Chapter Three

The gem watched John go and then went back to focusing on its lower reaches. In its attempt to expand downward it had run into some new developments. The most interesting of which was an underground hot spring. The gem's plans for its defenses already included moving some of its fish down to the lower floors, so at first this was a welcome surprise. Then the gem started to try and move its fish into the water. None of them lasted more than a few minutes. They just slowly cooked until they turned belly-up and floated to the surface.

The next attempt was just as much a failure, and even more costly. It started with fish with cores being introduced to the hotspring. They managed to last for a while without any consequences, so upgraded fish from across all of its territory were moved into the hotspring. Then it went to focus on other projects for a while. It thought of a new trap and had ideas for a few more, and then it went to check back in on the fish to find that they had all died. Apparently they were using mana to protect themselves and once they ran out they cooked just like the other fish.

The gem called for a few drybolds and had them harvest the cores from the fish, and then moved onto its next attempt at putting fish into the hotspring. This time it was going to create fish specifically designed for the hotspring. It took the descendants and relatives of the fish that lasted the longest in the hotspring and started to give them cores. That alone was unlikely to be enough though, so the gem also changed the type of mana it was giving them. Instead of just letting the fish absorb the type of mana they naturally would the fish were all stuffed with fire attribute mana when forming their cores. Ninety-nine percent of them died in the process, but that still left enough fish with fire attribute cores to start reproducing in the hotspring.

All of the special fish were thrown in while the gem watched carefully. It wasn’t until two days had passed that the gem was convinced they were going to be fine and moved on to its next order of business.

The choices for it were either making its second assistant or adding in the traps that it had been considering. The recent attempt on its life had made the gem realize that more traps were always good. That didn’t stop it from working on the assistant first. The assistant would allow it to have more territory, which would allow for more traps. It was killing two birds with one stone. Plus there was only one more core capable of making an assistant so after this all efforts would go to improving its territory.

The gem took that last core and focused. It flooded it with mana while imbuing it with the ideas of consciousness and loyalty. The core survived being imbued, and then nothing happened. Unlike the first assistant, no body was formed. The only upside was that it was definitely an assistant because it was able to send out concepts just like the first one. That meant it was worth it to spend the time teaching its newest assistant to talk. It was once again imbued mana and the knowledge of language until it could say

“Need flesh for body. Bring flesh to me.”

That was enough for the gem to realize what went wrong. The wind that formed the first assistants body didn’t come from nowhere, it just felt that way since wind and air are everywhere. It called for the drybolds to bring up some of the many fish it had cooked recently and place them around the core. Then its body started to form. It started out as a terrifying looking meat puppet. No face, flesh not hidden behind skin, and bones sticking out. Thankfully that didn’t last long as the core kept using its mana to condense and improve the body. After a few days of work the nightmarish creature was gone, and in its place was a six inch tall man.

During the time that its body was forming the gem had already explained the idea of being an assistant and managing its territory to the little man. Ever since it had finished explaining that it had been waiting eagerly to assign the man to a territory and get back to improving its dungeon.

“So where do you want to manage?” The little man didn’t respond so the gem continued “If you don’t tell me where you want to manage then I’ll just assign you wherever I want.”

That was finally enough to get a reaction from the little man. He shook his head and said “I don’t want to manage territory. I’m a healer. I’ll heal the injured defenders instead of managing territory.”

The gem had been hoping to expand more than just downward so it asked “Couldn’t you do that and manage part of the territory?”

The little man shook his head and said “No. I won’t manage territory. I’m a healer.”

The gem was at a loss for what to do. It wanted to expand more, but an unwilling assistant was probably worse than no assistant at all, so it sent the little man to the drybolds. “Go stay with the drybolds then. They and their mounts get injured the most often. We will talk about you managing territory another time.”

The assistant made it all the way to the drybold settlement in the valley before the gem realized it had forgotten something important its newest assistant had said it could heal but had never given any demonstration. It called out into the valley “Assistant, come give me a demonstration of your abilities.” and was surprised when a heavy gust of wind started to blow through the forest canopy. That was just a waste of mana, so it called out “No, stop wasting mana assistant.” Only to have the little man stop heading towards someone who was injured.

This confusion was only going to get more annoying as time passed so the next call was “Both assistants come to me. It’s time to get a name.”

The assistants headed straight to the tree and once they got there the gem asked them “Do either of you have something you want to be called? It is too confusing to call you both assistant.”

They both looked thoughtful, but neither of them responded so the gem continued “ Little healer. You were made from the core of a man named Frederick. Do you want that to be your name?”

The little man asked “Am I the same as Frederick?” while scratching his head.

“The gem thought for a second before responding “You are both healers. But other than that you are different from Frederick. He was a human and an invader. You are not.”

“Then I should have my own name right? Not his.”

“That’s fine. What do you want your name to be?”

The little man paused again before replying “I don’t know. You made me. You should give me a name.”

“How about number two then? You are the second assistant I’ve made.”

The little man frowned “Two isn’t a name. That's a number. Give me a real name.”

Giving a real name wasn’t easy, so the gem had to stop and think for a while before it came up with its next idea. “You said you were going to be a healer right? How about Medi then?”

The little man thought for a second and said “That’ll work for now. I’ll try and think of a better one later.”

With one down the gem’s attention turned to the windy being blowing around its territory. “So what do you want to be named?”

The wind flew in a circle and pouted “That’s not fair. Why did you give him a name and not me. You have to give me a name too.”

Thinking of a good name sounded annoying so the gem hopefully suggested “Number one? You were first after all.”

Unsurprisingly, It wasn’t that easy. “Didn’t you already hear Medi say that numbers aren’t names. Why are you trying to give me a number?”

After thinking for a while the next option came to mind. “How about Windy? I named Medi after what he likes. Why don’t I name you after what you like?”

“That’s too boring. That would be like if you called Medi wound fixer instead of a fancy name.”

The gem thought for a while longer before saying “Fine. How about Venti? That's like windy but fancy. It should be good right?”

The wind picked up and zipped everywhere before Venti responded “That sounds good. I’ll be Venti. Don’t mess it up in the future!”

There was no more discussion to be had on that, so Medi demonstrated its healing abilities and was put in charge of fixing up all the wounded defenders. Then Medi and Venti both ran off to fulfill their prospective duties, leaving the gem thinking that maybe having assistants was going to be a bit different than it expected.