Well, most of them. Her avatar was going to be experieng the ohat her of them liked. But that art of living life. And while she could always unicate with Mordecai or any of the inhabitants, it didn’t feel the same as actually talking did. On top of that, she couldn’t talk to visitors at all. Imagine if her parents came by!
And she couldn’t evee illusions the way Mordecai was doing early on to show Moriko other parts of the dungeon, which required having her avatar to cast the spells. Her core could only do dungeon magic. Hmm. Actually, there was an idea in that.
She began experimenting with her idea in the War Room, where she had an illusioing dungeoure to pare against. When Mordecai’s attention was drawn to her experiment, she was half expeg him to offer a ent gestion, but instead she just felt a sense of satisfa and encement before his attentio back to the dungeon and cheg up on their various visitors. Unless a group really needed special attention, they only o do spot checks, their inhabitants had everything under trol.
Mostly.
The faeries were tinuing to multiply and spread. And it wasn’t like it was their fault, it was Li’s influence. And they didn’t i with their inhabitant capacity properly either, it was like ara space just for the faeries was being created. And it itched.
Kazue adored the little ratling shard-of-a-god, but he was messing with the dungeon, and she had very mixed feelings about that part. Before, their dungeon didn’t do a lot of ued things, and everything worked pretty much how they were anticipated to work, though there had been occasional surprises.
Now? Well, he had somehow taught some of the dire rabbits how to shadow-jump and shadow-blend, and these abilities were beginning to spread to the bunkin and rabkin. And she retty certain she’d seen a shadowy faerie flicker by, and the fact that Kazue wasn’t sure about what she’d sensed was driving her a little nuts. Ever since she’d awoken as a dungeon Kazue had been very sure about everything she sensed ierritory, she’d just known anything she focused on.
And she hadn’t realized how thhly that awareness had bee normal to her until that surety was broken.
But! Enough of that! Kazue bahose thoughts for the moment to turn back to her project. They already had a ptform that could create an adjustable illusion, she just o ize that idea and add a few things. Plus there would be ernal trols, it was for dungeon use only.
The final results were, well, satisfactory. It was more like having a puppet than an avatar, but at least she could create an illusion of herself, plete with void other sounds, over the ptform, and could animate it to ad speak for her. There was no actual iion and ion, the illusion could only really do things she told it to do. But, wait, there was that other spell, could she build that in too? Yes! She could set an illusion running with a set of basistrus and responses programmed in. It would be obviously an automated illusion, but she was certain she could find a use for it.
“Good job. I was w what your solution to your frustration was going to be.”
If Kazue could have gred at Mordecai, she would have. “You khat I could do something like this for a while, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but you o find a solution on your own. I was fident you would find an option that suited you.”
She wao be ahat he hadn’t helped earlier, but the way he phrased that, “What were some other possibilities?”
“You could have created a puppet of some sort that looked like you, something that would only animate when your will filled it. It might have been more avatar-like, but it would have still missed the mark. I think that would be less satisfying by being that much closer without actually being there. And the liween an animated strud a full golem be thin. If you crossed it, the same blessing that has made our other inhabitants into se creatures would have applied. How would you have felt about a look-alike golem?”
Ick. Yeah, she was gd that she hadn’t gohat route. Even just the physical puppet idea started to feel creepy if she thought about it.
“But somewhere iween, you could have created more carved artwork, and ented it to animate much like your illusions, but a little more physical. That wouldn’t have had the risk of being a golem.”
Mm. Better, but she was still happier with her illusion. “And now that I think about it, I could have created a tiny version, and I still I guess. I was thinking of creating a ptform that was mobile too, but an automaton that plex will always run the risk of crossing that boundary, wouldn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so, but creating more of these will be something to do until we have filled out the popution gaps and start saving mana for our zone.” ‘Floors’ didn’t feel it described things accurately anymore, so after some discussion, she and Mordecai had shifted to calling them zones.
