[SS] Chapter 11: A king takes notice and a Dungeon forms

(Elsewhere)

Today was going to be horribly boring. A blessing and a curse.

These were the thoughts of Hames Hvilion The Third, King of Elysia.

His kingdom was a small one but it wasn’t without its own strengths. After all, they were much too much of a thorn for any of the bigger kingdoms to want to dedicate to and brought in more than enough trade. He had seen countless Kingdoms fall for that simple reason alone. They didn’t make themselves valuable enough or, rarely, worse. They made themselves too valuable. He’ll never forget watching Olvaria, their neighboring Kingdom, be integrated into The Empire. They did not go peacefully.

So days like these were a blessing and a curse. He never wanted anything interesting to happen because interesting meant death, destruction, and misery for him and his people. It meant politics and backstabbing. It meant upheaval.

But some days he would say that the boredom was just as bad.

Sadly, it seems human nature just could not learn to not tempt fate as no sooner had he thought that, the most important person in his Kingdom approached him. Only his [Etiquette] and [Kings Bearing] allowed him not to gasp and gape like a fish.

His Oracle was walking towards him. Alone, without guards, where she could be seen. Only something truly monumental could have prompted her to practically run at him and risk discovery. He wasted no time and activated a spell on his bracelet, teleporting both of them to a secure location.

He wasted no words.

“Time?”

“Year to Five years.”

He cursed and then nearly slapped himself. He needed information now, regardless of timing.

“Threat level?”

He asked but already knew the answer.

“Ten with conditions.”

His eyes widened to saucers, his skills not able to prevent the lapse even with their constant attempts. He was wrong. He suspected an eight, even though the scale of threat went to ten, eight was where their kingdom would be destroyed. Nine meant strong enough to cause a war with The Empire. Ten meant strong enough to have at least a small chance in a war against The Empire. Like a young dragon. Perhaps even an adult dragon, depending on the strength of The Empire.

It was a simple system. His oracle sometimes received feelings from the future. True future sight was the range of the Gods and the insane. What [Oracles] could tap into was world essence and time. But neither were clear nor set in stone. Time shifted about like smoke and the world essence was just an imprint of the entirety of reality at once. Most Oracles couldn’t tell you anything useful. His Oracle was different. She was over Rank 300. A Diamond ranked being in his Kingdom was such an insane idea that it was laughable. And yet, here she was. He hadn’t known why she chose to be here but he suspected it was related to something in the far future. He hadn’t much cared either way. A Gold does not tell a Diamond what to do and it had been a perfectly amenable partnership.

She was the biggest state secret his Kingdom had and was appropriately (if somewhat unnecessarily) guarded and hidden. Her existence becoming public knowledge could erase his kingdom off the map but it was on days like today where he was reminded why she was worth the risk.

But what she said had sent a cold spike through him.

“With conditions?”

She nodded and he prayed for more. It was completely possible this was all the knowledge he would get. A looming disaster with a rating of danger, and he should thank the Gods and Goddesses he got that much at all. Some other Oracles could only tell you “bad” and that could mean poisoned food to a devastating earthquake in a year.

“Dangerous but I sense no hostility or malice. I do sense desire.”

He frowned. That was vague, yes, but had too many answers. Any great monster could want to murder without having any hostility or malice in it. Like a man swatting a fly out of the sky. The feeling of desire could be completely unrelated. It could be a feeling it only feels in the future, possibly after it kills them all. Or it could mean that The Empire was finally coming time to take his Kingdom. And those were all the most likely answers, but it didn’t need to be monster or man. More things than that existed in this world. But it was at least most likely a thinking being and not a flood or a meteor.

The oracle looked pensive. There was more.

“Why are you hesitating?”

She normally would have given all information at once, not piecemeal. He would never rush her but he had to know why.

“Everything is vague but I sense a future connection. With you and your kingdom. And a location.”

His jaw didn’t drop but his heart rate sped up. He had been thinking about this as if his kingdom was in the way, not the purpose. Someone wanting the oracle, The Empire doing its normal rounds, a Dragon passing by and deciding it wanted to have fun. Not for his kingdom and especially not him specifically to be the main focal point of something with a threat ranking of Ten. And a location? That was nearly unheard of. There had been minor threats and timely interventions before but never something so specific as a location.

“It’s in the wolf forest.”

Hames Hvillion The Third, King of Elysia, grit his teeth so hard in fear they shattered.

(Elsewhere)

Stupid dumb stupid dungeon nonsense. I don’t even like dungeons. Stupid.

I was never a fan of the dungeon stories. You make a whole place and then people constantly end up dying in it and the whole book focuses on shit I couldn’t really imagine all that well. And it’s always outside factors that make the stories interesting!

No, that last fact hit too close to home on my real problem. Dungeons were issues and opportunities. It’d be like a man walking around made out of Gold. Everyone would want a piece of him. Even monsters are probably going to want to go into dungeons here in this world. For Adventurers it was free training and loot they could probably sell. For monsters, well, I doubted my mana summoned minions would count for free stats but they might count as food and things needed to eat. Free loot and levels and somewhat free food. Great. Might as well just be yelling at the forest to come take a bite out of me again.

And yet, I needed defenses. I might be able to do something with my spirit hands but constructing a fucking wall or gate was just going to be beyond me without tools.

