Frozen Time

A Dungeon Core Time Loop

Time Core – Book 1

Jonathan Brooks

Cover Design: Yvonne Less, Art 4 Artists

Edited by: Ellen Klowden

Copyright ©2022 Jonathan Brooks

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The following is a work of fiction.  Any names, characters, businesses, corporations, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.  Any resemblance to any actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

Cover Design Copyright ©2022 Yvonne Less, Art 4 Artists

Acknowledgements

I want to thank my wife for supporting me throughout my writing career, as well as my daughter, who had just recently started reading Dungeon Core and LitRPG – giving me reason to write even more so that she can enjoy them in the future!

I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention all the help from my beta-readers:

Aaron Eichler

Aaron Wiley

Andy Murphy

Brian Oles

Edward Ploger

Gevan Eldredge

Grant Harrell

Jack Painwell

Jeremy Squires

Joshua Chausse

Kegan Hall

Kelly Linzey

Kevin McCartney

Kristen Grispino

Mark Fluter

Nate Martin

Peter Kolotyluk

Sean Hall

Willie Jefferson

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Monster Progression Charts

Author’s Note

Books by Jonathan Brooks

Chapter 1

“This is important, Kiana!”

Snapping her head around, Kiana looked at their group leader in surprise.  I have to stop letting myself get distracted!

“I’m sorry, Horad.  I was listening, I swear!”

She wasn’t, of course, but she knew what the Shield was likely going on about.  It had been drilled into her every day since she had joined the Order of Defenders only a month ago.  Granted, so much had happened since then that it felt like a lifetime ago, but if she knew only one thing about her new role as part of the Defenders, it was to avoid calling attention to herself.

Especially since she was still only Level 1.

“Good.  Because if you die, then it’ll be my ass they’re chewing out back in Northfell, not yours.”  Horad’s gruff tone was a bit of a façade, she knew, though he was serious about her not getting killed.  Kiana knew that he cared for her like he would his own daughter – if he had ever married and had children, which wasn’t exactly something he’d ever spoken about doing before.  Horad was a self-proclaimed lifer in the Order, after all, and only upon retirement did many Defenders consider starting a family.

As she trudged through the deepening snow, the new Mage in the Order of Defenders pulled her thick fur coat around her to stay warm.  While the Frozen Reaches to the north of the Kingdom of Radia were obviously cold, it was the wind that increased in ferocity as one made their way farther north that was the real killer.  Thankfully, along the border with the Kingdom, which was where Kiana and the group of high-Level Defenders were traveling, it wasn’t so bad.  However, it was rare that anyone under Level 10 went more than a dozen miles past the border into any of the Wildlands surrounding the Kingdom, so she wasn’t likely to see anything much colder than what she was already experiencing.

“It’s just ahead!” Horad communicated in a raised voice as he turned his head to be heard over the howling wind.

Kiana looked past the others, who were walking confidently toward the hole in the side of the relatively small, snow-covered hill ahead.  She could sense what it was as soon as she saw it, even though she hadn’t ever seen one in person before.

A dungeon.

She hesitated only a half-step before she followed the others inside of the tall, stone arch demarcating the Frozen Reaches from the inside of the dungeon. Part of her hesitation was surprise at seeing that not a single snowflake seemed to enter the cave, despite the light snow whipping around in the wind outside.  The other part was her nervousness at finally beginning her development of herself as a Mage, which was something she’d been determined to do since she was old enough to learn about the Order of Defenders.

Pushing back her hood, she was pleased to find that the wind also didn’t follow them inside, though that didn’t mean it wasn’t cold inside the cave they had just entered.  While the majority of the dungeon’s smooth walls were simple – grey stone covered in a light coating of frost – icy stalactites hung from the ceiling and a radiating chill seemed to emanate from the floor.  Still, it was better than being outside, because the wind had been starting to become biting when larger gusts somehow found their way through all of her protective clothing.

Kiana shook her long, dark hair out from where it had been bunched up in her hood, allowing it to fall around her bulky, fur coat with snow-covered shoulders.  As she did so, she looked to see the rest of the group had also pulled their hoods back, including Horad.  The Dwarven Defender in charge of their expedition had reddish hair that was starting to go a little grey in parts, which was the only thing about him that showed his age.  Other than that, he was an intimidating Shield Class, which was essentially the complete opposite of her own Mage Class; he was there to protect the others and act as a shield against threats, while she, and other Mages like her, were there to dish out incredible damage in the form of spells at those threats.  In other words, Shields could shrug off hits that would otherwise cut a Mage in half.

Then again, any Level 55 Defender was much more durable than a Level 1, even in a Class as relatively defenseless as a Mage.  While the Wizard in their group wasn’t a Mage, he used to be.  As a Wizard was an advanced Class of a basic Mage, Fimble was easily capable of withstanding simple attacks that would otherwise hurt or kill Kiana.  The spellcasting Elf was a lot more nimble than Horad, however, and he was likely to avoid taking a hit rather than having to suffer through the pain.

Rounding out their group were Sylvia, an Elf Hunter – Level 55, like the others – who specialized in scouting and long-ranged attacks with her bow; and Mortimer, a Cleric who was Human, like Kiana, and who was there to heal them if something went wrong.  The four of the experienced Defenders with her had been a group for so long that they didn’t even speak as they strode forward confidently, with Sylvia up front, checking for traps.  Kiana followed behind, carefully stepping where those in front of her stepped; even if she couldn’t see where potential traps were located, she had confidence enough in the Hunter’s skills that if the Elf avoided a certain area, it was probably best that the fledgling Mage avoid it as well.

The initial tunnel leading gently down into the ground was fairly long, and they hadn’t even encountered the first room before a squirming inside of her thick fur-lined coat made Kiana pause and open up the front of it slightly.  Almost as soon as she made enough room, letting in the frigid air, an adorable head popped out, followed quickly by the rest of its body.

Mortimer glanced back and softly warned her, “Keep your familiar away from the fights; we don’t want it getting in the way or even killed.”

Kiana nodded, even as she smiled at her familiar, who was now keeping pace with her despite the cold air.  She took a moment to briefly run her hands along the glittery silver, black, and white fur of the Greater Temporal Fox kit’s tail, marveling at how soft it was, in contrast to any other fur she’d ever felt.  For instance, the rabbit fur making up most of her coat felt like sandpaper compared to the fur of her familiar. Despite only being Level 1, like herself, the Fox was already a foot tall, though she looked even larger because of her poofy fur that radiated a subtle, “star-studded” glow, almost like it was illuminated by tiny lightning bolts.

“Stay close, Tempara,” she whispered.

* Yes. *

Kiana smiled again as she heard the mental response, which was nearly the limit of the brand-new familiar’s vocabulary – other than knowing her name, of course.  That was the first word that Kiana had heard almost instantly after summoning her companion a week ago, though she had picked up a few more words, such as, * Yes *, * No *, and * Play * over the last few days.  As Tempara’s Level increased along with her own, Kiana was told the familiar’s vocabulary would increase as well, along with her innate abilities.  This was the main reason the new Mage was out with this high-Level group in the first place.

She hadn’t known it at the time, but bonding a Greater Temporal Fox as a familiar was very rare.  Not just rare, but almost unheard of; in the entire history of the Defenders, only 2 other Mages had ever bonded a Greater Temporal Fox as a familiar, and that had been more than 300 years ago.  It had been a whirlwind of celebrations and basic training over the past week because of that bonding, before she was saddled with Horad and his group to start the Leveling-up process as soon as possible.  All of that was because, well, it turned out that the Greater Temporal Fox wasn’t just rare, but powerful.

It was hard to tell how powerful Tempara would be right now, eventually, because the small Fox was nearly a baby at Level 1.  I guess I’m not much more than a fledgling Defender, either.

Thankfully, even if her familiar was killed in the dungeon, Kiana’s bond with Tempara preserved the Fox’s soul, which could be used to reconstitute her familiar’s body back in the city at the Font of Elemental Mana. However, Kiana knew she would try to do everything she could to prevent her familiar’s death in the first place.  Hence, she was going to heed the Cleric’s advice and keep the Fox back and away from the fighting as much as possible.

It would break my heart to see anything happen to my little puffball.

Ahead, Kiana could finally see the entrance to the dungeon’s first room, though she couldn’t see much in the way of details quite yet.  Then again, she didn’t really need to see that well, because the others were already engaging with the dungeon monsters inside.  What sounded like screams echoed into the tunnel that the Mage walked down, and she missed a step, nearly falling before Mortimer caught her arm.

“Whoa!  Watch your feet,” he said with a smile as he let her go once she had caught her balance.  “You better get in there and hit a few of them before they’re gone.”

She nervously laughed off her near-fall as she looked inside.  Get it together!  This is your first fight!  What she first thought were screams from her group turned out to be the death-screams from the monsters inside of the room as they were easily sliced in half or punctured by perfectly aimed arrows.  She saw the name, “Snow Hare”, and red bars depicting their Health floating above their heads, but half of the 6 she saw had empty bars, meaning that they were already dead.  She knew that if she wanted any Elemental Charge, she’d have to act fast.  Only by being an actual participant in the fight would she receive any of the important resources used to increase her Level – and the Level of her familiar.

As Kiana looked at the closest Snow Hare, which was on its side with an arrow sticking out of its fur – right where she figured its heart was – the Mage knew she didn’t have long before it was dead.  Shaping her hands in the form of a ball, she pulled up a bit of her Mana and bent it to her will, creating a flame in the space between her hands that didn’t burn her skin.  As soon as it formed, she pushed her hands out and away from herself, and the Flame Spark slammed into the dying Snow Hare, a second before it perished from the arrow in its heart.

She was pleased to see a bit of the monster’s fur was scorched where her spell hit it.  My practice back at the Defender’s Lodge has certainly paid off with my accuracy.  As a Level 1 Mage, though, she knew it would likely take multiple Flame Sparks to take one of these Snow Hares down if she were by herself; her spells just weren’t powerful enough to kill even the weakest monsters with one shot – unless she was very lucky and hit it in a critical spot a few times.

That was all that was needed from her, however, because as soon as she was in the room and participated – even marginally – she would receive at least some of the Elemental Charge that the Snow Hares released upon death.  Almost immediately after her spell had hit one of the monsters and it died, the rest of the Hares in the room were dispatched.  For the first time ever, Kiana felt a warmth flow through her as she received her reward from her help slaying the monsters they had come to kill.

Unfortunately, the warmth faded quickly, but she could still feel lingering traces of it throughout her entire body.  Pulling up her Condition Display, she saw that she had earned a total of 3 EC, or Elemental Charge – which wasn’t a lot, but she was now 3% further along to another Level.

Condition Display

Name:

Kiana Myers

Level:

1

Class:

Mage

Elemental Charge:

3/100

Familiar:

Greater Temporal Fox

Familiar Level:

1

Health:

10/10

Mana:

90/100

Physique:

1

Reflexes:

2

Mind:

10

Spirit:

5

Spells:

Bond Familiar

Flame Spark

Water Spout

100 Mana

10 Mana

10 Mana

Stone Sliver

Fist of Air

Minor Mana Shield

10 Mana

10 Mana

20 Mana

Her Flame Spark spell required 10 Mana, which was quite a bit considering that she only had 100 to start with.  It would eventually regenerate, though slowly; in the Wildlands, regeneration of Mana was stunted for everyone, no matter how much Spirit they possessed.  Within the Kingdom’s borders, she would receive at least 5 Mana per minute back due to the Fonts of Elemental Mana installed in every major city.  The Fonts practically permeated the Kingdom’s air with Mana by concentrating it into quantities usable by its citizens and Defenders; out in the Wildlands, it was much more dispersed and more difficult for the Defenders venturing deep into the terrain to process as usable Mana.  As a result, she would be lucky to gain back 5 Mana in an hour while she was in the Frozen Reaches, as opposed to 5 Mana a minute in the Kingdom.

Thankfully, her group mates had plenty of Mana saved up, considering that they were Level 55, and they had specially brewed potions that they could drink to give them a partial refill of their Mana pools.  Kiana wasn’t sure how many potions they had with them, but she was determined not to need one; she’d already promised Horad and the others that she wouldn’t be casting many spells, only enough to “participate” in the fights.  Any more than 1 or 2 per fight could call undue attention to herself, which was precisely the last thing she wanted to do.

Sylvia walked through the room and retrieved her arrows, before touching the corpses of the large Hares.  Almost instantaneously after touching them, the monster corpses disappeared into the Hunter’s bag, so they could be skinned and any useful parts of them salvaged back in the nearest village or even in Northfell.  Monster parts were the lifeblood of the economy, because they were useful in a myriad of ways, though typically only the stronger monsters and their subsequent parts were really valuable.

“Good job, Kiana.  Keep that up and we’ll be in and out with no trouble,” Horad said to her with a grunt, before turning toward the next tunnel that led to yet another room.  She nodded even as she followed the others, her nervousness starting to fade as the powerful group of Defenders had shown her that there was no reason to fear – as long as she kept her wits about her and didn’t make any mistakes.

You can do this.  You’ve got the easy part, girl; just stay out of the way and let them do their jobs.  With a more confident stride to her pace, Kiana stroked the tail of Tempara once again as she continued to step where her group was stepping, the warmth from the influx of Elemental Charge still tingling in her chest.

Chapter 2

Kiana didn’t know how many rooms were in this particular dungeon, but she wasn’t alone in that ignorance: None of the others in her group knew, either.  This was the first visit to the dungeon for any Defender, not just them; while delving through a dungeon was fairly common and frequent, each dungeon typically was only delved through once – because the point of delving through a dungeon was to destroy it.

That was why they were there today, in fact; to destroy the dungeon by shattering its gem-like Core, located at the end.

The primary job of the Defenders in the Kingdom of Radia was to maintain its borders, which were surrounded on all sides by the Wildlands.  They did this by perpetually “pruning” the dungeons that cropped up near the border, creating a buffer zone from the remaining portions of the Wildlands, where the danger was contained far from the common citizens of the Kingdom.  When dungeons periodically appeared too close to the border, they would start to send monsters inside of the Kingdom, which the Defenders would repel, and a team would be dispatched to take care of the dungeon before it became too powerful.  These “Core Eradication” teams, such as the one Kiana was currently participating in, had fairly steady work, as every couple of days, another dungeon would appear and would consequently need to be destroyed.

In addition, once a month, a very large contingent of powerful Defenders would push north, sweeping through the Frozen Reaches to eradicate as many dungeons as they could find.  Dungeons tended to pop up frequently, and allowing so many to gain in power could lead to a monster horde – a terrifying group of many monsters that would charge toward the Kingdom, killing dozens or even hundreds of innocent people if left unchecked.  Hordes still happened occasionally, because it was nearly impossible to find every dungeon, but the Defenders did their best to reduce the danger as much as possible.

In addition to eradicating as many dungeons as possible, the groups also spent the time hunting a few of the natural monsters and beasts throughout the Frozen Reaches. Despite the frigid weather, there were dozens of different species that thrived in the snow and ice-covered north, including the extremely elusive Greater Temporal Foxes – which was where her own familiar had originated.  During the last sweep, the Defenders had acquired the Fox kit at some point – the exact details of Tempara’s capture were unknown to Kiana – and had brought it back to Northfell, where the new Mage was able to bond with it.  Dozens of other new recruits had attempted the bond before her and failed; Kiana felt privileged to have succeeded, but she also knew the bond was a great responsibility.

Hunting both natural and dungeon monsters was also a great way of outfitting the Defenders, as many of the materials gained from the corpses of those they killed were able to be used in alchemical recipes as well as armor and weapon enchantments. When they went north, they weren’t just destroying dungeons; they were also tasked with acquiring as many of these materials as possible.

These perpetual sweeps were the only way the Kingdom had managed to stay largely safe over the last few thousand years, by perpetually culling all of the Wildlands of any future threats; hence, joining the Order of Defenders meant filling a very important role.  It was also a dangerous role, not because of the sweeping groups going in to eradicate Cores and hunt monsters, nor even due to the patrols discovering and dispatching any monsters that ventured over the border, but because occasionally, one of the hordes would sweep out and attack with no rhyme or reason.

These monster hordes were dangerous and deadly, not just to the villages and towns nearest the border, but also to Defenders.  There was typically very little warning when a horde would attack, because it was nearly impossible for all but the stealthiest Scouts and Hunters to venture deep into the Wildlands – when a sweep wasn’t ongoing – to discover when a horde might be coming.  As a result, sometimes there wasn’t enough time to evacuate all of the non-combatants nearest the border in time, which made it a bit of a risk to live so close to the Wildlands.  However, given that the lands nearest the border were almost always prime locations for farming, the rewards were objectively worth the risk.

Thankfully, most monster hordes were repelled without too many losses among Defenders and non-combatants, but there were still losses – just as there were losses during the sweeps and Core eradications.  Some hordes were larger or had stronger monsters than others, which led to a greater loss of life. It was one of these hordes that took the lives of Kiana’s family when she was young, when the monsters had pushed further into the Kingdom than typical, and their village was caught flat-footed when they arrived.  It was only because she had been hidden in a very small storage compartment in her family’s home that Kiana had survived long enough for the Defenders to arrive and push the Horde back. Sadly, her parents and older brother couldn’t fit inside of the storage space with her, and they perished trying to keep the Horde away from her hiding place.

Kiana shook her head to clear it of those memories, as she entered the ninth room of the dungeon, which was longer than she expected it to be.  From the looks the others shared between them, her group hadn’t expected this dungeon to be as large as it was, considering that it was supposed to be a relatively new one, easily found along the border.  It shouldn’t have had much time to expand and become stronger, though Kiana had heard that such an event wasn’t exactly rare.  Some dungeons managed to hide away for a bit before they started sending out monsters to cross the border, after all.

What it meant to the new Mage, however, was that she was down to 22 Mana, as only 2 Mana had regenerated in the time they had been inside of the dungeon.  Kiana had been quite careful to pick the targets for her spells so she didn’t miss, but soon enough she was going to have to ask for a Mana potion to restore some of her Mana if there were too many more rooms.  She was almost Level 2, though, so her Mana expenditure had been beneficial; it wasn’t as quick as she had expected, due to the high Level of her group mates.  They were taking the larger share of the Elemental Charge, though she wasn’t going to complain about free EC when it came her way.

Besides, delving through the dungeon was an experience that would’ve been worth it even if she hadn’t received any EC.  Already, her nervousness had all but disappeared, replaced by a confidence and determination to join a Core Eradication team in the future.  Kiana chastised herself not to become overconfident, as she knew it would likely be years before such a dream came true.

Still, it was awesome and amazing to see what she might eventually become if she worked hard enough.

“Get your hit in, girl!” Horad shouted at her.

Kiana shook her head to clear it as she created yet another Flame Spark in her hands, before sending it to hit the side of a large Polar Bear, which was easily 5 times the size and weight of the Dwarf holding up his shield in defense.  He staggered under a blow by a giant paw but seemed unhurt, and as soon as her little Spark made a tiny blemish on the Bear’s white fur, Horad pushed back and slammed his shield against the Bear’s nose, temporarily stunning it.

That was all the group needed to finish the monster off, as a maelstrom of fire from the Wizard crashed into the monster from above, followed by a barrage of arrows from Sylvia into the Bear’s mouth when it roared out in pain.  Kiana thought that the Hunter probably hit something critical, because the red Health bar above its head went from about halfway depleted to fully depleted in no more than 2 seconds.  As it collapsed on the floor of the stone room, the young Mage felt another rush of warmth signaling more Elemental Charge, and she eagerly pulled up her Conditional Display…

…and was immediately disappointed.

96 out of 100!  I’m only 4 EC away from Level 2!

She was hoping to achieve at least a single Level from this delve, as had those who had sent her on this expedition with the Core Eradication group, but she was quickly running out of Mana.  If the next monster or monsters didn’t do it for, then she would have to ask for even more help than was already being given.

“You see that, Kiana?” Horad asked abruptly, pointing toward the entrance of the next tunnel.  The Mage quickly looked in that direction but couldn’t see anything in the passageway.  Although, when she took a closer look at the tunnel itself, she saw something that caught her attention.

“That tunnel looks… odd.  Different type of stone?”

“Exactly!  It’s a much denser stone than the rest of the dungeon, and it’s almost impossible to fracture – even with my strength,” he admitted with a smirk, raising his right fist in the air and flexing his muscles.  “But there’s a reason for that; do you remember what you learned in training?”

Kiana’s training had been such a whirlwind that she thought she barely remembered anything from it, but something obviously stuck.  “It’s… the entrance to the Core Room, right?”

“Correct!  This is the final room coming up, so we need to be a bit more careful.  Dungeon Bosses will typically be stronger than anything we’ve seen in this dungeon thus far, but it’s nothing we can’t handle.”  He paused for a moment, seemingly coming to some sort of decision.  “In fact, to ensure your safety, I want you to hang back in the tunnel and stay out of the fight.  This dungeon has proven to be stronger than we were estimating, and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“But—!” she started to complain, before she was cut off by a firm hand suddenly squeezing her shoulder.  Horad had appeared at her side so quickly that she hadn’t even seen him move.

“No buts. This is my final decision.  If you don’t like it, you can leave right now, and hopefully you’ll make it back across the border before something finds you.”

What?!  He’d just send me out in the freezing cold all alone?  He wouldn’t—no, he wouldn’t.  He’s bluffing… but do I want to take that chance?

“Fine.  But I want in on the next sweep, so I can get enough Charge for my next Level.”

Horad let her shoulder go, looking down at Tempara, who was nipping at the Dwarf’s armor and yipping at him angrily.  “If the higher-ups say it’s alright, then that’s all right with me.  Don’t worry, little guy, I won’t hurt your friend here.”

* Bite. *

Hearing her familiar’s voice in her head made some of the sting of being forbidden to participate in the next fight go away, as she knelt down and petted her Fox consolingly, getting her to calm down almost instantly.

“It’s all right; he’s a friend.”

Horad just chuckled good-naturedly at the familiar before turning away, nodding for Sylvia to lead the way.  Kiana slowly followed them, knowing that she didn’t necessarily have to hurry after them because she wasn’t going to participate in the slightest.  By the time she arrived at the end of the dense-stone tunnel, the fight was already ongoing, and she was suddenly glad that she wasn’t in the room.

A 25-foot-tall Yeti towered over the group in the center of the room.  The monster was bipedal and had long white and ice-blue fur covering its body; curly horns sat on top of its head and tusks that were at least as wide around as one of her arms projected from the sides of its mouth. Its arms were heavily muscled and so long that they nearly reached the floor from a standing position.  The Yeti’s fists were currently trying to pound Horad into the floor, but the Level 55 Shield was more than up for the task, as he held on to his shield with only a few grimaces indicating how much damage he was resisting.  Or mostly resisting; it was hard to tell if he was simply straining or actually in pain.

Meanwhile, the others were already packing on the hurt, flinging fire spells and firing what appeared to be explosive arrows. Even Mortimer was doing something that seemed to hurt the massive monster, though Kiana couldn’t tell exactly what it was other than a golden light emanating from his fingertips.

Wow!  Even this Yeti is no match for them!

The Health bar of the giant monster was dropping quickly, and Kiana saw that it would likely be dead in less than a minute based on the speed of the bar’s depletion.  As she watched, seeing that everyone had everything well in hand without any problems whatsoever, she inched her way forward until she was just barely inside of the room.  I doubt anyone would even notice if I sent a Flame Spark at the Boss with all of the flames already surrounding it created by Fimble.

As the Health bar approached 10%, Kiana surreptitiously spent most of her remaining Mana to create another Flame Spark, before launching it at the Yeti.  She wanted to make sure she got her hit in before the Dungeon Boss was killed, and she judged that 10% of its Health left was an appropriate time.

Unfortunately for Kiana, her judgment was way off.

As soon as the Yeti’s Health was down to 10% and her spell was already flying through the air, a red aura appeared around the massive monster as it roared so loudly that Kiana thought she might go deaf.  At the same time, the other group members stopped attacking as if by some choreographed timing, with even Horad taking a quick step back and crouching behind his shield.

Her Flame Spark flew through the air, and Kiana caught a quick look from Mortimer, who was the closest to the Mage, and the sudden change of expression on his face sent a rush of ice through her body that even the cold wind outside hadn’t been able to achieve.

Oh, no; what did I—?

Before she could even finish the thought, her spell hit the Yeti, and it immediately focused on her.  Rooted to the floor in fright, Kiana could only watch in horror as the long reach of the monster swept toward her, and she realized she had made the one mistake she was specifically told not to make.

Don’t call attention to herself.

An impossibly hard fist slammed into her from the side, sweeping her off of her feet and carrying her with it as the Yeti finished its follow-through.  Even as she felt most of the bones in her body break from the impact, her mind and her eyes were still working as she saw that she was released from the fist as it stopped its swing, pointing almost directly behind its massive form.  And behind that form was a shiny, gem-like object resting on the top of a stone pedestal, glowing a light blue, almost-white color that was actually quite pretty to look at.

Is that… the Core?

Her thoughts were sluggish as she flew through the air on an impact course with the glowing object, though her mind was almost instantly pierced by a familiar voice.

* NO! *

A few inches away from impact, Tempara suddenly appeared in her fading vision, gripping onto her fur coat in an effort to pull Kiana away from where she was headed.  Sadly, there was nothing for the Fox to brace against, and the small temporal distortion field that the Greater Temporal Foxes were known for, was only able to slow down the inevitable – and that for only a short time.

That time was not enough.

The field was still active as she slammed into the gem-like object. She was somehow aware enough that she saw it slowly fracture when her body hit it with enough force to shatter whatever bones that still remained whole inside her.  It was then that she felt a wrenching tear in her neck as she impacted something she couldn’t see in her barely working vision, and she quickly lost even that vision as she succumbed to the darkness of death. Her last thought was being glad that it had been so sudden, that not even the pain had a chance to make her suffer.

Chapter 3

Tempara suddenly woke up, information immediately bombarding her to the point where she was overwhelmed.  The influx of knowledge was painful, threatening to tear apart any shred of sanity that the small Greater Temporal Fox kit still possessed.  After a few seconds, she was finally able to get a hold on her senses to look around.

What happened?  The last thing I remember was trying to save my master from—

NO!

The young Fox instantly rejected the term “master” in her mind, and was pleased and shocked to find that it had worked. Her thoughts hadn’t been her own for what felt like a lifetime, ever since her soul was forcefully bonded with that Human.  It was almost like she had been a stranger in her own mind, with some sort of presence infiltrating her body and controlling it; at the time, the real Tempara had been pushed down deep inside and could barely comprehend what was going on, so she barely protested – not that it would seem to do any good.  Whatever the Human magic-user had done had overridden any free will Tempara had possessed before she had been captured.

Memories of that horrible day invaded her mind, drowning out any type of external stimuli.  She remembered sneaking outside of her pack’s den, wanting to see the falling snow for the first time – because her mama had forbidden it until she was older – and then she was suddenly picked up by the scruff of her neck.  She never actually got a good look at who or what had nabbed her, but the next thing she knew, she was inside a cage, looking toward her den – and the absolute devastation that was going on there.

Tempara tried to block out the memories of her family being slaughtered at the sudden attack by the fur-covered Humans, Elves, and Dwarves, but the vision was too visceral to be easily forgotten.  The only saving grace was that she had turned away after the first few seconds, not wanting to watch her mama being killed, but it was small consolation after being forced to witness everything beforehand.

Not for the first time did she wonder if her sneaking out was what led to her pack being found.  The pack had been living there for a long, long time, and they had always avoided the Humans, Elves, and Dwarves as they swept through the snowy lands.  Their lack of detection wasn’t always due to living in a secluded den that was difficult to get to, however, but because of her kind’s ability to manipulate temporal distortion fields.  Being able to create an area where time would slow to a crawl was one of their strengths, as it would allow them to escape being captured or killed; something had obviously happened to prevent that when they were attacked and Tempara captured, because they should’ve been able to escape.

It's all my fault!

She didn’t know that for sure, but in her young mind, Tempara hadn’t been able to come to any other conclusion.  She had disobeyed, and now her entire family and pack was dead.

Worse than that, she had been enslaved as something called a “familiar” to a Human, and there was nothing she could do about it.  At least, nothing until now.  Now, her thoughts were freed from the cage they had been shoved inside, and she could think for herself.

As the memories faded from the forefront of her mind, Tempara finally looked around to see where she was.  It didn’t make sense at first, as her viewpoint seemed to be much higher than she remembered, seemingly 20 feet or so above the ground, but that wasn’t the strangest part.  Somehow, she was still inside of the dungeon she had been forced to visit with the Human, Kiana.

Down below her was her small body where it had fallen after her mast—former master—had hit the Dungeon Core, laying right next to the corpse of the foolish woman.  While she didn’t hate the Mage for bonding her, because it hadn’t been her who had captured Tempara and slaughtered her family, Tempara wasn’t in the least bit sad that the Human had perished.  She was sad that it had ended up with her own death as well, but she was consoled that her soul would likely now join her family in the afterlife.

Then… what am I doing here?

Her immediate thought was that her mind had somehow left her body and was floating around; it took only a few seconds to realize that she was partly correct.  It wasn’t just her mind, however, but her entire soul that was floating around.

Tempara was suddenly overwhelmed as sounds rushed back into her awareness, which turned out to be the final clash between the group they had entered the dungeon with and the giant Yeti, and she looked up to see the massive monster collapse dead to the floor of the Core room.  Faster than she’d seen any of them move when she was alive, the 4 people were at her former master’s side, with the healing magic Elf kneeling next to the body.  He then placed a gentle hand on her forehead before closing his eyes and seemed to concentrate.  After only a short while, he shook his head and ran his fingers over the woman’s eyes, closing them so that they weren’t staring unseeing.

“Foolish girl!  Why couldn’t she have stayed…?” the short Dwarf shouted, turning around and loudly banging his hand against his shield in anger.  From one moment in time to the next, Tempara found that her viewpoint moved to where he was now looking, as if she could somehow teleport her soul short distances from one place to another with a thought.  From her new perspective, she could see the tears running down his face, and his wasn’t the only one.

Yes!  Cry for me like I cried for my family!

Tempara knew that was completely unfair, because she was aware that none of these people had been directly responsible for what had happened to them.  Nevertheless, she took hollow pleasure in seeing something devastating happen to them, if only in petty revenge.  The pleasure didn’t last long, however, because it did nothing to bring her pack back from the dead.

“It’s not your fault—” the other Elf started to say, but was cut off by the group’s apparent leader.  His name is Horad.  Wait… how did I know that?  Even more than that, how is it that I can understand them?

“Of course it’s my fault!  I’m the one in charge, and I should’ve turned back when this dungeon proved much stronger than it should’ve been.  I saw the signs in Kiana that hinted at her impatience and drive, but I ignored them, confident in my ability to see us through—”

Whatever else he was going to say was cut off by a resounding *crack* that reverberated through the room, followed by a cascade of dirt raining down from the ceiling.  Looking up, Tempara saw that there was a huge crack in the stone ceiling, and it was only growing wider as the seconds ticked by.

“There’s no time for any of that right now,” the Elf named Sylvia—again, how did I know that?—shouted, being heard over the sounds of even more cracking throughout the space.  “Pick them up and move!”

Horad did just that, as he gently picked up the woman’s broken body and carried her in his arms, slinging his shield around to his back.  The healer, Mortimer, picked up Tempara’s body and cradled it in his left arm, before following the rest of the group out of the dungeon.

The one good thing about her corpse’s condition was that, while Kiana’s bones had essentially been crushed and shattered and there were only a few minor wounds on the surface of her skin, Tempara’s own appeared entirely unscathed. Seeing her body covered in blood would’ve been too much for the Fox, as it would’ve brought back the memories she was still trying to suppress.  As it was, she was barely holding onto her sanity as she followed the group out of the dungeon at a run.  Within seconds of them exiting the same tunnel they had entered not that long ago, the dungeon’s structure collapsed, sending out a plume of dust that was quickly lost amid the snow outside.

