A Lich's Guide to Dungeon Mastery

The name was accepted by my Phylactery, so I left Uban to his slumber. I figured that I could just make a new body for him downstairs and have him move into it when he was done napping.

My break from grinding was over, so now I had to figure out this Notions thing.

The first thing I wanted to learn more about with the Boon was its ability to create more matter, and have that matter be locked in place. With that in mind, I sent out a long stream of Spatium into the air in front of me, looping it into position between the other strands and then locking it into place with Mentum. I focused as hard as I could on making limestone, and concentrated on everything I knew about it.

What was limestone? My Omniscience could answer that question right away. It was a compound primarily made of calcite and dolomite, and contained a strong affinity for earth magic. Calcite on its own would be considered a limestone, though, and that was what I was after here. Each compound particle would be comprised of one element of calcium, one of carbon, and three elements of oxygen, meaning that its denotation on Earth would have been CaCO₃. It had a density of 2.71 grams per cubic centimeter, and a melting point of 1,517℃.

Even after dumping all of the knowledge from Omniscience into the thread, I could tell that it wouldn’t be enough. It was quickly losing its identity, and would soon fade into nothing. Instead of taking a purely scientific approach, I tried something else, and started sending thoughts of strength, roughness, and solidity, of something ancient, from before the time of men, durable enough to stand as a living testament to the changes that had been wrought on the world around it. I sent images of erosion marks, showing how even the ravages of time struggled to harm this limestone.

This time, my thoughts were accepted, and I felt something click into place. When I opened my eyes, there was a solid panel of limestone hovering before me. Curious, I pressed against, and found that it was firm. Yet, when I pressed harder, it cracked and shattered, then dissolved into energy once more.

That attempt had been a good start, but this time I was sure to make a cube rather than a square. It took a lot longer, and cost exponentially more energy, since I wasn’t just weaving in one direction, but rather needed to loop back around on myself again and again. I was about halfway through my energy pool by the time I was done, which was shocking considering my shiny new Mentum Generator Boon was constantly at work refueling me. I probably wouldn’t have even gotten close to completing this project before leveling into it, especially considering that was a full specialization level ago.

Still, when I was done and had confirmed the identity of my threads, a solid, immovable cube of limestone was hovering nearby. Well, immovable was a bit of an exaggeration. It was more springy than motionless. Pulling it away from its location would pull on the original threads of reality it was bound to, which would then want to return to their original location, bringing the block of stone with them. Putting enough force on the cube would tear the threads it was made of, hence the destruction of the previous square. This would be very useful for making floating objects to put into my next floors, but I needed to focus on learning how to actually use the Boon first.

I spread some influence from my Domain of Undeath over it, trying to reshape it. I'd only watched this carefully with my Delinear Sight a couple of times, but this time the result was far more plain to me than ever before. Altering matter with my Delinear Sight actually reshaped space, and I saw as some parts of the stone shrunk while others grew. That was apparently the limit of what I could do, though, as my attempt to split the stone into two parts was met by its destruction.

I pondered over why that happened, and eventually decided that it had to be because the object was directly bound to a certain part of space, the same reason it hovered in the first place. Typically, matter was another layer on top of space, with both affecting each other but not being each other, but with Notions I made matter within space. The matter was, in a way, a part of space itself, and space was much more static than typical matter. It would tighten in the presence of matter, creating gravitational pull, but it wouldn't hold onto the matter, allowing it to freely pass by. My Notions could not do that. They were inextricably bound to the spot they were made in, but in return, they were half again as spatially dense as a normal version of themselves, since they had an extra string through them. The normal warp and weft didn't particularly care about the Notions, but they did tighten around them, since the stone had a physical presence in addition to its spatial one.

Next up was a more difficult question: How would I use this? The most obvious answer would be to incorporate it into my next floors, but I didn’t know how I could do that without making things ridiculously complicated for my Wisps to work on and for my mobs to travel. It could be good for traps? Actually, that was a good one.

I spent some time replacing bits of the floor with flat Notion plates, just beneath the dirt. For increased deadliness, I also put spikes in hollows beneath them, turning them into hidden spike traps. Clever people with the right kinds of magic senses might be able to spot them, but anyone who stepped directly on one might find themselves falling into a pit of spikes. Since I had my mind on it, I also told my Wisps to start building a den for Uban on the 8th floor, making sure they knew that it would be the centerpoint of the entire floor.

That actually gave me another idea of what to do with the Notions. I didn’t love having incredibly long stairways on every floor. They would always be in predictable locations, and I could never move them. Furthermore, it would give adventurers who came in here a break, thus allowing them to recover their supplies, Mentum, and awareness. We couldn’t have that, now could we?

Empowering Omnipresence with my Delinear Sight to view the space that made up two flat planes on my first and second floors, I slowly cut squares out of the threads of reality, bringing them together with Spatium. It was actually kinda like creating bonds, except I was only lengthening something that was already there, and there were far more of them than most creatures would normally have.

