The massive shadow cut through the water at high speeds, and soon, it arrived at the bandit’s work area. As the shadow lingered in the area, the thick cloud of concealing silt and mud slowly spread out until the entire section of the river was murky and brown. For a moment, the forest held its breath as not a single creature dared to make a sound.

Then, with the sound of cascading water and a resounding BOOM! one of the worker’s dredgers shot into the air. Not even a breath later, a gargantuan beast burst from the water and caught the dredger between its rows of shark-like teeth. The dredger and Mud Drake both fell and hit the water’s surface with a giant splash.

Once more, the river was thrown into chaos as the Mud Drake violently thrashed and rampaged, intent on turning the dredger into scraps. When the draconic spirit beast was finally content, it tossed the ruined dredger into the air and sent the remains hurdling toward the treeline with a spinning slap from its fishlike tail. The ruined dredger slammed into one of the massive trees and shattered into fragments.

The Mud Drake then stood and roared toward the remains, its loud, screeching voice almost driving Hugo to his knees.

As the drake stared into the trees, its low, rumbling vocalizations made the ground vibrate slightly. Finally, after a long moment, it turned and trudged back toward the river.

“About time…”

Hugo didn’t see who had spoken, but his eyes went wide, and he grabbed both Bill and Claude’s collars, forcing them to the ground. In that same instant, the Mud Drake whirled around, its mouth opened wide. Instead of roaring, however, a thin ‘beam’ of pressurized water, no thicker than Hugo’s thumb, erupted from the back of the drake’s throat.

Faster than anyone could blink, the beam of water cut across the distance between the river and the treeline. The Mud Drake swept the beam from side to side, carving deep grooves into the trees… and anything else in its path if the screaming said anything.

When the beam finally settled, the drake gave one last roar — much softer this time, as if it had overworked its voice — then turned back to the river.

As quickly as it had appeared, its massive shadow vanished downstream.

Hugo let out a breath and let his shoulders sag. It wouldn’t have been the first time the Mud Drake had taken offense at their little operation and destroyed some of their equipment. Yet, every time, some idiot didn’t bother reading the information pamphlet that was handed out.

Fools. A Mud Drake’s eyesight might have been absolutely terrible for a creature of its power, but its hearing was among the best.

“Ok, show’s over, wrap it up and head back to the village for reassignment! No dawdling! Get moving! Now!” the goblin overseer yelled out once it was clear the Mud Drake wasn’t returning.

“And someone get these idiots to Dr. Maria before they bleed out! I don’t want something nasty attracted to the blood!” the goblin finished, pointing at two men who were too slow or dumb to avoid the Mud Drake’s attack in time. One leaned up against a tree, clutching a mangled arm that barely hung on by scraps, while another lay on his side, a deep gash running horizontally across his chest.

Both men were at least [Silver Spirit] Cultivators, so the wounds wouldn’t kill them immediately, but Hugo doubted they would be walking on their own any time soon.

As others moved to assist them, Hugo shook his head and turned toward the village, Bill and Claude following behind him.

The dredging teams couldn’t do any more dredging today, not while the Mud Drake was downriver. It was simply too dangerous and unpredictable. They could only work in the morning while the beast slept in its den. Thankfully, it never really ventured too far from the river proper, so as long as you didn’t approach while it was out and about, there wasn’t any chance of bumping into it just wandering the forest.

Hugo doubted anyone could live in the cavern, if that wasn’t the case.

The muddy river would slowly clear over the next few hours, the Spirit Energy-rich mud and silt following in the Mud Drake’s wake, settling to the bottom. By tomorrow morning, the waters would be crystal clear once more, and new plant growth will have already taken root.

Bill tsked at Hugo’s side as they turned and headed back toward the village.

“Well, there goes the day,” he said. “Where do you think they’ll put us next?”

“Pleeeease, not the quarry. Anything but the quarry…” Claude begged.

“What do you have against the quarry anyway?” Bill asked.

Claude turned to him and said with a flat face, “You’ve never seen someone crushed by a falling rock and it shows.”

Bill returned the blank stare but didn’t respond, only shaking his head slightly.

Hugo was the one to break the awkward silence. “They’ll probably stick us on the wall… again.”

The other two men groaned.

“What the hell!? What are they even building out here?!” Bill asked, throwing up his arms.

“A wall, obviously, idiot,” came Claude’s response.

Bill glared at the other man. “I know that. I mean, why are they building it? It doesn’t even connect to anything! It’s just one stupidly long wall in the middle of a forest!”

Hugo frowned. It was a bit of a mystery. The aptly named ‘wall’ was a four-kilometer-long, six-meter-high, and two-meter-thick stone wall built in the middle of the forest about a third of the way between the village and the river.

It was a massive construct that couldn’t have been built in the week they had been working on if not for the joint efforts of the goblins, the bandits, and — shockingly — ants.

The only thing was, none of the bandits could tell why the bloody thing was being built. It would make sense if it was some kind of fortification for the village or if it was being used to keep something out, but the ends didn’t even connect to anything! Not only that, but the slight bend toward the river made even less sense.

If the wall was made to keep the village safe from the Mud Drake, it was wholly inadequate. And why would they not build it closer to the river or village? Why build it in the middle of a random forest? It was just one more strange thing the goblins had them doing recently.

“It’s a waste, is what it is!” he said, throwing his hands into the air. They were far enough away from anyone at this point that they didn’t really need to be overly quiet. The goblins were pretty lax about traveling in between various tasks. The bandit’s… collars ensured they would be where they needed to be and when. Not that a few people hadn’t tried to take advantage or even escape.

No one tried more than once.

Claude shook his head in disappointment, sharing a rare moment of agreement with the other man.

