Chapter 18: Minion Madness

Tuesday, March 28th, 5:30 PM

Dungeon Ciara

Within an hour, my Dungeon was fully lit in all the areas I intended for human exploration. But the lighting also laid bare how plain and uninteresting most of my internal space was.

Better do something about that.

Fungi were easy. My Devilflies gathered a few dozen varieties from the mountains in less than an hour. One that piqued my interest was a variety that resembled a Death Cap—but it glowed a deathly red.

I stared intently at it.

<Dream Stalk mushroom. Poisonous. -F-> The Voice announced.

Oh! I forgot that I can consider creatures. I guess the same is possible with fungi.

I wondered where that mushroom came from. I’d never seen or heard of it before.

With a shrug, I populated my Dungeon’s darker areas with clumps of fungi. To my Dungeon half’s delight, the toxic Dream Stalk mushrooms glowed with just enough reddish light to make the planted areas look foreboding.

Edible varieties included Black Trumpets, Chanterelles, and Porcinis. I planted those beneath the shrubs surrounding my fruit orchard, then focused on minions.

I liked my Nemesis crabs, so I added one after another until I had thirty total. The process got faster as I went along, since my mana income continued to increase as more crabs joined my workforce. That scaled up my feeding operation to the point where I rarely experienced hunger for more than a few seconds before it was sated.

I also increased my Twilight cricket population to sixteen. Although they weren’t too dangerous, they were adept at handling small tasks like distributing arthropod denizens around my Dungeon.

With situational awareness in mind, I created a new minion type. Seagulls were common enough that nobody would notice if I had four of those as minions. So, I did just that, enlarging them by around ten percent, so they’d be a little stronger but wouldn’t stand out too much.

My Sentinel gulls took to the sky, joining the native gulls as they watched for danger.

Despite having lost a few here and there to predatory birds, my Devilflies proved so useful that I added quite a few more, bringing their total to forty. They couldn’t do much outside after the sun set, so I had them aid my crickets by ferrying smaller denizens around my Dungeon to spread the populations out.

By morning, I had nine Dire Widow spiders, and each spun an impressive, three-meter orb web in places where the shadows crept up against my lighted areas. The bright red Widow hourglasses on their bellies were handsome and intimidating alongside the black and yellow stripes from their Argiope heritage.

I was spellbound for a few minutes after panicked screeching alerted me that one Widow had caught a bat in its web. With a thirty-centimeter wingspan, I was certain that the bat’s furious struggles to free itself would rip the web apart.

But it held—and the bat suffered torn wings where the fragile membranes were sliced by the silk.

My Dire Widow attacked immediately, gliding along a silken strand from its hiding place to the center of its web before racing along one of the radial supports toward its squeaking prey. Like most orb weavers, it wrapped the bat in wide sheets of tough silk as thousands of strands were extruded from its wide spinnerets.

Soon the bat was mummified by a misshapen straight-jacket. Its struggles had quieted to shudders of impotent exertion as the spider ducked to bite.

I heard a wet crunch when the Widow’s fangs stabbed toward one another, sinking into what I assumed was the bat’s shoulder.

The web vibrated for a few seconds as the bat screamed and struggled, but the spider kept its fangs buried deep inside its victim. The screeching stopped, and the prey stretched out inside its silken prison.

My Widow snipped the lines by which the cocooned bat was suspended, then calmly hauled its enormous catch up to a crevice I’d shaped into the wall. The Widow seemed to appreciate its spacious, hardened-stone refuge, as did its siblings, which made me feel good.

I made certain to create escape tunnels behind those in case my minions needed to retreat. Then I connected all of them, with enough space for the spiders to move past one another if necessary.

After the first light, my pups stretched and circled one another before they headed outside. A large flock of seagulls was diving into the harbor, but I paid them little mind as I admired the powerful grace of my gorgeous Labs while they ran.

[You girls have fun and play for a while! Just be careful, and come home if you get scared.]

[Yes, Mommy! Sandy understands.] [Sunny does, too! We’ll be good girls.]

Their words made me glow inside.

Wow… their speech is incredible after that extra Blessing!

It still felt surreal to be conversing with my dogs, but I wasn’t about to complain. They were my best and most loyal friends, after all.

No matter what I did or how bad I messed up in my previous life, they were always there for me. No purer love could be found anywhere. But hearing them speak their minds made the friendship feel magical.

