Dungeon 42

Encyclopedia Wtfuckica

Chapter 21

Several minutes passed as I contemplated what to do about the sword. Looking at the deconstruct tab again I noticed that there was a pattern among the materials that would be generated. That resolved most of my initial misgivings.

I still had a fuck ton to think about but those thoughts could wait till later. I okayed the deconstruction despite the mana cost. An eight hour timer appeared.

I was accustomed to minutes for common items. It made sense that something listed as legendary would take a lot longer. That didn’t make me any less impatient but helped a little.

Looking at the list of materials I found some mundane items like enamel and some boxes with question marks. One had a legible name and stuck out to me.

“Look up Gilnamar.” I thought and was rewarded with an encyclopedia entry.

[Gilnamar (Legendary)]

[A metal that develops from iron exposed to high concentrations of earth mana. Rarely naturally occurring, it was once a major export of the mage king’s empire. Several colleges were devoted expressly to its creation. The method was lost after the death of the fifth mage king and the empire's collapse. The mythology that developed around it led to the near-extinction of silver giants.

While difficult to manufacture and the weakest of legendary metals on its own, it is a key component in many legendary and epic alloys.]

The factual information was followed by some bits about historic uses which wasn’t that interesting. Under that was something more colorful.

[Common Beliefs:]

[A metal culled from the blood of silver giants, it grants strange powers to a blade but curses its bearer. Those who wield blades made of it will be unstoppable in combat. In all other things, they find misfortune.]

A good old-fashioned ‘blessed with suck’ weapon according to the locals. It was good to know that was BS. Making cursed swords would be cool, but I wanted to have the stuff to make normal ones too. Or swords that started as normal anyway.

Despite how fun the idea of becoming a magical arms manufacturer seemed to me, breaking the weapon down had cost mana. I didn’t anticipate the parts populating to my store for free. Even so, it looked like I was going to have something fun to play with soonish.

Instinctively, I started looking at the related article links and didn’t emerge for nearly an hour. When I did, it was mostly an accident, the hounds splashing and barking catching my attention. Oof, it wasn’t good to get caught up reading like that.

The fact I had to wait on the timer for the sword made it tempting. Fortunately, since refresh had already hit, I had mana to keep me occupied while I waited instead. My first instinct was to buy a bunch of defensive items, but I refrained.

I’d already put in basic defenses after careful consideration. It wouldn’t be good to mess things up by being hasty, just because I had mana to burn now. I’d have to exercise patience again and properly plan my next expansion.

Before that happened though, it was about time to check in on my house guest. I’d neglected him for a bit longer than I should have, all things considered.

I found him in essentially the same condition I’d left him: unconscious and still heavily injured. Not good. I’d assumed the potion would fix him up fully, but obviously it had already reached the limit of its effectiveness.

I felt like a dumbass for not checking sooner. After seeing its effect push out an arrowhead and seal the wound, I’d assumed it was a cure-all. Clearly, it had limits and I took a minute to study the potions in the mana shop.

The one I’d given him was a minor healing potion. It could remove physical status ailments like bleeding and would heal a fifth of the recipient’s health points (hp). At a guess pushing the arrowhead out had been part of removing the status ailment in this case.

Being more thorough this time, I selected two potions to give him. The first was a slightly more expensive physical healing potion. It cost me ten mana and would increase his healing rate and resistance to mundane physical status ailments. It seemed like a good option to keep infection at bay without immediately waking him up.

The second potion was a hydration potion and would keep him hydrated for a week. Fortunately, the potion’s descriptions indicated they could be given to an unconscious person safely. I didn’t want to fuck around and accidentally drown him.

As I was giving him the hydration potion, I noticed a bare shoulder peeking out from under the blanket. Craaap, I’d forgotten I stripped him. I wanted to dress him the moment I noticed but hesitated.

I’d done it with the system which hadn’t involved contact or seeing anything. I’d seen his older comrades in the buck, but they were grown men. I was far more reluctant to get an eyeful of underage ass.

Determined to avoid the issue, I started fussing with my inventory system. A few tries later, I found I could in fact equip the clothes to him directly. Relieved, I dressed him properly then washed my hands of worrying about him for a couple of hours. It was dungeon time.

