No Need for a Core?

Kazue was full of conflicted feelings as she watched the adventuring party set forth to delve into her dungeon. On the one tail, this was her dungeon and her creatures, she really wanted them to at least have a good showing! On another tail, her mom was turning out to be way cooler than she ever thought. On a third tail, her husband was working hard to make this a challenge, and she didn’t want his efforts to go to waste.

It was a good thing kitsune could count problems on tails instead of on hands. The thought made her want to giggle, but even in her own head that sounded like stress laughter, and repressed it. Which was not an easy thing for her to do, but it wasn’t as bad as usual. Which brought up another point of mixed feelings.

When Mordecai had asked her to trust him, she’d only given it a moment’s thought. Aside from the fact that over the past several weeks she had fallen for him, she’d also already thrown her lot in with him. In for a copper, in for a gold. Though it didn’t hurt that she had the security of knowing most of the people there. She knew her husband was clever; a clever person wasn’t going to do something stupid near such a crowd; therefore, he wasn’t doing something stupid. Or at least not the bad sort of stupid, but there was the risk of impulsive-stupid, which she only considered after she’d had the tea. She was rather familiar with the subject of impulsive-stupid on a personal level.

She hadn’t noticed what the tea was doing until Mordecai had asked her how she was feeling, which caused Kazue to take a moment to reflect on how she was feeling. Which was to say, she was feeling great, and that in itself was kind of scary. Mostly because she didn’t know why she was feeling great. And if she didn't know to analyze what and how she was thinking, it's easy not to notice what her mind was doing. Her core and avatar had already split their focus to different things, yet her head didn’t hurt while keeping track of conversations, and she didn't need to retreat into her thoughts to recover from the effort. It was still kind of tiring, but it was tolerable, and it didn’t make her feel quite so fuzzy-headed.

Which meant she was entirely free to pay attention to both what Mordecai was doing and what was going on with the party itself, and still keep track of the conversation with the Matr-, er, with Aia. Though by the time the party had decided to take a short break for the fourth floor, she was feeling it wear off, and leaned into Mordecai to quietly ask, “Um, that tea you made for me earlier, could I have another?”

He looked over at her thoughtfully, and she could feel him weighing options. “Is it feeling noisy again?” Kazue nodded mutely. She felt embarrassed, though she couldn’t have told anyone why she was embarrassed. And ‘fuzzy’ seemed more accurate to her, but she could see someone else call it noisy. Which left her wondering how he knew.

Even more puzzled was Moriko, who was stuck watching the two of them talk about a subject indirectly without having yet been let in on the topic. But with a guest it wasn’t time to get into any of it, so he simply made a cup for her and handed it over. This time she watched the creation of the brew carefully, and made note of its ingredients. She blinked. It wasn’t that hard to make, and she was able to backfill the conceptual process to create it. Start with a blend of about 90% tea leaves, plus a few other herbs noted for helping with alertness such as ginseng and ginger, brew a big pot of it, make it strong, then just remove a lot of the water. Add honey to compensate for the taste, which only helped so much.

That was it? Just a concentrated wake-up brew? OK, not ‘just’, she wasn’t sure how most people would be able to concentrate it that much without burning it. But that was all it took to make her head feel more like when she was zoned in? And how the hells did he know? She had so many questions, but she still only had two 'minds', and one needed to focus on entertaining their guest while the other was keeping track of what was going on in the rest of the dungeon. So for the moment she just tried to sip at her bitter brew. At least she could make her own now and as a direct copy. Mordecai was the one who had spent time bringing the concept into existence in their shared information.

“What is going on with you three?” Aia asked with a sigh. “If you can speak of it of course.” Mordecai and Moriko looked towards their guest, but Kazue could feel that the decision weighed on her. It was her issue after all. She only hesitated a moment.

“It’s complicated, and I need to take some time to figure it out. Depending upon what I learn, I may call upon you when I can to talk about it. But right now it is private, sorry. It just needed to be dealt with quickly.” Kazue said. The dark-haired nine-tail tilted her head to the side as she gave Kazue a curious look, briefly becoming The Matriarch again. It made Kazue nervous, but she was able to keep herself restrained to just flickering her ears slightly, and refused to fill in the silence.

“Very well, I apologize for prying, but seeing all three of you distracted when other things are happening is a little concerning.” Her expression softened as she spoke. “I would be happy to lend an ear later if you choose.”

Kazue held back from sighing in relief and changed the topic instead. “So, Mordecai love, what’s the game plan? You are too competitive to let this go, but I have to admit they are kind of trashing the place.” This sort of stuff was very much not her forte, but she also knew that she needed to learn it.

He smiled in response. “I haven’t fully formed all of my ideas yet, but I know where I want to start. I want to fill in two of our boss spots. Horace for our second fourth-floor boss, and our stony friend for our second raid boss. I know more about what I want to do with an earth elemental, I’ve been thinking about it since he came to us, but I am open to ideas with Horace, assuming neither you nor Horace have any objections.”

