Dungeon Man Sam and the Orphaned Core, page 41
“We’ll figure it out,” Sam said, bending down to pick up the buffing tool again. “I promise. Hey, you’ve got a lot of people on your side on this one, right? We’ll figure it out.”
“Thank you, Sam.”
“Anytime.”
“Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“Those cores… When they appeared, I felt something awaken within me. I believe that subroutine that you and Rashun located within me reacted to their presence.”
Sam frowned and put down the buffing tool to look at Cora. “The part where you eat other cores, you mean?”
“Yes. I believe it is likely that I would be able to… Enact that routine upon these cores, should they appear again.”
“You know the only time they’d be coming in again would be if the revenant sent another invasion. There’s be enemies around.”
“Yes.”
“Could you ‘eat’ one from inside your bolt-hole, do you think?”
“I… Doubt. I think it more likely that I must be in close proximity for it to function. Perhaps my missing pieces might have allowed a longer-range process, but I do not have access to those currently.”
“Then you know you’d have to be out here, alongisde us, as we fight.”
Cora was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, like she was trying to find the right words, she started to speak.
“I do not like being afraid. And watching you all today, it occurs to me that one method of preventing fear is to confront it head-on. And…”
She fell silent for long enough that Sam finally asked, “and?”
“And watching you all fight… I do not want to sit idly by while others fight and die around me.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am afraid. But I am also certain. I wish to be of use when next the revenant attacks us.”
“Then we’d better come up with a plan, don’t you think?”
“Yes. I do think that.”
Sam went back to buffing the damage from his friend, and they talked. It didn’t take long—the plan they hatched was simple enough. And they were just finishing up when one of the mobs called out.
“We’re all finished, chief!”
Sam looked up and stared. The wooden tones were gone again, and the man who had spoken—a tall, skinny orc, with dark skin and short curly hair—was looking right at him with a tired smile and shining eyes that were very clearly alive.
The others were wiping sweat from their brows and leaning on their tools—a mix of shovels and rakes and similar implements. And they were talking to each other, conversations too low for Sam to hear. But they all of them moved and held themselves and spoke… They were alive too.
“That’s… Great,” Sam heaved himself up from the floor and made his way to the edge of the dais. “I… Thanks.”
The workers all looked up at him, and the first one who had spoken got a big grin on his face. The others started smiling too, and came to stand behind the tall orc.
“He’s got questions,” said one of them, a female orc almost as tall as the first one but with brilliant green skin. “I’d recognize that expression anywhere.”
“But he doesn’t want to offend us,” this time the speaker was a short human male with a heavy beard. “I love that about this guy.”
Sam felt his jaw drop. What was going on here?
Might as well ask.
“What’s going on here?” He let his hand drop onto Thumb Bane’s head, just in case this was some kind of elaborate trap. He also glanced at his map, but the mobs were all still colored blue, the color of friendly units. “Actually, wait for one second.”
“Right,” Sam nodded. “Okay, things are quiet enough. What is going on here?”
“You’re wondering what we are,” the tall orc said. It wasn’t a question.
“Little bit, yeah,” Sam said, coming to the edge of the dais. “None of you are the mobs you started out as. But you’re acting like I’m still in charge of you. You’re obeying my orders, but each one of you is alive and free. It’s right in your description. So yeah, let’s start with that. What are you?”
“We’re people,” another human, this one bald as a spear and with dark skin. “We weren’t when you spawned us, but we were before, and we are again. Thanks to you, and to mistress Cora there.”
Sam blinked. “Before?”
“There is a place,” the first orc said, his voice quiet. “I don’t know where it is, but we are all there, watching and waiting. Sometimes we sleep, sometimes for ages at a time. But we always wake when the Last regenerates, and we always watch, and we always hope. And now you have spawned us, and our hope has been made real.”
“We all can see,” the bearded man said. “We can watch what happens around the Last. We who are guarded by her, who are brought forth by her. We cannot speak to each other, we cannot even see each other. But we can see through her eyes, and through her effects on the system.”
“We all of us,” this was the orc woman, and her voice was gravely and gruff, “we long to help fight for the Last. We are trapped in that other place, but to come to this place we must give ourselves as mobs. Mindless, will-less, capable of war but not of thought. And we each knew when we answered the call that would be what we would become, and we accepted it.”
“But this?” The bald man spoke in a deep, rich voice, “This is like nothing we’d dreamed. When we saw Leiliana’s mind returned to her, we knew something had changed. Something that across the ages has remained constant had suddenly shifted. We are ourselves again. I know not how, except that it must be the work of you and of Cora.”
