Chapter 125: Come Consequence of Death_Dragonheart Core

Chapter 125: Come Consequence of Death

 The gleaming satisfaction of evolutions did sustain me for a while, but I was far too busy to really revel in it. A shame, because I was ever so excited for the reaper''s cap, but the imminent threat of a Gold merrily sauntering his way into my dungeon after escaping with five floors worth of secrets took just a scale more priority.

 That was the weight and work of it, unfortunately.

 I darted overhead, scattering points of awareness in my wake like stars; healing mana coiled through the ambient air, crackling over the Sknds in forked points of lightning that both healed and thoroughly shocked anyone they brushed. Back in the Stone Jungle, Seros hissed at Syalia''s corpse, slitted pupils narrowed and gravitas pouring off his scales like rising tides. Our connection thrummed with his hunger, at the first true hunt he''d had in a long time that had been just a deception, just a fruitless battle against someone who hadn''t been in their proper fighting mind.

 He was a champion, my first Named, and this was not a battle he was happy to have won.

 She was Gold, I murmured, at least a balm over the sphemy. A good reward of mana.

 Seros'' thoughts simmered like boiling water. He did not, apparently, see it the same way.

 What a little sycophant. He wanted to get stronger, which means he needed greater ambient mana andrger prey to sate his fill, and then he was pissed that he didn''t get to fight the same level of invaders he had before. As if he would be happy wing miserable little Bronzes to death and potentially chipping a fang.

 He needed to go work through his frustrations in a battle with the sea serpent. He had grown from fledgling to juvenile, a true monster in the third room of the Hungering Reefs; his attacks cleaved stone from walls and he regrly devoured roughwater sharks to satiate his hunger, and all those within my halls knew to fear him. His battles with Seros were legendary.

 In another world, Seros had fought with the sarco, a trainingpanion of simr size.

 But he was dead, and now she was dead, and the Undeke was missing its monarch.

 Ghasavlk would pay with blood and consequence for killing her and taking her corpse; I knew I needed to make a new one, to fill the void left behind by the end of the apex, but there was a biting urge of mncholy that roiled in my core.

 Two sarcos had I had, and both had died. Neither had even been in glorious battle, in victories that came with their sacrifice; the first had killed the dryadic fighter, but the other had needed to be killed by Seros. Ghasavlk and Syalia had killed her without more than minor injuriesand she''d been so clever. Her thoughts had been full of some melody deep in her mind, a Song she spoke of with great reverence and wonder. A call to magic more than might, something that her evolution would have given her in spades.

 It would have.

 If she hadn''t died.

 To be a dungeon was to be one of death. Dozens upon dozens of invaders had entered my halls, and many of them hadn''t left. I had relished in their demise, in the mana I had won from it; I didn''t care about them, and frankly I refused to. They had made the choice toe seek treasure with a garotte around their necks.

 But my creatures didn''t have that choice. They were born within my halls, to live in a paradiseand they were killed before they could ever reach their heights.

 The sarco, perhaps, could have been a mage. She had been reborn from a fossil, found nowhere else on Aiqith, and she had been so hungry for power. For something beyond what she had already had.

 And she was dead.

 I needed a distraction. I woulde back to the question of new sarcos when I was more stable, when I had aplished something other than letting a Gold with intricate knowledge of my first five floors slip through my clutches with corpses in his grasp, when I could focus past the death and the destruction and the decayso I pushed Seros to venture back to the Hungering Reefs, to carve his frustrations into the only creaturerge enough to go w-to-scale against, and fled myself down to lower floors.

 Past the lightning, past the reefs, to the smoke far beneath. Still unfinished, still empty and yearning with its ten thousand foot sprawl, but I never felt better than when I dug my ws into a project, and this was one I had many ideas for.

 The basalt pirs. The endless smoke. The untitlednd.

 In concept, the floor was simple and beautiful for it, and I couldn''t love it more. For all I was still not a fan of fire and smoke, such dreadfully garish manners of destruction with little more spark of creativity than muddy earth, I had imbued a certain elegance of my own make into this seventh floor, and I treasured it dearly.

 The billowing ck choked out the floor, plunging it into darkness, thick and grey and deepI had ignited another two furrows with mana from particr invaders to bring it up to nine coal-fires, all for magical cohesion, but I''d filled the rest with pockets of stone and potential. Not enough mana in my stores to create more magma smanders given their seventeen point cost, unfortunately, but still those three I''d made were living up to the pedestal I''d set them on. Gluttonous,zy beasts, some five feet long and growing, with cragged skin barely visible beneath the stone they melted under their bulkglorious.

