MH2 - Chapter 3: Wolfkin's Warning

The beast hung in mid-air, giving Dolli a second to react. She cast Fold Reality below him and opened the second portal behind her. Bakreh came down with a bone-shattering crack and a yelp. Nubiri’s too-large snout smashed into the cobblestones instead of passing through the portal—something Dolli had learned in her practice with boulders. There was some kind of mass restriction at this level, and if a creature or object exceeded that limit, it wouldn’t interact with the portal. Good news for Bakreh, not so great for Nubiri.

Dolli dropped to the wolfkin’s side. His health was below ten percent and dropping. Blood matted the fur on his chin, smearing against Dolli’s half-corporeal hand as she put the health potion to his lips. Bakreh pulled away, clenching his jaw so tight that Dolli couldn’t get the mouth of the bottle between his sharp teeth.

“Don’t do this. Let us help you,” Dolli pleaded.

“No can help. He come for all yekipyip. But,” Bakreh coughed up more blood. “You give yours, he let others go. Could work. My Overlord do this…” his eyes were glossy, and his health at 1%.

“Don’t let it die!” Nubiri roared, but Dolli couldn’t keep the creature here, she couldn’t torment it.

With a gurgle, Bakreh went limp in her misty arms.

“Fool! He’ll bring them to us!” Nubiri stomped around in a fury.

“Bring who?” Boji, Monster Haven’s very first recruit, asked from the gathering crowd asked.

Dolli stood as the wolfkin Bakreh disappeared in a shower of orange sparks and floated toward the south-east. “This Horde. A dungeon that hunts other dungeons. But they were already coming, that creature’s report will do little to change that.”

Nubiri snorted, “If you’d kept it alive…”

“What would it have bought us?” Dolli snapped. The exhaustion debuff was close at hand, and she was feeling the negative effects on her calm. “I would’ve tortured him for what, a few extra hours? That’s not who we are.”

“Overlord is right. We hurt heroes, not our own,” said Deetu, the outspoken goblin and former captain of Keegan’s ultra-rare zeppelin.

“But if they’re going to murder us, doesn’t that change things a bit?” Henrietta asked.

The group was growing by the minute, and so Dolli decided to stop rumors in their tracks, and just tell everyone what was going on. She opened her Overlord menu and started a new message to everyone: There is an enemy dungeon to the south-east that may be planning to attack and destroy us.

She paused, looking to her people. Chances were slim that negotiation would work, but Dolli had a secret bargaining tool. She could summon heroes. If she promised this Horde a portion of the kills and loot, perhaps that could appease them. The other options were far more grim, and not something she wanted to consider before diplomacy was completely off the table.

I will travel to their camp and attempt to negotiate a truce. If that fails, I’ll return and we’ll discuss the next step.

“Negotiate? Truce? What are these words?” Nubiri asked.

Nubiri was so well spoke, Dolli was surprised she didn’t know. But these weren’t words she required in her vocabulary as a wyvern. “I’m going to ask them not to hurt us in exchange for a portion of our summoned heroes.”

Nubiri barked a laugh. “You would sooner move Sol from the sky than Kelzoul with such tactics. He does not negotiate, or truce. He will take what he wants, destroy the rest, and move on. I know from experience. Our roost was ten mated pairs strong, and he took everything from us. His army never ended.”

“Well, I’m guessing you didn’t offer him a deal as sweet as I will,” Dolli said with a cocky smile that belied her anxiety.

“Send me, Overlord.” Rufus offered.

Dolli shook her head. “No, I think this is one of those things I need to take care of myself. I will need to prove my claim, too.”

Like a punch to the gut, the exhausted debuff slammed into Dolli. She drooped to the ground and groaned at the popup in her vision.

[Debuff: Exhausted]

All stats reduced by 25%. Movement speed reduced by 50%. Spark and Health Regeneration reduced by 75%. Damage dealt to you is doubled. Damage you deal is halved.

Effects amplify by 2x in 3:59:50.

-----

“You need to rest, please, send me,” Rufus offered again.

Dolli checked the Lifewell. Only two monsters were on respawn, so if she diverted the other four Lifestream slots to herself, she could regenerate four times as fast, making it only an hour of down time. That shouldn’t be so long that the Horde could sneak up on them. No, if Dolli was understanding Nubiri right, their coming would be obvious for miles and days.

Dolli picked herself up. “I’m going to expedite my rest, but before I go, we need to start working on fortifications—just in case.”