No one spoke as Horad and Mortimer continued to carry the bodies back to the border with the so-called Kingdom (which Tempara just discovered she knew the name of somehow), following the same path they had originally taken to the dungeon – or at least she assumed so, because she had been stuffed in a fur coat at the time.  The snowfall hadn’t been heavy enough to cover their footprints completely, and here and there she could still make out her former master’s smaller prints as they had followed the group only a short time ago.

Tempara floated her soul upwards, and she was surprised to see that the demarcation between the border with the Wildlands and the Kingdom wasn’t just a matter of opinion but was, instead, a visual and environmental change in the landscape.  In the space of 100 feet, the Wildland territory of the Frozen Reaches, where she and her pack had lived, went from small, snow-covered hills and cold temperatures to a strip of land filled with half-melted snow and ice, then to a snow-free grassland, with sporadic trees growing within a stone’s throw of frozen desolation.  When she had first heard mention of it, Tempara had always assumed her parents had been exaggerating at how stark the difference between the two lands could be; and to this day, it still seemed like an impossibility.  However, some innate knowledge that she had somehow gained told her the border and the Wildlands had always been like that, so the sheer impossibility of the environmental change was actually normal.

While she couldn’t feel the change in the temperature from the Wildland side of the border to the Kingdom, Tempara could see the snow covering the fur clothing of the group melting quickly, and it wasn’t long before they were all shrugging off their warmer clothes.  Everyone but Horad.  He appeared reluctant to set Kiana’s body down for something as simple as comfort. His grim-looking face was enough for everyone to stay away from him.  That even included the various patrols of people they encountered as they continued past the nearest border… fort?  Yes, fort, I believe.

The same knowledge that was trickling into Tempara’s mind told her that the forts were stationed every 2 miles along the border to help defend against any larger attacks by Wildland monsters, and that they could work together to repel most minor monster hordes.  Her own kind, Greater Temporal Foxes, wouldn’t ever think about crossing the border, however, as they had no interest in whatever the Kingdom had to offer.

Tempara was starting to get a little impatient for her soul to move on, and she was doing her best to stay calm with everything that had happened.  After the initial confusion and discovery of her death, the Fox’s thoughts had slowly settled into annoyed acceptance. Nonetheless, in the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but think that she should be fighting against this fate, finding some way to defy that it was her corpse clearly resting in the arms of the Elf.

I didn’t even get a chance to grow up, to really experience what it means to be a Greater Temporal Fox like my—

Memories of what happened to her pack made her pause in her complaints, because she hoped that she was soon going to join them in the afterlife. Instead of feeling angry at the large Yeti monster for killing the woman and subsequently killing Tempara, she was angry at herself for causing the deaths of her pack because of her impatience to see outside of their den.

Depression clouded her mind as she felt her soul being tugged along with the group, especially when she began not to care about actively moving with them.  She sensed that there was still some sort of anchor between her soul and her body, or at least between her soul and her former master’s body, but she didn’t care enough about it to investigate further.

Tempara barely even registered as the group walked all the way to… Northfell?... without stopping, even though the city was far from the border.  When they arrived, the Fox was again overwhelmed with how many people there were in such a small area, and her senses couldn’t keep up with everything that was going on – so she didn’t even try.

Eventually, she saw her body – along with the woman’s – placed in some sort of underground area within what she instinctively knew was the Order of Defenders’ main training facility.  Soon after everyone left, she discovered that there was a finite “leash” delimiting where her soul could journey from her body, which was apparently short enough that she was unable to venture where any other people were located.

Time passed as she fell into a cycle of recrimination and self-loathing, but even that faded as the hours crawled by without any external stimuli and a lack of purpose.  By the time a group of white-robed people appeared in the storage room, Tempara was essentially numb to the world.

Their presence was enough to stir a little interest in the Fox, especially when they went to her former master’s body.  She was disturbingly fascinated as they manipulated the woman’s mangled body, arranging her bones so that they somewhat appeared like they were supposed to, and Tempara quickly determined that they were readying her corpse for some sort of ceremony.

Final Defense?  What in the world is that?  Oh…

Again, somehow the knowledge of such a ceremony came unbidden to the Fox’s mind, and even then it was difficult to understand.  Instead of dwelling on it, she allowed events to progress and knew she would figure it out later.

Tempara’s soul was dragged along with both her corpse and the woman’s, which was now clothed in a plain, white linen dress, as they were both carried into the large courtyard she remembered seeing on the way in. Hundreds of Defenders were lined up in orderly rows, silently waiting for their arrival.

There weren’t any conversations in the crowd, because that wasn’t what was done at Final Defenses – or so her new knowledge told her.  As both bodies were placed gently upon the wooden bier in the center of the courtyard, she suddenly remembered watching the rite when she was a little girl, when her parents were included in a much larger ceremony after their deaths.  At the time, she hadn’t been able to stop the tears from flowing down her face, but she recalled being cognizant enough to stay as silent as she could, in respect for those that had fallen to the monster horde that had killed hundreds – including her parents and her brother.

What?  That wasn’t my memory!

Through her confusion, Tempara abruptly understood that the silence was for both respect and expediency; holding Final Defenses for those that had fallen could last for days if there were words for each of those who had died, and the last thing anyone who had perished would want was a delay in preparing for the next defense.  The Fox thought this whole thing was foolish, however, as wasting time with such spectacles in the Wildlands could end in a disaster for those trying to live and survive there.

Then again, those thoughts of foolishness might have been the numb depression affecting her thoughts.  It was difficult to tell for certain, nor did she care enough to evaluate it too far.  What she did know was that the Final Defense rite was designed to sever all connections between a body and their world, allowing any lingering souls to pass over to where they spent the afterlife.  At that point, that was all she wanted.

Still in silence, a dozen Mages cast fire-based spells – much more powerful than the Flame Spark that her former master had been able to create – to light the wooden structure in which both bodies lay in death, and the dry wood caught so quickly that Tempara was almost shocked at the flames’ spread.  The fire grew hotter and brighter, consuming everything but the flagstones underneath, including her body’s apparently quite flammable fur.  In less than a minute, the efficiency and heat of the fire-based spells did their work, turning both bodies into unrecognizable ash and—

SNAP!

Tempara felt the connection, the anchor that had kept her soul stuck to her body, violently break, sending her viewpoint bounding away, passing through the walls of the training facility and the city of Northfell so quickly that it was a blur.  It didn’t stop there, though, as her soul kept flying northward, skimming through miles of grassland and trees, passing over or through small clusters of constructed habitats and fields of things growing in neat rows, zooming through the same border fort the group had bypassed on their way back to the city, until she crossed over the border into the Frozen Reaches.

Almost as soon as she passed into the familiar, snowy environment, she felt her rapid travel slow down, until it came to a complete stop.  Looking around her, she saw the collapsed entrance to the dungeon that had ended up killing both her and the woman, though it was quickly being covered with snow as it continued to fall.  Judging by the pace of the coverage, Tempara estimated that the area would be completely unrecognizable within a day or two.

What… What just happened?  Why am I still here?  Shouldn’t my soul have passed on to the afterworld?

That was what everyone was told in the Kingdom, at least as far as the knowledge in her head said.  They were apparently taught that almost all souls passed on immediately upon the body perishing, but some stuck around if there were unusual circumstances surrounding the death.  That was obviously what happened to Tempara and her former master, but the Final Defense rite should’ve broken any connection they had to this world.

Which it did, as evidenced by the severing of my soul and whatever was anchoring me to my body – or hers.  But why am I here?

She didn’t have any explanation for why her soul wasn’t passing on to the afterlife, unfortunately, nor could she think of any way to find out.  To make it worse, when she started to move around, trying to see where she could venture, she was stopped as if she hit an invisible wall at the border.  Exploring her new “home”, she found that she could travel about 2 miles away in every direction – except toward the Kingdom – from where the collapsed dungeon was located, as well as straight up into the air.  Looking down from over 10,000 feet above the surface was incredible, as she could see the people of the city in the distance, clearer than any vision she’d had as a living Greater Temporal Fox.

All of that changed when there was a sudden, bright flash that blinded her vision, and her mind experienced a strange sensation of falling – which was weird, because she didn’t have a body anymore.

Is this it?  Am I going to the afterlife?

When the falling sensation finally stopped, her vision was flooded with something that made no sense to her at first.  Whatever it was that had just happened, she definitely wasn’t in any afterlife she had ever imagined.

Chapter 4

* Select your starting location…. *

The monotone, genderless voice blaring in Tempara’s mind was the first thing she became aware of, before she found herself suspended so far above the ground that she wouldn’t have been surprised if she could reach out and touch the stars above.  Unfortunately, she was looking straight down at the landscape, and from that curious knowledge that she seemed to possess, she thought she was viewing some sort of extremely detailed map of the Kingdom of Radia.  Some memory—which wasn’t Tempara’s—had seen a map of the Kingdom when she joined the Order of Defenders, so now the concept was familiar to the Fox.

Are these the memories of that woman, Kiana?  How did I get them?

The better question was probably what in the world was going on, because she had no idea why she would be floating hundreds of miles above the land.  She was fairly certain that this wasn’t the afterlife, because it wasn’t anything like Tempara’s—or even Kiana’s—memories seemed to indicate it was supposed to be.

* Select your starting location…. *

The annoying voice was back, telling her what to do, but she had very little idea what she was supposed to do. Not only that, but she wasn’t really keen on taking orders yet again, especially after her soul had been enslaved by the Mage woman.  Anything she could do to avoid having to obey unconditionally was something worth doing.

As Tempara ignored the voice and attempted to look to the side or behind her current viewpoint, she found that either her soul was affixed in place somehow or there was nothing to see… because nothing happened.  The Fox’s soul was stuck in place, staring down at the land below; she found that she had more freedom as an unattached soul after her body had been killed in the dungeon than she did here.

* Select your starting location…. *

NO!  Shut up!

Tempara suddenly started to feel a pressure growing upon her mind, as if in response to her thoughts.  It wasn’t painful or uncomfortable, yet, but she could sense an impatience behind it.  Regardless of whatever it was, the pressure led her to realize that if she didn’t “select a starting location” soon, the current lack of pain might change.  The Fox was tempted to continue to ignore the voice, as she still didn’t want to obey if she could help it, but she didn’t really see any other way to change her current circumstances; as much as she didn’t want to follow the instructions, she also didn’t want to be stuck up there for eternity.

Fine.

When Tempara looked closer at the landscape, she found that she could change her viewpoint, but only to get closer to the ground.  She quickly identified the Frozen Reaches where her family had made their den, seeing the vast expanses of snow, hills, and sheets of ice at the furthest areas at the extreme northern part of the land.

* Select your starting location…. *

The annoying voice was accompanied by a brief spike of pain in her mind, and she began to panic.  If she didn’t hurry up, then she might have to endure even more pain; as much as she didn’t like to obey orders, she liked pain even less.

Bringing her viewpoint back up to where it was originally, and feeling the mounting pressure that was soon going to turn to pain, the Fox looked at all of the Wildlands, using her newly gained knowledge to identify each of the different locations.  To the north were obviously the Frozen Reaches she was familiar with. To the northeast of the Kingdom was the Roiling Sea, a massive body of water that had hundreds of small islands periodically dotting its surface. To the east were the Endless Plains, a vast stretch of long grassland and sporadic clumps of trees that seemed to go on forever. To the southeast was the Sweltering Jungle, a densely packed and humid environment filled with so many trees that she couldn’t even see the surface of the land, except in a few areas that were cleared of any trees. Then, to the South was the Charwell Desert, filled with rolling sand dunes, hot temperatures, and bleached rock clumps breaking up the monotony.

To the southwest, bumping right up against the Desert, was the Nightgloom Swamp, filled with death, decay, and bubbling pools of rancid water.  The last two Wildland locations were the Verdant Forest to the west of the Kingdom, filled with monumentally tall trees and interspersed with hundreds of clearings, and the Rolling Mountains to the northwest, which was a series of hills bracketed in by towering mountain ranges, which made the small mountains in the Frozen Reaches look like anthills.

Should I go somewhere new to start over?  See if I can find another pack to join in another location?

There were a few reasons that her pack had lived in the north for so long, she remembered.  Most Greater Temporal Foxes enjoyed the colder air of the Frozen Reaches compared to other locations, and their unique fur blended in much better in the environment compared to anywhere else.  Looking at the landscape, the Rolling Mountains looked like they could potentially be cooler upon the higher slopes, but she wasn’t familiar with the landscape, food sources, or potential threats.  While she wasn’t an expert on the Frozen Reaches, she at least had learned about most of those things from her parents before they were killed.

Then there was the possibility that she might find another pack somewhere in her birthplace, but she wasn’t positive that she’d be able to; Greater Temporal Fox dens tended to be quite difficult to locate, which was why it was so shocking that her own den had been found.

So, start someplace fresh or go back to—

* Select your starting location…. *

OUCH!  Instead of a small spike of pain, Tempara’s mind was suddenly slammed with so much agony that her viewpoint went blurry.  Before the voice could follow-up with anything worse, she made her decision, concentrating on the same general area where her den had been located.  Though she hadn’t technically been outside of the den for more than a few minutes, the landscape around her cage as she was taken away was burned into her mind.  Because of that, she backtracked the route she remembered as she was carried to the lands of people, and she thought she found the area.  Unfortunately, the Fox was unable to locate the actual den, because it was very hard to find, especially from up above.

With one last thought of picking something else, Tempara realized that, deep down, she hoped to find a survivor or two.  She wasn’t positive, but the Fox thought that it was entirely possible that some of their den’s hunters had been out at the time of the attack, especially as she hadn’t watched the entire massacre to identify bodies.  It was probably a long-shot, but she figured she didn’t have anything to lose by looking.  Therefore, choosing the familiar area with the potential for survivors over the unknown, she mentally chose her starting location.

* Transferring control of new Dungeon Core now…. *

Tempara barely had time to comprehend the words the voice was conveying before the landscape and the pain disappeared, and she sensed her soul being moved at high speed in some direction – though she couldn’t see anything.  The sensation didn’t last long, though, and before she knew it, she was suddenly looking at a stone-faced wall.  There was a subtle sheen of frost on the surface, which brought back memories of the place of her death.

Wait—did that voice just say… Dungeon Core?

With her new viewpoint, the Fox quickly discovered that she could look around her position, so she quickly did so.  As she had thought, she looked up and saw icicles hanging like stalactites from the ceiling, and the large, stone-walled room around her was shaped very much like the one she had seen before she had died – though it was quite a bit smaller; the Yeti that had smashed her former master would’ve had trouble even fitting inside.  She estimated that it was only 20 feet wide and tall, a measurement that she thought she understood courtesy of her newfound knowledge, though it was difficult to tell without a physical frame of reference in the room.

Where am I?

Tempara’s question was quickly answered as she found that she could move her viewpoint, like she could when her free-floating soul had been anchored to her dead body, and she moved it away from her initial position.

Is that—?  No, it can’t be!

Back where she had started was a small, white-and-blue object attached to the top of a stone pedestal; again, it brought back memories of the Dungeon Core that Tempara had been forced to try and prevent her former master from crashing into, though this one – similar to the size of the room – was much smaller.  As much as she wanted to deny it, there was only one explanation for what was happening, even if it seemed impossible.

Tempara’s soul was somehow inhabiting a Dungeon Core.  Unfortunately, how or why this had occurred wasn’t something she could answer.  It was the same with the presence of all that woman’s knowledge in her head; its mere presence was a mystery to her.

Having had a little practice moving her viewpoint as an anchored soul, she quickly found the exit of the room she started in, which was quite easy; there was only one way in or out of the space, after all.  A familiar-looking tunnel shot straight out from the room, though after about 20 feet it changed from the darker, reinforced grey stone of the previous room to a lighter shade that she attributed to “normal” rock, but other than that there wasn’t any difference as she sped down the very long tunnel.  There were no additional rooms along the way, which surprised her; it appeared as though her “dungeon” was essentially a Core room and a straight tunnel leading all the way to the outside.

There was only a slight resistance as she passed over the threshold of the dungeon, but she pushed ahead and floated free into the gorgeous and snowy expanse of the Frozen Reaches.  Sending herself high into the sky, she found her viewpoint could only move up about 2 miles or so, if she understood the measurement correctly, but it still allowed her to see quite a bit.  The first thing she noticed was that the dungeon she just flew out of—I suppose I should say, “my” dungeon—was located closer to the border with the Kingdom than she expected, though based on where she thought her pack’s den was located, she supposed it made sense.

The second thing she noticed was movement about a mile and a half to the north, as she found that her vision as a Dungeon Core was much better than she had ever experienced when she was alive.  As she moved closer, she couldn’t help but recognize the landscape having more than just a passing resemblance to the area outside of her pack’s den.

I guess that I misjudged where the den was, but at least I was close.  And—wait!  That appears to be a survivor!

Her mind and thoughts froze in shock as she drifted closer to the large Greater Temporal Fox bounding through the snow with powerful leaps, a Snow Hare caught in their mouth.  Tempara was shocked because she immediately recognized the Fox, as it was almost impossible that she wouldn’t.

The Fox traveling back to the den was… her father.

Chapter 5

What?  How?

Comprehension escaped Tempara as she watched her father loping easily back to the den, and she unconsciously moved her viewpoint until she was following directly after him.

It can’t be.  As much as I don’t want to believe it, I know I saw him and mama killed just after I was captured.  How is this possible?

Eventually, her father scurried inside of the secret entrance, cleverly hidden behind an outcropping covered in snow, and his footprints were light enough that it was nearly impossible to see them even a few seconds after he passed.  Tempara glided up to the opening, but she was immediately stopped as if she had hit a wall.

Thankfully, she could still see inside of the den.  Her father had immediately gone across the entire space, where he stopped behind a veritable wall of Greater Temporal Foxes.  The brand-new Dungeon Core recognized all of them; they were her relatives in one way or another, and she joyfully watched them all standing there, alive and healthy-looking.

Behind her Uncle Forster, she saw something that made her mind freeze yet again in shock.

Mama.

Tempara stared at the exhausted-looking Fox, her memories of her mother engrained in her mind to the point where she was unmistakable.  She’d never seen her so tired before, but she intuitively knew exactly why.  Curled up in her lap was a tiny form, almost blending in with her mama’s fur, and it was crying softly, as if it was hungry.

She’s alive and has had another kit?  Did she forget about me so quickly—?

A closer look at the just-born kit stopped that thought in her mind from expanding any further.  Tempara immediately recognized a tiny discoloration on the kit’s back foot, which was familiar.  As in, intimately familiar; the new Dungeon Core remembered it perfectly, because she had seen it every day of her short life.

She had one exactly like it on her own foot.  Or her old body’s foot, now that she was somehow a Dungeon Core.

Unless it is possible that two kits could have the exact same discoloration, that’s… me.  Maybe this is the afterlife, and I’m being punished to watch the horrible results of my disobeying my parents again?

The more she thought about it, however, the less she thought that was what was happening.  Everything was just too real and vivid to be a simple memory playing back, and if it was some sort of punishment, she didn’t think the whole Dungeon Core thing would be a part of it.

Tempara watched her pack doting on the new addition, her mama accepting the Snow Hare that her father had brought back, and eventually everyone went back to sleep.  It was only then that the new Dungeon Core realized that night was rapidly falling, though her vision of the environment and the den seemed to be unaffected by the lack of light.  After her pack was all asleep, Tempara pulled her attention back to the land around the den, instinctively looking for signs of danger. At the same time, she also tried to find some other evidence that she was imagining things, but everything appeared… “normal”.  Or as normal as was possible in the Frozen Reaches, but nothing looked out of place or stood out as a reason not to believe what she had just seen.

I think I’ve gone back in time.

Time was, of course, fluid – especially for Greater Temporal Foxes.  Some of the most powerful of their kind could manipulate a temporal distortion field enough that they could actually travel back in time a few seconds, though the usage of such an ability was reportedly terribly exhausting.  Tempara had just been experimenting with her own distortion field, slowing down time within the field for a few seconds, when she was captured; she was far from being able to reverse the flow of time – but the concept wasn’t as foreign as it probably would’ve been for a person of the Kingdom.  A quick search of the memories and knowledge that had been implanted in her mind told her that she was fairly accurate in her assessment, though theories about time manipulation were present.

But that didn’t explain how she ended up over a month before her capture and subsequent attack on her den.  Her explorations around the area told her nothing, unfortunately, though she did find something interesting.  When she located two different entrances to other dungeons, there was a subtle aura, or almost a “flavor” that emerged from them, marking each dungeon as different to her vision.  It wasn’t anything she had felt before when she had been an anchored soul attached to her dead body, but she hadn’t really explored a lot at that point, either.

Huh.  What does it all mean?

She had no idea, but she attributed the difference to her own change in circumstances; namely, that she was now a Dungeon Core, as crazy as that sounded.

Further investigation of every corner of her current range revealed nothing else that could explain the reason for her return to the past.  With no natural or unnatural explanation at hand, Tempara could only come to a single purpose behind her arrival: She needed to stop the massacre of her pack from happening.

How she was supposed to do that was something she wasn’t quite sure of yet.

Therefore, Tempara began to think about what she could do to prevent the coming disaster.  A few hours went by as she tried to figure out how to stop her future self from breaking the rules and venturing outside of the den, by attempting to communicate with any of the Foxes inside of the den (which ended up being a lesson in futility), but any type of workable solution escaped her.  She briefly thought about inviting them to live inside of her dungeon, as she was a Dungeon Core, after all, but her kind avoided dungeons at every opportunity.  Communicating with either her younger self or any of her pack seemed like an impossibility at this point.

So, what can I do?

After a while, she realized that even if she were to warn her pack, there might not be anything that they could do to prevent what would happen.  Therefore, what she needed to do was stop the people from finding the den in the first place – or at least distract them enough so that they forgot about the pack.

It was a very simple plan, which worked well for the Fox.  She was technically only about a month old, and while her mind was crammed full of information and knowledge about subjects she didn’t ask for, she still technically had the mind of a juvenile Greater Temporal Fox.  Complicated plans weren’t exactly one of Tempara’s strengths.

At that point, she was basically only able to process a few things at one time, and she was at her limit.  In essence, what she knew was:

- She had been captured, enslaved, and then killed in a dungeon

- She had somehow been transported back in time

- It was her duty to stop the worst thing she knew from ever happening, using whatever she had at her disposal

Thankfully for Tempara, any thoughts about time paradoxes were beyond her comprehension, though there was a kernel of an opinion her forced knowledge about the aforementioned paradoxes seemed to impart.  Since it was too much for her to understand, the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core ignored it.

I need to find a way to pull attention away from my pack, but how?

She could only think of one way to do that: her new dungeon.  She didn’t know much about dungeons, though the one she had been in before had been quite dangerous; that was more than obvious given her former master had died.  From all she knew, based on her prior knowledge her parents had told her, as well as the new information from that woman, dungeons were all dangerous, which was why large sweeps of people from the Kingdom came periodically to destroy them.  That last part worried Tempara a little bit, but she knew that she had to do what she could to prevent her pack from being destroyed – even if it meant her own destruction.  She owed it to them, after all.

This should be easy, right? Dungeons send out monsters all the time, so all I need to do is send a whole bunch out when the people come and distract them.

With that thought in mind and her pack safely asleep, Tempara returned to her dungeon and zoomed through the tunnel leading to the room where her Core was located.  Upon entering, she immediately saw something had changed.  Standing next to the pedestal holding her Core was a large form, one which she recognized immediately.

Kiana?  No!  You’re not my master anymore—

* To begin the process of creating your dungeon, please refer to your Core Display.  For more information, ask your system-created assistant for details. *

Wait.  I recognize that voice!

The monotonous and annoying voice, which had previously instructed her to choose a starting location, was back.  If that wasn’t bad enough, she had the distinct feeling that it was coming from the woman standing next to the pedestal and staring at her Core.  As Tempara stared back, she began to see that the woman wasn’t exactly “normal”.  For one, she wasn’t breathing, nor was she moving in any sense of the word – she was completely stationary, without even the littlest muscle movements.  Second, the Dungeon Core’s enhanced senses couldn’t sense any type of heartbeat in her former master, nor any other typical signs of life.  In fact, for all that she could visually see the representation of the Mage, everything else told her that Kiana wasn’t actually there.

Thinking about the words the voice had spoken, she thought that she was beginning to understand a little.

Are you my… assistant?

* That is correct.  Do you have any other questions? *

Great.  Just great.  Not exactly who or what I would’ve chosen.  Better question: Why are you my assistant?  And what are you supposed to do?

* Assistants are created from the familiar connection Elemental Spirits have with their Cores to facilitate the operation of their dungeons. *

Elemental Spirits?  What are those?

The woman that looked like her former master but wasn’t really Kiana stared at her Core unmoving for nearly a minute before responding.

* You are not an Elemental Spirit? *

That was not what Tempara was expecting, especially as the tinge of the woman’s recognizable tone seemed to bleed through the voice.  Granted, Tempara had only been controlled by her former master for a short time, but the young, higher-pitched lilt to her voice was unmistakable.

No, I’m not an Elemental Spirit, whatever that is.  I’m a Greater Temporal Fox – or at least I was.  Somehow my soul was transferred here and sent back in time.

* That is not possible.  Dungeon Cores are designed for Elemental Spirits to contain and manipulate the Elemental Power present in the environment.  If they do not accomplish this task, the ambient Elemental Power left uncontained can cause catastrophic damage to every living being in the world. *

Uh….

If what her new assistant was saying was true, then there was a lot more to Cores and the Wildlands than anyone thought.  Still, that didn’t explain why Tempara was there inside of a Dungeon Core; somehow, the fact that her assistant had no idea why she was there either made her feel better about the situation.  That, and the fact that the woman seemed subservient to the Fox instead of the other way around couldn’t be anything other than a good thing.

Despite the impossibility, that doesn’t negate the fact that I’m here.  In a Dungeon Core.  I also have no idea what I’m doing, and I need to somehow prevent the deaths of my pack and my own self’s capture.

Her new assistant was silent and still for so long that Tempara thought for a moment that she had broken the woman.  Finally, after a few minutes, the full-on monotone and annoying voice was, back with all traces of Kiana banished.

* Open your Core Display by thinking— *

With a mental sigh, Tempara didn’t even allow her assistant to finish the instructions, as she figured it was very similar to the way her former master had brought up her Condition Display – which was imparted to her via the knowledge she had been given.  Thankfully, all it took was a mental nudge and the Display came up – but it was quite a bit different than what her not-memories were accustomed to.

Core Display

Core Name:

Tempara

Core Level:

1

Designation:

Frozen Cohort

Level Threshold:

1,000 EP

Elemental Power (EP):

1,000 EP

Accumulation Rate (AR):

5 EP/minute

Defensible Rooms:

1

Available Monsters:

3

Monster Threshold:

10

Available Traps:

3

Monsters:

Cold Slime

Snow Hare

Winter Wolf

25 EP

50 EP

125 EP

Traps:

Pit Trap

Frigid Blast

Icicle Rain

0.5 AR

0.5 AR

1 AR

Core Abilities:

Construct Dungeon

Create Monster

Install Trap

(EP cost – varies)

(EP cost – varies)

(AR cost – varies)

Skills/Knowledge:

Monster Creation

Trap Installation

???

(Total Available: 3)

(Total Available: 3)

(???)

Reviewing the information, which was strange to do considering that she couldn’t read a few days ago, Tempara saw that there were some similarities with what a person’s Condition Display showed.  First, she had a Core Level, which she assumed was very similar to how Levels as a Defender worked; thinking about Defender Levels left her with only a vague impression of them, but she thought she understood that they were a measure of how powerful one was.  The Level Threshold seemed to be like Elemental Charge, the energy gained to increase the aforementioned “Levels”, though the whole Elemental Power (EP) thing was new to both Tempara and her memories.  Her assistant had mentioned it, and she figured it was similar to the “Mana” her former master had used as a Mage, though how it differed was something she still had to discover.

Instead of “Spells”, there were “Monsters” and “Traps”, though one simply cost EP while the other required AR – however that worked.

* Each trap installed in your dungeon requires a portion of your Elemental Power Accumulation Rate to maintain. *

The unasked-for answer was helpful, but Tempara wasn’t sure if she appreciated her assistant reading her mind like that.  Then again, she supposed that it was nice being on the other end of the relationship for once, so it didn’t bother her.  At least, not too much.

Below the Monsters and Traps categories was “Core Abilities”, which consisted of Construct Dungeon, Create Monster, and Install Trap.  While not exactly self-explanatory, she caught the gist of what those abilities did, but she’d have to play around with them later in order to understand them a little better.

It was the category at the bottom that gave her pause, however.  Under “Skills/Knowledge”, there was Monster Creation and Trap Installation, which also noted that she had 3 of each at her disposal, matching what she saw above.  But in the corner, as if tucked away and trying to stay out of sight, was a bit of an unknown.

What is this Skill or Knowledge thingy that only has 3 question marks?

* Unknown. *

Well, that certainly wasn’t helpful.  Rather than linger too long on something she had no way of figuring out at the moment, Tempara turned to her available monsters, which included a Snow Hare, a Winter Wolf, and a Cold Slime.  The latter was something she’d heard about but hadn’t seen in her rather limited experience based on both Fox and Human memories.  What she knew about them was that Slimes – at least the ones that were common in some of the other Wildland locations – were particularly slow, if more difficult to kill than the normal monster their size.  That was exactly what she needed – something difficult to kill, allowing her pack to go undiscovered or to escape if they were, in fact, discovered.

Each of the monsters required a cost in Elemental Power to create, just like Kiana’s spells used to cost Mana, so that at least was relatively familiar.  Thankfully, Tempara had more than enough Elemental Power to create a bunch of them, probably because she had been absent for a while, watching her pack for hours before they went to sleep. Based on what she could deduce, her Accumulation Rate had brought her up to what was assumedly her maximum of 1,000.

* You now have enough Elemental Power to condense it on the outside of your Core, increasing your Core Level by 1.  To begin, think about applying your Elemental Power to your— *

Why should I do that?  All I want to do is create some monsters, send them to guard the outside of my pack’s den, and then distract the Kingdom people when they arrive.

* By raising your Core Level, you’ll be able to increase your Accumulation Rate, raise your maximum Elemental Power, and add to your Monster Threshold – which will allow you to contain additional monsters within your dungeon. *

Those all seemed like they could be useful—if she were a normal Dungeon Core.  As it was, all Tempara wanted to do was make a few monsters that were difficult to kill so that they could be used to protect the den.  She would worry about everything else once that was done, and the sooner she got started, the sooner she could ensure her pack was safe.

I’ll do that later.  Instead, how do I create monsters and send them out of my dungeon?

Her assistant didn’t seem to take the change in plans very well, because the not-woman was silent for more than a minute before the explanations started.  She struggled to implement the instructions she was given, mainly because she had never done anything like this before, but eventually she thought she had it figured out.

Whether or not it would be enough was still to be determined.

Chapter 6

Even after learning the principles of monster creation, there were still a lot of things that she needed to learn about how the whole “Dungeon Core” thing worked.

* First, a Dungeon Core is unable to release any monsters from their dungeon until the Monster Threshold has been reached.  In your case, you need a total of 10 monsters inside before a single monster can be sent outside.  Second, the firm limit on total monsters any dungeon can hold is 50% over the Monster Threshold; again, in your case, you can have a total of 15 monsters inside of your dungeon at any time. *

Wait; you’re telling me that I need to keep monsters in my dungeon before I can send them out?  Why?

* The Monster Threshold ensures adequate defenses to protect from external invasion.  If monsters from another dungeon manage to reach your Core, they can steal your current Elemental Power, as well as potentially some of your Core Levels. *

Tempara thought about what her assistant was saying, and she vaguely recalled hearing about how dangerous it was outside of the den, because dungeon monsters were constantly roaming around.  With the explanation she was given, it seemed that the monsters weren’t just running around without any purpose, but were instead invading other dungeons to steal Elemental Power.  Success could mean saving weeks or months of work and grant a few Core Levels; on the flipside, failure to stop an invasion could result in losing all of that work.