“And for that,” the first orc said, his grin broad and full of teeth, “we will fight and die for you, Samuel Tolliver. You have given us a chance to be ourselves again. After aeons in that place, after ages of watching and hoping and fearing and losing, after an eternity knowing, knowing we would never again know the solidness of earth beneath our feet and our own thoughts in our heads, we are ourselves once more.”
Sam stared. His jaw, he was sure, was somewhere around his ankles.
They were people. Not just people, but people who had chosen to fight for him? How did that work—Did that mean whenever he spawned a mob, it was going to be a real person who’d chosen to come from… somewhere to fight on his side? Did that mean that every one that died…
Another thought hit him like a thunderbolt on a clear day, one that almost made his legs collapse under him.
“You… What’s your name?” he asked the tall orc.
“I am Thrash,” he said, bowing from the waist.
“Thrash. You said you could see… You could all see. Who’s ‘all’?”
“There are many thousands of us,” the orc woman said instead of Thrash. “Not as many as there were. Our numbers have been dwindling for ages. And if we all die out… I do not know. Perhaps the Last will no longer be able to spawn mobs in time of need.”
“So, like, you all can see where Cora can see?”
“And where her influence extends, yes,” Thrash nodded. “It is not like seeing with your eyes, it is more… An awareness, like memories being made directly into your mind.”
“And… You all are on Cora’s spawn lists or something? That’s why you can see what’s going on?”
“We do not know the specific mechanics of it,” this was Baldy again. “The system scrubs much of our memory autmatically, sadly. Our knowledge of the past is mostly gone, if ever we had it. The last protects our personality, though, and our memories of everything after the System descended.”
“But yes,” Thrash said with a nod. “I believe anyone who can answer the Last’s call can also view what is happening within her influence.”
“Not in the white room though,” Baldy said. “We cannot see what happens in there. It was quite worrying when you called out to Cora that Rakun had also gained access to that dimension.”
This time his legs did buckle under him. He wound up sitting on the Dais, legs splayed in front of him, his palms behind him flat on the ground supporting him.
“You all can see,” he breathed, feeling tears welling up in his eyes.
“Well, yes,” the orc woman frowned. “We just said—Oh! Oh, of course! Yes, yes they can see you too, I’m quite sure!”
“What?” said Thrash, looking back at his companion. “What are you on about?”
Sam felt like laughing, felt like crying, felt like jumping up and screaming until his lungs exploded and his heart burst from his chest.
Nothing had changed. Not really.
Nothing had changed… Except for everything.
He dashed the tears from his eyes with one hand and looked up towards the ceiling, a joyous laugh escaping through the broad grin forming on his face.
They could see him.
They could see him!
“Hi Ma,” he said, laughing and weeping all at once. “Hi Pop. Hi everyone. I’m so sorry for what happened, and I’m so glad you’re all okay. I’m working as hard as I can to get you back.
“I’ll see you all soon. I promise.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
SAM HAD JUST finished spending his essence and reaching level 5 when Rakun launched his second assault.
It came two hours after the first attack. Araxes had predicted it almost to the second. Sam was just closing down his menu after purchasing another tier in his Indiscriminate Justice power and also the first tier of a basic healing spell called “Nightingale's Balm” when a surge of oily mana rolled through the dungeon.
A chorus of acknowledgments came back to him through the channel, and Sam pulled up his map. The dungeon had changed shape somewhat in the last couple hours. The western tunnels now had a large room at the end instead of a T-intersection, and that room had corridors looping to the north and south. Sam had placed the Mineral Processor in that room, and had set several worker mobs to mine and dig out more of the dungeon, and had discovered when he did so that they actually collected more minerals per square than his guardian power did.
So with the new resources, he’d spent a large portion of the last hour with Pearl building defenses. The little fae, in addition to her mania for paperwork, also had a devil’s eye for the best place for certain traps, and the best kind to use.
This time, he hoped, they were ready for whatever Rakun was going to throw at them.
He pulled up his dungeon map, and immediately saw the angry red cross icons of mob generators. One was in the infirmary, just like last time. And one had landed in the center of one of the bunk rooms.
He watched on the map as blue dots flowed out of the center bunk room. Those would be the non-combatants, the nestlings and the older kobolds, escorted by some of the stronger ones. He’d made sure they all knew what to do if and when they got hit again.
He stood on the dais next to Cora, and soon enough a stream of kobolds hurried out of the tunnels. A pair of orc warriors strode along beside them, and Char brought up the rear, herding them all towards the mess hall, which was the designated safe room in this scenario.
On his map, another half-dozen blue dots converged on the bunk room as the mob generator started spitting out undead. Those would be his fighters, and Pearl leading them. He itched to go join them, but no, that wasn’t his role this time. He’d raised up fighters, he’d constructed traps, he’d talked with his troops and figured out a plan.
