Underworld - Sanctuary: A LitRPG Series, page 22
She took a moment to examine it before putting it on. “Cool.” She thanked me.
“After you finish a small part of the wall, I’ll examine it and we’ll see if we need to rethink its thickness,” Khun offered.
Turning her focus to the base of the pillar, Clarissa took a number of seconds to examine it.
I had no idea how difficult it would be for her to create something with such precise measurements. Everything was riding on her ability to make it work. If she couldn’t…
She knelt down and held her hands out to either side of the dark image of Khun’s diagram. Brown mana seeped out of her palms and into the ground. A moment later, I saw a mound start to rise with the same color and textured pattern as the floor. She went slow, but to my delight, one square foot of stone rose up, fitting perfectly into Khun’s visual blueprint.
I met the ghostly dungeon spirit’s gaze and shared his smirk. It might not be as fast as spending the DP, but this was actually going to work.
A few minutes later, she stepped back as the first foot of the wall, reaching eight feet in the air, was magicked into place. She was so lost in what she was doing that she grinned to herself, but then remembered we were there and the muscle in the side of her neck twitched nervously as she turned to search for our response.
“It looks great!” I announced. “Your control is incredible.”
Her eyes widened in pleasure at my words before her cheeks turned red and her eyes once again retreated from the praise.
“Thank you,” she whispered so quietly that it was hard to make out.
Khun stepped forward and placed his hand on the new stone. After a moment, his hand shied away from it. He looked at me perplexed, then glanced at Clarissa.
“There is something about the mineral makeup of this stone that I’ve never come across before. I don’t know what to make of it. What I can say is it’s as hard as granite. It’ll be sufficient for our plans.”
If I’d thought Clarissa was red before, at that moment it was like her blushing ability leveled up before our eyes.
***
Audrey joined us about half an hour later, just as the bulk of Sanctuary was starting to head to the Outer Perimeter from breakfast. Clarissa had finished half of the wall between the pillars at the entrance and had figured out how she was going to handle the portholes. I left her to it.
The wall covering the entrance was approximately twenty feet away, so there was plenty of room for moving our carts back and forth.
I weaved my way through the Inner Perimeter and greeted those heading to our defense’s front lines. It was already close to 7:00 AM, so I stopped by the kitchen and grabbed a bowl of last night’s leftovers and devoured it right there where I stood.
Heading toward the south end of the Living Quarters where we had put the Cave Swine, I was no more than one hundred meters from where everyone’s bedchambers were when the smell struck me in the face like a projectile cow patty. It had only been a day and the smell of manure was already becoming a problem.
Aeris was waiting with Skyler and George who were both manning the poles to one of our carts. She was the only one wearing her armor. The guys were wearing the ever popular shorts and t-shirt.
Seeing Aeris shielding her nose with her hand the best that she could, I wondered why they didn’t have a golem doing the work.
The guys gave me watery-eyed grins as I neared to see that the cart was already filled with manure.
Any idea my jaw had of dropping open was rejected by the rest of my body’s protest. Squinting, I nodded in greeting, hoping I didn’t have to speak much while standing next to the filth.
It was worth asking. “Aeris. Can you do anything about the smell?”
“No!” Skyler and George cried as one.
Aeris shook her head frantically, rejecting the idea. What could I do to help the situation? There had to be something. Cold might do it. Fire was out of the question. No one wanted to deal with a literal steaming pile of dung. There was one thing that I was expecting to help with the creation of soil, but it might also help with the smell.
The first spell that I had mastered was Decay. It had been a great help defeating the skeletons when I first started fighting in the Head Mistress’s Dungeon, but ever since then a practical use for it hadn’t really come up. Until now.
Decay was a very minor spell that cost me literally 1 MP per cast at this point. I began to spam it all over the dung heap. One of its benefits was that each cast stacked to a point. Channeling it for an extended period of time worked the same as multiple casts.
Skyler and George both set down their poles and hurried away. It seemed Aeris’s try at taking care of the smell had made them as bashful as goblin scouts.
Almost immediately it seemed to dry out, which lessened the smell a noticeable amount.
The guys slowly returned to their posts but were still far too distracted by the smell to thank me.
“Coming!” Steve called, as he exited the hall of Cave Swine. He was dressed in his assassin’s leather, but as I was starting to picture him as a farmer, the outfit seemed to fit his new station as well. Across either shoulder, he held a freshly used shovel. Even if he wasn’t our pig farmer, it looked like he had happily helped George with the manure shoveling job.
I nodded my greeting as he stepped up beside George and motioned for us to move.
No one hesitated.
Aeris hurried over and took her place at my side. She grabbed my arm and leaned in as if to use me as shelter from the smell.
“Your Wind Magic didn’t work?” I said.
“Well. My first try didn’t. They wouldn’t let me try again after that,” she admitted with a shrug.
I burst out laughing and immediately regretted it, trying to cough out all the air I had inhaled.
She scrunched up her nose as she tried to keep herself from making the same mistake.
