Chapter 8: Chapter 8. Going into Dirt

Carolinus closed his mouth with a snap and peered closely at me. “I already knew that you were touched by necromancy.” He stated. “I had assumed you were forced to gain an evolution by a necromancer to make you into a familiar. Necromancy is death magic, but less-powerful necromancers often choose living familiars at first, because demons would wrestle them for control, and undead familiars at that level are extremely stupid and virtually useless.”

He shook his head, “However, I am surprised at how advanced your intelligence is.”

“Why is that?” I asked curiously.

“Despite Gus’ jokes, you are a juvenile, not a baby. In many packs or nations, at this age, you would already be out hunting for food or even expected to be self-sufficient. In our nation, we prefer to prolong adolescence because it leads to much higher intelligence when our people choose their role evolution, so we do not set them to gaining advancement as quickly, preferring to focus on survival skills and education rather than crafting and fighting which leads to quick evolutions.”

“That is very forward thinking?” I asked.

He opened his mouth slightly in a grin. “Most nations are on the edge of survival. Warriors and hunters must be turned out by the thousands due to constant predation. Dow here, we are generally left unmolested, and thus have the luxury of improving our offspring. That, and there is a human city directly above us… sending our hunters or warriors out barely able to speak would virtually guarantee that sooner or later they would be indiscreet and call attention to our settlement.”

I nodded, “Please excuse me, I am very ignorant of our kind. My first memories here were running away from a slime and fighting some goblins. You are the first other Kobolds I have met, so I don’t understand any customs or anything.”

Carolinus nodded, and turned to the warriors. “I am going to take this one to Dirt. It doesn’t look like he has a bond, but entering Dirt without a master should sever one if it exists.”

Gus nodded, “Good. Mage spies are bad. Would have to retreat, and maybe defend Dirt if bound. Especially necromancers.”

Carolinus nodded and gestured for me to follow him down the river’s edge, which I did. “You are actually very fortunate. I too was bound as a familiar. It has limited my evolutionary options, but my master was a healer, and when he upgraded to a more effective familiar, he chose to cut my bond rather than reclaim it for power. It has limited my evolutionary options, but opened up new paths that help me make a decent life as one of this nation’s shamans.” he looked thoughtful.

“Normally I wouldn’t have been out gathering today, but all my bloodwort and corpse touch fungus supplies had been left open, and had dried to uselessness, which required a shaman’s touch to harvest without poisoning the harvester. Other gather protectors might have been less inclined to ask questions when it was suspected you might be a familiar.”

Yes, convenient. Suspiciously convenient. “I am a little confused, what is evolution?”

He shrugged. “Most of the Common races, and don’t use that term if you speak to them, they would find it offensive, gain power and class abilities as they advance with levels. The natural races, what they call beast or monster races, which are similarly offensive to us, gain power by means of evolutions. We change and grow smarter, larger, or more capable, as we gain evolution. We have classes too, of course, but the structure is not as restrictive as the commons. Our ranks require vastly more advancement to unlock, but we also gain far more when we level. Do you know how common race classes work?”

I shook my head, “Not even slightly.”

He nodded, “They gain levels as they advance, which come with small, incremental advancements. Every fifth level they are offered the opportunity to restart as a different class, based upon the skills they have learned, the opportunities they have seized, defeating certain monsters, completing certain quests, and the like. They can choose to accept a new class if it has more power and potential, or more closely matches what they wish to do with their life, or continue to strengthen the one they have if they are comfortable with it or unhappy with temporarily losing power by starting a new one.”

“Non-commons evolve instead. It is roughly equivalent to the same speed at which the commons can unlock new classes. All creatures have this capability, but the unintelligent ones rarely gain the opportunity, and when they do, their evolution is generally not under their control.” he smirked a little, “You have to be able to read, you see?”

I nodded, “Right. I can read.” At least I could now.

He nodded, “Some evolutions lock others. For example, a Bear that lived in a heavily fire-mana-infused area would become a fire bear when it evolved. Very dangerous, but that would block off its evolution into a frost bear, do you follow?”

I nodded. “And that applies how?” I asked curiously, starting to work my knife back into my waist cord as we walked.

“Well, intelligent natural races start with a lot of advantages. Improved senses, an instinctive understanding of the smells of food that is likely to hurt us, and in our case, stonecutting, an instinctive understanding of how to create traps and identify useful pieces, and basic fighting tactics. We pay for that, however, by not being able to learn as quickly at a young age as the commons.”

“Juveniles are not babies, though. Those are tads, newly hatched. They are helpless for almost a year before they grow into juveniles. All races have a lifespan, though. For kobolds, it’s generally about four years before we evolve or die. By forcing the first evolution for a familiar, however, our new lifespan becomes limited to our master. We live until they die, or are released without reclaiming the energy.”

