Chapter 23: Day 77

Bargain Concluded.

Processing Bargain…

Set Incompatible - Override.

Applying species change to Shayma Ell.

Processing…

Shayma Ell species changed to “Blue Core Fox Spirit.”

Processing…

Shayma Ell Companion level advanced to 2.

Shayma Ell Companion level advanced to 3.

Shayma Ell Companion level advanced to 4.

Shayma Ell Companion level advanced to 5.

Skill and Ability Transcription beginning.

Transcribing Companion abilities:

Transcribing [Seeker] (Greater)...skill merge with [Mana Sight], [Treasure Sense], rank 10 [Sensory Organ]. New ability: [Genius Loci].

Transcribing [Endurance]...skill becomes [Efficiency]

Transcribing [Longstrider]...skill becomes [Extension]

Transcribing [Agility]...skill merge with [Customization]. Customization cost decreased.

Transcribing [Suppress Presence]...skill becomes [Warding]

Transcribing [Luck]...error! Override...Skill upgrades [Wisdom]. [Wisdom] evolves to [Tempered Wisdom].

 

Transcribing Dungeon Skills and Abilities:

Transcribing Architecture...1 ability found. [False Sky] Transcribed...error! Override...skill becomes [Illusion].

Transcribing Traps...7 abilities found. Error! Override. Skill merge. New skill: [Universal Weapon Proficiency]

Transcribing Bait...no abilities found

Transcribing Features…no abilities found.

Transcribing Breeding...1 ability found. [Blue Core Breeding Station] transcribed...species abilities upgraded.

Transcribing Fluid Handling...2 abilities found. Transcribing [Heat Resistance], [Corrosion Resistance]...skills become [Heat Resistance], [Corrosion Resistance]. Ranks set to 1.

Transcribing Ecology...no abilities found

Transcribing Fields...4 abilities found

Transcribing [Darkness]...error! Override...skill upgrades [Illusion]. Rank Set to 3.

Transcribing [Regeneration]...skill becomes [Regeneration]. Rank set to 1.

Transcribing [Mist]...error! Override...skill upgrades [Illusion]. Rank Set to 5.

Transcribing [Spatial Control]...skill becomes [Blink]. Rank set to 1.

Transcribing [Customization]...error! Override...skill becomes [Limited Shapeshifting].

Transcribing [Relocate]...error! Override...skill becomes [Prestidigitation]

Transcribing [Temperature Control]...skill upgrades [Heat Resistance]. Skill evolves to [Temperature Resistance]. Rank set to 1.

Transcribing Tempered Wisdom...skill becomes [Wisdom]. Rank set to 1

Transcribing [Genius Loci]...error! Override...skill becomes [Awareness]. Rank set to 1. Species senses upgraded.

Transcribing [Reclaim]...skill becomes [Phantom Pocket]. Rank set to 1.

Consolidating skills…

[Endurance] and [Agility] combined into [Physical Superiority]. Rank set to 3. Previous benefits retained.

[Blink] and [Longstrider] combined into [Ghost Step]. Rank set to 1.

[Illusion] upgrades [Suppress Presence] into skill [Illusory Presence]. Rank set to 2.

[Limited Shapeshifting] upgrades [Universal Weapon Proficiency] into skill [Combat Shapeshifting]. Rank set to 1.

Warning! Conflicting Skills render Class unstable! New Class required!

Processing…

Shayma Ell Class changed to - error!

Shayma Ell Class changed to - error!

Class change error - override.

Processing…

New Class framework created.

Shayma Ell Class changed to “Trickster.”

Bargain processing complete.

Breeding option selected:

Dungeon Seed - Creates seed to expand the Dungeon to unconnected area. 3 month gestation.

20,000 Experience gained for advancing a Companion to rank 2.

30,000 Experience gained for advancing a Companion to rank 3.

40,000 Experience gained for advancing a Companion to rank 4.

50,000 Experience gained for advancing a Companion to rank 5.

I stared at the flood of notification with some degree of bemusement. I didn’t realize that the bargain would be such a huge thing, and it came with some degree of overload. Not a true fugue as such, but I certainly didn’t remember selecting that breeding option, for instance. Without the overlay’s log, I would have had no idea what happened.

It seemed I’d lost only an hour or two. Iniri had reclaimed Shayma, who was asleep on the bed in Iniri’s master bedroom, a faint blue aura around her. Which made me relieved, to see she was more or less okay, but also worried, because considering how profound the changes she’d gone through were I had no idea when she’d get up. Or if she was in some sort of traumatic coma, rather than just asleep.

But it also made me realize I’d more or less ignored the overlay except for the essentials for a while. Once I figured out how to shape things just by will alone, shortcutting the process of delving through menus, I’d only glanced at it. Frankly, I didn’t even know what my own stats were anymore, aside from the easiest-to-remember things. Probably because the stat block was so huge now, even with the more boring listings hidden.