From what she had observed up above, and considering the “flavor” each of the ones she saw possessed, Tempara was fairly sure that none of the nearby dungeons seemed a lot more powerful than the others.  She thought that this might be because there had just been a recent sweep of people from the Kingdom clearing out the dungeons in the Frozen Reaches, so most of the ones – like herself – were just starting to develop.

The woman’s memories detailed “monster hordes”, however, which meant that occasionally some dungeons became quite powerful – and this seemed like the most likely means.  Tempara also remembered her parents mentioning these “hordes”, but only in the context of something else; essentially, they were dangerous to any of the local natural beasts, such as Greater Temporal Foxes, in their path, so she was told that it was best to stay out of their way.

* The so-called monster hordes to which you are referring are one example of when the balance of power shifts in a specific region.  When they become too powerful for their local environment, Dungeon Cores will send out a much larger force to seek out more concentrated forms of Elemental Power.  This includes the Kingdom that you have previously internally referenced. *

That prompted a question from the information that had been shoved inside of her mind.

Are you saying that the Fonts of Elemental Mana inside of the major cities are actually concentrated Elemental Power?

* That is correct.  These Fonts gather the ambient Elemental Power – exactly the same as is present in your current location – and concentrate it in a specific location.  When there is enough gathered, it is somehow changed and diluted, before it is dispersed across the local environment. *

It didn’t take her long to figure out what her assistant was getting at.  The Fonts that Kiana’s memories mentioned apparently took the same Elemental Power that existed in the Wildlands, which the Dungeon Cores gathered and used to create monsters, and then converted it to Elemental Mana and sent it around the Kingdom.

The fact that it gathered the Elemental Power and concentrated it in a particular location also explained something that the Mage had always wondered.  For one, it explained why dungeons near the border sent monsters into the Kingdom, when they normally had no chance of surviving; they were heading toward the nearest concentration of Elemental Power – as if the Fonts were really powerful Dungeon Cores.

So, according to you, the dungeons a bit further north of the border seem to be perpetually locked in combat with each other.  What’s to stop them from teaming up together to attack the Kingdom?

The thought of revenge against the Kingdom for what they did to her pack reared up at the thought of some sort of mega-monster horde sweeping them all away, but she curbed her blood-thirsty impulses.  As much as she hated them for what they had done, she logically knew that not all of them were bad; even the Mage, for all that she had enslaved Tempara’s soul, hadn’t done it out of malice and hadn’t even participated in the attack on her den.

* That is not possible.  Each Dungeon Core is specifically designed to act independently, and while different dungeon monsters might appear to work together to take down a more powerful dungeon, these occurrences are pure coincidence.  It is impossible for Dungeon Cores to actively and knowingly work together with another Core. *

That was both a disappointment and a relief.  While Tempara would’ve liked to imagine a massive horde of monsters devastating the Kingdom, it could also prove dangerous to any beasts in their way – including her pack.

Fair enough.  Now, remind me again how to create monsters.

The core principles in creating monsters were apparently similar to the way her former master had cast a spell back when she was a Mage – though that only helped Tempara a little bit since she had never actually done it herself.  Eventually, the new Dungeon Core found that all she had to do was think about what monster she wanted to create, along with where she wanted it, and a small stream of whitish-blue energy – which she could only assume was Elemental Power – flowed out of her Core.  The EP she spent hit the ground where she had wanted her monster, and the energy started to build up from the ground.  Within seconds, a bluish, gel-like blob sat on the floor of her Core room, its round exterior stretching no more than a foot across.

Tempara looked at her brand-new Cold Slime and immediately witnessed why it wasn’t all that common around the Frozen Reaches, especially when it came from other dungeons.  The spheroid monster started to slowly move throughout the room by essentially rolling itself around like some sort of flexible snowball; its speed was such that even the youngest kit could simply walk away to escape the Slime’s pursuit.  The internal “core” of the Slime was also plain to see, so all it would take would be an accurate slash of a claw and it would die.  When fighting against other monsters in the Frozen Reaches, even a Snow Hare could probably reach inside with its paw and swipe at the core, though what kind of damage it would take in the process by doing so was unknown.

Thankfully, she wasn’t creating the Slime to fight other monsters, but to catch the attention of the Kingdom’s Defenders when they came to do their periodic sweep of the Frozen Reaches.  She was also hoping that the sight of a rarely seen monster would give them pause, and then they would be so overwhelmed by an army of Slimes that they would forget about the Greater Temporal Fox den.

Simple.  Easy.  It was just the kind of plan that Tempara thought would work.

She was just about to create even more Slimes when she felt a connection with the monster she already had, which was reminiscent of the connection she had with her former master.  It wasn’t exactly the same, because it felt as if she were on the other side of the link, but it reminded her enough of the “bond” the Mage had performed on her soul.  It disturbed her more than a little bit, because she didn’t want to engage in the same act as the woman.

* Your monsters do not have souls, as they are technically constructs created by the use of Elemental Power. *

Tempara wasn’t sure if that made it better or not, but considering that she literally made the Slime out of nothing, she decided to accept that this connection was different from what had happened to her own self.  Concentrating on that link, the Dungeon Core was given a little bit more information about the monster she had just created.

Monster Details

Cold Slime

25 EP

Creation Threshold: 1/250

Battle Threshold: 0/100

Potential Advancement Options:

???

???

???

???

What are these thresholds?

* The thresholds are for advancing your knowledge of each monster you have available.  The Creation Threshold refers to simply creating a certain number of that specific monster.  The Battle Threshold refers to seeing the specific monster in battle a certain number of times; this threshold can be reached even by watching other Dungeon Cores’ monsters in battle.  Once both thresholds have been reached, up to four Potential Advancement Options will become available; choosing one will allow you to create a whole new monster based on the selection. To create the other Advancement Options, the Threshold will have to be reached yet again. *

Tempara thought that was interesting, but it wasn’t something that she needed to worry about as of yet.  Her former master’s memories told her that something similar happened when certain spells were used repeatedly in battle, as more-advanced versions or completely new spells would become available over time.  Use of particular spells also contributed to the Advanced Class options for Defenders when their Level hit a certain threshold; for instance, using fire spells constantly would give an option of becoming a Flame Mage, which increased the damage and versatility of fire-based spells.  Of course, as Kiana had only been Level 1 and had barely even begun to experiment with her spells, she hadn’t had firsthand knowledge of new spells or an Advanced Class.

Curious, the new Dungeon Core decided to create a Snow Hare to see what it would say.  As 50 EP flowed out of her Core, a small, white-furred Hare just slightly larger than the Slime quickly formed in the room, and it immediately started to hop around as if in search of something.  Tempara couldn’t help but notice that it was larger than the ones she had seen the pack hunters bring back to the den, but she assumed it was because these were dungeon monsters, not natural beasts.

Do these monsters have to eat?

She didn’t think they did, since there was nothing in the dungeon that they could munch on – other than each other, she supposed.

* No.  Once created, your monsters are sustained by the Elemental Power that was infused inside of them upon the act of creation. *

Good to know.

Monster Details

Snow Hare

50 EP

Creation Threshold: 1/250

Battle Threshold: 1/100

Potential Advancement Options:

???

???

???

???

The Snow Hare was different, not only because it cost twice the amount of EP as the Slime at 50, but because it had already had 1 contributed to the Battle Threshold.  Remembering what had happened in the dungeon that led to her death, the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core supposed that the fight against the Snow Hares there must have counted.  Since she hadn’t seen any Cold Slimes in the dungeon, that number was still at 0 for the Battle Threshold.

It was slightly fascinating to her how all of these things worked, but she pushed off looking at any more at the moment; she had a job to do, after all.  I’ll have plenty of time to look over more of this later if I so choose.  As a result of that determination, she continued to create more Cold Slimes, one right after another, until she had a total of 9 Slimes and the one Snow Hare, spending a total of 275 EP on the bunch.  In the time she had been creating and checking them out, she had gained another 15 EP from her Accumulation Rate, which put her at a total of 740 EP at the moment.

At that point, Tempara found that while she couldn’t communicate with the monsters she had created – as in, she couldn’t speak to them – they were able to follow her orders quite easily.  All she had to do was think about what she wanted them to do and they would do it – though in the case of the Slimes, they did it slowly.  Regardless, after having the entire group of 10 monsters doing laps around her Core room, with the Hare essentially doing 100 laps for every Slime lap, the new Dungeon Core tried to have one of the Slimes leave her dungeon.

As her assistant had mentioned earlier about the Monster Threshold inside of her dungeon, nothing happened when she instructed one of the Slimes to leave.  It wasn’t that she didn’t believe the woman, but it was good to know that the information she had been given was accurate.

If I create one more, it should be able to leave, correct?

* That is correct.  At your current Core Level, you can create an additional 5 monsters that can stay inside of your dungeon before you will be forced to expel them. *

I only need the one at the moment, so I can see if my plan will work.

After creating yet another Cold Slime, she instructed it to move out of her dungeon.  Unlike what happened before when it did absolutely nothing, the gel-like monster immediately began rolling out the entrance of her Core room and blobbed its way down the long, straight tunnel to the surface.

It took a full 30 minutes for the Slime to travel all the way outside because of its slow speed, but eventually it passed over the threshold of the entrance.  As soon as it did so, however, she felt most of her connection to it disappear.

* Once outside, there are only two things that you can order your monsters to do.  The first is for it to move to a particular location; if no location is specified, it will travel to the nearest source of Elemental Power.  The second is to return to your dungeon, and it will do so, provided that you have not reached the hard limit of your Monster Threshold. *

Her assistant answered Tempara’s mental question, and she found that the woman was correct.  The Dungeon Core immediately sent the Slime north, directing it to a place about 1,000 feet away from the hidden den of her pack.  Once it got there, she would see if that would be the best place to make her distraction, and then increase production of even more Slimes, until she had an army capable of distracting the people when they arrived.

While she waited, due to the fact that it was going to take the Cold Slime around 3 or 4 hours to travel that far, she used more of her EP to create a Winter Wolf, which was much bigger than either the Hare or the Slime, but it also cost 125 EP – which was the equivalent of creating two Hares and a Slime.  Thankfully, she had more than enough EP saved up, especially since waiting for the Slime to simply exit her dungeon provided her with another 150 EP thanks to her Accumulation Rate.

Monster Details

Winter Wolf

125 EP

Creation Threshold: 1/250

Battle Threshold: 1/100

Potential Advancement Options:

???

???

???

???

Again, she had already had 1 of the Wolf’s Battle Threshold added, because there were some in that other dungeon.  Other than that, there wasn’t really anything new for her to see about the Wolf that she didn’t know already.  She didn’t really need it, though, as she wanted only the strongest monsters in her army, namely: Slimes.

Is there a way to get rid of any of my monsters?

* Yes.  A simple thought toward one of your monsters inside of your dungeon will break it down into Elemental Power that you can re-use.  Keep in mind that monsters broken down this way only provide 50% of the original cost, rounded down, and you cannot fall beneath the Monster Threshold. *

So, she couldn’t eliminate all of her monsters, only those ones that wouldn’t drop it back down below 10.  Since the Wolf was the eleventh monster, it was easy enough to eliminate it from her dungeon.

With a thought, Tempara imagined it going away; as soon as she did, the Wolf stopped moving around the room as it froze in place, before it disintegrated from the top down, the reverse of how it was created.  As it disappeared, a portion of the EP that she had invested in the monster was returned to her, and she saw that she had just received 62 of the 125 EP the Wolf had cost.

I’m glad it didn’t kill it; I’m not sure I could handle causing it to drop dead with a thought.  As it is, it was like I was simply removing it without bloodshed – which is the last thing I want to see right now, given the memories of what happened to my pack.  Or will happen to them, if this plan doesn’t work.

Her assistant didn’t respond, mainly because there was no question in her thoughts.

While she was at it, Tempara created another Slime and then removed the Snow Hare, so that she had a roomful of only slow Cold Slimes.  If there was anything less threatening than that, she couldn’t think of it.

It was only a matter of a little over 30 minutes before she was full of Elemental Power again.  At that point, since there was still at least another hour and a half before her Slime outside would reach the border, and because she was bored, she decided to go ahead and see what happened when she followed her assistant’s advice from earlier.  She received a lengthier explanation this time, and just like everything else she had learned to do as a Dungeon Core, increasing her Core Level was simple in theory, if not necessarily in practice.

Eventually, Tempara figured it out, after a small amount of experimentation.  In the end, all she had to do was think about applying the full amount of her Elemental Power to her Dungeon Core, and the process was taken care of automatically.  She witnessed the massive amount of EP leave her form, but instead of creating a monster, it surrounded her Core.  Once it was shrouded in the glowing mass of energy, she watched it condense upon itself, forming a thin layer around the outside of the Core, thickening its size and making it just a little bit bigger.  She was thankful that there was no pain, no uncomfortable feelings, and no prolonged Leveling-up process; she’d had enough strange things happen to her soul lately that she didn’t need any of that.

In all, the entire process took 5 minutes, and she was left looking at her Core Display once again. Only a few things had changed, however, and she concentrated on those immediately.

Core Display

Core Name:

Tempara

Core Level:

2

Designation:

Frozen Cohort

Level Threshold:

3,000 EP (+2,000)

Elemental Power (EP):

0 EP

Accumulation Rate (AR):

10 EP/minute (+5)

Defensible Rooms:

1

Available Monsters:

3

Monster Threshold:

12 (+2)

Available Traps:

3

Monsters:

Cold Slime

Snow Hare

Winter Wolf

25 EP

50 EP

125 EP

Traps:

Pit Trap

Frigid Blast

Icicle Rain

0.5 AR

0.5 AR

1 AR

Core Abilities:

Construct Dungeon

Create Monster

Install Trap

(EP cost – varies)

(EP cost – varies)

(AR cost – varies)

Skills/Knowledge:

Monster Creation

Trap Installation

???

(Total Available: 3)

(Total Available: 3)

(???)

Her Accumulation Rate went up by 5 EP per minute, which effectively doubled the amount of EP she was acquiring.  Her Monster Threshold had also gone up by 2, which meant that if she wanted to send out another monster, she would have to add at least 2 more to her dungeon – along with upping her hard limit to a total of 18 monsters.  Lastly, the Level Threshold had increased by 2,000 EP, making what she needed to accumulate in order to increase her Core Level a total of 3,000 EP.  Based on the speed of Accumulation, a portion of her mind that she’d never used before calculated that it would take about 5 hours to gather that much Elemental Power – as long as she didn’t spend any up to that point.  Specific numbers and this thing called “mathematics” were unknown to a Greater Temporal Fox, but apparently the Defenders of the Kingdom used such things all the time.

The ease of the Core Level increase generated another question for her assistant.

How high of a Core Level do most Dungeon Cores achieve before they are periodically destroyed?  It seems inordinately easy and quick to increase a Core Level.

Her assistant responded, with her voice heavily influenced by her former master’s tone; it was only after she heard it that she deduced that Kiana’s actual voice was more pronounced when the answers to her questions were apparently outside of the norm for a Dungeon Core.

* As all other Dungeon Cores are controlled by an Elemental Spirit, they possess an insatiable drive to compete for additional Elemental Power.  This drive activates as soon as they reach Core Level 2, which is when they begin their campaign to acquire the Elemental Power from other Elemental Spirits in their Dungeon Core forms.  As a result, it is only under rare circumstances that a Core will entirely pause the production of monsters in order to save for their next Core Level – though it isn’t unknown.  In addition, all other Cores typically have a larger dungeon with multiple rooms that they are protecting by this point, which includes traps that consume some of their Accumulation Rate. *

Tempara was thankful that she felt no drive to constantly create monsters that could be sent out to gather more Elemental Power, but her assistant’s explanation made a lot of sense.  If the most common way of gaining additional Core Levels was through the raiding of other dungeons, then that would certainly limit the number of Levels a Core might possess.  Plus, when the loss of Levels was possible, then there was likely a large up-and-down process that was happening, equalizing the Core Levels of a large amount of dungeons after a while.  None of that really concerned her right now, though, but it was a tidbit of information that she filed away for later.

After she had finished looking at the changes her new Level imparted, Tempara decided to wait outside for her Slime to arrive where she directed it, to ensure that nothing happened to it.  After a little over 4 hours, she found that she had been fairly accurate in her estimation of how long the Slime would take to journey up to its designated spot.

As soon as it arrived and wobbled gently in the snow, seemingly content to stay in that exact spot despite the cold environment – which shouldn’t have been surprising, considering that it was a Cold Slime – Tempara went back to her dungeon.  It took less than a minute to get back, as she found that she could move her viewpoint in small leaps of distance rather than floating all the way there.  Once back inside, she began the mass production of Slimes, as she had gained a lot of EP over the last few hours.

This is going to be the biggest army of Cold Slimes the Frozen Reaches has ever seen!

Chapter 7

Unfortunately, it didn’t appear as if she would ever be able to see that army, because things started to go wrong only a few minutes into her Slime production.  After creating a half-dozen Cold Slimes that she was planning on adding to the spot she had chosen for her Slime army, she felt the tiny connection she had with the Slime she had placed outside snap, like it had never been.  It was different from when she got rid of the Snow Hare and the Winter Wolf in her dungeon; the feeling was more abrupt and shocking

What happened?

* Your monster has been killed. *

What?  How?

Already, Tempara was rushing out of her dungeon, using all the speed she could manage to leap ahead short distances.

* Unknown. *

Her assistant wasn’t a lot of help, but it was nice to know that the woman could communicate with her even when her viewpoint was somewhere else.  In less time than it took her to return just a few minutes ago, Tempara was at the site where she had left her Cold Slime alone, to mark where she was going to build her army.

It didn’t take long to find out what had happened.

A small group of the Kingdom’s Defenders had apparently stumbled upon her monster and slain it, severing her connection to it.  Widening her viewpoint, she noticed that they had likely come from slightly to the east, where there was a dungeon—or there had been a dungeon not that long ago.  Tempara wasn’t sure why she hadn’t seen them moving around or entering said dungeon previously, but that wasn’t exactly the issue right now.

The issue was that the group was now rapidly following the indented path her Cold Slime had left in the snow as it traveled from her dungeon to the location where they had found it.  While the falling snow had camouflaged most of the Slime’s track nearest her dungeon’s entrance, it had also followed a fairly straight line on its journey.

Uh, oh.

From the knowledge and memories that came from the woman, Kiana, she knew that – aside from the periodic sweeps that invaded the Frozen Reaches and destroyed all of the dungeons that were found – the Defenders also ventured over the border and eradicated any dungeons that were potentially a threat so close to the Kingdom.  It was one of these dungeons that had ultimately led to both of their deaths, in fact, so it shouldn’t have been surprising that they were here.  Even knowing that, the appearance of a group of people wasn’t fortuitous for Tempara right now.

Panicked, she rushed back to her dungeon and started to mass produce more Cold Slimes, as they were the cheapest to create.  At least she tried to, but after creating 2 more, for a total of 18 in her dungeon, the next one didn’t work.

* You have hit the hard limit of your Monster Threshold.  Either send some monsters out of your dungeon or eliminate them to create different ones. *

No!  Not this right now!

She had forgotten about the Monster Threshold, which put a damper on her plans.  Remembering that she had another option, she turned to her Core Display and located her options for installing traps.  The first was a Pit Trap, and as she concentrated on it, she got the impression that it was simply a deep hole in the floor with a very thin layer of ice covering the top of it.  When enough weight was applied to the ice layer, it would collapse, sending whoever was on top falling to the bottom of the hole.  From what she understood, the reason it required a portion of her Accumulation Rate instead of being a flat cost in Elemental Power was that the trap would reset itself after being triggered, with the layer of ice somehow being put back into place afterward.

That was the same reasoning behind the AR cost of the other traps, as well.  Icicle Rain was essentially a barrage of icicles that fell from the ceiling, as if dozens of stalactites had been detached and then descended in a “rain” of sharp projectiles.  The ongoing cost reset the icicles so that they could fall again.

Frigid Blast was something that was installed in a wall, unlike the others.  From what she understood, a shockingly cold blast of air infused with ice particles would emerge from a wall and surround whatever triggered it.  What exactly that would do, she wasn’t sure, but she was well aware that not everyone loved the cooler temperatures of the Frozen Reaches like Greater Temporal Foxes, especially the same people that were heading toward her dungeon right now.

Maybe that’s what I need right now.

Using the same principle of creating a monster, Tempara imagined installing one of the Frigid Blast traps about halfway down the tunnel leading to the outside, and she saw something change along and even inside the wall she was focused upon.  It was small and subtle, not like anything she was picturing… and it also didn’t appear to be done.

* Frigid Blast trap is currently installing.  The time until installation is complete: 14 minutes, 55 seconds. *

What?!  But they will be here before it’s done!

* Because there is no initial cost to the installation, traps use your Accumulation Rate to complete the installation over a set period of time. *

That would’ve been nice to know before now.

Thinking quickly, Tempara looked for other solutions.

Is there any way I can seal up the entrance?  Block them from coming inside?

* No.  Access to your Dungeon Core from the outside environment is critical for the accumulation of Elemental Power.  To cut off or restrict access through the construction of your dungeon, even marginally, could result in anything from minor damage to your Core to its complete destruction. *

Her options being shut down one-by-one, Tempara considered the 18 Cold Slimes she had inside of her Core room.  She briefly considered getting rid of some so that she could produce faster-moving monsters, such as the Winter Wolf, which she could send outside and potentially delay the incoming group of Kingdom Defenders.  However, before she could even get started on that, the option was taken away from her as time ran out.

The group was already at her entrance.

As soon as they stepped inside, she felt a disturbance flow through her Core; it wasn’t painful, but it was slightly uncomfortable – almost like she was being restricted somehow.

* The presence of these “Defenders”, which use an altered type of Elemental Power different than that of Dungeon Cores, disturbs your natural Accumulation Rate and restricts the use of your available Power to create monsters, install traps, or construct parts of your dungeon. *

NO!

Tempara suddenly felt powerless, like she had been put back in a cage and there was nothing she could do to escape.  As she watched the quartet of Defenders walk into her dungeon with confused expressions on their faces (which, thanks to her former master’s knowledge, she could identify), she was suddenly angry at them and wished to lash out.  While she didn’t recognize them as the ones that would eventually attack her pack, her memories of the experience made her wish to visit the same kind of pain upon them.

Unfortunately, the only thing she had at hand was her Slimes, and without the ability to make anything more powerful, she sent them charging ahead out of her Core room and down the tunnel.  Though, charging wasn’t the correct word, because the Cold Slimes were still quite slow, but she thought that there was a determined gait to their rolling.

The Defenders didn’t take their time traveling down the tunnel, though one of them was out front, staring intently at the floor, walls, and ceiling as they moved.  Tempara vaguely remembered someone in her former master’s group doing the same, and she supposed that they were looking for traps.

Unfortunately for the Dungeon Core, they wouldn’t find any.  At least none that were already set up and working.

Her Cold Slimes had only made it about 35 feet up the very long tunnel that led to the outside before the group of people came upon them.  As her monsters determinedly attacked, she could see the fear in the faces of the Defenders as they took a step back.

She ignored the knowledge that her thrust-upon memories said was actually amusement and not fear on their faces.

“Slimes?  Really?  I thought that one we found outside was a fluke, but I guess I was wrong,” a gruff male voice from the middle of the group said when they spotted her force.  “And what’s with this dungeon?”

“I don’t understand it, either, Jonas,” the one doing the trap-checking up front said after they were about halfway down the tunnel.  “I can’t sense or detect even a single trap, which I’ve never seen before.  Even the most basic dungeons I’ve been in have at least a couple of traps, and rooms, but here… nothing.”

Jonas, whom Tempara suspected was somewhat the leader of the group, warned, “Keep your eye out, Mitchell.  It could be luring you into a false sense of security, and it’ll hit us toward the end when we’re not expecting it.  For now… take these things out, Rose.”

Rose, as it turned out, was a woman toward the back of the group, who held out a blackened, wood staff in the direction of the approaching Slimes, while those Defenders out front moved to the sides of the tunnel.  Tempara wasn’t sure what was going on at first, but a part of the woman’s knowledge of magic came to the surface a split-second before the unthinkable happened.

A burst of flames sprang out of the tip of the woman’s staff, washing over Tempara’s Cold Slimes like a wave, leaving melted monsters in its wake.  The gel-like substance the Slimes were made from had greatly evaporated, leaving their central cores in a puddle of their own melted slime.  Even as they quivered in place, continuing ineffectually to try and move, the one that had given the order to attack started to walk carefully through the extremely injured Slimes, poking their exposed cores with his long sword, killing one after another.

Tempara felt her connection with them *snap* after each death, which was much more pronounced than the severance she experienced with the one that had been outside.  Thankfully, it wasn’t painful or even uncomfortable, but there was a sense of loss that accompanied each *snap* as it happened.

In less than a minute after the “fight” had begun, all of her Slimes were dead, and now Tempara’s Dungeon Core was left completely unguarded.

“I’m going to take some of this with me.”  The one member of the group that hadn’t spoken or taken any action yet stooped over to touch and transfer the corpse of one of her Slimes into a bag at his side.  Tempara’s new knowledge said that this person was likely some sort of healing Class of Defender.  “You know, Slime Essence is a sought-after component in some alchemy solutions, though I’m not sure how valuable this low-grade stuff is, Jonas.  If it turns out to be valuable, then we can send a group up here every day or so to clear this dungeon out while we farm this particular Slime Essence.”

Tempara wasn’t exactly sure what all those terms meant, and the memories of her former master didn’t seem to help any.  From what she understood, though, it sounded like they were planning on letting her Dungeon Core survive for a little while.

The Defender named Jonas put his hand on his chin as he looked at the tunnel and the deceased Slimes, apparently contemplating the proposal.  After nearly a minute, he finally looked up at her Dungeon Core only about 50 feet away down the tunnel and in her Core room.

“Nice idea, but I don’t want to take the chance that this dungeon could grow out of control.  Gather up all the rest of the loot while I take care of this little problem.  Mitchell, you’re with me.”

“Will do.”

With that, her fate was sealed.

Jonas stepped around the remains of the Cold Slimes as he brandished his sword at her, while Rose and the healer gathered up the Slime Essences left behind.  The one named Mitchell, who was responsible for looking out for traps, led the way as he looked for traps everywhere.  He, of course, didn’t find any, but it certainly prolonged the inevitable.

“All done!”

The Defender leader had walked all the way up to her Core and waited with his sword raised, waiting for the others to be finished.  Tempara hadn’t been able to do anything but stare at the sword as it was poised to strike, though she also noticed that her assistant didn’t seem to be visible to any of the Defenders.  If she had been visible, Tempara was almost positive that they would’ve seen and attempted to talk to her.

With the go-ahead from those still in the tunnel, the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core watched as the sword descended and smashed into her Core, shattering it into a thousand pieces, taking her soul along with it.

Chapter 8

* Select your starting location…. *

The monotone, genderless voice blaring in Tempara’s mind was the first thing she became aware of, before she found herself floating high up above a very familiar landscape.

Wha—?  What?  How?

She wasn’t sure how long she was staring in confusion at the landscape below her, but it was long enough for the voice to prompt her again.

* Select your starting location…. *

How is this possible?

Tempara was having trouble comprehending what was happening, and in fact, she was even more confused than the first time it had happened.  She was positive that her soul had been destroyed along with the Dungeon Core it had inhabited… but now she was supposed to choose another starting location?

After another prompting by the voice, the Fox realized she was just staring at the map again, her mind stuck in a loop of incomprehension and confusion.  However, the memory of the prodding and pain that would soon accompany the voice spurred her on to start the process.

Should I go someplace else?

While she didn’t know as much about the other locations in the Wildlands, she figured it might be safer elsewhere.  Then again, it might be more dangerous – she had no way of knowing.  Plus, if she went somewhere else, how would she be able to stop the massacre of her pack and her capture at the hands of the Kingdom’s Defenders?

If I’m going back right after my Dungeon Core was destroyed, then I haven’t lost much time.  There’s still a chance that I can change all of that from happening; I just have to be more careful and think things through.

Feeling better about the idea and determined not to mess up this time, she focused on the Frozen Reaches again.  She picked the general area that she had chosen before, if not a little more north of the border, and managed to avoid the pain and pressure from the voice again.

* Transferring control of new Dungeon Core now…. *

As had happened previously, Tempara felt her soul being transported at high speed before she found herself in yet another Core room, which looked very similar to – if not identical to – the one she had before.  Now at least somewhat familiar with what she had become, she sped her viewpoint out of her dungeon and looked around, wondering how much time had passed since her Core had been destroyed.

The first thing she noticed was that her new dungeon entrance was in the same general area where the previous one had been, though it was probably about a mile to the northwest.  She looked around to see if she could spot the signs that showed where her old dungeon had likely collapsed after she was “killed” again, but she couldn’t see it anywhere.

Does that mean it was a long time ago?  Am I too late?

She quickly looked around and located the spot where the den should be and temporarily panicked when she couldn’t find it.

Where is it?  It should be around here somewhere—

She stopped looking not because she found the den, but because she found something else.  It was her father, running effortlessly over the snow with a dead Snow Hare in his mouth.

This looks very familiar.

It wasn’t just a coincidence that she saw her father carrying a Snow Hare, like the first time she had seen him after becoming a Dungeon Core.  Once she followed him back to the hidden den—There it is!—she peered inside and saw her exhausted mama, curled up protectively with a newborn kit laying on top of her.

WHAT IS GOING ON?!

After she calmed down, Tempara realized that was a silly question.  As much as she would’ve liked to know the how and why of what was going on, the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core was smart enough to piece together what was happening.  She had somehow gone back in time, again, to the point where her soul had originally been born into the world.  As impossible as it sounded, even in her own mind, the proof was right there in the den and the kit that was her after just being born.

Tempara once again watched her pack spend the rest of the day tending to the new mother and the kit, until they all fell asleep once night fell.  It wasn’t because she wanted to make sure everything was as she remembered, but because she was still struggling with figuring out the reason behind everything.

Is this only a temporary thing?  If my Core is destroyed again, will I be sent back in time – or will that be it?  And if I’m sent back in time again, is there a finite number of restarts, or will this go on for eternity?  Is there a way to break out of this… time loop?

She didn’t have any answers to these questions, but she knew how to discover the truth of at least one of them.  All she had to do was get her Core destroyed again, and that would solve the question of whether she would be sent back in time again.  Naturally, there was the risk that her soul would end up being lost forever; as a result of that risk, it wasn’t something that she would strive to answer, but if it happened, then it happened.  She would continue to try and save her pack first; the answers to her other questions would come last in her priorities.

After all of her pack was asleep, Tempara took the time to look around again, verifying that everything seemed exactly the same as it had when she had first become a Dungeon Core.  Well, all the other dungeons are in the same places, and everyone in the den did exactly the same things.  If there were any doubts about going back in time again, I think they’re starting to erode.

Retreating to her dungeon, she moved her viewpoint inside and shot down the tunnel to her Core room.  When she saw a familiar woman standing there, staring up at her Core on top of its pedestal, even more of those doubts faded away when she heard an annoying, monotone voice in her mind.

* To begin the process of creating your dungeon, please refer to your Core Display.  For more information, ask your system-created assistant for details. *

I know – I’ve heard that all before.

Her doubts, the few that were there, were all but gone.  Her former master sounded and acted exactly the same way as she had the first time Tempara had spoken to her assistant, but the Dungeon Core wasn’t interested in learning any more from her right now.  Nor did she desire to argue over the fact that she wasn’t an Elemental Spirit, because she didn’t think it would serve any purpose at the moment.

Instead, she opened up her Core Display, pleased to find that it worked exactly the same way as before, to see how much Elemental Power she had to work with.  While she still had nearly a month before the attack on her den, she figured she might as well get started – though with more of a cautious approach.

