I stumbled out of the dungeon master’s quarters to see that the sun hadn’t noticeably moved. Whatever magic the dungeon used on me hadn’t taken very long. I went into my yurt and grabbed the beer bucket, and then headed over to my tree chair. I needed to think about what I saw and better understand what was going on.

I sighed and took a sip. “So this whole place is part of a galactic war with those Dark Ones. They sealed this place off to keep it safe but the orcs still got in.”

I kept drinking for a while, just watching the birds. I had learned that I didn’t want to watch them too closely so they wouldn’t think I wanted a fight. I might could take them now, but it wasn’t something that I wanted to try. At least not with the headache that I was dealing with right then.

I swirled my beer in my bottle for a while, as I thought. This was all crap. I got brought in from Earth to fight a war. It wasn’t that I didn’t think the war was worth it. By all accounts, from what I had seen, it was a just war. It just wasn’t my war.

“Unless those Dark Ones are heading to Earth sometime soon. Then I’m like the guys who went early to the world wars because they knew it was the right thing.”

I downed the rest of the bottle I was working on and grabbed a second. I didn’t like that I should be leveling faster than I was. From what the dungeon showed me, I should be rocketing ahead in levels. It also showed that I wasn’t from this dimension or universe. I guess they called it a realm.

I downed the rest of my beer and sighed. “Well I guess the god of bards struck out with me. I just can’t figure out what I did that made Sam hate me so much. I would have thought he would want to help all the champions.”

I got up and stretched; the beer had done me good. “Time to see if I can get the second file open now.”

I headed back in to see the dungeon heart. I wasn’t super happy about the headache I got from it, but I needed to push on learning about the dungeon. It might be the key to me getting the faith I needed to get the Sisters to do me a solid and lead me to Lannah.

When I got in, I saw that the “Operations” option wasn’t grayed out any longer.

I sighed, “I guess there is no reason not to.”

I clicked on “Operations” and got an error message.

Warning

Twenty four hours must pass for your brain to handle the next learning.

Raise your intelligence to at 10 to remove this warning.

“Well I guess I am planting seeds for a while.”

I began with planting on my landing. Each one I planted next to a tree counted as one seed planted. It was nice that I could get some of the quest knocked out but also confusing as to why the other times hadn’t counted.

As I was stretching my back from planting the last one, I whispered to myself, “Unless they need the increased mana and Ni’Bish knew it was here.”

I was mostly sure that the upper valley was safe since I had tried to close off the area before I left. But I wasn’t going to get caught unaware, so I geared up first. I needed to do a sweep of the upper valley before I started to plant the seeds. Then I would plant the new forest first and move out to the trees that I hadn’t planted. I only had just over 29900 left of them to plant…

The sweep of the upper valley started off quick. But that was only the start. When I got over to where the vines had killed a bunch of gremlins before I headed downriver, I saw them hacking at the vines. They had already punched a hole through the vine wall I had planted. It looked like they had used burning logs to start their attack, as the ground was covered in char. The hole was big enough for gremlins and goblins to pass through without any problems. I would have to stoop to get through, and so would orcs.

I settled in to watch. I needed to know what they were doing here so that I could figure out a way to stop it. The little guys were all screaming and swinging their tiny spears at the vines that were trying to grow back. Every now and then, a spear would get snagged and pulled in, or a gremlin would. There were several goblins overseeing what the gremlins were doing from outside the vine tunnel. They would yell and smack the gremlins around and send them back to work.

After watching for about an hour, I saw a hunting group pass through the tunnel. It was made up of approximately thirty gremlins and half a dozen goblins. In the past, that size group would have killed me, but I had gotten more powerful and figured that I could take them without a problem. Yet, I wanted to see what they were up to.

I snuck in behind them and followed them as they headed toward where the mountain sheep had been grazing in the past. I hadn’t done anything with the sheep because I didn’t have any use for the wool. I could get the whole sheepskin which would have made a small covering. However, with the climate controls of the Yurt and dungeon, I hadn’t seen the need.