He shook his head, “That means that when we are released, a lot of the normal evolutions for kobolds that increase their lifespan are closed to us. Adolescence is open, but maturity, and the ability to reproduce, are generally locked. We have many evolutions that are only available to familiars, such as minor size increases, spell channeling, and a number of specialty evolutions based on the affinities of our master, but I will never be as big, or as… prolific, as a hunter, warrior, or chieftain.”

I nodded, “You said we were hatched? Like from eggs? But that doesn’t make any sense!”

He looked at me curiously. “What do you mean?”

I sighed and brushed my chest. “I have nipples under my feathers. I checked.”

He laughed, a short coughing bark. “That is true. Kobolds, like goblins, imps, changechildren, and many animals, are considered a base species. We can potentially evolve into other species such as troglodytes, lizardmen, merfolk, bird folk, or nagas, and some of those give birth to live young… You need the building blocks to evolve yes? Once a kobold evolves to a new species, it gives birth to that species.”

He looked thoughtful. “Our species history claims that we are originally the offspring of dragons, that’s why many of our kind worship the Drake, but personally, I doubt it.”

“You can keep evolving, right? Why not dragons?”

He chuckled a little, “Because we are the most humble. The bottom rung of the intelligent races, even of the base races. Goblins don’t assume that they are the Offspring of Ogres, Pixies don’t claim to be the children of Angels, and while Imps will loudly screech about their connection to Lucifer or Baalzebub, no one believes it, not even then. Kobolds are the bottom rung, while Dragons are the top rung, the most powerful of the natural races. Why would they allow their children to devolve in such a way? Kobolds do one thing well… we reproduce and survive. Each female produces a clutch every six months, and after a year the children are ready to hunt and fight and evolve… but I won’t pretend that each individual kobold is a dragon waiting to happen!”

That made me wonder. A Dragon, looking at a kobold, would be like an English dire wolf looking at a Chihuahua and proudly claiming to be its forebear. It was not outside of the realms of possibility, but it certainly strained at the edges of credibility.

We were approaching an area where the river dropped off into a much deeper-looking cave, and even to my enhanced eyesight the cavern looked… dark. And we were heading towards it. “You said that you extend the time?”

He nodded, looking at what I was noticing and giving a kobold smile. “Yes, at my suggestion, we started slowing down the time it took for juveniles and adolescents to evolve, and used that time to train them in skills, crafts, language, tactics, and logic. Most of them survive to evolve, and while that means ten years from tad to fully functional adult, rather than the three years that other nations have, their warriors are brutes, barely able to string a coherent sentence together and capable of little more than blindly charging into combat to be slaughtered as a mass… Our warriors and hunters can speak clearly, use tactics, ruses, and clever ploys, and fight one-on-one with a human warrior and often win.” he looked proud.

“We still have a high casualty rate, but that’s being a kobold, and it’s because the creatures in our proving grounds are vastly more dangerous. We do not send our warriors out unprepared. We have a higher evolution rate than most other nations, which is why, in human cities, you will find more browns that have a pass than any other natural species.”

I could understand his pride, somewhat. “You have a higher survival rate?”

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He shook his head, “No, we have the same casualty rate to adulthood as any other kobold nation, close to 90% every five years, but when they do survive, they survive for a long time. They evolve to new races, and we have actually established trade relations and alliances with other, more advanced species, which almost no kobold nation has ever done.”

“If you are training your warriors, hunters, and shamans so well, why is your casualty rate so high?” I asked.

He looked at me, and then nodded, “Because we live in a Dungeon.” he said, matter-of-factly as we entered the darker cavern.

Most of your log messages are suppressed due to irrelevance, but this is an important one. You have entered the Dirt Dungeon. Please be aware of enhanced threat levels.

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“You live in a dungeon?” I was surprised, but instantly on my guard, my knife out again.

He nodded, relaxed. “Yes. When a Chaos portal is formed, a dungeon is formed to contain it. It forces the chaos energies to assume physical forms, usually incredibly destructive monsters of various sorts.”

“In general, adventurers are supposed to destroy these monsters. The more complicated the dungeon, and the larger it is, the more of these creatures it can form and hold… dungeons grow in response to a chaos portal getting larger as its energy corrupts and consumes the reality around it.”

“The problem is, while the dungeon can force these energies into physical form, it cannot actively fight it. It can create traps and try to have the monsters fight each other to keep their numbers down, but dungeon cores are spawned on the spot of a chaos gate, they very seldom have the intelligence or experience to meaningfully affect the creatures they produce.”

“If the energies are unopposed long enough, there will be a breakout. The Dungeon Core can die, and a new one will have to be formed, hopefully moving the chaos gate in the process. The longer the energies are unopposed, the stronger the monsters become, and a break out for an experienced dungeon can be a horrifying event that devastates entire countries, both on the surface and beneath.”