Core Display

Core Name:

Tempara

Core Level:

1

Designation:

Frozen Cohort

Level Threshold:

1,000 EP

Elemental Power (EP):

1,000 EP

Accumulation Rate (AR):

5 EP/minute

Defensible Rooms:

1

Available Monsters:

3

Monster Threshold:

10

Available Traps:

3

Monsters:

Cold Slime

Snow Hare

Winter Wolf

25 EP

50 EP

125 EP

Traps:

Pit Trap

Frigid Blast

Icicle Rain

0.5 AR

0.5 AR

1 AR

Core Abilities:

Construct Dungeon

Create Monster

Install Trap

(EP cost – varies)

(EP cost – varies)

(AR cost – varies)

Skills/Knowledge:

Monster Creation

Trap Installation

Temporal Manipulation

(Total Available: 3)

(Total Available: 3)

(Total Available: 1)

After spending a little over 4 hours watching her pack in their den, Tempara found that her available Elemental Power had already been maxed out.

* You now have enough Elemental Power to condense it on the outside of your Core, increasing your Core Level by 1.  To begin— *

I know, I know.

That was actually what she was planning on doing, as she wanted to see if having a higher Level might unlock some special abilities that would help to protect her from suffering another invasion by the Kingdom’s Defenders.  Since she had the time, Tempara figured she might as well explore all of her options.  Before she did that, however, there was something different about her Core Display compared to the last time she had seen it.

Under Skills/Knowledge, the ???s that had been there before now said Temporal Manipulation.

Huh.

Concentrating on Temporal Manipulation, something else popped up in her mind’s eye that answered some of her earlier questions – and she found that she didn’t need to risk her soul being sent into oblivion if her Core was destroyed again.

Temporal Manipulation

Auto-skill: Temporal Reversion

Usage Threshold: 2/1,000

???

Temporal Reversion is an ability that transports the soul inside of a destroyed Dungeon Core back in time to the point of the last temporal displacement event.

Further Temporal Manipulation Skills can be developed with proper usage and knowledge of previous Skills, as well as the fulfillment of all requirements.

It was a relatively simple description, but her Auto-skill: Temporal Reversion also explained a lot more about what was going on.  She now had the answer to how she was able to somehow travel back in time – it was this skill.  Looking down at her Dungeon Core assistant, Tempara realized that in a roundabout way, she had the Mage to thank for the skill in the first place.

When I tried to save you by creating a temporal distortion field, I did this, didn’t I?

Her assistant appeared to break at that, as her former master collapsed on her side and began to twitch and spasm uncontrollably.  Tempara wasn’t sure what to do, as everything she said to the woman appeared to fall on deaf ears or a closed mind, but eventually her assistant stopped moving and slowly sat back up.  As she looked at her Tempara’s Core again, she mentally spoke in the same monotone voice that the Dungeon Core was now familiar with.

* Unknown. *

Thanks.  Very helpful.

Regardless of what the Assistant said, the Fox was going to assume that was where the Skill originated from until something told her otherwise.  Why it brought her back to when she was born was a little more of a challenge to explain, but something her mama used to tell her occurred to Tempara.

“Whenever a new kit is born, it is as if time stops; a new blessing is granted upon the world, and even the gods take notice.”

She had thought it was nonsense at the time, but what if time really did “stop”?  That might explain the “temporal displacement” to which her skill was referring.  Overall, though, it didn’t really matter how she obtained it in the first place; what mattered now was what she did with it.

At this point, the only thing really on Tempara’s mind was saving her pack, so if it contributed in some way toward that, she would welcome going back in time.  Granted, how traveling to the past was supposed to help when she couldn’t directly interact with them was something she was still trying to figure out.  Given that any progress she made toward her goal would be undone if her Core were destroyed in the future, it almost seemed pointless.

But she would try, anyway.

Mentally dismissing her new Temporal Reversion Auto-skill as more of a curiosity than anything else, Tempara concentrated on what she wanted to do now.  The first thing that she knew had to be done was to increase her Core Level, as she needed the boosts to her Accumulation Rate, maximum Elemental Power, and her Monster Threshold.  As such, she used all 1,000 of her available Elemental Power and put it toward increasing her Core Level, wrapping the energy around her Core, making it a tiny bit bigger.

With a new Level Threshold of 3,000 and an Accumulation Rate of 10 per minute, it was going to take about 5 hours to achieve the next Core Level.

* Now that you have increased your Core Level, you can start defending your dungeon.  Once that is complete, you can create additional monsters to attack and capture additional Elemental Power inside of foreign dungeons. *

Not happening.  I have no need of defending my dungeon at the moment, because no one should be able to find me here.  I’m not planning on sending any monsters out of my dungeon until I’m ready.

Tempara’s assistant seemed to freeze again, staring at her Core in confusion.  When it spoke, hints of Kiana were back in the woman’s voice.

* I do not understand.  Does this not go against your nature as an Elemental Spirit? *

With a mental sigh, and because she now had some time to kill, Tempara told her assistant about being the soul of a Greater Temporal Fox trapped inside of a Dungeon Core.

* That is not possible.  Dungeon Cores are designed for Elemental Spirits to contain and— *

I know, I know.  That doesn’t make it untrue, however.

Then, because she wasn’t sure what else to do while she waited, she told the woman about what happened in the dungeon where she had died trying to save the real version of her assistant, having mountains of information and knowledge forcefully shoved into her mind, the severing of her soul from her body, being transported back in time, the discovery that her parents and pack were still alive, and the disastrous confrontation with a group of the Kingdom’s Defenders.  She went on to explain how she returned back in time again, and how she was hoping not to make the same mistakes this time.

…and so that is my plan.  Therefore, I have no desire to defend my dungeon right now, because there’s no point.  I’m just increasing my Core Level in order to see if there are any advantages to doing so, while also allowing me to create many, many more monsters.  Do you have any knowledge of anything that might help me out?

The woman was silent for so long that Tempara actually sent her viewpoint outside, looked around to see if anything noteworthy had happened, and then came back to her assistant still frozen with a vacant stare on her face as she looked at her Core.  After about an hour after Tempara last communicated, her former master finally started to speak, all while beginning to pace around the pedestal – which was a new action that she hadn’t seen from her before.

* An intriguing story.  I have very little knowledge of anything that might be of use to you in your endeavor, but information pertaining to higher Core Level Abilities or Skills/Knowledge is scant until those Core Levels are achieved.  What I can tell you is that almost all of your current Knowledge can be expanded upon through repetition, which is how most new Abilities and Skills are developed. *

There was almost no trace of the annoying, monotone voice from earlier; the tone that entered her mind was almost entirely the Mage that had bonded her soul.  Tempara wasn’t sure if she should be worried or not.

Kiana?  Is that… you?

* Yes and no.  This form was chosen to be your assistant based upon your relationship with this being, but only trace personality attributes are present, as apportioned out from your own mind. *

That was an overly complicated explanation, but Tempara thought she understood.  There was still a kernel of Kiana’s personality in her mind that accompanied the knowledge, and she was brought to the surface when the assistant was forced to deviate from the norm.  Since she had made the assistant deviate far from what was likely normal for a Dungeon Core, due to the explanation of what was happening to her, more of Kiana was making herself known.

Other than what she had said already, there wasn’t much more that the woman could contribute.  Her assistant did warn—multiple times—about defending her dungeon again; so, Tempara got her to stop nagging by creating a dozen Cold Slimes in her Core room, just on the off-chance her former master was correct – though she doubted it greatly.

That led to another interesting discovery after she had finished creating the Slimes.

Monster Details

Cold Slime

25 EP

Creation Threshold: 31/250

Battle Threshold: 2/100

Potential Advancement Options:

???

???

???

???

For some reason, the Creation Threshold said 31 instead of 12 for the dozen Slimes she had created – and the Battle Threshold was up to 2.  Tempara was about to ask her assistant about it, but then she remembered how the Battle Threshold for Snow Hares and Winter Wolves had been higher than 0, because she had seen them fighting in the dungeon where she had been killed.  She could only assume that, even if she hadn’t witnessed the first “battle” between her one Slime and the Defenders, both interactions with the Kingdom’s people counted toward the Battle Threshold.

Hmm… that could be interesting in the future.

Tempara spent the rest of the time waiting for her Elemental Power to accumulate making her Cold Slimes chase Kiana around her Core room.  It was more a test of patience and strategy than anything else, however, as even when they touched the woman, they went right through her as if she wasn’t really there.  Given that she spoke to her mind and had been created out of nothing, as well as the fact that the Defender group hadn’t seen her, the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core figured that was probably as good an explanation as anything.

Still, she played along, doing her best to avoid the dozen Cold Slimes chasing after her, which seemed to loosen the woman up even more.  Whether that is a good thing or not, I’m not sure; either way, at least it might prevent that other, annoying voice from invading my mind.

Eventually, after about 5 and a half hours – due to previously using some of her EP on Slimes – Tempara had enough to increase her Core Level.

Chapter 9

Expelling 3,000 Elemental Power out of her Core was a strange but pleasant feeling, and it was even better when Tempara felt the energy condense and solidify around her form.  The process also took slightly longer than advancing from Core Level 1 to Core Level 2, but perhaps only by a few seconds.  When it was done, there was a significant feeling of being able to do more that she hadn’t experienced the first time, though nothing seemed to have changed as far as her Core Abilities or Skills went.

Core Display

Core Name:

Tempara

Core Level:

3

Designation:

Frozen Cohort

Level Threshold:

6,000 EP (+3,000)

Elemental Power (EP):

0 EP

Accumulation Rate (AR):

15 EP/minute (+5)

Defensible Rooms:

1

Available Monsters:

3

Monster Threshold:

15 (+3)

Available Traps:

3

Monsters:

Cold Slime

Snow Hare

Winter Wolf

25 EP

50 EP

125 EP

Traps:

Pit Trap

Frigid Blast

Icicle Rain

0.5 AR

0.5 AR

1 AR

Core Abilities:

Construct Dungeon

Create Monster

Install Trap

(EP cost – varies)

(EP cost – varies)

(AR cost – varies)

Skills/Knowledge:

Monster Creation

Trap Installation

Temporal Manipulation

(Total Available: 3)

(Total Available: 3)

(Total Available: 1)

The only significant change was the increase in the three different statistics that had altered last time, namely her Level Threshold, Accumulation Rate, and Monster Threshold.  Using some of the mental number skills that Tempara had acquired from the Mage, she figured that needing to acquire another 6,000 EP was going to require nearly 7 hours of time, even with an additional 5 EP per minute.

Thankfully, I have nothing but time right now.

* Was that intended to be humorous? *

What?  Oh, I get it. I’m assuming it wasn’t humorous?

Fortunately for Tempara, her assistant didn’t respond.

Thinking about how long it was going to take for the next Core Level, she decided to ask her assistant about the process of constructing her dungeon – as well as wanting to know the limits to the Core Ability called Construct Dungeon.  She was going to need to have some larger rooms if she wanted to be able to hold a lot of monsters in her dungeon, after all.  If her plan was to build a large enough force of monsters to stop or at least distract the people who were coming to capture Tempara and kill her pack, then she was going to need somewhere to keep the ones that had to stay in her dungeon.

* You can use your Elemental Power to shape the stone around you, as the Power will automatically dissolve any material you designate.  The only restriction to this ability is that you cannot remove anything below your current elevation.  In addition, Elemental Power can be used to add simple environmental/structural objects, such as steps, risers, and any elementally appropriate decorations. *

Elementally appropriate decorations?  What does that mean?

* As your designation is the Frozen Cohort, elementally appropriate decorations could include snow, ice, and frozen water. *

Isn’t frozen water simply… ice?

She wasn’t that experienced in the world, but she was fairly certain that this was true.

* Yes. *

The annoying voice had crept back during the explanation, but her assistant didn’t stop moving around the Core room, her independence a welcome change from the monotonous staring.  As for what she was told, Tempara directed her vision to a space about 50 feet down the tunnel from her Core room, and then activated her Construct Dungeon Core Ability. Within seconds, every spot that she focused on started to disappear, as if someone with a healthy appetite was taking full chunks out of the stone walls and then eating them.

It took about 100 EP to carve out a round room of which half sat on either side of the tunnel; in all, it was approximately 50 feet across, according to her new knowledge, with a 20-foot-tall ceiling.  The entire procedure wasn’t hard to do, though it took a little while to get used to eliminating stone as if it wasn’t even there; not only that, but the process wasn’t instantaneous.  It took about 2 hours for the complete room to be finished, and it wasn’t even as perfect as she imagined it.  The side walls were a little uneven and rough, but she figured it would serve its purpose.

All in all, it looked similar to the den that she was trying to protect, if a bit smaller.

This will do for now.

Because of the expense in creating the room, it put Tempara behind a little in gaining enough EP for her next Core Level.  In actuality, it was only a matter of a few minutes, especially considering her Accumulation Rate, but the Dungeon Core still begrudged the delay.

Periodically throughout the night, the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core had sent her viewpoint out of her dungeon to check on the situation outside.  Being able to see in the dark as well as the day was something that she’d been able to do even as a Greater Temporal Fox, so she was able to see the same group of Defenders that had destroyed her Core last time leave the dungeon they had emerged from before finding her Slime.  This time there was nothing to pique their interest, and they ended heading directly south, before passing out of her range when they got close to the border with the Kingdom.

One mistake fixed!

Tempara knew that she still had to be cautious and safe about things, otherwise she would have a repeat disaster of her previous incarnation.  Caution was natural to Greater Temporal Foxes, after all, which was one of the reasons she had only sent a single Slime outside before; she wasn’t sure what her Slime might do once it was out there, and she was also unsure if she could control it well enough from such a distance. She now had the answer to both of those questions, and she was going to take what she had learned and adapt it to her current plan.

Essentially, she was going to raise her Core Level up as high as possible in the next few weeks while not calling attention to her dungeon, and then use her heightened capabilities to make the force she was thinking about earlier.  Again, the plan was simple, easy, and hopefully safe.

Daytime was already lightening the sky when she had enough Elemental Power to increase her Core Level once again.  Spending another 6,000 EP, the sensation of wrapping her Dungeon Core in energy was rather pleasant, and after a short while the entire process was complete.

Once it was done, she felt another internal increase in her capabilities, but other than a 4,000 increase to her Level Threshold, an increase of another 5 EP per minute to her Accumulation Rate, and an additional 4 added to her Monster Threshold, not much else had changed on her Core Display.

Now with 10,000 EP needed for the next Core Level, her number knowledge figured out that it was going to require just over 8 hours to accumulate enough Elemental Power.  Since she had to wait anyway, Tempara spent another 100 EP – which equated to about 5 minutes’ worth of Accumulation – to create yet another small, den-shaped room a little closer to the entrance of her dungeon.  She found that as her Accumulation Rate went up, the expense in EP was not nearly as impactful as it would be at lower Core Levels.

I think I’m really getting used to this whole Dungeon Core thing.

As the day progressed, the snowfall dropped off until it stopped altogether, at least for a few hours.  At that point, the sun was exposed from behind the clouds, and the environment started to warm up – not that Tempara could feel it, of course.  However, she was able to see the snow everywhere rapidly melting, creating small trickles of water that ran off of the small mountains where the dungeons nearby were located.

It was at this time that the Frozen Reaches really came alive.  Even as she watched it happen for the first time, she had heard about this occasion from her parents; it was a regular occurrence that happened every few days, and was how the beasts of this particular part of the Wildlands survived the harsh environment.

Plants, buried under the snow, grew at a rapid rate as they pushed up and out of the deep-piled snowflakes; they sprang up so quickly that the process was able to be observed.  Within 30 minutes of the sun coming out, there were the reaching branches of hardy bushes, there were saplings of young trees, and even long-stemmed wildflowers were blooming, painting the desolate and rather monochrome landscape in a riot of colors.

The beasts of the Frozen Reaches turned the bounty of these growing plants into a feeding frenzy.  Herbivores streamed out of their hidden dens, attempting to harvest as much of the vegetation as possible.  At the same time, carnivores – like her own pack – emerged from their own hiding places, feasting on the herbivores as they scrambled around, or even on smaller carnivores.  Hundreds, thousands of beasts were suddenly everywhere, using this time to feed or to gather as much sustenance as possible before the snows came again.

It was chaos, but it was also a real testament to the hardiness of the beasts that inhabited the Frozen Reaches.  For instance, smaller Snow Hares, some of the weakest – and tastiest, if Tempara had anything to say about it – ran around everywhere, and despite the easy way her pack were able to hunt them down, they largely ignored the predators in order to tear off entire branches of still-growing plants.  The veritable warzone wasn’t something new to them, and they realized that they were going to take some losses in order to get what they needed.

Of course, her pack were experts at avoiding their own predators, such as the Polar Bears or Icicle Spiders that roamed around, if only because of their temporal distortion abilities.  As Tempara witnessed her kind utilizing those distortions, she was barely able to follow them as they zipped around the area, seeming to move dozens of feet in a split-second.  It was both a means to close in on prey and a way to escape from predators – and they used it very effectively.

Other than some of the apex predators, the Greater Temporal Foxes were the only ones not to suffer losses during the feeding frenzy.  That was usually the way it was, or so she was told, and it was imperative that they maintain the fewest losses possible.

Why?  Because they reproduced slowly, and only 1 kit was born with each birth.  Most of the other denizens of the Wildlands reproduced very quickly, which was something that as a young kit, Tempara had wondered about.  Now that she had learned more of Elemental Power and the way it seemed to infuse the very environment of the Wildlands, she concluded that Power must have something to do with it.  How?  She didn’t know – but on some instinctual level, she knew it was true.  Why didn’t it affect her kind?  Again, she wasn’t sure, but the earlier memory Tempara had about time stopping when new kits were born made her think that there was something fundamentally different about them.  It was something that made them unique, but also vulnerable and less able to reproduce quickly.

After a full 8 hours of sunlight, warm temperatures, melting snow, and the feeding frenzy of thousands of beasts, the weather changed again within a half hour.  Clouds rolled in, snow began to fall, and the plants began to shrivel up and retreat back beneath the snow and ice.  By the time Tempara had enough EP to engage the process of increasing her Core Level once again, the landscape had changed from one full of life and colorful engagement, to a snow-covered expanse where the only color to be found was in the bloodstains that were quickly being covered up by the falling snowflakes.

Through all of the feeding frenzy, not a single Kingdom Defender had been seen.  While Tempara wasn’t sure why this was, Kiana’s memories told her that it was because there was too much danger for them.  If the people to the south were to come up during those times, they would quickly become the targets of every beast in the vicinity, all at once; swarms of every predator, and even the herbivores, would defend their bounty from the invaders with everything they had.

Tempara supposed that made sense, and it even gave her a sense of pride in her kind and all of the other beasts in the Frozen Reaches.  Serves them right for coming up here.

* Dungeon Cores also restrain from letting their monsters emerge during these times of extreme growth, as they are seen the same way as the people from the south.  It would be counterproductive to let them out, as they would be swarmed and killed. *

Ah.  That would be why I didn’t see any dungeon monsters out there.

Unfortunately, Tempara failed to account for what that ultimately meant and the consequences of forcing the dungeons to delay the release of their monsters.

Almost immediately after achieving enough EP to raise her Core Level to Level 5, she spent the energy to wrap around her Core.  This time, the sensation felt like curling up in the warm embrace of her mama’s fur, as it was both comforting and pleasant.  When it was finished, she opened up her Core Display to see that the same 3 things as before had increased yet again.  With a Level Threshold now at 15,000 EP, Accumulation Rate at 25 EP per minute, and a Monster Threshold of 24, she was well on her way to—

What’s that?

* Your concentrated Elemental Power and higher Core Level has attracted the attention of a nearby Dungeon Core. *

Tempara sped to her entrance faster than ever before, where she was met with a group of dungeon monsters – which were definitely not her own.  A pair of Winter Wolves were flanked by 3 Snow Hares, and they had a certain “flavor” to them that reminded her of the dungeon to the west of her, about a mile away or so.

That knowledge didn’t really help her, unfortunately, because they were already in her dungeon.  She had somehow sensed that they were there, though not in the same sense as when the Defenders had walked inside; instead of feeling restricted, she felt like she could continue to use her Elemental Power, as well as make changes within her dungeon.

* Unlike the Defenders down south, monsters from other dungeons do not have the same effect on the ambient Elemental Power, nor do they affect your abilities. *

That was good to know, but it didn’t help her all that much at the moment.  As she had just spent all of her EP on raising her Core Level, Tempara had very little she could spend on anything, even though she had the capability.  As the group of foreign dungeon monsters ran straight down her tunnel toward her Core room, she estimated that she’d have just enough to create another Cold Slime to add to the dozen already in the room, but that was about it.

* If they get through your defenses, you will lose all of your accumulated Elemental Power, as well as a few Core Levels as the condensed energy is stripped away from your Core. *

That wasn’t a welcome idea, as she would lose all of her progress she’d made over the last half-day.

At least it won’t shatter my Core.

It was small consolation, but it still allowed her to recover and adapt so that something like this wouldn’t happen again.

She did, indeed, have enough Elemental Power to create another Cold Slime in her Core room before the Wolves and Hares arrived, and she hoped for the best.  Arranging them so that they were in between her Core and the entrance to the room, they waited in two semi-circular lines of 6 and 7, blocking access to her pedestal.

There was absolutely no hesitation in the foreign monsters as they savagely attacked Tempara’s Slimes the second they arrived.  Within the first few seconds, four of the Slimes had been killed when the Wolves slipped their jaws inside of her monsters and crushed their cores, though they didn’t come away unscathed.  For the first time, the Dungeon Core was able to see the effect that the gooey stuff her Cold Slimes were made of could do to an enemy.

First off, the Slime inside of her monsters was sticky, as it clung to the fur around the Wolves’ heads.  Secondly, after a few seconds it had frozen in place, like snow that had melted and then refrozen when exposed to a much colder temperature; it not only visibly radiated an extremely cold temperature after it was frozen, but it also started to contract.  A few whimpers coming from the Wolves as they turned to more Slimes was evidence of that, and one of them even had a chunk of icy slime embed itself in an eye, seemingly drilling inside the cavity while puncturing the organ.

Lastly, the chill coming from the frozen slime substance on the Wolves’ fur was penetrating even the thick outer layers of fur and fat on the larger monsters.  The pair of Wolves were visibly slower, feeling the effects of being chilled, though it wasn’t nearly enough to stop them as they each bit another Cold Slime core in half.

Meanwhile, the Snow Hares were also destroying her Slimes, using their hind feet to kick out behind themselves, penetrating the gooey exterior of the blue, spheroid monsters.  A swift kick to the internal core of the Slime was all it took to pierce it, and her monster collapsed – but not before doing its own damage.  As with the Wolves’ faces, the hind legs of all the Snow Hares were soon covered in freezing goo, which certainly affected them just as much as, if not more than, the larger Wolves.

They didn’t seem to care, however, as the Winter Wolves took out their third pair of Slimes. The one with the frozen goo through an eye somehow managed to inhale some of the Slime’s exterior, and Tempara watched it quickly seize up in place.  The Dungeon Core wasn’t sure what had happened right away, but after she saw it collapse on the floor, there was a tightening in its jawline that betrayed the culprit.

The goo had frozen inside of its throat, pulling all of the vulnerable flesh together as it condensed down.  In essence, it had choked to death on Slime.

Two of the Snow Hares finished off a second Cold Slime, though by that time there was so much goo covering their lower halves that they were stuck in place as it froze.  Tempara could hear the cracking of bones as the ice contracted even further, doing enough internal damage that the Hares were killed.

The third Snow Hare managed to avoid the same fate, though one of its legs had practically frozen completely off, so it limped around on three legs.  Soon enough, there was only a single Slime Left, and the remaining Wolf used its paw this time to swipe at the core inside of the gooey monster, which helped to keep any more from adhering to its face.  The goo coated its paw, causing it to limp, but Tempara soon saw that the effects from the Slime were only temporary.  About 15 seconds after the initial application of cold, slimy goo, the frozen substance coating the 2 remaining foreign monsters seemed to melt and quickly slough off their fur.

They were actually way more effective than I expected.  After my Slimes had been utterly annihilated by those Defenders, I was starting to have my doubts.

On top of their performance, there was another surprise.  Seconds after the deaths of one of the Wolves and two of the Snow Hares, she felt a sudden surge in her Elemental Power.

* Just as if you were to eliminate your own monsters, you receive half of the Elemental Power invested in any monsters that perish in your dungeon. *

A quick check of her Core Display showed that she had received a total of 355 EP from the deaths of her 13 Cold Slimes, the 2 Snow Hares, and 1 of the Winter Wolves.  She immediately started to create another Cold Slime, using her new influx of EP, but it was too late.

As soon as the Wolf and the Snow Hare still alive recovered from the cold goo, they turned toward her Dungeon Core.  With a quick leap over the melted forms of the Cold Slimes, the Winter Wolf stood underneath the pedestal while the Hare limped around the melted goo, its leg still damaged from contact with the Slimes.

The Wolf looked up at her Core with an intense gaze, and suddenly Tempara sensed her progress with creating the Slime halt – and then fall apart completely.  She then felt as if she were paralyzed, unable to do anything else as Elemental Power flowed out of her Core and into the Winter Wolf, who was soaking it up like a sponge, a soft glow quickly emerging around its entire body.

Tempara then felt pain, like someone was ripping fur out of her entire body, and it didn’t take her assistant to explain what was happening – but she did it anyway.

* The Winter Wolf is stripping away your Core Levels. *

Yes, I know!  Is it always supposed to hurt this much?!

Her former master stepped back with an expression that appeared to be surprise.

* Dungeon Cores are not supposed to feel anything at all. *

Well, you’re wrong—

The pain suddenly escalated, more intense than anything she had experienced before, before she felt it all disappear…

…moments before her Dungeon Core shattered.

Chapter 10

* Select your starting location…. *

NOOO!  Not again!

The familiar, monotonous, and annoying voice was back, telling her to choose a starting location once again.  This time there was no confusion over how she was back at this point, at least as far as her Temporal Reversion Auto-Skill worked.

What happened?!  Why did that destroy my Core?

She was half-expecting the voice to answer her, but she quickly realized that it wouldn’t; she wasn’t inside of her dungeon yet, and there was no assistant to help answer questions.  Just this insistent voice without a form, which didn’t seem to have any other way of responding to her, other than to—

* Select your starting location…. *

—do exactly that.

Without any hesitation, she zoomed her viewpoint down on the landscape spread out below her until she reached the same area she had just had her dungeon in.  She considered moving from that location, to one where there weren’t any other foreign dungeons, but as she thought about the environment, she realized that there weren’t really any other options.

First, she wanted to be close to her pack’s den to ensure it was kept safe.  Second, the only place without very many dungeons was near the border with the Kingdom, but that was only because the Defenders from said Kingdom traveled over the border to wipe out any that could potentially be an immediate threat.  Third, her vision of the land further north revealed the presence of quite a few more dungeons, which would only increase the risk that she would be invaded not only by one nearby dungeon, but by several.

Therefore, for the time being, there really wasn’t any good reason to move from where she had been last time, but she was going to have to be a bit more careful and methodical in what she did.  So far, she didn’t have a good record as a Dungeon Core; she hadn’t managed to survive longer than she had as a Fox, after all.

Regardless of her failures, Tempara was learning.  Now that she had identified two different threats to her survival, she could take extra care to prevent the shattering of her Core again.

This time, I’m going to save my pack.

With her determination running through her mind, she chose the same location where she had been during her last failed attempt.

* Transferring control of new Dungeon Core now…. *

Again, the same feeling of her soul moving at high speed ended up with her inside of a small Dungeon Core, on top of a stone pedestal, inside of a familiar Core room.  As was quickly becoming her routine, Tempara shot out of her dungeon’s entrance and found her way to her pack’s den, finding it this time much faster and without the need of watching her father running over the snow on his way back.  This was the first time she had been able to see inside the den before her father got back, but there weren’t many differences to see; all of the Greater Temporal Foxes that were part of her pack were inside, only in slightly different positions than they would be in the next minute or so.  Her mama was gently licking the kit—me—to clean some of the afterbirth off, but other than that, there wasn’t much that was different.

Right on time, her father arrived with a Snow Hare in his jaws, and Tempara watched him join mama and the newborn kit, just like he always did.  There was something comforting about watching the same events play out over and over, especially when it concerned her pack, because it was as if it was proof that they were still alive.

Tempara left off watching them slightly before she usually did, because she was keeping an internal eye on her current Elemental Power.  Once it reached 1,000, she rushed her viewpoint back to her dungeon, where she saw the expected assistant in the form of her former master staring up at her.

* To begin the process of creating your dungeon— *

Already know about that!

Her assistant stopped her lecture immediately, before moving on to another.

* You now have enough Elemental Power to condense it— *

Right on top of that!

Without wasting any more time, Tempara pulled all 1,000 EP out of her Core and wrapped it around her Core, where it condensed and hardened, adding a layer to the outside.  With the increase in her Core Level, she again felt the expansion of her abilities through raising her Accumulation Rate, Level Threshold, and Monster Threshold.

It still felt good, freeing almost, but she was already planning out what she was going to do next.

* Now that you have increased your Core Level, you can start defending— *

Tempara cut the woman off yet again.

Got it.  Doing that next.

It took 45 minutes to accumulate enough EP to create 18 Cold Slimes, but she didn’t begrudge the time that it took to create them.  She had seen how effective they could be when the foreign monsters had shown up, and having even more of them could only be a good thing.  Now at her maximum number of monsters allowed in her dungeon due to her Monster Threshold, she then waited for her Elemental Power to accumulate until she had the required 3,000 for her next Core Level.

While she waited, she observed the area outside, watching the Defender group that had destroyed her the first time take care of their business with the same dungeon as usual, before departing back south.  She also moved the extent of her range, which was on the edge of where several dungeons were starting to cluster up north, and she watched as groups of monsters departed entrances and then invaded foreign dungeons – just like what had happened to her in her last experience.  The groups that she saw up north, however, were much different than the one that attacked her; they had both more monsters and stronger ones, like some smaller versions of the Yeti that had ended up killing her former master and herself.

The Core that had sent the group to her dungeon also sent a group of Wolves and Snow Hares up north to that cluster, though she doubted it would do much against the slightly more powerful Cores up there.  It did make her wonder for a moment why it had eventually attacked her, but after a closer look, she thought she understood.

The cluster of dungeons up north weren’t just closer to the dungeon that attacked her, but judging by how strong their “flavor” was, she guessed that they were also a higher Core Level than Tempara.  Not very high, though, perhaps only Core Level 3 or perhaps 4, but there was also one (as well as the dungeon that had attacked her) that was likely Core Level 2 – the same as her.  When Tempara had increased her own Core Level to 4 and beyond, she was suddenly a very tempting target – both higher Core Level and within range.

As her assistant had explained, having a higher Core Level meant that there was a lot of Elemental Power there for the taking, and would only invite any dungeons within range to attack.  For all she knew, even if she had ended up defeating the group that had inadvertently destroyed her Dungeon Core last time, she might have been bombarded with even more foreign monsters from the other dungeons within range.

Therefore, she had to ensure that she kept a balance to her progress, or else ensure that she had the means in which to defend herself.  To that effect, she was already starting to put her plan into place.  It was a slower approach than last time, but hopefully it would be much safer.

In addition to looking outside, she began another explanation to her assistant, describing the events of her last two experiences as a Dungeon Core, as she wanted to see if her former master had any thoughts on why the foreign monsters had ended up destroying her Core, rather than just simply stealing Elemental Power.

Thankfully, after a while when that little bit of Kiana’s personality came back, she received a reasonable explanation.

* Since you aren’t an Elemental Spirit, your soul seems to have altered your Core in different ways – positive and negative.  While you seem to have broken out of the normal Elemental Spirit instincts which allow you to positively alter the way you operate your dungeon, it also appears to have made your Core more fragile.  It would be advisable to avoid allowing any foreign dungeon monsters near your Core. *

That’s my plan.