For a while, I let myself watch while they ran and played, feeling as fulfilled as I ever had in my previous life.

My girls made their way to Schwan Lagoon.

With my attention focused inside my Dungeon overnight, I hadn’t realized the lagoon was growing a lush carpet of green shoots near its southern banks. My pups raced around the shoreline, then stopped to roll on the grass.

Wow…

I knew plants had been popping up near my small animal entrances for a few days, but I wasn’t expecting the series of tunnels I’d made around and beneath that end of the lagoon to have such a dramatic effect on things.

Even the lagoon’s waters had cleared up near the beach. An emerald-tinted view of its bottom sparkled under the sun where there’d long been a murky, green-gray mess. Aquatic insects darted atop and beneath the surface, and a few small birds occasionally dipped to snatch them up. But there were no fish, reptiles or amphibians to be seen.

They were probably all killed by the bomb.

Birds and many insects could fly, so it was no surprise they were first to reclaim the lagoon.

I sent a mental command to my Devilflies to transplant what freshwater species they could from wherever they’d survived. Meanwhile, I expanded my small tunnels to encircle the entire lagoon, with numerous entrances to entice new denizens.

That should help. I nodded.

Curious to know if my ability to accelerate the biosphere’s recovery also applied in the ocean, I checked below the flock of feeding gulls.

The area I’d cleaned in the harbor was dramatically different from the day before. Several varieties of seaweed and all manner of crustaceans covered the seabed. Red octopi munched on bivalves, starfish congregated, and thousands of tiny fish swarmed the area, their scales flashing in the early morning light.

Seagulls dove in coordinated attacks, aiming to snatch up a meal. Whenever a gull made a successful catch, there’d be a chase if it failed to swallow its prey immediately. Often, the successful hunter became a furious victim of theft.

Birds will be birds…

There was even a young Blue shark swimming lazily until a fish injured by one of the seagulls dropped to the water and caught the shark’s attention. The seagull dove and flapped through the water in pursuit of its lost catch, but the shark snapped it up, then grabbed the seagull before it could flee.

Other small fish darted through the resulting cloud of blood, scales, and feathers as the shark thrashed about to rip chunks of flesh away.

I’m revitalizing every place that I touch—this is incredible!

Because I could, I opened a meandering, dog-sized tunnel out from my entrance beside the fruit orchard. The passage ran underneath the harbor, then connected to Seabright Beach. From there, I sent out a network of smaller passages for my minions to crawl and fly through, and peppered a few city blocks near the beach with small entrances. At random intervals to either side of my new canine highway, I hollowed out a few rooms where my girls could sleep, then added hiding places for my smaller minions along their walls. More small tunnels connected those hiding spaces as my growing Dungeon spread its influence.

I did the same around my old neighborhood, dramatically increasing the number of exits my minions could use. I hoped they’d also serve as points of ingress for prospective denizens. The process took almost an hour, but I covered the entire Twin Lakes district, east of Santa Cruz Harbor, west of Schwan Lagoon, and south of the railroad tracks.

Eventually, I hoped I could reach the mountains to let my girls play in the forest. That thought made me smile, until I thought about certain animals that lived in the California mountains.

But first, I needed to make sure my minions were strong enough to keep them safe from Mountain lions.

I’m sure some big cats survived. It’s not worth the risk. Not yet.

With my increased area, I spotted a group of around forty humans approaching, providing me with much more warning than I would have had.

Hm. Ninety-nine minions out of 100 maximum. Time to work on that boss idea.

I designed something special with the body of a Scolopendra centipede and parts from a Northern scorpion and a couple of other tweaks.

With its size at maximum, my Flame-tail centipede minion stretched twenty-four centimeters long, from its antennae to the tips of the twin scorpion tails that rested alongside its final pair of grasping legs.

I’d replaced one tail’s venom gland with two enlarged sets from a Black Widow. Thus, it had three types of venom—from a scorpion in one tail and a Black Widow in the other, along with the agonizing bite of a Scolopendra centipede via strong, hollow forcipules beneath its head.

The scorpion tails curled upward, while the centipede’s head could bite things below it.

I improved its eyesight by adding a trio of simple eyes from a hornet atop its head, then made its legs 100% larger for two reasons; to allow it to run faster, and to make its twin scorpion tails a little less obvious.

