No Need for a Core?

While Crios happily tested his new abilities and explored his new home, Kazue added some finishing touches to his underwater lair, including connecting to the network of streams and making sure he had fish to catch and eat. The fish weren’t quite right as fish were a lot harder to transport live than crabs, so they’d only had preserved samples to create new ones from. From what Mordecai had taught her, in a few generations their biology should be able to work properly without being in their dungeon’s territory, but they would never quite be the species that they looked like unless they got some proper live samples first.

After that was done it was time to move on to the third floor, and Kazue began reinforcing everything without having to pay much attention to it, the activity was practically becoming a background activity. She did notice something because of it however. “Um, Mordecai, what we’ve been doing has been draining our mana reserves, and while I’m sure it’s going to be useful, I don’t think we’re going to have enough to complete all of the fifth floor any time soon.”

“You are correct, but the longer we wait to change things the harder it is. There is a sort of inertia to well-established dungeon floors, which is why I have been emphasizing creating levels and rooms with built-in variations. That creates a sort of opening to be able to add changes within those limits, and means we don’t have to worry about people memorizing levels.”

Kazue nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense. So what were you thinking about for the third floor, boss-man?” she finished with a teasing smile.

Mordecai gave her a considering look that made her shift nervously, then he slowly smiled at her. “You know, it’s a good thing we’re already married. The way you called me ‘boss-man’ was rather cute. It would be so tempting to take advantage of being your boss.” Her thoughts were torn for a moment between ‘eep’ and ‘yes please’ from his counter tease, but he moved on before she could form a response, leaving her wandering mind to scramble and catch up. “But I am not going to change much on the third floor right now other than the boss room, the environment I want will take some samples we don’t have to get quite right. Besides which, it’s going to take some training for our friends to be able to take full advantage of it. Speaking of which, I need to make a small speech, and I would like to have your avatar with me as well, but the topic may be uncomfortable for you. I am going to be asking some of our laganthros to put themselves through something more extreme than even the normal combat training and challenging our visitors.”

A mix of emotions flowed through her, one of which was frustration at being treated delicately about a topic that should be just normal for a dungeon. But she also understood that trying to push too much to be like a ‘normal’ dungeon could lead to mistakes like the one she’d been about to make earlier. Kazue was herself, neither a normal kitsune nor a normal dungeon, for whatever value the word ‘normal’ had. She was not going to let it hold him back, however. “Alright, so long as they are choosing it.” Kazue knew better than to doubt he’d give them choices, but she felt better making her position clear.

“Give me a moment, then.” He said, and then she could feel him send out a request to the laganthro population. He wanted the thrill-seeking warriors, the ones who truly loved the challenge of combat and throwing themselves at the enemy. For all those who matched that need, they were to gather in the center of the third-floor combat path.

While they gathered, Mordecai pushed at the level to swap out the room for an open area pattern, then added a small stage. While he was prepping that, he handed her a pair of rough concepts as well as a request for a few more dracobits, he’d need them by the second half of his speech. Hmm, what was he up to? Well, the dracobits were easy enough, now that they had one, more of the rabbit population was interested in the upgrade. She was a little worried that they’d run out of rabbit creatures on the first floor given how many were becoming interested in ‘upgrading’ into other rabbit creatures. The only reason they’d managed to keep up so far was that the dungeon environment seemed to encourage their reproduction and growth rate.

But she’d have to worry about that later. The other two concepts she needed to find other volunteers for. One set of volunteers came from Moriko’s efforts early on, while the other set came from a breeding pair that Moriko’s village had brought during their visit. That should do nicely, and they were both cute. They weren’t quite ready by the time the crowd was gathered, but she could finish working on them during the first part of Mordecai’s speech. She had a few ideas, and while she might not be quite the expert monster maker Mordecai was, she was learning and these were very basic changes she was adding to his concepts.

Mordecai transferred his avatar to the podium at the front of the stage, once more pulling together the full pseudo-military outfit she’d designed for him, and Kazue moved herself to a luxurious chair a little behind him, wearing a diaphanous dress of rich green and gold silk. She also wove a quick cooling enchantment into the dress, a magic she could only pull off in their territory. Come to think of it, she didn’t know how to create proper enchantments, that was another thing she needed to learn eventually.

