Chapter Twenty Seven

Gem

The gem ended up sleeping for much longer than expected after giving one of its tusked beast a core, and ever since it woke up all of the invaders that come into its territory have been strangely competent. Even invaders that have come before and performed poorly have been acting more carefully. In fact, there hadn’t even been a single death. This was obviously unacceptable.

There were a few obvious paths to take. The safest would be to give up on the boost to its growth provided by killing invaders and grow slowly. This would obviously work, but when the gem thought of the waiting, the stagnation it would experience as its mind had to sit and wait as its control grew at a snail's pace that idea was thrown away.

Another obvious path was to simply make everything more deadly. If the entirety of the drybold tribe ambushed everyone who entered its territory then there were certain to be deaths. This option seemed good until long term growth was taken into account. If every invader that entered its territory were to die then there wouldn’t be anyway to attract new invaders. That meant that plan was limiting all long term growth for present gains.

The next plan considered was to grow its own invaders. This was tested by focusing on absorbing one of the few drybolds that were killed in combat. It did provide a boost, but that boost was miniscule compared to the normal invaders. That was enough to scrap that plan.

The final plan was to increase the amount of time invaders needed to spend in its territory to get any harvest. Every extra second they were hunting for riches was another chance for them to fall prey to an ambush or trap. The gem didn’t see any downsides to this, so work began on it immediately. Work started from the waterfall entrance and moved backwards. The previous straight shot to the valley was replaced with curved hallways, dead ends, and even more traps.

There was one trap in particular that was extra malicious. It was a variation of the rock fall traps that looked like it would have a one hundred percent fatality rate. The drop was placed in front of dead ends, and instead of dropping loose rock it dropped a solid slab of stone. Once the stone was in place holes in the ceiling would be opened to let water flood into the room. The gem was hesitant to use this trap because it was worried that knowledge of its existence would scare off potential invaders. The ones it did set up were partially an intellectual curiosity and partially a last resort in case an overly strong invader attacked.

With that the changes for the entrance were set. That meant it was time for the upper floors. The gem sacrificed some mana production to grow larger plants and force the invaders to take a roundabout route through the rooms. They could choose to just cut their way through, but that should leave them extremely vulnerable to the snakes, ticks, and rabbits on the floor.

The last place that needed changes was the valley. All the plants that had been easily accessible at the entrance were replaced with plants that the invaders appeared to have no interest in. After that the flowers that they focused on were spread all through the forest. They grew slightly worse in their new locations, but that was a necessary cost to lure the invaders into more dangerous situations.

Now that the structural changes were done it was time to improve the defenders. Not with mana like it normally would, but by training them. If the invaders could make it so that even their most incompotent knew when to retreat then the gem could teach a rabbit how to set up an ambush. Every single creature that played a part in its defense was taught when they should attack, how they should attack, and who they should attack. The days of mages and rangers killing defenders from a safe distance were over. Now they would have to get up close and personal unless they were protected by the best of the invaders. No other improvements seemed obvious, so the gem settled back and waited to see how its most recent changes worked out.

John

It had been a week since the supply ship got here and they still hadn’t gotten a turn with the trainer. At first he had been skeptical about how useful they would be, but results spoke for themselves. The farmboys and blacksmiths who had been coming back either empty handed or not at all hadn’t had a single death since a lesson with the trainer was added as a pre raid requirement. John ate a small breakfast so he would be ready for whatever training was in store for him and hurried to the guild. When he got there he was surprised to find that instead of a one on one lesson all the more experienced adventurers were gathering there.

He stood in the back and waited for a few minutes before a small kindly looking older man walked up to the front and started speaking

“Hello everyone. I know a lot of you were expecting a smaller meeting, but with how experienced you all are I believe that isn’t necessary. Instead of making sure that you follow your better instincts and don’t overexert yourself in the dungeon I’ll be telling you about how to get stronger.”

The adventurers present burst into a clamor before one of them yelled

“How is an old man like you going to teach us jack shit?”

The trainer just smiled before responding

“You shouldn’t call me old man. You should call me senior trainer or Lou if I like you. Now, If you would like to test my qualifications then come up here and I can show you.”

The man walked to the front and asked

“So what are you going to show me? I’d feel bad bullying an old man like you in a plain old fight.”

Lou continued smiling

“How kind of a young man to take pity on me. How about we have an arm wrestling match then?”