Its legs, antennae, and tails were all dark-red, contrasting well with its slate-gray body and jet-black head.

The only potential problem with my glorious new creation was its mana cost—eighty-five percent of my total, per centipede.

With the crowd of humans still a few hundred meters away, I decided to risk it. Watching carefully for a moment when my crabs would deliver a sizable bounty of food, I created a spawn point inside my core room for my first Flame-tail centipede.

The hunger was savage. I saw red, I craved blood, and my Devilflies all made a beeline toward the humans.

[Mommy? Are you okay?] [Why would Mommy hurt humans?] My girls sounded unhappy.

My mana received a large boost from a group of anemones that were slain, and I regained control in time to call my minions off. But Joe narrowed his eyes just before the closest Devilflies broke off their attack to fly away, a few meters from the humans.

Worse, Siobhán and Rihelah shared a frown.

Ugh. That’s gonna be fun to explain. Better not spend the mana to evolve my Flametail into a boss until the humans are far from here.

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Michael tensed, feeling uncertain as the dragonflies Joe had spotted bore down like a bunch of miniature fighter planes, but to his relief, they pulled up and flew away before reaching the group.

How many were there? I counted at least twenty.

That was totally abnormal.

Maybe it’s the radiation? Michael’s mouth tightened as he walked.

“Hey, mantis-brain. You okay?” Rihelah asked him.

Michael shrugged. “Weird behavior for those dragonflies. Was wondering if they’ve mutated or something.”

“Mm.” Rihelah pressed her lips and furrowed her brow, looking thoughtful.

“You’re weirdly unconcerned, for someone who freaks out around insects.” Michael raised an eyebrow at her.

Her face screwed up and he knew Rihelah was thinking about how to respond. “I mean… they were dragonflies! If it’d been hornets or something, I’d be screaming.”

“Hah! Yeah, you would.” Michael grinned.

Rihelah faced forward again, and Michael did the same, but he glanced at her.

She’s not being honest. That’s unusual.

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Joe edged closer to Mike as Siobhán crowded him from the right while they crossed the harbor bridge. She’d followed Joe everywhere since breakfast. Her groomed brown ponytail glowed red beneath the morning sun.

What the hell is her deal?

“Schimpf, I know we’re brothers in arms and all, but I’m not lookin’ to go pick out curtains. Give ol’ Pops here some space, would ya?” Mike snickered, pushing him toward Siobhán, who remained where she was, but turned her torso in his direction so her breasts would press into his side.

Fucker. He knows exactly what’s going on, and Siobhán’s hinting like a sailor on shore leave. Joe sighed as he recalled her trying to slip naked into his sleeping bag the night before.

Siobhán’s startled departure after she realized Mike was there was the only thing that had saved Joe the trouble of rejecting her.

Anna, give me strength.

An unwelcome stirring in his pants made Joe tense, and he tried to force those thoughts away. But he couldn’t forget Siobhán’s shapely body or her pink-nippled breasts that had hovered inches in front of his face in the light from the campfire while her hand caressed his cheek. Breasts that were pressed insistently against his side. Worse, it was even harder to forget the clean, delicious scent of her arousal.

That little body of hers is smokin’…

Damn it.

Stop thinking with your dick, Joe.

He glanced down at Siobhán, suppressing the urge to frown at the earnest young woman as she beamed up at him with inviting eyes.

Killarney’s attractive, but that ain’t enough. I need Anna back.

Recalling that Siobhán favored Japanese animation, Joe gently rubbed her head.

“Hey! I’m not a kid.” Siobhán smacked him in the back and moved away into Joe’s shadow, smoothing her hair out in a huff.

Damn, she hits hard for such a small girl. Joe rubbed his back.

He could hear Mike, Michael, Rihelah, and others snickering.

When they rounded the curve in the road toward the beach, the sunlight peeking over the mountains caught Siobhán’s auburn hair and porcelain-white skin, making Joe squint. His eyes settled on her as she deliberately looked away. Two beauty spots stood out just below her left ear, and together they almost formed a heart shape.

This girl is gorgeous.

Damn it.

Joe averted his gaze, but his traitorous anatomy saluted Siobhán anyway.

The Labs came running to greet them, and Joe was grateful for the distraction.

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Minions: 100/100

Residents: 8/10

Denizens: 5007

Traps: 1/5

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