“You’ve been busy.”

Cheshire.

Somehow he’d managed to sneak right into the greenhouse without me noticing, his leather-soled boots clacking softly against the brick path as he strolled through.

Maybe saying ‘somehow’ wasn’t the right choice of words. I knew damn well how he got here, I just didn’t have any way to stop him. It was a bit like having a manager with the keys to your house—and I couldn’t even change the locks to keep the wily bastard out.

“Well, yeah. This tea isn’t gonna grow itself. Er, well, it will, just not without a bit of nudging,” I shot back, watching as he stooped down to carefully inspect one of the sprout’s branches between his fingers.

He stayed for a moment, gently sampling the velvety texture of the leaves against his fingertips. “Nonetheless, there’s hardly any need to rush. Take as much time as you require to iron out all the kinks. It’s not like I have to worry about you taking the money and running, yes?”

“Of course. Trust me, I understand. It’s just that the sooner I get that first batch out, the sooner I can start working on the coming months to actually make profit. Besides, you said it yourself: you’re not someone I want to be indebted to, right?”

Cheshire shrugged. “I did say such, yes. Ah, and the star attraction, too,” he continued, stepping over towards the sealed starfont, shaking his head, “That pulse the other night was quite the show, you ought to know. Tell me, what was it that you were so eager to create to put on such a performance without any defenses prepared?”

“You saw it too? Guess I’m not that shocked. I wasn’t exactly expecting it to blow up like that, and it’s already brought a bit of unwanted attention our way. You’re actually just the man I wanted to talk to about that, even.”

“Oh?”, he quipped, standing up straight and holding his hands in his coat pockets.

“I know you’ve got some illusion magic under your belt. As such, I wanted to see what it would take for you to whip up some kind of disguise for my greenhouse’s dome. If we could make it invisible, make it look like something else, anything like that—”

He held up his palm, shaking his head. “Ah. While such a thing is entirely possible, I absolutely will not. Our arrangement is one of business and should those that you seek to hide from discover my involvement, I may well end up dragged into your trouble as well. The fact that you’re still here is proof enough that you can survive without it.”

Hm.

“Now, with our pleasantries out of the way, I’ll cut to why I’m here: your starfont. A burst like the one you caused can only come from improper usage, so I’m here to educate you. To secure my investment—and in a way that doesn’t put my head on the chopping block. What was it that you fed to the pool on that night, exactly?”

I gave Cheshire a brief rundown of the events of that night leading up to the crystal falling into the pool, which seemed to elicit some understanding glinting in his eyes.

“You have a poorly-founded understanding of the starfont’s properties, but this isn’t entirely your fault. I’ll elaborate. The font and its contents—liquid moonlight—serve a singular purpose for the evolution of a core: risk for reward. You can consider the relationship of dungeons and mortals to be an ecosystem of sorts. Both sides seek safety, and both sides seek power, for these concepts are one and the same.”

“Just as a stalwart tree’s branches hang heavy with fruit, a prosperous dungeon’s halls are filled with treasures—treasures created by use of a starfont. These treasures can empower your monsters or simply act as bait to lure foolhardy adventurers to their demise, yet the result is the same. You get stronger, but it comes at a price. The power that your fountain can infuse into an item increases the longer you allow its power to collect—and as this power collects, your presence will become harder and harder to hide.”

“The humans know the score. Despite their mortality, they do not let their children die to the same shortcomings they once had. Among their many myths, a few are known by all. One of those relates to the nature dungeons: to see the light of the stars upon the earth means doom to those who do not act swiftly.”

I listened as best as I could, trying to make sense of what he was getting at.

“So the starfont makes magical items. The longer I allow it to gather power, the more of that power it can put into whatever I drop in. In exchange it makes me a far bigger target and announces my presence to the world.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, seemingly in disapproval of me boiling it down so much, he snapped, “In simple terms, yes.”

Pressing further, I asked, “And what is it about crystal that made it go haywire, exactly?”

“Ah, that,” he started to explain, clasping his fingers together, “The only thing crystal can be ascended into is the seed of a new dungeon core, though it takes quite a bit of energy to do so.”

“I don’t see any reason why I’d want to make more competition for myself,” I remarked, “It stays locked for now, then.”