Dungeon Level 3

Blue Core HP 4/4

Biomass: 1200/1500

Stone: 300/300

Hardened Stone: 300/300 (2 Stone)

Stonesteel: 8/300 (5 Hardened Stone 50 Mana)

Water: 900/900

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Ice: 900/900

Magma: 900/900

Iron: 40/150

Copper: 35/150

Gold: 1/150

Magicite: 14/150

Mana: 8000/8000 (4000 from Tempered Wisdom, 3000 from dungeon level, 1000 Base)

Allocatable Experience: 142,132

Features: 232 (Expand List)

Categories:

• Architecture: 8: Architecture costs reduced. (Expand List)
• Traps: 8: Trap costs reduced. Traps reset automatically. Traps may be deployed automatically. (Expand List)
• Bait: 5: All Bait cost reduced. Bait may be separated from the dungeon. (Expand List)
• Features: 10 (Level Max): Feature costs reduced. Feature formation time reduced.
  • Boring Tendril (Root Upgrade) (23 Biomass): Digs into and consumes material external to the dungeon
  • Digester (3 biomass): Consumes prey and objects on the dungeon floor
  • Storage Crystal: Provides external storage of non-inventory resources
    • Small: 100 Stone 10 Iron 1 Gold 100 Mana | 25 Storage
    • Lesser: 200 Stone 20 Iron 1 Gold 250 Mana | 50 Storage
    • Normal: 400 Stone 40 Iron 1 Gold 500 Mana | 100 Storage
• Breeding: 7: Breeding costs reduced. Breeding station strength upgraded. Breeding station resiliency upgraded.
  • Breeding Station (50 biomass): Used for breeding monsters
  • Blue Core Breeding Station 8 (250 biomass): Used for Blue Core breeding
• Fluid Handling: 7: Maximum pressure increased || Upgrades: Heat Resist 6, Corrosion Resist 2.
  • Pipe (1 Iron or Copper): Serves to transport liquids through the Dungeon
  • Valve (1 Iron or Copper, 50 Biomass): Controls liquid flow. Can be attached to traps or operated manually.
  • Pump: (5 Iron or Copper) Serves to pressurize liquids.
  • Tank (scalable, 15 Stone per 100 liquid): Serves to hold liquids.
  • Filter (2 Iron or Copper): Serves to filter liquids.
• Ecology: Level 10 Max: Ecology costs reduced. Growth time reduced. Yields increased.
  • Dirt (1 stone 1 biomass)
  • Tayan grass (1 biomass) | Dirt
  • Tayantan tree (5 biomass) | Dirt
  • Grey Chrysthenium (10 Biomass 10 stone) | Stone
  • White Chrysthenium (10 Biomass 10 stone 10 ice) | Ice
  • Red Chrysthenium | (10 Biomass 10 stone 10 Magma) Magma
• Fields: 8: Field costs reduced. Field deployment time reduced. Field strength cap increased. Costs vary with room size.
  • Darkness 2
  • Depletion
  • Regeneration 5
  • Mist 2
  • Spatial 5.
    • Spatial Control 2: Up to 10x growing or shrinking along any number of axes. Does not require upkeep once the field is established.
    • Link 2: Provides transport between two doors (mana cost per use)
    • Teleporter 2: Provides a permanent transport system between two points
    • Warding 2: Disrupts scrying and communication magic

Skills

• [Customization]: Combines [Alteration] and [Camouflage]: Allows complete customization of all dungeon features to any scope. Allows saving of customized architecture, features, or sets thereof.
• [Relocate]: Move a dungeon feature. Time based on complexity and size of feature.
• [Temperature Control 7]: Increase and decrease temperature of areas inside dungeon.
• [Reclaim 5]: Remove a dungeon feature and absorb a portion of its cost.
• [Warding]: Adds [Warding] Field as well as active ability. Active ability allows the dungeon to deflect or suppress any scrying or communication magic within range of [Genius Loci].

Abilities

• [Tempered Wisdom 2]: Combines Insight, Intuition, Foresight, and Luck. Provides low-level instinctive knowledge of the world. Allows appraisal of individuals and items. Unlocks magic use. Allows for projecting probable outcomes.
• [Blue Core]: The Dungeon takes direct possession of bred entities. Breeding options restricted. Unlocks dungeon options.
• [Genius Loci]: The Dungeon no longer needs sensory organs to discern its interior or the nearby area. Massively improves the ability of the Dungeon to appraise individuals and items inside it. Effect degrades with distance from dungeon architecture.
• [Fluid Handling]: Unlocks Fluid Handling category.
• [Dungeon Ecology]: Unlocks Ecology category.
• [Spatial Manipulation]: Unlocks Spatial Fields
• [Efficiency] 2: Global reduction in mana and material costs. 1% per rank.
• [Extension]: Genius Loci effect extends through Companions of rank 3 or higher.
• Companion
  • Induct Companion
  • Shayma Ell: 5
    • Manage Skills

Titles:

[Breeder]: Improves Breeding options.

