Flickering Anxiety

Chapter 18

Despite my joy at the massive number of tiles I had, I knew it wasn't time for a celebration. I had fifteen mana to my name, and going by the fact I had an E grade core, I should have had a hundred.

That was when I remembered the error tones and how I hadn't been able to read anything earlier. I tried to get the prompts I'd thrown to the side to reappear.

I cycled through every mental command I could think of until finally, 'alert history' did the trick. A prompt appeared with a list of the most recent alerts. I wasn't sure where to start but noticed a generic error repeated several times and picked it.

[Alert!]

[Action canceled due to insufficient mana]

That wasn't precisely illuminating, but it fit timeline-wise when I tried to buy tiles. Nothing after it had a title that led me to believe it would shed additional light. That left something weird I didn't know about, or my tile purchase going horribly awry.

"Build log?" I said, hoping it was a feature. A pop-up appeared but was blank for a moment. Text shimmered in and out of existence before finally deciding to stick. Most of it was various tile coordinates from the startup phase.

The mass of numbers took a little time to understand. I found what I needed just before I deployed the elemental hounds by the timestamps.

[Exterior plot purchase]

[2 spaces, 20 mana (raid penalty)]

[6 spaces, 60 mana (raid penalty)]

My relief was immense. Going by the costs, my pathetic remaining mana made almost perfect sense. Five were still unaccounted for, but I felt confident I'd find the reason soon enough.

Exterior plot purchase, I hadn't done anything of the sort in the tutorial. I'd converted tiles but only from an underground source at the time. Going by that and how my core would dig in if I didn't place it underground, I'd assumed the surface was off-limits.

I was deeply pleased to find out I was wrong. Having access to the surface would give me a lot of exciting options for building my dungeon. Building; I needed to get to work on it, but not just yet.

Digging around the five-point drop corresponded timestamp-wise to deploying the hounds. I checked and found the problem in their species description. Without a high heat environment setup, they would draw mana to make up for the deficiency.

I hadn't paid attention to that during the tutorial since it was in a lava tube-based dungeon. It would have been problematic to make a cold spot, not supply a hot one.

While I was on the subject of the hounds, there were a couple of things I needed to address before proceeding. Something I hadn't had the spare brain cells to contemplate before. The majority of my mind had been in panic mode over my mana.

"Heeeey… So, I named you Stalin before I realized you could talk or anything. I'll undo that and give you one you had before. Or one you want," I offered. It wasn't an apology, but I wanted to get the first bit out of the way. I felt like knowing someone planned to make amends made the apology process smoother.

"No need, I like the sound of it. We identify by scent and call; we accept names to make it easier on our masters," Stalin said simply. I looked to his companion, uncertain of how to feel about anything.

"I feel the same. It's fun to learn what the names mean and why you give them," she said, grinning or showing her teeth at me, amused either way.

"Okay, well, is there anything you'd like? I have some tiles free, so I'll set up your zone now," I offered.

"I'd like to kill the male," Stalin said, tail wagging. For all that he was being a good boy and listening, he seemed to have a one-track mind. It was kind of cute if you didn't think too hard about the murder part.

"I want a pool!" the female shouted. She stood up, bouncing in place and yapping to punctuate the sentence.

"A pool?" I asked, startled.

"The hottest you can manage, deep enough to dive in!" she clarified.

"I'd like a shallow part to lounge in," Stalin said, seeming to forget his blood lust for a moment.

"Uhm…Yeah, I'll put it in the lowest level, so-" I was cut off again as both hounds went dashing off down the tunnels. Racing toward the lava pool I had yet to construct. I had meant to say I'd build it after the system refresh. I had to choose between disappointing them and a speed build challenge.

Challenge accepted.

Building a pool wasn't hard, and I dropped six tiles of the barrier-type lava flow a few miles away from my core. It wouldn't be harmed by it, but I didn't like putting dangerous things too close to it. I used my control interface to reduce two of the tiles to a lounging depth.

The automatic ten-foot depth was already suitable for diving. I left that alone but moved some spaces around to create a high ceiling. With the basics of their request met, I checked their progress on the map. They were almost to the new area.

Since I wasn't pressed for time now, I decided to get creative. First, I put in a waterfall of lava flowing down a rock face like a slide. Next to that was a small outcropping to use as a diving spot into the deepest part. Next came some of the basalt stones to act as stairs leading in and as decor around it. By the time the hounds arrived, it looked like a proper bit of hell to play in.

"Fear me, for my interior design skills are legend!" I cackled happily to myself. Feeling revived by that fun little project, I was ready to tackle getting my dungeon set up.

Unfortunately, the first step wasn't buying things or manipulating them. House cleaning and research were. I needed to finish reading all of the notices from when I'd been ill to start with.

On the bright side, my anxiety was gone. When the refresh came, I would be ready to get shopping and building.

Since the mystery of my low mana was solved, that left me curious about points. How they were earned hadn't been covered in the tutorial. The hood had indicated they came of deaths in the dungeon. With that in mind, I turned my attention to the death reports.

[Death Report]

[Philip (NN) +1]

This one had stood out to me, but I couldn't figure out precisely what the +1 was for. I wanted it to be points, but there was no visible indication for that.

"My points?" I said to no effect. I tried a few other variations before finally, a small counter appeared above my clock. It was greyed out, though, so I was still in the dark about what the +1 meant. I decided that didn't matter and kept checking the notices. I had a couple more death ones to get through.

[Death Report]

[Jax (NE) +0]

Without warning, I heard a ding, and suddenly the counter changed from greyed out to active with a -1 count. Fuck. Fuck a duck. Fuck a fucking duck.

I had no idea why I was starting in the negative, and I felt like screaming. Going by the deaths I'd already looked at, I should have had a positive score. Scared, I kept reading.

[Death Report]

[Tip (CE) -2]

Tip, whoever the fuck he'd been, had screwed me. Hard. I gathered my courage and went back to reading.

[Death Report]

[Durst (NN) +1]

Angry, I felt like trying to figure out which of these fuckers was Tip. He was one of the bandits, and I found the other listed names in the process. Despite my anger, there wasn't anything I could do to or about a dead man. I went back to reading.

[Death Report]

[Rastin (LN) +3]

[Cori (NG) +3]

Those names threw me off. I couldn't figure out where they were until I remembered the exterior purchase. Looking at those tiles, I found a pair of the Savex soldiers lying dead. Both slain by arrows.

Maybe I was wrong, and the deaths weren't the cause of the points. I should have been at six points, not still negative. No, going by the math, I should have never been negative.

I had to be missing something. Maybe the number represented potential points. I could have something I needed to do to harvest them. I looked at the point tally accusingly and found it had turned grey and zeroed out again. I felt my orbs flicker.

What the actual fuck?