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 And then, above on the basalt pirs and darkness skittering around, the bounding deer raced. Still with the eldest leading the original herd, his pale antlers held high and hooves kicking up sparks as he darted over the ins. Already he''d gained a knotted pink burn scar over his hindquarter, where a scorch hound had leapt for him in an attempted huntbut he was fast and he was clever, as far as deer went, and he''d managed to escape. Other members of his herd weren''t as lucky, their numbers thinned, but already the scorch hounds were blooming. The hollows between their ribs were filling out, the embers returning brighter than ever to their eyesthey''d imed one of the many dens in the far back of the enormous floor, and already a litter of pups was on their way, with the hunting returning true dividends. They hadn''t managed to scratch past the carapace of the mottled scorpions, but they were making steady progress. Everyone on the floor was developing stronger ws, actually, after running over the basaltalready the scorch hound who had so captured the attention of my beast-tamer kobold had sparks that kicked up around her paws, new fires in the darkness.

 She was growing exponentially, actually, more than even her pack; something about the kobold working with hermore urately, attempting to work with her, she hadn''t really agreed to avail her pack to work with him yet, though he was making progresshad bolstered her beyond, and she was a beast in the darkness. Larger than the others, faster, more cleverher fangs were always tinged red, and she''d gained back the weight the Sknds had deprived from her.

 A right monster, she was. And the kobold at her side was positively blossoming in these fiery depths, as much as I deeply, deeply hated it. His scarlet scales seemed iridescent at the edges, charcoal horns growing longer and more ridged, and in the middle of his hunt I''d caught him with smoke trickling from behind his fangs.

 The absolute asshole. It seemed he was going directly the route of the fire-drakes, the idiotic imbeciles with their garish breath weapons and moronic fighting styles. Well. I had Rihsu, and Chieftess, and all the evolved kobolds from the Hungering Reefs. I would leave this little fool on his own.

 He fit in with this floor, at least. I hadn''t yet decided on a title for it, something to carve out meaning from the deep and the dark, but fire was unfortunately fitting and belonging here. His evolution wasing extremely soon, I could sense it, and that was even ignoring the bond he was forging with the scorch hound. Whatever he would evolve into, it would be something I would have to live with. Maybe.

 As proven by Ghasavlk, adventurers could make it down to the lower floors. Perhaps he would be put out of his misery before he could make the regrettable decision to fall to the fire.

 But as Ghasavlk had also proven, adventurers could make it down to the lower floorsfloors which were not perfect. All creatures here relied on closebat, on invaders getting too close to their magma pool or not seeing them lunging from the darkness; but I did have a schema that hadn''t yet found a proper home in my dungeon.

 Well. I had given it a home, and then Veresai had killed them all. She was a true delight, at times.

 The spined lizard would fit well on this floor, though.

 I gathered all of the mana I''d had before Syalia, since I certainly wasn''t using the Gold-attuned points for this; only around twenty, but I wove together a group of four just to seed the poption.

 They were a touch too bright, the majority of their scales being a gold-brown instead of the deep grey of the basalt, but clustered over their backs were ck-white spines that bristled and shivered at every movement. They blinked at each other, forked blue tongues flicking out. Their tails flicked.

 In the distance, a scorch hound howled, and immediately they scattered.

 Little hooked ws wrapped around the lips of basalt pirs and pulled them up, tailsshing as they raneven with gold scales they blended into the darkness almost immediately, lost to the smog and the smoke. Already I could feel them weaken in the acrid environment, little lungs struggling under the grey, but these weremon creatures not yet evolvedmy ambient mana flooded through them, powerful and endless. Their little channels thrummed with mana, adapting to this newnd, healing what damage the smoke caused.

 This batch may not survive, considering the other predators here had already gotten quite on their way to perfecting their hunting style, but already I could see the dreamspinesunched from towering pirs of basalt, striking from shadows unseen and unheard. There would be nothing that would stop them if they got powerful enough.

 And in my dungeon, the potential was all there.

 But for now, those four skittered off to distant corners of the basaltnds, finding the algae pools and carrion left by the scorch hounds, carving out a home amidst the chaos. When I regenerated more mana, I would create more, to pour them into the nooks and crannies to serve as smaller prey for the scorpions that were not quite fast enough to kill either the scorch hounds or bounding deer.

 But with that, I rocked back, settling in my core with its golden lettering. I peered out, awareness flickering through my various floors, tracing the path that Ghasavlk had taken out of my dungeon. It had taken him and Syalia hours to go through my dungeon, even with him stealing paths from Veresai''s mind, and in under a day another adventuring party would being through.

 It would never end, I feared. And I would not dieI refused to die, not againbut a Gold had escaped. Escaped not just alive but newly bolstered with knowledge, with very ufortable information about my floorsI didn''t know all he had learned, but it was clearly something, and that was without what he''d brought in himself. Something about Chosen, he''d said, rather than Named; and about sensing draconic powers and Kriya, deep within Veresai''s den. So.

 All things considered, not particrly desirable.

 But I was alive, and Syalia was dead, and new evolutions bloomed under my powerand there was still a void in the Undeke, still an emptiness of death, still a dearth of victories. I would not allow it to stand.

 My gaze slid up, past the floor I was working on, to one that had so recently been tested. Been tested, and held strong.

 The Jungle Labyrinth had certainly shown its strength. Perhaps it was time it received its just reward.

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Chapter 125: Come Consequence of Death