Kevin Curry
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Chapter 16: The first rumbles of the earth
🕑 Added 2022-05-30 18:09:59 +0000 UTCPurz pulled through on the official quest, fortunately. So Casimir had a half dozen maps of the intended tunnel system, the ones the kobolds didn’t dig themselves, and a mission to map out the new tunnels while the government assembles a group of knights and puts them through a crash course on fighting kobolds, as few of them have ever had to do so before.
Casimir hated mapping quests. Well, kobolds were generally unpleasant to deal with, as their universally metal weapons made their melee combat strength annoyingly high, and even if their more intricate trap mechanisms could be enjoyable to examine… there was still the matter of the dangerous traps that he was responsible for disarming safely. Responsibility sucked.
But… if you want something done right, you can’t let something like that stop you from doing things yourself. First, Casimir went to the same area where he found the kobolds in the first place. Impressively, they had already fixed the damage and sealed off the entrance that the kobolds knew Casimir knew about, replacing it with solid stone. The mana density of the stone was slightly higher than the surrounding parts, so it was clearly fixed magically. Kobolds weren’t very good at stone magic, but they could still use it, if slowly. The finesse and speed in which the repair was done… another unusual facet of the situation.
Still, while they did make it a wall instead of a door… to an adventurer, the difference between a wall and a door was the thickness, and this? This was the thickness of a door. Just to be thorough, he pulsed stone mana throughout the cavern, allowing the shape of the terrain to percolate in his head as he brought out one of the maps, sitting at the desk that the code wheel was in to do the delicate work.
Now, despite his familiarity with the technique of sensing terrain with stone mana, he was far from an expert at it. He could only discern shapes within a couple dozen meters, instead of the hundred meter radius a trained stone sorcerer could manage. While the amount of mana used was low, it was still pretty loud, magically, so Casimir made sure to keep his senses alert for any attempt to sneak up on him. It wasn’t quite as loud as an equal amount of mind mana, as mind mana was by its nature extremely easy to sense.
After ten minutes of careful sketching, Casimir was confident that he had adequately mapped out this section. Now, should he go through the stone wall, or go around to the other entrance?
…He’s still undetected, so no need to go breaking doors in yet. Packing the maps back up, Casimir maneuvered around the tunnels to get to the other section they had found that was already on the maps. On the way, he found a kobold scouting party, but there were only six of them so it was a simple matter to lop off their heads with his fancy new sword and destroy the body with the condensing technique, which also provided a small amount of extra income for the mission with the empowered monster cores. Well, less ‘extra income’ and more ‘grocery money’, but the point was to make sure the corpses weren’t easily found. Besides, the special soap that removed his scent worked a lot better on cleaning off monster goo than blood. Kobolds have way too good of a scent of smell to not take such precautions.
Scouting out monster encampments and dungeons was a common solo task, before his sabbatical. Every time one gets discovered, there were plenty of smart types that preferred to contract out the most dangerous parts of dungeon delving. Some people thought that the value in dungeons were the rare monsters, as they only tended to form once there were enough other monsters around, conditions that only dungeons generated. What people forgot was that most dungeons were ruins left by some other civilization that fell for some reason, and thus there was actually a goodly amount of treasure in most dungeons… but it got cleared out so quickly that only the first few teams to go in ever got any. Which was mostly the scouts, of course.
It was the only reason such jobs weren’t hilariously expensive, anyway. But this time there will probably be no notable treasure. Just Casimir and his civic duty was what kept him here, occasionally pulsing more stone mana to map out the secret tunnels without actually entering them.
It was after the first time Casimir found and defeated a proper ten man squad of kobolds that he was sure that the kobolds knew he was around. Was it killing the scouts that gave him away, or the stone magic? Still, even with the easy sections mapped out he still needed to find a route into that large cavern he spotted the first time, and none of the original tunnel system he was in was close enough to it for him to detect it.
This called for some clever improvisation. Ideally, he’d have another team create a distraction so he could penetrate further into their defenses. Could his students… no. They’d die. Probably. Instead… he took out his paint and enchanting brush, creating a quick magical trap for the next kobolds who come to check on the latest casualties. Once completed, he quickly dashed back to an exit, leaving through some warehouse owned by the city currently filled with a stockpile of road building materials and dashing like a thief towards another entrance, this one at a customs checkpoint. This part was mostly luck…
After finding an entrance to the hidden tunnel system, he waited for his moment. Then, as expected, the enchantments he set exploded with mana to his senses, assaulting the kobolds caught up in it with a crude but powerful mind curse that convinced them they were under attack. Within minutes, they should be able to communicate with the other kobolds and draw most of the combat ready force over there, leaving this entrance with a token number of defenders at best.