Kazue pulled an absolute blank on anything special to have her librarian do in an actual fight. His ability to eject people from the library was a function of her intent to enforce the rules that were part of the challenge. Her mind briefly bounced to thinking about how focused Mordecai had been about ‘intent’ recently, but then she yanked her thoughts back on track. “I’m OK with it. I’ll ask Horace, you talk to the elemental.”

She closed her eyes briefly to send her mental query to the orangutan, and after some consideration got an affirmative ‘ook’. That made her pause a second in confusion. Apes were already rather smart creatures, and she was certain that the upgrades she’d given him should enable him to physically speak, and thus more than capable mentally. Was he just choosing not to? She shook that off and opened her eyes.

“He says yes. Well, ‘ook’, but I’m pretty certain it’s a yes.” Mordecai raised an eyebrow, and she just shrugged to show her confusion.

“OK then.” Mordecai replied, “Well, I’ve also gotten an affirmation, and I’ve named him Enki. He’s soaking up the mana pool for his slot and growing right now, and I’ve made sure to emphasize the traits I want for him, namely that he can flow unimpeded through all stone, including worked stone and dungeon stone. Outside of that, I suspect he’s mostly going to be brute strength at first, though I am sure he’ll develop more abilities as we all grow stronger.”

He leaned forward over the table where his illusion was displayed and moved it to show the boss room for the library. “Given his abilities, Enki has an entire floor to hide under, and pop up at the right time to land surprise attacks. It’s hard for people to look up and down at the same time. But while Biblios out in the open is fine for a weaker group, with three strong spell casters he’d be blasted out of the air quickly. So I want to also develop some cover for Biblios, and integrate Horace into the fight. So I am opening the floor to ideas before I talk about my own, I don't want to cut off any thoughts.”

The four of them looked at the illusion in silence for a little while. Aia was probably not going to give any of her thoughts, she had a bit of a conflict of interest here. And Kazue was coming up blank trying to figure out what sort of special powers she’d want to give an ape to become a boss. She had a feeling that making him bigger would just make things worse here.

“Oh, I have an idea!” Moriko said with sudden excitement animating her. “So, in addition to our regular training, we often get some opportunities to spar with various masters who are passing through. This is to say, we ‘trade pointers’ by getting beaten up, and hopefully manage to learn something in the process. And to be fair, most of us do. Anyway, one of them was the crazy old dude who had mastered Monkey Style. And not just ground fighting either. The arena for him was put together with a lot of our climbing exercise equipment plus extra scaffolding put together just for this. We were given a day to get used to fighting in the arena, and it was clear that this guy wasn’t going to be staying on the ground, so we got used to climbing everything as best we could. Didn’t matter. That man could swing through there like he was an actual monkey. Bastard broke my nose when he swung down for a kick, then let go of his ‘branch’ while he still had momentum, pushing me back before he used me as a launch point to jump up to a different branch.” She shook her head with a rueful smile. “It was a blast, but I’m thankful for healing magic, or I’d probably have a crooked nose.”

Kazue was having trouble visualizing it exactly, but Mordecai was smiling evilly, so she knew that she was going to find out, and moments later she could feel Mordecai begin to reshape the Annex. While he did so, Moriko continued to talk about the visiting master. “He was amazing. Our masters sent us into the arena in groups of ten, 15 minutes apart, or when the last trainee went down, whichever happened first. Lots of people tried to form defensive groups to buy time and let our numbers build, but I don’t think any group ever hit the 15-minute mark. He had the best stories too. Apparently, he met a group of awakened apes and monkeys who were studying in a far-off monastery on another continent. Given how perfect his fighting style was, I could almost believe his tales. Though I am pretty certain he was ribbing us on one thing, he claimed the head monk of the monastery was a silverback named Ki.”

There was a heartbeat of stunned silence as that awful pun settled into place, and Kazue burst into giggle fits. “Oh gods above, that has to be a joke, right? Like, no druid would actually do that to a creature they awakened, would they?” Ki, the ape monk. The idea was ridiculous. Mordecai only shook his head in amusement while he continued his work, and Aia sighed, lowering her face into her hands.

Moriko grinned. “I know, I am with you on that. But he swore up, down, and sideways that it was true. We tried to get him drunk to see if he’d change his tune, but the man could guzzle fermented drake’s bane without blinking an eye.” She snorted. “Mixed advantage of our training I guess. Harder to poison, but harder to enjoy a drink too.”

