Quick Thinking

Chapter 33

The time hit me like a bucket of ice water. I needed to use up my remaining mana but I didn’t have a plan because I’d fucked off literal hours playing with paint. Shit.

As I knew already, my strategic abilities did not improve under stress. I needed to think quickly but stay calm and make a useful purchase. I ruled out traps and monsters immediately. They required more time than I had to study in order to implement properly.

Decor was out on principle, it was a non-priority. That left surface or interior dungeon tiles. I thought hard about them for several painful minutes. Interior tiles were cheaper but I had a lot of them already. Exterior tiles had their charms but I didn’t own many yet and I wasn't sure what I’d do with the area.

That was when it hit me. I didn’t have a strategic reason in mind yet, but surface tiles would allow me to implement something new I’d almost forgotten about: I could add curb appeal!

I had a hundred project ideas forming in my head as I danced in bouncy circles. My dungeon was going to be magnificent. I spent all of my remaining mana and felt a deep sense of relief. I hadn’t lost anything through carelessness and would soon be back up to full.

Shopping done, I looked up to the mana counter, and my relief at spending my mana fast enough evaporated. My mana was 80/100.

I immediately started digging through my notices trying to figure out why. After looking through my alerts I couldn’t find anything to explain it. That was when I noticed little dots beside the mana counter that hadn’t been there before.

Selecting the mana counter produced a dropdown. Five mana upkeep monsters, fifteen for employee medical benefits. What the hell?

I selected the tooltip and it opened to reveal a rather large brick of text. I read it several times to make sure I understood it and eventually felt like I did. Legal jargon condensed, it essentially meant the system had made a subsystem to fulfill the healthcare condition I’d included in Elim’s contract. This was the cost to run it.

I titled my head and opened my store, feeling like fifteen mana was a rather specific price. I checked the potions tab and the most expensive physical healing potion was fifteen mana. Well, that explained why the number seemed familiar.

[Greater Healing Potion, Legendary S]

[Restores the state of the body to peak health including the regeneration of limbs and organs. Brain injuries are also addressed, but can take up to a week to fully heal. Can restore the deceased if administered within ten minutes of death, if the brain isn’t removed or destroyed.]

That was a hell of a potion. Everything short of catastrophic head trauma seemed reversible. I had to wonder if decapitation was a deal-breaker or if you could hold it in place on the body. Or if it would just regenerate a body if you only had the head.

My own head full of gruesome images, I decided to table the matter entirely. I didn’t have a test subject to cut up and/or any desire to actually see that happen. My morbid curiosity had limits.

As for the upkeep cost in mana, I decided to just eat it. If it auto dispensed potions to Elim it would be worthwhile to not have to manually be notified and send them like I originally thought I would. That the upkeep would be charged even when none were used was annoying, but manageable.

One question I could answer though was what the fuck was even in that kind of a potion. I hesitated to buy it without reason though, and picked a cheap one instead. Another of the ones I’d used on Elim to be exact.

Despite only costing one mana, it had forced an arrowhead out of a wound unassisted. That wasn’t regrow limbs magical but it was pretty miraculous on its own. It only suffered by comparison.

Potion in hand I dropped it into the deconstruct tab and was rewarded by a list of six herbal ingredients, some kind of special water, and a recipe. It cost one mana to deconstruct but that was negligible in the grand scheme of things so I paid it.

Checking through the results I found the plants were mundane if a bit hard to find normally. The recipe was also a fairly straightforward set of cooking instructions. The only two things that stood out were the water and the fact that an elemental fire source was required for heating.

[Elemental Spring Water, Grade C 5]

[Water from a natural spring located on a mana lei line. Due to its pure elemental nature it cannot be contaminated through mundane means and is resistant to heat.]

The water’s resistance explained the need for the special fire. I’d have to figure out how to get my hands on a source of that or teach the hounds to hold reeeeally still. I chuckled at the notion of Stallin balancing a small cauldron on his head while I stirred some random brew.

As fun as the idea was though, this little experiment wasn’t a priority. I put it aside mentally and got back to thinking about my more immediate needs. Since I was still going with my mana reserve plan I technically only had forty mana to use until just before refresh.

After a little consideration I decided to make buying lava tiles part of the purchases I’d make at the end. It was a recurring cost on the low priority side. It was fine to put it off until the last minute.

Buying potions to deal with bloody mana fever also went into the end of day purchase list. I could spare a couple mana and build up a hoard without issue. They just weren’t important enough to make part of my active purchases. If something came up and I used my reserve I wouldn’t feel the loss of them.

With my budget planned, more or less, I considered how I’d approach things. It didn’t take me long to realize I was still missing a critical component in moving forward. I hadn’t decided on a plan or theme for how I’d build out the dungeon fully.

I wasn’t feeling much inspiration, which was problematic. I could leave the whole thing natural and just go with ‘its a bunch of caves full of monsters’ kind of deal, but that seemed like a bad idea. Partly because who would even want to deal with that?

Too much danger for an uncertain reward. What would an adventurer even hope to get out of a place like that? A hodgepodge of trash left over from the victims of a monster's meal.

The appeal of a dungeon in my mind was a promise of adventure and treasure. A nest of monsters wasn’t the same even if there were rewards to be had. A proper dungeon offered the kind of loot that spoke of olden days, magic, and even lost civilizations.

The inelegance of it chafed me already. My dungeon needed to be attractive to outsiders so I could lure them in. It needed to be astheticly pleasing to me because I was going to live in the fucking thing.

I didn’t even want to think about living in the dungeon equivalent of a college dorm. All necessity and a fine view of a brick wall.

No, as much as I might not like my circumstances I didn’t hate myself. I picked out a beautiful valley to live in and I was going to have a god damned view. No matter if I was above or below ground.

That left the question of how I would proceed, but sadly I was drawing a blank on inspiration. There were a few simpler decisions I could make though. Like what I’d focus on for the very brief rest of the year.

Looking at my map of the exterior of the valley I decided I’d focus on interior purchases instead of top side. Curb appeal was nice but it wasn’t like I had neighbors and with my tithe accounted for I could rest on my laurels safely for a bit.

I headed up to the top most layer and realized I had another problem. I hadn’t set up any design terms or other more basic planning elements. That simply would not do.