whoah.” Shayma’s illusions snapped as she wobbled, eyes glazed. Cheya was there instantly, flickering from Shayma’s shadow to ease her onto one of the chairs. “You see like this all the time?”

“Yes, and I wanted to use it to show you what things look like from my perspective. Just tell me if there’s too much.” It was impossible to exactly describe how I was feeding Shayma the perspective, other than it felt like a fragile thing that could break at any moment.

Shayma waved a hand, watching it from the strange outside perspective. “Yeah, it’s...a lot.”

“Are you all right, Shayma?” Iniri asked anxiously, leaning forward in her seat.

“I’m fine. Blue is just showing me what he can see.”

“Okay, so let’s zoom out a bit and you can see what is going on.” For this, I kept the senses vague. She didn’t need to be able to see every blade of grass and scrap of mana. Mostly, I wanted her to see the broad strokes of the mana dynamo, the three chambers and the flow between them.

“Oh, wow,” she breathed. “This is all mana? How come I can’t see any of it normally?”

“I have no idea. But see, that flow increases my mana regen and resource generation, so I figure I want something like it for the farm areas. Only, I don’t know if the way it’s put together is even a good way to do it, and I also don’t know what any of your crops are like. So really, any ideas you have for what I ought to do for cropland are great.”

“I...don’t know much about farming,” Shayma admitted. “I guess I know most of the foods we have, but not how to grow them properly? I do know that the ice and fire places might be really useful. There are some herbs and fruits that only grow like that. Mostly in mana springs of the proper affinity.”

“So what are mana springs anyway?”

She smiled broadly. “One of the things adventuring Classers go for all the time. The mana gets all knotted and takes on a certain Affinity and then you get animals and plants and things coming from that area.”

“Are there any around here?” I was curious. I hadn’t seen anything outside the mundane since I was here, and if they were all localized to these mana springs, that might explain it.

“No. This area is practically mana-dead. Except for you, I guess. That’s one reason I was surprised to find a dungeon here. How could one form?”

“I also have no idea! But I’m pretty sure I do duplicate what mana springs do, at least.”

“Right, so, hmm. Farmland.”

It turned out they had a number of crops similar to ones I was familiar with, albeit with different names. Their rice still used terraces, but the grains were green and hexagonal. Something like potatoes were red and grew in circular patterns around the parent plant. So we had some little information to think about structuring the farmland.

Shayma suggested a sort of lobed structure, chopping it up into different areas for different crops with terraces for the rice and whatever else used them on the outer walls. The magma was turned into a far deeper and narrower chamber, reducing the heat so there’d be room at the top for growing things where humans could actually survive, while the ice was flattened out. More water, access to the cold area, and more wind. The end result of the plan was rather mushroom-like, which was at least vaguely appropriate for a farmland.

I really, really wished the overlay had a note function. Just text would be fine, but sketching or, even better, some sort of rendering ability would be amazing. I didn’t need the map anymore, not with [Genius Loci], but that fantastic skill just left me wanting more tools. Unfortunately for me, I had yet to run into anything that gave me even a hint how to do so. Though maybe that Status sigil would. It was the first time I’d seen overlay functions in the real world, so to speak.

Once it was clear Shayma could handle the input, Cheya and Iniri had headed off for a meeting with other members of her council, filling them in on the deal. So when we wrapped up our planning, she was more or less alone. She glanced around nonetheless, lowering her voice. “Blue? I know our Bargain is finished, but...are you ever going to breed me again?”

Her tone of voice made it very clear she hoped the answer was yes. I’d not pushed because, given the circumstances, I wasn’t sure she even could say no, but now that she was asking I felt no little glee. “When you get home tonight, we can find out everything my breeding station can do,” I promised her with a laugh. “In fact, I’m sure exploring everything will take days.”

Day 85 - Shayma

Magic was amazing.

Ever since Blue had gifted her with mana and spellcasting, it was like an entirely new part of her brain had woken up. A part that could let her push anything she imagined into the world, so long as she fed it mana. Of course, it wasn’t as easy as all that.