Since coming into a comfortable cadence of murdering heroes, the round-the-clock work of improving the dungeon had slowed to allow the dungeonfolk down time to relax and enjoy the hobbies of their previous lives, or new ones all together. Dolli wished now she’d pushed them harder, but that was a fruitless thought.

“Rufus, get everyone who’s awake tasked with wall improvements, and we need Julie strategizing on how best to handle an endless army marching through our maze. Get Greg up here working on any armor and weapon improvements we can manage.”

The crowd had come alive with chatter about the situation, many people talking with Nubiri about her knowledge—Henrietta and Vilhelm among them.

Dolli sighed. “I’m sorry to leave you like this, but please field the questions of the dungeonfolk about this situation. Let them know I am handling it personally, and that everything is going to be okay.”

Rufus lowered his voice and said, “Is it?”

“That remains to be seen. At best, we may forge a tenuous alliance with dungeon murderers, at worst we’ll be at war.”

“Nubiri,” Dolli said louder, getting the wyvern’s attention. “The wolfkin creature, he said Kelzoul would eat out “yekipyip.” Do you know what that means?”

Nubiri snorted, curls of green smoke leaking from her flared nostrils. “I don’t know that word, but I know what he meant. The sjæl, what allows us to bind to a seat of power, and roost. The gold that was inside me that changed green when I joined you. The orange that was the wolfkin when he returned to his master. The white that is the dead heroes. You understand me?”

Dolli nodded. “I believe I do.”

Respawning was not a foreign concept to the people, though it had only been just recently they were capable of it. While their deaths were sometimes traumatic, coming back was a lot nicer than staying dead. Dolli didn’t want to take that away from any of her people.

She didn’t want to lose it, either.

“I must rest now,” Dolli said to Rufus, who nodded then turned to the crowd.

He lifted to his full height of nine feet and spoke loudly. “Everyone, come to me for new assignments.”

Dolli opened the Overlord menu and updated the settings for redirecting the open slots to herself, then selected the “Recall” button. The sunset world dissolved in a burst of green sparks, then returned a fraction later to the darkness of twilight. An hour and fifteen minutes had passed for Dolli in the blink of an eye.

Her exhaustion debuff was gone to her relief, so she got to work. All the dungeonfolk were tasked out with reinforcements, and the dungeon had leveled up to six while she was gone.

[Congratulations – Your dungeon has reached Level 6]

Unused Monster Slots: [5/200]

Undistributed Roles: [1/6]

Open Lifestream Slots: [0/6]

Unclaimed Overlord Ability Points: [2]

[4] levels remain until next dungeon ability: Modulate; Resolve.

-----

Dolli focused on the two new dungeon abilities until their information came into view.

[Dungeon Ability: Modulate]

Transform your dungeon to respond to a threat once every [7] days. Transformation is permanent until Modulate is used again. Transformation is dependent on the enemy threat level; Miniscule, Moderate, Extreme, Legendary.

Dungeon will rearrange itself automatically in [60 seconds] to best fight the assessed threat.

-----

[Dungeon Ability: Resolve]

Strengthen the dungeon and its monsters once a day for [.5] hours. Dungeon monsters will have all stats increased by 100%. Dungeon traps will restore to full durability unless they are disabled or destroyed. And damage to dungeon buildings, passages, temples, or treasuries will be repaired automatically over [.5] hours.

-----

The Resolve ability was undeniably the best option. It would make fighting heroes a sinch, well, for half an hour at least. Dolli assumed because that number was encased with brackets that it was something she could affect or improve upon. That would be an even bigger boon in the future.

She couldn’t just disregard Modulate, though. The more the dungeon grew, the harder it was for Julie to keep up with all the modifications. Heroes learned their patterns after a few days, and Julie was almost constantly making updates to one floor or another. The time restriction on that was also bracketed, denoting possible improvements. Dolli knew that once the dungeon was twelve levels or greater, it would be nearly impossible to keep it fresh regularly. And since the ability would automatically respond to whatever threat was thrown at them, they wouldn’t have to make that judgement themselves, saving hours of thought.

Indeed, they were both powerful. She would have to put it to a vote, but she was leaning toward Modulate, since it was the right long-term option.

She spent a quick moment going through the Overlord Abilities. The first was an updated Chat system. She could target specific groups instead of blasting the entire dungeon every time she wanted to deliver a message, which would be incredibly useful. Not only that, but her Officers could now use the chat with her. The Officers could talk to one another and their direct subordinates.