While she was talking, Mordecai had finished modifying the Annex, growing branches between the bookcases in a complicated pattern, but as he did so Kazue noticed him doing something else as well, creating covered intersections and tying them together. Not physically, but… she turned the full attention of her core there and watched ... something being connected. Language was failing her to describe the connections, but as she watched her core instinctively analyzed what he was doing, and she felt herself absorbing mathematical concepts she’d never heard of. It itched. Specifically, it made her core itch. That was new, not to mention extremely unpleasant, and not entirely accurate since the core didn’t have nerves, but once again language failed to give her an exact word, and itch described so many physical and mental sensations already.

He also connected the network of intersections to a dozen points in newly carved tunnels behind the bookcases. But these were a little different, they drifted randomly throughout the tunnels. “What is up with those connection points? And why does that set drift randomly, and why are they set behind the bookcases instead of in the arena?”

Mordecai chuckled softly “Well, this is me testing my limits. What I’ve done is connect these points,” here he highlighted the spots on the map for Moriko and Aia to see, “so that they are spatially adjacent. It’s not entirely a new thing for us, you touched on this sort of reality-changing when you created the library. The fourth floor is not 5 stories below the third, yet the library fits just fine. Don’t look at all of it, higher dimensional math is one thing, actually seeing in higher dimensions as a creature that exists in our three spatial dimensions is another.”

Mordecai’s words made Kazue start, as that was exactly what she was about to do. At first she was thinking he just knew her that well, but then she made a different connection. “Oh, you did that before didn’t you?”

“Guilty as charged, though that was in my original dungeon, and I had ten floors at the time. My core had a headache for a week. No, don’t ask me how that works, as far as I can tell I never figured that one out. That was one of the memories I kept as a warning, I would be so annoyed if I experienced that again, then recovered the memory that could have prevented it. But as for the random ones, it offsets things a bit. It does make it harder for the party to figure out which bookshelf Horace might be behind, but it also makes it harder for Horace to have an opening exactly where he wants. Though with sufficient time he can also just dash through the tunnels. I made sure there are plenty of vertical sections and hand grips everywhere. This way he can potentially ambush from behind them as well. Once the party knows that he can move between the intersections, they probably won't think about a different set of locations until Horace uses them.”

She could well imagine how annoying that would be. Kazue also had an idea that might work with this ambush setup. “Oh, Mordecai, I had a thought. So, I kind of want Horace to keep the librarian theme, what if he could use books as weapons? Maybe throw them or something if someone isn’t close?” Mordecai tilted his head thoughtfully, while Moriko chuckled.

“I know Horace won’t be up to my old master’s skill, but the idea of throwing that style together with a teleporting ‘archer’ sounds all kinds of annoying. Not necessarily much more deadly, but frustrating.”

The monk’s words made Mordecai smile evilly once more. “You are quite right love, it would be. And imagine if he could not only throw heavy tomes, but ink as well? And I don’t just mean ink, I mean any ink.” Moriko looked a touch confused, but his comment sent Kazue’s mind racing, and she could see from Aia’s expression that the matriarch was following the same chain of thought.

There were a lot of things that were considered inks. The line between ink and paint was a lot blurrier than most people thought, it mostly was about what surface it was going to be applied to. And there were a lot of different types of paper too. And then there were special ink compositions done for various symbols, religious or arcane. She could feel her core analyzing all her memories of doing art and calligraphy at the temple, expanding the concept of ink as far as it could and cross-referencing with the materials available to them.

Kazue also felt Mordecai act while her mind raced with possibilities, officially assigning Horace as their second fourth-floor boss and feeding his intent for a combined monk and projectile slinger, complete with an image of a satchel on either side. Then the node pulled that intent from them, combining their ideas together into a new whole as it merged with Horace’s form, drawing an evil smile from her to match Mordecai's. “Oh, I can’t wait to see what that’s going to be like!”

The process had made her a bit dizzy actually, but she was excited to have been more directly part of the boss-making process like that. Unfortunately, that was going to be a while still, which Mordecai was quick to point out. “Since that isn’t going to happen soon, I have another thing I want to work on. I wanted to make a special version of the staff for your mother. She may be wrecking the place, but she’s also dumping a ton of mana into it. Besides, she’s my mother-in-law, I think I can play favorites a little bit.”

As she and Mordecai started getting to work, Kazue couldn’t help but overhear Moriko sigh and turn to Aia. “I love them both, but they get wrapped up in this. I get it, and I am happy to contribute where I can, but times like this there isn’t a lot for me to do. I don’t suppose you happen to have a suitable combat style for a spar? They’d barely notice as long as we don’t break anything.”

The nine-tail laughed softly. “I’m afraid not. Oh, if it came down to it, I can hold my own in close quarters against most foes, but I am another spell specialist. Hmm, if you stop by the clan sometime, I can introduce you to my son. He runs the monastery side of the religious orders. I’m sure he’d be just as happy to trade some pointers with you as your old masters were.”

The exchange did make Kazue feel a little bit guilty, but it was really interesting to see the stuff Mordecai was doing too, and for once she wasn’t feeling burnt out and wanted to take full advantage of it.