DD5 ~ Chapter 13 ~ <3

As I continued to take more of the crater wall as my own property, I decided more and more that I didn’t care if the Northmen were acting of their own free will. So a dungeon gets control of a nation or two? Good for the dungeon! That’s an inspiration, not a detriment! Yeah! If I ever met this dungeon in person, I’d congratulate it as I tried to eat or take control of its area.

There was another benefit to getting this Ward. Now that I had the Runes that powered and directed the power of a succubus, as well as the demon’s pattern, I could create a defense against it. I decided to slow down my influence spreading, and take a short while to design the needed protections. If I hit another lure as I was, I would once again eat it. Eventually, this would be noticed and I would likely have a fight on my hands as the Northmen tried to stop me. I started to build my defense, selecting Runes that should specifically counter the lure. This is harder than it should have been, since I needed to go through every single Rune I had and determine which would be the most effective.

This is one of the real issues that I faced with using Runes. Right then and there, I decided to start classifying all of them by type and give them a name. As it stood, Runes only had an effect listed. For instance, if I were to put a Runecrafted weapon with a fire effect out into my dungeon, it would be called a 'flaming sword' or some such nonsense. From now on, every new Rune combination would get a specific name, and I would save that for future use. otherwise, I had to do everything by memory, or remake it entirely.

Creating a new Runescript wasn't a huge issue, as I did have perfect memory, it was simply time-consuming and inefficient. Calling everything ‘Rune’, ‘Runescript’, or ‘series of Runes’ was also getting confusing. I put my new plan into action immediately, completing my anti-lure setup and keeping it in my mind as 'demonic attraction filter'. It was an excessively complicated schema, so I didn't feel too bad about the long-though-concise name. Besides, no one would be seeing it except for me. Actually implementing it was trickier, is it required me to filter my perception through a somewhat small circle. On the plus side, once I did get the hang of using it, I was far more confident about allowing my power to eat away at the crater wall.

Over the course of the next few hours, I was able to find three more of the Ward-shapes. I wasn't sure what the proper designation for them was, but Ward-shape seem to fit fairly well. Each time I found one, I absorbed then replaced it. Within a few moments, it would be reactivated by the energy circling the crater. As far as I could tell, this was a minor drain on the Ward and should not be noticed. Using my new classification system, the Wards that I took were 'Allow Essence', 'Block Mana', and 'Repel Flesh'.

I was still looking for the protections against my flying dungeon. I needed to find and be able to disable them just in case I wanted to stage an invasion at some point. Another positive, since I had a defense against the lure, we were able to look directly at the Wards and plot a course that should maximize our efficiency. I had given Bob a task, and now my influence was flowing along the cliff face in a pattern I would not have expected. It was only thanks to his directions that we had found the three Wards that we had, and at our current pace we should be able to collect a few extras before making it to the bottom of the crater.

Of course, though my attention was mostly on this, my mind was not as limited as a human such as Dale. I was also working on refining my monsters, traps, and Rewards. Another part of my mind was working on classifying all of my Runes, and putting existing set ups into a different part of my mind. If this weren't enough, I was also begrudgingly working with The Master on his 'Masterpiece'. Personally, I thought it was quite narcissistic to name a contraption after yourself like that. Even though other people assured me ‘Masterpiece’ was common terminology, I knew he was calling it that for his own ego. He couldn't sneak one past me!

Now, in my own mind I really wasn't doing too much with that project. The master would submit a list of materials he needed, or various Runescripting that was necessary for his project. Diplomat Bob would take the list, get my attention, and take the Inscribed materials back to the master when I had finished. Even without devoting my entire attention to that project, I was still able to complete it a million times faster than would have been possible without me. I should give myself more credit: I should actually call that non-inconsequential assistance. 

After all, I ensured that my work was of the highest possible quality; since I would eventually be directly benefiting from the possibly hundreds of thousands of people who would use the finished portal. That was worth more than considering myself as a minor assistant on this project! Still, I had better things to do and concerns that were more directly important to me. 

For example, now that I had a lure Ward, I could work on fully reverse-engineering it and turning it into a zone of 'ignore me'. The Elvish Embassy on my Surface achieved this by inscribing every single chunk of building material with a series of linked Runes. So wasteful. I had no idea how they were able to power that all day, every day, without some form of internal power source. Did that building house a dungeon...? No, Probably not.

I eventually came up with a system of inverted Taunt Runes linked by the connecting Runes of the original lure. It sounds simple, but making the connections sync up was the work of a master artist, carver, and philosopher all rolled into one. They did not want to play nice. The next step was testing it. A single Ward like this should project a bubble of power only a few feet in diameter, and since I did not have the massive linkages that must have been used in this crater, I was going to need to figure out a system on my own. Or I could steal the one that was currently in place, but I didn't think I had that kind of time.

I put a shining gold treasure chest on the first floor, in a highly traversed area, with the Ward placed on its lid. I supplied the initial power requirements, but I had upgraded the original Ward system with 'Essence Collection' Runes on the outer edge. They would only supply a trickle of power, but there would be almost no impact on the ambient Essence. There were only thirty seconds where people were not in the area, and in that time I lifted the treasure chest into the selected spot. Then it was time to wait.

Dozens of parties walked past the brilliantly Shining treasure chest, some of them even tripping and falling over it. I had placed in the center of the room. Mile after continued only until a Mage-led party entered the room. The cold, bored eyes of the Mage lit up when he saw the treasure chest. When no one else with him seem to be excited, he grew confused and became worried that he was looking at an illusion. He went over and touched the treasure chest, throwing it open and destroying the Ward in the process.

The people with him were all students, and though they were excited to see the chest, they knew that they would not get anything out of it. The rules were: you had to participate in gaining the loot to get any of it. For me, this highlighted the fact that Mages were far from simple creatures that you could trick. I replicated the setup on a lower level, this time using my powerful Mana to create the Ward. As soon as I applied this to the treasure chest, it exploded into a ball of fire and chaotic energy. Well. It seems that I need to upgrade the materials I was working with if I wanted them to handle the stress of the magical forces moving through them.

That was easy enough. Design of the chest too much, simply adding a small disk of diamond about the size of a person's hand to the lid. I placed the 'Ignore Me' Warding schema on the disk, and tried again. This time, the setup was stable even if only just barely. If I tried to use my full power to create the Ward, it was likely that I would need to use more varied materials, and likely a Core that could contain and distribute the power. Somehow, I was also going to need to find a way to enhance this to the point that people above my own rank would be impacted. This will require quite a bit of trial and error, research, and dangerous experimentation. At the same time, it was good to have plans for the future .