Having waited long enough, Casimir went through the motions of this particular secret door mechanism: two-thirds down, then left, hold for two clicks, right, up to one-third, right again, four clicks, then left and all the way down, finishing the unlocking by pulling the lever outwards before returning it to the neutral position. Really, once you’ve seen enough of these, they’re not that hard to figure out, it’s just a number puzzle. It has to be, as the kobolds need to have a way to unlock it without having access to the creator.
Still, now that he was inside, it was time to move up to the edges of his map and pulse more mana, then retreat to a discreet location so he could mark it all down. When he was halfway through the drafting, a massive pulse of stone mana moved through the terrain, his mana sensing spell interpreting it as a shuddering grinding sound echoing through the tunnels. Good thing he was perched on a barrier rather than touching the stone…
…Crap. If there was any proof that the kobolds had some monster with stone magic on staff, that was it. The pulse came from deeper into the complex, from the big cavern he was just now making the marks on his map for.
Well, he didn’t get to be elite-ranked by giving up when he needed to change tactics. This new result did explain why the kobolds eventually converged on wherever he used the terrain sensing spell.
This time, he inked a little magical trap where he was, before making two more after sneaking to other locations, before casting the spell once more in a fourth location, synchronized to when he set the other three to go off. With four simultaneous locations, none of which was where he was drafting his maps, the kobolds weren’t going to get anywhere by following those instructions.
“That's where the traps are.” Casimir whispered to himself as he finally detected the place he was going to label the ‘warren entrance’ rather than just as regular tunnels. It appeared to be a scything blade trap, even without sensing the metal directly the thin line of talc painted to resemble the rest of the wall was a dead giveaway. That little trick isn’t something you’d find in a new kobold warren, but he already knew this place was held by high tier kobolds.
After a few more distractions and chaos sown, including a few war parties that he had to skill due to being spotted while drafting the map. Casimir was pretty confident that he had the entirety of the tunnel system on this side of the warren, all four entrances of it, mapped. He wasn’t going to assume there wasn’t another exit somewhere that didn’t connect to these tunnels, after all. Nevethreless, that’s enough work for now.
It was a mapping quest, after all. That meant killing a few dozen of the groups that had been patrolling, exhausted from a long day of frantically searching for the assassin in their midst, was strictly outside of the contract.
Luckily, Casimir’s rich enough that he doesn’t need to care about headcounts on kobolds.
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“Alright Adventurer Toomes.” Guildmaster Purz said once the meeting started. “This is Knight-Commander Carpenter. He’ll be the one leading the knights into this kobold warren.” The Knight Commander was a middle-aged freckle-faced human, his blonde hair and fair features only marred by the massive scar he had across his upper lip and cheeks, ruining any chance that he could grow a mustache while giving him a mocking parody of one made out of scar tissue. “Knight-Commander Carpenter? This is Adventurer Toomes. He’s the one who discovered the kobold problem, and the one who accepted the mapping quest you authorized.”
With the introductions handled, Casimir took out the scroll case he stashed in his enchanted bag and started bringing out the maps. “As you can see, the kobolds have a substantial network of tunnels that amount to about triple the official guerilla tunnels. Even for kobolds, this kind of work would take months. Doing it under everyone’s noses? They have backup.”
“So they have other monsters under their control that’s helping them?” Knight-Commander Carpenter asked.
“My bet is the other way around.” Casimir retorted. “These kobolds are restrained, disciplined. Something in this main chamber pulsed out stone aspected mana, I assume in an attempt to locate me for its minions. Whatever they have, it’s strong, and given that the kobolds have different behavior, the simple answer is that they’re under the control of another monster that’s smart enough to do this kind of plot and capable enough to bully the kobolds into going along with it.” The question is, what is their plot? Yes, having a powerful warren of kobolds under your control is a useful thing that could be bent to many ends… but what end was this particular mastermind going for?
