Chương 138: Beginner Dungeon

Aliandra It was late afternoon by the time she and Mato reached the Adventurers Guild. Ali paused and stared at the heavy oak doors with their distinctive heavy brass handles gleaming from the reflected rays of the mid-morning sun. It had been quite some time since she had entered the guild – so much had transpired. A complex knot of emotions twisted around inside her.

The last time she had entered through these doors had been before the business with Alexander Gray, before Roderik and the burning of her forest, and even before much of their exploration of the jungle level below Dal'mohra.

"Are you ok, Ali?" She collected herself with an act of will and nodded to Mato. It was just nerves. She straightened up and followed him into the guild hall.

"Hi Aliandra, hi Mato," Mieriel called out from her desk, her typically delighted lyrical voice guarded and laced with an undercurrent of uncertainty. She was elegantly dressed, as usual, in a creation that Ali would have bet had started the day in one of the many boxes stacked up in Lydia's Allure earlier.

"Hello Mieriel." She had avoided the guild for a long time mainly because she had gotten such a bad vibe from Mieriel – reinforced by Malika and Calen's suspicions of memory tampering – but, now that she knew what had happened, she knew she no longer had any reason to be afraid of the Sun Elf. Her emotions, however, did not subscribe to direction from her rational faculties, insisting on doing their own thing.

"Sorry," Mieriel said, looking awkward and apologetic, clearly catching the tone of her emotional state with her potent perception skills. Spy – Sun Elf – level 53 (Mind)"It's ok," Ali answered, willing it to be so. It should be ok.

"You leveled up," she said, trying to shift the conversation to something a little more comfortable.

"I got three levels from the preparation and the Town Council trial," she answered, inclining her head. Then she continued, "There are some personal quests for you guys." Personal quests? Someone wants us for a job, specifically? Ali reached out and took the envelope Mieriel offered her, noting, curiously, that there was a separate one for Mato. Your minions have defeated Mage – Skeleton – level 9 Ali dismissed the distraction.

"Also," Mieriel continued, "If you have the time, there are a lot of new general quests and jobs up on the board related to the undead. You might want to check it out. And, Aliandra, the Guildmaster would like to talk to you, if possible."

"Busy day," Mato quipped.

"Thanks, Mieriel."

"Yes, thank you," Ali answered, tearing open her envelope and peeking inside. She found an elegantly hand-written letter in Elvish with a simple request from Eliyen asking if she could escort Basil to the lake to collect more mana-purified water. Apparently with the blight and the undead, her elixirs were suddenly in much higher demand. Easy enough. Spying a curious footnote in the letter, Ali asked, "It says here that Eliyen made some sort of arrangement with the guild store to pay me for mana-purified water?"

"Oh, yes," Mieriel said, smiling.

"The guild percentage for mana-purified water has been increased by fifteen percent for every sale, and the difference is to be paid into your account. Is that acceptable?"

"That's good," Ali said. I think. Without Malika around to confirm, she wouldn't know for certain, but it sounded generous. So far, Eliyen had been conscientious about keeping her end of the bargain and she trusted the herbalist. Depending on how much water she needed, Ali might soon refill her bank account. She could, of course, just make the gold directly, but Hadrik Goldbeard would probably be suspicious if she suddenly deposited a whole lot of ancient Dal'mohran currency again.

I could palm it off on delving, I suppose?

"What did you get?" Ali asked, changing the subject as she turned to Mato. He offered her the note, and said, "Sigurd saw me using Tree Form from the city walls and he's offering to pay me to try to cleanse the blight from his farm."

"Will that work?"

"Yes, I'm pretty sure I can help him," Mato answered.

"Maybe you can practice your plant growth skill on his fields?" Ali was pleased to hear Mato thought he could help. Sigurd had been very nice to them, even when it had become common knowledge that she was a dungeon. Some people simply had remarkable integrity.

"Yup. Let's check the job postings while we wait," he suggested. He seemed to be quite excited about his personal quest – which was not much of a surprise. Mato always wanted to feel useful. The jobs board was a bit of a surprise – there were many more jobs posted than she had remembered from the last time she was here.

"Most of these seem to be fallout from the Necromancer," Ali observed soberly.

"Yep, seems like it," Mato said.