I had more that I wanted to know from him, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to come out and question him directly about it. More about the nature of dungeons, as well as if he had any knowledge of my ‘sibling’ further inland. I held my tongue for now though, mostly just on a bad gut feeling.

With how much he knew about cores, was there really any chance he hadn’t already come into contact with the other core? If so, why hadn’t he mentioned it at all?

After our surprise stealth-compliance audit from those adventurers last night, it was obvious that some changes were in order. The success of the façade had come as a surprise even to me, though they hadn’t ever gotten close enough to properly inspect it. Still, it served its purpose from a distance, provided the viewer was at ground level. Considering the top of these fake cliffs was nonexistent, I had to be certain I could control where we were visible from.

With the time crunch gone, I took little while to address the detailing on it and curve it around further. It couldn’t just hug the walls of the dome or it would block too much of the sunlight. As such, I had to widen it significantly, leaving about thirty feet of clearance between the rest of the false wall and the greenhouse. Not ideal, all-in-all. With winter coming, sunlight from directly overhead would be a rarity, though without an exact idea of our latitude I couldn’t guess the severity of it. Hopefully enough for us to continue our operations within.

After that came clean-up, with the manamites scouring all of the useless dirt I’d piled onto the dome.

This gave me time to begin to process everything that had happened in that short span of time last night.

Not only was I not the only core operating within this area—I was the weaker one, if hearsay was to be believed. While I hadn’t seen any of its forces aside from the massive insect Ephi had forced the adventurers into fighting, this was the second mention of goblins that I’d heard.

Two for two, as far as my interactions with humans went.

So somewhere deeper inland was a dungeon core with a roving band of goblins capable of attacking armed parties.

There was a warzone in my backyard and I hadn’t even noticed until now. Evidently it was far enough away that the presence of both parties was better focused elsewhere, but it was uncertain how long I’d get to keep it that way. While that ‘trillipede’ had been convenient in the moment to shoo the interlopers off, it would likely serve to reinforce the idea to them that this was the other dungeon’s territory.

Given that I lacked any sort of combat force, this was a battle that I couldn’t afford to entwine myself into.

While I still wanted to continue pushing the tea plants further, Cheshire’s reminder that I didn’t need to rush was sorely tempting. I didn’t want to have my star employee solely relegated to gardening, especially when it took so much out of her. The goal was to turn it into a passive source of resources without needing intervention on either of our parts every single day.

Besides, with several of our plants already adults, I felt confident that we’d be able to get a decent amount of product without much more pushing on our part. We could rest on our laurels—a little bit, anyways.

Which was a bit of a relief, since the discovery of these new threats had essentially lit a fire beneath my metaphorical ass.

If this was the case, I could no longer afford to idly sit and meekly bury my head in the sand, hoping that no one noticed me. No—I needed a far more advanced and meticulously-planned way of burying my head in the sand, instead. We needed defenses, contingencies, and a sharp increase to our logistical capabilities.

My first step towards this was the construction of blast doors at the entrance to the vault, though I certainly wouldn’t have enough mechanism slots to keep them at every threshold in the base just yet. Six inches thick and made from solid stone, dropping it only took a moment or two and would hopefully be able to buy some time if things got to that point.

Ideally, they wouldn’t.

Most of the mana I’d stockpiled over the past few days went into reinforcing the horde’s numbers to a more respectable level, and in turn this raised my speed of construction sharply.

FRAGMENT OF COALESCED WILL LVL: 2 NAME: "Boss"

Traits:

Skills:

[Horticulture I]

[Biology I]

[Creator's Insight]

[Mech. Engineering I]

[Textiles I]

[Transmutation I]

Features:

[Manamite Creation]

[Self-Synthesis]

[Manamite Specialization I]

[Material Infusion]

HP: 15 / 15 CATEGORY: Elemental MP: 16 / 100 SPECIES: Dungeon Core MP Rate: +22 daily SIZE: Tiny WEALTH: 5 XP: 74% STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 0 5 0 9 7 8

Nascent heart of a world-born entity, crystallized from soul energy. Exerts control over a localized area.

