Dragonheart Core

Chapter 63: A Sapient Mind

Lluc canceled his invisibility only once he was outside of the mountain proper.

The mana diffused around him with a hiss, settling back from the active incantation he'd mapped out with such care; he'd been proud of it. Canceling sight, smell, sound; he'd been a true shadow, simply not present to anything that wanted to find him, and it had been going so well.

Up until it wasn't.

The first floor he had passed through, quiet and uncontested, and it had looked about what he'd expected. Large, open, filled with mostly scuttling beasts and a few serpents. Not a particular challenge, though underranked fools would struggle. He'd called up an air-based platform to walk over the rocky pond and padded down to the second floor.

Now that one had been unique; trees somehow grew underground, great towering trees like nothing he'd ever seen before. Deep, wine-red bark and pale leaves, seemingly ignoring most standard laws of plants. How had the dungeon gotten a hold of trees? They had the basic form of mangroves, with their roots exposed and tangled in the surrounding canals, but certainly not the species found around here.

Was it an old dungeon? One of the ones born and formed eons ago but then sealed up, stagnant, unable to grow or expand but not dying either, lying dormant beneath the stone until something broke through their exit once more? He'd heard of those before, pockets of ancient worlds kept and stored with creatures never heard of before.

But then why would they only be hearing of it now? He rather doubted an ancient dungeon wouldn't have exploded onto the scene, trying to claim Calarata outright. Instead, it'd only eaten what wandered into it and mostly kept to itself. Almost polite for a dungeon.

But that didn't explain how it got those trees.

He'd been so focused on that he'd stayed in the first sort of "room" of the second floor, the canals rumbling alongside him and the twitter and hiss of creatures in the further halls. There had even been a thought of indulging in his invisibility, harvesting a portion of a mangrove to examine in further detail, when the mana around him had changed.

No longer ambient, no longer passive; instead it moved, fluttering around the first room like a confused child, but active. Shifting.

And, to his great horror, it was looking. Not just reacting to stimuli, not just hungry for mana; it was searching with the sort of deliberation that only came from aware beings, hunting for signs of something. It knew he was there.

So he turned and ran, and now he glared at the sun as the last of his mana fluttered away.

That hadn't gone as hoped.

Lluc exhaled, rubbing at his eyes; his soul ached. He was a wizard, not a mage—he didn't have one of those fancy little attunements that made it so much easier to cast magic of a certain type, but his internal mana also wasn't stuck to only using said type. So while it was harder for him to use invisibility for as long as he had, mages with a different attunement wouldn't be able to do that at all.

It was a cold encouragement from the mana-exhaustion he could feel at the corners of his thoughts.

Barely a glance at the second floor before he'd decided to cut his losses and run out. All of that from the week of planning, the hunt for two inmates idiot enough to agree to this foolhardy scheme, the time spent dodging Varcís who wanted a report.

Well. He'd certainly learned some things, at least.

The two idiots—or the one who had actually listened to Lluc's fucking instructions—would be let free, no need to drag him back to the brig. Lluc wouldn't bother with him. They had only been shoved into the dungeon as a distraction, something to keep it from awakening on the further floors. Lluc wasn't a novice when it came to dungeons; they were mostly filled with an animalistic awareness, reacting to stimuli and filling all of their creatures with the raid sickness, a furious hunger for blood that only ended when said stimuli went away. He knew this. He'd tested it time and time again on other dungeons, even those controlled by High Lords, like Thiago's back in the Leóro Kingdom. It was a tried and true strategy.

So to have the dungeon work up a strategy to deal with those blabbermouth fools while immediately seeing past his invisibility spelled something very bad indeed.

Lluc knew himself. He'd only worked up the grit to enter the unknown dungeon himself because of the strategy he knew worked, content in its previous successes. That had failed.

It was no longer up to just him to discover what was hidden in Alómbra's shadowed halls. He would be going to Varcís and admitting his defeat, because if Calarata was going to survive, they needed this fucking thing controlled now.

-

I absentmindedly ate the man's corpse as I pondered what had happened.

Two invaders, told to stay outside of my halls and distract the creatures on the first floor, while someone turned invisible and tried to creep further in. From the memories I'd salvaged from his soul, he and his companion were foot soldiers, told no more than their instructions. Useless on that front.

But the man in their memories, tall and tanned with a tricorn hat lined in wolf fur, seemed familiar. Pressingly so. I tore through my other memories and kept coming up with flashes of him, little bits seen from across Calarata or ducking away from his presence; not on the same level as the Dread Pirate, but worryingly close. Who was he?

That was, admittedly, the problem with consuming people's souls. While I got plenty of memories, the only ones I collected fully were those closest to the time of death, with everything past that growing hazy and disjointed.

So while those I'd eaten had memories of seeing this important man, they didn't remember him with the same importance they gave to the Dread Pirate, nor did they do the helpful little job of remembering his name. Brilliant. I'd make sure to berate the next invader before I killed them.

But he had gotten out and exposed a weakness in my dungeon. I was pretty sure I could safely rely on Rhoborh's blessing to keep other invisible beasties from strolling through my floors down to my core, but that made me consider other types of spells. What about teleportation? Flight? Charming my creatures?

If only I'd paid slightly more attention to humanoids when I was a dragon to know what kind of magic they had access to.

