Aurora

I swung the steel sword, not sure how to feel. It was… okay to my untrained eye and hand. I knew Hez and York had said they would need practice to improve their skills. It might just be my annoyance at my situation that was leaking over into my judgement of their work. I took a few calming breaths before handing the weapon back to Hez.

The walls of the room were black from soot while the Forge appeared heavily worked. I had to give them some credit, but my face refused to cooperate along with my mouth. “I certainly hope that the next batch is better than this,” I said glancing between the two of them with a glare.

“Yes! Definitely!” York said backing a few steps away from me.

“Good. I want my parties to come back from their hunts. They need good weapons and armor.”

“Of course. We’ll start on the next batch right now.”

I nodded then made for the next room. Another forge sat against the wall, though this one was much less worked. A Greater Demon with four arms hammered away at a piece of armor. He had a name. I couldn’t pronounce it for the life of me. I just stuck with Gel. He was working with Steel as well, and looked to be having a much easier time of it. Part of me wondered if I should summon a higher level creature to replace Hez and York, I just felt that would be wrong of me.

Two suits of plate armor stood on the other side of the room. I walked over to examine them and couldn’t help but feel that something was missing. After a few seconds, I realized there was no coat of arms. Most of the games and movies I’d seen usually had a symbol on the chest piece or pauldrons to represent to whom they belonged.

Thinking about it, I decided that I needed a crest. I was a Night Queen. While right now my queendom was nothing more than a hole in the ground, who knew what the future held. Reaching out, I used my nail to carve a moon with a fang across the front of it. I added a drop of blood from the fang. Once the outline was done, I added color, making the moon and drop red, and the fang snow white.

Coat of Arms – Morale increased by ten percent when wore by a member of your side.

Well. That was a happy bonus. I moved over and added the symbol to the other set of armor. Sadly, it wasn’t an automatic process, but the simple crest only took me a minute or two to make. A hiss came from the forge, I turned to find Gel dipping the armor piece he was working on into a barrel of oil.

Gel folded his four massive arms and bowed his head. “My queen.”

“Gel. This is some fine workmanship. Perhaps you should give the two next-door some tips,” I said admiring the helmet in his hand.

“I could with the metal. Not the weapons. Different disciplines.” Gel’s deep voice was a pleasant listen. Even if I didn’t like what I heard.

“I see. Then keep it up then.”

I left without waiting for his reply. Passing through two rooms, I came to where my clothworker. The man had only a few bolts of fabric to work with given that we only had access to level zero cloth that wasn’t much better than toilet paper, and level three cloth which cost more than a Greater vampire for a single bolt of half a meter. I’m not even sure if that qualified as a bolt of fabric at that point.

“What you got for me, Zin?” I asked as I walked into the room. There were a variety of dresses and clothes hanging from the walls, but they were from the crap fabric. I wouldn’t even let one of my lower vampires wear them, even if they looked nice.

“My queen! I’ve… I’ve done my best, but this was the best I could do.” He brought over what could only be called lingerie. There was just enough fabric that it could almost be called a nightgown. None of this changed the fact that it was designed to highlight my body in a way that nudity almost didn’t. Still, it was better than being completely naked. I didn’t mind but interacting with people outside the dungeon would become increasingly difficult if they couldn’t keep their eyes off the goods.

“Thank you, Zin. This is fine work for what little material you had. When I have a bit of spare mana, I will make sure to send it your way.”

“Forget mana. Just give me something better than this shit to work with,” he complained with a disgusted face as he held up a tunic.

“Sure thing.” I left the still complaining Zin after I dressed and made my way back to the core room. I found Roland waiting for me in front of my chair.

“My queen.”

I moved over and sat down before I addressed him. “Roland. What is going on?”

“I am about to take some of the vampires to attack the cave outpost. With our attack on the surface, they might not suspect us to attack again so soon.”

I considered his idea then nodded in agreement. “Alright. Do it. Let’s keep them on their toes.”

“Excellent. I was hoping I could take Varroth with us.”

“Of course. I’m sure he’d much rather be tearing through some goblins then sitting in his room.”

