“Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you”

  --The Stranger, in The Big Lebowski

  By the time the third day rolled around (and I was hoping that time limit meant Aven would be back soon), I had managed to complete one additional quest. Between the shade owl hunting at night and the badgers out at all hours, they’d brought back enough prey to trigger my assimilation quest.

  Blueprint Acquired: Mossy Vole

  Blueprint Acquired: Horned Rabbit

  [Quest Completed: Assimilate New Lifeform; Reward: Choose one of the following – Jewel Viper, Cloud Wildcat, Giant Rat]

  [Quest Reset: Assimilate 5 New Lifeforms; Reward: 2 Tier One Creature Blueprints or 1 Tier 2 blueprint and Learn Skill – Absorb T1 Skill]

  Well, I’m not super interested in the rat, though I can see the potential for the underground part of the dungeon, and they’re smarter than people give them credit for. The cat has obvious potential, as well, more for the outside part of the dungeon, but I think I’m going to go with the viper. Viper generally is applied to venomous snakes, and access to poison might be helpful, both for surprising invaders and for diversifying my trap selection.

  Blueprint Acquired: Jewel Viper

  Spawning one in at the entrance to see what I’d gotten, the viper was a modest thing – not more than a half meter in length, in a yellow-green reminiscent of dried grass. The jewel of its name was a small green crystal nestled between its eyes in its diamond-shaped head. It was, in fact, quite venomous – generating a paralytic neurotoxin that would suffocate most small to mid-sized animals and radically impair the movements of larger ones. I somehow knew these vipers came in several variant affinities – this one had a minor illusion affinity enabling it to conceal itself when motionless.

  Given its base camouflage, I set it to guard the entrance in the tall grass just behind the blackberry bushes and in front of the rocky outcrop.

  As I waited to regenerate my mana and pondered my next moves, a warning cry went up from the Hawk-Eagle and was shortly followed by alarm calls indicating a terrestrial predator from the ground squirrels to the east of my entrance. A quick peek through the eagle’s eyes revealed a large greenish bear with two cubs ambling towards the blackberry bramble. Suddenly, pushing them to fruit early seemed like a bad idea.

  The sow, or so I assumed, hesitated briefly as she hit the edge of my 10-meter surface zone, but the lure of significant food in early spring prompted her to cautiously move in. Frankly, there wasn’t much I could do about it, as I doubted a couple of badgers and a Hawk-Eagle would stand much chance against her. I was hopeful that they’d simply eat the berries and move on. The jewel viper might be able to take down one of the cubs, but wouldn’t have enough venom for both, much less their mother. For that matter, I didn’t particularly want to hurt her or her cubs, so I figured my best move was to simply ignore her and hope for the best.

  As it turned out, that lack of response might not have been the right idea, as once her immediate hunger had been assuaged, she moved towards my entrance and gave it a series of cautious sniffs. I’m sure she smelled the badgers, whom I’d had move deeper – one to the core room and the other to the tunnel leading to my eastern room. Clearly, that wasn’t enough to dissuade her, and she started to dig around the entrance, as it was going to be a tight fit for her across the shoulders. I assume I looked like a good den for her to use, or at least a place to park her cubs at night. It was odd – I could feel the clawing at my entrance, though it didn’t hurt, and I wondered if I could make her a deal. I pushed the notion of assimilating her forward, with the feeling of welcoming and support.

  I could almost feel her consider it, briefly, but a sense of rejection quickly followed. Her efforts to enter redoubled, though, and that was immediately concerning. I didn’t know whether she could hurt me or not – my conversations with Aven, suggested not – but I was disinclined to find out. This was going to be tricky, but I decided to try to take her down.

  I began by offering some basic directions to the jewel viper, who was carefully concealed mere meters away at the base of the outcrop. I suspected the bear’s fur would offer some defensive armor, so I had the viper look for some bare skin. Coming up on the bear from behind meant some careful movement should go unnoticed. Going for the face was too risky, so the pads on its feet were about the only unfurred region accessible.

