Legion refused to leave the room until the ritual was disabled. All of the communication was through Ita, since the body in the room with Serenity didn’t seem to be able to pay attention to the outside world, but Serenity didn’t doubt Legion’s conviction at all.

Serenity could have forced the issue, but he couldn’t argue with Legion’s conclusion that it was safer for other people if the Hollowed-out body stayed in the base until the ritual was destroyed. Legion was willing to accept losing the body, but asked that Serenity do what he could.

Understanding the ritual properly took hours. Even then, Serenity had to partly depend on the similarity to other ritual circles he knew; there was information about the ritual he didn’t have because it wasn’t encoded in the symbols on the floor or echoed in the spellform the ritual created. It was clear that there were multiple ways to shut it down, but they all required either a key or a passphrase of some sort and Serenity didn’t have any of them.

It was likely that the Viper had a key on him, but that would require finding him in the mess of the base, then returning to the portal room. It was probably possible, but there was no reason to try. The intended methods weren’t the only way to shut down a running ritual circle. There were always weaknesses.

In the end, the easiest weakness to exploit turned out to be the power input. One of the features, probably a safety mechanism created by the ritual’s designer to avoid spilling uncontrolled power, was a series of cutoffs. The first one was probably a limit to its area of control based on the available power, but there was a sequence of them. The last one, at the lowest level, seemed to be a safe shutdown of the ritual.

There were several possibilities for the consequences to the Hollow Ones if he removed the ritual. The most likely was that they would simply die as the energy that had been fed to them stopped arriving. If they’d been altered to be viable creatures even without their hearts, they might well continue to live but they would not be even remotely as sturdy.

The worst (but fortunately least likely, since the ritual designer seemed to have a brain) possibility was that they might turn into feral Hollow Ones, out to steal Life energy from other creatures. In that case, they would live as long as they stole it from enough other things. Those could be dealt with; it wasn’t easy but it was possible. You just had to hurt them while starving them of power.

Ferals could usually create new Hollow Ones, as well. Serenity remembered the odd itching sensation he’d felt after touching each Hollow One; that might well be an attempt to spread. It was entirely likely that they could only spread when there was enough mana available, but that only made them a little less dangerous. If they faced the lower-Tier of the people on the surface, they might well be able to kill enough to fuel their life and spread even without the mana the ritual fed them from the ley line.

No matter which of the possibilities was true, cutting off the ritual wouldn’t make the situation any worse.

Simply cutting a power input would guarantee an explosion; there was no design feature that guaranteed it, but there was also no design to prevent such an explosion and raw mana was volatile. He needed to slowly decrease the power available so that it never went outside the limits of what the ritual could handle. There were several ways to achieve that goal.

In some circumstances, it was possible to confine an area so that mana couldn’t enter or leave then use up the ambient power. That wouldn’t work in a nexus, even a weak one.

There were no spells that Serenity could reasonably cast that would isolate the ritual, either. That had the same problem as the previous option; he couldn’t even start without the nexus overwhelming any isolation. It might be possible for someone well over the planet’s Tier to temporarily redirect a ley line, but Serenity couldn’t.

On second thought, that wasn’t entirely true; it’d happened once on Earth, hadn’t it? Of course, that was a weak ley line and he was well over the planet’s Tier at the time, so it still didn’t solve the current problem.

There were some items that would work, but Serenity didn’t have them available.

No, it was going to come down to either an appropriate runescript or a ritual of his own. Either way, it wouldn’t be cheap or fast. For this, he needed something that would handle an incredible amount of power, which made the precision of a runescript less viable. He’d have to draw a circle outside the Hollow One ritual’s circle.

A reverse-orientation ritual was clearly the way to go. He couldn’t use the inside of the circle, since it was occupied by the ritual he needed to block, and he couldn’t use two concentric circles; there were places where the ritual was less than a foot from the wall. That wouldn’t be enough room and he couldn’t afford a warped circle. A reverse-orientation ritual would let him spread what he needed to into the corners of the room. It was even somewhat appropriate, since he wanted to catch the ley lines’ mana and move it around the ritual without entering it.

Serenity pulled out his tools and got to work. Liquefied monster core was still the best basic mana-compatible material he had, but it was no longer the only one. He’d picked up more every time he performed a ritual on Earth, then still more as he traveled with Rissa and she made him visit markets. He’d even checked the shops that were still open in Tzintkra.

Four hours after that, he was exhausted but the ritual was ready. There hadn’t been any interruptions the entire time. No one was certain how far the ritual’s influence had spread, but Ita had already sent most of the lower-Tier mercenaries back to Takinat for their own safety … and everyone else’s.

