Dragonheart Core

Chapter 116: Ashen Hells

In what was both surprising and not, the invasion party made it decently far before things started to fall apart.

The taller orc was some kind of berserker, red in his eyes and axes awash with hemolymph and blood, and injuries knit themselves together in his stupid, brutish face as he charged. Infuriating. Made even more infuriating by the other orc, with her spear-tipped staff, casting billowing clouds of green-yellow that sped up healing for all members of their party. The one with hooks braided through his hair was a close-range nightmare, the one wielding gauntleted fists sent lightning crackling through my creatures, and the absolute bastards passed through the Drowned Forest without too much difficulty.

Was this the strength of all Silver invasions? Exceptionally irritating. They'd killed a good number of my creatures before the others had gotten the hint and pulled back; not something my halls were used to, though something they would have to learn, if these bloody daily raids would keep up. Maybe I would have to set aside areas for them, unattached to the main floors, for them to breed and recuperate in relative peace.

Questions for a later day, since I didn't have much to worry about now. The group was having a touch less luck in the Underlake.

The brawler couldn't use her lightning in the water, and for all the berserker could heal his injuries, it didn't matter if he couldn't strike back. They could all do the mana-trick to hold their breath longer, but fighting underwater was a slow and fumbling process for these floundering terrestrial beings, and that was before the sarco crocodile caught scent of the situation.

There was a ripple of something… odd, though. Some power within her, that burning desire to prove she was something more, and it flared as she went for the killing stroke on the smaller orc; a wave of mana I couldn't place as she clove head from shoulders.

Fascinating.

Not one to be outdone, the armoured jawfish had emerged from the shadowed depths of the bloodline kelp forest, and the last three members of the party had found themselves in a dance they didn't know the steps to. A messy, violent death, even as the one with braided hair tried to flee right at the end.

Then, as they were wont to do, the armoured jawfish and sarco crocodile started to fight directly after, because their pissing contest never ended. The Underlake trembled in wake of their brawl.

My creatures could be so kind, really. The royal silvertooth with his horde of fang-embedded thralls hadn't even had a chance to fight, and judging by his furious thoughts as he stalked around the edges of their fight, he'd wanted to.

He'd get his chance if he was faster. That was on him.

But bright, delicious mana flooded through me, another healing aspect to send to the poor crowned cobra trying to learn from Kriya's unconscious body, and more useless souls with information from Calarata. I poked through them with idle curiosity; not much new, another layout of the Adventuring Guild and a flash of the red-haired man I was sure I had seen before. Probably. Whoever he was, he wasn't interesting enough to remember, so that was really on him.

The mana was a welcome reward for the distraction, and I turned back to my seventh floor with deliberation. I had finally, finally, finished carving out the base of the room, a ten thousand foot sprawl that curled back and forth in an odd, irregular habit. The ceiling was low and crushing, as little as fifty feet to a hundred at its peak, and everything was made of the same deep, hexagonal basalt pillars in a variety of heights. Deep furrows interwoven through the madness, surrounded by hills and valleys, laced through with stuttering, uneven steps and falls.

In short, a prison of interlocking columns and inky darkness.

It had taken every drop of mana I'd had, which sent me to the pathetic depths of waiting by the river entrance to my second floor to catch every new silverhead that got tossed my merry way so I could direct my creatures to kill it instantly just for the mana it held, but it was finally carved out, and I couldn't be more proud. Already I could taste the potential in the air, see the distant fiery plumes and hear the scratch of claws on stone.

I had even carved myself a basalt pillar for my core, rather than the silver-flecked limestone I normally used. This was an unprecedented level of cohesion to this floor I had never experienced before.

The next part was even easier, insofar as a lack of thought; I darted around to the various furrows throughout the floor and filled them with coal. I'd collected this schema some time ago, carving out veins of it alongside the iron and copper the mountain had offered me, but I hadn't had much use for it before now. It was an ugly, crumbling thing with ancient histories within that I couldn't access, made up of the desiccated remains of flora and fauna enough changed that I couldn't get a schema from. Horrible.

It did, however, burn.

And thus.

I took around half of the mana I'd gotten from the invasion and inlaid seven furrows with coal, layering deep veins in the depths of the basins, carved over their surroundings like scars. They were scattered randomly and not all of the places, since I didn't want to empty myself of mana all at once, but it would be plenty to understand just how this place would work.

