While my minions are getting in touch with their artistic side I am creating a few things.

I have been thinking about how to fatten up my crystal slimes and how to make them absorb more mana faster. I have a few ideas but will need some testing first, a few arrays are being made on the ground, the only thing they do is create a small area where mana is thinner and I cover them in small domes of bone with a single small opening right at the top I tell the slimes to go up there and lay on top of the holes, the holes are small enough that the slimes have no risk of falling, a tube of bone is created around one of them an array drawn all over the dome.

There are 30 domes, five of those have the array and tube the others do not. The tube array is going to pull in necrotic mana into the tube and the slime, then the slime will spew the purified high quality mana down into the dome. The other ones are different, for them a skeleton will sprinkle bits of necrotic quartz, one test group will get the pieces of quartz unbroken, the other three will get broken pieces, the last one getting necrotic glitter pretty much. And the last group will get injected with a highly necrotic liquid, created using water as a base.

I will have to create more tests later but for now these will suffice. I also quickly create a few voice boxes, they are simple arrays that transmit sound. I start fiddling with them a bit and try to get my voice right, I hope Merlin will enjoy hearing it.

Speaking of Merlin, he and the army have restarted their march a little while ago. They had a few more engagements but nothing serious. We are getting pretty deep into crab territory so I imagine they must be concentrating their forces somewhere.

Merlin and Irax have been talking all the while. Irax talked a bit about a lot of things, for example this world uses coins as currency. You have your copper, silver and gold coins, those are the standard everywhere, and a lot of places have higher value metals too, all coins need to have a certain amount of mana inside of them, otherwise they are called ‘iron’, iron copper coin, iron silver coin and iron gold coin, and are valued less, so the real actual thing deciding the value is the amount of mana they carry.

The reason why coins without mana are called iron coins is because they are actually valued less than mana attuned iron, a simple mana rich iron sword could cost several times its weight in unattuned gold, so unattuned currency is pretty rare.

All places on the planet have their own special blend of metals to make their coins as filled with mana as possible. Ten coins make a rod, ten rods form a tower and lastly ten towers form a castle. Though he did say this is adventurer names, and most places will have their own names for their coins and coin groupings.

Apparently it’s called ‘castle’ because you could buy an actual castle with it, though only with the gold coins. Irax explained that the exact value though can fluctuate a lot.

“Cronmei has a lot of gold, platinum and mages so they create a lot of high value coins, Poslath also has Deepfrost and deepfrost coins.” I see him looking at Merlin and before he can ask Irax continues. “Deepfrost is a special type of ice, extremely rich in cold mana, it can be used for pretty much anything, though mostly for weapons and construction.”

Merlin asks if there are bone coins, to which Irax says there are no no places he knows that have bone coins, which does give me an idea…

Irax talks about it a bit more there is a standard for measuring the worth of coins, to further complicate things dungeons can also make and drop coins, and the coins from the dungeon may be of higher value then the country it is currently in, there are ‘coin farms’ which are dungeons that have been turned into coin machines essentially. The conversation ends up becoming about the fate of dungeons, Merlin just asks the questions on his own, I imagine he is curious about my future.

Irax explains that when a dungeon is discovered they send a bunch of specialized teams to scout it and see how big and dangerous it is, the scouts also see and catalog the type of monsters inside, they have a list of illegal monsters, and if the dungeon has them inside it will be marked for core termination, meaning death for the dungeon. There are multiple levels of illegal monsters and responses to illegal monsters, they vary from place to place.

“There was an elemental dungeon, a rookie dungeon, simple elementals, fire, water, air and earth and nothing too strong. One day it created acid elementals, these new elementals were all over the dungeon, so a kill team was created. A kill team is a specialized party made to kill a specific threat, or type of threat, the idea is to send a message to the dungeon that the targeted monsters are not desired.” Irax stared at Merlin. “Most dungeon hearts are not as smart as yours, but they tend to get the message after a while. In this case the kill team created was made from elemental charmers, they would control the other elementals from the dungeon and make them kill the acid ones, afterwards the elementals would be healed and released from control. After the dungeon stopped creating the acid elementals it was rewarded with mana.”

“How was it given mana?”

“Might have just been pumped into it, or a powerful mage released some. Seltila sometimes rewards dungeons by executing criminals inside of it.”

“Is that a common practice everywhere?”

“Yes, in Seltila only the most heinous of crimes lead to you being executed inside a dungeon.” Right, that does remind me…

“You said that the soil of Seltila has enough necrotic energy that you cannot bury the dead in it, so how do you dispose of corpses?” A small wooden statue appears in his hands, about 30 cm tall, Irax gives the little statue to Merlin.

It is a cylindrical statue with a face at the top, a tiger-like face. “Is this you?” Merlin asks.

“Yes, this is an ancestor totem, malgaro carve them and when we die they are taken and joined together in Tyrvarr, the capital of Seltila.” He points at the forehead of the little statue. “You pour a drop of blood here, this was one of my training ones, the real one is back with my party, should I die, they will take it to Tyrvarr for me. Once I die, should I ever be needed again, I can be summoned in spirit to fight for Seltila. This is the greatest shame of those who are executed, they will have no totems.”

Irax explains a bit more about them, like some malgaro put their ashes inside of them, or coat the totem with ash. There are a wide variety of materials used too. As expected the exact mechanics of how they can be called back from beyond are an ultra secret, but apparently it is pretty reliable. All the spirits called can stay for a while, the more powerful in life they were the longer, and they cannot leave much farther than Seltila itself, so it’s only a defensive ability. An incredibly powerful one, Irax says that as long as they are defending Seltila they have the strongest and most numerous army ever, since they can call literally hundreds of years of people to fight. Merlin asked about some of the powerful ghosts, which Irax gladly started talking about. I imagine they cannot actually summon all malgaro that have died ever, there is probably some kind of limit or something, still it is one heck of an ability.

Irax is talking about the greatest malgaro heroes and their totems, I tune out and start working on something.

Coins. Bone coins.

I create a simple coin, made from bone and rich in necrotic mana. In one face there is a skull facing forwards, and on the other a rib cage. Hmmm. I created another coin, again it is made from bone, but this time the skull and rib cage are made from steel. Looks cooler. I created it again, this time I also put dark quartz on the sockets of the skull and in the spaces between each rib on the rib cage. I make another one, this time it is made from black bone and has dark quartz all around the coin, the dark quartz covers the rib cage, and the skull has two gem-like eyes. This is the ‘Merlin’ coin. I make another coin, this time it is made from bone, the skull is now on profile and instead of a rib cage there is now a closed skeleton fist. Around the coin I sculpt a segmented scorpion tail, ending in a dark quartz stinger. This one is Stinger’s coin… This is kind of fun actually. I should probably see if the others have any ideas for coins. Speaking of that, I wonder how my little maze sculptors are doi— Minotaurs, minotaurs everywhere.

My labyrinth became a minotaur fanclub.