Chapter 13

Chapter 13

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The Dungeon, Medea Island, Kalenic Sea

Moments after the Delve.

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I...

I may have gone a little overboard.

After seeing them mow through the crabs, even when they were full-on trying their best to murder the party, I'd kind of just assumed they'd do the same with the fish. they were smaller, weaker and needed numbers to make up the difference.

I completely disregarded the fact they were at a huge disadvantage.

They were underwater, which severely restricted their movement.

Lieza couldn't use her most devastating spells, which removed the easiest method to clear the monsters.

Lione couldn't effectively fight dozens of fish with just his daggers, given his bow wouldn't really work well underwater.

Ferai was a healer, and couldn't exactly fight with his Morningstar underwater. It just wasn't designed for it.

Isid and Jerrad were similar, being unable to move or fight normally.

They put up a decent fight, as much as they could have at least. A sword swing there by Jerrad cut a Bloodfish in twain. Dual mana-blades from Isid shredded a couple of the Arrowfish swarming her. Lieza bore a small dagger, obviously her fallback weapon. She skewered a Sharpscale that attempted to shock her and failed to do any damage past her lightning resistance.

Lione, slashing with his twin daggers, increased flexibility and reaction time had racked up the most kills.

Ferai, as explained, had much less luck. In the minute they were fighting he had failed to smash a single fish with his large, bulky spiked ball-on-a-chain.

One by one, they succumbed to the fish.

Lieza was first. Given how the Sharpscales couldn't do much to her I sent a school of Arrowfish at her. With disturbing ease they cut through her robes and sliced her to ribbons. She didn't have time to reach for her teleport crystal; within seconds the blade-headed fish had cut her throat and tendons. She either drowned on her own blood or bled to death. I couldn't tell.

Not having actually meant to kill them, I hastily ordered the other fish to back off a bit, but the order came seconds too late to save Ferai. He had gotten surrounded by a dozen Sharpscales, who's combined Spark spells and conductive scales hid him in a cloud of lightning. now dead weight, he drifted down out of the cloud to the corridor floor.

Lione had lost a leg to the Bloodfish. His leather armor had been cut clean off there, and the fish were feasting on the severed leg.

Jerrad and Isid escaped to the surface, cut bruised and burned but without major injuries. Lione managed to get to the surface while the Bloodfish were distracted with his leg, giving Jerrad time to pull him out of the water. They disappeared in a flash of light, leaving me with some enhanced monsters and two floating corpses.

Well... At least some good will come from this fiasco.

While the guilder's mana drifted into the manastream and started on it's journey to my core, I had a group of Kobolds collect the corpses. They stripped them of their armor and weapons, collected their manacores, then threw the bodies to the fish. The bones would make good decorations.

Yes. I'm distracting myself from my lack of reaction by focusing on something positive. Let me have a quiet breakdown later.

The manacores were interesting. Shaped like a ellipse, the little gems were tucked away between the heart and spine. A similar location to my monster's but a different shape; my monsters all had perfectly spherical cores. They were... fascinating.

Lieza's core discharged electricity when mana was pushed into it. Ferai's core radiated a gentle yellow light that I assume is some kind of healing magic. What made their cores different from each other? I had no idea.

A quick bit of biological manipulation gave me two Shaman Kobold mini-bosses with gnarled wooden staves, with the ellipsoid cores clenched at one end by a wooden Kobold hand. My Fire Shaman looked disappointed, so I gave her wooden stave holding an obsidian orb. While the Fire Shaman would remain a mini-boss, my new healer and lightning mage expy quickly took up leadership roles in the two Kobold tree-top villages.

Hopefully they could learn how to produce the spells on their own, or I'd learn from the mana even now traversing the third floor, but my new Staff of Healing and Staff of Sparks are good enough substitutes for now.

Their robes and metal weapons were distributed between the mini-bosses, each getting at least one bit of the under armor the two mages had worn. My 'Floor Guardian' Mushu was given Ferai's Morningstar. It was a bit of a departure from his pincer-sword, but a far stronger weapon. He seemed to like it, given how he was swinging it about and smashing it into rocks.

The Teleport crystals were... strange. I had absolutely no idea how the mana in the tiny crystal warped space-time to transport the person holding it. I also felt like I wouldn't figure it out for a while.

The bones I spread about the second floor.

Alright.

No avoiding it now.

"By order of the Grand Duke Plaised, for the murder of his second son." Layla took a deep, calming breath.

"That party who left a week ago, the boy who died and left his sister behind, correct? They never gave their last names." She guessed. Felin shrugged.

Ultimately there was nothing they could have done about that, it didn't matter where you came from, if you took the oath you were a Guilder. Many who joined were trying to escape something or someone. Some didn't want their family names behind them in some misguided sense of honor and fair play. An applicant only had to give one name, but it had to be the name they were given at birth. Lie-detecting artifacts were used liberally in that sense.

Layla sprung into action.

"Ask Isid and Jerrard if Horat and Dival can use their Teleport crystals to get some crab meat from the dungeon. We're going to have to test it's edibility first, but it's the most bountiful source of meat on the island.

"Organize tents for the Silvers. The Platinums can take the spare rooms in the guild hall, though they'll have to share. Those new houses near the Hall, knock on a couple of doors and ask if we can rent the buildings for a few weeks. We'll give them fair compensation for the use of their new homes." Felin nodded and left. Layla ran her long, thin fingers through her hair.

If she wasn't albino, this job would have given her grey hairs long before her time.

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The ships filled with Guilders pulling in to port gave me a terrible feeling, even before i overheard their reasons for being here.

A bounty.

Someone had put a bounty on me.

For Murder of all things!

Isn't it implicit that you risk your life when delving dungeons? Why the sudden hate? I haven't killed that many people... Kurt, Kale, Herna, Rorgas, Lione, Lieza, Ferai...

Rorgas.

It had to have been his sister. She ran home and told on me to her father, who put out a ridiculously high bounty on me if the response is this... enormous.

I guess I'm going to get a few guests in the very near future.

Guests that want to murder me for money.

I think I'm justified in upping the reproductive rates of my crabs.

I watched through dozens of seagulls and scores of rats as the Guilders settled in for the night. The two parties who delved my first floor regularly were given orders to kill my crabs, then use the teleport crystals to escape with the bodies.

it was certainly... odd. Then they tried cooking the things and it turned out my crabs are delicious. It's a little disturbing to me that they're eating my barely-sentient crabs, but their numbers had been replaced and then some by the next morning, so it wasn't a huge loss.

I also decided The Crabs were long overdue a new breed. I took a Brawler base, added eastern-dragon-like moustache-tendrils and a larger-than-normal mana core. It's pincers grew hollow tubes from which it could blast fire like a flamethrower.

All that was left was a name...

I'm drawing a blank.

Bah, it'll come to me.

I set it up so a few dozen of these would be sprinkled amongst the defenders.

Thus, my crabs now had a ranged option.

There was much rejoicing among their primitive tribes. Speaking of, I did feel a little bad at how many of them were being thrown into the meat grinder. I'd created them with that goal in mind, but it was more unsettling now they were intelligent enough to have a religion.

There were a few things that made me hesitate to reduce that intelligence though; The first was that they actually desired to spend their lives in service to me and the second was a reduction in capability would make them less effective, causing more deaths.

It blew my mind a little, that they would be so devoted as to throw themselves at the humans invading their home, fully knowing that they would probably die.

Tomorrow, when the first of these new parties began their delve, they would be my first line of defense and they were proud of that fact.

Willing to die for the Core, their Creator. Their God.

...I kind of feel bad for these humans. They had no idea just how hard delving me was going to be.

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