Wrath, page 39
“That’s what makes it fancy,” Kamrah said with a shrug.
Rikon looked like he wanted to object, but he pushed it aside. “And they have new weapons and classes. For real. A friend of my brother’s saw the nameplate of one of them. It was a Tin tier with the class “Gumslanger,” and he had these two metal tubes that could shoot sling bullets faster than arrows.”
Zeke had been watching with her that day, and tapped her core with a claw. “What’s a gumslanger?”
Tira said.
Zeke bobbed his head. “Do you think Gumslangers taste good?”
“Gumslanger? Haw!” Kamrah’s laugh was loud and fake. “No such thing. You didn’t see it, did you? Course you didn’t. It’s always a friend of an aunt's brother’s former party member twice removed or something. Probably won’t even come to a real war. We get some of our towns sacked, we sack some of theirs, the kings meet, some towns that weren’t sacked change hands, and nothing changes.”
“Everything changes!”
“Not war. War never changes.” Kamrah took a long drink. “You’ll understand when you’re older, kid.”
“I’m twenty-three.”
“When you’re older,” Kamrah repeated. “Look, if this heats up, the Guild for both sides will get called up. Then you’ll see. Hope it doesn’t come to that. I don’t want to lose another eye. Only got the one left.”
Zeke tapped Tira’s core again. “I wanted to ask about that. Why do some humans have permanent injuries, when healing is so plentiful and powerful?”
“Why not just heal the eye the rest of the way later, then? After the natural healing is done.”
Tira remembered the feeling of her blood boiling in her veins as the headman’s axe descended.
Zeke, who had been caught by a Druid’s Wild Growth spell and had a tree erupt from his chest just yesterday, nodded in somber understanding. “Do you think the war will happen?”
Zeke bobbed his head, but looked thoughtful. “What about a war between dungeons?”
“How can you be sure of that?”
Zeke hissed happily at that answer. It was perfect for the servitor. Tira couldn’t help but wonder how true that was. Her mobs were impressive, but if she was still low tier during that...well, she’d need to be Bronze to even fight, and she doubted even Bronze bosses would be very impressive to Gold or Platinum base mobs. Even her dinosaurs.
Zeke tapped the floor with his sickle claw. “I do not think any of the current ones will make good Servitors.”
“You did too good a job on second floor. Made things too...what is the word. Like a basket, made of little pieces of wood?”
Zeke bobbed his head. “Yes, that is the word. Interwoven. Things are too interwoven. Which is good for the floor. Makes for better hunting. But remove one, and floor no longer is balanced. The pack members down there are used to their roles. Next time you go up in rank, make new Carnotaurus and Irritator. Have them in open air zone. I will evaluate them.”
Tira sent Pierre a smile.
Zeke shifted uncomfortably. “Herbivores are pack when adventurers come though. They are not pack at other times. They are...simple. Uncomplicated. Even if awakened, would not make good servitors. Predators have greater understanding. Maybe...the pachys? They look like they are smarter. Like arcos. And have hands. Hands are important for servitors.”
“What about other - the other - mob you got when you got the Inn? Pteranodon.”
Tira had been so engrossed in the Inn, she’d completely forgotten about that particular unlock. She pulled them up. They were a scaled up version of the dactyls. Immensely scaled up - no bird grew this large, save rocs.
Zeke cocked his head, and Tira could feel amusement coming off him in wages. “I understand what Pierre said now.”
“He said you are distracted easily by new ideas.”
Tira couldn’t stop the embarrassment from leaking out.
“That does make sense. How goes the combination to make new mobs?”
“Time is annoying,” Zeke said, startling a laugh out of Tira.
That had been day three of the wait. Later that day, Tira had advanced to Copper Four, unlocking a new mob - a semi-bipedal herbivore with a wicked thumb claw called an Iguanodon. She put that aside for later. The extra command needed to go to the Carnotaurus and Irritator for Zeke to evaluate. Right?
She quickly placed the new pylons and pulled up her sheet.
