I keep an eye out for vis signatures and we don’t go far from the dungeon entrance. We can handle a Basic or three on our own, but if any Elites or higher come into range, I want us back inside the dungeon and behind a few traps. It still might not be enough, but it beats being caught out in the open.
I telepathically direct Rowan to stay quiet. While I can’t read his mind, I can detect his emotional state, which is good enough for most delving situations. We can discuss anything in-depth that needs to be discussed when it’s safe.
We start off with gathering some rocks that are big enough to make tools out of. There isn’t as much in the way of glowing fungus on this level, but there’s some non-glowing flora that we take samples of to see what we can do with it. I’m not picky; everything’s got at least a little bit of essence in it, and I can try to make something out of anything.
Some large auras come into range, some of which are Elite rank. People, and not goblins or humans. Those I would recognize from their auras. Orcs, perhaps. I don’t care to let them get close enough to see them with my normal eyes. I send a message to Rowan to grab his baskets, and we withdraw to the dungeon.
From the room beside the trap-filled entryway, there’s a spot to look out and see the area in front of the door. It’s empty still and there’s no sign of them noticing us, so I relax a bit and go to test out the materials we collected.
A plain stone is worth 1 essence. Once it’s made into a Poor-quality stone knife, that goes up to 5 essence.
“It’s still not worth much,” Rowan observes. “Is all this going to be enough?”
“It’ll be enough,” I say. “It just takes work. And if it’s not enough, then I will work more and make more junk to pile into the spawner.”
Over the course of the next several days (at least we have Hebron’s changing colored light to mark the time), we continue to make short forays out into the caverns to gather materials. I make a few of every stone tool I know how to make as well as a some crude figurines depicting dwarves and monsters. I even try to use the stringy roots we collected to make twine, though they’re a poor material for it and my attempts are unskilled.
The most common fauna in the area are Basic-rank centipede monsters around 30 cm long. Their pale carapaces make for decent crafting materials, and the monster cores I dig out of them are worth a good 250 essence each. I’ve noticed that monster corpses tend to only start dissolving when they’re left untouched for too long. Cooking or crafting something out of their body binds it with your own essence, stabilizing the protean goo that monsters are made from. These little cores made of essence remain behind.
Rowan holds up a pea-sized monster core between his fingers, now clean of the ichor I’d dug them out of. “I suppose using them to spawn a dwarf would be more useful than having the dungeon make our own centipedes.”
A bit further from the dungeon entrance, we find twisted trees with dark leaves. There’s no sections straight enough to make a proper staff, but it’s still wood, so I gather some while trying to be as quiet as possible about it.
Stealthy lumberjacking might be a bit of an ask, but the wood isn’t too hard for a serrated blade to cut through. With a 5 kg limit on my bag of holding, I couldn’t bring a large saw, but I certainly brought something capable of cutting wood if need be.
Once we return to the Empty Halls, I use that cave wood to carve a wooden chess set and a toy boat. I make a stone hammer and axe by tying suitable heads to a handles with roots. While the regular stone knives and chisels are only worth 5 essence, these more complex tools are worth 15.
I even include my notebook in my calculations, full of notes, charts, and diagrams. It will all stay in my [Mental Library] even after the notebook is absorbed unless I remove those pages, but it’s also the highest essence thing I have since I’ve doodled so much in it. Rowan gave it to me for my naming day and I’ve gotten a lot of use out of it, but that’s why it has so much essence in it. There’s still some room left, so I cover every blank page I have with drawings of bridges, ambulances, ships, tools, and so forth.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“Even the notebook?” Rowan wonders.
“This notebook is worth more essence than that entire pile of stone tools combined,” I say. “It’s just easy to pack it in densely when you’re dealing with pages. I’ve filled up every page and it’s worth over 3000 essence by itself.”
“Huh,” Rowan says. “Well, we’re making progress. Your family is taking its sweet time in rescuing us, though, so we might as well keep at it.”
So we keep at it. During one of our excursions, we run across a boulder that seems dwarf-sized but small enough that Rowan’s Enhanced Muscles might be able to roll it back to the dungeon. His aura seems a little put out by the prospect, but he makes no complaint aloud.