Of course, she already had a project that was eating up some of their mana right now. She was expanding their entrance hall and shrine area, and was including almost all the gods she could find information on in all the books they’d received. There were even mods than she’d realized from her studies at the temple. Though some of them got shrihat were just shy of being officially insulting, such as Dormire. “And what about your idea for a perma arena?”
“I’d really like that to be outdoors, but sihat isn’t an area most people are going to know is part of our territory, it wouldn’t make seo have my avatar doing anything risky there. I could attach it to our private chambers, but I’m not sure how to make the aesthetid feel of it work just yet. I don’t want to make everyone who reaches the bottom have to walk through it, but it feels lopsided to have it branch out. So I am still thinking about it.”
Even without growing deeper, there were still a lot of projects for them to work on. It wasn’t hard to stay busy, even if the ck of a body was occasionally irritating. She wao talk to the kobolds that Mordecai’s avatar was dining with, but she’d already realized that installing one of these ptforms in their zone-zero wasn’t going to be a good idea so long as they were trying to maintain the illusion of having fewer zohan they really had.
A series of lights fshed from the ceilihe ptform showing her illusionary self. “Thank you Saraag, I’m gd you like it.” Wait… with a mental sigh, Kazue focused her attention on examining the mushrooms growing on the ceiling ier detail. There were several stalks with broad, thin fruiting bodies that had grown into a single surface, and upon that surface were a lot of tiny mushrooms that could glow different colors, borrowing and bining differehods from the other fungi growing throughout the dungeon, including some of the wild growth ihird path.
“That was the color and shapes nguage you and Kstoria worked out, isn’t it?” Which she’d have picked up automatically.
“Hmm, you make words?”
There was a brief pause, then [Yes.]
Huh. That was kind of . “That’s awesome. You talk to anyone anywhere in the dungeon with that. You should show that off to all the other bosses to start with, and then see who else you get to talk with you.” Their giant mushroom boss was the least unicative inhabitant due to his nature, but this should help with that. “Don’t push yourself to talk to too many people at ohough, go at your own pace.”
Saraag fshed his aowledgment, and then the square of mushrooms went dark as he shifted his attention elsewhere.
Kazue moved on to the step of her project, which was simply going to be pt instead of making mobile ptforms. This was fairly quick to set up, just skimming through the dungeon and marking off where she wahe ptforms to be pced, aing the process automate itself as mana allowed. Really, it was still her doing it, but she had found that stuff like this didn’t really require her focused attentio was just repetitive tasks.
Sweepitention through the dungeon did let her catch up on what Li was doing, down by the edge of the ke at the deepest zone of the dungeon. It seems their three einherjar ‘guests’ were amusing themselves by having a friendly sparring match with Li, o a time of course, all while Li ying verbal one-upmanship with the zuhra genie, each telling ever more outndish stories to try and make the h first. Oh, and he mao pull out the occasional snack from somewhere to mun. While sparring and talking.
She was beginning to develop a faint ability to sehe robability ed around the small figure, but it took a lot of tration and she found the traces of pure chaos to be deeply disturbing, though she could not have expressed exactly why, so Kazue had stopped trying to look that closely.
Li had proven himself pretty good at staying out of the way of the adventuring parties, though Kazue he exact way Mordecai had phrased the request. He’d made sure to couch it ierms of everyone else is pying their own game ihe dungeon, and if Li pyed his games too close to their games, it might interfere with their games and make them less fun.
And Li was not the sort to eople to have less fun. And Mordecai was always willing to e up with mames for Li to py if the rest of the dungeon got too busy. Which was good, because he never seemed to sleep. Oh, one might find him asleep somewhere, but no one ever saw him go to sleep, and he’d be found in the most improbable pces.
Kazue let her focus rest here for a little while and took the time to enjoy the absurd stories being sed. Sleep might be a fn cept to a core, but rest aion were still good things to have.
Zagaroth