Name: Tira, Silken Champion
Theme: Dinosaurs
Contained Entities: Acekorah, [UNKNOWN]
Tier: Copper
Rank: Four
Mana: 207 / 230
Regeneration: 20 / Hour
Regen Bonus for Upkeep: 15 / 41
Command: 315 / 360
Contracts: 0 / [ERROR]
Area of Influence: [View]
Dungeon Map: [View]
Rooms | Mobs | Upgrades
Seeing the numbers, Tira checked the Arena. It was empty at the moment, waiting for the next round of combatants. Tira created two carnotaurus to fight down there, bringing the total command up to 339. At some point, she’d fallen behind on mob creation. A perfect time to fill out the pens.
Tira created one pen for a pair of Iguanodons, bringing her total up to 351, and another for a normal Ankylosaurus at eight command points. That filled out her command usage nicely.
With that taken care of, Tira returned to waiting. Sara still sent daily updates. Unfortunately, most of them said “no new information.” Tira could feel her tension rising each time she got one of those messages from the Rifter. Soon they would be nine days into their fourteen day deadline, and Refinael would be free in just five days. Less than a week.
Tira sent Glek out to catch more Manacores, wishing she could do more. For the first time, her dungeon started to feel like a dungeon for herself, keeping her well contained from the events she needed. The tensions about the war were rising on the surface to match her own frustrations. Apparently, the enemy had taken a bridge. This was very important for reasons Tira was certain she’d understand if she could see a map of the surface. Since she couldn’t, she just had to accept that everyone who agreed it would be a major problem was right.
A week of waiting, and the final day came - the day Pierre would wake up, and the day the timer on that quest ticked down to five. Of course, seven days of relative boredom meant that when things started happening, they couldn’t trickle in.
Maybe it was a law of magic, or the universe, or the gods. What was certain to Tira, however, was that when things started happening, they wouldn’t stop happening for some time.
Chapter 53
The inn was abuzz with excitement the next day, adventurers so packed in that Tira had to spawn another Server NPC to fill their orders in a timely manner. Tira could barely make out any one voice in the clamor, but two words did cycle through more than once.
King and Peace.
The phone buzzed with a message from Sara. “Good news. Conflict - not really war - coming to close. King suing for peace. They’re using your Inn for peace talks, since its right on the border. Should be three days.”
Tira felt that was a cold comfort. So the human nations weren’t going to squabble among themselves anymore. If that had been why dungeons were dying, that was good news. Only Refinael had lost all the dungeons containing it. But that didn’t solve the primary problem of Refinael getting close to escaping containment. Tira wanted to tell Sara as much, but that would involve explaining how she was going to contain Refinael. Tira wasn’t certain, but suspected the Issy Rifter would have problems with forcing someone who was running the dungeon into becoming a core.
Instead, Tira just sent a simple message back. “Good. Let’s hope they were the ones actually killing dungeons then. Until we know, stay vigilant.”
The problem was, at the moment, there wasn’t much more Tira could do about the lack of a new dungeon core. She had five manacores now, running through air tracks in her ceilings and floors and walls. No upgrade available gave her anything that would allow her to get closer to containing Refinael. All she could do was watch adventurers go through her dungeon and wait.
Well, that wasn’t all she could do. There would be important people meeting in her Open Air Zone soon. Tira looked over it with a critical eye. The pens were proving to be quite the attraction, and not just for the Iron and Tin ranks that would go in to fight her mobs - or the occasional higher tier adventurer. Bronze and Silver tiers, especially. They’d go in to challenge the Carnotaurus and Irritator to one on one combat to mixed results.
But the pens were also popular for everyone else. Some would come to watch when the fights were going on, just to enjoy the bloodsport and place bets on the winner of various challenges. Others would come earlier in the day or later in the evening, when the Guild stopped allowing challengers in. They’d watch the dinosaurs moving, sleeping, or just existing with apparent fascination. A couple natural scholars from across the sphere had come to do detailed drawings and take copious notes. They’d even thrown the dinosaurs food through the gaps in the pen, and taken notes on what they’d eaten.
It had never occurred to Tira people would just want to look at her dinosaurs, like the pens were some kind of menagerie, but she secretly preened at the attention. She had even adjusted the plant height and density to make sight easier. Some people who came weren’t even adventurers, but merchants, sell swords, and a bard - not the class, just a musician - who was working on a song about the dinosaurs. A couple enterprising ones had set up makeshift stands to sell their goods to others who came to observe.