Over the course of the next few hours, Tempara was able to accumulate enough Elemental Power to reach Core Level 3 in the middle of the night.  Once that was accomplished, Tempara knew that she had to put some defenses in place, before any other dungeons started sniffing around her entrance.

Over the next few hours, with her Accumulation Rate at 15 EP per minute, she first spent more Elemental Power on creating 4 more Cold Slimes, which was what her new Monster Threshold would allow – bringing her up to a total of 22. With her Core room now very crowded, she began work on another round-shaped den like she had made before, carving out the stone of the small mountain where she was located to make a space that was very similar to what she had created before.  After the few hours it took to create the den room, she sent a dozen of her Cold Slimes there and ordered them to wait near the exit leading to her Core room.

At the entrance to the room, she decided to tap into her Accumulation Rate and include a trap or two for better defense.  First, Tempara installed an Icicle Rain trap a few feet just inside the den room, where it would hopefully be triggered by anything coming inside.  As she felt and saw it beginning to take shape, with a barely visible outline of large icicles slowly forming on the ceiling, the Dungeon Core looked down on the floor and saw something she hadn’t noticed before when she had attempted to install the Frigid Blast trap to stop the Defenders in her first incarnation.

There was a slightly discolored square on the floor of the den room, directly underneath the Icicle Rain trap, and it was approximately a foot wide and long.  As she concentrated on it, she realized she could feel a connection between the square and the trap above – but she couldn’t tell why.

* Your trap triggers are able to be positioned for maximum activation potential.  Simply think about where you would like it to be placed, and it will move within its allotted area.  Note: Trap triggers cannot be moved after installation is complete. *

Trap triggers?  The actions of that Defender group make a bit more sense now.

While Tempara had, in general, comprehended what the person checking for traps had been doing, she hadn’t really understood until now.  They were looking for triggers, which would allow anyone wary enough of them to avoid the trap entirely. That meant that whatever traps she installed may or may not actually be effective against people, but after seeing how foreign dungeon monsters ran in without any sense of looking for triggers, it would likely be effective against them.

* More powerful traps typically possess trap triggers that are harder to identify, so they may be more effective against those with a greater sense of perception. *

Also good to know, but that doesn’t help me right now.

With a thought, she moved the trigger so that it was a little closer to the entrance, as it would allow the trap to activate in time for monsters to be hit by it once they passed underneath.  Once that was done, there wasn’t anything else to do but wait for it to complete.

All told, it took about an hour for the Icicle Rain trap to complete, and when it did it seemed to snap into place, fully materializing where it had been installed.  A moment later, Tempara focused on it like she did with her monsters, and some more information was fed to her.

Trap Details

Icicle Rain

1 AR

Installation Threshold: 1/50

Usage Threshold: 0/250

Potential Advancement Options:

???

???

???

???

The Trap Details that were fed to her were very similar to the Monster Details, but there were obvious differences.  First, there was an Installation Threshold instead of Creation Threshold, but she figured that they were essentially the same; rather than Battle Threshold, there was Usage Threshold, which served a similar purpose.  Basically, Tempara needed to install 50 of these Icicle Rains and then see them used 250 times in order to reveal some Advancement Options, but how easily she’d be able to do either of those things was a bit of an unknown.

Just before the entrance to that den room, Tempara installed another trap in the tunnel.  The Pit Trap took up about half of the floorspace of the passageway, which was slightly disappointing because the Dungeon Core wanted it big enough to cover the entire width.  Still, she thought that putting it in the middle would work well enough to stop most dungeon monsters from bypassing it, especially if they weren’t looking for it.

After about a half hour, the installation of the trap was complete, and a very obvious thin sheet of ice about 3 feet wide and long was now on the floor of the tunnel, covering a deep pit.  There was no doubt that if any Defenders saw it they would easily be able to avoid falling victim to the trap, but she had created it to kill dungeon monsters – so it would do.

She also focused on it and found a very similar breakdown of information (as the Icicle Rain) on the Pit Trap, with the exact same Thresholds.  The only difference was that this particular trap only required half of the Accumulation Rate as the first, which meant that she was now only acquiring 13.5 EP per minute – at least according to her Core Display.

Feeling better about her defenses, Tempara stopped constructing, installing, or creating any more elements of her dungeon and instead focused on gathering enough Elemental Power for her next Core Level.  As she had already waited a little bit for her traps to complete, it was only a matter of a few more hours, even at her now-reduced Accumulation Rate.  While that was going on, she continued to monitor the situation outside, and everything appeared to be following the same pattern as it had before.

Dawn was lightening up the sky as she finally accumulated enough EP – 6,000 – to increase her Core Level to 4, and she immediately completed the process; the feeling of satisfaction and warmth as her Core grew in size with another layer was yet another pleasing sensation.  Before she did anything else, with her new Monster Threshold and Accumulation Rate, Tempara created another 6 Cold Slimes to bring her up to 28 and sent them to her den room to add to the dozen Slimes that were already there.

Thankfully, she didn’t have to worry about an attack quite yet, because this was the day that the Frozen Reaches would come alive, allowing the natural beasts to venture out and acquire sustenance. The Dungeon Core thought that if she timed it right, in about 9 hours from her last Core Level increase, she would be able to gain Core Level 5 before the danger to her dungeon began.

All she had to do now was wait.

Chapter 11

Excellent!  Now, to get more of my Slimes created.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened during the day, and she estimated that there was still just about an hour to go before she remembered being attacked by those Wolves and Snow Hares.  She was ready for them right now, if it came down to it, with her 28 Slimes – 15 more than last time – but she wasn’t going to take any unnecessary chances.  That was why, with her new Monster Threshold at 24, she could have an extra 12 monsters in her dungeon at one time – so she added some more.

But she wasn’t going to add simple Cold Slimes, this time.  She had seen how fast and powerful the Winter Wolves had been that attacked her, so she knew it was time to upgrade her monster force.  Over the next hour, Tempara added 8 Winter Wolves to her Core Room, acting as a final defense if somehow the upcoming invasion force managed to get past her Slimes.  With a cost of 1,000 EP, it was an expensive addition, but she wanted to be more careful than she’d been up to this point.  She’d really prefer her Core to survive more than 24 hours, after all.

It was difficult to recall the exact time when the foreign monsters had attacked, but they showed up in what Tempara thought was the same timeframe.  When they graced her entrance, the Dungeon Core wasn’t as panicked and worried as the last time, because she had many more defenses in place on this go around.

As they had done in their last visit, the 2 Winter Wolves and 3 Snow Hares raced down the tunnel, with the small white-haired Hares out front.  They didn’t slow even a little bit as they approached the den-shaped room Tempara had constructed, and the first Snow Hare stepped on the thin ice of the trap.  The monster wasn’t ignorant of the danger, it appeared, and with its agility was able to push off from the falling ice, hopping just past the Pit Trap and landed awkwardly just inside of the room.

The other 2 Snow Hares weren’t so lucky, however.  Racing on the heels of the first white-haired monster, the first was unable to jump off from anything as the ice fell a split-second before it landed on top of the pit, and it ended up falling into the hole at full speed, and Tempara could hear a *snap* as it ran its head into the inside wall of the pit.  She didn’t have to look real hard to see that it had broken its neck, and by the time it hit the floor of the pit, it was already dead.

The other Snow Hare was a little further behind and attempted to turn to avoid the trap, but it stumbled and rolled, coming to a stop just before it would’ve fallen inside.  Unfortunately for the smaller monster, one of the Winter Wolves was right behind it, and when it planted its back feet on the edge of the pit in order to leap over it, the Wolf brushed roughly up against the Hare and knocked it inside.  There was a very disturbing scream that came from the dungeon monster as it fell down to the bottom of the pit, followed by a *crunch*.  When Tempara looked at the bottom, she could see it lying on the floor, its back legs both angled in directions that weren’t quite normal.  It was obviously still alive, which was further punctuated by the “Hare”-raising screams that continued to emanate from the bottom of the pit.

Meanwhile, the first Snow Hare recovered from its stumble into the room and quickly leapt forward, aiming for the nearest Cold Slime.  Somehow, it miraculously missed the trigger for the Icicle Rain trap above, and it reached the double line of Slimes unhindered.

The first Winter Wolf, though, managed to step on the trigger and activate the trap as it shot forward with its teeth bared at the blocking Slimes.  It was moving so fast that by the time the propelled icicles from the ceiling fell, it was almost entirely free of the trap.  A single icicle hit the side of its rear end as it shot by, creating a furrow through its fur that appeared relatively deep, but didn’t elicit anything other than a brief whine of injury from the Wolf as it went on the attack.

The Icicle Rain trap also failed to hit the second Wolf because it was far enough back to avoid being hit, though it was forced to navigate its way around the activation area rather than be impaled by icicles.  The delay helped her Slimes get into position as the other invading monsters attacked, and with 18 facing off against the single Hare and pair of Wolves (one of which was slightly injured), they had a distinct advantage.

Still, the attrition on her Slime force was considerable, as the Wolves fought savagely, tearing through 5 Slimes each before finally succumbing to the freezing goo on their faces and bodies.  The Hare managed to take out a pair of Slimes before it, too, was overwhelmed when it wasn’t able to escape because of its frozen hind feet.

That… was it.  They were dead.  Tempara sent a Slime over to the pit to fall inside, which it did immediately.  It fell down the length of the trap without even hurting itself, falling onto the floor of the pit with a soft *splat*; much higher than that, though, she thought that even the squishy Slime would be hurt from the length of the fall.  Regardless, her ovoid monster rolled over to the screaming injured Snow Hare and put it out of its misery, essentially covering its face as it rolled over the white-haired Hare, suffocating and infiltrating its mouth as it continued to scream in pain.  Seconds later, the last of the foreign monsters was dead, and Tempara was left to deal with the aftermath.

* Corpse removal is completed automatically, without any cost or benefit to you. *

Even as her assistant communicated this to her, all of the corpses of the Snow Hares, Winter Wolves, and even her own Slimes that had been destroyed started to dissolve in front of her viewpoint, disappearing into nothing within about a minute.

That’s useful.

With the deaths of the monsters – hers included – Tempara received just under 350 Elemental Power, so she began to replace the dozen Slimes that had been killed in her den room.  Thankfully, she didn’t have to worry about the Slime that had descended into the pit, because she found that it could adhere to the side and slowly work itself up.  When she looked closely at the two traps, she could feel that they were slowly resetting themselves, but she calculated that her monster would escape far before the Pit Trap was able to be activated again.

However, Tempara had replaced only 2 of the Slimes when there was a disturbance at her dungeon entrance once again.

More?  How many—?

The answer was more than she expected.  Sending her viewpoint past the large force of monsters that had just entered her dungeon, she looked out to see at least 2 more groups of monsters heading in her direction, staggered in their distance because they were coming from the dungeons that were at the far end of her range.  Or her previous range, at least, because the Dungeon Core found that she could now move her viewpoint perhaps a mile further than she could before.

* At every 5 Core Levels, the range of your observable surroundings will increase. *

That was important information, but it also wasn’t something that she could make use of at the moment.  That was because, as she quickly sped back to her dungeon, she followed the large group of Winter Wolves as they ran down to her den room.  The dozen large monsters ran fast, so it was only 30 seconds or so before they were already to the Pit Trap, which they either flowed around the sides or jumped over without issue.  As the Icicle Rain trap was still resetting, they bypassed that one as well, and tore into the 5 remaining Cold Slimes inside of the room.

Needless to say, against a dozen Winter Wolves, the gooey monsters were annihilated within seconds.

At that point, Tempara had replaced a total of 5 of the Slimes that had been killed previously, and instead of having them roll off to the den room, she held them in reserve in her now-crowded Core room.  There was barely room to move with 15 Cold Slimes and 10 Winter Wolves, but they were her final defense – there wasn’t much else that could be done at the moment.

When the group of a dozen foreign Wolves arrived, the fight inside where her Dungeon Core was located was brutal.  Slime flew everywhere as the enemy tore into their gelatinous masses, but the space was so tight that only a little over half of the attackers could assault at one time.  The result was that 4 of the foreign Wolves got covered in frozen goo to the point where they were practically incapacitated, though none of them were killed.

With a third of the enemy momentarily out of the fight, her own 10 Winter Wolves went to work as soon as the lines of Slimes were devastated, savagely ripping into the foreign invaders in defense of her Core.  While they fought, she created yet another Winter Wolf, which joined the fight as throats were torn out on either side of the fight, leaving monsters to bleed out while they weakly attempted to attack at the same time.

It was a bit horrendous to see all of the blood splattered everywhere in her Core room, and Tempara was temporarily taken aback at all of the violence.  It wasn’t that she was opposed to the savagery and death, but it reminded her too much of her parents and her pack being slaughtered right in front of her eyes.

The more she thought about that time, however, the less it seemed real; whether it was the fact that during this particular point in time, it hadn’t happened yet, or she was growing immune to its hold over her thoughts, she wasn’t quite sure.  Either way, her momentary aversion to the scene unfolding in front of her Dungeon Core meant that she missed when the fight was over.

Left standing over the corpses of Winter Wolves and piles of Cold Slimes was a pair of injured Wolves, one with a limp and the other with a few slowly bleeding bites on its neck.  She didn’t have to check it too deeply to know that they were her own Wolves that had survived, because she could tell at a glance that they were hers; the “flavor” of them was distinctly hers, and for her it was impossible to mix them up with any foreign invaders.

This isn’t good.  I need a faster way to create my monsters, or perhaps have stronger ones.

* You haven’t created a Dungeon Boss yet. *

Dungeon Boss?  What are you talking about?  And why didn’t you mention it until now?

Even as she asked that, Tempara thought back at the large Yeti that had been at the end of the dungeon that had ended up killing the Fox and her former master.  It had been so much bigger than anything she remembered seeing in the rest of the dungeon, to the point where it had been a threat even to the powerful Defenders that accompanied them.

* A minimum of two additional rooms are required in order to create a Dungeon Boss, and as this requirement was not yet met, the information was not shared. *

That doesn’t help me now.

There was no way she would be able to construct another room at the moment, even though she had a large influx of EP from the deaths of so many monsters in her dungeon from the last attack.  She was already replacing her forces, however, creating one Wolf and then one Slime, one after another.  The process to create either of them wasn’t instantaneous, however, as even a Cold Slime required about 12 seconds, whereas the Wolves took a few seconds more. Even as she did that, the corpses and blood of those that were slain dissolved into nothingness, leaving her Core room floor clean for her newly created monsters.

But even those wouldn’t be enough, as she sensed yet another group of foreign monsters running inside her dungeon entrance.  This one was slightly smaller than the previous one, but only by a little bit; the group consisted of 9 Wolves and 2 Snow Hares, which raced down the tunnel without stopping.

By the time they arrived at the den room, Tempara was back up to 4 Cold Slimes and 6 Winter Wolves, 2 of which were still injured.  Her assistant informed her that they would heal in a relatively short time – around 1 to 2 hours – if they stayed within her dungeon, but they didn’t have that kind of time.  Her traps were still resetting and wouldn’t likely be ready for another 20 minutes or so for the Pit Trap, though the Cold Slime that had fallen inside was nearly to the top.

In fact, it reached the surface just as the new group appeared.  Tempara’s Slime rolled to the top just ahead of the lead Snow Hare, which wasn’t able to compensate for its appearance and slammed right into the spheroid gel monster.  The running Hare’s front half was almost entirely enveloped by the Slime as her monster was pushed back into the Pit Trap, taking the invading dungeon monster with it.  Tempara watched as they both fell the distance down to the floor of the pit, and this time her Slime was destroyed as the head of the Hare impacted the Slime’s core as it hit the bottom.  Even with the cushioning, the foreign Snow Hare still hit the floor hard enough to snap some bones, including its neck due to the way it landed.

That was just about the only real success in her defenses, however, because the rest of the invading force ran around the open hole and moved onto her Core room, where Tempara had just managed to create yet another Wolf, bringing their total up to 7.

It was not enough.  Sure, the Wolves – along with the Slimes – put up a good fight, but they were both outnumbered and injured from previous fights; as a result, while more than half of the foreign monsters were killed, the rest survived – if injured – and approached her Dungeon Core.

Not again….

Chapter 12

* Select your starting location…. *

It took her very little time at all to focus on the same area in the Frozen Reaches, as Tempara considered her upcoming fourth attempt at surviving as a Dungeon Core.  She debated moving from her last location, but ultimately decided against it.  For one thing, she wanted to stay near her pack’s den; for another, from what she had been able to observe, there were very few places around the area that were free of nearby dungeons, so she wasn’t sure it would do any good.  In fact, the only place that was relatively lacking in rival dungeons was right on the border, but then she’d have to worry about Defenders finding her across the border with the Kingdom.

I have to survive to get stronger, but I can’t seem to do that anywhere I go.

With only the vaguest idea that she would change the way she went about her development this time, she chose the same place she had been the last few times, away from the border.  She figured that, with proper planning and care, she might be able to handle the monsters from other nearby dungeons; at this time, though, she had very little hope of surviving against a group of Defenders if they were to find her entrance.

* Transferring control of new Dungeon Core now…. *

In moments, Tempara was back in her dungeon, looking at the familiar sight of her Core room and her Dungeon Core sitting on a pedestal.  She immediately sent her viewpoint outside, and it was only a matter of minutes to verify that she had been returned to the same point in time she was expecting.  After watching her father enter the den where her younger self had just been born, she decided to make some changes.

First of all, she didn’t stick around for a few hours to watch her pack settle down for the night like she usually did; it wasn’t through boredom or already knowing what would happen, but because she really wanted to get started on her dungeon.  Tempara had some things to accomplish, and she figured it would be best if she started now.

Therefore, the next thing she did was head back to her dungeon, where she found her former master assistant waiting for her, having appeared at some point when her attention was elsewhere.  I wonder when she actually arrives—

* To begin the process of creating your dungeon— *

Tempara cut the woman off, not through any annoyance, but because she already knew what she wanted to do.  Having been informed about the Dungeon Boss during her last temporal existence, she got started on construction immediately.  She wasn’t concerned about being attacked quite yet, because throughout all of her previous incarnations, nothing had bothered her until the next day – other than the Defenders, but that was only because she had sent some monsters out of her dungeon, which she wasn’t planning on doing.

Over the next few hours, Tempara constructed one den room and then another 50 feet further toward the entrance, both sized approximately the same.  At the same time, she also created 15 Cold Slimes, putting 5 in each room and keeping 5 for her Core room for defense.  They wouldn’t do much against the larger groups of monsters that would attack her the next day, but she was slowly learning that it paid to be as cautious as possible without being wasteful.

By the time the second room’s construction was complete and all 15 of her Cold Slimes had been created, which took nearly 5 hours, she had accumulated enough EP to increase her Core Level.

* You now have enough Elemental Power to condense it— *

I know, I know.  I’m on it.

Tempara proceeded to wrap condensed Elemental Power around her Core, which added a layer to her form and increased her Core Level by 1.  She wasn’t going to increase it again, however, until she had some better defenses in place – including this Dungeon Boss that her assistant had mentioned.  Before she did that, however, she took a little time to survey the outside of her dungeon to ensure there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary; after a few minutes of looking around, she concluded that nothing appeared too concerning.

Tell me about this Dungeon Boss.  How do I add it?

* You have achieved Core Level 2, as well as constructed an additional 2 rooms in your dungeon.  You can now produce a Dungeon Boss in your Core room. *

The monotonous voice, for some reason Tempara couldn’t fathom, had become less annoying as time went on and she heard it more frequently, but it appeared as though it could still manage to annoy her anyway.

I understand; how do I go about doing that?

* Creating a Dungeon Boss requires 15x the base EP cost of a normal monster, though only a single Dungeon Boss may be utilized at any one time inside of a dungeon, at least until higher Core Levels have been reached.  To create a Dungeon Boss, simply feed more Elemental Power into the base monster when it is in the process of being created. *

Seems simple enough.

With a thought, Tempara brought up her Core Display and saw that she had already accumulated over 400 EP while she was recovering from the Core Leveling process, surveying outside of her dungeon, and communicating with her assistant.  Seeing that she had enough to create a Dungeon Boss, the Dungeon Core created another Cold Slime in the middle of her Core room and then started to feed even more of the energy that had accumulated inside of her Core into the slowly materializing shape.  After sending an additional 375 EP over the original cost of the Slime, the flow of Elemental Power shut down automatically, which Tempara thought was convenient.

There was an abrupt change in the size and shape of the Slime, which went from being just about a foot across to something much bigger.

* When you are making your new Dungeon Boss, keep in mind that its size will likely be substantially bigger than its base monster version.  Prepare accordingly— *

Oh, no – how do I stop this!

* You cannot stop the creation of a monster in progress.  If you desire, you can eliminate the Dungeon Boss after it is created; a simple thought toward any one of your monsters inside of your dungeon will break it down into Elemental Power that you can re-use.  Monsters broken down this way, including Dungeon Bosses, only provide 50% of the original cost— *

It was too late.  Her new Dungeon Boss was already taking shape, a giant Cold Slime that was at least 15 feet wide, which almost entirely filled up her tiny 20-foot-wide Core room.  That wasn’t the worst part, however, as the Boss was pushing up against the pedestal that held her Dungeon Core.  As the minutes crawled by during the massive Slime’s creation, the pedestal was pushed up against more and more as the girth of the Boss expanded.  Tempara could only watch in mounting horror as it finally reached a breaking point, and there was a sharp *crack* that reverberated throughout the room.

Observing from outside of her form, she witnessed the top half of the stone pedestal fall backwards with force, with her glowing Core slamming up against the back wall.  As she had dreaded, the fragile Core shattered immediately upon contact—

* Select your starting location…. *

This is getting ridiculous.

She wasted no time picking the same spot, and before she could even get over the anger that was infusing her Core at how stupid her last incarnation could be, she was looking at her Core room once again.  This time, wanting to shout at someone, she waited for approximately 5 minutes before her assistant suddenly appeared next to her pedestal, looking straight up at her Core.

You could have warned me that it would be so big—

* To begin the process of creating your dungeon— *

Aaarrgh!  I can’t even be properly mad at you because you don’t remember anything!

At that, Tempara calmed down a little, as the object of her frustration obviously had no idea what she was mad about.  To try and put out her failed Dungeon Boss experiment out of her mind, she went outside her dungeon and located her pack’s den, though it was a few minutes after she normally found it; still, despite her late arrival, everything appeared as it did every other time she had observed her pack.

Putting her setback behind her, she went back to her dungeon and repeated what she had done last time by constructing two smaller den rooms and creating 15 Cold Slimes.  This time, however, she put 5 of them in the room closest to the entrance and the other 10 inside of the other den room, leaving her Core room empty.

After she increased her Core Level to 2, she spent some time greatly expanding her Core room, which required about twice as much EP compared to the smaller den rooms she had constructed.

* The reinforced stone of your Core room requires more Elemental Power to manipulate, but the nature of it also ensures that there is very little that could cause the space to collapse, as well as allowing a larger open space without additional supports. *

It was a reasonable explanation from her assistant, though she mentally grumbled at the offered information; Tempara was still more than a bit annoyed at the woman for her Core’s prior destruction.

Regardless of her current dislike of her former master, she eventually got her Core room’s expansion completed, at the cost of over 1,000 EP.  Instead of its previous 20-foot-width, it was now 50 feet wide with 30-foot-tall ceilings, and her Core pedestal was located along the back portion of the room, far away from the center.

During the construction, Tempara had accumulated enough EP to increase her Core Level to 3, but it also meant that she had a choice to make.

Should I create another giant Cold Slime or something different?

Doing some manipulation with numbers, she discovered that her current total EP was more than enough to create a Dungeon Boss based on the Winter Wolf, which she had observed was faster and nominally more powerful than her Slimes.  It would consume nearly two-thirds of the Elemental Power she’d accumulated, but would it be worth it?

Yes.  Yes it was.

The required time to create the Boss was much longer than the Slime had been, and it was only after an hour that it finally completed inside of her expanded Core room.  The Winter Wolf Dungeon Boss was 12 feet tall and twice that long, and its sharp teeth were nearly the length of its smaller brethren’s legs.  The long, bluish-white hair on the massive Winter Wolf made the monster appear a little shaggy, but it also covered corded muscles that revealed a strength inside the giant Wolf.

Overall, she was pleased with her new Boss, even though she was thinking that she needed to expand her Core room yet again, in order to give it some space to maneuver.  While she did just that over the next few hours, she saved up enough EP in order to reach Core Level 3.  When all of her construction was finished, she looked outside and was surprised to see that it was already morning, and the sun was shining, prompting the rapid growth of the plants and mass exodus of beasts from their dens in a feeding frenzy.

It was only at this time that she decided to increase her Core Level, because she knew that her dungeon would be left alone during this time, as no other dungeons were actively attacking each other.  Looking around her limited range at those same dungeons, she suddenly understood why they had all attacked her during her last few incarnations.  She could gauge how strong they were from a simple look at their entrances, and with most of them being Core Level 2 and a few Core Level 3, with her own Core being Level 5, she must have presented a tempting target.

Therefore, staying at Core Level 3 could be advantageous, because it wouldn’t attract so much attention.

But if I did that, how am I supposed to build a massive force of monsters to stop the Kingdom’s Defenders from killing my pack and capturing my younger self?

That was an excellent question, and the answer to that was something she didn’t think she was likely to figure out right away.  For the moment, Tempara was focused on protecting her Core so that she didn’t have to keep starting all over again—

But… I’m not completely starting all over again, am I?

While the outside world was undergoing its rapid growth of plant life and predators were hunting prey animals, Tempara was accumulating enough EP to continue filling her dungeon with more monsters – which were what was focusing on when she was considering her restarts.

Monster Details

Cold Slime

25 EP

Creation Threshold: 93/250

Battle Threshold: 7/100

Potential Advancement Options:

???

???

???

???

Tempara wasn’t starting completely over from scratch every time her Core was destroyed, after all.  True, all of her work constructing a dungeon and putting together a force of monsters had been undone, but she was making progress on one front: She was slowly approaching the Creation and Battle Thresholds for her Cold Slime, though it was still going to take a bit of time… which the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core abruptly realized was something she had in abundance.

Thinking about the first dungeon she’d ever seen, when her soul had been bonded to her former master, she remembered seeing a wide variety of different monsters – not just Snow Hares and Winter Wolves (she didn’t remember seeing any Slimes at the time).  From what she understood, it was only through repetitively creating and sending monsters out to fight that these other monsters, or “Potential Advancement Options” according to her Monster Details, were available to create.

Considering how often the other Cores in the area sent groups of monsters out to try and attack other dungeons for their Elemental Power, while also defending against similar attacks, she could see these thresholds being reached quite quickly and frequently.  In a matter of days, she could imagine some of the higher Core Level Dungeon Cores hitting the Creation and Battle Thresholds for Snow Hares and Winter Wolves, which would allow them to create… something different?  More powerful?  Tempara wasn’t exactly sure what it would be, but it was possible that if she managed to survive a few days, then she would be seeing them.

Then she would have to figure out how to defend against something even more difficult to defeat.  The periodic waves of Defenders that came through and swept the Frozen Reaches of all dungeons made a lot more sense at that point, because after a month of unlocking one Advancement Option after another, many of the nearby Cores would be a threat not only to the Kingdom, but to the natural beast population in the area.

That still didn’t justify what had happened to her pack, however; she didn’t think she’d ever forgive them for doing that – even if in this timeline, it hadn’t occurred as of yet.

All of this consideration about stronger monsters and Advancement Options made Tempara come to a few conclusions based on her situation.  The first was that she was unique compared to the other Dungeon Cores, not only because she was the soul of a Greater Temporal Fox instead of whatever an Elemental Spirit was, but also because she wasn’t constrained by the same limitations.  Her assistant, Kiana, had mentioned that Elemental Spirits typically stopped increasing their Core Level strictly based on their Accumulation Rate, and were instead prompted to fight for what the other Cores possessed; compared to the others, Tempara had no problem hiding out in her dungeon in order to raise her Core Level.

Therein lie the second conclusion: Increasing her Core Level without proper defenses in place would call too much attention to her dungeon, and it was possible that she would be perpetually under assault.  From what little she had seen of the other dungeons, their strength and Core Levels fluctuated as time went on; when one became too powerful, the others nearby would attack it until they got through all of the defenses, wherein they would acquire some of that power for themselves – which in turn would make them a target.  Without the ability to allow some of her Elemental Power to be “stolen”, as the process inevitably cracked her Core, she would never begin to reflect that attention elsewhere.

Thirdly, even if she managed to achieve even higher Core Levels, it was possible that Dungeon Cores further away would send their forces, as her dungeon would be a shining beacon in the dark that not many would be able to resist going after.  On top of that, if her dungeon was constantly being attacked by group after group of foreign dungeon monsters, that would certainly draw the attention of the Kingdom’s Defenders.

Lastly, Tempara had to admit that she had something else unique going for her, which was evidenced by the fact that her “knowledge” stuck around between each time restart.  She had been looking at her auto-Skill to go back in time as an unfortunate side-effect of whatever had happened to her in that deadly dungeon, though she was also thankful for its presence.  But up until now, she hadn’t really understood the benefits it could impart, i.e. knowing what would happen, as well as keeping her progress on various Thresholds.  Therefore, if she planned on her Core being destroyed, she could use that to her advantage.

In short, if she couldn’t produce a gigantic army of Cold Slimes to eventually prevent the Defenders from killing her pack and taking her younger self captive, then she would have to create a small force of powerful monsters that could perform the same task.  In other words, it was a matter of quality over quantity.

To get those powerful monsters, Tempara was going to have to reach the Thresholds of not only her Slimes, but every other monster she had access to creating.  Not only would she have to unlock the Advancement Options of them a few times, but as many times as possible.  Naturally, to survive that long and actually accomplish that feat wasn’t likely to happen…

…in one time period.

It was more likely going to take multiple trips through time, something that was nearly unthinkable for the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core.  Of course, knowing that she was going to be destroyed and being fine with it were two different things, but it was something that she was going to have to adapt to in order to make any significant progress.

What better time than now to get started.

Chapter 13

Before she did anything drastic, Tempara needed a little more information from her assistant, who had been relatively silent lately, only contributing answers to questions when directly or indirectly asked.  The Dungeon Core put it down to the fact that she had, thus far during the current incarnation, appeared to know what she was doing; therefore, no extra help was needed.  That was going to change now, though, because it was time to dig deeper into how some things worked.

Does the Creation Threshold for my monsters count even those I eliminate for half of my EP back?

* Yes.  Any monsters you create, whether they are eliminated at your direction or by an external force are counted toward your Creation Threshold for that particular monster. *

Excellent.  Another question: How exactly does the Battle Threshold work?  I’ve seen dozens of Cold Slimes participate in fights with foreign monsters and even the Kingdom’s Defenders, but my Battle Threshold is only at 7 for them.

* The Battle Threshold counts confrontations between monsters in separate locations only.  Therefore, even if you have a thousand Cold Slimes participating in a battle in one space, the Battle Threshold will only count it as 1 until the battle is concluded.  In addition, the connecting tunnels both in your dungeon and those in foreign dungeons do not count as a separate location, but are a part of the subsequent location space. *

Thinking back on all that had happened inside and outside of her dungeon, she supposed that made sense.  Despite having as many as 18 Cold Slimes in a room, each of those fights with foreign monsters only counted as 1 toward the Battle Threshold; however, at the same time, it appeared to count the fights in her den room and her Core room as separate battles.

That got her thinking.

How big of a space does it have to be in order to be considered a separate location?

* The minimum requirement for dungeon rooms is 512 cubic feet. Keep in mind that some traps require more space to operate efficiently. *

What?  That much?

Her numbers and measurement knowledge, imparted to her mind courtesy of her former master, told Tempara that 512 cubic feet was the equivalent to an 8 foot by 8 foot by 8 foot cube of space.  When considering that size, she could see that it wasn’t that large, but was still more than she expected.  Regardless, it was exactly what she needed to know.