I tried to look on the bright side. Defenses and minions and traps meant that if anything tried to attack me and killed me, I could eat it. Eating stuff meant I got stronger. Where these wolves probably ate rabbits which didn’t count, I’d be eating wolves, which currently counted. A few dozen wolves and my stats would take a jump up.

I crawled out of my crack in the ground and looked around. The cave was shallow enough for me to see all the way to the back and it was connected to a natural incline of a hill. Meaning this location sucked but whatever.

I took out the Dungeon Core and it floated and glowed. It looked like a diamond from a playing card, but three dimensional and blue. I instinctively ‘threw’ it at the back of the cave and it started to float. And then I felt a pulse and connection go through me.

And that was it.

At first I felt like I had been robbed but the sensations were trickling in. Options. It wasn’t anything nearly as precise as screens. I popped open my Dungeon screen.

[General/Crown/Evolution/Dungeon

Dungeon Core Integrity: 100%

Intruders: 0

Mana: 1000

Current Dungeon:

Dungeon.png]

Below current dungeon was a map of, well, my dungeon. It showed me 15 miles in a circle but it was all greyed out. I hadn’t been there, seen there, or knew anything about those locations. It was a top down map but I could change that to seeing it in real time or from a normal perspective. I had options but that was where things got incredibly vague. For example, I could build a nice simple wooden wall right? Well I could build it however I imagined it. I could build trees made out of cut wood or stone or even metal. But building literally anything out of steel jumped the mana costs an order of magnitude or more. That was fine, I just wanted a wall or two.

First, I made a flat but thick square of wood around my cave. The overhang from above was a concern but I didn’t know how to fix that. I didn’t want any wolf to just drop down on top of me but a wall wasn’t going to fix that. Instead, I just made the wall taller and had it go further around the cave. I’d just include the top of the cave as part of the area I’d try to keep wolves out. Hopefully, wolves couldn’t climb trees… damn it.

Right, whatever, we’ll cut down all the tree’s within my wall later. Hell, we’ll make a wall of stone later. Right now, I need defenses besides a wall that’s only about 8 feet tall. I made a little gate for starters in front of me so I could easily leave and started trying to make spike pits.

Until I saw the cost. Digging out the ground was no joke.

Instead I settled for obvious spikes pointed outward in front of my wall. I sighed. The wall was probably useless because I knew regular wolves could go up 8 feet. I knew they were smart enough to not just run face first into wooden spikes. But it did make me feel a little better. I put a giant wooden gate that went across the whole cave entrance, with a door with a latch, and started reinforcing the cave walls. A moment later I had to stop.

Mana: 0

Great. I looked at my own mana and did some calculations.

MP 140/140

I regenerated around 1.2 mana every 5 minutes. So it would take me around 10 hours to refill all my mana. That was around 70 hours to get 1000 mana again. And that clearly wasn’t enough to do more than make a few wood structures. Which while great, would take less than 70 hours if you had 3 people working on it. Or maybe I was dismissing how great a feat making a 8 foot wooden wall was. Either way, it would take too long. I needed more mana than that and I didn’t want to try and get monsters to die nearby so my Dungeon Core could eat them instead of me. Luckily I had something for this.

I used a spirit hand to pull out a certain item from my bag.

[Mana Potion] - A small glass bottle that can fully recover your MP. Has one charge but can be recharged. To recharge you must fill the vial with your mana by pressing the opening to your palm and pouring your mana inside the bottle. This will take 60% of your total mana to fill up. If you don’t have enough MP, it will begin to drain your HP instead.

I loved this thing because it broke some laws of physics for sure. With this, I could spend 40% of my MP on something, then pour the rest into this and then drink it and repeat forever. With this, I’ll pour in around 56 mana into the Dungeon Core, the rest into the magic bottle, and repeat forever! With this, I’ll get infinite mana! BWHAHAHA! Things are finally looking up for me!

(Some time later)

Ughhhhhhh. Ohhhh my aching everything.

Mana: 840

Why! WHY?! Why does everything hurt?! New lesson learned. A creature can not just chug back mana potions like no tomorrow and have infinite MP. I feel like my veins are trying to kill me and I don’t even have veins. This isn’t what I signed up for! Where’s my infinite mana, huh?!

It made sense I guess but I wish I had learned it an easier way. I’m sure for most people there’s probably potion sickness or something but I assumed that wasn’t going to happen with me because it was a divinely made item. No, instead I got to learn that whatever metaphysical thing mana pulls from can be strained like a muscle. I couldn’t use mana right now if I wanted to and if I tried, I’d probably break something in me and I really wouldn’t know how to fix it. I don’t know if I can regenerate broken mana, channels? Yeah those.

Still, the mana was enough for now. I sent it all into reinforcing the cave. I already hated how much I was focusing on it. But I remembered dying too strongly to just give it up and go out and try fighting random stuff. Besides, the second I had a nice safe bunker below me, I could finally start practicing actual magic in a safe location.

Most of the day had gone by, by now. It took a little longer than expected for infinite mana(™) and I had more passed out than anything the night before. As I was thinking through whether I wanted to try risking working on my [Spirit Hands] or try doing that moving eye thing with [True Sight], I heard a terrible noise.

A wolf’s howl. Right outside my walls. It was soon followed by another. I felt a pang in my gut from danger sense.