It seems getting the robe has filled her with determination. She’s gone back to the corpse of the scythemaw. She’s not after a bone this time, though. She’s after a claw. Why would she want a claw? One of those big mandible things would probably be a better weapon.

Once she takes the claw over to where the monster tried to dig through my walls, though, I realize what she’s doing. She gives a few testing scrapes and smiles as she sees the stone gouge for her. I’m pretty happy, too. I won’t need to wait for alchemical ants to get some digging done!

Fluffles! Get down here! Use your telekinesis to see if you can smash a claw with a bone, or with another claw! Once I get some chips the ants can easily pick up and use, I’ll be able to have them start digging real rooms in the stone walls!

Speaking of the ants: Queen! Get the workers to widen the tunnels from the secret rooms so we can get the stuff out of there. Don’t break the surface on them just yet, but get ready. We’re going to be moving shop soon!

I design a quick handle in the secret library before telling the rats in the maze to get a decent knotted piece of wood and gnaw it into proper shape. I need a notch for the end of a claw to fit into, and then the whole thing can be secured with webbing! If the kobold wants to mine, I’m more than happy to give her a tool to do it with.

Next order of business, hmm… oh! I need to move the spider spawner. The spandrel (yes, I wrote the word down after I heard elf guy say it) is too small for me to be able to upgrade it further. It has been for a while now, actually. I just didn’t see the need to get stronger spiders before. Now that I have tunnels and stuff, though, I find myself wanting more things to handle the stuff down there.

In fact… that gives me an idea. Sorry, kobold, but I’m going to be invading your personal space. Don’t worry, though, I’ll help you get more. I have Teemo squeak at her to get her attention, and lead her back to the little cavern. There’s a crack in there that I think would be a good place to start expanding

He squeaks at her again and gnaws at the wall. It takes a few repetitions before she seems to understand what I want. Once she does, though, her face lights up and she eagerly starts chipping away at the little crack. My ants start swarming the rubble to break further down and cart off, and I have an idea for how to deal with that, too.

I don’t need all these entrances to let something big and nasty wander in. I don’t think I can just block them, just like I couldn’t lock the front door on the manor. But I think I can mostly block at least some of them, only letting smaller things in. I have the ants and small spiders team up on one of the passages, using rocks and dirt and reinforcing with web.

It’s hardly pretty, but I expect most big things would go around instead of trying to break through. And if they do try to break through, I’ll have time to move a response into position. Between webcrete and slimes, most of the entrances will hopefully be too annoying to bother with.

The next several days are mostly spent with me focusing on digging. There’s been a few more hostile delvers from the deeps, but nothing like the scythemaw, thankfully. They give way more mana when I kill than even when I simply defeat one of the topside delvers, which just reinforces to me that a lot of dungeons must go after that quick payoff.

Still no new invaders, but I wonder if the new delvers are filling that role for in the tunnels? At least nothing else intelligent has come in down there. Most of the critters run off when they spot a slime or something. The ones that don’t, tend to get got by a slime, and I get a nice bit of mana.

The kobold seems to be mostly nocturnal. She can be a bit of a night owl, or morning dove? She’ll usually be awake to watch the early crafters and such come in to do their gathering. The first time they spotted her in her new robes, I don’t think they knew what to do. It didn’t take long for them to understand she wasn’t going to harm them, and that she’s not an encounter, either.

They’ve been calling her the ghost, and she gave a few of them quite a scare, until they realized she wasn’t going to harm them. So yeah, they mostly just ignore her and she mostly ignores them as she goes about her nights and mornings.

Soon enough, it’s time to move. Midnight is the planned time for this move, and it hopefully should be the last real move I’ll need to make. I get everyone to their various places. I’ve only managed to choke down one of the cavern entrances, so small spiders and rats can watch that one. Poe and the ravens are to guard the surface, and thankfully their increased alertness shouldn’t make the people worried this time, since most of them are asleep.

Coda and the bats are keeping an eye and ear on everything underground, and I have dire rats and spider swarms watching the other tunnel entrances. Fluffles and Teemo are on core duty, along with the kobold. I can’t give her directions like I can my denizens, but she tends to follow Teemo when he squeaks at her.

First stop: the basement. I want to do a bit of a dry run, and moving the Secret Library seems a good practice run to me. Kobold seems a bit nervous about what’s going on. Spiders have been encroaching on the cavern a lot recently, and there’s a flap of silk over the little tunnel we’ve been digging. She must know we’re about to put something in there.

Teemo and a few rats quickly dig out the book that the ants moved to the basement, and Teemo squeaks at her to take it. She glances over at Fluffles, who simply flicks his tongue, and gingerly pulls the book out. She brushes a bit of the dirt off it before realizing she’s got something very important in her hands. With wide eyes, she clutches it to her chest, and then follows Teemo down a trail to get back to the small cavern.

While the rats dug out the book, most of my spiders are moving everything from the spandrel into the new spider cavern. She looks around, but doesn’t slow as she follows Teemo beyond the flap, which is now teeming with spiders.

The flap, not what’s beyond it. Beyond it is… well an alcove at the moment. In one of the walls is a little nook for the book, and Teemo doesn’t need to direct her for her to place the book there.

Beside the book nook is an indent for the alchemy lab, which already has a few rats bringing in the various pieces. On the opposite side of the book nook is a divot, and the kobold’s eyes widen as she realizes what must be going there. Yeah, I’m gonna be bunking with you, hope you don’t mind.

I’ll have a spider web the map up on the wall at some point, too. They’re not going to be the greatest examples of their respective rooms, but they’ll be safe and secret and I can easily expand them. Alrighty Teemo, get her pointed at the chimney. It’s time to get the core moving.

Kobold lady seems to understand what the next little quest I have for her is. She doesn’t even need Teemo to guide her to the chimney. He does anyway, because that’s his job and he’s a professional. At the fireplace, she starts to take her robe off, but then reconsiders and leaves it on. I figure she wanted to keep it clean, but then decided she’d rather have the protection or something. Either way, she starts to shimmy up the chimney.

She doesn’t get as dirty as I had expected. She looks more like she tripped into some dust than climbed up a sooty chimney. Probably because it hasn’t seen use in who knows how long. Up at the core, the ants and spiders have been thinning the webbing supporting it.

The kobold wedges herself in the chimney with her legs, freeing her arms to reach towards my core. It’s about a basketball in size now, so much more and it wouldn’t be able to move without me having to tear the chimney apart. The ants and spiders get the core slowly lowering through the webbing, and she reaches up and carefully extracts it, and then shows probably the real reason she kept the robe on.

She gingerly wraps it in the hem of her robe, creating almost a pouch. She still needs a hand to keep it secure, but it’s better than using up both. It’d be pretty difficult to climb down with both hands occupied, I’d imagine. She also has her tail to help stabilize herself as she slowly descends.

Once she makes it out, she stares around, eyes wide. She definitely understands how important the core is. Teemo squeaks at her and she’s all too happy to quickly follow him down a trail. It only takes about a minute for them to reach the spider cavern, and then just moments to slip past the silk flap and into the safety of the secret base.

She visibly sags in relief before moving to the divot and carefully placing my core in it. Good job, kobold lady. And good job Teemo with those trails. This would have been a lot harder if we didn’t have those shortcuts to abuse.