Dragonheart Core

Chapter 54: Welcoming Committee

Half a dozen more pigeons swarmed over the fifth floor.

They were still right little monsters, swooping at the bats like they owed them money; the bats, for their turn, had gotten very good at weaponizing their wretched screams to spook the pigeons away. A proper rivalry.

Just a slightly annoying one, because both sides had been fighting so much instead of finding mates, and that meant I was still having to replenish their numbers by hand. Which was expensive.

But while I had to sweat and work to keep the populations up on the fifth floor, something else was doing it for me.

Remember that little thimbleful of mana I'd put on the first floor? The bugs had gone mad for it, willing walking into death just for a chance of it. But that had been the first floor, where my ambient mana was weakest, given the distance from my core. Still certainly higher than the outside world, but not really impressive. Just a taste.

On the second floor, where there was another thriving bug population, similar story. Stronger but not strong enough. Then the Underlake—self-explanatory for why there was a lack of bugs there. The fourth floor had its share, yes, but living inside tunnels filled with thousands of always-hungry always-active threats in the form of the thornwhip arms was rather unconductive to living a long and prosperous life.

So on the fifth floor, where the mana was fresh and deep, where there were predators but also ample places to hide and sneak, to protect and grow… well. As long as they survived for just a touch, just enough to eat some of the mana-rich jadestone moss or kill another bug, the ambient mana would do the rest.

Messages crawled across my core.

Admittedly, it wasn't exactly a clean pipeline—as fast as they were evolving, the baterwauls were eating them several orders of magnitude faster—and I noticed that again, it was mostly the same species that were evolving, being the ones already gifted enough to have a chance at evolution despite the seemingly larger capacity for mana needed before evolving. The mosquitos, despite needing a mere speck of mana to break past the threshold, hadn't gotten an evolution yet.

But the handful of pale white lights blooming over the fifth were still very welcome.

I pranced on over to inspect them.

The first was another praying mantis, with again only one evolution path available—I tucked him underneath one of the rocks on the floating island he'd ended up on and selected hunting mantis. I'd probably send him back up to the fourth floor once he'd evolve, if just for how more suited to that environment he was; same for the two platemail bugs evolving on a separate island.

Four beautiful eye-spot butterflies are curled up as their eyeblight evolution crawled over them. Welcome little bastards. Sounded terrible but I was rather hoping one of them would die just so I could have their schema—but I'd made a promise. I would never betray one of my creatures that had worked so hard for their evolution. Killing them for my own gain was not how this dungeon worked.

Though as much as I was hyping these evolutions up, they were still only Unranked. It wasn't exactly like they wouldn't end up dying throughout their lives.

Although I was starting to understand just how varied the levels were for the ranks. Both Seros as an underground monitor, a true threat and powerful above his peers, was technically on the same level as a burrowing rat. Right. That made sense.

I was inching towards the conclusion that it had much less to do with overall strength, and more to do with future evolutions. I certainly hadn't known all the fine details before I'd up and gotten killed but I thought that most creatures could only evolve five times until they reached their peak form. So was Unranked just a way to show that they were at their base form?

I shoved the thought away. There'd be time to focus on ranks when my creatures actually started evolving past the first one.

Because as much as there were familiar faces, two new messages waited patiently for my attention.

Your creature, a Brown Ant, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Groundbreaker Ant (Common): Boring through stone to build their elaborate homes, there are multiple variants within this species; warriors, enormously powerful to defend the nest; workers, strong-jawed and clever; and queens, rulers over all.

Your creature, a Common Wasp, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Swarming Wasp (Common): They fiercely defend their territory in massive, droning swarms, flying as one to cover their prey and inject them with nausea-inducing venom.

Oho. Don't mind if I do.

Only one option for both, of course, but both were very intriguing. I had plenty of plain stone on the fifth floor, unlike my others which were often covered in plants and other various things. This was open territory.

