Violet grumbled as he watched the latest trade caravan plunder the main worldlet. It was true that traders were allowed to kill dungeon creatures and harvest whatever they could find, but most caravans were more concerned with speed and safety than with squeezing out every last bit of profit. Violet dismissed the visual scanner and turned back to his work. He had a few more measurements to double check.
Violet felt quite confident about the physical aspects of the "thinky-talky" device and was reluctantly excited to get the mental magic components worked out. The device looked like a group of particularly disturbed bees had a grudge against clams. Multiple lobes made of clamshell pieces rose from a clay platter too large for Violet to reach his arms around. The space between the lobes defined a pattern that would guide "mental emanations" and mana to an array of zircon gems embedded in the plate. Violet''s enthusiasm for the gems had not diminished, even after his experiments with enchanted treasure had hit roadblock after roadblock.
Violet glanced over to Yrryth, who sat reading Crataz''s books about mana flow patterns and vortex inhibition. "Any words you need help with today?" He asked the gargoyle. It was still astonishing that the gargoyle had learned to read so quickly, but Violet had gladly accepted reality when it meant the gargoyle was responsible for managing the entire mana flow situation in the tunnels, instead of himself. Yrryth shook her head in response to his question. The chain on her glasses clacked quietly against the side of her neck. Violet smiled, he had made her the glasses as a small joke, but she seemed to enjoy wearing them while reading. The lenses weren''t curved at all, just flat circles of glass.
Turning back to his workbench, Violet pulled out his notes and a few practice gems. He could have practiced the enchanting directly on the gems in the plate, since, as long as he didn''t mess up too badly he could "erase" a gem and start over, but he had decided that would be a bad habit. He started working on the "speaker" enchantment, since it was the simplest.
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Squints squinted in the extremely bright light of the dungeon floor. The light and the rain together were enough to blind or disorient anyone, which is probably why he was setting up a large tent for bandit queen. There weren''t enough tents to go around, and the fabric wasn''t thick enough to stop all the light. Squints wondered if the bandit queen would have a ready solution to this, like she had with the now magic-less but still talkative wizard.
The wizard sat nearby, hands over his eyes. His mouth, unfortunately, remained uncovered. "Used to be that a person would marry a selkie after stealing their seal skin. The selkies didn''t mind, it was their most reliable method of procreation and they nearly always outlived their captor by a hundred years. The coastal empire only stepped in when it was discovered that an officer had secretly used a form of necromancy to transfer damage from himself to his captive selkie whenever he wore his sealskin armor. That''s why seal-based armors are banned, not because of the cuteness of seals, but because of the connection to necromancy." The wizard paused his lecture to shift uncomfortably. "I think the ground here is acidic. Feels like peat to me. Peat bogs are a common source of the ''preserved'' style of artifacts due to the acid levels and poor air mixing at the surface. Preserved artifacts tend to..." Squints finished setting up the tent and tried to scurry away, but the bandit queen appeared out of nowhere and ordered him to watch over the prisoner while she arranged a few of her things in her tent.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
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Punch stepped through the portal into the river delta dungeon floor wearing his armor and carrying his spear. He shook himself to remove some rain while rubbing at his eyes. Yes, it did seem like the locals avoided the discomfort of the blinding rain dungeon floor, but Punch wished the bandit queen had picked any of the more comfortable dungeon floors to hide in.
Bean, Target, and troll bandit named Shtorrr stepped through the portal over the next minute. Punch addressed his group of scouts. "The bandit queen wants us to delve more deeply into the dungeon floors. We''ve all already sampled what the forresty floor has, so now we need to make a proper survey and map out all the resources and sources of treasure. If we find a better place make camp, we''ll be heroes for a day. Any questions?" No one had any questions, so Punch continued. "Here''s the order of things: Shtorrr goes through portals first since it heals the fastest, but on each floor we travel shield, spear, sling, then Shtorrr. Bean, call your targets before slinging stones." Bean nodded and loaded a stone into her sling. Target hefted his shield. Shtorrr stood there. Punch waved Target forward. "Take us to that sandy floor first, I want to see if there''s fish in that pond."
Target strode forward, less cautiously than he probably should, but the bandits had mostly cleared this floor on their way in and it still looked mostly clear. Punch decided he would get after the shield bearer if he remained sloppy on the next floor.
Shtorrr was first through the portal, as planned. When punch stepped through after Target, he found Shtorrr standing next to a pile of rapidly melting ice. "Jellyfish." Shtorrr reported. Punch nodded in acknowledgement and waved Target forward. The scouts slowly circled around the perimeter of the dungeon floor. The air was warm and the light was bright. They had to duck under the huge vine on the far end of the floor. Punch wondered why the vine would grow straight across the dungeon floor just to run right into the invisible wall that he could see out of the corner of his eye.
Target led them down towards the pond when they finished the big circle around the floor. The scouts crept along in the cover of the giant vine. Occasional monsters hid in shadows or up in the leaves of the vine, but any that Bean didn''t spot were impaled by Punch or obliterated by Shtorrr. The light had started to fade when they reached the pond. Punch considered having the team retreat to avoid any "nighttime" dangers but... the dungeon monsters so far were not a real threat to any of the bandits. The scouts took a short break at the pond while Shtorrr stood guard. Punch was happy to see fish in the pond, though some of them were suspiciously white-blue, like ice. He managed to spear one of the white-blue fish and held it up for inspection. The fish struggled on the end of the spear for a moment, then went completely still. The fish broke in half when Punch tried to pull it from his spear. The fish carcass was fully ice and had begun to melt. Ice fishing. Punch snorted at his private joke and got the scouts moving again.