"Lots of requests for food, it must be scarce still."

"I can help with that," Ali answered. The zombies hadn't destroyed any of her fruit trees, and she could always plant more wheat or rice.

"Maybe ask Sigurd if he wants to stop by and fill up from the fields again?"

"I'll let him know," Mato said. The blight and destruction were still causing problems for the surrounding areas. There was a general bounty on culling undead.

"Wish I'd seen this before we cleared the cavern," Ali said, adding the quest to her guild ring by touching it to the parchment pinned to the board.

"Mhm," Mato said, still scanning the board. There were quests from the logistics department at the Garrison requisitioning arrows, weapons, potions, and bandages, some of which Ali noted as things she could help out with immediately.

"Ok, I'm going to go see what the Guildmaster wants," Ali said.

"See you later."

"Thank you," Ali said, choosing one of the comfortable seats around the coffee table opposite Vivian Ross in her office.

"What for?" she asked, looking a little surprised.

"I understand it was you who pointed Calen and Mato in my direction when I was facing Alexander Gray," she explained.

"Oh, that… yes."

"I assume the council didn't approve," Ali said.

"They don't know. Well, besides Donella. They can't disapprove if they are not aware of it." She quirked a wry smile.

"Did you put her up to helping too?" Donella Novaspark had been a devastating force with her Chain Lightning, suppressing the undead army with covering fire from the battlements. Every time Ali had been able to draw undead back into the range of the Gnomish mage, they had been obliterated instantly. Without her support, they would have surely been surrounded and overrun. Her involvement was one of the things Ali still hadn't figured out, and if Vivian had been involved she finally had her explanation.

"I might have suggested she stand on the battlements and do some target practice," Vivian answered with a grin on her face.

"I hope it helped. Bastian really had our hands tied, and if Donella wasn't so influential, she would probably be in a lot of trouble with the crown right now. As it stands, he can do very little to her because she controls all the advanced teleportation into and out of Myrin's Keep, and the flow of information with the rest of New Daria."

"It was a big help, thank you again," Ali answered. The woman was not only powerful, but she was smart and politically savvy. I suppose she would have to be in this town.

"It is me that should be thanking you for taking care of that thorny problem. Bastian and his friends lost quite a lot of political capital in that debacle, especially having earned the disapproval of the Pathfinders. I find myself in your debt, and yet I must ask you for some big favors."

"What do you need?" Ali wasn't certain how to read Vivian. On one hand, she had been the one to order the invasive interrogation. But she had also stood by her during the council trial, and even though bound by the council rules, she had found ways to help Ali with the necromancer.

"I just wish I were still–" Vivian said, but she stopped and cleared her throat awkwardly as she caught Ali's eye.

"I was hoping to convince you to use your shrine again. William Turner indicated he is close to having enough candidates to run another set of class trials." Vivian paused for a moment.

"And… you think you can convince them to use my shrine?" A little shiver passed down Ali's spine.

"Convincing them won't be an issue. Word got around from last time, and some people are deliberately holding off in the hope that your shrine will be available soon," Vivian said. She took a deep breath.

"You see, I'm struggling to recruit good people for the guild. The news that this 'silent assassin' is targeting our members has begun making the rounds. There aren't that many people gaining combat classes, and the good ones are often snapped up by the garrison, or they leave town for more attractive or profitable jobs in Southport or one of the other larger cities.

I recruited those that have been interested – on probation, of course – but they're weak or have poor attitudes, and I think I will need to weed them out soon. The only strong guild members are your party and those in Teagan and Aiden's groups – more than half of which you're responsible for unlocking with your shrine." How do I say no? Ali had been overjoyed to help people like Havok, Basil, and Ryn gain their classes, but she had no personal investment in the people this time around.

The last class ceremony had been followed almost immediately by assassination attempts and the burning of her entire Forest Cavern, wiping out most of her domain in the process. But she helped me with the Necromancer… and paying it forward is always good, but…

"Can I have some time to think about it?" She really wanted to talk it over with Malika, but she was still in Kezda recovering with the elder.

"May I ask what's causing your hesitation? I thought you enjoyed giving them strong classes?" Vivian asked, surprise flickering in her eyes, but it didn't sound like she wanted to force the issue.