Serenity lit the candles he’d set around the room, then lit the pair of braziers and set the appropriate herbs on fire. A chant and a slow pace around the room was the next step; he’d have to continue until the Hollow One ritual was no longer functioning. At that point, even letting the mana reach it again wouldn’t cause it to start up again. They’d be able to actually destroy it and see what the effect was.

[Choose bonus monster type:]

[Dragon]

[Burrowing Wyrm]

[Mandrake]

[Myconid]

[Kobold]

Aki stared at the list. It was short and to the point, but she didn’t understand why it was there. It appeared as soon as she finished what she thought of as her fifth true area, even though she knew it was only a Tier Three dungeon floor, and she wasn’t sure why it was there.

She’d never gotten a “bonus” monster type before and she wasn’t certain she wanted one. She’d heard of them, of course; dungeons would talk. She’d never heard a good reason for them and couldn’t understand why it happened now. These weren’t even particularly connected to her dungeon theme!

Well, dragon might be; she was a Young Dragon’s First Hunting Lands on her surface, after all. She still wasn’t going to pick Dragon. She knew better than that. Dragon dungeons were hunted down and killed.

The Burrowing Wyrm might be there for the same reason, but at least it wasn’t a dragon. It would be fine to have, except that she didn’t want it. She wanted to build her dungeon herself, not have her creatures do it, and what good was a Burrowing Wyrm if she didn’t let it burrow?

Mandrake and Myconid were both plant-creatures; she could tell that much from the Voice’s information. Either would probably do well on the floor she’d just completed. Perhaps that was the point? Was the Voice telling her she hadn’t placed enough monsters?

Plant monsters were boring but viable. They’d fit in with the “traps” theme of the level, since they’d probably be as much traps as real monsters themselves. Plant monsters didn’t tend to move much. They might have been more interesting if she knew what either one actually was or what they did, but all she knew was that they were plant monsters. That was enough, really.

Kobolds, however, were actually interesting. She’d never seen them; she had, however, heard of them. One of the dungeons close to her back on Asihanya was a kobold-themed dungeon, with kobold hunting camps on the top level and an actual kobold city by the time you got to the sixth. Merven had liked talking about them, as she recalled. They were pranksters and tricksters with a distinct fondness for doing clever things.

Aki wondered if Merven was still around. When the ley line moved off her dungeon on Asihanya, she’d lost contact with all of the other dungeons and the World.

Perhaps she should pick kobolds. If they were as clever as she thought she remembered, they’d be perfect thematically for a floor full of traps. They’d also remind her of Merven’s long, rambling tales. That was a good memory.

None of the others were better.

[Kobold]

A group of forty kobolds appeared on Aki’s new level. They were lizard-like and varied in color; each of the kobolds had a different base color. Most were predominantly green, brown, or pale yellow, but there were two that seemed more reddish and four that were blue or purple. One was black on his back, while several others had black accent colors.

That wasn’t how this was supposed to work! She always had to make monsters one at a time, set their special features and spawn locations, then trigger their initial spawn.

One of the kobolds sniffed the air. After a moment, it shared its conclusion. “Dragon”.

No, that was a male, wasn’t it? Aki had to look carefully to be certain; she’d never really cared about the physical differences. They were all animals, after all.

The four kobolds closest to the first one to speak seemed startled, then sniffed the air as well. One of them - a female, Aki thought - agreed with the first one to speak. “Dragon!”

The other sniffing kobolds all agreed. “Dragon!”

Aki had no idea why they were smelling a dragon on her new floor. Raz hadn’t been down there yet!

There was a relatively easy way to find out. They were her monsters, she could speak to them. They might not know the answer, but they ought to know enough to answer. “Why do you keep saying dragon?”

The first kobold to speak glanced around, then seemed to pick a random direction to face before he responded. “It smells like dragon here. Faint but good. The dragon who let us live.”

“The dragon who let you live? Does that mean you came from somewhere else?” Aki had never heard of that. As far as she knew, dungeon monsters were always created by the dungeon they belonged to. Surface dungeons could have Pathed or monsters who came from outside live in them, the way Raz lived in Aki, but they weren’t dungeon monsters. They wouldn’t respawn and they weren’t beholden to the dungeon for sustenance.

“Kobolds teach care, teach traps.” The speaker nodded firmly. “Also give secret if asked. Few ask. Dragon did; dragon spoke. We come, help, teach. Voice asked, we agree. Happy. Better than long wait.”

Lillene

I wonder how Raz will feel about kobolds in the “basement”.

Speaking of which, one of my Patrons reminded me that a lot of people may not remember the kobolds. They're from Chapter 90 ... you'll recognize the scene quickly.