We passed the kitchen and eating area to our left and our bedrooms and the restrooms on the right as we headed clear to the other side of the Living Quarters where we planned on creating our field. The idea was to keep the Cave Swine as far as we could from our crops in case they got out, but perhaps that wasn’t a good idea. Thankfully, it was after breakfast and most everyone wouldn’t have to worry about the smell until lunchtime.
Olivia was already hard at work when we arrived. The sounds of her toil echoed throughout the Living Quarters.
An entire football field sized stretch of stone floor had been chosen for our little farm. There was enough space for foot traffic to the apartments to the east of the field, and to the crafting stations to the west. It was tight, but unless we wanted to take the time to literally dig out more space in the wall of the Living Quarters, this was the best solution we could think of.
Khun had untethered this slab of stone from the room’s mana supply so that it wouldn’t automatically repair the damage we were doing. Our new field would reach a depth of as much as five feet.
“That’s freaky deaky!” Skyler proclaimed as Olivia’s handiwork came into view.
Dozens of thick green vines were rising up from beneath the earth and then diving into the stone floor to break it up like enormous earthworms. They churned the ground of blue- and silver-streaked rock into gravel.
Lowering her arms, our Nature Mage turned from her work to face the incoming smell. Wearing a knee-high purple dress, her outfit made a fashion statement among the rest of us.
Seeing the manure, she shook her head.
Aeris and I greeted her as the guys came to a stop.
Steve joined us as if he didn’t even notice the odor.
“How’s it coming?” I asked.
“See for yourself,” she replied, motioning with her head to the strip of rock she had already broken up.
There was a row, about ten feet thick following the outside perimeter of the field closest to the living area. It spanned three quarters the length of the field. Most of the rock that had been broken up was still far from soil. It was mostly gravel in consistency, like the patch they were working on right now.
“You’re doing the edges first?” I questioned.
She nodded.
“This is the hard part,” Steve announced. “Once we get the border done, we’ll have an easier time chipping away at the rock remaining. It’ll be less stable.”
George approached, scratching his chin. “How are you going to turn that,” he pointed to the broken-down rock, “into soil? Just mixing in manure won’t be enough, will it? Not to mention, it’ll be months before the pigs produce enough to make a big difference.”
Everyone was silent. It was a real problem.
“Olivia. Are your plants permanent? Or will they vanish after the spell is finished?” I asked.
“These are temporary. I do have more permanent ones, but they’re slower and would likely drain the rock of the little nutrients it has.”
“Do it,” Aeris insisted. She looked up at me. “I think I know what El is thinking. We should be able to kill the permanent plants and speed up their breakdown with his Decay spell. With them and the added manure, that should greatly speed up the time it’ll take for us to make real soil.”
I marveled at the silver-skinned girl beside me. Her ability to follow my logic wasn’t a surprise, but the realization that we were growing close enough that we were starting to commonly share one another’s thoughts struck me as a big deal.
My mind returned to the issue at hand. “That is okay? Killing your plants?” I probed, not wanting to offend her.
“Of course,” Olivia said. “They’re just plants.”
The two girls shared a laugh at my expense. I took a little pleasure in their struggles of dealing with the increased intake of air.
Adding the manure was more difficult than anyone would have liked it to be. With our increased stats, it wasn’t back breaking work by any means, but everyone secretly wished there was some gravity magic that allowed us to command the dung to float out of the cart and into the gravel. Instead, we simply moved the cart close to the edge of the field and grabbed shovels. Starting at the end where they had begun, the manure hardly helped filled in a 10 ft by 10 ft square chunk of earth even when mixed with the gravel.
Olivia did her thing and added her permanent vines to the already manured section, and they began churning it slowly, mixing the earth and further grinding down the remaining rock. It would be days before our first patch of earth was ready to even begin planting something.
The creation of the field took up another hour of my time. I ended up leaving with George and Skyler when their work with the manure was done. For some reason, Aeris didn’t want to join me. Who could blame her?
I wasn’t excited about the smell, but the wellbeing of our livestock was more pressing than the field. Neglecting our meat source was not something I could stomach. The thought of a future bacon and pork belly supply drove me on.
As filthy as it was, I had to admit that the cart used to carry the manure had lost most of the repugnant odor now that it was empty. The dung had broken down even more since I had first cast Decay, making our job much less of a burden than it could have been. What normally would take weeks to decompose would now only take days. It made me wonder what the surface world would have been like if magic existed there in the same way it did in the Underworld.
“Even if we delay breeding the swine, they still eat hundreds of pounds of food a day. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the food supply you brought back will probably only last us a couple of months, tops,” George advised. “I’m still figuring out how much they eat a day, but even the piglets eat as much as a normal adult pig. The adults… are monsters. We need to get that farm going and producing soon or we’ll need to find another food supply, or just eat the pigs.”
Skyler and I stood there in the hall of rooms that had been turned into a pigpen listening to him while trying to breathe as little as possible. George seemed to already be growing accustomed to the smell.