"I am certain that the class ceremony is how Roderik Icecrown discovered I was a dungeon." She grimaced at that memory. It was hardly the only reason, but she didn't want to go there right now.

"Aah… well I understand. Just let me know when you decide. In the meantime, would you consider repopulating the sewers? We're being swamped with undead from the southern forest, and most of the quests and jobs are too high level for the guild as it is right now. If Aiden and Teagan's groups were all bronze rank, I think we would stand a much better chance of cleaning up the mess left behind by Alexander Gray. Your sewer was the perfect training ground for them."

Your minions have defeated Warrior – Skeleton – level 11"Why are there still zombies and skeletons? He's dead. When I got back, the sewer and my cavern were crawling with undead," Ali said. She checked her ring, noting that the quest counter for the undead bounty increased by one, even though the notification had come from her minions making the kill without her.

"The forest is still infected with the blight," Vivian said.

"That miasma is spreading, and everything it kills is raised as undead. Without expensive potions or high-level cure skills, the lower-level beasts and people are dying like flies. I'm hoping your friend, Mato, can help out, but the scale of the problem is immense."

"Ok," Ali said.

"I'll reclaim the sewer and populate it with appropriate monsters. It shouldn't take more than a day." This request was easy enough. After all, she was going to need to become a real dungeon, and that meant monsters and traps, and figuring out how to dungeon. Actually, Vivian is an experienced delver.

"Vivian, you spent a lot of time in dungeons, didn't you?"

"I did, but I'm retired after losing the rest of my team," she answered, a shadow of some old pain crossing her face briefly.

"Lyeneru Silverleaf paid me a visit." If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Vivian cocked an eyebrow.

"She told me I was a terrible dungeon," Ali said, grimacing at the embarrassing, blunt assessment she had been subjected to.

"I had no monsters or traps or anything like a real dungeon. I can populate the sewer for the guild members to train on, but I'd like to do it like a real dungeon. Do you have any advice?"

"I… Well, that's a request I never expected to hear in my lifetime." Vivian's brow furrowed for a long moment before she continued.

"Bosses – you need boss monsters. I don't know how it works for your class, but dungeons are powerful, and terrifying because of the bosses they wield. And you need to invest in some kinds of traps. Just… nothing too diabolical for the training area, please. I'd rather not send our best guild prospects to their deaths."

"Ok, I'll have to do some research. I don't know how to make bosses yet, but I have a few things I can study. I mean I didn't even know my class was a dungeon till recently. I'll do the sewer and keep the monsters and traps under level ten. Do you think that will be sufficient?" One side benefit would be that the monsters and traps in the sewer might provide a safety buffer preventing the undead from reaching town.

"That's perfect, thank you, Aliandra. I really appreciate it. And please let me know about the shrine whenever you decide. Even one more Havok, Kaitlyn, or Devan in the guild would be a huge success. With a strong set of people reaching bronze rank, we should be able to start pushing back the blight and the undead monsters." Vivian Ross"How did it go, Vivian?" Mieriel asked her. How did it go?

Vivian reflected on her life as part of an adventurer delve team and what had brought her to Myrin's Keep and her desire to form a guild. Nothing in there had prepared her for Aliandra. The appearance of Alexander Gray had nearly undone her. Vivian grimaced. With what had happened to her class upon her evolution… She was easily able to deal with incidents like the Goblin dungeon-break, but the necromancer might have been beyond her abilities now.

If Aliandra and her friends hadn't been up for the challenge, her precarious situation might have been unmasked – and with Mori, Bastian, and Jax all arrayed against her, that would have been an unmitigated disaster. She needed to accelerate the guild and the development of their classes. Somehow… before everything unravels.

"She agreed to repopulate the sewer. You can let Aiden and Teagan know they should be able to use it by tomorrow morning."

"But not the shrine?"

"She said she wanted to think about it." That was the thorniest problem. Aliandra had single-handedly contributed to the bulk of the guild's recruitment in that one event – and, if she counted by quality, rather than quantity, the ledger was skewed even further in Aliandra's favor.

"I imagine she wants to talk with her friends, and two of them are out of town right now. Give her time."

"I wish I knew what she wanted."

"Don't force her, she has been through enough already."