As the two planes of threads I’d pulled away from each other snapped together, I bound them in place with my Notions Boon, but the identity I sent was simply one of my intentions: I wanted these Notions to hold these two planes together until I dismissed them. Slowly, the strands began to form, and the Folded reality was held in place… for a couple seconds. Then, the Notions broke, and reality snapped back into place, and I was left with a feeling of disappointment. Well, at least the buzzing sensation from my Phylactery helped ameliorate that condition.

Seif Ambrose

Spatial Lich 4

Phylactery 5 (Max)

Undead Possession 8

Reconstitution 6

Incorporate Phylactery 6

Mental Shield 0

Mentum Generator 6

Clone 1

Necrosis Manipulation 5 (Max)

Deadsight 7

Animate Necrosis 8

Shape Necrosis 5

Create Undead 9

Necrotic Restoration 4

Construct Consciousness 8

Domain of Undeath 5 (Max)

Spread Undeath 9

Mold Terrain 10

Transmute 5

Omnipresence 5

Omniscience 4

Empowered Control 4

Spatium Manipulation 4

Delinear Sight 6

Stitching 5

Folding 3

Notions 2

Available Boon (Notching, Zipper)

Calling 5 (Max)

Taglock 6

Nomantic Call 5

Bondsight 7

Alter Bond 5

Sympathetic Bonding 3

Call Through Space 0

Enhancements: Willpower x3, Available Enhancement (Reinforcement, Willpower)

Named Belongings: Caerbalope, Antigo, Arachnomicon, Drachma'Uban

Just… wow. I guess using multiple Boons at once was just the best way to level Stitching? Folding hadn’t leveled in ages, mostly due to my underutilization of it, but Notions was brand new. Maybe it was just a fairly simple Boon, and there wasn’t much to learn about with it? That actually made sense to me. It seemed like an ability that had more to do with creativity than knowledge. I could be a master at forming the threads, but it had more to do with what I used them for than anything else.

The Willpower Enhancement was the obvious choice for me. As a ForeverDM, I didn’t get the chance to participate in many games as an actual player, but when I did, it was minmax all the way. Diversification works well in parties that have fewer people, but it’s best to have one person of each type, all of whom are really good at what they do. At that point, all you need to do is ensure that they’re all constantly available for whatever you need them to do. For example, everyone should carry healing potions just in case the party healer goes down. I might grab some Reinforcement someday, but to be honest, Willpower was already increasing the strength of the bodies I made.

In terms of the available Boons, Notching was like putting a pin in space, and Zipper was like creating a resealable rift in it. At first, I felt a bit underwhelmed by Notching, since it seemed so similar to Notions, but then I realized that it had other implications. Notions created an object that was mostly static, but Notching would pin an already existing object in space. In addition, it was useful for exactly what I’d just been trying to do. It could pin more than just objects; it could pin any construct with sufficient Spatium in place, including the strands I used for Folding and Notions. In addition, the things I pinned in place with Notching wouldn’t have the springiness of my Notions, and wouldn’t break the moment they were overpowered. Instead, they would simply be freed.

Zipper was just about what it sounded like. It would make a seam in space, one where you held control. While its initial construction would take a lot of energy, it would remain in place and you would only need to spend energy on it again when you closed it. The Zipper would be a location in space that was more malleable to your touch. More specifically, you could make the reality inside of it stop existing. It was an advanced application of spatial magic, one where you would mask the threads through a mixture of intent and something like a pseudo-domain. Anything inside the Zipper would just stop existing, making it a powerful weapon. My Spatium Manipulation wasn't exactly geared towards fighting, but I could fix that with this one Boon. Laying a bunch of Zippers around this top floor would make it into a death trap for any attackers, which was great since I was currently lacking direct offensive options.

Zipper was amazing, but I had another thought just before I locked it in. I currently had no idea how I was going to get idiots to come to my tower, but portals could be a good way to handle it. My portals wouldn't be able to last without something holding them in place, and Notions wasn't going to cut it. Furthermore, Notching was less rigid than Zipper. While Zipper would provide me with awesome traps, they wouldn't do much else. Notchings, on the other hand, seemed to be as versatile as I could think of. It was a mix between an Immovable Object spell and a Permanency spell, both of which could be incredibly powerful in the right hands.

It was close, but I took Notching instead. It might have been the wrong call, but I didn't think so. In the end, this would prove to be a more versatile choice, and I felt that its effects would prove even more useful to me later on.

In the meantime, it was time to make some portals.

I used Folding to once again bring together two roughly-rectangular planes of reality, forming a portal between the two spots between my first floor and second floor. I latched a Notch to one corner of the portal and watched in fascination as it formed.

It was actually kinda similar to the Notions, but these Notches were points rather than strands. Furthermore, it seemed that they were entirely disconnected from the typical weave that Stitching influenced my Delinear Sight to show me. As I connected the portal to the Notches, it too became slightly disconnected from standard reality, and moved separately from other threads.

Releasing my hold on the magic, I was excited to see that it stayed in place, and quickly went about removing all of my stairs and placing portals that would take people from the most dangerous section of one floor to the easiest section of the next. Well, theoretically. I wasn’t going to warn my mobs to specifically avoid the area, but I did tell the more intelligent to ignore the disturbance, just in case any of them got curious.

