When I awoke from my untimely blackout, the world was at peace. Peace in that there were no sounds of combat around me at all. My body was sore, yet the debuffs were all gone. That was something that I needed the answer to. Why could I have movement pain like a crick in my neck yet not a debuff?

I slowly stood up and looked around. Blink was happily chewing on the left arm of a goblin. As my eyes landed on her, she thought to me. “Lazy.” Then she started toward the dungeon door.

The area where the goblin reinforcements were made my battlefield look like a pleasant stroll through a city park. If the blood and body parts of the gremlins and handlers took on the role of graffiti. That mild nature the bloody viscera made ended where Blink had gotten involved. If the mess from my fight was graffiti, then her horror was what one would think of after a riot.

I had cut and stabbed my way through my foe. Which caused relatively minor wounds that would kill. Even the goblins that I beheaded only had a slight bloody puddle. Blink used her teeth and claws. From some of the wounds that I looked at as I gathered loot, it appeared she almost swam through them. The profuse amount of blood made me almost wretch as the bodies appeared to have been virtually dissected with her teeth.

If I stumbled upon this mess without knowing she was on my side, I would say this was a warning. One which I would heed and leave the area. Even in other battles, she hadn’t ever been this vicious. This showed more emotion…

I quickly gathered the equipment that was present and added it to my pack, and then went into the dungeon where Blink had been waiting. In many ways, I missed the clean looting from the dungeon. What was left above was something that was more than I wanted to deal with again. However, with that being my only exit, I feared it would become something that I would see age and age rather poorly.

The equipment I gathered all went into a pile in my hut. I didn’t have a new storage room, and I wasn’t really thinking of making anything new as far as weapons went. I just wanted to deprive the goblins of ready equipment. I also suffered heavily under the second rule of adventuring don’t leave any loot behind. The first rule, of course, was always to have rope.

As I didn’t want to wait for weeks to grow the trees into something that would obscure the view of the Shrine, I once again headed into the safe room to work. This time I was taking enough clay in my pack to build a rather sizable pot. I was going to use the safe room, and the tree growth stakes to quick grow potted trees, and then I was going to move them onto the ledge once I had taken several years of growth off the requirements.

I had found that I could change the entrance and exit of the dungeon in size, and so the requirement that I had was simply that I needed to be able to move the dumb thing. So I set to work creating a pot on stone wheels that also reduced the weight of what was in it. Once I had my first one made, I copied my idea and created 10 of them.

Those ten I tied together and filled with dirt and then moved into the dungeon. Just because of how odd they were to move, it went slowly, but since it only took me one actual day to do this, I was far ahead of where I thought that I would be. I had piled on top of these 10 the rest of the equipment that I was going to need.

I was planning on doing something relatively crazy. I would spend twenty weeks in the safe room with these things getting them to grow. I might not be there for the entire time as if the trees were too big, I would need to head out sooner. That being said, I needed to take with me twenty weeks of projects so that I could be ready for what was to come.

I felt at this point that I was all but breaking a set of rules. I wasn’t sure who’s rules, but I knew that with what I was doing, I would please both of the Sisters in one move. I also knew that I would end up changing as all my levels would go up, even in the safe room. I just had to make sure I could work on things.

As I moved into the safe room with my supplies, I thought of Lannah. I hated that I was taking another 6 days to deal with this problem, but I knew that it would make it so that I was better prepared for what was to come. I also was hoping that in the next 4 months of my life, I wouldn’t forget what Lannah looked like or where she said her family lived. While I tended to be good with remembering things like that, I also knew that I had only been with her a few days and so things would get foggier over time.

Blink chose to come in with me, but I figured that she would leave after a while. It was going to be very dull in the safe room without things to hunt. So I expected that she would come and go across the actual 6 days on the outside. Which meant that I would only have Dave and the Shamans to speak with for weeks on end.

There was only so much that I could take with me to work on. The sheer amount of peaceful time that I had to work on projects was incredible. The problem that I had was how much I could bring in with me. Or, more to the point, how much I did bring in with me. The other things that I found out were that when trees are growing in their perfect environments, they grow much quicker. The pots were designed to help feed and grow the trees, as were the tree growth stakes.

So, where I thought I was going to spend around 20 weeks in the safe room, I ended up spending only 12. By that time, most of the trees had broken thirty feet. It also meant that three and a half days in the real world had passed. The trees that I had grown this way showed some bizarre changes. The fruit and nuts glowed slightly because of the infused mana.