“As you say. He is a formidable force and excellent ally to have on the field of battle.”

I leaned back a shrug. “If you say so. I’m sort of stuck down here so I’ll take your word for it.”

“Then I shall depart within the hour.” He stood up and left the core room. Once I was alone, I debated what to do with myself. I had barely any mana to play with currently. That might change once the attack began and my vampires began channeling the mana from the goblins’ deaths to me, but that left me twiddling my thumbs until then.

I could go paint. That always took my mind off things. I just worried about going into a trance. I had a plenty of blank rooms that needed to have a purpose assigned to them. Getting up, I decided that was what I wanted to do. Mainly because I was still covered in paint from my session an hour ago.

Turning, I checked up on Losa, but found him the same. I stroked his check then headed for the back of the core room. A set of rooms separate from the main spiral were back here. These were for rooms that I planned to devote to myself. At some point, I planned to create a bedroom for… various purposes.

For now, I went to the back and carved out a large opening. Smoothing the stone out, I added a few designs to make it nice looking. Nothing too amazing since I might lose it if I got too carried away. After that, I used some mana to fill it with water. I used a trap to cause a low-grade flame to heat the water. It was a good thing that I learned the basic magics from Carson.

Putting some finishing touches on the bath, I admired my handy work before undressing. I ignored the irony that I had only worn them for a few minutes, as I got into the water. Submerging up to my shoulders, I greatly enjoyed the warm water against my skin. I would worry about actually cleaning myself in a bit.

While I floated, I used a dark spell I learned from Carson. Clairvoyance. I had an easier time of it since my Death Sight worked similar. The main constraint was that I had to have a good idea of what or who I’m looking for. I couldn’t just randomly set the view outside. I set my sight on Roland. A moment later, a swirling dark mirror formed in front of me. It reminded me of a low-quality television.

Roland marched with the other Greaters and Varroth toward the entrance to the Goblin outpost. The vampires moved through the shadows, while Varroth just charged down the tunnel like a made beast. The goblin guards panicked and were unable to do anything as the Greater demon slammed violently into the gate crushing one of the guards in the process.

The gate held against the impact, but Carson fixed that with a shard of black ice that caused the gate to explode into a dozen pieces. Varroth charged through the new opening and attacked the first thing that came near him. Roland and the others entered the outpost as well but kept to the shadows leaving Varroth to the goblins.

I was starting to get angry at his actions. Varroth wasn’t immortal. He could take a lot of punishment sure, but that didn’t mean they should use him as a meat shield. I fumed until I realized that he was positioning his troops to cause the most damage. I remembered that this was why I summoned him. He had the system gifted knowledge of how to conduct war.

The next half hour, I enjoyed the sight of goblins dying by the dozen. In the darkened world of the cave, my vampires were boss. They moved with almost impunity among the confused goblins. I also found that I was getting more mana than the attack on the village. It looked like I lost some mana over the distance.

The goblin outpost ran red with blood. Roland had even started gathering some prisoners to bring back to the dungeon. I would really need to reward him when he returned. Looking over the Greaters, I saw that their steel weapons had taken quite a bit of damage. Roland had even broken his sword. I would need to figure something out about that. Even if it meant summoning new blacksmiths.

A goblin yell came from the other side of the cavern. As Roland turned to look at the new threat, I saw a small army of well-armed goblins heading toward my vampires. I was forced to only watch. A strangely dressed goblin riding a wolf kept his goblins from rushing forward, making them move in an organized line.

I started trying to command Roland to retreat even though he couldn’t hear me. His force had already lost over half of the normal vampires. I’d rather he not lose many more. Even more so, I’d rather him not lose any of the Greaters. Even without being able to hear me, he ordered for a retreat back to the dungeon.

I jumped out of the bath then called for all the monsters that were capable of fighting to head to the tunnel leading to the outpost. A force like that might consider pursuing my vampires back to where they came. It didn’t help that I had a bad feeling about the goblin leading them. Going by his strange clothes, it was possible he was an event character, or worse, a player. My traps might not be able to stop him.