Chapter 103: 101. Gardening

Sith nods, and you can practically feel her approval, as the latest team brings in another load of stone from Sapphire's quarry. The demoness has shown a startling head for numbers since her evolution.

Or, well.

In her own words, “You have how much wood? Why are you still sending teams into the forest?”

She glances at you, flicking her fingers through the air in a weaving dance that reminds you of Mercy's magic but that Sith insists is just a way to help her remember numbers.

“If this harvest is on target, you should be up above your target for Phase One.”

You roll your eyes.

“That makes it sound so grand. I'm not giving you Sapphire's naming privileges.”

She rolls her eyes right back at you. “Right. Because 'Phase: Lets get the basics set up so floor two is functional, you know, walls and stuff' was so much better.”

“That wasn't the name! I was just thinking out loud! Why does it even need a name?”

Three days. It's been three days since you mentioned your resource troubles near the hunger demon, and that's all it's taken for this insolence to creep in.

You shake your head and walk off before she can respond. You can feel your reserves swell as stone is disgorged into your stockpile, and she's right. You have enough for phase one.

Damn it. It's not phase anything!

Thirty stone on two medium rooms, back to back, swelling out the first section of floor two along the north wall and finally brining the Stumpy trap technically online. Another sixty for four more pit traps, all joining together underground. Ten stone for a small room, stretched as high as it can to form an outer tower at the intersection between what you're beginning to call the Castle and the Grounds. A negligible handful of wood to build a couple of doors tucked into alcoves around the tower. There has to be a reason for people to brave the mysterious pit traps, after all. Inside the tower another chunk of wood goes on a rickety staircase. Maybe it'll become a trap of it's own one day.

Then comes the fun part. Two hundred and ten wood on seven Living Trees, but with careful placement and manipulation of the menu, the blueprint for a hedge maze snaps into place. A tight and claustrophobic mess of greenery. Not designed to be hard to enter, nor a direct danger – you have no minions especially suited to fighting in the narrow, winding tunnels at the moment. But it is designed to beguile and confuse. You have plans to allow the walls of wood to shift on their own, for audible and visual hallucinations to lead people astray, and Mercy has told you there's a way to bind runes of confusion into the shape of the maze itself, although unfortunately that is currently beyond the two of you. You have to settle on thick greenery forming passages only a few foot wide, and the current total lack of illumination to set the mood. And you're sure watching party members drop into pit traps will help with the ambience.

To add to the confusion, you utilise the few gold ore that your minions have been bringing back from the new quarry, and your stockpile of bones, to make a gilded pavilion just large enough for a few people to sit and rest. Another handful of wood for a small table and four chairs and you've created a calm place to rest and recover, should anyone trust you enough to use it. On the other side of the maze, you utilize most of your remaining animus – your minions will have to manually reset most of the pit traps for now – to create a handful of weak restorative berry loot drops in a small arboretum. They won't do much more than soothe a sprained ankle, but they'll either confuse or entice an injured hero.

The rest of your wood goes on a delicate lattice roof for the entire maze made out of Living Ivy – the variant of Living Tree that you get when you force it into the thinnest shapes you can. The entire maze will be cast in twilight at best, and the tower will not be an obvious landmark to walk towards.

At least you hope.

Hah! Out of wood. I knew I wasn't wasting everyone's time.

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It doesn't hurt that once you get the animus to buy smart trap controllers, the winding maze will actually be a pleasant place to stroll for Amanda, and look pleasant out of any windows you construct in the main wall.

Which is where you turn your attention next.

Currently, the second area, the 'castle' of floor two, is nothing more than a flat area, raised ten foot above the grounds in a sheer cliff face. You don't have the stone to raise the full castle wall. But with Sith's calculations, you have enough for the main entrance.

Barring the wood for the door.

Shit. She did say not to make the lattice yet, didn't she?

You cough, down on the first floor, your vision firmly locked onto your blunder. Sith's voice sounds right next to you, making you startle.

“You ordered the lattice instead of the door didn't you?”

You nod, and her footsteps echo with her sigh as she walks away, presumably to find Sapphire to organise another change to the resource rotation. You wince, and turn your attention back to the blueprint manager. Nothing to be done about it, you just have to push forwards.

Ten stone for a small room, half way across the castle cliff opposite the stairway, and with one wall left open. You spring for the 'Dungeon' theme for the room, turning it into thick, cut stone blocks. Another twenty for two more towers, jutting out from the cliff either side of the room that will eventually become the first courtyard. Three thin holes in the walls of each tower become arrow slits that are perfectly placed to fire down onto your final construction.

A thin stone stairway. You have plans for this too, once you get more animus, but for now it will serve as it is – a walkway only wide enough for one person at a time, allowing weaker members of adventuring parties to be fired at from a defensive position. The stairs themselves are narrow and shallow – not too bad for your smaller minions, annoying for your larger, and a nightmare for a fighter in a helm that cuts into their vision, who is also being shot at from both sides.

Thirty stone left. The perfect amount for two tunnels, raised and placed from the two towers along the walls of the courtyard. Somewhere for the defenders to retreat into to keep besieging any attackers. More arrow slits, raised above the head height of the average hero.

A death zone.

Your smile isn't a pleasant one.

 

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