"Oh, no, I wasn't planning on forcing her. I… I've learned that lesson." It was just that the idea of forming a working relationship with an actual real dungeon bent and even sprained several long-held expectations and truths she believed – had believed, she admitted to herself.

"It's just hard. We need to increase recruitment. You know how dangerous the initial levels are."

"Well, about that…"

"Oh, no, what did they do this time?" She sighed. A few of the probationary members seemed to think that their guild membership conveyed rights and entitlements that they had no business demanding. She had only accepted them into the guild because of the dire state of recruitment, and, of course, it was now backfiring. I should have trusted my instincts. I miss the days of simple adventuring… Aliandra"Is that enough?" Ali asked as she sealed the last bottle and stored it.

Even removed from the lake the mana-purified water glowed a brilliant blue – far brighter with mana sight, but even to her mundane senses it still looked impressive.

"Yes," Basil answered.

"Eliyen doesn't have enough money to buy all this back from Weldin, so we'll have to make potions first and work our way through the stock." It was perhaps an overly complicated system, Ali decided, but it seemed to check all the legal boxes. As a member of the guild, Basil could harvest the water and legally sell it to the guild store.

As a registered herbalist apprenticed to Eliyen, he could purchase it back, paying the additional guild markup and taxes – which was how Hadrik Goldbeard was kept happy – and Ali would get paid.

"How long till you can have the potions made and distributed?" Mato asked.

"Some of the farmers caught the blight."

"It's our highest priority," Basil said.

"We can have the first batch ready in a couple of hours."

"How about I come with you?" Mato said.

"I have a job to cleanse Sigurd's farm, and he will want one of those potions – I could take it with me."

"If we're done here, let's head out," Ali said.

"I want to work on the sewers, so I can walk with you for a bit." Chatting amiably, the three of them headed back together.

"Oh!" Basil exclaimed.

"You replanted the flower garden!"

"I missed it," Ali said. There were more Mystic Bluebells than perhaps strictly necessary, but she still thought it had been worth it to make a point to Lyeneru. Silly perhaps, but it still made her feel better.

"Where did you get peacebloom?" Basil exclaimed.

"Bakahn Village in northern Toria," Ali said. She had planted a fair amount of it in the bamboo forest Malika loved, but it had also gone really well in the flower garden.

"Can I take a sample?" Basil asked.

"I'm sure Eliyen knows how to use it."

"Sure," Ali nodded. It was not her goal to turn it into a resource, but if Malika's flower helped, she wouldn't begrudge them gathering some.

"You know, I can ask Eliyen for some cuttings from her roses," Basil said, quickly gathering some of the flowers and storing them.

"Maybe we can add some of those to the garden? Also, I know where to find some chrysanthemums in orange and pink – I think those would go nicely off to the left side over there."

"I'd love that!" Ali said, and for the rest of the way to the passage up to the sewer level, Basil continued gushing about his favorite flowers, what he might be able to find, and how they might enhance the garden. She smiled to herself, finding that his contagious enthusiasm never seemed to get old.

When they reached the location of the old rockfall and the glowing golden staircase she had made, Ali bid the two of them goodbye and summoned her Grimoire, calling a couple of Kobolds to guard her in case she encountered any loose zombies. The mana from her domain below didn't quite reach the sewers – she hadn't been that interested in reclaiming them until Vivian had requested it, so she hadn't planted anything that could reach nearby.

With just a few minutes' worth of work, she planted a stand of Living Bamboo along the cavern wall, reaching up till the tips of their stems brushed the lower cavern roof along this edge. She turned to the next imprint and spread ivy and several species of creeper from the jungle below across the craggy wall and through the hole into the sewer above, careful to avoid splashing herself with the foul-smelling effluent that poured out from above.

To bolster the arcane portion of her domain, offsetting the density of nature mana beginning to spill from the Living Bamboo, she planted several thick patches of blue mana grass around the base of the spiral staircase and nestled up in the hollow spaces between the rocks. It was easy work, but as she got into it, her mind returned to Lyeneru and her sudden appearance in her domain." Dungeons don't think like that," she had said. This is harder than it seems.

