Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

Well, I spent the last five days doing my regular training and sneaking things to and from the storeroom.  In some ways I feel like I've stagnated some.  I'm not really accomplishing much other than accumulating materials and slowly training up my tectonic sense.  Speaking of tectonic sense, I'm really starting to get good at the tougher cubes if I say so myself.  I think I might even make a few training cubes with different amounts of dark and light stone within them.  If I can get good at those, then maybe I'll move on to cutting actual blocks from the walls to try.

I've got enough wood and still plenty of food in my room to last for a few weeks yet, so I think I'll just wait until the goblin arrives soon to see what happens.

Well, it's day 47 now, and I haven't seen the goblin.  It's never been two days late like this.  The lizard continues to just sleep.  If nothing happens by day 50, I think I might try to sneak outside for a bit to gather some new food.

It's day 50 since I saw the goblin last, and getting past the sleeping lizard was easy.  The unfortunate thing is that I now see why I haven't seen the goblin.  I'm snowed in.  Not just a little snow either.  It's practically filling the cave entrance.  I can see a very small opening near the top where I spot some sky, but that is about it.  This really changes my plans a lot.  I have no idea how long this will last, but I now at least understand why the lizard came into the cave to sleep.

I didn't want to have to try to kill the lizard before, but if this weather goes on for too long, I very well might have to.  Actually, thinking about it that way, if I'm going to do it, I should do it sooner than later.  The longer I wait, the riskier the whole thing becomes.  I'll really need to do some experimentation though to see how feasible it will actually be to kill it.

I sneak back down into the cavern and back into my room to start planning.  I'll only get one shot at killing the lizard.  If I fail to do so, I think I'm probably dead.  Even injured, I'm pretty sure given its size it'll easily kill me.  So I have to kill it while it sleeps.  So, like I said before, I'll try to drop as big of a rock on it as I can from the ceiling.  The first thing I'll need to test is how far I can actually do stone shaping from.  To do so, I think it's safest to go into a new sub-cave and begin testing.  

I sneak back out into the cavern and begin entering new sub-caves until I find one long enough to make testing worth it.  It's fairly cramped through the cave, but it's exceptionally long, so it should do for testing.  The first thing I attempt is to activate stone shaping and use it on a target a few feet away.

No response, and no mana used.  At least it didn't drain any mana.  The next thing I attempt is to start shaping from where I touch the wall, and keep shaping a straight line cut in the wall for as far as I can.  Surprisingly, this works, and I can keep shaping until I run out of mana.  I decide to inspect the cut line along its length, which actually isn't that long.  At 10 mana per second, it only goes around 10 feet given how little stone I actually manipulate at a time.  The second issue is that although I felt like I was making a straight line, it actually turns somewhat where the wall turns.  From my perspective while making it, it was straight, but it isn't from the front.  I drain a few crystals from the wall in here to recharge my mana, and try to continue from where I left off, but am disappointed that I actually have to restart shaping from the start every time.  I can't just pick up where I left off.

This is valuable information though.  It means that if I can come up with a good stockpile of crystals, I should actually be able to pull this off.  I will need a lot of crystals though.  I want to drop a very, very large rock on the lizard.  My next concern, obviously, is a cave-in as a result of collapsing part of the ceiling, or the crash down afterwards.  I'm not sure that there is much I can do for that except maybe to do some tectonic sense pings for pockets of unstable material.  The unfortunate part of that is that I can't actually ping far enough for that to really matter.  With my current mana I can't even ping to 20 feet, and it's much further than that from my room to the top of the cavern.

Which leaves me with just risking it.  Honestly though, I can't imagine it is so unstable in here that a complete cave-in is likely.  With that in mind, I suppose my next step is gathering enough crystals to be able to stone shape enough material to actually kill the lizard in one go.  That should be easy enough, but for good measure, I'll spread it out over a few days.  I'll take a bucket into a different sub cave each day and gather as many big crystals as I can before returning.  A few buckets worth should be plenty.

The very last thing I'll need to do will be the riskiest part.  I want to make sure that what I drop is actually going to kill the lizard, so I want to get as close to the lizard's head as possible, and look up to the ceiling from there to know where to drop the stone from.  Thankfully, the ceiling is also covered in crystals, so I should be able to distinguish the exact spot fairly easily by pattern.

I spent 3 days getting ready, so the only thing I have left to do today is sneak up to the lizard, figure out what I'm gonna drop, then actually do it.  Which honestly, I've been really dreading having to do that for a while now.  I'm honestly just scared to get close to the lizard.  However, just guessing is far more dangerous.  If I drop a giant rock and miss, I definitely would wake the lizard up.

I inch closer and closer to the lizard.  I don't want to get too close and wake it up, so I need to go very slowly and keep an eye on its breathing.  Eventually, I make it to just a few feet from the lizard's head.  Which, by the way, is taller than I am.  I look directly up from where I'm standing, and memorize the crystal pattern on the ceiling.  Then I begin the slow move away from the lizard.  I'm very thankful for its hibernated state keeping it pacified.  

I get back to my room's tunnel, and get my buckets of crystals set up next to a wall, along with some buckets to drop them in when they're used.  Then, I start channeling stone shaping.  I spread a line up the wall of the cavern, picking up a new crystal with my free hand every time my mana starts to deplete, and eventually, the depressed line in the stone reaches all the way up to the area above the lizard.  It's a long process, and I'm less than halfway done.  Now, I cut a large circle to mark where I'll begin cutting into the ceiling.  The final step will be a process I'm very familiar with, simply cutting into the ceiling to cut a large chunk out.  I've done that hundreds if not thousands of times now for all my various projects, so even though it's over a hundred feet away, I don't struggle too much with the process.

What does come as a surprise, is that the free chunk of rock falls before I finish severing it.  I hear a faint crack as I'm about 80% through cutting it free, and a large mass of rock begins its freefall descent towards the lizard.  It accelerates towards the ground, and within a mere moment, there is a very loud crashing sound of rock on rock.  For a moment, my brain registers that I might have missed the lizard, given the sound, but my eyes verify, more than half of the lizard is eviscerated, including it's head.  Rubble and viscera fill the nearby area.

I hold my breath, and listen for any further sounds of collapse or rockfall, but it seems like the cavern is holding up.  I make my way down to the lizard, or at least what remains of it.  Yeah, this is going to be a long cleanup process... There is viscera splattered everywhere, and crumbled rock scattered about.  Before I do any of that though, I need to butcher as much of the lizard as I can.  It's massive, so I fashion myself a large knife to start cutting into the less splattered parts.

As I make the knife, I double check my stats, and find that I've gained quite a healthy amount of levels from the lizard.  I wondered if that would happen or not, and am pleased to see that it has.

<MYTHIC IMP>
Level: 64
HP: 618/618
MP: 206/206
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Mighty Imp
Magic: Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense