Khenal
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Chapter One-Hundred Fifty-One
🕑 Added 2023-05-04 23:56:01 +0000 UTCIn hindsight, in my eagerness to get an enclave and so a project to keep me busy, I may have forgotten that an expansion gets me more than just a bigger sandbox. I blame how long it’s been since I expanded. Totally a good excuse, right?
Well, this is why I drill into Violet the need to have plenty of extra mana before expanding. Before I get into the new stuff, I focus a bit on my fire ants, first. The basic ones aren’t all that impressive, but I have easily enough mana to upgrade them to cinder ants. Interestingly, the resource focus I’ve taken the main hill into seems to work even with these. I might not actually need to get into the volcanic section if I want volcanic ash for Coda to play with for the concrete. Even better, the ants seem to build little nests out of coal and what I’m pretty sure is coke. If my ratlings can get that, steel production should get way easier.
I’ll probably want to encourage the bats to help the plants in here along, too, as the ants are working on processing them. Plants become coal, coal becomes coke, coke becomes steel… once my ratlings start gathering it, at least.
Interesting as the cinder ants are, they’re far from my only denizens down here. Yes, a new expansion means a new spawner! It’s even dragons! Technically. They don’t look very draconic to me, but they have the little tag, or whatever it technically is. What they actually look like are tiny graboids from tremors, but made out of magma. They’re wyrms, and are magma affinity.
As is tradition, I spend the mana to make a new scion, and watch with interest as she crawls out of the little wyrm den. Little being relative. The wyrms are around a foot thick and around six feet long, but I get the feeling they could easily get big enough to take up a full lava tube with enough upgrades. But back to my new scion… what should I name her?
Cinder or Ember are pretty classic, but they don’t quite feel right. Sure, she’s fairly small right now, but if she ends up being a big actual dragon, the name just won’t fit anymore. I could call her Grendel, but that doesn’t feel right, either. I should lean more into the fire and heat, rather than the dragon. Not a lot of lady dragons to name her after, feels like.
Corona? That’s certainly leaning hard into the heat aspect. People often like to talk about the surface or the sun as being hot, but it’s tame compared to the corona. I think the surface is around 10,000 degrees, while the corona can top 100k? I honestly don’t remember the specifics, just that the corona is the hottest part. The name feels closer, but still not quite right for her. What’s hotter than a star’s corona? Hmm… well, there’s one other thing stars can do that’s probably hotter. I don’t know if it’s technically hotter, but a Nova has some ridiculous energy output.
Yeah… Nova sounds perfect. She seems to slump a bit under the weight of the grandiose name, and I do my best to encourage her. I don’t need her to live up to the raw power of her namesake, but I figure we might as well aim high. Even if we miss, we’ll land among the stars, right? For now, Nova, just try to get used to life and living. I’m sure the other scions will come visit you, soon.
In fact, I poke Teemo to visit her and help her get settled before he heads out. We’ve kinda both been procrastinating on that, but we really should get on it. I think I’ll send him out in the morning with a tundra wolf. I don’t think there’s much else that I’ll need him here for, even if I’d like to have him around anyway. While talking with delvers is good and helps build trust, I kinda need to start building it with Southwood, especially if I’m going to be helping him with defense.
I watch my wyrms and ants as they start to populate the lava tubes, and wonder what kind of invader I’ll be attracting, as I wait for Teemo to make his entrance. If it’s anything like in the caverns, I might be getting the attention of something from the next biome, or whatever it technically is. If the caverns got those dire mosquitoes from the underswamps, what kind of critter will the volcanic area send at me?
Maybe just some lava variant of what I’ve already seen? Lava slimes, fire bats, obsidian snakes? Hmm. Those sound pretty cool, but I don’t think it’s going to be something that simple. Maybe an elemental? Or even something draconic? I don’t have much information to base my imagination on, so I just let it wander until Teemo arrives in the tubes. Nova is a bit deeper, so I nudge her to make her way to him, instead of making him start making shortcuts just to get to her.
“You know I don’t mind looking around and making them, right Boss? What kind of scout doesn’t enjoy blazing trails?”
Heh, that’s fair. I just feel like I’m putting more work on you lately, so I want to try to lessen it when I can.
My Voice smiles. “Yeah, I get that. But it’s good to have something to do. Helps keep me from worrying…” he trails off as he glances in the direction of the underswamps.
Yeah… I know that feel. Having something to do is why I decided to expand. I’d probably go nuts if I didn’t have something to work on while waiting for word from the Southwood or from the depths. You can make some shortcuts after chatting with Nova, if you want. I’d like to get you on the trail to the Southwood in the morning.