Ali paged through her Grimoire for a bit and then summoned a Luminous Slime. The slime blobbed and wobbled, casting long shadows from the massive bamboo stems with the bright yellowish light of its amorphous body. She took a moment to reacquaint herself with the bizarre, alien senses of the ooze monster, but it wasn't nearly as disorienting as she remembered.

She could feel-hear the vibrations of the Kobold guards nearby, accurately pinpointing their position by the sound of their heartbeats tickling the entire membrane of the slime's body. That's so weird, she thought. Her skills had leveled up – that had to be the explanation. She had more intelligence, more perception, and her Martial Insight skill had grown.

She still struggled to correlate the strange senses to what she perceived with the more familiar senses she had been born with, but she sat with it patiently until it progressively resolved in her mind. Then she added the senses of her Fire Mage. It took several minutes to get used to the second pair of eyes. The Kobold's vision was different than her own, seeing much better in the darkness, but it was maintaining two points of view that were the most disconcerting.

She took some time to wrap her mind around the extra stream of information, deliberately not favoring one or the other. I need to get used to this if I want to get the most out of my skill. She climbed up the stairs and into the sewer, calling for her monsters to follow.

Her Kobolds scampered up the spiral staircase, triggering an explosion of vibration senses from the slime while it simply flowed itself up the ivy-draped wall and along the rocky ceiling before smooshing itself into the sewer room, through a little crack. Her domain mana was already beginning to percolate up through the bamboo and ivy and seep through the brick floor of the sewer chamber, propagating far faster now, partly due to her class and skill growth.

The biggest boost in speed, however, had come when she had added Arcane Recall – the Mastery skill benefiting her other skills in many surprising ways. First the domain, then monsters. Ali opened her Grimoire, and then, ironically, summoned a monster first. Her Moss Creeper bobbed gently on the ground in front of her." Plant moss everywhere,"Ali said, sending it scampering off into the darkness." Verdant Moss." She summoned a few more and then did the same with Spore Spreaders.

Delegating filling the gaps to her summoned minions, Ali spent the next couple of hours walking through the sewers with her Kobold bodyguards, channeling enormous amounts of mana through her imprints, laying down moss carpets and golden glowing mushrooms everywhere. This is so much faster than last time. She took the time to add variety.

Psathyrella mushrooms in the sewage channels were a must, the place reeked – but she planted those by proxy, more willing to let her Spore Spreaders get dirty than stick her hands in that foul stream. Here and there, she added jasmine for its pretty white flowers and the distinctive scent of their perfume and instructed the Spore Spreaders to be liberal with the kinds of mushrooms they grew.

If the adventurers were going to level up in these tunnels, they might as well do some good harvesting ingredients for the Alchemists or Herbalists. Or perhaps even the Chefs, given how scarce food seemed to be. If they earned some coin doing so, Ali imagined they'd probably spend it buying armor or weapons from the store, which would help them grow. Content that her minions could finish filling in the vast network of smaller passages, she stopped and paged through her Grimoire. Ok, which monsters? Slimes for sure.

It was a sewer after all – even if it was beginning to smell much better. Too cramped for wolves. She stopped and considered the Goblin imprint for a while. She had felt rather uncomfortable about making Havok fight Goblins, but he hadn't seemed to mind at all. Goblins and Slimes it is, she thought, deciding not to be squeamish about it if Havok wasn't. Her Kobolds were mostly way too high level to be an appropriate challenge.

She began summoning, idly studying the cascading runes as they swirled off the pages, enjoying the familiar sense of the slow tick of Sage of Learning as it helped her understand the magic construction. She kept particularly close tabs on the class level of the monstrous Goblins, making sure to keep everything below level ten as Vivian had wanted a bronze rank training ground.

She didn't particularly wish to optimize the gear of the Goblins she was summoning, so she simply fed her Grimoire the extra mana and let her Customization choose random appropriate gear for them – mostly the worst quality daggers or leather armor, but her skill at least seemed to make generally ok choices. As she studied her magic, though, something of a pattern began to emerge. She paid closer attention, and after a half-dozen new summons, she was certain. So that's how it encodes the class level!

With mounting excitement, she pushed on the skill and quickly discovered she could influence the level within the range of the variants she had deconstructed. This is going to save so much time! Fully absorbed in her momentous discovery, she forgot all about the sewers and immediately tried to summon a maximum-level Kobold Acolyte – but although she tried everything she could think of, she was unable to influence the Grimoire to surpass the highest-level Kobold she had deconstructed.