He shrugged, “When the rift came, the Chaos gates came too. Dirt Dungeon was formed in a bad place, probably because of all the metal ore around it. It was too deep for surface adventurers to find, and far away from any of the delving races, which tend to concentrate around mountains where resources such as metal are easier to harvest.”

“Hundreds of years ago, Our nation, searching for a Haven far from Dwarven adventurers who often chose to slaughter us instead of making treaties or trade, wound up finding the dirt dungeon. We made an alliance with it. We keep its chaos gate small and weak by regularly destroying what is spawned, and it keeps our nation safe, hidden, and filled with certain resources.”

“What kind of resources?” I asked curiously, still looking around nervously.

“Well, the dirt dungeon doesn’t have much exposure to outside influences, although occasionally when we find something new we bring it back to add its potential to the Dirt Dungeon. The Monsters often provide edible meat, useful horns, hooves, and the more powerful ones even have magical components we can use when they die.”

“More importantly, killing the chaos beasts release energy. Some of it the dungeon can use to produce things like silver, wood, and leather, you know, dead stuff. The rest is released as spirit energy, Magic, and a bunch of other types of energy other kinds of affinities we do not possess can use.”

He shrugged, “Sindaenaway was a small town when we came here. Since then it has grown to a mighty city, the capital of all of Rhydia, and home of the Mage’s guild. This is probably due to the endless wellspring of magic released when we kill monsters that the mages can harness for their own use. They probably do not know, nor care, that that magic is coming from a dungeon that we regularly patrol to keep its chaos gate small and manageable.”

I nodded, “But wouldn’t… I mean, why don’t you have some kind of trade deal with Sindaenaway? I mean, you provide something they want and need, they can send adventurers down to help clear out monsters and lower your casualties and everyone profits.”

Carolinus looked shocked, “Are you joking?” and then shook his head, “Of course, you wouldn’t know. If the mages knew there was a core down here, they would expend every possible resource to clear the dungeon and harvest its core. They wouldn’t bother with a tiny core, but Dirt Dungeon gains strength, just like we do, for every creature destroyed in its depths. Its chaos gate is sort of weak, but the core is enormous. Anyone that needs the energy could take it and use its ambient ability to absorb chaos and produce magic to become more powerful. It wouldn’t be as much magic released as leaving it as a core, but a single person would have access to all of its power.”

I sighed. “So they would happily weaken their own city, let a Chaos gate free, slaughter all of the creatures down here, cripple all of their fellow mages and potentially their entire country, destroy a potential source of endless silver and other resources, all so one person can take an artifact that makes them more powerful?”

Carolinus just stopped and looked at me closely for a few seconds while I considered it.

“Shit,” I said.

“Indeed,” he replied. “Only an Ambitious mage devoid of conscience would make that decision. You wouldn’t happen to have heard of any of those, would you?”

I nodded, I had played enough games, read enough books, and even played a few tabletop games with players that chose to run mages of various sorts. Add to that the fact that Earth Human players considered this world to be a virtual game… “I suppose that most mages would qualify.” we were walking towards a light source of some sort, ahead of us in the tunnel, the sound of the river rushing past almost drowning out our conversation.

Carolinus nodded, his crest bobbing. “Exactly. And even down here we know that Sindaenaway has recently turned from a city hosting the most powerful mages guild in Rhydia into a city directly controlled by the Mage’s guild. Quests are being generated to destroy any beast people that get close, and they are getting some assistance from the sky elves to root out any dissent.”

The river opened up into a cavern, a gigantic cavern. There were many structures about, and I suddenly had to squint. They had a sun! Okay, not a sun, but a bright spot on the roof of the cavern that was producing sunlight.

After my eyes adjusted for a bit, I realized that it was not sunlight. After I got used to it, it did not actually hurt, but it was apparently bright enough for grass and some small trees to grow in the center of the cavern.

“There’s not really enough light here, but the energies of the dungeon help plants to survive and grow. Kobolds are innately afraid of big, open spaces, but living here helps to cut down that fear a bit, especially for hunters, foragers, and warriors that have to go to the surface.” Carolinus stated.

I could sort of understand. Look, I fell in love with the Ocean when I was in the Navy. I spent all my life under a big, open sky, but for some reason, the openness of this cavern was….intimidating. It had to be those Kobold instincts at play.

“What is it about well-grown dungeon cores that allows them to create so much power once they are taken away from their chaos gate? Wouldn’t they like… cease to function or something?”

Carolinus nodded, “Yes, they do die. But that doesn’t matter. Their affinity is still active.”

“What Affinity is that?”

Carolinus shrugged, “Cores are one of the few things in this world that are natural channels.”

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