And another beautiful flier. Most were coming in post floor construction, but I wouldn't look a gift… wasp in the mouth. Admittedly, I think I'd gotten a touch too used of the specializations that usually came with evolutions past Unranked; while nausea-inducing venom was interesting and useful, I couldn't help but think of the vast potential in a… paralysis venom, or something that disrupted their mana channels.

Ah well. For a later evolution.

Half a dozen ants were evolving together, all crowded around the corpse of a poor moth caterpillar they'd neatly sliced to ribbons; I selected groundbreaker ant and let the glow overtake their form, growing a lump of stone around them for a touch of protection. I wasn't expecting this evolution to take long. They were mainly growing in size, maybe something special for cutting through stone. Should be quick and to the point.

Thankfully, I also had three wasps looking to evolve, which was great because I would somewhat doubt their capability as a swarm if it was just one lone bastard out in the world. Three still wasn't great, but there was plenty of room for eggs. They'd make it work. None of them were in the same area, all scattered over on top of the various other bugs they'd killed, and I siphoned them all off into safer areas as the pale glow of their evolution overtook them.

Soon there'd be more predators, more threats filling my great halls. Already I was feeling far more dangerous than I'd last been.

Which only meant more power to expand.

-

Nicau woke up with a truly throbbing headache.

He hissed, blearily slapping a hand over his eyes; the softly glowing algae that made up his bed wasn't bright but anything hurt now, jabbing like swords into his head. Gods, what had the dungeon and its snake done to him? Everything ached like he'd just pulled up the mainsail by himself–

And then he felt a very unfamiliar swirl of mana curl around the pain from his headache and soothe it away, and he was suddenly very much awake.

Nicau had always had mana—being a stowaway without any magic was just asking to be killed by the captain if they ever found you and you didn't have a use beyond being thrown overboard—but his ability to follow mana trails was a weak, fluttering thing he had to grapple with just to summon. But now something flowed through him, bright and gushing through his channels.

It felt alive.

He sat on his bed for a moment longer.

It looked like he'd gotten his soul-bond, then. Really, he'd had all of a second to even figure out that he was still alive but captured by the dungeon, talking to a snake, being press-ganged into a deal, and then he was unconscious again.

It had been a bad week.

But a week that would get worse if he didn't figure out what was fully going on. He was pretty sure the dungeon wouldn't kill him, and he hadn't been given a mission yet to go out and spy, whatever that was supposed to mean, or collect more creatures. So he was probably safe. Ish.

But he wouldn't know that until he left the isolated cramp of this rocky home, so he waited no time to let his anxiety sink in and just poked his head out of the crack in the wall.

The same low-roof cavern, covered in algae-beds and stacks of bone and wood, clumps of mushrooms growing in the corners and shed scales piling up near the entrance. Half a dozen kobolds wandered throughout, some scarfing down on food, others sharpening spears. A little society.

As one, all their golden eyes snapped in his direction.

Nicau valiantly held back a whimper.

One of the kobolds stood up, leaving behind its hunk of meat, and padded towards him with its spear held loosely in its claws; her claws. He wasn't positive but she had the same wildly branching horns, more similar to antlers than the other kobolds; the one who had first met him. All the other kobolds dropped their heads in a vague bow as she passed, and he saw that her spear was carved with shoddy engravings, like it was important. Like she was important.

"Awake," she said.

Said.

It came out like a hiss, the same sound he'd been hearing before, but now something in his brain told him that it meant awake. That she was saying the word awake.

"What?" or at least he tried to say; but what came out instead was a vague, warbling hiss he was definitely sure he hadn't been able to say before that still sounded like what? to his mind.

They both stared at each other.

Nicau had felt the mana in his chest move as he spoke, something filtering up through his mouth. He fought the urge to hang his head in his hands. Somewhere in the back of his mind when he'd accepted the dungeon's offer, he'd had brilliant thoughts of firing lightning-attuned mana from his hands, maybe summoning gold and jewels straight from the earth, maybe soaring over the world on spectral wings. Something powerful.

Now he was talking to lizards.