I paused beforehand. A simple exhalation of non-tangible breath, the pride rumbling deep in the golden runes carved over my core.

And then, with a spark of fire-attuned mana, I lit all of the seven furrows at once.

There was a wheeze and a cough and a boom, something deep and powerful, as they caught—it was slow burning as I'd designed it to be, rock interlaced through the coal, veins with thin exposure to the air and extended further down; I wanted it to be sparse lighting at best, the memory of flame instead of a wildfire, and for the smoke to be most pressing.

And oh did it deliver.

From deep in the furrows, black clouds billowed; they were heavy and choking, spiraling through the air and drowning out any of the light the fire brought. I didn't have sensory organs like mortal creatures, but I could approximate things with my points of awareness, and what I was receiving was decidedly unpleasant. Glorious.

If the Hungering Reefs were a paradise, this was a stinking cesspit, and I couldn't be prouder.

It did, unfortunately, have to be habitable; so after taking a moment longer to appreciate the towers of black smoke in that already dark room, I dove it closer to the hexagonal mounds littered around the floor.

See, I was going to be doing a very clever, mean-spirited little thing—no actual water on this floor. The ambient heat with all the burning furrows meant what was there would turn to steam, painful and scorching, and invaders would have no relief from the sweltering pain. It was a very fun interaction, darkness and fire, two that could go together but often not in the vast creation I wielded.

But, well. My creatures did need to survive.

So the only water they would have would be from algae.

Green algae, the first ever schema I had taken within myself, so long ago when an underground monitor's den had felt like a paradise; it was, perhaps, the thing I was most familiar with, even as my creatures had wildly expanded and grown and changed. I had multiple modifications of it, being so simple and blasé that I could manipulate it with my mana for much greater lengths before it started to absorb my power rather than change with it. I had the variants in my first three floors, where it exuded gentle green light; what I'd had in the Jungle Labyrinth before it'd evolved, where its spores glowed in faint, trickling specks; and ever an overall change, becoming a more emerald green than the paler shade it had been before.

Was I getting nostalgic over an amorphous clump of flora? Hells, maybe becoming a dungeon core was the worst thing that could have happened to me.

But either way, my plan was simple and beautiful for it; in the clumps beneath basalt pillars and hills, I would grow fields of green algae, housing sapphires deep in their nestled cores.

It didn't happen much in the Fungal Gardens, due to being so far from my core, but if I kept jewels on the lower floors and let them absorb my ambient mana, they would eventually begin to expel excess as whatever they were attuned to. It was a slow, inconsistent thing, which meant I wouldn't be able to fill a furrow with rubies and let that produce the lava for me—though I'd tried—but it would, in theory, be able to produce a steady enough trickle of water to keep the algae damp and growing. Not much, barely enough to pool, but it would keep my creatures fed and watered.

And if that failed, I would make an oasis somewhere in the center of the room, fed by a tunnel from the river overhead, and then they could all kill each other in territorial disputes trying to claim that vital resource.

I was fine with either, really.

So in the darkness, I let little fields of green bloom, tucking them away in the shadows and the depths of pockets in the pillars. It immediately shriveled, which, rude, but I poured the mana equivalent of holding its hand as I guided its adaptation to survive in this smoke and darkness choked world. It ended up stringier, a little more sparse and weak than the variants above, but that was fine. I would make sure it would survive.

Most of the creatures I would be adding here would be carnivores, with one notable exception; the bounding deer. They weren't particularly suited to this environment, but they could change, and I had means of providing them the food that would counteract their harsh environment.

Still I remembered the visible ribs of the scorch hounds above, the hunger that clawed deep along their marrow and put desperation in their eyes. I had made them in a world that could not feed them. I would not make that same mistake again.

So the bounding deer would be the basis of the food chain here, large, meaty creatures with plenty to provide from a single kill, and as they would be the only one consuming the algae here, I would easily be able to adjust to their population for how much to plant. It would work. And then the scorch hounds and mottled scorpions and kobolds could go apeshit for all I cared, so long as they stayed alive. I tossed around a couple patches of whitecap mushrooms mostly as an experiment, since for all the room was dark enough for them to grow, I didn't know if the deer would eat them. Maybe. Their pale, ghostly bodies in the black looked wondrous, though.