As we’re slowly dragging it toward the dungeon entrance, a cluster of auras comes into range. I silently tell Rowan to freeze and hide my light as I analyze the vis signatures. The strongest of them is Elite, and they’re coming this way. Voices in a guttural language I don’t understand echo through the tunnels.
[Leave it,] I send to Rowan. [Withdraw to the dungeon.]
Rowan complies, and we scurry back toward the door, though not as quietly as I might have hoped. From the auras of the probably-orcs, they seem to have noticed something interesting even if they haven’t pinned it on us yet.
Once inside, I lock the door and activate the traps in the entryway, then go to look out the peephole to see if any of them actually approach. Five hulking figures come into view. Six feet of solid green muscle might not be towering to an adult man, but I’m 8. Only one of the orcs is an Elite in leather armor, and the other four are Basics wearing loincloths, and I’m glad they bothered with that much. From a read of their auras, they’re curious and eager to fight.
I send the information to Rowan. [With the traps, we might actually be able to take them, but a patrol going missing in the area might attract further attention.]
Rowan nods grimly and readies his green spider-venom sword.
The orcs outside start pounding against the door. It holds firm for a while, but after several strikes it slams open and orcs come streaming in through the door. Wooden spikes shoot out into the entry corridor, resulting in serious injuries on the unarmored Basic orcs, but they press on only to trip over even more traps. In the end, only the Elite makes it through the gauntlet relatively unscathed, and that likely has as much to do with using his companions as meatshields as his armored higher-rank body.
The Elite orc angrily smashes several of the wooden spikes and snarls at his dying comrades. While I can’t actually read his thoughts, I get the impression of ‘you incompetent fools’ from him. He emerges from the trapped corridor and growls, hefting his crude bronze axe and looking for a target to take his annoyance out on. His eyes fall upon me and Rowan, staff and sword in our hands.
“You know, that was really rude,” I say. “You orcs couldn’t just politely knock and say hi? Come in to share a cup of grape juice? We didn’t have to be enemies.”
I don’t know if the orc can understand me, but his only response is to snarl at us and swing his axe. Rowan is quicker, and gets in a couple strikes with his blade. The poison might not have as much effect on an Elite, but it might still give us an edge. I try to trip him up with my staff, without much success. A grazing strike with the axe leaves me bleeding, but I ignore the pain.
We back up, harrying him as we go until we reach the workshop where I’d left all the stuff I’ve been crafting. I drop my staff and roll it on the floor toward the orc’s feet, then start throwing everything I have at him. Distracted by being pelted with crude tools, the orc stumbles and Rowan presses the advantage to take him down.
“Oh, thank Heavens,” Rowan breathes, poking the orc a few more times with his sword. “I thought we were dead for sure. And I got so many levels.”
We go back to make sure the Basics in the entry traps are dead, and I realize I left an alarming amount of blood on the floor between the entrance and the workshop. Feeling a little woozy, I focus my efforts on [Rapid Healing] after pulling the lever to disable the traps.
While five orc bodies won’t fit on the spawning platform, we do drag them into the core room for Hebron to absorb. By which I mean Rowan drags them, as he insists that I go to the life-aspected fountain to wash out my cuts and meditate until my health is back up. The water is cool and soothing, and the fountain radiates a sense of peace and tranquility that calms my uneasy mind.
Rowan joins me after a while and sits down by the fountain with me. “Hebron says the corpses will be more than enough to repair the damage to the door and traps. I gathered their weapons and the Elite’s armor into the workshop. I did not touch their loincloths. How’s your health?”
“Improving,” I say. “We need better defenses. We can’t just sit here and hope my family finds us soon, and hope nothing attacks us.”
“Agreed. Maybe the core can make some upgrades?”
I flick my fingers in the water as I think. “The wooden spikes weren’t very effective against an armored target. The centipedes might have helped if there were enough of them. A huge boulder rolling down the hallway would have been crude but fun.”
[Do you wish me to implement these suggestions?] Hebron’s voice asks in our heads
“Yeah. Let’s go all Indiana Jones with this. Next time they might send a Heroic, and I want to be ready. Add a rolling boulder trap and a giant centipede pit!”
The aether around me subtly shifts. [Done.]
“And also make sure we don’t get squished by it or fall into it,” I add quickly.