It doesn't seem to be a matter of control, she thought, pondering the problem. Arcane Recall gave her enough control to influence the runes with a substantial amount of precision. It was more like having too few pieces to finish the puzzle. Wait… can I go the other way? Far less useful, of course, but if she could downlevel monster summons, that might add a lot of variety to her sewer, combatting the problem of diminishing returns that came with killing the same variety of foes repeatedly.

With her excitement returning, almost as strong as before, she channeled her mana into the Kobold imprint, choosing an archer, and while it was in the process of being created, she spent mana to customize it, suppressing the monster's power. The lowest level archer she had recorded in her imprint was a level eighteen, however, when her spell completed, she knew she had been successful. Archer – Kobold – level 4 Your reserved mana has increased by +8. Perfect.

Her archer came equipped with some crude leather armor and a shoddy-looking bow, but for what she was trying to make here, he was perfect. She immediately created a horde of friends for him, mixing in rogues and warriors, letting her customization pick the gear to save time." Guard the sewer against all intruders," she said, addressing the Kobolds as they stood in a line awaiting her orders.

As one, the rogues all faded into the shadows, and though she couldn't see them with either her mundane or mana sight, she found she could still hear their heartbeats with the tremor sense of her Luminous Slime. She smiled, happily, as the Kobolds scattered to explore their new domain. As she organized her space, a rough order emerged.

She populated the areas nearest the sewer entrance tunnels with the lowest level Goblins and Toxic Slimes, reserving the downleveled Kobolds for her mid-range threats, giving them tunnels and nooks and permission to construct crude traps with whatever they could find – even going as far as to create some extra weapons for them to use as materials.

Retreating progressively through the sewer toward the passage leading down to the forest, she steadily scaled up the level of her minions, summoning Brine Oozes and Kobolds in the level range of five to ten. This should give a nice ramp. It didn't hurt that the highest-level Kobolds would be able to hold their own against the vast majority of the zombies and skeletons that still seemed to be trickling in, drawn by her domain mana. When she reached the final room, she paused. This needs a little work, she decided.

The decrepit brick floor looked like it might be about to collapse, shot through with cracks. And this room would be a good space if it were bigger. Maybe I can think like a dungeon after all! Ha! Setting to her task wielding Domain Mastery, she removed several walls, merging the room with some nearby smaller ones, and widening it into a sizeable chamber. She widened the sewer channel, now flowing with clear water, thankfully, giving her Brine Oozes some more space to lurk.

She left the crumbling brick but reinforced the foundations below with granite to forestall any possible accidents. Then she finished up by populating the room with several level ten Fire Mages, warriors, and rogues. Domain Mastery has reached level 15. After considering it for a few more moments, she summoned a swarm of stinging jellies and dropped them in the wider water channel.

The swarm monsters were a ridiculously cheap way of filling space, six being summoned for the cost of a single normal monster of the same level – and they made a good water threat. And finally, my traps. She spent the next half an hour inscribing Runic Circles of her old favorite Grasping Roots everywhere to serve as traps. Attached to the rapidly propagating domain mana, those cost nothing to maintain, so she was rather liberal with them. Vivian should be happy with that.

She paused to admire her work, taking a moment to add a mushroom here or there as needed and placing a few clumps of Blue Mana Grass for Basil to find. There, Miss hoity-toity legendary Night Elf. Is this dungeon enough for you?

Obviously, her minions were not going to keep someone as strong as her out, and she nearly fell over laughing as her imagination served up Lyeneru's mildest sneeze clearing this level in a hurricane – but her level ten kobolds should be more than sufficient to keep most of the zombies and other random monsters, or even townsfolk, from passing through. How else can I think like a dungeon?

Deep in thought, Ali made her way out of the sewer, flying down into the Forest Cavern, but a flash of red and the distant thump of a Fireball detonating snagged her attention, even before the chime sounded. Your minions have defeated Warrior – Skeleton – level 6 Keeping a healthy height among the trees, Ali flew over to find two of her Kobold Fire Mages running from several skeletons and dodging behind trees to avoid the ice bolts of a low-level skeletal mage. This won't do.