Manamite Horde (149 / 180):

139 Manamites

1 Managermites (-3 MP/d)

Boiler Squad (5 / 20):

5 Manamites

Criteria for Next Ascension Tier:

Level: 5

Wealth: 25

Employees: 3

Cost: 100 MP

Facility: Prison Virtual Hoard:

➤519.4 Raw Stone

➤414.0 Loose Soil

➤0 Biological Material

➤338.4 Raw Lumber

➤26.1 Plant Fiber

➤0.3 Raw Crystal

From there, I spent several hours thickening the outer walls of the entire dungeon, adding structural supports in a number of areas to help me live up to my goal of being an impenetrable bunker. A second blast door went in to separating the greenhouse from the path leading to the vital areas of the base, given that they were all along a single path and the greenhouse would be the easiest point of entry for any intruder breaking in.

On their own, doors weren’t a miracle cure to stop anyone from getting inside, just a stalling tactic. I’d need something to actually drive them away as well, but I was lacking in non-lethal options.

Traps meant to crush, pierce, or drop were almost comically easy for me to create, generally only requiring a single mechanism and some material. But stopping someone without hurting them, that would be a challenge. Maybe it was fine for me to use lethal defenses in here, considering that it was unlikely anyone would end up in here save for the sole purpose of ending my existence.

Kill or be killed wasn’t a great philosophy to adhere to since it would likely only lead to further escalation if we reached that point, but sitting defenseless felt foolhardy. Ultimately, my goals—profit and survival—shouldn’t have required death in an ideal world. If I were to injure, maim, or kill humans, that was a sin that they wouldn’t forget easily. Still, it was better to be overprepared than underprepared. This was the wildnerness, after all.

With some hesitation, I began to carve out a simple system: a way to drop out the floor directly in front of the vault’s blast door, sending anyone standing on it plummeting into the drainage pipe that led to the cliffside.

I sincerely hoped I’d never have to use it, as the fall seemed to be almost a hundred feet down to the sea below.

With only a few mechanism slots remaining, I added something I came to call the “hug machine” in the hall leading to the vault as well.

It wasn’t as cute as it sounded.

Mimicking a crushing trap, it was essentially a section of the wall I could push into the hallway to pin anyone within up against the opposing wall. Ideally, this would be to immobilize and restrain, though I didn’t add a hard limiter of any kind to it.

Wiping my hands of that, I turned my attention towards Ephi.

Given the self-sustaining point our farm had gotten to, I’d given her a politely-worded order to take a break from working on them for now.

She took this to mean “go explore inland and try to find evidence of the others”—and I followed behind.

I wanted a presence throughout the valleys and hills of this land, to see the comings and goings of everything within my jurisdiction. Then, I could form outposts as needed: rest stops for Ephi to resupply or sleep at, where I could build anything she might need and monitor the area. If these outposts could be linked to my main base via a quick and easy transportation system, then all the better.

While I couldn’t excavate at the same pace she could travel at, I had the luxury of not needing rest and being able to disregard the terrain itself as I ripped halls through the bedrock. While she bounded across the forest floor, I dug as the crow flies. I had several ideas I could test later to make travel faster, but for now we just needed a foundation: a simple tunnel.

There was an evident need for a better transportation method for my employees to cover ground more quickly. While I’d initially toyed with the idea of water slides as a method of transportation to the farthest reaches of the base, it also didn’t seem very practical for her to have to get dripping wet every time she wanted to move around.

This ended up forcing me to evolve the idea into something more along the lines of a log flume ride, which just felt horrifyingly out of place in a dungeon. I constructed a small proof of concept and, while it worked, the amount of water I’d need would be fairly high unless I rerouted the water systems significantly to allow me to use the ‘gray water’ for it. Even then, without a water source at the end location to route towards my base, this would likely be a one way trip without all kinds of extra engineering.

This, however, led to ideas that seemed much simpler to implement and didn’t even require water.

Moving walkways, just like at the airports—or even better, a simple minecart system would even work, effectively forming a subway to carry employees and goods around as needed. That one seemed promising, though I'd want metal to create such a thing for durability's sake.

She reached the road in a few hours. The evidence of the ambushed travelers was gone by this point, with their abandoned wagon entirely missing and only a few singed plants remaining to stand as testament to whatever their fate had been.

“You said that the adventurers mentioned it was… south, right? Which way is that?”, Ephi chimed over our link, standing up almost like a meerkat as she looked around the forest from her perch atop a stump.