Once Nicau got back, I'd sit him down and grill him on what those in Calarata knew. If I needed to try and get a god with some sort of disbanding blessing for my first floor, something to ward off pre-cast protection spells, I'd like to know that now.

But that was a question for when Nicau returned. I could wait. Maybe.

Waiting that would certainly be made easier to bear with the messages crawling over my core. Only a handful, but an exciting handful nonetheless; two beautiful new strands of evolution.

Your creature, a Luminous Constrictor, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Colossal Boa (Uncommon): Growing to titanic lengths, this constrictor lurks in the shadows and strikes at passing victims. With its immense strength and size, there is little that can successfully fight off its fatal hold.

Smoldering Serpent (Uncommon): Taking inspiration from its latest kill, this creature burns with an internal flame, superheating its scales until they scorch its surroundings. Though water spells its doom, its ambient heat means its territory is never challenged.

Crowned Cobra (Uncommon): Where once it waited, now it strikes. Armed with venom-launching fangs and a flared hood, it stalks through the undergrowth in search of richer prey.

Well. That was certainly welcome.

Only one was familiar, the colossal boa; once again, it called to me. While my creatures were slowly crawling towards larger sizes, only the sarco was truly big, with both Seros and the horned serpent being too slender to count even if they were long. And already the sarco's size had been helpful beyond belief in fights, able to swallow hits and dish them back with no need for adjunct precision. The colossal boa promised much of the same there, and I rather liked the turn of phrase titanic lengths. Very pleasing.

But on the other hand, here came an elemental attunement. The smoldering serpent. Something like the underwater geysers from my sea-drake days, producing no flames but only raw heat, scorching everything around them until they begged for mercy they wouldn't receive. The water weakness was something I was a touch concerned about, given how many of my floors were water-based, but my fifth was relatively open, and there were also the ideas I'd been building up for my sixth. Who knew? And once I'd unlocked one attunement—although I wasn't positive on whether this was a full mana-attunement, and not just the creature having some innate collection of fire-attuned mana—there would only be more to come.

And the crowned cobra. As much as I loved my various creatures, one of our greatest limitations that came to a nasty point whenever we fought mages was we were limited by range. All of our attacks tended to rely on fist and claw, which needed to be close in order to function. That was half the reason I'd been so excited to collect the triggerfish's schema—beyond its general orneriness that fit well in the Underlake—because it was my first true ranged creature. I had the baterwaul for general discombobulating attacks, the horned serpent for her psionic call, even Seros and his hydrokinesis, but that wouldn't be enough to even the odds if more invaders with the ability to just lob fireballs came into my halls. Something like the crowned cobra would be more than helpful.

Hm. So I wanted all of them. That wasn't helpful.

I glared at the message.

Well. It seemed like I'd be debating for longer than I wanted. I shifted it to a less active part of my mind and read the other.

Your creature, a Cave Spider, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Shardrunner Spider (Rare): Learning from the stone-backed toads and burrowing rats, this creature harvests surrounding stone and minerals to spin into silk, creating tangled webs strong and sharp enough to cut larger creatures to ribbons.

Jeweled Jumper (Common): Foregoing webs entirely, it spends its life constantly on the hunt, jumping between trees and stalagmites alike in their hunt for prey. As active predators, they ignore smaller insects and use their potent venom to take down larger prey, draining their insides and leaving the husks as a warning.

Clawed Spider (Uncommon): Its fangs are no longer enough. It grows spurs on the tips of each of its claws, ones built to inject venom into whatever creature it attaches to, massively increasing the output of its most dangerous weapon.

Oho. The behavior of these spiders were equally mixed, really. They'd only attacked because their web was destroyed, their prized possession that would only be accented by becoming shardunner spiders, and they'd attacked by launching themselves onto their enemy in the way of the jeweled jumper or this clawed spider. They'd fit into all of these evolutions easily.

I couldn't say I wasn't interested in more jeweled jumpers; while I was happy my current one had gone below to the fourth floor in search of greater prey and more mana, he was truly unparalleled in the Drowned Forest, with so many trees to jump off of and plenty of shallow rooms he could jump through. So more would never go amiss.

But I also couldn't ignore how powerful webs were; my webweavers were already convincing me of that, with how many bugs and larger prey got caught in their fake trees. As well as their certain activities I didn't talk about. Adding actual strength and structure behind their silk would only be a boon; and considering they were harvesting materials instead of naturally producing them, that meant I could control it, putting specific types of stone or metal ores around them to influence their webs.

And then the clawed spider. Every arachnaphobe's worst nightmare; because while the jeweled jumpers would leap onto their prey in order to bite them, they often leapt off just as quickly, protecting their fragile bodies. But I was getting the sense that this clawed spider leapt onto, stabbed all of its limbs and probably its fangs as well just for good measure, and hung on until their prey died. Many would die in each attempt, considering the addition of venom-claws didn't really add to a spider's pitiful defense, but it would be an immediate reward. Even the jewel jumper's potent venom worked over time, slowly shutting down its prey's abilities until they expired. Not so for the clawed spider.

Well. The gods up there really knew how to give me a difficult choice.

I finished eating the man's corpse, letting the mana diffuse around the various creatures of my first floor; already they were starting to recover from the fireball and force barrage, spores taking root where algae had burned away and even the more skittish beasts poking their heads from their dens. I had enough time to really think it over.

Now to decide what to pick.