  The viper made its strike successfully, but its attempt to get back under cover was met with abject failure – the bear wheeled and crushed it before it made it halfway back to the rocks.

  Angry now, and in pain, the bear forced her way into the entrance. As her head pushed its way into the narrow tunnel, the first badger lunged, biting the bear’s nose and clawing at its eyes. Not much real damage was done, but the bear reared back, dislodging the badger. It was willing to keep fighting, but I sent the badger backing away into the eastern room.

  Truly enraged now, blood trickling into its right eye and dizzy and stumbling from the venom, the bear crawled rapidly towards the eastern room, missing the entry to the core room in its pursuit of the badger.

  Dungeon perception is an oddly complete thing, within its range. I could hear its angry snarls, sense the musk and its blood, feel its claws scraping on the passage walls, even assess its heart beating and the heat of its anger.

  Likewise, I could feel the adrenaline-soaked tremors of my badger as it backed rapidly through the stalagmite field of the eastern room until it ran up against the back wall. It snarled its own resigned defiance as the bear emerged into the larger room, finally able to come fully onto all fours, if not to rear upright. The delicate looking stone obstructions were surprisingly sturdy, but hardly able to prevent it from making headway with broad, smashing blows. The deadfall trap worked as intended, fortunately, and the bear had only a moment to react as the massive stone plummeted onto its skull.

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  The bear was sturdy, but not THAT sturdy, and it was only moments before I could feel its energy flow into me.

  ------------------------------------------------

  I spent a minute assimilating the bear. It was odd to see the body slowly sink into the floor; I could feel it being disassembled and its genetic information absorbed, leaving literally nothing behind but a blueprint.

  Blueprint Acquired: Grassland Grizzly

  As it turned out, the bear was still Tier 1, albeit at the upper end of what I could tell was a range of mana cost. Lacking any sort of mana affinity, the bear would cost substantially more mana than any of my other Tier 1 creatures, but a bit less than any of the Tier 2 ones.

  That did leave me with a dilemma, though. What should be done with the two cubs? They might be big enough to survive on their own, but I had my doubts. More to the point, I felt a certain obligation to them, having dispatched their parent.

  I decided that the best I could do was to try to offer them assimilation, like I’d tried with their mother. Pushing a sense of regret, I found myself able to convey the fate of their mother and an offer of food and shelter. They seemed cowed by the awareness of danger I represented, but didn’t seem to think they had many options, and I soon had a pair of residents. As such, I was able to make a formal connection with them, bordering on a contract for food and shelter in exchange for assistance when called upon. Unlike the creatures I’d spawned directly, they required no mana upkeep, but would need to eat and sleep like any normal creature.

  That said, I’d need to provide them with a den soon, as well as providing them with a source of protein to go with the berries.

  *Add it to the list of chores, I guess*

  I didn’t need to eat or sleep, myself, but the mana limitations were starting to be a real issue. I’d need to ask Aven about that, whenever it returned. I wasn’t sure if it was an issue of leveling up, adding territory, or simply absorbing specific resources. Fortuitously, it did seem that adding the bear cubs to my roster boosted my mana intake a bit, if not my total capacity. I assumed that having living, non-dungeon created beings in my zone was one way to acquire mana.

  **************

  I spent most of the next two days waiting for Aven to return and cleaning up after the bear’s "visit", and that included providing some basic sleeping space for the cubs along the eastern wall for the time being.

  As the saying goes, “it doesn’t rain, but it pours", and in the late evening, two days after the demise of mama bear, I had my next set of visitors/invaders.

  This time, it was simply a disturbance in the mana flows that caught my attention. The shade owl was on watch, but only once I’d signaled it was it able to spot some movement. That was odd, since its night vision was quite well developed, and its shadow affinity only boosted its ability to work in darkness.