While Nubiri wouldn’t ever have any apprentices, Greg, Julie, and Dolli could all take on two or more as they leveled up. Being able to talk to one another while miles apart was the kind of Hero Magic Dolli didn’t understand but wasn’t going to turn down. It could mean the difference between survival and defeat for them now.

Dolli didn’t have any more time to waste if she was going to get ahead of this and maybe save her people. She selected the upgraded Chat ability and then moved on to the next. There were two more staring her down; Lifewell Upgrade and Multitasking.

Dolli had already used the Lifewell upgrade once, and it was powerful, but the Multitasking ability would allow her to have only half of her vision taken up by a screen, meaning she could watch two different ones at once—the map and the chat for example—or she could watch one and her surroundings. It sounded like a useful upgrade that she’d end up getting eventually, so she decided to go for it now.

When she’d finished the Overlord ability selection, she was bombarded by another popup for leveling up to fourteen. Dolli growled and went through the motions.

The level didn’t come with any new abilities and there wasn’t anything she was hankering for, so she saved the ability point and quickly dropped her stat points in: two for Mental Prowess, two for Magic Affinity, and one for Constitution. Slowly, very slowly, she was becoming harder to kill, but she was still very much a glass-cannon.

With that done, she held her breath as she closed the menu for, hopefully, the final time. No new popup appeared, and she was left in the sitting room of her cottage, alone. She looked to her rocking chair, the low-burning embers in the fireplace, and the old tea on the table. It was home, but it felt cold despite the glowing hearth.

What Bakreh had said before he died drifted through Dolli’s thoughts. If she sacrificed herself, the others could be saved. Was he telling the truth, or just trying to convince her to make it easy for them to sweep in and annihilate everything.

She had to keep her mind on the task at hand. She wasn’t ready to roll over and die just yet. Maybe twenty wyverns couldn’t hold off the Horde, but Monster Haven had grown into a formidable dungeon over the past few weeks. It was possible they could fight Kelzoul back and make him move on. Nubiri said he would never take on something more powerful than himself…

But was that just delaying the inevitable? He would move on, destroy smaller dungeons, then return for Monster Haven. Dolli only saw two horrible futures: eternal war, or the void of death.

Unless her negotiations worked. She could lure the Kelzoul into a comfortable lull, gaining power and converting his monsters all the while until he was weak enough to destroy. That was the only way the dungeons of Hafheim would ever be safe.

But if her negotiations didn’t work, they would need a backup plan to protect themselves. Dolli went back into the Overlord menu and panned to the Dungeon Abilities. On the right side was the Officers and Roles section, which had just one role unallocated. There were a few options still open, but one she’d been eyeing since level five when the recruited goblins had truly proven themselves master of weapon modification: Tinkerer.

It was a type of engineer role that focused specifically on the generation of plans. It could create new designs for traps, weapons, building upgrades, and so much more. It was an important role she probably should’ve given out sooner… but there was no time like the present.

She opened her chat: Boji, Deetu, would you come to the Cottage?

She only had to wait a moment before the two were knocking on her door. She showed them in and they took a seat at her table. Dolli used her new multitasking ability to keep just the Officers and Roles panel open while she watched the goblins. Deetu was still quite small and nimble while Boji had grown to be nearly five and a half feet tall. He was much more muscular, and Dolli assumed he’d been putting a lot of his points into Strength.

“I called you here because there’s a role I need filled. Boji, you have shown great aptitude for creativity, and Deetu, you’re already a skilled engineer. The role I have is called Tinkerer, and I wanted to offer it to one of you. The role would have you discovering new plans to help keep the dungeon protected and upgraded.”

Boji’s eyes lit up at Dolli’s description of the role.

“You can only give it to one, right?” Deetu asked.

“That’s right. I wanted you to be able to decide who wanted it more. It would be a lot of hard work, and you’d have to reduce your fighting rotation to accommodate it. It comes with responsibility, too, like attending the daily meetings.”

Deetu looked to Boji. “I’ve had enough crafting to fill a lifetime. I want to relax.”

Boji grinned. “I love this role. I accept it. I will work very hard.”

Dolli nodded. “You may want to consider diverting some of your stat points toward Mental Prowess, as I think it’s an important factor in the role.”

Boji nodded vigorously. “All the points for Mental Prowess from now on.”

Dolli laughed. “I don’t think you need to be thatextreme, but it might be a good idea to put most of them there, at least for a time.”

