-Mita Orono-
“I have teleported the secondary core to its to-be throne room, it is awaiting your guidance,” proclaimed Wlogwa as I appeared within Forgotten Historie Pastries’s main tower’s apartment block. I know I could have used the teleportation pads situated just above, but I wanted to check up on the sweet tooths: everything was going smoothly, even though most of the apartments were empty the place was still lively. Not to mention my secret little project of making blackzone plants using my school mandala of Roots of Beginnings: Equilibrium Chapter (Innate) was progressing perfectly.
Countless planters hung off the railings and balconies, each housing soybean plants that would draw in the ambient curse produced by the sublayer’s monsters and extracted from the Greater Aether Veils and other sources of mana by the core to denature it before repurposing the now loose manalogical components into desires and dungeon-manas. The fact that they also acted as repellents against the pisces just showed how effective they were.
“Sagamo!” called out one of the older sweet tooths, Sozap.
“Could you please not call me that? You’re the sagamo here, not me,” I replied with a wince; why did he have to keep insisting on transferring the title of chief over to me? He was one of the chiefs of the main band before moving here with the others, not me.
“How can I consider myself sagamo when you’re the one that controls this place and not me?” he asked before wrapping a muscled arm around me.
“I don’t know? Because you’re a higher tier than me, because everyone here still considers you sagamo, hell because that’s what the council decided when you and the others made the move here?”
“Yes but still does not feel right Mita, you are going to be the one that reclaims the rivers for us with this Enigma, not me.”
“I know, I know, and it is still on the docket, but now isn’t the time. The only dungeon cores I have to use are for Subdungeons, not expansion,” I replied, trying to break away from him in vain. Fucking spellmen… I mentally swore to myself: of course the only frontier core that was brought in during the assault had to be snatched away by spellman. But then again I couldn’t help but think it was a blessing in disguise, if that ritual had gone off then Historie Pastoria Enigma would have an expansion in the middle of Indiana, the middle of Empty Back-World’s sphere of influence. And reclaiming the Penobscot river with a corrupted dungeon core that dealt in curses probably wouldn’t be received well by either the tribe or state government. “Besides I still don’t think Robert and Ras actually trust me enough to give me an expansion core to plop down in the middle of another Earth’s Maine, even if that Earth is where we’re from.”
“So we’re once again against a rock and a hard place,” noted the sagamo wisely, finally letting go.
“Not exactly, I’m finally allowed to use one of the secondary cores. This place can finally become a Subdungeon, that means new types of monsters and some terraforming. We’ll be able to have some actual farmland to use now,” I pointed out, heading up the spiral staircase at the center of the apartment block with Sozap in tow. While Robert was terraforming Final Cut Caketopia and the main towers of the Interconnections to have more of an office building like floor plan, I had something different in mind: instead of half of each floor being winding hallways and small rooms, I’d have greenhouses and gardens on their halves instead.
“No rivers for fishing?”
“I haven’t figured out the logistics of that yet, so no.” I mean how in the world am I supposed to put rivers in a skyscraper like this? There is barely any space between the floors to dig out.
“Ahh, Sagamo Sozap, have you come to watch the creation of the Subdungeon,” asked Wlogwa audibly, his voice slightly computerized by his com-booster, as the two of us entered the miniature throne room.
“ I have,” answered Sozap with a curt nod before looking over at the murky yet colourful octahedron floating in the middle of the room. I can’t believe I used to think these would usher in an era of propesterity, I thought to myself with a shudder, feeling the soft but corruptive waves of curses roll off the dungeon core even from the far end of the room: compared to the sublayer core I practically slept next too, this one was still aggressive and eager to cause chaos. Corrupted manas really are something else…
“Okay, well here goes nothing… Sozap, you should probably stand back for this,” I commented, slowly walking toward the dungeon core. As curses of various colours washed over me, the small amount of curses that my system passively circulated did the best it could to fend off the foreign element. Touching one of its facets, I instantly felt my powers as a blackzone manager subjugate the dungeon core and formally transform it into a secondary core of the Enigma.
Trying to mimic what Ras did with his frontier core, I forced my will further into the layers of spellcraft-protocol that made up the secondary core’s innards and tried to terraform the main tower as it was claimed as a part of the newly forged Subdungeon. After a fair bit of floundering, Wlogwa finally stepped in to help me.
“Like this,” the system assistant whispered from the back of my mind as a 3D replica of the main tower appeared in my mind’s eye. Thanks, I quickly thought back before taking a deep breath and going to work designating the balconies and half of each floor outside of the throne rooms, apartment block, and lobby as slated for greenhouses and garden plots. Drawing on the Enigma’s generation protocols, I populated the terraformed places with blackzone-attuned grains and vegetables that were simple enough for the Enigma to produce with its current repertoires.