  I still don’t know if it would have seen the invaders if they hadn’t been in a hurry, and more than a bit careless. The mana signatures I was observing showed three larger creatures in hot pursuit of a smaller one – none of which were readily visible to the naked eye. I quickly applied Identify on both with enough success to provide some clarity on the situation. The smaller creature was a T2 Night Cat, and it was being pursued by a pack of three T2 Shadow Ripper Hounds. The Night Cat had managed some separation from the pack through greater cornering ability, using the scattered crags and low trees to make some distance from its pursuers.

  In an act of apparent desperation, the cat lunged through the blackberry bramble and dove into my tunnel entrance, pausing briefly about a meter in, to see if the hounds would drop the chase or pursue further. In the meantime, I had the shade owl circle back to my westernmost room through the gap in the cliff face, where it took up its assigned perch above the eastern entry to the room.

  While my creatures were unable to see the hounds as anything but vaguely formed shadow, they registered in my mana senses as only generally canine in shape and fairly substantial – maybe a meter in height at the shoulder and quadrupedal. Like dogs, they cast about, apparently scenting their prey. Deciding the cat was trapped in the bramble, two set up on either side, while the third pushed into the bramble itself. It quickly found the tunnel entrance and loosed an eerie snarl, that caused its packmates to push forward as well. Entering wasn’t a problem for them, but they could proceed only in a single file fashion.

  Meanwhile, the night cat, somewhat larger than a normal housecat, had pushed down the tunnel as soon as the first hound entered the bramble and was creeping through the first room to the west of the entrance. Moving slowly, though with a twitching nervousness, it slid through the second room failing to trigger either of my new traps. Finding the opening to the cliff face and an apparent dead end, the cat started to circle back, only to be cut off by the hounds emerging from the tunnel into that first western room. Giving a defiant yowl, the night cat backed into the short tunnel connecting the two rooms as the three hounds surged forward.

  I felt a bit bad for the cat, as the clear underdog, and blazed a mana light above its head, dazzling the hounds and temporarily driving away the shadows clinging to them. They yelped in surprise, stumbling, and one fell into the ankle breaker trap. I wasn’t sure if it had, in fact, broken anything, but the three meter drop onto uneven stones clearly had some negative effect, and its howls took on a distinctly pained sound. The other two paused briefly to look down at their packmate but apparently decided it could wait until after they’d dealt with the night cat and continued the pursuit.

  The cat, having seen them coming, had rapidly retreated to the cliff edge, and appeared to be hastily assessing its chances of climbing up. I could see through the shade owl’s eyes the instant it decided there was no time, and braced itself for a final stand, arching its back and hissing viciously, as the inky fur rose on its back and its tail lashed.

  The remaining two shadow rippers paused just inside the entry, focused intently on the night cat. They launched themselves in a coordinated fashion, looking to take the cat from both sides. That plan met with immediate failure as the leftmost hound hit my comical slime trap and vanished from sight with the sound of desperately scrabbling claws followed by a protracted falling cry.

  The final hound, barely noticing his missing compatriot, barreled towards his prey, only to be taken by surprise, as the shade owl swooped in on silent wings, clubbing the hound in the back of the head with its clenched talons at a crucial moment, sending it into a roll that launched it off the side of the sky island yowling after its packmate.

  The cat, thoroughly unnerved, tore past the owl, and was out the main entrance and beyond my range in no more than 10 seconds flat.

  *No gratitude at all. Tsk. Didn't even have time to make it an offer.*

  I chuckled to myself in amusement, pleased at the verification that my traps were functioning as anticipated as I reset them. Then snorted as I realized I’d shorted myself of a few corpses by pitching them off the island and out of range.

  *Suppose I should check on that last shadow ripper hound*

  As it turned out, it hadn’t been badly injured and had managed to claw its way out of the pit. Having apparently understood the meaning of the falling cries of its packmates, it, like the cat, made its way out of the dungeon as quickly as it could in a rapid but limping gait with its long tail between its legs and its glowing red eyes rolling in their sockets.

  *Sigh. Call it a wash, I guess. I’m down a bit of energy, but at least I got some valuable testing in...*