[Blue Core]: Grants Blue Core Skills. Restricts Breeding options.

[Purifier]: Severely restricts Breeding options. Unlocks Dungeon Options. Unlocks Companion Options.

Inventory: 785 items (Expand List)

Even before sorting through all the new stuff I’d gotten, I noticed that some of the descriptions had gotten a touch more verbose, no doubt thanks to [Tempered Wisdom], but they still weren’t great. It seemed that advancing a category didn’t tend to unlock much. I had to do that myself. It made sense, I supposed, since the categories were far cheaper than the individual entries, as the enormous amounts I’d spent just on getting Spatial Control showed.

Also some skills were at rank two despite having three base stat rank-ups. That was weird, but given how generally unhelpful the descriptions and things were, I figured there was just something hidden or unexplained where the missing skill ranks went. Maybe Skills had an invisible level zero or something that I skipped now, meaning I learned them faster.

But the ranks weren’t the important part, the new skills were. Especially the enormous [Genius Loci]. It was easier to integrate than new senses, even, because it didn’t seem like there was more of it, but rather that things had deepened by a dimension. That I had stepped back. No longer did I have an enormous patchwork of eyes and ears, but rather a singular, whole appraisal of everything. Despite the fact that yes, technically, there was more input, especially with mana sense on, it was just easier to handle. Like holding one large ball instead of thousands of smaller ones, even if that analogy was wrong in every respect.

It was just better, was all.

Plus I could finally properly see outside. The clarity of vision faded to a more vague perception something like ten meters away from the dungeon walls, but that was enough to penetrate through the ground and rock and give me a huge swath of perspective to look around. Not that there was anything new to see, but it was the principle of the thing. I’d have to work upward along the mountain face so I could get a proper view.

None of the other abilities seemed nearly as groundbreaking. Cheaper costs were fine, but ultimately unexciting. [Warding] was nifty, though. I wasn’t sure if it’d mean I could stop people from teleporting in or out, but being able to hide and muffle intruders near me or near Shayma was fantastic. Even if there was still scrying going on for Iniri and her company, Shayma could wander about unseen.

Speaking of Shayma, even though she was still asleep, the Companion tab actually gave me access to her stat block, and made me realize that I had been missing a lot. Not just with her skills, but with the descriptions of her skills. Apparently, non-dungeon people got more...verbose skill descriptions.

Shayma Ell

Blue Core Fox Spirit: You are a creature of the Dungeon, body and soul. You have a connection to the Dungeon like no other, and in turn it can reach out through you. Furthermore, your soul has been altered to be immune to depletion.

Enhanced Senses: Your sight, hearing, and smell are sharper than similar races. You can see mana naturally.

Blue Core’s Blessing: Despite being a spirit, you still have a body of flesh and can still have children.

Trickster (Level 1): As a Trickster, you are never where or what your opponents expect. The closer they look, the less they see.

Health: 200/200

Stamina: 1000/1000

Mana: 100/100

Skills

[Seeker] (Greater): You can find that which is most hidden, most lost, and most desired.

[Physical Superiority] 3: Your body is stronger, tougher, and more flexible than your species’ base. Each rank improves benefits.

[Ghost Step] 2: You can walk through the world without touching it, instantly moving short distances and quickly moving longer ones.

[Luck]: Heads, or tails. You can bend probability to benefit yourself.

[Limited Shapeshifting] 1: You are exceeding the limits of form. You can change your shape easily, but not completely. Convenient for disguising your identity or race.

[Illusion] 5: Reality is what you say it is. Allows the creation of illusions, temporary phantasms of the senses. Longevity and distance of illusions increases with rank.

[Illusory Presence] 1: You are not who you say you are. Allows you to present a false identity to magical and mundane senses, including your Status.

[Combat Shapeshifting] 1: Because you can shapeshift, your combat options are unusual. You may create claws, harden your skin, or wield a weapon not meant for your body. Provides universal weapon proficiency and unarmed style proficiency. Improves learning of weapons and unarmed styles. Provides unique synthesis of combat styles with Skills.

Abilities

[Regeneration] 1: Your robust health significantly improves health regeneration and allows recovery from crippling or disfiguring wounds without magic.

[Wisdom] 1: You have become wise in the ways of the world. You have unlocked spellcasting, and this skill provides an intuitive grasp of known spellcasting skills. Improving rank improves mana pool and learning speed in spellcasting skills.

[Corrosion Resistance] 1: You have a natural resistance to acid and other eroding effects. Ignore damage and status effects associated with corrosion. Benefits improve with rank.