Last question: Can I eliminate traps in the same way I can eliminate monsters, and if yes, do they still count toward the Installation Threshold?

* Yes and yes.  You will not receive any EP back for eliminating a trap, but the reserved Accumulation Rate will be returned immediately. *

That was all she needed to know.

With that information in mind, Tempara got started on some construction.  Beginning near the entrance, she used her accumulating EP to construct a small cubical-shaped room, just large enough to be considered a separate location.  There wasn’t going to be anything inherently fancy about it, because all she needed was a basic space – especially considering that it was only going to be holding a single monster.

Even that small of a space was going to take at least 30 minutes to fully construct, but thankfully her assistant informed her that multiple projects could be undertaken simultaneously as long as she had enough focus and EP.  As a result, through some experimentation, she found that she was able to start on another small room only 5 feet down the tunnel while the first was still finishing, and was even able to add a third – but that also hit the limits of her focus and concentration.

After 30 minutes, those 3 rooms were finished with their construction, and Tempara immediately started on yet another trio of small spaces.  While those were undergoing construction, she periodically created another Cold Slime to add to those she already had, while instructing a single Slime to move down the long tunnel and stay inside of each of the spaces she had thus far constructed.

After her second set of 3 rooms were constructed and she had hit her monster limit of 22 for her dungeon, she found that she could free up a little of her concentration to begin installing Pit Traps and Frigid Blasts along the connecting tunnel floors and walls.  While they cut into her Accumulation Rate, they would be an invaluable addition to her defenses, meaning that her Core would survive that much longer.  Plus, she wanted to see what kinds of Advancement Options they might eventually unlock, and only by using them would she be able to see those.

All told, she created 20 traps as her new, small rooms were constructed, reducing her current 15 per minute Accumulation Rate by 10, but it was a very small price to pay for the defenses they provided. She only stopped constructing the rooms when she hit 21, which was exactly how many Cold Slimes she had in her dungeon, and each of those rooms now had a single blue-colored Slime defending them.  In her two larger den rooms, she added an Icicle Rain trap to each of them, further reducing her AR by another 2, bringing it to 3 – which was more than enough for the time being.  An hour before she estimated the feeding frenzy outside was going to end, she checked her Core Display and was pleased at what she saw.

Core Display

Core Name:

Tempara

Core Level:

3

Designation:

Frozen Cohort

Level Threshold:

6,000 EP

Elemental Power (EP):

6,000 EP

Accumulation Rate (AR):

3 (-12) EP/minute

Defensible Rooms:

24

Available Monsters:

3

Monster Threshold:

15

Available Traps:

3

Monsters:

Cold Slime

Snow Hare

Winter Wolf

25 EP

50 EP

125 EP

Traps:

Pit Trap

Frigid Blast

Icicle Rain

0.5 AR

0.5 AR

1 AR

Core Abilities:

Construct Dungeon

Create Monster

Install Trap

(EP cost – varies)

(EP cost – varies)

(AR cost – varies)

Skills/Knowledge:

Monster Creation

Trap Installation

Temporal Manipulation

(Total Available: 3)

(Total Available: 3)

(Total Available: 1)

Not only was her dungeon now protected by a bunch of traps, 21 Cold Slimes, and a giant Winter Wolf Dungeon Boss, but she had still accumulated enough EP during that time to have enough to get to Core Level 4.  But should she?  At the moment, her current Core Level was not necessarily on the high side, but was one of a few that were of the same strength nearby; by elevating her Core Level, she would be sure to garner attention.  Not necessarily as much as being Core Level 5, like she was before, but still enough to draw some groups to her dungeon.

There wasn’t really any other choice, however, because she needed to engage in battles in order to achieve what she was planning.  Even though it would inevitably end up with her Core’s destruction, it was necessary to make progress.  With her current setup, that was all she was looking for.

So, an hour before she’d have some invading foreign monsters come and visit, Tempara wrapped her Core in her extra Elemental Power and raised her Core Level.  Within the first few minutes of her increase, she was already creating more Cold Slimes, because with her AR now at 8 per minute (after all of the traps were taken into account), she could produce them every 3 minutes or so.  These new ones were instructed to move to the first of the den rooms, where they would help to back-up the Icicle Rain trap that was located there.  After a total of 6 more Slimes were created, she hit her Monster Threshold hard limit again, meaning that there wasn’t much else she could do at the moment.

Letting her current EP increase, Tempara sent her viewpoint outside and watched the last of the feeding frenzy wind down, as the cold temperatures rushed in with the snow, driving the plants back down below the surface and sending the beasts running for their dens.  She managed to accumulate a few hundred EP by the time she saw the first group heading toward her dungeon.

It was, as she was expecting, a group of 3 Snow Hares and 2 Winter Wolves coming from the nearest Core Level 2 dungeon.  As she ranged further away from her entrance, she saw a familiar group of a dozen Wolves heading in her dungeon’s direction from a Core Level 3 dungeon, but they were still a little further out.  As for any additional groups, there weren’t any that she could see at the moment, but she was sure they were likely on their way.

The quintet of foreign monsters raced inside of her dungeon and two of the Snow Hares immediately dropped from sight as they collapsed the ice-covered Pit Trap only a few feet within her entrance.  Even as they were still falling to either their deaths or severe injury, the remaining Snow Hare hopped over the hole in the floor and the pair of Wolves coming in behind quickly navigated to the side of the trap.  The Hare got to Tempara’s solitary Cold Slime first, turning around and kicking it with its hind feet; the core inside of the Slime was punctured, killing her monster, but the foreign Hare had its hind legs liberally coated with rapidly freezing goo.

The Winter Wolves abandoned their fellow monster even as the Hare struggled to pull itself forward, the icy goo constricting its hind legs enough that it was in visible pain.  By the time the goo melted off of the Snow Hare, the Winter Wolves were already in the next room killing the next Cold Slime, having somehow avoided triggering the Frigid Blast in the connecting tunnel.  Fortunately for Tempara, the Snow Hare limped along with some sort of debilitating injury to its legs, and it triggered the trap.

A blast of supercooled air slammed into the slow-moving Snow Hare.  From what she understood of the trap, it was simply supposed to chill any victims passing by, slowing them down considerably because of the frigid air; with the Hare, however, it wasn’t able to move away from the blast fast enough to get away with simply being slowed.  Instead, it was literally frozen in place, its outer fur coated with very thick frost to the point where it was encased in a thin, solid layer of ice.  It struggled feebly for a moment before it succumbed to the severe cold, and Tempara could feel the Elemental Power gains from its death.

Meanwhile, the Wolves dispatched her Slime without any issue in the second of the small rooms, but the Pit Trap in the next tunnel claimed another victim.  The lead Wolf shattered the iced covering the deep hole and nearly managed to escape death due to its size; its forelegs were already across when the floor dropped beneath his hind legs, and it scrambled to pull itself up the edge of the pit.  Unfortunately for the foreign monster, the floor and sides of the pit were smooth, which didn’t allow it to gain any purchase in which to pull or push itself up, and it fell backwards into the hole.  Even as it was trying to save itself, its fellow invading Wolf passed right by it, where it could’ve easily gripped the unfortunate monster by the neck or foreleg and pulled it forward.

I guess they don’t have any other thought other than to get to my Core, no matter if success could be achieved by helping their fellow monsters.

Despite its single-mindedness, the remaining Winter Wolf managed to kill the third Slime without too much issue, though its jaws seemed to be pained from the frozen goo that had been stuck to it afterwards.  It also didn’t manage to avoid the second Frigid Blast trap, and it got a face full of supercooled air; unlike the Snow Hare, however, the Wolf avoided being frozen solid by running out of the area before it could happen.  When it approached the Slime in the fourth room, it was noticeably slower, thanks to being chilled to the bone from the previous trap.

As a result, despite its size, strength, and overall deadliness as an attacker, the Winter Wolf was entirely too slow and inaccurate in its usual quick bite inside of the Slime’s internal core.  While the jaws were still closing in on the vital organ inside of the gelatinous sphere, the Cold Slime managed to wiggle up its face, diving a part of its mass straight into the vulnerable eyes of the dangerous canine.  Even as the teeth punctured the core, the Slime had managed to puncture both eyes and was making its way into the Wolf’s brain when it turned to frozen goo.

Needless to say, the result was a bit of a mess as the contracting ice shattered the Wolf’s frontal skull from the inside out.  That was a bit much for even the strong monster to come back from.

As for the two Snow Hares that had fallen inside the first Pit Trap, one of them had landed badly and snapped its back, while the other had died from some other means that Tempara had missed – though it was probably a serious neck injury.  Thankfully, whatever damage had been done to the still-injured Hare prevented it from screaming, so she was spared that as it slowly died inside of the hole.

With 4 dead Slimes and 4 triggered traps as part of her defense, Tempara was pleased at how well they had worked.  As soon as the last Wolf was dead, she immediately started moving up her Slime from the fifth room to the first, the Slime from the sixth to the second, and so on down the line.  At the end, she fed four of the half-dozen Slimes in the first den room to the line of rooms, taking the spots of those that moved up.  Back in her Core room, she was already creating 4 more Slimes to replace those that had been killed.

All 4 of them were created in time for the group with a dozen Wolves to arrive – and that was when her defense started to take a beating.

Chapter 14

* Select your starting location…. *

Tempara didn’t hesitate to pick the same location she had been using for her dungeon, mainly because she was familiar with the area and she was starting to work out the timing of everything.  It was for that reason, as well as the success of her last time reset, that led her to being encouraged as she felt her soul being transported to its new Dungeon Core form.

A very brief check outside showed her father running toward his den, and another look at her mother just after giving birth to her was all she needed to verify that nothing had changed, so she went back to her where her Core waited on its pedestal to get started.

* To begin the process of creating your dungeon— *

Tempara ignored her assistant when the woman suddenly appeared, as she went over the takeaways from her last incarnation.  She was amazed at how long her Core had survived, and it was mostly in thanks to her giant Winter Wolf Dungeon Boss.

After the dozen foreign Wolves invaded her dungeon, they managed to tear through her first four rooms without any difficulty, as there was only a single Cold Slime preventing them from moving on.  She thought that it was interesting to see that, while the monsters wouldn’t go out of their way to help each other, they – for some reason – refused to advance to the next room until all of the enemy monsters were dealt with.  Therefore, all dozen of the foreign Winter Wolves stopped while one or two of their number killed the Slimes, and only then did they advance out of the room and down the tunnel.

Anyway, the first untriggered Pit Trap that the group encountered unluckily didn’t manage to catch any of the Wolves when the ice layer collapsed, but the Frigid Blast in the next tunnel managed to hit more than half of them, slowing them down considerably – but it didn’t do any permanent damage.  The ones that weren’t hit raced ahead and attacked the waiting Slime in the next room, so her monster couldn’t even take advantage of the triggered Frigid Blast trap.

On and on they went, tearing through the 21 rooms she had constructed, though it wasn’t all good luck for the foreign enemies.  Four more triggered Pit Traps were successful in catching one of the Wolves as they raced by, helped by the fact that every single invading monster had been hit by a Frigid Blast at one point, with some having been hit multiple times.  Those that had been affected multiple times by the supercooled air were practically walking by the time the group got to the first den room, where they encountered a half-dozen Cold Slimes.

Amazingly, her Slimes and the two Icicle Rain traps worked together to put up a good fight against the 8 remaining Wolves, killing 2 of them outright and injuring 2 more when they were impaled by falling icicles.

In the second den room, there were another 4 Cold Slimes that Tempara had been able to create while the foreign group of Wolves was making their way through her dungeon.  Another Wolf was killed when it inhaled too much freezing goo, which left 5 of the dozen Winter Wolves that had entered her dungeon, with 2 of them possessing injured jaws that didn’t appear to work properly.

Her Dungeon Boss, a giant Winter Wolf of her own, tore into the enemy monsters when they appeared and literally ripped them apart.  With jaws large enough to pick up a smaller Wolf in its mouth and practically chomp it in half, it only took one bite and they were done.  Her Boss’s paws were weapons of their own, batting the nipping Wolves around when they approached too closely, and then shredding them with sharp claws once they were backed up against a wall.

For all of its size and strength, however, it was technically still a Winter Wolf – and it turned out that the thick fur was its only special defense.  The enemy Winter Wolves managed to bite the legs of her Boss a few times before they were killed, doing a significant amount of damage for such small bites.

But Tempara had survived, and while her Boss was slightly injured, it wasn’t anything debilitating.  When the Dungeon Core looked outside, the nearest dungeon monster group was only a minute away from entering her dungeon, so she worked fast to create even more Slimes, as they were the quickest to create and get moving.  By the time the next group of Wolves and Snow Hares arrived, navigated their way down the pit-ridden tunnel, and made it to the second den room, there were 8 Slimes waiting for them.

Sadly, the fresh enemy monsters weren’t deterred by her Cold Slimes and tore through them with minimal effort, though one of the Snow Hares ended up with a slightly injured hind leg in the process.

Her Dungeon Boss tore them apart, as well – but not without suffering even more injuries on its part.  By the time it managed to kill all of the enemy monsters, it was limping badly from a plethora of bite wounds, and a portion of its jaw had been torn open and was bleeding profusely.  Tempara only managed to create another 5 Slimes by the time the next group was inside of her dungeon and nearing her Core room, which was a smaller group of 5 Winter Wolves and 4 Snow Hares.

Needless to say, her Cold Slimes didn’t do much to prevent them from reaching her Dungeon Boss.  Sadly, despite being bigger and stronger than them, her final defense was sluggish from the loss of blood and other injuries; as a result, it wasn’t able to catch the Snow Hares as they ran circles around the bigger Boss, distracting it enough that the foreign Winter Wolves could jump in and work together to tear its throat out.

All of which led to her needing to “choose a starting location” once again.

The first thing she did once she was back in her dungeon and ready to start was to create a Cold Slime to see how far it had progressed.

Monster Details

Cold Slime

25 EP

Creation Threshold: 126/250

Battle Threshold: 35/100

Potential Advancement Options:

???

???

???

???

Her plan seemed to be working.  Not only did she manage to reach a little over halfway to the Creation Threshold of 250 for the Cold Slime, but she added an additional 28 to its Battle Threshold to make it 35.

Another few like that and I’ll be able to reach an Advancement Option.

Focusing on her Monster options, she looked at Winter Wolf and saw that it was almost as impressive as her Cold Slime.

Monster Details

Winter Wolf

125 EP

Creation Threshold: 17/250

Battle Threshold: 37/100

Potential Advancement Options:

???

???

???

???

Due to how many Wolves were fighting in her dungeon, the current total Battle Threshold was even higher than it was for Slimes at 37.  While she only had 17 of them created, that was something she could work on in the future.  For now, all she was focused on was her Cold Slimes, as those were currently the furthest along the road to an Advancement.

For the most part, the next day consisted of a very similar arrangement of constructed rooms in her dungeon, except that instead of 2 den rooms, Tempara constructed 6 more small rooms, where a single Slime could fight against the invaders.  She ended up forgoing the Icicle Rain traps in favor of 2 more Pit Traps and Frigid Blasts each, as both of them were already progressing nicely in both the Installation and Usage Thresholds.

Now knowing what she was doing – or at least she thought she did – there were at least 3 hours left before she expected to be attacked, and she had already constructed everything, created all of her monsters, and installed all of the traps she needed to in addition to reaching Core Level 4.  Instead of wasting that time, she decided to add to her Creation and Installation Thresholds for her monsters and traps.

First, she eliminated one of her Pit Traps and then reinstalled it right where it had been a few moments before; she would do this another 4 times before the foreign dungeon monsters attacked, adding an additional 5 to the Installation Threshold over the 12 that had already been achieved for this incarnation.  Next, she started eliminating Slimes and then recreating them every few minutes, eating into her EP reserves, but not too badly – especially considering that she was getting 12 EP back every time she eliminated one of the Slimes.  She was easily able to add another 50 to her goo-filled monster’s Creation Threshold by doing this, and it didn’t exactly cost her anything to accomplish it.

Then it was time for another round of attacks by the foreign dungeon groups, which all arrived exactly as they had before, in the exact same compositions that Tempara was growing familiar with.  Things were so similar that the first 2 Snow Hares from the preliminary group again fell inside the Pit Trap and injured themselves exactly the same way as before, down to the snapped neck and broken back.  The remaining Hare and two Wolves died similarly, with the Hare freezing to death, one of the Wolves barely falling inside of a Pit Trap, and the last Wolf being slowed by cold and having its face covered in Slime goo.

The only real differences between this time and the last was seen in the subsequent groups, which went through additional small rooms instead of the den rooms, which actually turned out to be beneficial for Tempara, if only because the extra traps she had in place were able to be extra effective to the already slowed group of Wolves.  Only 4 Winter Wolves from the original dozen made it to her Dungeon Boss this time, and they were killed quickly with very minimal injuries to her giant Wolf.

The next group, however, was barely challenged, due to the fact that there weren’t as many united groups of Slimes to fight against, and they went into the fight with the Dungeon Boss a little fresher than the previous incarnation.  It ultimately didn’t matter, though, because they were still all killed before they could reach her Dungeon Core – but her massive Wolf was barely able to stand upright afterwards.

Needless to say, Tempara didn’t survive the next group, and she was sent back to choose her starting location.

When she was back in her empty dungeon and after she briefly checked to make sure nothing had changed (this was something she was going to check every time, no matter what happened), the Dungeon Core was able to see that her Cold Slime was rapidly approaching its Thresholds.

- Creation Threshold: 213/250

- Battle Threshold: 76/100

One more time, I believe.

Checking with her Winter Wolf, she saw that while the Creation Threshold had only gained 1, due to her Dungeon Boss, the Battle Threshold was up to 81!

That will likely finish during this go-around, as well.

As far as creating enough Winter Wolves, that was something she might look into during her next incarnation.

* To begin the process of creating your dungeon— *

At some point while she was looking things over, her assistant appeared and briefly startled Tempara.  The Dungeon Core ignored her as had been usual lately and got to work, replicating what she had done the previous time because it had been quite successful.

The only changes she made was during the few hours before she was attacked, where instead of creating 50 Slimes, she instead created an additional 10 Wolves to add to its Creation Threshold; in addition, instead of eliminating and reinstalling Pit Traps, she did the same with Frigid Blasts.

Because she had been quite precise in the placement of her traps, as well as the arrangement of her Slimes inside of all the small constructed rooms, there was absolutely no change in the results of the monster assaults that went through her dungeon.  While she couldn’t remember exactly how every encounter went the time before, she was able to recognize many of the same Wolves or Hares performing the same attacks on her Slimes, or how they did or didn’t avoid her traps, and even how her Dungeon Boss was injured each time.

What she was to do with that information, she wasn’t sure, but the repetition was somehow… comforting, in a strange sort of way.  It was almost pleasant being able to predict what was going to happen, and when her Dungeon Core was destroyed yet again, there was no surprise or despair at the occurrence.

* Select your starting location…. *

This time around, Tempara was eager to get back in her dungeon, because she was fairly certain that she had finally achieved the Thresholds for her Cold Slime during her last incarnation.  The Battle Threshold for Winter Wolves was likely achieved as well, but the Creation Threshold was still a long way off.

She was almost impatient by the time she felt her soul being transported into her new Dungeon Core, and her brief visit to her pack was probably a little more rushed than usual.  Because of that, she was able to get back to her dungeon far before her former master appeared as her assistant, and she immediately pulled up her Core Display and focused on her slimy monster….

Chapter 15

As she had predicted, when she brought up the details for her Cold Slime, there was definitely something different about it.

Monster Details

Cold Slime

25 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Glacial Ooze

50 EP

Snowball

100 EP

Frost Elemental

200 EP

Ice Golem

500 EP

Tempara had been expecting a single Advancement Option for her Cold Slime, but instead there were 4!

Why are there—?

* Proper selection of Advancement Options are important, because some are better suited for defense as opposed to assaulting foreign dungeons. *

The Dungeon Core had been so absorbed in looking at her Monster Details for her Cold Slime that she missed when her assistant appeared.  For a change, the first thing spoken to her wasn’t about creating her dungeon, but was instead regarding her Advancement Options.

* To begin the process of creating your dungeon— *

Ah, there it is.

Ignoring Kiana as usual, Tempara instead looked at the Options before her.  Thankfully, she was able to obtain an impression from them just by focusing on each name, but it was only after she was done that she realized that the choice was more difficult than she expected.

The first Option was the Glacial Ooze, which was essentially a slightly larger Cold Slime in shape and size for an extra 25 EP.  The biggest difference, however, was that the Ooze seemed to have the ability to create multiple appendages, which would be able to extend and attack up to 2 feet away; how much damage they could cause, or what effects their appendages could have, was something that wasn’t included in the information she gained from focusing on the name.  She did get the impression this “upgraded” Slime was slightly faster in its movement speed, but nothing particularly significant.

The second Option available to her was something called Snowball, and when she focused on it, she found out that was exactly what it was.  For 100 EP, she could create a packed ball of snow 4 feet in width… and that was about it.  It could move by itself – and quickly, at that – and use its weight to slam into an enemy, but once it was rolling in a particular direction it was unable to easily turn without slowing down. From what she understood, it was relatively strong defensive-wise only because it was literally packed snow and didn’t bleed or have a core that could be damaged like the Slimes, but once it had enough snow knocked off of its spheroid form, it would collapse and fall apart.

The next Advancement Option was a Frost Elemental at 200 EP, which was even stranger than the Snowball monster.  Instead of being made of ice or snow, the Frost Elemental was made of a semi-solid frozen mist very similar to what was expelled from her Frigid Blast traps.  It was shaped like a 3-foot-wide, amorphous, semi-transparent sphere that floated a couple of feet above the ground.  A pair of appendages seemed to come out of its sides like odd-looking arms, and there was a solid-looking mass in its exact center, which Tempara could only assume was some type of vital organ, like the core inside of a Slime.  What its attack actually did was unknown, but if it was anything like the Frigid Blast trap, then she could only assume that its touch would slow any victims’ reactions down and eventually freeze them to death if they were unable to escape.

Lastly, the Ice Golem was the most expensive of the Advancement Options at 500 EP – a significantly hefty step up from any of the other monsters available to her currently.  Even the Frost Elemental was only 75 more EP than a Winter Wolf, but something that was 4 times as many EP as a Wolf?  The Ice Golem cost a lot more than most Dungeon Cores at this point could reliably afford to create, given that 500 Ep was half of what was required to increase from Core Level 1 to Core Level 2.  At Core Level 1, 500 EP was 100 minutes’ worth of waiting for enough EP to create it, and even at Core Level 2 it was just under an hour at 10 EP per minute.  That was without taking into account any traps that might be set up around their dungeon, which she was sure there would be, which would then reduce the AR and consequently would increase the time to create another Ice Golem.

To see if it was worth it, despite the high cost, she focused on the Ice Golem to see exactly what it was.  At first, she wasn’t overly impressed at what the Golem was supposed to look like, because it was simply a stumpy, 5-foot-tall and 3-foot-wide bipedal figure constructed entirely of jagged ice pieces solidified together.  Its feet looked more like stumps at the end of thick ice pillars, though the arms that jutted out from its shoulders were essentially long, sharp icicles.  There was no “head” on top of the torso, just a relatively flat, empty space where she thought it should be, but other than that it looked like a person.

From what she understood, it was relatively slow to travel in comparison to Snow Hares and Winter Wolves because it couldn’t run, but it could walk relatively quickly and at a steady pace.  The Golem’s movement speed appeared to be even faster during a fight, and its arms were its weapons, so she supposed that it would be deadly for most smaller monsters to go up against.  Its main defense seemed to be the fact that it was made of hard ice, though there was a glowing blue orb of energy that appeared to be embedded in the center of its chest, under a very thin layer of ice.  She could only assume that this was its vulnerability, and what it would have to protect during a fight with another monster – which shouldn’t be too difficult, at least from what she’d seen thus far from the other dungeons.

Naturally, against Defenders from the Kingdom, that would be an entirely different outcome.  Tempara still remembered her first visit to a dungeon with her former master, and how one of the Defenders had a bow that could shoot arrows; even one of those projectiles could pierce the thin layer of ice and puncture that glowing blue energy from a distance, making the Golem practically worthless.

So, the Ice Golem is likely quite good in defense against dungeon monsters, but won’t be too helpful against Defenders in the future.

Again, though, the expense of one of the Ice Golems was something she needed to consider, because if one of them died in her dungeon, it would probably be difficult to replace it.  Not only that, but she had already discovered that the higher the cost in EP, the longer a monster took to create in the first place.  She may or may not be able to actually create a replacement before another monster group appeared, even if she had the EP.

This is a hard decision.  I wonder which one I should choose.

Tempara wasn’t expecting her assistant to actually respond, as her thoughts were entirely focused on herself, so she was surprised at the voice in her mind – especially as it sounded more like Kiana than the annoying, monotonous tone she was used to hearing.

* Based on your current Monster Creation and Trap Installation Knowledge, which is more extensive than is normal for a new Dungeon Core, I would suggest that your preliminary choice should be the Snowball for defense of your dungeon.  None of these Advancement Options for the Cold Slime are necessarily appropriate for attacking other dungeons, which are currently better-served by your other monsters.  *

Oh, really?

She thought about her options and realized her assistant was likely correct about her Options not being appropriate for attacking other dungeons.  They were either slow or lacking in movement potential, and traveling to another dungeon – as well as navigating through one – would take far longer than a normal Dungeon Core would probably care for.  Granted, she wasn’t planning on attacking any other dungeons at the moment… but perhaps later?  It was something to consider, at least.

Given that her former master was probably telling the truth about the viability of these Options as an attacker, she was curious as to why the woman thought the Snowball was the best idea.  If she were being honest with herself, she had barely even considered it before her assistant mentioned it.

Why do you think the Snowball Option is the best?

* Based on your current knowledge of Pit Traps, Snowballs can be used to great effect when paired with that particular defense.  At a relatively low cost, they can be utilized to help encourage foreign monsters to fall victim to a potentially deadly drop. *

Encourage…?  You mean knock them in the Pit Traps, don’t you?

* Precisely. *

That was a use for the Snowballs that she hadn’t thought of, but it certainly made sense.  She began to think of a few different scenarios where the spheroid snow monster could be used most effectively, but she still wasn’t completely sold on the idea of the Snowball as her Option choice.

What about the Ice Golem?  It seems like it would be quite powerful against other monsters like the Winter Wolf and the Snow Hare.

* You are correct.  However, given the cost in EP, the Ice Golem would probably be best utilized when your Core Level is much higher, as they are expensive to create. *

That was basically what Tempara had been thinking about the powerful monster, but she was glad to have a second opinion.  Eventually, she would have the monster and trap knowledge to take advantage of the Golem, but that day wasn’t today.  Or even tomorrow’s today, however she wanted to look at it.  She would have to work up to that point, and right now she needed something a bit less expensive in terms of EP cost.

Before finalizing her selection, she looked again at the Ooze and the Elemental.  The first would definitely be a step-up in terms of her Cold Slimes, but she was realizing that she would need something that could contribute to a better defense than what it offered.  The Frost Elemental was intriguing, because it seemed versatile and would help to slow down the quick Snow Hares and Winter Wolves that were attacking her dungeon, but it, too, was slightly costly at 200 EP.  It was something to work toward, though, but right now it wasn’t what she needed.

With a final look over her choices, she mentally chose the Snowball from her Advancement Options under Cold Slime.  When she did, a few things happened all at once.

The first was a small influx of information that pierced through her mind and was slightly uncomfortable for all of a second, before the discomfort disappeared entirely.  The second thing that happened was her Core Display popped up, showing that she now had Snowball available under Monsters, as well as her Total Available Monster Creation Knowledge being at 4 instead of 3.

Next, looking at the still-open Monster Details for her Cold Slime, she saw that the Creation and Battle Thresholds had depleted, so that the first read 0/250 and the other showed 0/100.  Under Potential Advancement Options, there were now only 3 Options shown, which were the same 3 that she hadn’t picked before.

Lastly, a new Monster Detail information screen was available for her new Snowball monster.

Monster Details

Snowball

100 EP

Creation Threshold: 0/250

Battle Threshold: 0/100

Potential Advancement Options:

???

???

Hmm….

Not only were the Monster Details very similar to her other monsters in terms of their Thresholds, but there were also mystery Advancement Options for the Snowball once those Thresholds were reached.

Does every monster have Advancement Options?

* No.  Eventually each monster will reach the end of its Advancement potential, though it will likely be a long time until you ever have that occur. *

A long time?  Probably not as long as you think.

With Tempara’s choice of Advancement Option out of the way, it was time to get started on her dungeon once again.  This time, however, she was going to change some things based on her new monster, as well as in consideration of her existing ones – including the Winter Wolf.

Once she had gained Core Level 2, instead of constructing over 20 separate small rooms for individual Cold Slimes, Tempara constructed only 18 of them.  The reason for this was a bit more complicated, but after everything she had seen of the attacking groups, she had a plan that would change her defense for the better.

Chapter 16

Prior to the first group of foreign monster’s arrival, Tempara double-checked that everything was in place.  This time around, she had barely been able to finish in time for the feeding frenzy to finish outside, though she knew that next time the delays in her completion wouldn’t be nearly as bad now that she knew what she was doing.

She looked over everything and mentally confirmed everything.

Dungeon Boss… in place.

Rooms… constructed.

Traps… installed.

Hares… in position.

Wolves… in position.

Snowballs… ready to roll.

Slimes… wait… ok, the last one’s almost there.

Even as the last Cold Slime rolled into place in its designated position inside one of the small constructed rooms, the familiar sight of a group of 3 Snow Hares and 2 Winter Wolves appeared at her dungeon’s entrance and ran inside immediately.  Instead of being faced by a Pit Trap, however, the short tunnel leading to the first small room had a Frigid Blast trap, which the Hares in front triggered.  They were moving too fast to be caught by the supercooled air as it shot out into the tunnel, but the Wolves behind weren’t so lucky; they were quickly covered in frost and visibly slowed because of the chill infusing their bodies, but they weren’t otherwise hurt.

Inside of the small room, instead of a Cold Slime, the Snow Hares were confronted by a solitary Winter Wolf, which immediately clamped its teeth onto the first Hare to run into the room.  With a *crunch* and a shake of its head, the powerful jaws crushed the smaller monster in its mouth, before it was torn into two pieces when it shook its head.

The other two Hares didn’t hesitate to attack while this was going on, hopping toward the Wolf and latching onto its neck fur and skin underneath with their strong front teeth.  Even as the Wolf was shaking its head to tear their brethren apart, they pulled their hind legs up so that they were up against her Wolf’s upper chest – and then they pushed with all of their strength.

Two wounds fountained blood as the Hares’ teeth ripped out a chunk of flesh and fur, badly tearing out its throat to the point where it wouldn’t be alive too much longer.  Tempara’s Wolf dropped the now-dead Hare in its jaws and lurched forward after a different Hare, but it stumbled slightly from the blood loss caused by the wounds it had suffered.  Boldy attacking again at the weakness displayed by the Wolf, one of the Hares attempted to jump and latch onto its neck once again, but was intercepted by the Wolf’s set of jaws; it wasn’t dead yet, and it still had some fight in it.

The *crunch* of the second Hare was the only further win for Tempara’s Wolf, however, as the foreign Wolves entered the fray and immediately finished the injured monster off.

Two down, three to go.

Without any hesitation, the remaining invaders headed through the short tunnel to the next room, where the Wolves were hit yet again by a Frigid Blast trap, slowing them down even further.  In the small room, the remaining enemy Hare was facing off against a Cold Slime, though Tempara wouldn’t necessarily call it a fight.  The Hare simply kicked out with its hind leg and pierced the core of the Slime before it could do anything, and the Hare was forced to endure the crushing icy goo on its leg for a few seconds afterward.

Slowed by the Frigid Blast traps and now with a slightly injured hind leg, the group practically walked through the next tunnel, with the Snow Hare up front – which was why it triggered the Pit Trap located right before the entrance to the next room.  The enemy Wolves behind it ignored the plight of the Hare as it fell and snapped its neck on the bottom of the pit, other than to go around the outside of the hole.