"Hello?" He tried, and there came that lilting warble. Within seconds, all the other kobolds abandoned their tasks and surrounded him, hissing their own greetings with wide-eyed awe. Nicau yelped, tucking his arms close in; he was taller than them by just a fraction, though admittedly their horns beat him out, and they had absolutely no sense of boundaries. Cold scales brushed against his arms.

"Back, back," the lead kobold chided, and the others begrudgingly backed up like scolded children. She narrowed her golden eyes at him, her slitted pupils mere pinpricks in the hazy light. "Speak?"

Nicau wasn't positive whether that was do you speak? or merely speak again. Their language, while he was somehow now fluent, didn't seem to be complete; words and conjoining phrases missing, all the like. Fantastically fun for him to figure out. "I do?"

She poked at his arm, tapping her spear against the ground. "You are of dungeon," she finally said, though even she didn't sound fully convinced. "Not to kill. Maybe?"

Kobold-ese didn't have a specific sound for stuttering so it just came out as a hiss, low and wavering. He still had absolutely no idea how his boring human vocal cords were producing these noises. "Uh. No kill."

She seemed vaguely disappointed.

At least that was settled. This was his brand new home and they maybe weren't supposed to kill him, and Nicau was definitely not on the hysterical part of his journey. He swept all desperately growing desires to run screaming out of the dungeon away and brushed his hands over his pants for something to do. This was his new home. Maybe. Probably.

He turned back to the Chieftess. "Do you have a name?"

All the kobolds tilted their heads in confusion.

"Not Name, no," she warbled, and they had a special word for it, not the one he had used. There was a special sort of reverence in her eyes as she spoke it. "But you are Named."

Ah. That was what they meant.

There was a difference in how he had woken up; now he was Nicau but also Nicau, old and heavy in a way that he really didn't think that name had earned yet. It was an uncomfortable thought; feeling his Name sit heavy in his chest, fresh, unattuned mana pouring through that gap in his core and filling him up. He knew he needed to test it, figure out what else he could do with this power beyond understanding the creatures around him, but he was still far too focused on what it felt like to be Named.

What if the dungeon hadn't known his name was Nicau? If it had Named him… Arnao, or Ither. Or even worse; Human. Maybe Boy.

Some of his frustration at his current situation faded away. It could have been much worse.

"Not like that," he said. "What do you call yourself?"

The other kobolds seemed confused, and once more their primitive language came back to bite as they dithered for a way to explain themselves. "Call her Chieftess?"

Nicau furrowed his brow. "That could be a name, I guess?"

Every single kobold hissed in a manner reminiscent of a gasp. "Not Name," the Chieftess corrected. "We cannot Name. Only Great Voice can."

This Great Voice sounded an awful lot like the dungeon, which, fair. It would be the only one giving anybody a Name. But that hadn't been what he was going for. "Well." Gods, how was he supposed to explain this? "A name is different from a-" he fumbled to mimic how she'd said it "-Name. You can choose a name for yourself. If you want."

They looked somehow even more confused.

A different angle. "My Name is Nicau," he said, and let a trickle of mana diffuse out; their eyes all widened in awe. "And my name is Nicau." No mana on that one.

They all blinked at him.

Nicau tried to shrug and extend a hand forward and ended up with a half shoulder shimmy. "So. What is your name?"

The lead kobold paused, looking almost hesitantly at her claws. "I am. Chieftess?" She squeezed her eyes shut but there was no flicker of mana, no dungeon descending to cleave her head off for the insolence. Perfectly fine.

There was a moment where the kobolds looked at each other, eyes widening frankly further than Nicau would have thought possible, watching the lead kobold—no, Chieftess—not be killed for daring to name herself. It only took a moment for the idea to take root.

"Branch!" One cried, tail almost wagging. "Scratch!" Another shouted, jabbing their claws at the air. The talk went around the half circle, every kobold pondering a name or calling out whatever their favourite object happened to be. As more of them continued to not die, more named themselves, cheering raucously as they all survived.

And Nicau couldn't help but feel a vague sort of pride, watching over them. He had done that. He had helped.