And there was one more plant I wanted to add—I would be removing them from the Skylands as soon as I established this land, but they were, admittedly, more difficult to transfer than creatures, so for now I just wove more from mana. Fire-tongue flowers, shrub-vines with charcoal green leaves, rooting around for the thin and wavering pockets of dirt I'd scattered alongside the basalt. With a bit of coaxing, scarlet flowers edged in black bloomed outward.

Almost immediately, they caught fire, smoke trickling outward to carry their seeds up to the massive clouds overhead.

Lovely. Such a fascinating plant, with a defense the likes of which I'd never seen before, and it would fit perfectly in with my floor. More food for the bounding deer, as well.

And speaking of.

The scorch hounds and mottled scorpions would be migrating down, as soon as I carved a tunnel for them, but there was one creature I could put in now. One that I had never seen, actually, which was odd—rarely did a schema enter my core that I didn't use immediately.

And that was what had led me to the situation. So it was only now, in a land with plenty of room and greenery tucked in the corners, would I create them.

…some of them.

See, the funny thing about creating an entire floor was that it tended to leave you a little light on mana. I had, roughly, seventeen points to my name, which was. Ah.

Not a lot.

But I could, presumably, start the basis of one herd, four or five to start exploring the seventh floor and show me what changes I would need to make.

With all my concerns soothed by ambition, I gathered almost all of my mana and woven it into living flesh.

Their antlers emerged first, twisting, knotted things of ivory-white; then then body, sleek, covered in grey-brown fur with white on the underbelly, perked ears with black edges, wide, eyes–

The bounding deer, some eight-nine feet tall, opened its eyes. Its hooves sparked and skittered over the basalt, tail flicking, branched antlers bobbing and weaving as it tilted its head—then, in the far distance, some pocket of coal rumbled and belched another cloud of smoke.

The deer disappeared.

I stared at the space.

Now, that was a touch of hyperbole, but I– well.

The fucker was fast.

But my points of awareness were faster, so I caught up with it; even in the darkness, eyes wide and pupils wider, it threw itself over the harsh environment like it had been born there. Which it had. Its—his—leaps seemed almost attuned to the sky, carrying him in massive bounds as he threw himself away from the perceived danger, unaware of where he was going but only away.

Well, if I had wanted the scorch hounds to expend all the energy they had, these were certainly going to give them a run.

Eventually, he calmed down, slowing to a mere trot. His head stayed swiveling, peering with cautious eyes at what elements of his environment he could see, but already in the adaptive mana of my dungeon I could see him begin to see better, to change to match this darkened cavern. His antlers gleamed.

Fascinating.

Moving quickly to catch him before he spooked, I wove three more bounding deer—all I could afford, considering their size—and dropped them directly behind him. He did, of course, immediately sprint away, but this time they were all terrified, and the three new members of his herd ran with him. Innate instincts I didn't care to dig deeper into took over and suddenly they were scared together. A family.

How cute. I would never understand prey animals.

But for now, they ran around the seventh floor, exploring as best they could in the deep and the dark; it would take them time and likely multiple generations before the smoke could be called hospitable, and already I knew I would have to add more hidden greenery to support their lanky size, but they were here, and they were alive.

And, two floors above, my points of awareness focused in on the scorch hounds.

Soon they would be here.

There were perhaps two dozen, shrunken from the three that had been there before, and still their ribs protruded and they watched the Magelord goblins below with hungry eyes. The female still had the beast-tamer—attempted beast-tamer, really—kobold at her side, though it looked like she'd stopped trying to kill him, if the healed scratches over his scales said anything. It likely had more to do with it being a waste of effort than any real amiability on her side.

The kobold was making progress, though. I could see it in his thoughts—he wanted to work with her, to be a team.

I wondered what he'd think of the seventh floor.

Come down, I wanted to croon, come to your new paradise—but the empty hollow where mana usually sat was heavy in my soul, and I couldn't create more out of nothing. Damn.

Soon, though. I had no concept of the outside world, no sun or tides to notice, but I could tell that it had been close to a day; new invaders would be coming soon, and with them, mana. Enough for me to carve a tunnel for the scorch hounds and mottled scorpions.

Gods.

When had I gone to waiting for invaders?

Life could be strange, at times.

But life could be strange or normal or boring or incredible, and all I could do was experience it—so I bunkered down, watching my cove entrance, and prepared for the mana needed to complete my seventh floor.

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