Approximately 4 feet from the hole inside of the room was a Snow Hare, which immediately avoided a pair of bites by the slowed Wolves as it hopped backwards.  At the same time, the Dungeon Core triggered something just out of view.

Along the side of the room was a relatively narrow tunnel that Tempara had created, which turned upwards and ascended about 15 feet above the room, which then flattened out at the top.  At the top of this tunnel sat a Snowball, and at her prompting, it quickly started rolling down the tunnel, picking up speed rapidly.  By the time it entered the room, it was fast – much too fast for the slowed Wolves to avoid.  Since they were standing just past the pit in the tunnel, when the Snowball hit them with tremendous force, one of them was flung backward right into the hole, while the other narrowly missed following right after, landing on the edge of the tunnel.

The foreign Wolf wasn’t unscathed, however, as the impact with the Snowball had evidently snapped its foreleg, and it struggled to get up.  Tempara’s Snow Hare took advantage of the Wolf’s injury as it sprinted toward the Wolf and then hopped over its head as the enemy Wolf attempted to bite it.  Flying through the air, the Hare turned its body so that its legs landed against the wall, and then pushed off in one swift movement.  As it flew back toward the injured Wolf, it twisted itself again midflight so that it had its legs pointed toward the larger monster; when it impacted the Wolf, the Hare pushed off against its side, shifting the Wolf just enough on its injured leg that it wasn’t able to stop itself from falling into the pit next to it.

Just like that, the first group of attacking dungeon monsters was finished off.

Pleased, Tempara started the shifting of her monsters forward, so that she could replace the Wolf and the Slime that had been killed.  As for her Hare and Snowball, while there was a small chunk that had been taken out of the large ball’s packed snow, it was largely unharmed – just like the Snow Hare.  The Dungeon Core quickly started work on creating another Wolf and then a Slime to replace those that were shifted forward, as she had gained more than enough Elemental Power from the deaths in her dungeon.

I think this will work out excellently – or at least it has so far.

Granted, three of her traps had been triggered during the assault, but that was to be expected.  The Frigid Blasts were designed to slow down the incoming monsters, making them easier to hit with a Snowball – which was a way to take advantage of a deep hole in her dungeon more than once.

Tempara had observed that the monsters stood near the entrance of each of the rooms while a few of their number killed her single monster, which was usually a slime; this allowed her to take advantage of their pause and placement with her Snowball, adding another kill or two to the trap’s tally that otherwise wouldn’t happen.  It wasn’t foolproof, and she didn’t expect it to work every time, but that wasn’t necessarily the point; the point was that it would work at least some of the time, meaning that her Core would survive longer.

Thankfully, her point was proven not too much longer, as the next group of a dozen Wolves never even made it to her Dungeon Boss.  After the first two Frigid Blast traps, there were two Pit Traps in the next two tunnels.  While her Snowball in the third room failed to knock anyone in the already existing hole, it did manage to injure a pair of Wolves in the process of rolling out from its curving tunnel.  It was then bitten and scratched apart in a matter of seconds, until it collapsed in a large pile of innocuous snow.

The next Pit Trap managed to catch a Wolf off-guard, killing it when it fell inside, and the Snowball that descended slammed into the injured Wolves from the previous room and knocked them into the hole, because they couldn’t move in time.  It also helped that there were so many Wolves attempting to fill each of the 8-foot-wide rooms, because the press of bodies next to each other allowed her Snowball to hit at least a few of them, even if they attempted to move away.

Then the next few tunnels managed to slow down the majority of those left from the original 12 with the aid of Frigid Blast traps, and their numbers were further culled by the next few rooms by the Pit Traps, Wolves, Hares, and Slimes that Tempara had in defense.  The last Wolf remaining made it a total of 10 of the 18 rooms before it was defeated, and all the while Tempara had been creating more of her dead monsters as they made their way through.  By the time the next group arrived, she had replaced every single one that had been killed, though some of the Slimes were still rolling into place in some of the rooms.

Granted, her traps that had been triggered hadn’t been reset yet at this point, but they had done their job.  With the pits still active and her Snowballs at work, a few of the next monster group were killed due to the combination, and Tempara was shocked at how many injuries the heavy Snowball could inflict on the tightly packed crowds, even if it didn’t manage to knock them into a deep hole.

I have to admit, Kiana was correct in her advice.  This has worked out remarkably well so far.

The third group pushed another few rooms further than the second, and the fourth nearly made it to her Dungeon Boss.  It was at that point that Tempara realized she had now survived longer than ever before, but her survival was only temporary.

Looking outside, there were more dungeon monster groups heading in her direction from further away, and some of them were downright huge.  She had periodically observed a gathering of monsters outside of foreign dungeon entrances, which was likely how the Cores managed to build such large forces.  It was similar to what she had planned to do to the Defenders when they came to attack her pack in their den in about a month, but that hadn’t turned out so well during her first incarnation.

The next group managed to get to her Dungeon Boss with about half of their number left, but her giant Wolf took care of them with only a few minor injuries.  By that time, some of her first traps were starting to reset, which was beneficial because Tempara was having trouble replacing the monsters nearest the entrance with new ones, for the simple fact that groups were pushing all the way to her Core room.

The sixth group was larger than anything she had seen in her dungeon, though it consisted of half Hares and half Wolves.  Still, with 20 total attacking monsters, her defending forces and resetting traps were overwhelmed, and with two injured Wolves surviving her Dungeon Boss, her Core was shattered yet again.

* Select your starting location…. *

When Tempara was back in her dungeon, she took a look at her progress.  While none of her monsters had a lot added to their Creation Threshold, there was at least 30 or more for each of them – which meant that she had ended up creating over 120 monsters in just over a day, a new record for her.  The Battle Threshold for everything went up as well by just over 20 for Slimes and twice that for Snowballs, and the Hares and Wolves were already at the limit.  Now all she needed to do was create more of the last two to unlock another Advancement Option, which was why she was including every single monster she had available in her dungeon.  While it slowed down progress toward Threshold for a single monster as opposed to concentrating on one, like she did with the Slimes, she was beginning to learn that the Advancement Options for all of her monsters were important.  The more she could unlock, the better off she would be – and the longer she would survive.

Therefore, she did it all again.  Tempara constructed the rooms, created the monsters, and installed the traps in the same way she had just done in her previous incarnation, though she tweaked the angle of the Snowballs tunnel after seeing it miss the spot she wanted it to hit a few times.  She also changed up the order of her defending monsters a little, after seeing what worked best where, but overall she was happy with the arrangement.

There were other things she thought she could change if she had the time and extra EP, but even with practice, she didn’t think she’d have a lot of either of those things before she was attacked.  If she managed to survive long enough to get to Core Level 5, she was planning on adding even more rooms, more monsters, and more traps – and perhaps even alter the pathing of the current straight tunnel so that getting to her Core wasn’t as straightforward and obvious.

But that wasn’t going to be today, or the next day, or even the next.

She had a lot of traveling back in time to do before she got to that point.

Chapter 17

It was only a matter of a few restarts before Tempara began to see some more progress.  She changed nothing significant about the construction of her dungeon, the creation and placement of her monsters, or the installation of her traps before the first groups of foreign monsters arrived to assault her dungeon.  In fact, the only thing she changed during two incarnations was to experiment with a Dungeon Boss based on the Cold Slime and Snow Hare, but she ended up replacing them with the Winter Wolf almost immediately after seeing that they were smaller and less effective than the deadly Wolf.

In addition, being the soul of a Fox made her a little partial toward having another canine protecting her Core, even if they were completely different.

The rest of the dungeon did exactly what she wanted it to do, however, so she largely left the design alone.  The Creation Thresholds for all her monsters steadily increased, and after being destroyed 8 times – after she had acquired the Snowball monster – Tempara had not just hit the Thresholds for 1 or 2, but for all her available monsters.  It had taken some tweaking of the monster creation in the last iteration, with more Snow Hares, Slimes, and Snowballs than Winter Wolves, but some advice told her that it would be better to have more Advancement Options to choose from than just 1 or 2.

Strangely enough, that advice came from her former master, Kiana.  As she had been going through each time reset, Tempara had been talking with the woman more and more, if only to have conversation with someone other than her own mind.  With everything that had happened to her, it didn’t really hit the former Fox how lonely she was until she went hours without either of them saying anything to each other; the loss of being physically near her pack, as well as not being able to interact with them, was starting to really weigh on her mind.

Therefore, shortly after every incarnation, she would spend hours telling her assistant about everything, if only to have a ready ear at her disposal.  Kiana had not really been responding with any good advice – or really any at all – but that all changed when she started approaching a few Creation Thresholds.

* As the opportunity arises, you would be well-served to achieve the Threshold for all of your monsters simultaneously.  If it is true that your soul is being sent back in time every time your Dungeon Core is destroyed, then it would be beneficial to have more Advancement Options available.  That way, you can choose which ones would work best together, rather than remaining ignorant of future Options. *

It was sound advice, so with some alterations to her last attempt at protecting her Core, Tempara managed to manipulate the number of monsters she was creating to hit all of them at once.  Fortunately, the Battle Thresholds for each of them were easy enough to achieve from the multiple assaults on her dungeon, so that wasn’t a problem.

Now, technically, she had hit the Thresholds for each of her monsters during her last incarnation, but she hadn’t the time to look at them, as she was busy replenishing her monsters and directing them to replace those that had been killed.  On her next arrival to her dungeon, though, she had some time to spend before she accumulated enough EP to increase her Core Level to 2.

* To begin the process of creating your dungeon— *

I’ve got it handled, thanks.

First, she opened her Cold Slime Monster Details, just to confirm that she had the same Glacial Ooze, Frost Elemental, and Ice Golem Options that she had to choose from before.  Instead of selecting one of them, Tempara turned to her other monsters, to see what kinds of Options she had available for her Snow Hare, Winter Wolf, and even her Snowball.

Monster Details

Snow Hare

50 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Snowdrift Hare

100 EP

Icicle Spider

200 EP

Snowflake Pixie

400 EP

Freezing Salamander

750 EP

The Advancement Options were definitely not what she was expecting for the Snow Hare.  The first Option, the Snowdrift Hare, appeared to be a larger version of the basic Snow Hare.  At about 3 feet long, it was nearly as large as the Winter Wolf in body size, though it was lower to the ground and didn’t have the powerful jaws of the larger canine.  The biggest difference from the original – other than the size – was that it had long, sharp claws on its hind legs, which were extremely powerful-looking and would undoubtedly be able to kick out quite hurtfully.  Its teeth were in proportion to its size, which were still long enough to do some serious damage.

Next up was the Icicle Spider, which was a large arachnid with a body the size of a Snow Hare, but its legs were long enough that it was technically larger than a Winter Wolf.  Tempara estimated that it was approximately 4 feet wide, but it wasn’t its size that made it intimidating; rather, it was the lower legs of the Spider, which looked like sharp icicles.  She could only assume that being stabbed by one of the legs would hurt terribly, and with 8 of them available to stab with, the Spider was likely a vicious killer.  When she focused a little more on the Option, she also got the impression that it could spin webs, though what exactly they looked like was unknown.

After the Spider was something called a Snowflake Pixie, which wasn’t something she’d ever seen or heard of before.  Even the knowledge she had somehow gained from Kiana knew nothing about it, so as she focused on the name, the information was new – and strange – to her.

The Snowflake Pixie was all of 6 inches tall, and for the most part it appeared to be a very small Elf with a pair of diaphanous wings on its back, especially with the pointed ears and slightly angled eyes that her former master identified with the race.  However, it was those same eyes that set it apart, because the Pixie’s eyes were actually silvery, glowing orbs that were disproportionately big for its head.  When she added in the teeth – which were all thin, pointed, and long enough to not allow the Pixie to close its mouth – and the crooked claws on each hand, it was quite unlike any Elf that her knowledge had ever seen before.

In addition, from its overall bodily appearance, it seemed to be female, with a white bolt of fabric that covered its upper torso to just above the knees of the rather “normal”-looking legs.  At least, that was the impression that Tempara received when she focused on the information being provided to her mind.

As this would be the smallest of the monsters she’d seen thus far, it took her a moment to figure out why it would cost 400 EP.  Finally, the information she gained from concentrating on the monster’s name provided her with the reason: The Pixie could cast spells, like her former master used to do as a Mage.  These spells were only cold-based, however, such as forming and flinging out spears made of ice to impale targets, or creating an isolated blizzard of snow around a target meant to chill and confuse them.  Essentially, this monster wasn’t meant to physically attack anything up close; instead, it was meant to attack at range with spells.  Despite its mean appearance, Tempara suspected that it would crumple under any direct physical attack.

The last Advancement Option under Snow Hare was the Freezing Salamander at an obscenely large cost of 750 EP.  When she focused on it, she discovered that it was basically a large, lizard-type monster, 10 feet long from its head to the tip of its tail, with dark blue scales that appeared to be covered in a thin layer of ice for extra protection.  Its head was relatively small in proportion to its body; out of that head, or more precisely its mouth, was the ability to periodically breathe the same supercooled mist as her Frigid Blast traps.

That freezing breath, combined with the durable defense of its scales and the long, curved claws on its feet that appeared capable of scratching stone, meant that this monster was even better at defense than the Ice Golem Option available from her Cold Slime.  There was no indication of how fast it was, but she suspected that it was relatively slow to travel, as the ice-covered scales probably weighed it down a little.

This is harder to choose than I thought it would be.

Before she made any decisions, though, she had 2 other monsters that had reached their Thresholds.

Monster Details

Winter Wolf

125 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Winter Dire Wolf

250 EP

Whiteout Panther

350 EP

Polar Bear

450 EP

Yeti

800 EP

I’m beginning to see a theme here.

From what Tempara could tell, it appeared as though the first Option for the three basic monsters she had started with were basically upgrades of the original, such as the Glacial Ooze, Snowdrift Hare, and now the Winter Dire Wolf.  In this case, the Winter Dire Wolf was almost twice as big as the original Winter Wolf, with longer teeth, a stronger jaw, and sharper claws.  Other than that, there didn’t seem to be too much of a difference other than size, and possibly being faster.

For the other Advancement Options, the Whiteout Panther was next at 350 EP.  With a sleek fur that was as pure white as newly fallen snow, as well as eyes, ears, and nose of the same color, the Panther would be able to hide in a snow drift and be entirely invisible to those relying on visual clues. While it was only as large as the original Winter Wolf in terms of size, what made the Panther special was its ability to burrow through loose snow almost as fast as it could run, which was remarkably fast.  From what Tempara could tell, it was as if the feline monster ignored snow like it wasn’t even there, treating it as if it was simply air.

Next up was the Polar Bear at 450 EP, which she remembered seeing before when her former master took her in the dungeon that ended their previous lives.  At 9 feet long and nearly 5 feet tall at the shoulder, the white-furred bear was almost the complete opposite from the Whiteout Panther.  There was no sneakiness nor subtlety about the package of compact muscle; instead, the monster was designed to use its immense strength to hurt its targets, striking out with its enormous paws to batter around its enemies.  That wasn’t to say that its teeth couldn’t tear open its victims with ease, but with its thick fur, strong muscle, and extra fat around its body, the Polar Bear was meant to resist quite a bit of damage while smacking around its foes.

The last of the Winter Wolf’s Advancement Options was something Tempara was intimately familiar with: the Yeti.  Unlike the 25-foot-tall Dungeon Boss that had finished Kiana and her bonded Fox off, this Yeti was only 7 feet tall standing on two feet.  Its arms were as heavily muscled as a Polar Bear’s, yet were long enough to nearly touch the floor as it stood upright.  The white and ice-blue fur covering its body was easily recognizable to Tempara, as well as the curly horns that emerged from the top of its head and the tusks located on the sides of its mouth.

Was it worth the cost of 800 EP, though?  It didn’t seem to have any special abilities, no magic, or anything other than its raw strength – which was comparable to the Polar Bear.  As she dug further into it, what it seemed to lack in any special physical characteristics was overshadowed by its intelligence and dexterity.  Not only could it pick things up to use as weapons, such as a fallen stalactite, but it could move around with alacrity that was more akin to a Snow Hare or the Whiteout Panther.

Its adaptability was its strongest asset, or that was the impression that she received from the information provided.

Again, these choices are becoming more difficult as time goes on.

She still had one more monster left to look at, however.

Monster Details

Snowball

100 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Armed Snowball

200 EP

Snowbeast

500 EP

As had been the trend, the first Advancement Option available for the Snowball was something called Armed Snowball.  Other than being about a foot wider than the original Snowball, the “Armed” version had two long appendages that could emerge from either side of the ball that acted like arms.  These arms were good for a multitude of things, such as touching the ground to help the Snowball turn while in rolling motion or acting as implements of destruction if the sphere rotated in place, sturdily smacking into whatever was around it. Again, it was an improvement over the original, but nothing entirely new.

The Snowbeast, on the other hand, was quite a bit different.  While it was still mostly made of compacted snow like the Snowballs, this one was sized and shaped like a Polar Bear but with 6 thick, stubby legs; on either side of its ovoid-shaped body was a large mouth, which had sharp icicles for teeth.  The mouths’ openings were large enough to fit a Winter Wolf inside of them. To help with that process, a pair of vine-like, white snow tentacles came out of the middle of the Snowbeast’s back.  These appendages were long and flexible enough to reach a few feet in front of each mouth, and they could be used to ensnare victims and drag them into the awaiting maw.

The variety of different monsters she now had to choose from was a good thing to have, Tempara supposed, but it also made choosing the right ones a bit more difficult.  After her assistant had given good advice when she had helped the Dungeon Core choose the Snowball, she decided to ask the woman again.

What do you think I should do?  I’m still looking primarily into defense right now.  I need to stay alive a lot longer than I currently am.

Thankfully, it didn’t seem to matter that she hadn’t yet taken the time to explain her life story to her former master during this new incarnation; her assistant responded after about a minute, and it seemed as though she had considered all of Tempara’s knowledge and statement that she was looking for defensive monsters.  On top of that, there was more of Kiana’s tone in the voice in her mind than was usual this soon after being introduced to each other.

* While your overall motives are unusual, the way you are prioritizing defense over attacking other dungeons means to me that you need a comprehensive defense team.  To this end, I would recommend picking the Frost Elemental from your Cold Slime Advancement Options, the Snowflake Pixie from your Snow Hare Options, the Whiteout Panther from your Winter Wolf Options, and the Snowbeast from your Snowball Options. *

Those choices seemed entirely different from what Tempara had been leaning toward.  She had been thinking about getting the Ice Golem, the Icicle Spider, the Polar Bear and the Armed Snowball; her thoughts were all about doing as much damage as possible to the incoming monsters with a minimum of cost, and these seemed like the best options.  With the Ice Golem and the Polar Bear being the most expensive, she was thinking of using them just before the Dungeon Boss, in order to soften up any monsters that made it that far.

Why those ones?

* Based on your use of the Frigid Blast and Pit Trap knowledge you possess, it seems as though you want to specialize in eliminating any threats using unconventional means.  In this case, unconventional means not placing increasingly stronger monsters in subsequent rooms until they arrive at your Dungeon Boss. *

And these monsters will help me do that?

* Yes.  The Frost Elemental will allow you to have some extra slowing capabilities for a relatively small EP cost, and it has a wide range of effect.  The Snowflake Pixie is perfect for ranged attacks, which is something that you currently lack.  The Whiteout Panther will allow you to attack from hidden locations as an ambush.  Lastly, the Snowbeast is large and durable enough to act as a substantial defender while your other monsters work together to thin out the numbers of attackers. *

That was a different way of looking at what she could do.  While she had technically combined different monsters together in the same room, such as her Snowballs with whatever monster was keeping the invaders in place, her assistant appeared to want her to expand upon those combinations.

Is this a common tactic in other dungeons?

* No.  As was said before, this tactic is unconventional. *

Unconventional, huh?  I wonder…?

Curiously enough, Tempara thought she understood what was being suggested.  Her experience being bonded to her former master – as horrific and wrong as it was – had taught her a few things that were only enforced by the sudden knowledge that had been implanted in her mind.  She remembered the Defender group that had gone with Tempara and Kiana into that dungeon, and how they all seemed to be adept in different specializations.  Even her former master had specialized in casting spells – even if she hadn’t been accomplished at it at the time.

So, what her assistant seemed to be saying was that she should try to treat her own monsters in the same way, allowing them to work together as a team rather than as individuals.  Her memories of the dungeon that had led to her death showed that other dungeons didn’t think that way, as each room had only the same monsters in them, which only became stronger as they advanced.  This was something… new, which Tempara hadn’t necessarily thought of before.

I… see your point.  Let’s do it.

With her selections now confirmed, she acquired the Frost Elemental, the Snowflake Pixie, the Whiteout Panther, and the Snowbeast.  With those additions, she now had 8 total monsters to choose from; soon enough, after another few incarnations, she was hoping to have some new Advancement Options for her two most-commonly used traps, as well.  For now, though, Tempara had to rethink her dungeon strategy with consideration of her new monsters.

Chapter 18

I think I know what I did wrong.

The answer was obvious as soon as the first foreign monsters started to arrive, though for some reason it hadn’t occurred to the Dungeon Core while she was setting up everything in her dungeon.

The rooms she had made were entirely too small.

Tempara had expanded each of the small rooms she had been constructing to fit her new Snowbeast, because otherwise it was entirely too large to even move around.  A 12-foot-wide cube, she had thought, was more than enough for it to move around and allow its appendages to strike out.  The larger rooms meant that she couldn’t construct nearly as many as she had before, as they both took longer and required more EP, which was quickly becoming scarce with the more costly monsters she had just picked up.  With only 8 rooms, instead of nearly 20, she intended them to be even more effective at defense than anything she had made before.

What she hadn’t taken into account was how her own monsters would get in each other’s way.  By the time she had noticed how her Frost Elemental would start affecting her Snowbeast by slowing it down, or how the small Pixie’s spells would accidentally hit the large snow-compacted monster, it was too late to do more than shift some of them around for later assaults.  When she added in the fact that there wasn’t nearly enough loose snow around for her Whiteout Panther to hide and take advantage of the camouflage, her defense fell apart.  Her Core did end up surviving for one group longer than her previous incarnations, thanks to the strength and size of her Snowbeasts, but she didn’t exactly call that a victory.

She was going to have to try something else.  Her normal method of making small rooms in order to maximize the number of battles for Battle Thresholds wasn’t going to work anymore.  Or at least, not with her limited time and resources.  Instead, she was going to have to rely on a combination of strategies in order to pull it off.

Everything was going to have to happen in stages, as well.  What she really needed to construct and create was a powerful defense that could withstand many different groups assaulting her dungeon without completely collapsing after a few invasions.  The piecemeal strategy was still viable for gaining Thresholds, but that would come after she was able to prove that her assistant’s strategy for her monster selections were going to work.

So, to begin with, after she achieved Core Level 2, Tempara began work on the biggest room she’d ever constructed just outside of her Core room, which was even larger than her normal Core room when she made space for her Dungeon Boss.  She estimated that it would take nearly 14 hours to construct, as it was approximately 100 feet wide and 100 feet long, as well as being 30 feet tall. The large area was necessary, however, because of what she was going to put inside of it.

While that was under construction, the Dungeon Core saved up enough EP to get to Core Level 3, and she continued to allow her Accumulation Rate to gather Elemental Power instead of spending it on anything other than construction.  Just before the feeding frenzy started outside her dungeon in the early morning, she was able to advance to Core Level 4, increasing her AR to 20 per minute, which was necessary to afford everything with which she was going to fill her new room.

With 8 hours to go until she was going to be attacked, her new room was finally finished.  To begin with, she used her accumulating EP to fill the room with a layer of snow a foot deep, and then began adding large hills of snow that were 15 feet tall around the perimeter, surrounding the center of the room in a vague circle.  The only easy access to the center of the room was from the entrance and the exit to the Core room, which was exactly how she wanted it to be.

Thankfully, constructing snow and placing it all around the room was much less expensive in terms of EP and required very little time, so that left her free to start creating monsters and placing traps.

In the center of the room, she built up a platform of packed snow that was 5 feet tall with sloping sides, which nearly butted up to the surrounding hills of snow.  On top of the platform, Tempara began to create and place a trio of Snowbeasts, which practically filled the space all by themselves, especially when she spread them out so that they were distant from each other – so as not to get in each other’s way.  Hidden in the surrounding snow hills, 5 Whiteout Panthers were created and instructed to stay camouflaged until they had targets that they could ambush.  The Dungeon Core was glad to see that even though she knew where they were because of her connection with them, she couldn’t see the Panthers when they were hidden inside of the snow.

Flying about a dozen or so feet above the perimeter of the platform were 4 Snowflake Pixies, who were hopefully spaced out enough not to hurt each other or the Snowbeasts down below.  They were there to attack from above, and as they were far out of leaping range, it was doubtful that any of the incoming monsters could reach them.

Around the perimeter of the platform were 6 Frost Elementals, whose purpose was to chill and slow down any monsters that arrived; they weren’t intended to do a lot of damage themselves, but to act as a means of easing the jobs of every other monster in the room.  Their wide area attacks were perfect for the open space, and it was her hope that they could attack and then retreat before they were overwhelmed.

Lastly, Tempara installed two Icicle Rain traps, one just inside of the entrance and one at the exit to her Core room.  To ensure that they were at least partially effective, three Cold Slimes were arrayed behind the activation area, which would hopefully stop the incoming attackers so that they took the brunt of the icicles falling from above.

With less than an hour remaining until the first attack, she spent the rest of the time letting her EP accumulate, as she hadn’t even had the free time or Power to create a Dungeon Boss.  She briefly thought about making a simple Slime a Boss, but she’d rather wait until she had enough to make her massive Wolf.  Later, if her current plan succeeded the way she was hoping, she might upgrade it into something that could protect her Core even better.

The first group arrived, the same as usual with 2 Winter Wolves and 3 Snow Hares, and they ran through the long tunnel until they arrived at the entrance to what Tempara was mentally calling the Snow room.  They ran inside with the Hares out front, which triggered the Icicle Rain trap, and they were stopped by the trio of Slimes she had placed to halt their progress.

The Hares didn’t get a chance to attack her gel-like monsters, however, as all three of them were impaled from above by the icicles that rained down on them.  Even as they died from the impacts, the Wolves following them ran inside the room, noticed the icicles falling, and ran around the trap area to engage the Slimes.  Two of her Slimes were killed within seconds, as jaws clamped around her monsters’ internal cores, but one of the Snowflake Pixies was close enough in the air to attack one of the Wolves.

That was the moment she learned something else about the foreign monsters assaulting her dungeon.  When faced by a strong attack, even when engaged with another target, the entire group is almost guaranteed to ignore the prior target to try and eliminate the biggest threat.

A 6-inch-long icicle had impaled the side of one of the Wolves, thanks to the Pixie in the air, and while it wasn’t an immediately fatal attack, it definitely caused a lot of blood to spill in the process and marginally debilitated the Wolf.  Despite that, it and the other foreign Wolf ignored the last Slime in an attempt to jump at the Pixie high up in the air, but they fell quite short.

What they didn’t fall short of was the edge of the center platform, where they were immediately covered in a frosty mist expelled by the Frost Elementals nearby.  As they turned to attack the new targets, Tempara instructed them to retreat, floating up to the platform and behind the Snowbeasts waiting for their victims.

As the Dungeon Core had hoped, the foreign Wolves didn’t hesitate to follow, where they were snatched up by a wiggly, compacted snow appendage that emerged from the backs of a pair of the Snowbeasts.  Even as they snarled and attempted to bite the snow tentacle wrapped around their backs, they were pulled into the teeth-filled maw of the much larger monsters.

Tempara thought she was becoming immune to the savagery and death of dungeon monsters over the numerous times she had been sent back in time, but watching the head being bitten off a Wolf by a Snowbeast made her turn away for a moment.

Needless to say, she was glad when all the bodies and blood started to disappear over the next minute or so.

I guess that worked pretty well, but that first group was never very difficult.

Even as she replaced the two Slimes that had been killed and then moved them away from the triggered Icicle Rain trap and nearer to the platform, she looked at her current EP and realized she had enough to make her Wolf Dungeon Boss, thanks to the small influx of Elemental Power provided by the deaths of the foreign monsters.  After starting the creation of the Boss, she looked at her Snow room to see if everything was as it should be.

Alright, here we go.

Next up was the dozen Winter Wolves, who descended upon the Snow room at a run, before skidding on the snow as they stopped in front of the 3 Cold Slimes arranged in front of them.  As she had learned through all of her incarnations, even if there were other visible targets in range, any foreign monsters would stop right at what was in front of them.  Of course, as she had just learned, their attention could certainly be diverted – and it soon was, by the two Pixies that were close enough to attack from above.  Just as before, even though two of Slimes were killed almost instantly, leaving the third ripe for the attack, the entire group of a dozen Winter Wolves turned their attention to the Pixies.

With two of them now with icicles impaled in their back, they then ran into 3 of the Frost Elementals, who liberally covered them in supercooled mist before attempting to flee.  One of the Elementals wasn’t fast enough in its escape as one of the Wolves managed to jump into its center mass and bite down on the solidified core of the monster, killing it instantly.  The attack left the foreign Wolf nearly solidified, itself, as in the process of the attack it had been surrounded by even more frosty mist, and it fell to the snow frozen into immobility.  Tempara could tell that it hadn’t necessarily been killed, but it was out of the fight.

The three Snowbeasts on top of the central snow platform grabbed 6 of the Wolves as they attempted to run by in their pursuit of the Frost Elementals.  The remaining 5, including the pair that had been impaled by icicles courtesy of the overhead Pixies, saw this happen and attempted to go around the platform, ostensibly to catch the Elementals; unfortunately for them, they passed by the hidden locations of the Whiteout Panthers along the perimeter, which exploded out of the snow in a shower of white powder.

Landing on the backs of their targeted Wolves, the Panthers brought their victims down to the snow, where they savagely tore into them with their deadly claws, along with ripping out throats with their long, feline fangs.  They were so quick with their ambush, however, that they had pounced, savaged their victims, and then bounded back into the snowy hills in a matter of seconds. The remaining pair of injured Wolves barely had a chance to react before they were hit again by icicles from the sky, this time doing enough damage that they slowed down considerably, one with a heavy limp from an icy projectile through its upper shoulder. They were so slow by that time that they couldn’t avoid another round of icicles, which this time finished them off by hitting something vital inside of their bodies.

One of the Snowbeasts lost an appendage as it was chewed through, but as soon as the successful Wolf dropped to the ground, the last Panther burst out of the nearest snow hill and leaped at least a dozen feet horizontally to pounce on the recovering monster.  The abrupt attack was too much for the Wolf, and while it got in a good bite on the Panther’s back while it struggled to free itself, it was too little, too late.

The other 5 Wolves that were still caught by Snowbeast appendages shared a bloody fate as snacks for the gaping maws of the large, compacted snow monsters.  With an icicle to its head, the half-frozen Wolf that had killed the Frost Elemental was quickly finished. The assault was completed.

All-in-all, it was a success.  Granted, two of her Slimes and one of her Frost Elementals had been killed, but with a little over 850 EP gained from the deaths of both foreign monsters and her own, she had more than enough to replace them.  She could even eliminate her slightly injured Panther and replace it, but she didn’t think it was necessary; the wound had already stopped bleeding, and it would slowly heal.  Besides, it wasn’t hurt badly, it was just that the blood was certainly visible amongst its pure white coat.

Replacing the dead monsters in her dungeon was simple enough, but the surplus EP from the assault meant that she had finally found a way to maintain her defense without it slowly depleting through attrition.  She could come out ahead of most attacks from foreign monsters, at least for the time being; what had lately led to her demise in her previous incarnations was that the longer she lasted, the more numerous the forces were that attacked her dungeon.

