Chapter 6

Daniel headed down the long stairs. It was time to do another round of creating his seed weapons. Then prepare the traps for their assaults on the last Zombie floors, maybe test some moth traps in order to clear the lift wells and then be back down to Ivey’s room before she woke.

Once he reached level twenty-one, he went to the building stairwell. Animal sense revealed the dense mass of fluttering moss. In the brief moments the spell was active and covering only three or four floors worth of space he must have sensed almost fifty of them, flitting up and down the stairs and the elevator shafts.

They were powerful. Everyone of them was as strong as the single moth that had taken their entire combined group to take down. His animal sense was not perfect, but it gave an impression of power, and Daniel could easily imagine what they would do if they had been unleashed on the zombie floors or against that octopod. He regretted not thinking about using them.

The zombies, even if they were almost sapient, couldn’t fight back against that. Once a flood of insects were released into the corridors, that unnatural communication the feral pack had would break down. No matter how individually physically powerful the isolated zombies were Daniel doubted whether one that was isolated would survive for long against a handful of moths and there would be a lot more than that unleashed.

If they coordinated with each other, it was a different story. There was power in numbers and while a significant amount of synergy across the varied types. An earth and speed feral truly working together was a fearsome combination. Either alone was simple to take down, but if the earth tanked incoming damage to get the speed one close enough, it was a nasty mix. Individually, none of the skill sets Daniel had observed would get close to allowing them to handle multiple moths.

The only problem with that plan of mothclear was dealing with them afterwards. Just like atomic weapons, the issue was not necessarily difficulty in creating and uses it was the contamination that was there thereafter.

He tapped the door while bleeding animal sense out to maintain a sensory domain around two metres in front of himself. With-in the small area beyond the door that he could perceive, a moth changed direction to investigate the sound.

Then it was next to his hand, with only a few centimetres of wood separating them. Daniel almost recoiled at that evil feeling literally within arm’s reach. They were separated or more viscerally he was protected by flimsy wood. A barrier that Daniel knew he could break with a single punch. The moth held its position, its wings presumably beating vigorously to allow it to hover. It was right where he had knocked. He pulled his arm back, having no desire to repeat the experiment while it was so close. He did not want to provoke it with such weak defences in place.

After a moment, having failed to find the source of the noise it fluttered away. Daniel wiped the sweat off his face.

Deadly but flummoxed by a bit of wood. If they could be contained within the stairwells, then there was nothing to stop him from quarantining an area with wooden walls and they could then descend through the floors the moths had been released on without fear.

Mothclear was a definite option if there was any monster between here and ground that they could not defeat with more traditional means. It was better by far to have dumb and powerful than strong and smart. They would test the ferals, but if they were as unified as Daniel feared, then he was unleashing the fluttering menaces that fluttered aimlessly beyond his sight. Turn an enemy into an unwitting ally by setting it upon a different threat, it was such a human thing to do.

Or maybe he was approaching this the wrong way. If the moths were so powerful, then it was his duty to tame one.

Oww!

He slapped his ear in response to the sharp pain and then felt an unrepentant Priscilla easily dodge the strike.

She had bitten him!

Because?

“You don’t want me to tame a moth. Do you?”

Yes, and a feeling of resolute determination hit him.

There would be no yielding there. An image of a moth. It stole all the chip packets! Hoarding them away and it didn’t even eat them!! Evil. It didn’t even eat them!! That was how terrible and unnatural they were.

She would not never accept a chip stealer.

“They stole chip packets?”

A slightly abashed feeling came back along with an acknowledgment that there might have been a slight embellishment within her thoughts. Then the mouse’s opinion firmed. Yes, or at least they would if given a chance because they were so depraved.

“No moth, but the dog?”

An image of the caviller appeared with an overtone of excitement. Then there were chips, and the cavalier ate them! Then even though the dog clearly loved them more than life itself, the dog shared half, no three quarters of the packet with Priscilla.

“Really?” He glanced at her on his shoulder.

The mouse nodded vigorously.

“It’s a shame because the moths are so strong.”

Suddenly Priscilla was on his other shoulder with teeth on his unhurt ear. He tensed despite himself, but she did not bite.

“Joking,” he said hurriedly.

Feelings like Priscilla was the paragon of innocence and that she was only joking too. The teeth moved away from his vulnerable earlobe.

“Don’t worry, when it’s daylight, I’ll see if I can tame him.”

Not tame, bond, share, join the family, Priscilla reminded him with a reproachful tone.

“Of course. The question is can I tame a moth as well?”

The mouse was vigorously shaking her head. He got the impression that such a bond would be one sided and not in his favour. The moths were not very nice as pets or neighbours. Mutated to where they were evil and no longer a natural animal.