Overall, it was bustling, but Tira could do better. Once night fell, she got to work, raising new storefronts from the ground and constructing tiered seats, like an amphitheater, around the pens. Once she found more natural iron veins, she could designate those pens as arenas to reap those rewards. In places where the grass has been worn down by people walking over them time and time again, Tira created stone pathways. She also marked off several large sections of the zone with empty pens that had a “Coming Soon” sign hanging from them. She trimmed down the plants that weren’t part of the pens to create a more cultivated feel to the landscape, evening out the grass and pulling in leaves that didn’t quite match the rest.
She was so focused on her work, she almost didn’t notice the fluttering sound of wings approaching.
Pierre didn’t respond.
Myn walked over to Tira and put her hand on Tira’s core. “Dungeon. You are bound to another. But we must talk.”
Myn, of course, said nothing in response to what she couldn’t hear. “Can you possess a mob or summon a Servitor? Please. Someone killed my old core. You may be in terrible danger.”
Glek all but dashed towards Tira’s core room, but the second floor was large. It would take a minute. Zeke was closer and faster. Fortunately, Tira didn’t have to wait for either of them. Pierre was stirring. “Myn? Oh my.”
The words came from his room, making Myn whirl to face the door and raise her hands. Sparks danced on her fingers. “Who’s that then? Show yourself.”
“Just a moment, please!” Pierre shouted. There was a clatter from his room and a couple crashes. “I’m terribly sorry about the wait. I’m not decent, just a moment!”
Myn’s face went from suspicious to confused. “Who’s there?”
“Just a moment, please!” Pierre shouted. There was another crash and then Pierre burst out of the door, his shirt on backwards under his vest and his hair an absolute mess. “Myn. You’re awake.”
A bevy of emotions crossed Myn’s face, starting with shock that went to relief, then taking a sharp left towards anger before immediately moving onto outrage. “You,” Myn said, snarling the word. “This is where you’ve been hiding, you thief.”
“Myn, I can explain. Please.”
“Oh, you can explain? You wanker. You stole an upgrade token. A token! How could you?”
Pierre ran a hand through his hands and responded to both of them at once. “Yes, I did, but for perfectly good reasons.”
Tira and Myn responded at the same time, but with entirely different messages.
“You betrayed us,” came from Myn.
“You...you…” Myn puffed up, her face setting with resolve. “You are under arrest. I’m taking you back and you will be put on trial for your crimes.”
A low hiss cut her off from saying more. Zeke had entered the room at a crawl, just in time to hear Myn’s words.
Myn whirled to face the newcomer, and saw a couple hundred pounds of velociraptor creeping her way. The temperature of the core room increased as Zeke started to draw on his molten heart. “Um. What I meant to say is that we should have a calm, reasonable discussion about your theft so I can gain a better understanding oh gods Pierre he’s still getting closer please tell him to stop.”
“Zeke, I think she gets the message,” Pierre said softly.
Zeke stopped his advance, although he let his hisses hang in the air for a couple more moments before they stopped.
“Now,” Pierre said. “Tira, would it be all right if I established a temporary link between you and Myn, so we could all communicate directly? And then, Myn, would you listen to the explanation?”
Myn looked up at Zeke’s jaw and nodded quickly. “Yes, of course, you know I’m a good listener. I listen very well please don’t eat me.”
“Not...quite the response I was hoping for, but I suppose it will do. Tira?”
“Absolutely.” Pierre led Myn over to Tira, put his hand on Myn’s forehead and Tira’s core. Moments later, Tira could feel the new wisp in her mind, but the presence was muted.
“Who else is…” before Myn could finish, the sound of scrabbling claws were heard on the path into Tira’s core room. Zeke switch to microraptor form to make room just before Glek burst into the chamber. “Glek?” Myn asked, her eyes wide.
“Myn!” Glek said.
Myn threw herself at the little imp, wrapping her arms around his neck and laughing with delight. “I thought you were dead!”
