Ah, everything went right with the move! I even learned exactly what the go-juice actually does! Well, almost everything went right. Let me explain. My ants started moving my core through the tunnels and towards the crack in the wall, when a mole finally found the core! I tell you, at that scale, moles are terrifying!

The Queen, though, quickly rallied the troops to fend off the invader, and the little soldiers started zapping it! Lightning ants! Isn’t that cool?! Anyway, I only had about a dozen lightning majors, but with them and the normal majors, and the Queen directing them in the fight, the mole barely even got to touch my core.

It took a tiny bit of my mana before they could push it back, and the affront of it touching my core seemed to send them into a frenzy. The lightning majors are all dead now, but that mole is also very very dead. Queen got the ants moving the core the rest of the way, and Teemo soon got ahold of the orb, and Queen, with Fluffles watching over them all.

With the mole incursion making me cautious, Teemo led everyone through a secret passage and into the crawl spaces in my walls. He wasn’t taking any chances, which I definitely appreciated. It seemed like the various invaders could all sense the core was vulnerable, even if they didn’t know where it was. I’ve never seen the invaders number that high! It feels like every hand, foot, talon, wing, claw and tail was on the ground to repel them, and I can’t help but be a bit proud of my denizens.

Thanks to the secret paths, my core was quickly placed in the new Secret Sanctum, safe behind layers and layers of thick spider silk and packed dirt, as well as the stone and mortar of the chimney itself. My raven Scion even set his nest on top of the chimney, with various spiders actually protecting the opening from various insects. All in all, a very successful relocation, and I signal the all clear.

Everyone goes back to their normal doings, and I ping Tiny to head outside. I have an idea for what to do with all that free real estate, and I’ll need his help. I also set my bats to be fruitbats. I want to make me some agriculture, and is there any more cultured agri than a hedge maze?

See, I have all sorts of interesting things I can grow out here, and a thorn hedge is one of them. If I set them up right, I can make a maze. If I’m gonna have a labyrinth, I’m gonna need something to live in it, and I don’t have a minotaur. I do, however, have Tiny. I also have various larger critters to help populate the maze, too. I have a couple dire rats and even a small swarm of crows. That should be plenty to populate the maze, at least for now.

I also have the ability to make a ton of nodes out there. I’ve got several options for herb nodes, and a bunch of spots for various wood nodes, too. I go a bit crazy with spending my mana to get the thing up and running. I don’t need to expand downward right now anyway, and the increased numbers of invaders means more mana production, too.

I haven’t seen any Delvers in the last few days, though. I had a few, aside from the elf guy and the kids, but none recently. I wouldn’t mind a bit of extra mana from them doing stuff, but I’m not exactly hurting for it. I’m definitely glad I made my bats into fruitbats, too. The hedge maze is a bit out of the range of Queen and her workers, and fruitbats are just the kind of things to help make my herbs and trees grow better. More herbs and trees should mean more Delvers, right?

I even sprout a few chests out in the maze, along with the aforementioned various nodes, just to sweeten the pot. They’re all listed as Least chests, which I’m pretty sure means they kinda suck. That might be from how I’m organizing everything out here, though.

See, in the house, it’s basically dungeon business as usual. My critters defend me from invaders and challenge delvers, everything to the death or to retreat/rout. Out in the maze, though, I’m setting things up differently. I’ve had Teemo out to teach the dire rats a few things, and I’ve also had Tiny practicing his webbing. He’s approaching the size of a horse now, and I wonder if even the elf guy might have to actually try to be able to beat him.

Which would be difficult for me. See, if nobody comes to get my stuff, I don’t get that bonus mana. So I have a new job for Tiny: hide and seek. I want to get Delvers to explore the maze and have to avoid Tiny. If he catches them, he’ll web them up and dump them outside the maze. I think I can even have Fluffles levitate them from there to just outside the gate.

The dire rats will be playing annoyances, stealing stuff from the Delvers as they spot them. I wonder if the Delvers will consider the area even more dangerous than the house. HP are a lot easier to replace than stuff sometimes. I’m not too worried, though. I think challenge translates to reward levels, for the Delvers and for me. It’s a weird and different challenge, but one I hope will pan out.

And if it doesn’t, well I’ll have more herbs and things to experiment with in my lab. I’ve tried a few other combinations, but so far, the Bottled Lightning (despite not being in a bottle) is my only success. I get the feeling that I don’t want to mix everything one to one, but I don’t think I have much other option at the moment. I’d need a bigger lab to upgrade it, but I want to keep it secret. I think that will have to wait until I expand downward a bit and can get into stone.

I have upgraded my library a bit, and moved it into the wall not far from the chimney. It’s not the most efficient as far as working with my lab, but it’s secret and a bit bigger, giving me a full piece of paper to work with now! It might not sound like much, but I’ve been able to keep track of each combination I’ve tried in the lab

Speaking of the lab, Queen has started to produce a specialized worker for in there. I’ve been calling them alchemists, because that’s basically what they’re doing. They’ve been slowly producing more bottled lightning for use in the rest of me. I actually want to get the basement swarm of spiders to be venomous and lightning powered! That’ll be quite a boss fight! It’ll also take a lot of bottled lightning to accomplish. I like that it seems permanent, but it’s a pretty significant dose to achieve.

The lack of Delvers still has me concerned, though. The maze is still growing, and while the fruitbats are occupied, other flavors of bat are just kinda milling around. Sure, some help look for moles, but the number of snakes is starting to increase now that I have enough ravens to handle the gulls. I focus in on one of the normal bats, wondering what I should do with it. There’s not a whole lot of stuff to do at night, after all.

Oh hey. That’s a new option.