Without the option to tame them directly, his thoughts turned instead to his other idea. Could he farm them for experience and cores?

The wooden doors held them.

“You know what, Priscilla, I think I can do this.”

The mouse cocked her head at him. She understood a lot and was probably smarter than him. Despite that, it was only here when they were alone that he could be himself and discuss the problems with her. He did not want everyone thinking that he was completely crazy.

“It should be possible. Create a box, let one fly in, trap it and then squish it.”

The mouse just looked at him blankly.

“That looks like agreement to me.”

The image of a trap and Priscilla cheering him on as he made them. But instead of popcorn, she wanted…

“No.”

This time there was an image of Priscilla dressed in a superman’s cowl helping him build the trap and then afterwards they were successful. Daniel would reward her with chips.

In the sending, he did not see any evidence at all of Priscilla actually doing anything. “Good enough for me. But maybe you should keep scouting the zombies?”

Indifference came back.

“You know, so we can get down and find different chip varieties.”

She was genuinely torn. She enjoyed finding out about monsters and making them fight, but she also wished to stay here and help protect him.

“I’ll be fine.” Daniel assured her, then he went to work.

Three doors were repurposed for the traps and he created a three layer box, with each layer being almost air gapped to the next layer. Security was a primary concern because the last thing he wanted was for a moth to escape. The inner box was where he spent the time, as he lovingly turned it into a kill zone.

The moth would go in and Daniel would then manually trigger the trap to snap shut.

With the box currently open, he examined the two central jaws. The workmanship was immaculate. They were symmetrical and when they shut the three-dimensional teeth lattice would close perfectly. A mat of spikes, each a couple of inches long and its mirror image coming from the opposite direction. Then he inserted the springs so that when it triggered the spiked wood would snap shut with the force of a crocodile or possibly a T-Rex if he went back in history far enough. The trap would close with a force that would crush bone, which he hoped would destroy them.

Daniel aimed to make them reuseable, so he tempered the wood to be tougher than steel. Against metal it might not work, but as dangerous as the moth’s magic was their physical defence was relatively low. He was hopeful.

Frankly, it was a beautiful piece of art and then, because he was aware of the moth’s life drain ability Daniel went a step further and sucked the life out of the wood. He went so far that it was completely inert and it would be a struggle for him to reestablish any type of control over it. With the pieces prepared and partially tested, he finished fully assembling it.

“So much easier than a flat pack,” he thought to himself as he ran a finger down a seam and bonded the wood pieces together. When he pulled his finger back, where there had been two pieces of wood, now there was just one. No screws, glue, or nails, only magic.

With the trap assembled, he pushed it up against the fire door. Now all that was left was to open the door to let a moth in. His power flowered into the door. His mind weakened the area the trap was pressed against steadily hollowing it out. The vital energy of the wood shuffled to the side to make the rest of the door thicker. Then the hollowed area fell away completely, with the last few scraps crumbling into dust.

Daniel heard the clatter of the thin pieces of wood falling, and the moths heard it, too.

In order to watch, he reused his mini animal sense ability, keeping the distance of less than two metres, which was the point that his natural mana regeneration covered the costs of the magic. Moths that had been fluttering past investigated the noise. One flew in. Daniel’s mental control of the trigger trembled, but the moth reversed direction. He might have been able to trap it but for the first moth it was better to take it slowly and carefully and to make sure he moth was fully trapped before triggering the trap.

Another one teased him by entering partially before fluttering away. There were however lots of them moving up and down the long fire stairs. At any point, four to six were flitting through the tiny space he was monitoring. Exploring everything repeatedly and so it was only a matter of time before one fully entered the box.

Daniel monitored patiently.

In and out.

There were only two visible moths before more flooded in till the visible ones reached eight, or nine if he counted that wing that flapped through right on the edge.

Patience, he reminded himself. Two were flying toward the opening created. One deviated at the last moment, but the other one didn’t.

Snap!

Wood cracked down, closing the trap and locking away the stairwell once more.

The moth fluttered in the cage and even though his instincts were screaming at him to destroy it immediately, he resisted the temptation. He wanted to learn how well this trap worked. After all, if it was as safe as he hoped, then he could create dozens of these and slowly collect the cores and maybe get steady experience to the noncombatants in their community.

The desire to shred the moth roared to life within. “No,” he whispered. “Test.” He focused on breathing exercises to calm himself. The panic receded slightly.

Priscilla?

Innocence with a tinge of guilt came back. Her emotions had been amplifying his own, but slowly they both got it under control.

That Daniel acknowledged was potentially dangerous.

There was a stir of emotions and thoughts. An apology along with a guarantee it would never happen again for the small price of one chip packet. He did not believe her at all.

“Sure.”