It was as if the minor quests to build our settlement just kept adding up. At least our raid on the imp’s dungeon had bought us some time to hopefully deal with the Minotaur problem before we were running out of food again. We could always slaughter one of the adult Cave Swine, but I really hoped we could use them for breeding because of their high amount of natural mana even for members of their species.
The pigpen itself received praise from George, but he wasn’t entirely without complaints. Eventually, we would need to place the adults in a larger pen so that they had room to move around.
“Once I get a good idea of how much they need to eat, I’ll start experimenting with their diet. Lydia had some ideas as well, but I think we’ll be limited with what we can do until we get the first yield of crops. I doubt adding something with special properties will have any effect on their mana if it’s not consistently a part of their diet,” he added.
“If you need any help, let me know,” Skyler offered. He had been lingering alone watching one of the adult Cave Swine sleep.
Richard abruptly answered over group chat. “Just looking at them giant piggies makes your mouth water, eh?”
The very thought of trying to eat in the presence of the stench made me cringe.
Skyler’s hand shot to his mouth as he swallowed hard, trying to keep his breakfast down.
A wicked snicker sounded over chat.
“That’s cruel, man,” I retorted.
His mockery only intensified.
***
My day only became more hectic. I visited Clarissa to check in on her just before lunch to see that she had already finished the stairs and was discussing with Khun the best section to work on next. Audrey stood at her side but seemed rather uninterested in the process itself.
I encouraged them both and reminded them that lunch would be ready soon. Then I headed to the Outer Perimeter to check on our defensive line.
There were many different exits to The Bridge, but only one main one. Most of the smaller ones were just dead ends, with only a few of them leading into the maze of the Outer Perimeter. All of these smaller passageways had been heavily trapped by Travis, even before Lady Contessa had arrived, and everyone let them be. A more permanent solution would be necessary eventually, but it wasn’t a priority.
From the main exit, I found the room that four of my Golems were hanging out in, standing guard along the walls. I left them, exiting to the left and heading south. There I found Mel’s minions hanging out and the red-headed man himself sitting against the wall in a dark robe with The Living’s Hazzard crown placed upon his head. I was glad to see he could make use of it. The +500 Intelligence stat was incredible, not to mention the regen and Necromancer specific bonuses. He was examining the Incubus’s skull. His hand sat over its brow and his eyes were closed. Dark Mana escaped his hand with hundreds of static electric shocks dancing between him and the red skin that had yet to be removed.
I had never seen him work his magic and found myself watching in fascination while I tried to puzzle out what exactly he was doing.
A few minutes later his magic stopped, and I found him staring at me.
“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I’ve never seen an examination skill like that.”
He grinned but it fled from his face as quickly as it came. “I’m having a lot of difficulty grasping the essence from this skull,” he admitted.
“Do you want me to remove the hard skin shell?” I offered.
He shook his head no. “Normally that would be necessary, but not with this. I’m close to understanding why that is… it should speed up the process.”
“You mentioned its essence. I also try to understand a monster’s essence with Force Learn and it gives me access to the Shape Shifting form and Blue Magic. Is it the same for you?”
He thought for a long while before answering. “I think it’s similar, but I can’t change myself, only recreate what was already there. The better I understand it, and the higher level my mastery, the more powerful these advanced minions become.”
“I’m jealous. That’s pretty amazing.”
He gave me an earnest look before bowing his head in thanks.
“I’ll leave you to it,” I concluded. “Need anything before I go?”
He thanked me but assured me he was doing just fine.
I retreated to my golems’ hangout then took the door that headed west. From there a whole assortment of groups were holding their own rooms and staying quiet in the hope that some random mobs would wander in, lured by Khun’s Dungeon Aura. I was glad to see Chris there, grouped with the three girl rogues that I didn’t really know. I greeted them but felt it wasn’t the time to admit to them that I didn’t remember who was who. The rest of our bashers had set up camp in their own rooms. To the north, Trevon had three rooms to himself. If there was any doubt he was coming into his own, the boredom written across his face spoke volumes.
While there, I drained a few odd monsters that the others had already finished but didn’t stay very long. These were creatures we had already faced so I received no stats. When I arrived in each room, most of the others felt like it was necessary to start up a conversation with me so as not to be rude, but I saw it in their faces. It was an unspoken rule that silence was appreciated so as to not scare off any mobs.
After lunch, I found myself unsure what to do next. It was about time I started experimenting with Arcane Engineering and got my Construction skill up.
Chapter 18 – Arcane Engineering
I entered my room for only the second time since it had been restored to working order. The bed called out to me. Its comforts were very tempting in the moment, but after a cast of Heal, I laughed in its face.
Letting out a deep sigh, I shook my head. I was laughing at a bed…
Even though I was alone, I found it impossible to feel that way. People were close at hand, even if I was the only person in the sleeping quarters. Richard’s audible form of group chat was always active and gave us direct access to one another as long as we were within a square mile or so. Here, we were never alone.
