The first thing I feel through the new bond with Hullbreak is abject misery. The First Mate seems to be taking it a bit more stoically, but none of them seem too happy with the new situation. I can’t really blame them. I’m looking around, and I’m not really looking forward to this right now, either.

Hullbreak really did consume everything to try to beat me. I can at least respect the commitment, even if it means I have to do a lot more than I was hoping to fix this. I can see a bunch of various depreciated nodes and spawners as I look around.

Right, well, just staring isn’t going to make the problem fix itself. I try to push a bit of encouragement through the bond as I start planning how to get Hullbreak back into shipshape. Nodes and spawners are going to need to come back online. Looks like he had a crab and sea slug spawner, too. It also looks like the fish and shark spawners are different things. It seems kinda weird to me, but then again, Violet has a mushroom spawner, where I have mushroom nodes.

I look through the crab options before I spend any mana, wanting to try to plan out a little more than just kinda flying by the seat of my non-existent pants like I usually do. There are a few options for magic crabs, and a couple resource ones that look interesting, but I think I’m going to try to aim them towards being tough melee fighters. If delvers are going to delve properly, they need something they can fight. Sharks and gulls are not the easiest things to deal with, being in the sea and air, but a crab battle can take place on a beach or something. I’ll probably have to expand Hullbreak towards land or something for that, but might as well have a plan for it now.

Speaking of the sharks and gulls: they’re both more specialized for dealing with invaders than as being something a delver can actually fight. The problem is that, while there are still the ordinary invaders, I don’t think there are any more dungeon invaders around, so there’s a lot fewer to actually deal with.

I have a few ideas that might work for them, though. I’ll still keep most of them to help keep invaders at bay, but I think I can do something interesting with the gulls and their little island thing. It seems like a great place for a lighthouse, to me. It’ll take a lot of work, but if we can give Hullbreak an above water section for more classic delving, that should go a long way towards making him mana solvent.

The extra sharks, I’ll probably send out on expeditions out into deeper water. Maybe there’s an actual deep water dungeon out there? I dunno.

The fish have a few interesting options, but one immediately catches my eye: Goldfish. Sure, it’s a pun, but it also seems to be a specialization for more rewards. More rewards means more delvers means more mana. That one is definitely on my list of upgrades for Hullbreak.

I’m more uncertain what to do with the sea slugs, though. They seem to be mostly magical, though there are a lot of interesting affinities they seem to be able to be specialized towards. I have no idea how fire affinity would even work, but it’s real tempting to go down that path just to see. I think I’ll put a pin in upgrading them beyond just enabling the spawner again, at least for now.

The nodes are an easy decision, at least: bring them all back and upgrade them. Lots of various sea herbs, corals, even a couple beds of pearl oysters, all are on offer, and I want them all and more. I take a few minutes to look deeper at the coral nodes, though. Back on Earth, I’m pretty sure trying to harvest coral tends to go very poorly for the coral. Here, though… it looks like it behaves similar to an underwater mining node.

Oh, that gives me an idea for the sea slugs! I dig through the options there, and eventually find what I’m looking for: an upgrade similar to what I got for my slimes back home. Where my slimes seem to help crystalize more ore in my nodes, it looks like sea cucumbers will help feed the coral and so grow better. Bleh, just don’t think about how a sea cucumber feeds something else.

Ah, I almost forgot: Hullbreak’s core. As suspected, it’s in that big coral structure in the center of the merfolk enclave. That needs to move. I can understand him wanting to be close to his dwellers, but they’re both going to need room to grow, and in more ways than one. My first instinct is to get it under the gull spawner, but I’m not sure that’ll work too well for Hullbreak. The guy definitely doesn’t like delvers, and he’d probably be constantly on the verge of a panic attack if they’re running around in a lighthouse right above where his core is.

I look around a bit more, and eventually find a spot that could be good. There’s a nice area that doesn’t have much going on, but could be a great spot for a thick kelp forest. It’d be pretty easy to hide the entrance in there. I’m not sure how I’ll be able to move him, though.

Hey Teemo, can you ask the First Mate if she has any ideas for moving Hullbreak’s core? I don’t think it’s a good thing, long term, for him nor the dwellers for him to stay in the middle of their enclave.

My Voice perks up when I talk to him. It looks like more and more merfolk have been coming out to see what’s been going on, and everyone just looks a bit lost, even with the First Mate trying to reassure them. Teemo simply swims over to her and perches on her dorsal fin before speaking up.

“Hey, First Mate. Is there any way to move Hullbreak’s core without tearing apart that coral?”

The shark looks confused for a moment, before looking towards where her Captain’s core is, and considering. “Ordinarily, no… but the Captain is rather drained after… today. I should be able to get him out without doing too much damage.”

The gathered merfolk look dismayed, but don’t make any moves to stop them. My Voice tries to explain. “See, the Boss wants to make sure your Captain and you all have room to grow. If Hullbreak wants to tell you how to get to his new sanctum, that’s his decision, and the Boss won’t stand in the way of it.”

That doesn’t seem to make them feel any better, but at least there’s nobody else trying to use a trident to stab anyone. Which reminds me: where’s Yendo? Thankfully, it looks like nobody else is blaming him for what happened, and he seems to be talking to a merman who looks on the verge of being an adult. They’re being quiet, though, so I don’t try to interrupt them. I just wanted to make sure nothing happened to him while I was distracted.

In the short time I was looking at/for Yendo, the First mate is already at the coral. A quick chomp puts a hole in the big mound, and a little bit of water mana is all that’s needed to wash the core into her waiting mouth. The blue tetrahedron is only about the size of a basketball, which is a bit concerning. From the hole, it looks like he used to take up a lot more space than that, poor guy.

Well, let’s get him into some new digs. Slash, I’ll need your help. Rocky and Jello, you guys can head back now, or take a look around if you like. Teemo guides the First Mate out of the enclave, and the merfolk watch them go. The mood is tense, like they think they won’t ever see the Captain or his scions ever again.

Which is fair. All they’ve seen is me come in like I own the place and walk out with Hullbreak’s core, with only a few words to try to placate them. Time to put some action to back up the words to try to ease their fears. It’s expensive, but I should be able to afford the upkeep on all this, as well as the actual cost.

As the dwellers watch, the sea seems to come alive around the scions as they leave. Coral rapidly regrows, kelp and other sea flora grow thick and lush. Beyond what they can directly see, the spawners come back to life and start rapidly producing their new upgraded denizens. Copperfins and Silverscales start to form schools and meander, while the sea cucumbers start the slow journey towards the various corals. I don’t add any new scions yet, leaving that decision to Hullbreak.

It doesn’t take long for Slash to create a small sea cave for the First Mate to deposit Hullbreak’s core in, nor does it take long for the new kelp to grow in nice and thick, obscuring the entrance as well as a decent bit of the sea bed.

I can’t help but feel a little proud of how Hullbreak Harbor looks right now, and I’m encouraged by the small ember of hope I feel from the bond with the paranoid dungeon. There’s still a lot of work to do, but I’m already feeling pretty accomplished.