This process actually took quite a bit of time, considering I needed to wait for my energy to reach full again each time I created a portal, since it took so much of my power to do so. Most of the portals ended up hidden deep in the stone forests or inside caves, at least on the first few floors. In the case of Drachma’Uban’s floor, I put it at the very back of his lair. Anyone who wanted to reach the next floor would have to beat him, no way around it. They could try to sneak, but just like all other undead, he had Deadsight, and I’d also given him Delinear Sight which further improved that. Rogues who got cocky and thought that they were invisible would be in for a surprise.

Speaking of Uban…

I slapped the lazy dragon on the nose. “Get up already, you’ve been sleeping for at least a full day.”

His body flinched backwards as though my slap had actually done some significant damage, and his maw gaped open with a choking sound. There was a loud swallowing sound, and then some coughing, and finally, Uban was in working order again. “Ah, Father, my apologies. Was I snoring?”

I rolled my eyes at him. “You don’t snore, Uban, and I was just waking you up so you’d go guard the 8th floor and stop lazing about here. If you want to nap, you can at least pretend to be a centuries-old dragon who’s slumbering atop his hoard.”

Uban looked at his own body, then at the stairs, then back at me. ”How am I meant to fit down there?”

I facepalmed. “Uban, you’re piloting that body. You aren’t actually the body.” His mouth hung open once again, and I decided to just spare myself the awkwardness and started opening a portal. It was the largest I’d ever tried to make, but I managed to handle it with the help of Mentum Generator. I then pointed at it and made a shooing gesture, and he reluctantly stepped through the portal, which I let close behind him.

I’d talk with him later, but to me it felt like I’d just had a conversation that lasted for multiple days, during which I'd needed to teach him every single thing about speaking, the topics of the conversation, and so on. I’d basically raised a child in a couple days, and I was kinda tired of it. He would need a little while to get used to knowing things and having a body anyways.

I fed a little trickle of Necrosis into him to make sure he knew I wasn’t angry or anything, then got back to replacing all of the stairs with portals.

I got a buzz at about the 55th floor, but I ignored it until I reached the top. Azrael had been sitting on top of the tower for a really long time, just staring off into nothing and kicking her feet out, and my best guess was that she was really deep in thought, perhaps about her old life. I decided not to bother forming that portal yet, so as not to spook her. In fact, I might actually just not put one up there at all, since I only really kept the passageway up there open when Azrael was getting some air.

Anyways, I gazed into my Phylactery to check on the upgrade I’d gotten.

Seif Ambrose

Spatial Lich 5 (Max, Specialization Available)

Phylactery 5 (Max)

Undead Possession 8

Reconstitution 6

Incorporate Phylactery 6

Mental Shield 0

Mentum Generator 7

Clone 1

Necrosis Manipulation 5 (Max)

Deadsight 7

Animate Necrosis 8

Shape Necrosis 5

Create Undead 9

Necrotic Restoration 4

Construct Consciousness 8

Domain of Undeath 5 (Max)

Spread Undeath 9

Mold Terrain 10

Transmute 5

Omnipresence 5

Omniscience 4

Empowered Control 4

Spatium Manipulation 5 (Max)

Delinear Sight 7

Stitching 5

Folding 5

Notions 2

Notching 7

Available Boon (Seaming, Moulding)

Calling 5 (Max)

Taglock 6

Nomantic Call 5

Bondsight 7

Alter Bond 5

Sympathetic Bonding 3

Call Through Space 0

Enhancements: Willpower x4, Available Enhancement (Reinforcement, Willpower)

Named Belongings: Caerbalope, Antigo, Arachnomicon, Drachma'Uban

It sorta felt like this upgrade had come much quicker than the ones before it, but that was probably just because I’d done fewer things between them. Notchings had been pretty simple to figure out once I’d gotten the hang of it, and my Folding Boon had always been underleveled and underutilized. Once it had gotten some love, it shot up in levels. The same was true for my Stitching Boon, which was basically just a conglomeration of all the different ways I could use the threads of space that it showed to me.

Seaming and Moulding were both capstones, the peaks of their tiers. From that alone, it was pretty obvious which one I was going to take, but I looked at Moulding anyways.

This Boon was from a completely different discipline of spatial magic, one that I had no experience with, so my mind actually shivered a bit from the influx of information. Moulding was pretty similar to Mold Terrain, which made sense. The part about it that was different was that it worked on space as a whole, rather than just ground, and it didn’t particularly care about the conservation of matter. The world would extend and contract according to the will of the caster, in the same way that had been advertised by the original Banding Boon. Nothing would be outside my control, and I would be able to manipulate space like clay, hence the name of the Boon.

Still, after just a single glance, I immediately took Seaming. In stitching terms, to seam is merely to sew two things together. In other words, it's basic sewing. In Stitching terms, Seaming is the opposite of basic. In fact, it's the pinnacle. The cloth of reality was all one solid thing, so how could you seam another thing onto it?

Well, to be honest, it was kinda simple.

You’d tie another reality to it.