Once the crowd settled down, Mordecai began. “First, I would like to thank you all for how you handled our most recent challengers. You all did very well given the circumstances. However, you have now also seen just how important raw power can be. Fortunately, the limits of your potential have not been reached. So I have a few training regimens that I can offer to let you grow even further on new paths, and combine with your fellow defenders to enable new tactics. I am going to begin with the hardest, most painful path, and I mean that literally. And I can only offer it because unlike those of the outside world, in the morning you will be made whole and healthy. Our dungeon has a zone containing dangerous creatures that are not a part of our community or will.”

He waited for them to react and the noise to calm back down before he continued, “For those who decide to take this path of training, you will be challenged at first to just simply survive for as long as possible with no weapons, and then slowly allowed to learn how to hunt. You will experience the pain of death repeatedly on this path, and many of them will be agonizing. Furthermore, no matter how hungry you are to challenge the dangers again, you may spend an average of no more than one day in five in the sewers. The other four days will be split evenly between normal training and time off.” There were a handful of frowning rabbit faces, but Mordecai had expected that.

“I know some of you feel that you want to master the skills and strength it takes to overcome even the greatest dangers presented by the slimes, but we have a few reasons for this. First of all, the purpose of the training is to help defend the dungeon better. This limitation means that no more than one in five of you should be occupied with this training at a time, leaving the rest available. Second, you also need to integrate your new skills in working with those who do not take this path. Third, you have friends and family in the community, you need to maintain those social bonds to be a whole person. And finally, becoming too obsessed with the darkest arts of war can turn a person into a monster in disguise. Would you want to hurt Kazue by letting her see you succumb to such a fate?”

Kazue composed her face into an appropriate kind and caring expression, looking out to meet their gazes with soft concern, but internally she was torn between being impressed by that sort of manipulation, being happy that he was being careful with their personhood, and feeling like she was being used. And it’s not like she really minded, she was glad that he cared enough to set things up like this, but he had caught her off guard.

After a few minutes of murmurs and conversation through the gathered crowd, Mordecai gestured for them to quiet down again. “But that is not the only new path I am opening up. While the art of stealth and close, dirty combat can be important, there are other ways to enhance one's combat potential.” His mind reached to hers, and Kazue pointed towards the creatures she’d enhanced and modified. Being able to feel his pleased response directly made her very happy with her work. “First, we have cavalry for both land and air.” Moriko’s village had brought them a pair of polecats, and while the small busyness of them that came surging out from a nearby tunnel were much larger than their origins, the long, ferret-like creatures were just as energetic and curious as their smaller selves had been. At the same time, a similar-sized wing of dracobits dropped from the ceiling to circle around the group of laganthros. “We don’t have enough new friends for everyone to train with at once, but they will slowly grow. I do want cavalry specialists for each, but I also want everyone to know how to learn to ride either one. Ranged specialists and casters especially, as you can provide excellent support from the air. I’ll give you specific training goals when you have formed strong bonds and mastered basic skills, like staying on for more than a few minutes when they are running or flying about.”

She hadn’t thought of cavalry, but that would explain both the minimum size he’d asked for and why he’d specified making sure that her selection would be able to support significant weight bearing down on its back for a long time. Kazue had needed to modify them for that last bit. So what exactly was he planning on doing with the other group?

“And finally, I would like to see some of you train up as a specific type of hunter. Those who follow this path will stalk your prey with a fierce predator by your side.” Now came out a pack of her enhanced caracals. They weren’t much larger than their originals, but she’d worked on enhancing their screams, some of it through tweaks to their biology but also empowering them with magic, letting them direct their screams at enemies to stun and even injure their foes. “Stealth will be part of your training, as well as a balance of melee and ranged combat, but your primary focus will be to perfect the art of ambushing and fighting as a team.”

With all of these announced possibilities there was a lot of excitement in the crowd, and Mordecai let them talk for a little while longer before he asked for questions and started clarifying his plans for specific training paths. Kazue’s mind drifted a bit as this went on, and she was rather pleased to note that he handled them well, endlessly patient and readily keeping them in order so that they didn’t all talk over each other at once. Well, in his previous life he had been a father multiple times, and maybe in a decade or two she might decide to see for herself how well he handled the role. Though she’d have to be careful with her shape-shifting if she decided to do that.

Hmm. That thought led her down a chain, and Kazue had to repress a slightly wicked smile. Mordecai had overlooked something, and when she had him in private Kazue was going to have fun pointing it out. But she absolutely had to loop Moriko in on it as well, the half-elf was going to enjoy the results. Unfortunately, they were not done with the third floor quite yet, they still had a second boss to work out, and Mordecai had said he wanted to do some more changes to the boss room.