“Hm. Tell me, Adventurer Toomes, what would you recommend as an approach?” Knight-Commander Carpenter questioned, although something about how he said it made Casimir bite back a sarcastic response.
“Well, first you’d want to draw out as many of them outside their defenses as possible.” Casimir began. “When I was scouting, they sent out over four hundred kobolds to try and kill me. Small parties at first, but after I went through…” Casimir took out the bag of kobold monster cores he collected during the job, allowing them to spill out on the table. Fortunately, the horrible smell only came up when the blood red spheres were damaged, or wet. “-this many, they started sticking together with their roaming groups, and taking on over thirty at a time is too much for me to risk when I’m alone.”
Purz picked up one of the kobold cores, examining it. “You bothered collecting these?” He asked, somewhat incredulous. “You even compressed them… Why?” It was a fair question, even that whole bag, with over a hundred cores, only increased the quest pay by a fifth, and that estimate was optimistic. Military quests paid well.
Casimir shrugged. “It’s easier to lose a tail when the monster corpses aren’t in good condition. I’m pretty fast at it by now.” He took out the nearly empty bottle of scent neutralizing soap he had. “Speaking of, do you have any of this in the storage room? Take it out of my pay.” When Casimir says that it pays to be thorough and clean up any stains after every fight, he meant it, but it could apply equally to the literal payment made to the alchemists as to the dividends of not getting sniffed out by little bear-dog men with pointy bits of metal.
Purz picked up the bottle and looked at the maker’s mark gilded on the glass bottle. “...Yeah, we do. I’ll get it after the meeting.”
“Good.” Casimir said, collecting the cores back into the pouch and then placing it back in his enchanted bag. “As I was saying, a good start to any operation would be for me to skirmish with them and lure out more kobolds before the mage knights come in and clear out the larger groups. That’ll take care of a few hundred of them.”
The Knight-Commander contemplated the plan. With a meaningful glance at his bag, where the kobold cores were kept, he gave a firm nod. “We’ve already lost strategic surprise, so that would be a good start.” He started going through the maps with more detail, matching up the sheets that connected to one another and spreading them out in an attempt to get a clear picture. “Four choices, huh?”
“Minimum.” Casimir replied. “I’d like to spend tomorrow trying to find other entrances and exits to the tunnel system they’re using. While I’m not concerned about kobolds trying to abandon their warren, I can’t say the same for whatever’s calling the shots.” Of course, tracking the specific exits is a bit of a fool’s errand, but you can’t set someone to sense the bastard making a new tunnel magically until you’ve removed the possibility of them using pre-existing tunnels. “That reminds me: Given this warren’s demonstrated capabilities, we can’t rule out that the tunnel system will change its layout between now and when the operation occurs.”
That particular possibility earned Casimir a snort from the Knight-Commander. “So like real enemies, then?” He waved off Casimir’s concern. “I’ve already stationed diviners to observe the area around the clock for large scale magic, we’ll catch any redecorating they try to do.”
“If there are any other sets of tunnels in this area, by the way, you should probably tell me.” Casimir added. “If you don’t, I’m going to find them anyway, and I’d like to avoid any misunderstandings from any twitchy security forces that may or may not be with the government.”
“None that I know of.” Smoothly replied the Knight-Commander. “If you find any, assume they’re criminals or made by the kobolds.” Or both. “Only set I know of is in Nexus.” Well, naturally the government would have some secret facilities in the capital city. Casimir would be disappointed if there weren’t any.
“So you can feel free to get these copied, I’ll pick them back up after I take a look around in a few places outside of town that would be a good spot to hide a secret cave.” Casimir said, leaning back and stretching as he prepared to leave. “Anything else you’d like to ask me before I get some dinner?”
“No, this is good work for the first day.” Knight-Commander Carpenter said, still looking through the drafted maps. “The knights will complete their anti-kobold tactics course by the end of the week, just get us as much information as you can in that time and we’ll eliminate this threat to the country.” He chopped his hand, manifesting a blade of air around his fingers for emphasis. “It’s a simple operation. Get in, kill them all. Easy.”
Casimir frowned at the cavalier way he was treating this. It was bad luck to say such things about a mission…
Well, as long as he was ready for when it all went sideways, Casimir would probably pull through. Unless that stone magic source decides to make things complicated.
Which it definitely will.