“To your right—yep, that way. I’ll be setting up a camp right around here for you, so don’t venture too far ahead. I figure this’ll be a good spot, since we can keep an eye on the road—maybe watch for travellers and listen in if we need to.”

“Got it, Boss. I’m just gonna go a bit further that way and see if I find anything interesting, then swing back.”

It took me nearly the entire day to reach it with my tunnels. The result was promising though: beneath the earth at the top of the bluff overlooking it, I began to create a simple rest area for Ephi. There weren’t many frills to it so far, but it was a fairly-simple mirror of the essentials, minus the bath. With a safe place to rest her head for the night, we could use this as a staging point for further exploration while I worked on establishing a quicker way to make the trip back-and-forth for her.

Hell, maybe I could even transport food straight to her to help save her the trouble of foraging, once the farms were producing.

This new outpost received a number of exits in the form of burrows, both near the top of the cliffside as well as snaking down to the very bottom. All-in-all, a good listening post for me and a rest stop for her. It felt strange to be stretched thin like this—even my senses felt distant from this far away, slightly muffled and muted.

Still, by the time I'd finished all of my work on it, between the agonizingly-long tunnel and the bedroom itself, I'd managed to push myself up a level.

Experience Requirements Met.

FRAGMENT OF COALESCED WILL has increased to LVL 3.

FRAGMENT OF COALESCED WILL has gained 2 skill points.

WISDOM has increased by 1.

VITALITY has increased by 1.

I had a number of ideas that I was considering for skills, but infrastructure and defense seemed like the most promising way to go. If I wanted to get stronger, I needed better materials--and that would mean metal.

⬘ Mining I ⬘

Attuned with geological knowledege and intuition, allowing for easier identification of minerals and metals. Grants a short-ranged sense of nearby tier-one ore deposits (Copper, Tin, Iron) within 200 feet. Slightly increases the amount of material gained when excavating. Slightly increases manamite excavation speed for stone materials.

TYPE:

Passive

CATEGORY:

Proficiency

⬘ Core Metalworking ⬘

Allows for direct conversion of raw metal ores into forged metal. Significantly less efficient than forging by non-magical means, requiring three parts of ore for every one ingot produced. Manamites can construct objects directly from ore in the virtual hoard this way.

TYPE:

Passive

CATEGORY:

Core

My senses lit up for a moment, almost like opening a third eye--or in my case, perhaps a thirty-thousandth eye. It was faint, like the glimmer of metal shining beneath the surface of ripping water, but I could feel it glowing. The occasional small pocket within the earth, the rare nugget resting atop it, and a few rising like the tips of icebergs far below me.

Ephi’s explorations of the surrounding area proceeded slowly as she moved into this new territory as cautiously as she could, keeping a watchful eye for any predators or signs of disturbance. The road itself had little happening on it, winding through the forested hills for ages. It served as a great landmark to navigate by though. Eventually, she spotted something that looked like it might be a mile marker of some kind to me: an obelisk-shaped structure of stone, weathered and chipped from the ages.

Giving a nervous scan of the area, she darted towards it to take a closer look, and we simultaneously spotted writing carved into its base.

“What’s it say, Boss?”, Ephi questioned, keeping her eyes locked onto it so I could see.

It took me a moment to realize exactly what I was looking at.

Written in English were directions and distances, along with some names I recognized.

“ELLOMERE, 43 MILES NORTH

BOLTHA, 24 MILES SOUTH”

There was no magical translation taking place. This wasn’t an effect of [Core Link] simply sending thoughts back and forth. This was the language I knew. And here it was--a memento left by some past visitor? It was ancient, though. Just how far back did this go? Modern English wasn't some ancient language, after all.

Yet this place seemed like it hadn't seen proper use in a very, very long time.

“It’s a thing people use to tell how others much further they have left to travel. It says Boltha is to the south, and Ellomere to the north. Those adventurers that you dropped that freaky bug onto—they were from Boltha, too. It’s… weird. I'm not really sure what to make of this.”

After all, the fact that it was on the signs meant more than just that someone from Earth had been here. Someone from Earth had been here and been influential enough to introduce a new language. While I wasn't too shocked by the concept, given that Cheshire had mentioned knowing of Earth as well, it was still a bit jarring.

“Head on back to base for now. I want you to try and track down that camp first thing tomorrow morning.”