“Now then, what shall we name this Subdungeon? Are we going to follow the naming schemes of Final Cut Caketopia or Capita Sweets?”
“No… Let’s name it Trophaeum of Forgotten Farmers,” I replied verbally as I finally noticed how much the entire building was rumbling and how the tremors were already dying down.
“Trophaeum… that’s a thing of victory, correct?” asked the sagamo with a perplexed look on his face as he tried to remember the meaning of the word.
“Yeah, I think it is Greek, but I just thought it was fitting. A small victory for the Penobscot.”
“It is an occasion worthy of celebration. Shall we?” noted Sozap, pointing to the door.
“You can go ahead, I still need to make some new types of monsters.” After watching the sweet tooth nod in understanding and leave, I had Wlogwa conjure up a translucent screen to see how much dungeon-mana reserves I had to make use of. And it was sizable, which made sense as I had effectively spent the last two months waiting around for this, only using my allotments of dungeon-mana reserves to help improve cellular reception in both the sublayers when Robert asked. I now had to make a tier 2.2 variant of the cheesecake knights and then a tier 3.0 roaming boss variant of it to keep in line with the rest of the Enigma, but there was something else I wanted to make first: something to deal with all the taiyaki pisces. “The highest tier of normal monster I can make is 5.6 right?”
“Correct, you can create normal monsters three full tiers higher than your own,” explained Wlogwa before continuing, “Although I would not suggest you expanding that much to create such a potent type of monster.”
“I wasn’t thinking about it,” I replied as I opened up the Monster Creation Menu. Everything was familiar enough to me after watching Daphne and Lucilla use them so many times during our blackzone manager lessons.
Starting with the form, I already had something in mind as this type of monster would have to be able to fly to deal with the pisces: a giant spirit eagle with a rider warrior that used a set of old-timey shotguns, using enchanted Native American and Japanese sweets in their physiology to help with the generation costs. Their habitat would be all of Forgotten Historie Pastries and their personalities would include a desire to protect the skies of the sublayer and a compulsive need to keep the taiyaki pisces in check. Their affinities would be three fold: spellwarped dungeon-mana, curse of grudge, and desire of stability. I could have just used the basic chromatic corrupted mana, but that felt pretty plain, so it felt right to mix it up with the Glyphworks-typed mana’s curse variant and World Kernel-typed mana’s desire variant. As for rarity I made sure there would always be just enough to keep the skies relatively clear of taiyaki pisces. And for attributes I made them an agile fighter while giving the rider’s shotgun enchantments for range and accuracy on top of the ability to conjure up the anti-curses soybeans to be used as ammunition through the combination of magical hardening and empowerments.
Feeling sore from expending so much at once, I moved onto the drops so I could finalize this new type of monster. For produced drops, it would drop some anti-curses soybeans and then giant eagle feathers that absorbed white manas and curses that could be used in crafting trinkets and magical devices, and for physical drops I made it so the multi-affinity magical cores in both the eagle and the rider were sturdy enough to likely survive death and that the enchanted shotgun would likely still be useable.
“Do you have any preference toward the naming of this new type of monster?”
“How does eagle & warrior enjoying setsubun sound?”
“That sounds appropriate enough. Entering monster information into Enigma’s monster generation protocols as ‘Eagle & Warrior Enjoying Setsubun.’”
“Thanks Wlogwa, I was thinking for half a second there you’d say it’s too artsy or something,” I replied with an exhale and realizing I was holding my breath. Probably cause everything was cramping up right now: muscles, mandalas, even my Sea of Phenomena.
“Shall we move onto creating a new variant of cheesecake knight and it’s general counterpart? We have more than ample dungeon-mana reserves remaining.”
“Yeah… in a bit… Oh man I feel like crap right now.”
“This is partially why I suggested you not create such a high tier type of monster.”
“I thought you just meant don’t make the highest possible tier as to not waste dungeon-mana resources.”
“No, but that is an understandable misinterpretation.”
“It is…” I agreed as I tried to stretch some as I went back up to my penthouse. I know others thought it was a bit weird how I tried to combine both Penobscot and Japanese designing into the place, but it was home to me. I mean I am half-native american, but I am more than just though. I got so much to do, don't I? I mentally thought to myself with a sigh as I crashed onto one of my fur-covered couches, Accounting for the Enigma, trying to reclaim the tribal lands back home, and not to mention getting myself ready for whatever Robert’s grand prize is going to throw our way. At least I had a decent number of people to talk to about this: the other underling blackzone managers, the sweet tooths down at the apartment block, and Margaret.
Thinking of Robert’s cousin, I took out my phone and started to text her. I guess I should also add figuring out how to tell Robert I’m sort of dating his cousin to the list of things to do.