Dolli pulled the pin from the ether and held it out to Boji. He grabbed it delicately between his thick fingers and smiled wider. “I’m so happy.”

[Boji of Haven has accepted the role of Tinkerer!]

Tinkerer can deconstruct weapons, tools, and reverse engineer many different workings of science. They can combine ideas to make new inventions or upgrade existing inventions. Tinkerer gets a passive bonus to Mental Prowess 1.2 x Role Level. Current bonus for Boji of Haven: +9 Mental Prowess.

The Tinkerer may take on one apprentice at level [5] and a second at level [10]. The Tinkerer will gain new abilities at levels [3], [6], [12], [24], [42], and [60].

-----

“Good,” Dolli said. “I need you starting on weapons upgrades right away. If things don’t go as I hope with the Horde, we will need a good offense.”

“I will do the best job, I promise!” Boji said and moved toward the door. “Starting right now!”

Deetu waved and followed Boji out the door with a grin, leaving Dolli alone in the cabin again. She took a deep breath and focused on what was next: Alchemy time.

She moved over to the renovated alchemy lab next to the enchanted tailor. Her shop was even better than it had been before the plague from the new technologies supplied by the goblin crews. They’d been able to salvage some of the zeppelin wreckage and reconstitute it into functional burners Dolli could utilize for smaller batch potions.

Which was exactly what Dolli needed now. There were just enough pelimint leaves for two more Spark potions. Dolli had a sneaking feeling she would need all the help she could get if things went wrong in negotiations. She got to work brewing the leaves in water not brought to a boil, but close. Purple steam rose from the small pot that glistened green and silver tea. In a matter of minutes, it would be ready for bottling with a sephrim seed, which would dissolve in the acidic fluid to create the potion.

While she waited, she ground up five of the seven ogre beans—aptly named for their enormous size and reddish pigment. She mixed the pink powder with boiling water until she had a thick soup in her massive cauldron. She pulled the lever next to her workbench to operate the mechanical arm that moved the iron pot from the fire to the basin of cool water.

The arm slowly lowered the pot into the water. The metal of the cauldron whined and steam hissed as the pot and its contents rapidly cooled. Dolli approached when the bubbling water quieted, then dripped oil of moonsylph into the ogre bean brew.

It was one of the rarer potions, despite both ingredients being plentiful. The process was hard to get right. It had to be well timed, and the right temperature. Most potions weren’t terribly harmful when done incorrectly—most.

She finished off the two Spark Regen potions, then stored them in her inventory. The Constitution potion, a clear, pinkish color the thickness of honey, she mixed slowly with more cold water, thinning it out and changing the color to a deeper, sunset color.

With the potion complete, Dolli funneled the mixture into several large kegs set up next to the cauldron. Now anyone could come refill their healing potions whenever they needed, as long as they didn’t break their bottles—which happened far too often. One of Greg’s apprentices had learned to blow glass, but his bottles were still… useless.

Dolli corked the last keg with the automated hammer when the door to her shop opened.

Greg ducked under the door to squeeze inside. “I was able to make you upgraded Spark Channelers,” he said, wasting no time. He pulled the new equipment from thin air, manifesting it from his inventory.

The silver bands were carved with intricate swirls, half-moons, and radiant starbursts—though the second one looked as if the bottom half was unfinished. Dolli accepted the gift and looked at the information sheet.

[Celestial Spark Channelers of Mental Prowess]

Armor Type: Jewelry

Class: Rare—Expert Forged

Spark Alignment: Celestial

Effects:

- +24 Mental Prowess

- +12 Magical Affinity

- Decrease Spark costs for Celestial aligned spells by 25%

- Increase Spark costs for Nature aligned spells by 10%

Celestial Sol flows through your being, banishing the dark.

-----

Greg cleared his throat. “I didn’t getta finish the designs, so I’ll need’em back when you return.”

“I’m grateful. These will surely be helpful if our chat doesn’t go well.”

“About that,” Greg started, shifting his weight from side to side. “Well, good luck.”

Dolli felt he had more to say, but that was his business to tell her or not. “Thank you.”

Greg nodded, then left. Strange man. He wants to kill her for the throne for years, then suddenly he’s worried about her. Or maybe he was worried about her ability to negotiate. Either way, he wished her well on her journey and it was a significant improvement from their past interactions.

Dolli packed up a few health potions for herself, then double-checked all her gear. She was ready to go. But was she ready to face a murderer and broker a deal to save her village? Whatever it took, she’d keep them safe.