[Temperature Resistance] 1: You have a natural resistance to temperature extremes. Ignore damage and negative effects from heat and cold. Benefits improve with rank.

[Prestidigitation] 1: Your grasp exceeds your reach. Your fingers are supernaturally quick and you can touch people and objects without quite needing to reach them.

[Phantom Pocket] 1: You can store and retrieve items from a small space only you can access.

[Awareness] 1: Like eyes in the back of your head. You can sense your nearby surroundings even when you can’t see it directly. Precision increases with rank. Range very slightly increases with rank.

I felt a bit cheated. Someone had gone to the trouble of making clever little descriptions for herabilities, but not for mine. Something told me that was mostly because nobody expected Dungeons to be bright enough to really appreciate the difference.

[Tempered Wisdom] advances to 3.

Ah, that was what told me.

Regardless, it seemed like Shayma had gotten a hell of a power boost, and some of those abilities looked absolutely bonkers. Especially when taken together. I didn’t remember her attributes exactly, but it seemed to me that she was better off than before, and additionally had access to mana...and was only level one.

I should have been pleased, but actually, I was worried it’d be too much. When she woke up, almost everything about her would have changed. And I knew how disorienting that was. Besides, I remembered her sensory overload from before, and I couldn’t keep her blindfolded allthe time.

That thought did make me bring down the light level in her room, though, to dim and indirect. Best to assume she’ll wake up with something approximating a hangover. A thought that made me also manifest a glass of chilled water at her bedside table. With [Temperature Control] it’d still be cool when she woke up.

Most of the rest of the refugees were scattered about the lake. Two of them even had fishing poles, though I had nothing for them to fish. Iniri was sitting with her council: Tulk, Joce, Keel, and a serious-faced older woman named Cheya whose Class was [Spymaster]. But really, their conversation was fairly mundane, concerning logistics and who else they might convince to hide away here, and how said people might be reached. Well, I had ideas, but I couldn’t share them. I could however, give them proper furniture to sit at, which I did. And watched in amusement as they reacted to the black cauls swelling out of the grass and vanishing to leave behind wooden tables and chairs.

For once, Ansae was awake too. The dragon was studying the decorations I’d placed in her lair, and it absolutely boggled me when she simply cut away one of the ephemeral doors I’d placed to keep the ice and magma from spilling out into the rest of the room. It smarted, sure, but I wasn’t sure how she could destroy something that wasn’t actually there with a wave of her claw. Or why. More claw-waves followed, and I focused with my mana sight to see what was going on.

She was poking and prodding the mana flows. Not all of them, just the ones connected with the various flowers in the room. She teased the mana from the magma flowers up and over to the ice flowers in a gigantic half-kilometer arc, then pulled the ice flowers mana to flow along the ground over to the magma flowers. Hot and cold air followed, and the entire damn thing lit up with sudden movement. The flowers perked up, growing deeper in color, and started feeding me more mana.

I was an idiot.

It was Dungeon Ecology, not Dungeon Flowers In A Box. Sure, I didn’t have any fauna but that probably didn’t matter. The ecology was based on mana, not on biology - flowers that grew on lava didn’t make much sense, otherwise. Keeping them all nice and boxed off made for neat boring rows of rooms, but it didn’t provide much nutrition. That was mostly my guess, at least, since they liked flowing mana far better than static.

Plus the weirdness of even open doors blocking the heat was solved. Everything that was dungeon-stuff was mana as well as physical, so doors made a little mana weave across the spot they closed. Which Ansae had now punctured, though the doors still existed, so I figured if I wanted to I could make one without the mana weave, too.

But first, I wanted to help Ansae out. Instead of a cold breeze blowing across the grass, I formed some trenches underneath, running from cool to hot, and pulled the mana down there.

[Mana Manipulation learned].

I was definitely an idiot. One, because given that I was half mana that was something I should have learned ages ago. Two, because even though I’d just thought about mana ecology I’d not actually realized it mattered to the grass and the cold breeze was just incidental. I tried a third option while Ansae frowned at the mana flows. This time I put a trench around the perimeter of her island and connected it to the waterfall. This time I dragged the mana through the water in a big circle, from cold to hot to cold, and then pulled it in through the grass.

It snapped into place, anchoring itself on the trees and spreading out through the grass, a slowly rotating spiral of mana. The structure wasn’t mine, it was something that emerged from the flowers and the trees and the general circle of water. The mana pulled water into the soil with it, the teal of the tayan grass brightening, tayantan tree leaves fluttering slightly as they grew larger.

[Mana Manipulation] advances to 3.

“Better,” Ansae said aloud, nodding in approval, and took a deep breath. She actually inhaledsome of the flowing mana, pulling it into herself. Not that I minded; so far as I was concerned that was her lair and she was welcome to it. Besides, I had the rest of the dungeon to experiment, and now that I knew how to start, I had ideas.

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