She dropped a waist-high barrier between the skeletons and her Kobolds with a gesture and a flash of her mana. The two mages chirped their approval, instantly launching a pair of Fireballs that instantly turned the bunched-up warrior skeletons into a pile of smoking, blackened bones on the ground and then unleashed a flaming barrage of Firebolts at the hapless ice mage. But before the chime even sounded, Ali heard moaning from the lake's southern outlet tunnel and two zombies emerged.

The very same tunnel she and Seri had blasted open so long ago to release the fury of a waterspout on the Goblin siege. So, that's where they're sneaking in… She spiraled down and landed beside her Kobolds, ignoring the heat and flashes as they turned their magic upon the newcomers. Fixing this hole would be some work, but nothing she couldn't handle with Domain Mastery – her mana in this area was easily strong enough – but then she paused. Hmm… If I close it, where will all the water go?

Visions of flooding her Forest Cavern did not appeal to her. Worse still, another skeleton clambered out of the tunnel to the delightful welcome of a Firebolt in the face. Where will the zombies and skeletons go? If Lira was right – and it certainly seemed that way – they were being drawn in by her mana. If they couldn't get to it, they would probably go searching for another way in. And that might take them around to the farms.

More Kobolds, she decided, but when she checked her current mana reservation, she winced. It was all well and good for Lyeneru to tell her that dungeons thought with their minions – but the Night Elf didn't have to deal with spending the mana to support them. How am I going to defend this area? It would take a large squad of Kobolds to reliably hold the undead while the mages destroyed them.

At least a couple of warriors for the frontline – and a few Acolytes due to the Fire Mages' penchant for blasting everything with no regard for friend or foe. Ali sighed. This was far harder than she had imagined. Wait… what about traps? Lyeneru's book mentioned traps, but she hadn't needed to read the book to realize that dungeons used traps – they were notorious for it. Everyone associated dungeons with traps and monsters. And treasure… but Ali didn't care too much about that last part right now.

She had an invasion to deal with. She flew down till she was right beside the offending tunnel, drawing her Kobolds with her for protection." Protect me," she said and then ignored the sounds of combat as she set to inscribing a runic circle. Grasping Roots – level 25 (Nature) Summons Grasping Roots on anything entering the circle. Runic Circle Perfect, she thought, attaching the glowing circle to her domain mana.

It couldn't move, or think, but it would defend her cavern – and more importantly, she could use her domain to power it instead of reserving her own precious mana. Just like the sewers.

Except, she didn't need to be careful of killing the newbies down here and she could make a far higher-level circle. She stepped away, studying the glowing green runes on the ground, spanning nearly two meters in diameter. Except, from the eyes of her Kobolds, the effect was nearly invisible. Without mana sight or another specialized perception skill, her traps were perfect. She didn't have to wait more than ten minutes before a skeleton emerged from the tunnel.

With bated breath, Ali watched it clacking its loose jawbone and surveying her forest before it took a few steps forward shambling right across her runic circle. Thick roots burst from the ground, entwining the monster rapidly." Shoot it," Ali said.

"At once," the Kobolds hissed, and fire rained down on the struggling skeleton. Your minions have defeated Warrior – Skeleton – level 8 The quest counter recorded on Ali's ring ticked up by one. Perfect. Besides, she had another idea brewing – but first she should finish this part. It took about half an hour for Ali to inscribe enough Grasping Roots circles to satisfactorily cover the entire channel of the outflow stream on both sides. When she was done, she summoned a handful of lower-level Kobolds."

Make more traps in this area, especially different ones," she instructed. They set to with devious grins and the enthusiasm of a cohort of overexcited squirrels. Huh. She obviously needed to challenge her creatures more often! The Kobolds had proven to be resourceful trap-makers when she and Mato had been forced to creep through the ruins of Dal'mohra. Some had poison skills – not that poison darts would be effective against skeletons and zombies – and there had been rock-fall traps and tripwires.

Ali grew a stand of Living Bamboo up against the far bank, some handy vines clinging to the wall, and a few assorted patches of poisonous mushrooms for them to scavenge for materials. I think that should do it, she decided. She would need to check in on them regularly, but for now, she was happy with her solution to the problem.

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