“Sounds good to me, Boss. Try not to be too lonely without me, yeah?” he says with a smirk, and we share a laugh as Nova pokes her head through the wall of the tube Teemo’s in.
“Ah, heya Nova! The Boss wanted me to check in on you. Things can be a bit hectic, especially right at the start. How’re you doing?”
She rumbles and does a little bow, earning her a resigned look from Teemo. People and scions both are only going to get more and more nervous talking to him for the first time as I grow, after all.
“Just Teemo is fine, Nova. Yeah, I know what your name means. Don’t think of it as an expectation, but as a goal. The Boss will take care of you even if you never get a single level. I’m still just a rat, after all,” he says with a smirk, though it doesn’t seem to have eased her concerns.
“Don’t worry, Nova, I’m sure you’ll grow into it. And don’t worry about the Boss not immediately having a specific job for you to do. For now, just try to get settled, and maybe visit some of the others when you get a chance. Did you have anything else you wanted to ask the Boss, besides your name?”
She wriggles uncertainly and gives a quiet rumble, somehow managing to look and sound rather shy. Teemo just gives her a smile. “Yes, you can wander wherever you like, though you might need to be careful in the manor to not burn it down. And you can go talk to the others, too. You’d probably like Jello, in fact. She’s very friendly and mostly patrols the various caves and tunnels for invaders. Most of us did basically that at the start, and a lot of us still do.”
Nova looks like she’s trying to chew on that idea for a few seconds, before she turns and looks at the wall.
“You spot something? If it’s an invader, go kill it,” encourages Teemo. Nova looks like she doesn’t want to just take off on a hunt where he can see, but a little shoving motion from him gets her into gear.
Wow, really into gear. Teemo’s going to need to be on his A-game to make his shortcuts work faster than the wyrms can tunnel, or at least Nova. She dives into the wall like it’s made of water, leaving behind a plug of molten rock as she goes. As I watch her, I can see it’s more than just a plug. She really is basically just swimming through the rock, melting it and zipping through like an eel in water.
I quickly look ahead to see what she’s after, and I get to see the new invader. It’s… I don’t know what it is. It’s labeled a fire elemental, but aside from being really hot, it’s not like what I would expect a fire elemental to be. It’s not a vaguely-humanoid flame, nor even a floating fireball. It’s more like an amoeba made of napalm.
It doesn’t move like my slimes, either. They move more like slugs or snails, mostly gliding forward as a single mass. This thing launches a tendril of itself forward and then flows into it. It’s kinda disturbing, actually. It’s also surprisingly quick, though that’s only compared to my slimes. Jello can manage about a brisk walk when she’s at top speed, but this thing is moving at a jerky gallop. It probably averages a decent jogging pace, but trying to fight something like that in melee would probably be a very bad idea.
Or a bad idea if you’re flammable. Nova does a remarkable missile impression as she exits the wall, and her triple mandibles snatch the thing up before it can react. I think. The elemental is so alien I have no idea. She simply swallows it, and chews a bit of the tunnel that has bits of it left, and I make sure to send her some feelings of praise through the bond.
She’s certainly not what I expected of a dragon, but she’s strong and fierce like one. I can trust her to keep the tubes safe, and depending on how quickly she advances, and how long it takes to find the other dungeon, she might even get to go on a proper rampage.
Comments
SciGuy75
I really do feel for the Dungeon Inspectors with the volume of paperwork Thediem is. Also I love the difference in intensity with Violet and her two baby scions and love of cave bunnies, Hullbreaker with a formidable great white shark and new albatross, then Thediem with a brand new magma dragon and to-be third enclave.
Wolf_Senpai
Im trying really hard to picture someone fighting them for real... Dude has a LITERAL grim reaper, a flying serpent with the mana output of a dungeon core capable of literally erasing continents if it wanted to, A boxing zombie capable of smacking the shit out of anything, a magical hand that can make or break pretty much any enchantment, an RND and Construction team currently making concrete and can turn just about anything into metal, a rat that can dump an entire army on your doorstep in an instant once his shortcut is setup, a pack of tundra wolves that love the cold, and now a fire wyrm that swims through solid bedrock like its water at very high speed.... To ACTUALLY take them on in a no hold barred fight.... There aren't enough cartographers in the universe to remap the world after they are done. And that isnt even listing all the insanely over powered mountain erasing tsunami crushing scions.
Brandon Johnson
Graboids were great. It was to bad that they killed off Burt in end. It would be funny if they end up looking like a** blasters in the end