My ritual healing and herbalism skills were both saying that the produce was a different tier than what I had been finding around the area. I wasn’t sure what it would mean, but I knew that they were unique in some way. I was just hoping that they wouldn’t get me killed on my way out.

Of my other projects, I created a ton of growth stakes. I wanted to change the way the fights with the goblins went, so I created stakes that would address vines and bushes as well. My plan was to plant the clearing where the dungeon entrance was and make it defended by plants as much as it was obscured. I also was planning on making the forest hostile to the monsters that were now coming to hunt me.

For the vines, I didn’t give it any cap on how much they would grow. My hope was that they would grow and tangle up the horde. I also adjusted the vines to make them give off a slight confusion. This would hopefully redirect the horde away from this spot and make Chaos happy enough to let me leave. Lastly, I created stakes that would cause the vines with thorns to grow more powerful in how deep they would cut and tangle.

Ten weeks of work on creating traps out of magic and cores. It was rather scary how quickly I could work on things when I didn’t have to worry about food or danger. If I could, I would figure out a way to move this dungeon with me. As it stood, I just needed to get released from my range restrictions from the Sisters. Which might mean that I leave and come back.

Getting the trees out of the dungeon was a trick and a half, but the work was worth it. Once I was out of the safe room, I could roll the trees one by one down to the dungeon exit. Then it was a matter of using the Ghost Ogre staff to remove them from the pots. Once I got them into the ground, I used a new staff I made to help guide the roots out of the ball they had made.

I got the ten trees in place around the entrance of the Shrine so that you couldn’t see the Shrine from above. While I was ready to do more, I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to. However, I didn’t get a pop-up, and my movement was still locked in place.

So I took a large number of growth stakes and headed out. I knew that I had work I needed to do, and the sooner I got the horde cut off, the sooner I could leave. But unfortunately, my natural desire to be self-guided was chaffing under the overt direction of the Sisters.

“Blink! Lets go have fun up top!” I yelled as I picked up my bag.

As I was moving to the door, I felt my legs get bumped. Glancing down, I didn’t see anything, but our bond told me she was there. Then I felt joy and excitement flood over to me. “Hunts!” She thought with almost a yell.

The first few hours went great. I started with the path that overlooked the newly made lake. I found any tree that seemed to have thorns and gave it a growth stake. Then I added to the trees the vines that I could find. The stakes for the vine could each power the growth of three. I also was looking for a few young trees that had thorns. If I could find them, I wanted something like a Locust tree.

It was after the third hour, when I had just finished loading a honey locust into my pack, that we heard the yells of what sounded like angry goblins. Blink vanished and went moving toward the sound, and I slowly started my move in that direction.

In the last ten weeks, I had changed. I hadn’t just built things; while I was in the safe room, I practiced everything I could. I focused all of my work while my mana was regenerating on weapons training and drove every skill I had the weapon for up to 15. With the notable exception of the spear, as that one was locked. However, short spear, spear throwing, and long spear were all skills I found and worked on.

As I approached the screaming, I became awashed with a feeling of amusement, and then Blink sent me an image of the screaming. The growth stakes for vines were much more potent than for trees. Or, more likely, the same amount of power just channeled into a smaller area and so much more noticeable. The goblins that had been coming up the game trail found that they were now entangled with vines growing all over the place. Some were binding them, and some were covered in thorns, slowly poisoning them.

It seemed that this passage would soon become too hard for them to pass. However, right now, they were just being slowed down. So Blink, and I had our work cut out for ourselves. Blink slipped through the vines like they weren’t there and started with a scare from behind. Making the group of goblins rush forward into more of the mess we had made. These vines would make Chaos happy; I was sure of it.

As they rushed in, a few were able to break through, which led to me being able to cut them down. They saw me, but they were just too tied up to deal with me as I used my throwing knives and sword to slaughter them as they came. The vines were hungry and pulled the bodies of the horde towards their crowns so that they would be able to feel better.

There were two other places that we needed to block off so that the upper valley was cut off from below and safer from the goblins. I was sure that they would come, but I was more worried about making Chaos happy so that I could get out of here. So I took the locust tree back to the dungeon entrance and planted it. I wanted to get several of them so that they would fill in the clearing and provide a screen.