Much as he wanted to go in and knock some heads together, he was meant to be kept in reserve in case Rakun pulled something they weren’t expecting.
Sam smiled a tense smile. They’d known the infirmary would be a prime target for Rakun, so they’d taken special steps to protect Buggs and anyone else who might wind up in there.
Most of the simple traps in his lists were unmanned. Things like pitfalls or acid vents or walls that shot out poisoned darts. But some of the traps required workers to man them, and some of the most interesting traps required a goblin to man them.
And would you look at that, he’d already spawned a bunch of them.
His smile widened as he watched on his map screen. Two blue dots appeared in the infirmary, popping out of the walls right beside Bugruk’s bed.
Twin auto-crossbow turrets would have just emerged from their nooks in the wall, and the goblin operator in his cupola would now be lining up and taking his shots—Yes! The cross icon disappeared from his map after spawning only a pair of mobs. Those too quickly disappeared as the goblin turrets mowed them down.
Another wave of oily magic roiled through, and this time one of the strange cores and a single large generator slammed into existence right in front of Cora’s dais. The generator was tall and square and and had a pair of double-doors on the front below a pair of large glowing gemstones.
Almost as soon as they appeared, the gemstones on the large generator flashed and a huge lumbering thing with three arms and two heads shambled out. Not to be outdone, the core began spawning UnCroaked and zombies into the room as well.
“Go to ground, Cora,” Sam said, feeling strangely calm as he pulled Thumb Bane from its loop. “I’ll holler when it’s time.”
“Good luck, Sam!” Cora floated quickly to the center of the dais and dropped into the pit Sheshek had crafted for her. As soon as she was all the way in, metal doors shot out of hidden recesses just under the lip and clanged together, sealing her in her hidey-hole. If anything wanted to get at her, they’d have to go through an inch of plate steel to do it.
Oh, and one very annoyed Guardian. They’d have to go through that too.
Sam stepped back and hit the Identify spell on the monstrosity as it lumbered towards him.
Grotesque Shambler
Level 5
Enemy Dungeon Mob
Type: Undead
Subtype: Earth
HP: 300
MP: 0
Description:
Oh. These damn things.
So you know that one mad scientist, little skinny dude with a bad haircut and crazy eyes and a mild B.O. problem? Yeah, those types always seem to think it’s a great idea to stitch together a bunch of bodies in some wacky bid to gain power over life and death.
Usually what actually happens is they forget to install little things like a safety cut-off switch, and their monster goes nuts and converts their creator into three square yards of street chutney before going on to terrorize the local village.
Yeah, this is that monster. Too many limbs, too many heads, and a real narc-on for anything even tangentially related to the dude who brought them into this hideous un-life. And when I say ‘tangentially related’, I mean, like, ‘living’.
Good luck!
Combat Data:
Immune: Poison, Dark, Blood Loss
Vulnerable: Fire, Holy
Crushing Grip: Base Damage x5 if it successfully grapples its enemy.
The undead monster howled and lurched towards Sam, all three of its mismatched arms reaching out for him. He tapped his “Bite Your Kneecaps Off” power and felt the strength surge into him as he was confronted by something larger than himself. Then he quick-stepped to the side and brought his hammer down hard on the nearest arm, right at the elbow.
There was a sickening pop, and the arm collapsed to hang limp at the shambler’s side. The other two arms swung at him, one catching him on the shoulder and sending him spinning away. He regained his balance, then ducked under another swipe.
He could have laughed out loud. He was moving like he had been practicing these dodges for weeks. His steps were light and quick, and his strikes could have vaporized bricks. Part of it was the preparation; finally, finally he wasn’t reacting to something unexpected, and it felt amazing.
But that was only part. And not the largest part.
He wasn’t alone anymore.
A pair of UnCroaked tried to hit him with their tongues. He swayed away just enough to avoid them, then flung his hammer at one, splattering it. The other one croaked and tried to bite him, but he stepped forward and rammed his boot right into it’s left eye, sending it flopping backwards with half of its health gone.
Oh, not that he’d really been alone, not with Pearl and the kobolds and even Araxes. But the knowledge that his family could see him, was cheering him on from wherever they were, knew what was happening and that he was fighting to get them back… That was something else again.
Three skeletons came at him at once. He stepped forward and caught the first one’s clawed hand as it swiped at him, then cranked his harness strength to maximum and spun, ripping the undead off its feet and caroming it straight into its fellows. They all went down in a tangle of bones. Then he Called his hammer and finished them off with a single blow that crushed all three of them at once.