“Truly. They’re using [Deep Marble] for the bricks and refined clay and gravel from a Dragon Pool for the mortar! If someone with the right skills got ahold of even some of the mud we’ve been dredging up downstream, they could refine it into spiritual tablets that would sell for a premium in Halirosa, if they could get the right complementary ingredients.. Hell, I bet it even has some alchemical uses if the water is anything to go by.” Claude had mentioned — more than once — his dream of becoming an Alchemist one day. But such things were beyond men like them.

Hugo sighed as well, trying not to think about it.

“Let’s just get to the village and get our next task. I don’t want to be late for dinner again.”

The mention of food seemed to be all the other men needed, and all three doubled their pace.

As they neared the check-in station set up for the bandits, Hugo stared up at the ceiling.

Just one day at a time…

—————————————————————

In a certain cavern, a certain AI played through the recorded audio logs with interest.

Alpha knew that monitoring the captured bandits would pay off eventually, but he hadn’t been sure how.

And to be fair, most of the inmate’s conversations were decidedly… boring. But every so often, he’d catch wind of a good lead.

“Hmmmm. Interesting indeed.”

—————————————————————

//Alpha Log -

6952 SFY-Third Era, 5 standard months since Planetfall. 

3 weeks since the battle to retake the Goblin village.

‘Operation: Safari Hunt’ is progressing smoothly, for the most part. 

Safari Hunt’s primary goals are simple. We need something to distract the official Adventurer’s Guild expedition party — and whatever forces this Icefinger fellow sends — from both my primary base, and give the expedition party a reason to side with the goblin village. So I’ve decided, why not kill two birds with one stone? 

With that in mind, plans for a secondary operations area, Site B, have been implemented. With help from Antchaser and Dr. Maria, the current plan is to fashion Site B into a ‘Dungeon ruin.’ Essentially, a Dungeon that has degraded through either age or damage. Despite their degraded state, however, both claim they are still seen as valuable resources, as they often retain some of their previous functionality, even if the actual inheritance has been lost. 

Overall, it should act as a decent enough cover, letting the Adventurers’ Guild have their shiny prize while keeping them away from the important stuff. 

We don’t expect to keep the ruse up indefinitely. But by the time the cracks start showing, I’ll have already accumulated enough power between the ants and goblins that it shouldn’t matter. 

Not to say sacrifices haven’t had to be made. Given our time crunch, all ongoing construction efforts have shifted from expanding my base at the ant colony to creating Site B. Or, as the goblins in the know have taken to calling it, the ‘Dragon’s Garden.’ A little chūnibyō if you ask me, but Antchaser assures me such trends are common among dungeons. It seems no matter how powerful one becomes, one can’t escape the rule of cool. 

That said, we have hit a few… hiccups. 

According to what I’ve gathered, ‘Dungeons’ serve three main purposes. 

1 - To act as training grounds and tests for individuals attempting that Dungeon’s ‘inheritance.’ 

2 - Producing various ‘artifacts’ as Antchaser calls them. Basically just tools, weapons and rewards for the trial takers. 

3 - Raising various creatures to be used in said trials or as materials to make the rewards. 

Current construction is mainly focused on the wall that will act as the entrance to Site B. The current plan is for the wall to encompass roughly a third of the cavern. It will eventually circle the section of the river with the lifeform the locals call a ‘Mud Drake’ at its center. This serves the dual purpose of isolating the dangerous, evil creature from the rest of the cavern to some extent as well. 

You will always be remembered, Alphantonso III!

Ahem. 

As I was saying. Unfortunately, with only a week more to work on it before the Adventurers are expected to show up, there’s no way it’ll be finished in time. Even using the ants and captured bandits as a labor force to quarry bricks and dredge river sediment for mortar won’t come close to being enough to finish. 

That’s where good ol’smoke and mirrors come into play. Using the villagers and hunters as ‘friendly native guides,’ we can direct the Adventurers where we want and keep them away from the areas still under construction. 

Surprisingly, it was Boarslayer who had come up with the idea. Apparently, it wasn’t uncommon for more friendly Adventurer parties to hire native guides and hunters to show them all the best spots. Some Deep Tribes made a fair living doing just that. 

All I have to do was set up some simple challenges and puzzles, along with some ‘artifacts’, and boom, my very own guided Dungeon Safari! The ‘artifacts’ were the simple part of all this. 

With my printer banks growing each day and even more task-specific workshops going up soon, I can finally say things are looking up in the resource department! 

No, where I’m really struggling is in the third aspect…

The original plan had just been to throw ants behind the wall, but Antchaser insists that would raise questions they couldn’t answer yet. 

After that, the plan was adjusted to collect genetic samples from various creatures and stock Site B as needed to simulate a strong ecosystem. 

Just like the sapient people, the creatures of this world seem capable of naturally absorbing the radiant energy in the environment to grow stronger and even mutate in certain ways. Some are so well adapted to this process even, that lab-grown clones aren’t viable in the normal way, as the creatures don’t have the time to absorb enough energy to grow properly.

This makes the cloning process far more complicated and time-intensive than that of the ants, which are biologically designed for rapid growth and propagation.

They still can be grown, and I’m already working on several translight enclosers for this very purpose, but they won’t be ready for the expedition party. 

So, instead, I’ve had the goblins running around this and neighboring caverns, capturing as many samples of the various wildlife as they can find. 

Of course, wildlife being wildlife, they didn’t care much for being suddenly tossed into a new area filled with other strange creatures. Nor did they have the habit of staying there, what with the wall still being a work in progress. 

That problem was solved easily enough with the same restraint collars I used on the inmates, as well as some other modifications. Most of the stocked creatures were quickly learning to stay out of fights and to avoid the marked boundaries where the rest of the wall would eventually go up. 

As for what comes next, all we can do is hope these next Adventurers are more… agreeable than the last.