As soon as he said that a group of adventurers dashed into the guild and came back out carrying a table. Before long the trainer and the brash adventurer were sitting at the table with their hands grasped together and a circle of adventurers around them. The entire crowd started counting down together and as soon as they said “Zero!” it began. The old man just moved his hand down slowly but surely with a placid expression on his face. The bulky adventurer across from him grimaced and you could see his arm flexing, but Lou didn’t seem to notice at all. Lou lightly tapped the adventurers hand on the table he went to stand up but the adventurer burst out

“You must have used a rune or something! No way you didn’t cheat! Let’s do it again with runes and then I’ll show you!”

Lou sighed but still nodded in agreement. They went back to the table and set up for a second round. The crowd counted down again and as soon as they hit zero a scream burst out from the adventurer. He jumped away from the table with nasty looking burns on his hand Lou ignored him entirely and said

“I hope I have made how I feel about unnecessary interruptions clear. Can we get back to the lecture?”

That was enough for the crowd to quiet down and the lecture was about to begin when one brave soul raised a hand

“Can I ask a question?”

Lou had already looked like a kindly old man again as he nodded

“Why was his hand burned but yours wasn’t crushed? I know he’s pretty good with an earth rune.”

“That of course is because I” Lou gestured to himself as he spoke “protected my hand using my mana, while he” Lou pointed to the adventurer that was still on the ground nursing his charred hand “called for a duel using runes and didn’t even try to protect himself from mana based attacks. Any other questions?”

The crowd was silent so he continued

“Now as I was saying before I was interrupted I will be telling you how to get stronger. For you lot there are two real options. The first is solidifying your mana. That will give you a core similar to dungeon creatures and will greatly increase all of your attributes both physical and magical. The second option is to enhance your compatibility with a specific element. If you are able to create pathways and rotate your mana in specific sequences then your affinity for specific elements can be increased exponentially. This doesn’t strengthen your body much but it allows for spells to be cast at a fraction of their normal mana cost or with strength that would have been inconceivable before.”

He paused and someone took advantage of the silence to ask a question

“If these will make us so much stronger why haven’t we heard of it before? Everybody is always looking for ways to get stronger.”

Lou maintained his kindly look as he gave answers that were very unpleasant for the adventurers to hear.

“If you didn’t know about this at all then the most likely answer is that you were too weak. This knowledge is an open secret among the more skilled adventurers and nobles. If any of them thought that you would have a good chance of succeeding then they would have told you about it. In fact, the only reason most of you are being told now is because of special circumstances. The resources from this dungeon are more valuable than expected so we need to harvest a lot of them. Giving you lot a chance to get stronger might help with that, so here I am.”

This time John raised his hand and asked a question

“Why is it an open secret? This seems like the type of thing they should either tell everybody to make the guild stronger or something they don’t tell anybody so that they can be the strongest.”

John thought that might be a harder question but Lou immediately started answering

“That is because both of these methods take resources. If every schmuck who wanted to get stronger knew about these then there would be enormous waste as people who don’t have any chance of succeeding use up valuable and rare resources. On that note one of the things I have to tell you is that if you are caught spreading this information to a large number of people or people who don’t have any chance at succeeding the guild has legal authority to administer severe punishments.”

Another adventurer asked

“What happens if you solidify your mana and rotate it in a specific sequence?”

Lou shot this down

“ If you managed to do that you would join the extremely exclusive group of tier three adventurers. Unfortunately that is a lot easier said than done, and the majority of people who try it end up killing themselves. If you still want to try despite knowing that then go ahead, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Lou continued answering questions until no one’s hand went up anymore. Then he dismissed the group. John waited until almost everyone had left and then he went up and introduced himself. They made pleasant conversation for a few minutes before John got to ask what he really wanted to know.

“So how did you convince all the newbies to play it safe and not kill themselves? I helped out with training them before you got here so I know it can’t have been easy.”

Lou waved his hands dismissively and said

“That's just a bit of hypnosis combined with a little bit of body magic to make them more susceptible to it. Really it's not much more than a party trick.”

John shook his head

“I don’t think anything that useful is a party trick. They’ve been so safe it almost seems like mind control.”

This time it was Lou’s turn to shake his head

“If only it were mind control. It has got tons of limitations to it and the effects start to wear off after just a little while. As soon as I’m not able to meet everyone going back into the dungeon every single day most of them will turn back into reckless idiots.”

John realized it was time for him to go on patrol, so he hurried to end the conversation

“Thanks for answering my questions. I’m looking forward to when you have time for a one on one. I’ve gotten a lot stronger since I got here so I’m really looking forward to learning the details for trying at tier two.”

As he hurried off Lou called out

“I think I’ll have time next week if you can make yourself free.”

John waved his thanks and then went off to make sure everything was alright in the woods around the settlement.