She did a back flip on his shoulder and Daniel put her out of his mind and focused his entire attention on the trap. His senses were sharpened by the club. Its vine had uncoiled to touch the trap and with Wood Sense together they watched what was happening.

Daniel breathed in deeply.

He had never been serious about taking a moth as a pet. It felt evil even if the power it possessed was indisputable. There was a spark of energy within the wooden prison and the desire to destroy the moth re-emerged.

Priscilla.

The emotions dampened down with a feeling of embarrassment.

Was the moth breaking out? The simple answer was no. The club was as focused as him and it had not found that spike of energy concerning.

Within his senses, the box flashed as the moth cycled through its powers, launching cautious attacks.

The attacks failed.

Daniel smiled grimly.

It was always gratifying when plans came together. The box hummed under a savage sonic attack. If that had caught someone in the open it would not have been pleasant.

Once more, both Daniel and the club ran a health check over the wood. Unaffected. Better still, the moth was no longer fluttering the way it had been before. Its sound attack must have rebounded back upon it.

What had Tamara said about that other moth. She had said it had life, dark and sound magic. He did not know what the dark magic did, but the life magic was twisted and some form of link between it and its victim. Daniel hoped the moth had already tried both. The wood was dead so the life drain ability would do useless. The sound attack had failed, and he suspected that dark magic had been the first spike of energy.

The box vibrated. “Wow, another sonic attack. I was not expecting that.”

Daniel nodded happily. That strike had contained less power than before. The insect was hurt or having failed in its attempt to blast itself free it was now probing the integrity of its prison.

The pitch of the sound changed as the moth cycled through the vocal range of its sonic attack. It was trying to figure out if the prison was susceptible to certain frequencies. Daniel watched everything like a hawk, knowing that if the right vibrations could be reached that sometimes standing waves could buildup, which would magnify the destructive potential. One of his mates, probably Borg, had once shown him a YouTube video of mechanical resonance destroying a bridge.

The sound vanished.

More magic flared within it for a similar lack of results. Then a different type of magic. From what he could tell, they were full of strength. One had to be dark and the life. “Long enough.” He declared.

The entire box vibrated as the moth lashed out in response to Daniel’s voice. The hum broke off abruptly and he was sure that the sound wave trapped in the box had rebounded and done damage to the monster. He wished he had an unobstructed view that would have allowed him to confirm his hypothesis. “Shut up,” he yelled. The magnitude of the sonic attack did not alter, but the frequency increased and what was leaking out was hurting his ears.

He hit the manual trigger to collapse the jaws of death with his fist.

Crack!

The humming stopped. “Warned you.”

Animal sense confirmed the moth’s death, but he took a little longer to confirm with his wood sense. His consciousness entered the box, but the fully dead wood was a terrible medium for his power and his ability to use the wood was blocked till he brought it back to life. Twenty seconds later he had sufficient vision inside to confirm that it was well and truly dead and in lots of different parts.

Success.

His magic flexed further. Hands running over seams to split the wood from one piece back to two. And a minute later, he pushed out the squashed moth. It looked like it had been run over, stamped on, thrown through a washing machine, and then pounded dry with baseball bats. There would not be anything usable for the crafters except for the marble sized core which had survived and by the look of it presumably undamaged.

He put it aside and then reassembled the box. The night was half gone, and he figured once it started getting light outside, he would return to Ivey. But till then, he would hunt moths and finish the potential sapient seed weapons.

Daniel humming went to work to create traps. He sat with his back on the wall next to the working one while his magic shaped the next version. They did not discuss it but while he focused on creating the club monitored and Priscilla was downstairs trying to improve their intelligence on what was happening down there.

There was a surge of emotion demanding action and his finger slammed down on the lever to shut the trap. Sealing the moth inside. The club hummed in satisfaction and Daniel triggered the second stage of the trap to squish it.

Disappointed floated up from the club and the box throbbed as the still living moth generated a sonic attack, but it was lethargic and animal sense told the same story. It was badly hurt and dying.

“Watch,” he ordered and then waited a moment, but the monster did not react to his noise this time.

Affirmation flowed from Blood Drinker and Daniel went back to work. He pulled himself out of his crafting fugue with the centre springs of the next trap done.

An image of the life force of the moth having left it came to him and when he touched the wood, the club had already created a path for his consciousness and it was easy to confirm the insect was deceased.

This time the trap fell apart without magic, as he had improved the design. The tattered remnants of the evil beast fell out. He kicked his foot through the disgusting dusty mess and a core rolled out.

The concept worked.

The second trap was assembled and after installing it and turning it active, he started on the third and fourth. Then he monitored the traps and started trying to create the sapient weapons. The staff he flipped over in his hand was currently perfectly functional. Functional was not what he was driving for. He wanted special. His senses went into the wood and he could feel the hulk’s core as a hard foreign mass within the wood. It had not been absorbed. Whatever his process was that created the sapient seed it had started yet.