First up on my list of things to sort out was the hounds. They were costing me a small amount of mana in upkeep which I was reluctant to pay. Studying their data, I found the problem. They needed regular proximity to at least forty tiles with a heat rating close to that of their natural habitat.

I had fifteen freebie lava environment titles from the tutorial which meant I was twenty-five short. That was quite a bit, unfortunately. The normal cost for a forty-by-forty tile generated by the local terrain in the store was one mana.

The lava tiles were listed as ‘exotic’ and cost five mana each. Thinking back to the tutorial, there had only been ten types of them in the tutorial mana shop. I’d added fifteen myself using Agony’s trick and was grateful to find they were all still available. It would be adding insult to injury if I could only buy the blandest of them for such a stiff price.

Curious, I checked how much it would cost to buy exterior plots of land. Unlike the lava environment stuff, they were listed as local surface terrain. They cost two mana each, but were only twenty by twenty feet in size. Twice the cost for half the size. It wasn’t awful but I had to wonder why they didn’t just sell them as ten-foot squares for one mana.

That irrelevant mystery aside, it was time to start planning my next phase. That meant deciding on what I wanted to do, both above and below ground. Knocking out the daily upkeep cost was an obvious choice, but I wasn’t in a hurry. I decided to spread that out over five days and bought five tiles to add to the pool area.

The rest was more complicated. One thing I knew I didn’t want was to be caught with my pants down if something happened. To that end, I decided to reserve half of my mana for the day. It would be held as an emergency fund until just before the day's refresh hit.

That left me with twenty mana to play with. Mana I was likewise reluctant to spend, since I didn’t have a solid plan in play yet. Wanting to correct the problem, I started studying my existing layout.

The modifications I had already made addressed some basic defense concepts, but haven't altered the overall layout that drastically. It was still made up of a series of tunnels, many of which led downward at various intervals. What it lacked were distinct layers.

Technically, it didn’t have to have them, but I liked the classical idea of a dungeon. For me, that meant a series of levels that parties descended. Each one functioning as an added layer of defenses for my core also had its appeal.

It wasn’t a small or quick task. Knowing I’d be in deep planning mode, I decided to start breaking down and refining the mundane items and materials I had on hand. The activity wasn’t a priority, but it was something I didn’t need to give much thought.

All I had to do was listen for the ding from a timer and throw new items in as needed. Once that was underway, I got back to the more involved task. To start, I picked where the first layer would end and the stairs to the next would be.

The tunnel heights were all over the place but I carefully brought them in line on a single layer. Making sure the lower ones remained connected was a little tricky but I managed not to trigger the build alarm too often.

By the time I was done I had four messy layers. The lowest one was more like a large room where the lava area and my core were. Some elements of the defenses I’d set up remained intact, but most were compromised.

Since I still had my original note, it wasn’t too hard to clean things up, just time-consuming. I had to prune cut-off sections, straighten out planes, and make sure all requirements were met again. By the end, I had a functional set of layers with good essential defenses and a pool of pruned tiles.

The excess tiles I hadn’t found a home for I labeled my ‘roughing in’ set. They were plain things, but useful for trying out floor plan elements I wasn’t sure about.

When a timer dinged, I popped open the crafting interface and felt my orbs flicker a couple of times in surprise. I thought the lantern I’d put in it had finished processing, but it still had a few minutes. It was the second slot that was blank.

The sword had finished being dismantled. Eight hours had really flown by while I was in the zone. Excited, I looked through what the process had yielded for me to play with.

[Corroded Gilnar, F 1 Grade (Legendary)]

[The metal has been exposed to a corrosive of Epic or higher grade. It is not usable in its current state.]

Bummer. My first instinct was to see if it could be salvaged but I resisted. The boxes that had been filled with question marks had changed and now featured text.

[Degraded Unknown Blood, F 1 Grade (Legendary)]

[Blood of a powerful being, degraded to the point of being unidentifiable.]

Ominous, but it made me think maybe the blade had been quenched in blood. That felt very sword and sorcery appropriate to me though I couldn’t prove it. It could have just as easily splashed on the blade at some point and ‘stained’ it as it were.

I didn’t really have a way to find out aside from asking the kid. If he even knew about it.

[Basilisk Venom, Grade F 1 (Mythical)]

[Venom of a Basilisk that has lost most of its corrosive power.]

Whaaat the fuuuuck?