Despite the relatively high Skill level guiding her, she wasn’t actually that practiced with said skill, and neither of her teachers were quite proficient enough to properly push her limits. Cheya’s illusions were from [Illusionary Shadows] rather than the broad-base Skill she had, and Joce’s [Archmage] skill was so broad he’d never really pushed Illusion very far. Between them, though, she was starting to get a handle on keeping illusions going, and preventing them from being dispelled by mere interaction.

There were actually two types of illusion, broadly speaking. One was an illusion imposed upon the world, the other imposed upon a person. She could create either a false reality, or an hallucination. Really she preferred the former over the latter, despite the fact that it was often more difficult. Reaching into people’s heads was beyond what she felt she could handle, this early on. She hadn’t even advanced her Class level yet!

[Combat Shapeshifting] was almost as absurd, even though she had precious little shapeshifting to add to it yet. There was nobody who had any shapeshifter type skills with them, which was little surprise. Shapeshifting wasn’t common, and it was usually to a specific form when it did exist. The apparent free-form nature of it stymied her, though she had a feeling it was a little bit like [Illusion]. The only thing she’d managed so far were longer claws.

That said, [Combat Shapeshifting] still helped her with using [Illusion] and [Ghost Step] in combat, making the multi-tasking just that little bit easier. [Prestidigitation] was a little bit of an edge case. Huron’s instruction with basic unarmed combat showed she really could land hits maybe a hand’s width further away than her reach. Which was, in his words, entirely unfair. But it did make properly learning punches, kicks, and blocks more difficult for both of them.

Actually, he admitted, she’d be an annoyance even at level one by combining illusions and combat. She didn’t yet have the power to truly hurt a higher-level Classer, and she didn’t have the mana pool to outlast one, but if there were a Great Dungeon nearby she could clear a few levels and become a proper Classer herself without issue. Blue didn’t have monsters, or even proper levels, so he couldn’t provide much help himself.

Well, aside from maybe exercising [Physical Superiority] but she wasn’t sure that counted.

Her basic methodology for the moment was to start by creating two illusions of herself, then using [Ghost Step] to force Huron to lose track of which was which. [Illusion] and [Illusory Presence] meant that she could make herself almost invisible, or more disorienting, like a poorly maintained [Illusion]. Then it was a matter of distracting or flanking with her copies as she darted in for an attack.

She rarely actually landed a proper blow with Huron, once he adjusted to her extra reach, but he was a level 42 [Brawler] with [Keg-Se Style: Mastery] skill. It was only to be expected. But so long as she had sufficient stamina for [Ghost Step], it was difficult for him to do much in return. Normally [Blink] style movement took mana and spellcasting, so the variant Blue had given her was potent.

Still, the record for this particular bout was her three touches to his five, which was depressing until she reminded herself of the vast level and experience difference. She’d been training less than a week.

His advice was, in a group, that she should distract and confuse. Though [Combat Shapeshifting] wasn’t up to damaging high level Classes or monsters, her magic was still disorienting. And even if it was something she could damage, the support potential was impressive.

By herself, she was an ambusher. With her species enhanced perception, [Illusory Presence], and [Ghost Step], she should be able to get the drop on most, and from that point on they shouldn’t ever know where the real her was. Her illusions could be seen to take wounds, bleed, and retreat if necessary. No need for her to do any of that.

Between training sessions, Blue consulted her on the cropland rooms. Not that either of them actually knew what they were doing, and once they got some farmers in things could change, but she was entirely flattered that he wanted her input. Especially since the complexity of most of what he was doing was far beyond her. Just the little bit of input he gave her was enough to level her [Awareness] skill twice so far, his omniscient view of everything an overwhelming version of the same.

Soon enough she’d be ready to head out and try to bring back some allies. She was the only one who could move without signaling their location to Vok Nal, since Blue’s [Warding] and her [Illusionary Presence] rendered her entirely unidentifiable to any kind of divination, even from another dungeon. With the Class that Blue had granted her, she would be ready.