He thought about Tamara’s power. Fire, Ice and lightning, the second two he had cores for. Daniel dug into his backpack and at the very bottom of it were a couple of dozen lightning bug cores. He set them aside and then the ice core Dave had slipped to him after Ivey had traded with others to get it to Dave to help develop his strength.

Fire was harder. They had fought nothing that used fire extensively, but he placed down two more precious cores. A telekinesis one that he felt guilt about using in a weapon given the fuss he had made and earth armour.

Reckless, the words kept going into his head, but he wanted to do something special and the starting inputs were almost certainly important. It was not like he was going cheap with Ivey’s. He had already put aside the two eggercough slug cores because their regeneration was so strong, which had to be related to healing magic.

“You already made this decision.” Daniel reminded himself, and grabbed the last additions. They were claws extracted from one of the ice zombies. Daniel could feel the power floating in them. There were ten of them, and his instincts told him they would work with everything else he had prepared.

The materials were laid out, and he went to work. Wood flowed and his magic started directing the shape of the weapon. He got lost pushing wood one way, then another. Then, abruptly, his magic ran out, and he opened his eyes ruefully. Everything apart from the earth armour core had been absorbed, and his intuition told him it was no longer required.

A box began humming, and he stepped up and killed the moth. Shifted the refuse into the growing pile of moth parts and the new core got tossed with the others. That gave him an idea, and he grabbed six of them. They would be a better fit to the weapon he was creating than the earth’s core. To stop second guessing himself, he swallowed the earth core then winced at his impulsiveness. Hopefully, it would not cause issues with the octopod core. Not that he regretted the decision too much. He had an ambition to grow his earth armour to where he could match what the other zombies. Being able to become invulnerable briefly would be a godsend.

Then he paced the corridor as his magic finished regenerated. Finally, it was full. He sat down with the moth cores and went to work. He was lost in the process’s magic. The shaft under his power became sleeker and extra weight was concentrated at the tip like a staff with a gem on top, but his version instead of being elaborate worked metal was wood. Ultimately, he wanted a better weapon rather than something aesthetically pleasing, but if he could do both that would be best. His mind conjured twirls on energy and the flow or magic from one spot to another and the wood responded. Some threads were as thick as a finger and others were like sewing thread. Delicate, intricate changes and Daniel just let his subconscious mind play out.

Once more, his mana bottomed, and he opened his eyes to examine what he had created. Quite simply, it was beautiful. Because he knew what to look for he could even see the shiny side of those claws on the surface of the wood. Visible as a flash of multicoloured sheen like an opal.

He touched the weapon in amazement and when he sunk his consciousness into it the cores he had inserted had vanished. They hadn’t disappeared Daniel knew they had become part of the wood. His magic had been successful.

Now he needed to repeat it for all the others. They were going to get stronger, and these weapons were a key plank of that plan. He kept working. Getting up regularly to kill a moth.

Once more, his mana was at zero. Daniel leapt to his feet, feeling all the energy within him.

Speed.

He blurred forward for a microsecond and then stopped. He could feel that his breath was coming a little faster, but not too badly. Down the corridor, he practiced. Engaging speed, followed by strength then both of them together.

The block crumbled in his hands when he flexed them.

His chest was heaving, and he looked out the window to the city absent any of the myriad of lights that had existed on those few days he had stayed here back when life was normal. There were clouds and it was black, or maybe not. He was looking east, and the sky appeared lighter. It had to be approaching dawn.

It was time to pack up.

Daniel retreated to his traps and shut down the two empty traps and stretched and focused on calming his breathing while he waited for the last two traps to stop humming. It had been a successful night of killing. After the final two moth’s perished, he was going to have thirty-four cores besides the six that went into Tamara’s weapon.

It was a lot of dead moths.

They gave him experience to promote his beast whisper class, crafting materials and a proof of concept. This design depended on his plant skills to set up the automatic trap. That meant currently only he or Priscilla could reset them, but it should be easy to convert the traps to function with a manual lever. Create the lever long enough, maybe one that stretched across the entire corridor and even Zac pulling on the lever would probably be able to assert sufficient force to squish a moth.

Job done he went to see Ivey. He entered the room soundlessly with his magic flexing to ensure there were no errant creaks. He stripped off most of his clothes and slipped into bed next to her. She stirred but did not wake and a few moments later sleepily she reached out for him and he gathered her to his chest.

Stay away he ordered Priscilla and then he focused on what was happening below. His plant conduits grew silently under his control. Behind walls they spread, following the lift. Carefully, he prepared the mothclear contingency.