They went right toward the sheep and attacked. It didn’t seem like they had any plan, as they didn’t even surround the sheep before the gremlins jumped on it. My thoughts proved true when I saw the ram start to defend the herd. One bump from its head would throw a gremlin over a dozen feet. It was educational watching as the ram’s horns would spark just before striking.

However, the goblins got involved, and then I saw that there was a plan. The goblins went to the backside of the flock and quickly killed two of the ewes as the gremlins were dying. Then they made off like they didn’t care about the gremlins. The gremlins took off running once the goblins were past them, and the ram turned around, thinking it had won.

Up to this point, I hadn’t seen the goblins act crafty at all. I had only seen their savagery. While this had been ruthless toward the gremlins, it has been a reasonably smart play. They got all the meat the six of them could carry and only lost about a dozen of the gremlins.

I smiled, “I wouldn’t mind having some fresh lamb for dinner. I bet Dave could cook something up nice.”

The group was about a 10-minute run for me from the other batch of gremlins, so I figured it was far enough away that I could help them with their food problems. The hunting party wasn’t traveling with any form of discipline now that they had their prize. So I got between them, and the tunnel planted my standard dropped my totem at the front, and pulled out my bow.

I muttered. “I’m counting on y’all being as dumb as normal and not trying to run.”

Right then, the front gremlins came around the bend on the game trail and screeched. Then the rest of them took up the cry as they scampered at me. It was just a disorganized attack that I didn’t even bother to try to fire an arrow. They went from all fours to just their legs to some sort of three-legged swinging run thing. As they closed, they threw their tiny spears, which impacted the dome.

As the front few gremlins hit the dome, the totem fired up and started to steam them. Then the goblins came around. Honestly, after fighting the undead, this group was nothing. My aim had improved to the point that I dropped the goblins all with single arrows. By the time the last one went down, the gremlins had died to the totem.

I recovered my equipment and went to retrieve the sheep. I didn’t have much of a good way to move them, so I downed a couple straight branches and made a travois for the weight. I was heading to the dungeon, so I figured the path wouldn’t matter much.

I picked up the front of the travois and started to move. “Can’t leave this around for the enemy.”

It wasn’t long before I was down in the safe room, and Dave was helping me clean the sheep.

I asked. “So does it matter if I bring you fresh meat or not? Like if I bring this in can you turn it into jerky that I could take out of the dungeon?”

“Yeah, since the meat doesn’t come from the dungeon if you hang around for the full process I can send you out with the finished product. But if you leave the safe room then anything you leave in here will get absorbed back into the dungeon.”

“Does that go for the dungeon master quarters as well?”

“Nope, those are permanent but also done have the accelerated time.”

“Since they are connected to the safe room can I go in there and you stay around or will you vanish?”

Dave chucked, “Poof!”

“Well I guess I am here for a while to get this made. While you are getting it all taken care of I got to figure out what to do with the goblins. The vine wall I put up didn’t do as good of a job as I wanted.”

“With what you told me about their operation up top with the vines I would say that they are committed to keeping the path open. From what I know about them I would guess that an orc commanded them to make the tunnel. I couldn’t see them handling this on their own.”

I smiled, “Yeah they are kind of uncreative and that tunnel seemed to have had some brains involved. Any clue how Blink is doing?”

Dave grinned. “She just finished recovering in the first floor safe room. She told me that she had no problems with the spiders and the bashers. The skeletons however, gave her lots of issues. She ended up having to use fire-strike to fry the bones enough that they wouldn’t rebuild. Her bow was worthless and her claws weren’t much better. She was royally pissed when I wouldn’t sell her a high level club.”

I chuckled, “Not the dungeon master and so could only get level one equipment?”

“Yup! I am honestly not sure how she plans on getting all the way through level two with just claws but I know she will. If push comes to shove she can always revert to her natural form.”

* * *