By being ahead of her defenses until then, she could add to what she already had and prepare for their coming.

This is working.  With this turning point, I think I can actually survive more than 24 hours; in fact, I might even be able to survive for a few days or more.  Who knows? I might even be able to finally get a chance to stop the Defenders from killing my pack.

Only time would tell.

Chapter 19

What are they doing here?

There was no reason why a group of Defenders should’ve been snooping around her dungeon – or at least she didn’t think so.  Tempara hadn’t sent out any monsters, after all, so it was inconceivable that they would show up, especially after everything had been going quite a bit better than even she had predicted.

After the first few initial groups had gone through her dungeon and had been defeated with minimal losses, the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core had slowly started to expand, using her positive influx of Elemental Power.  It first began with some small rooms just before her Snow room, similar to the ones that she had been using before acquiring her new monsters.  This was simply to continue utilizing Snow Hares, Winter Wolves, and Snowballs to allow them to reach their Thresholds again, as well as adding in some Pit Traps and Frigid Blasts.

Even with subsequent groups blowing through these few rooms without too many problems, the incoming foreign monsters still suffered from a few injuries or losses because of the traps.  By the time they hit the Snow room, they were a bit more disorganized, which meant that her team of monsters defending the area could take advantage of their loss in group cohesion.

Overall, there was still a net gain in EP, especially since she hadn’t crippled her Accumulation Rate with dozens of traps.  In order to add more rooms with monsters, however, she needed to increase her Core Level again to boost her Monster Threshold.  Getting that done was the next step, and at Core Level 5 she had a Monster Threshold of 24; with the allowance of 50% more allowed in her dungeon, that meant she could have a total of 36 monsters without having to send any outside.

After that was done, Tempara really started to alter the layout of her dungeon.  The first thing she did was start adding additional tunnels branching off from her smaller rooms, connecting to even more small rooms that intersected with others.  These new rooms were all connected together in a large grid of 24, each of them the same distance from each other, and they all appeared as identical as possible.

Then, doing something she had yet to do – but had always wanted to – she closed off the main tunnel access that led straight to her Snow room.  After checking with her assistant to see if this was allowed, she found that as long as there was still a route that led to her Core room, any disruption in the Elemental Power Accumulation process would be minimal.  Tempara wished that she could dig down to add multiple elevations, but that was not allowed or even possible; only digging straight or up was possible, as the original elevation needed to stay undisturbed.  Even the Pit Traps, which “dug” a hole in the floor, weren’t actually altering the elevation, as they were magical in nature; when removed, the Pit Trap would return the floor to its previous state.

There were some ways to get around the downward-digging restriction, which she would accomplish later, but for the moment she was content with simply blocking off the straight access to her Snow room and her Core behind.  Instead, any incoming monsters would have to make a choice as to which direction to go, because only by going through the grid of small rooms would they be able to make their way closer to her Dungeon Core.

It was after implementing this maze of rooms that she discovered one more thing: Foreign monsters had no way of “sniffing out” the right direction to go.  She was able to block off multiple connections between the Grid rooms to make it not as obvious where the right path may be, and half the time the incoming groups would hit dead ends or loop around for a few minutes before finally choosing the right direction.  These delays were always beneficial for Tempara because the groups would inevitably encounter traps and defending monsters inside the Grid rooms, and the Dungeon Core would be able to create replacements for any of her own that died – many times before the invaders reached her Snow room, where they would then be obliterated.

After 48 hours of constant battles, she was beginning to see the limit in group size from the other dungeons.  The largest group she had seen assault her dungeon was 30 in total, with over half of those being Snow Hares; that size of force actually did more damage than most, killing 1 of her Snowbeasts, 3 of her Frost Elementals, all 4 of her Panthers, and – as unlikely as it sounded – 1 of her Snowflake Pixies.  Whether it was just happenstance or the monsters were learning, Tempara was shocked when one of the foreign Wolves picked up an enemy Snow Hare in its jaws by the scruff of its neck and then whipped their head around quickly, sending the Hare flying.  It wasn’t a perfect throw, but the airborne Hare was able to stretch out its hind legs at just the right moment to impact a Pixie’s wings as it passed by, sending the tiny monster to the ground – where it was quickly trampled and neatly bitten in half by another Wolf.

Still, despite the losses during that assault, Tempara was able to replace every lost monster by the time another group arrived.  More than that, after 3 full days of survival, she had accumulated enough EP to achieve Core Level 6.

Core Display

Core Name:

Tempara

Core Level:

6

Designation:

Frozen Cohort

Level Threshold:

21,000 EP

Elemental Power (EP):

0 EP

Accumulation Rate (AR):

19 (-11) EP/minute

Defensible Rooms:

26

Available Monsters:

8

Monster Threshold:

30

Available Traps:

3

Monsters:

Cold Slime

Snow Hare

Snowball

25 EP

50 EP

100 EP

Winter Wolf

Frost Elemental

Whiteout Panther

125 EP

200 EP

350 EP

Snowflake Pixie

Snowbeast

400 EP

500 EP

Traps:

Pit Trap

Frigid Blast

Icicle Rain

0.5 AR

0.5 AR

1 AR

Core Abilities:

Construct Dungeon

Create Monster

Install Trap

(EP cost – varies)

(EP cost – varies)

(AR cost – varies)

Skills/Knowledge:

Monster Creation

Trap Installation

Temporal Manipulation

(Total Available: 8)

(Total Available: 3)

(Total Available: 1)

Not only was she able to now have 45 monsters inside of her dungeon at one time, but she was still accumulating nearly 20 EP per minute.  Her AR would start going down when she implemented the next step in her dungeon construction, however.

Having seen the benefits of snow inside of her Snow room, if only because it allowed her Whiteout Panthers to hide within their depths for ambush purposes, she decided to see what she could do with ice.  She started construction on 2 different rooms, which were bigger than her Grid rooms, but it was more that they were longer rather than wider or taller.

Just past the Grid, she constructed a hallway of sorts, which was 8 feet tall, 8 feet wide, and 80 feet long.  After it was complete, Tempara coated the entire floor with a layer of ice a few inches thick, and then installed 6 Pit Traps spread around the room, which blended in with the ice almost perfectly.  While ideally, she would’ve preferred to install them right next to each other, creating a much larger hole that the incoming monsters couldn’t avoid, she had already discovered that there had to be a minimum distance of at least 8 feet in between each trap on all sides.

To add to the chaos that was sure to erupt in the room, with all of the ice and the Pit Traps, Tempara constructed very tall ramps that led upward along the sides of the room, where a Snowball could be placed, which could descend the ramp and slam into anything trying to slide by.  Their objective wasn’t necessarily to hit any foreign monsters, but to make them lose their footing to try and avoid getting hit, which could inevitably lead to them sliding into a hole.

The Snowballs wouldn’t just run into the opposite wall, however, but would roll up another ramp she constructed on the other side.  Once it rolled up, it would slow to a stop – and then roll back down, continuing the process until it finally lost momentum.  That would likely be after the current group of monsters was either dead or passed through the room, and then the Snowballs could be reset to their positions at the top of the ramps.

For some more fun in the room, she also moved the trio of Slimes in the Snow room near the final Icicle Rain trap to the Ice room, where the gooey monsters could roam around the ice with absolutely no problem, as if it wasn’t ice they were on.  They wouldn’t do much good on their own, so they were there as distractions and for getting in an attack as sliding monsters slid past, so it was worth it.

Past the Ice room was another very similar room in terms of size, as it was longer than it was wide.  This one, however, went up in elevation.

Since she couldn’t dig down using her dungeon construction abilities, the only other option she had was to dig up.  Tempara had already done this many times for her Snowballs, but this time she created an entire room that angled upwards for about 35 feet, leveled off for 10 feet, and then – coming from the opposite side – angled up to the top for 35 feet.  The result wasn’t very steep, as it only went up from the normal elevation about 15 feet total, but that was more than enough for her purposes.  Once it was constructed, just to the side of the main tunnel, she closed off the main thoroughfare and connected the new room with slight trepidation, as she was hoping that the change in elevation wouldn’t matter for the accumulation of Elemental Power.

Thankfully, it didn’t.

With relief, she finished all the construction.  On the ramp upwards – which was closest to the entrance, and which the monsters would have to navigate – she placed another sheet of ice a few inches thick, making the entire ramp a slick slide of sorts.  At the bottom of the slide she placed another Pit Trap, and along the walls heading up she placed 4 Frigid Blast traps, which would serve to slow down those trying to scramble up the ice.

On the leveled-out portion of her new Slide room, Tempara created 2 more Snowballs and had them wait there until something attempted to climb upwards.  Simple and effective, or so it proved.

It turned out that the claws on Winter Wolves and Snow Hares were quite adept at scratching into the ice in both her Slide and Ice rooms, stabilizing them enough to walk over the slick material, but trying to avoid obstacles heading in their direction was a little more difficult.  Over the next 24 hours after her Slide and Ice rooms were finished, dozens of monsters were either rolled over by compacted Snowballs or lost their footing when trying to avoid such a fate, falling into open pits conveniently located nearby.  Snow Hares hit by a Snowball rolling at speed rarely lived, and even Wolves that somehow avoided being knocked into a hole were injured from the impact, many times seriously.

Line-of-sight also played a part in killing more foreign monsters than she thought possible, especially in the Ice room.  Once a Snowball rolled down and then disappeared up the opposite walls’ ramps, assaulting Hares and Wolves seemed to forget it was there – and so they were surprised when it came back.  As long as it wasn’t in their sightline, it was as if they didn’t exist – which was why very few of the enemy monsters stayed to fight the Snowballs, unlike every other defending monster in the dungeon.

For a little more than 5 full days, her Dungeon Core was protected, and Tempara was even getting close to the required 21,000 EP to achieve Core Level 7 – which would allow her to expand even more.  The Creation and Battle Thresholds for all of her monsters were steadily increasing as attrition in their ranks meant replacement, and even her traps were quickly reaching their own Thresholds after being activated so many times.  To help the Installation Threshold along, she periodically eliminated one or another and then replaced them. It took twice as long to install than to let them reset themselves for use, but she knew it would be worth it to eventually unlock some new trap-based Advancement Options.

She was even beginning to believe that she might survive until she could save her pack in a few weeks, but then a group of Defenders showed up at her entrance.

* It is quite possible that they have been watching all of the surrounding dungeons send their monsters toward your own, which would likely indicate a need for them to investigate. *

Great.  Not what I need right now.

Worse yet, she recognized these particular Defenders.  They were the same ones that had killed her during her first incarnation, when she had sent out a single Cold Slime to start the building of her eventual forces.

What were their names?

It felt like a lifetime ago when her Core was destroyed by the armored Defender’s sword, mainly because she had lost track of how many times she had reset back to when her younger self was born.

“Was this here a few days ago?  I don’t remember hearing any reports of more monsters across the border, do you, Jonas?”

Ah, that’s right.  Jonas is the armored Defender in charge… and he shattered me with the sword at his hip.

The one speaking to him was… was… Mitchell!  She remembered the Defender well, as he had been checking for traps the entire time he walked through the long tunnel that led to her Core room, and was confused at not finding any.

That’s certainly different this time.

“No, not that I’ve heard,” Jonas replied, looking down the long tunnel, which was still lengthy in the beginning because Tempara had yet to do anything with it.  “But with so many tracks leading here, there has to be something going on.”

Darn it, those other Cores are going to get me killed!  Seems as though you’re right, Kiana.

Her assistant didn’t respond, which was good, because Tempara was too busy watching the Defenders cautiously walk inside.  As she had experienced before, the Dungeon Core felt as if her access to the dungeon had been severely limited, and she knew before she even attempted it that she wouldn’t be able to create any monsters, install any traps, or construct anything while the Defenders were inside.  Her Accumulation Rate also dropped to 0 as it was basically frozen because of their presence.

She had thousands of EP on hand, but she couldn’t even use any of it.

I guess I can see how well my defenses will work against them, right?  It’ll at least allow me to gauge how far I have to go before I can stop what will happen to my pack.

She didn’t have high hopes that she would survive, especially since her defenses were designed to protect against foreign monsters, not the Kingdom’s people.  Regardless, it was sure to be a learning experience.

Chapter 20

“Ever seen anything like this?” the Defender named Mitchell asked, while also pointing out something.  “Watch out, there’s a trap in this section right here.”

“No, I can’t say that I have.  I think we were right to check this dungeon out.”

Tempara watched them look at the bottom of the Slide room, with the sheet of ice leading upwards at an angle.  Jonas eventually looked over at the woman in the thick, fur robe that had accompanied them, as she was leaning on her blackened, wood staff and peering curiously ahead.  “Can you melt it, Rose?”

The woman, who had some fire spells – if the Dungeon Core remembered correctly – shook her head.  “No.  Well, yes, but to melt that much would deplete a large chunk of my available Mana.  So, no, not a good idea.”

The Defender leader nodded his head, as if he was expecting that response.  “Fair enough.  Mitchell, arrows?”

The bow-wielding Defender shrugged.  “They’ll stick in the ice, but I doubt it’ll be enough.  How about I go it alone and then toss down my rope? I’ll anchor it while the rest of you climb up.”

“You sure?  We don’t know what’s up there.”

Mitchell shrugged again.  “I’ll be careful; it’s what I do, you know?”

Jonas glanced back at the entrance down the tunnel, as if he was debating coming back later.  Turning back to the other Defender, he said, “Fine; but be careful.  And run if you see anything you can’t handle.”

With a nod, the agile-footed Mitchell started up the incline, avoiding the Pit Trap at the bottom that had reset.  Unfortunately for Tempara, none of the Frigid Blasts were ready to trigger along the walls, but she did have 2 Snowballs ready at the top.

Despite not having claws to dig into the ice like most of the monsters that assaulted her dungeon, the Defender handled the ice slide amazingly well.  He didn’t walk as quickly as he would on level ground, but he advanced steadily upward, checking the ice beneath his feet, the walls on either side of him, and even the ceiling for any sign of traps, but he obviously didn’t see any that he needed to worry about.  When he was approximately halfway up, Tempara sent both Snowballs forward, and they topped the lip of the slide a second later, before descending with speed at the preoccupied Defender.

“Look out!” Jonas shouted from down below, though it was unnecessary.  Mitchell had already seen the two compacted-snow monsters heading in his direction, and he had steadied himself on the ice.  Then, in an amazing, acrobatic show of his agility, just before they would’ve impacted him, he jumped high and to the side, where he kicked off the wall, propelling himself even higher.  He did an unnecessary flip in the air as his wall-jump sent him over the rolling Snowballs, and he landed behind them on the ice.

His agility wasn’t enough to prevent him from slipping on the ice as soon as he made contact, and he slid down at least a dozen feet after the Snowballs passed, but he caught himself and stood back up without being any worse for wear.  Down at the bottom of the slide, Jonas was there in front of the other two Defenders, Rose and the one that Tempara knew was likely some sort of healer, with his shield at the ready.  The large balls of snow were stopped when they hit his shield, rebounding off as if they had hit a wall; a large chunk of snow was knocked off them as they landed hard, the damage to themselves from impacting the simple defense quite non-proportional to the damage they caused – which was none.

As they started to move on their own, turning to head back up the ice, Tempara saw all of the watching Defenders eyes widen in surprise.

“Those are monsters!” Rose exclaimed, and Jonas immediately went on the offensive, his sword chopping deeply through both Snowballs before they could fully recover and head back up the slide.  It took a few more hits to completely demolish them, but there was no real risk to the Defenders at that point.

“That… that was new.  Haven’t seen or heard of those before,” the healer said.  As he bent down to inspect the remains of the Snowballs, Mitchell kept climbing, with his head on a swivel.

“Anything salvageable, Georgie?”

The healer, Georgie, shook his head at the leader’s question.  “Not that I can see; it looks like this thing was simply compacted snow.  I’ll take a little bit of it with me to bring back and investigate.”

That said, the kneeling Defender picked up a few chunks and they disappeared, which Tempara knew from her implanted knowledge was due to some sort of Defender storage bag.  A moment later, the end of a thin rope was tossed down to those down below from Mitchell, who had arrived at the top without any other issues – not that there was anything else to bother him, as none of her traps on the slide were active at the moment.

The scout up top ended up anchoring the rope to himself, and he held it while the others walked their way up, with much more slipping and falling than the agile Defender.  Still, within a few minutes, everyone was at the top without any injuries – and then they were walking much more easily along the downslope.

“More ice?  At least it’s not uphill.”

The Defenders had a much easier time navigating their way across the slippery floor in the Ice room, but the Snowballs coming out from the sides gave them a little trouble.  Unfortunately for Tempara, all of the Pit Traps in the room were open, so there was no surprise for the group.  Even with them open and obvious, there was a moment when Jonas blocked an incoming Snowball with his shield, bringing it to a stop; at the same time, being on ice, he slid backward and slightly to the side from the impact, where a foot dropped inside one of the pits.  He was saved by a quick grab from Mitchell, who raced to his side and grabbed him before he could fully topple down into the hole.

The Slimes inside of the room raised some curiosity, but they were annihilated from afar by the efforts of Rose, who shot out darts of fire at high speed with astonishing accuracy. The fire darts penetrated their gelatinous bodies and pierced their internal cores in a single shot each.

Overall, the room was a failure, but it also almost dropped one of the Defenders down a hole.  Tempara wasn’t sure if it would’ve killed the durable and armored leader, but it certainly would’ve slowed them all down.  It might’ve even made them turn back, which was also a possibility when they entered the Grid.

“Is this some sort of maze?  This place keeps getting more and more odd as we go on.  Do you think we should head back and let the Order leadership know about this?”

That was Georgie, the healer, after they had taken a few turns in the large complex of small rooms.  The group had no problems avoiding the few traps that were reset, and the Hares and Wolves scattered throughout were no problem for the dangerous Defenders.

Jonas seemed to think about it for a moment before shaking his head – and dashing Tempara’s hopes.  “No, I’d rather this dungeon not get any stronger, especially after seeing how different it is.  It’ll be better to just destroy it than have to worry about it later.”

When they approached the Snow room, however, they nearly rethought that idea.

“I’ve never seen those Snowbeasts before.  I’ve seen the Pixies up in the air, but they’re usually found in the stronger dungeons right before the sweep,” Mitchell said, pointing at Tempara’s flying monsters.

Jonas nodded at the floating monsters around the perimeter of the center snow platform.  “I’ve never seen those Frost Elementals, either, and I’ve been in a lot of dungeons.”

“Do you think we should go back?”

The Defender leader really considered the question again, spending nearly a minute staring into the room at all of the different monsters.

“I’d still feel more comfortable destroying this place rather than let it grow.  We should be able to take care of this, as long as we don’t get too overconfident.”

There was no argument, but the group shifted their stances in preparation of the attack.  Mitchell stepped forward.

“There’s a trap here that will be difficult to avoid, so I’m going to disarm it before anyone else heads inside.”

They can disarm my traps?

* Yes, in a way.  Defenders can send their Mana into your traps to temporarily disrupt their activation triggers, which effectively acts to disarm them.  It requires a large amount of Mana, which is why they don’t bother to disarm every trap along the way. *

That was new information for Tempara, as she hadn’t had any active traps when she had first seen Defenders in her dungeon.  It was something she would have to remember for the future, if protecting her Core from more Defenders became a common occurrence.

There was a sudden spike of energy that blasted into her Icicle Rain trap that originated from Mitchell, and focusing on her defense revealed that it was essentially inactive.  There was none of the internal Elemental Power that she could normally sense moving within the trap, so she could only believe that her assistant was correct in how it had been disrupted.

That meant that her trio of Cold Slimes that were positioned to keep monsters in place while the trap did its work were now vulnerable.  Mitchell had his bow out and sent three arrows whizzing through the air in quick succession, piercing through the internal cores of the gooey monsters, killing them instantly.  Tempara was curious why the Mage woman didn’t use her spells to kill them again, like she did in the Ice room, but the answer was made obvious a few seconds later.

With a few hand gestures and waves of her staff, 4 glowing, red, transparent bubbles appeared around the Defenders, looking like some sort of protective shields.  The knowledge imparted by her former master told her that they were magical shields of flame that were designed to block cold-based projectiles and other harmful spells, though they apparently had a limited-time use.  How long that limited time was, she wasn’t quite sure, but it was at least effective enough to block the icicle that was shot at Mitchell by one of Tempara’s Pixies.  The frozen projectile hit the glowing, red barrier and stopped immediately, before evaporating into steam within a second.

That’s going to make it a bit harder to hurt them.

The bow-wielding Defender took a shot at the offending Pixie and struck true, with the arrow hitting her monster so hard that it was launched across the room with the arrowhead practically cutting the Pixie in half.  A few other attempts at hitting the remaining 3 Pixies were met with failure, however, as – aware of the danger – the tiny monsters were able to narrowly dodge the attacks in the air.

In the meantime, all of her Pixies attempted to hit Mitchell, but none of their icicles managed to penetrate his protective barrier.  As Jonas stepped out in front of the others with his shield raised and his sword at the ready, he slowly approached the first Frost Elemental, which sent out a mist of supercooled air at the Defenders. Unfortunately, the same glowing barrier made the mist turn to steam, keeping all of them safe.

Instead of running, which was what her Elementals normally did after releasing their frosty mist, she sent them to attack, to test the limits of the barrier.  As it surged forward, she saw that there was a limited resistance as it passed through the red bubble, which appeared to hurt her monster slightly as its size noticeably shrank, but it wasn’t killed outright.  A condensed mass of the mist surrounding the solidified center of her monster struck out at the Defender’s shield like a punch, but it lacked effect, just as the Snowballs had earlier.

A quick counterattack in the form of a slicing sword through the aforementioned solidified center was enough to end the existence of the Frost Elemental, and its remains fell to the snow below.  Just as it died, a snowy appendage from the nearest Snowbeast attempted to slam into the armored Defender from behind, but a burst of flames originating from the woman intercepted the attack, burning away the condensed snow in a flash.

That was when the real turning point in the fight began.  A massive wave of flames was launched from the staff of the Mage-type Defender, washing over the assembled monsters in a cone-like pattern.  The closest Snowbeast took the brunt of the spell and practically vaporized before Tempara’s viewpoint, while the other two were slightly melted in areas all over their bodies, but particularly their snowy appendages.  A trio of Frost Elementals was also caught in the Flame Wave, where they were killed immediately, and one of the Pixies was unfortunate enough to be too close when the spell went off, and it lit up like a torch, falling to the snow even as it burned alive.

The woman sagged a little in place and bent over to put her hands on her knees, all while she started to breathe hard.  “That took a lot out of me,” she panted. “I still have more Mana, but I need to recover—”

She was starting to stand back up straight when, behind her, the snowy hill erupted in the form of a Whiteout Panther, which launched itself across the intervening space and landed on the woman, sending them both crashing to the ground.  Mitchell spun around and reacted quickly, releasing a glowing arrow at the white-furred feline, which impacted the side of the monster with incredible and unnatural force, knocking it off of the Mage.  Unfortunately for the woman, the large cat was in the middle of biting the back of her neck, and when the Panther’s teeth were locked in place, her head was halfway torn off her shoulders.

“ROSE!  Hold on!” the Healer shouted, running to her side, but it was already too late.  Tempara doubted that even magical healing could reattach a head to a body.

The proof of her demise came about a few seconds later, even as healing energy flowed over the woman, as all of their glowing barriers abruptly disappeared.  With Georgie no longer protected by the bubble of fire, the remaining 2 Pixies turned their attention to him, as he was still ineffectually trying to save the woman, and the two icicles managed to pierce his throat as he was bent over the corpse of the Mage.

Jonas and Mitchell, seeing two of their number dead, went berserk.  With a yell of understandable anger and pain mixed together, the Defender leader tore into the Snowbeasts with intense savagery, hacking them apart while uncaring of the frightening maws that attempted to eat him.  He was ambushed twice by more Panthers, but he shrugged off the wounds that were inflicted through the gaps in his armor and sliced them apart.

Mitchell, on the other hand, shot arrow after arrow with a cold look in his eyes, his arrows now infused with what Tempara could only assume was Mana, hitting the Pixies in the air before they could dodge, and then taking out the remaining Frost Elementals from a distance.  He was knocked down by a Panther who attempted to ambush him, but he had a knife out in a flash even as he fell backward, stabbing the monster through the bottom of its jaw and piercing its brain.

Within a minute of the healer and the woman dying, all the monsters in the Core’s Snow room were dead, hacked apart or pierced through by arrows.  There was a moment of silence as the two wounded but alive Defenders looked at their fallen comrades, before they turned as one to the final tunnel.  Whether or not they expected the Dungeon Boss to be there didn’t seem to bother them, and Jonas barely hesitated before he attacked the giant Winter Wolf inside.

But it was all a distraction, because as soon as the Wolf was engaged with the armored Defender, Tempara saw Mitchell sneak around the perimeter.  As he raised his bow and pointed an arrow in her Core’s direction, she saw that they weren’t even going to bother killing her last defense.  She tried to instruct the Boss to intercept the arrow as it was released from the string, but it was too late.

As he Core shattered into hundreds of pieces, she couldn’t help but think that her dungeon had done much better than she thought it would.

I’m getting there.

* Select your starting location…. *

Right.  Back to it.

Chapter 21

As she began to reconstruct her dungeon, following the raising of her Core Level to 2 and starting with her Snow room, Tempara looked at the details of all her monsters.  None of them had hit their Thresholds quite yet, but her Slimes, Hares, Snowballs, and Wolves were each more than halfway to unlocking another Advancement Option.  It was going to take a little longer for her newer additions, if only because she didn’t have to replace them quite as much – and therefore they advanced much more slowly.  She debated changing things around to see if she could improve that, but she really didn’t want to mess with something that was proven to work.

Perhaps later.

She also checked her traps, as they had been constantly in use over the days she had survived the waves of monsters from other dungeons, and the Kit was surprised to see that her Pit Trap had achieved both Thresholds.  The Frigid Blast trap was relatively close and had already fulfilled the Installation Threshold, but still had approximately 75 more of the Usage Threshold to go.

Trap Details

Pit Trap

0.5 AR

Installation Threshold: 50/50

Usage Threshold: 250/250

Potential Advancement Options:

Spiked Pit Trap

0.75 AR

Javelin Launch

2.5 AR

Spear Impalement

3 AR

Wall Crush

5 AR

The Advancement Options for the Pit Trap were interesting, with one of them even requiring 5 AR to install – which was essentially an entire Core Level’s Accumulation Rate increase!  She focused on each of them, but the more she looked at them, she realized that most of them wouldn’t be as useful as she had been hoping they would be.

First was the Spiked Pit Trap, which was basically an upgraded Pit Trap – for an extra 0.25 AR – with spikes along the edges of the pit and on the bottom.  Tempara thought that it would certainly help to finish off some of the Hares and Wolves that fell inside her Pit Traps and didn’t die right away; there were quite a few times when she had to throw a Slime down inside the holes to take care of them completely.

The Javelin Launch cost 2.5 AR and was something that could be put on the wall, where a dozen stone javelins – which were essentially long, sharp pieces of stone – would be shot out of holes in the wall at high speed.  The holes were located at different heights, with only a few of them on the bottom half of the wall, which was where most of the incoming monsters were at, height-wise.  At the moment, she wasn’t sure how well this worked against Snow Hares and Winter Wolves, but it could be useful against Defenders and some of the stronger monsters, once the other Cores gained access to them.

Next was the Spear Impalement for 3 AR, which was another floor-based trap.  Once over the activation area, 20 6-foot-long stone spears would shoot straight up out of the ground, impaling any victims from below that were unlucky enough to be caught in its range.  This one seemed quite useful, as the area of activation was the largest of any of her traps, with a width and length of 6 feet – more than enough to cover the width of a basic tunnel.  Like all but the simple Pit Trap – which was activated by victims walking across the thin ice – it had a trigger that needed to be activated, so that was its only drawback; if none of the monsters touched the trigger, they could bypass it completely.

Lastly, there was the Wall Crush, which was the most expensive Option at 5 AR – which was hard to take seriously, because it seemed prohibitively expensive.  Its effectiveness was probably worth the cost, however, because the trap essentially took a 10-foot section of a stone wall and moved it up to 8 feet at tremendous speed, before retracting to its original location at the same speed.  That meant that if she installed it in a tunnel, a whole section of the stone wall would crush whatever was inside of it at the time.  Or she could theoretically put it in one of her Grid rooms, which would completely obliterate anything that walked inside.  Wiping out an entire group of monsters in one go was certainly possible, but would it be worth the cost in AR?  How long would it take to install something like that, and how much time would it take to recharge?

* The first category of traps, of which the Pit Trap is one, are commonly shared between every Dungeon Core throughout the Wildlands – though the ice covering on the Pit Trap has been adapted for your location.  Because of this commonality, though, AR costs for these types of traps are typically more expensive than some of the others that you can acquire, which are typically elementally suited for your Designation. *

Tempara wasn’t surprised that her assistant spoke up, as she had been quite helpful lately when it came to making the tough choices among Advancement Options.  However, she wasn’t exactly sure what the woman was getting at.

Elementally suited?  Designation?

* Precisely.  Your Designation is the Frozen Cohort, which primarily uses ice and cold-based Elemental Power to construct dungeons, create monsters, and install traps.  You’ll find that when you unlock more Options from your Frigid Blast and Icicle Rain traps, they will likely be deadlier, while at the same time requiring less AR than these Options you are selecting among now. *

Somehow, that had never occurred to Tempara, but she supposed that it should have at some point.  Since almost everything in the Frozen Reaches was based around the snow and ice that was found in the area, and all of the monsters she was able to create followed that theme, it only made sense that the traps that used cold and ice would be more powerful and would cost less AR to install.

So, what do you think I should choose?

* For now, you can make more use out of the Spiked Pit Trap, as the others are too expensive for a brand-new Dungeon Core.  Once your Core Level rises and you are able to unlock another Advancement Option, what you choose would depend entirely on what would work best for your defenses. *

Kiana’s tone had been coming through the explanation stronger and stronger as her assistant went on, and by the end, Tempara could detect something in it that hinted at something else.

Are you trying to say that the other Advancement Options for the Pit Trap aren’t worth it?

There was a slight hesitation before the woman answered.

* There are situations where the other Advancement Options for the Pit Trap could be useful, but it would be more beneficial to concentrate your progress on your elementally suited traps for now. *

So, yes is what I’m hearing.  Good to know.

All of that was helpful for the long run, but it wasn’t going to change much about her strategies at the moment.  The Pit Trap was extremely useful as an inexpensive way to create a hole into which monsters could fall, but it was possible that if she changed some of them to Spiked Pit Traps, she could eventually unlock something even more useful through that pathway.  Either way, though, she wasn’t going to worry about trying to hit the Thresholds for the basic Pit Trap in the future, because she agreed that the other options were just too expensive for her dungeon. Unless something else became available to replace the utility of the Pits, she would continue to use them, but not with the ultimate goal of getting something better through potential Advancement Options.

After selecting the Spiked Pit Trap, she focused on it to see that it only had a single Advancement Option that would eventually become available, but she didn’t let that bother her.  If she unlocked it, all the better, but if she didn’t… well, that was probably fine, too.  Knowing what she now knew about her elementally suited traps, she was more excited to see what those would eventually give her access to.

During her construction of the Snow room, she thought back at what had happened during her last incarnation.  The Defenders showing up at her entrance had been a complete surprise, but now that she thought about it, the situation shouldn’t have been unexpected.  Throughout the few days that she had survived, she had taken time to look outside of her dungeon, where she noticed periodic groups of Defenders crossing the border to scout out the situation with the nearby dungeons, though her own was far enough North that none of them traveled anywhere close to her location.  However, given that every single dungeon within her viewable range had been sending groups to assault her dungeon, it was only a matter of time before it garnered some attention from the members of the Kingdom.

From what she understood in the memories passed on to her by Kiana, that was the Defenders’ whole purpose – to defend the border and their Kingdom.  They did this by performing the periodic sweeps, of course, but they also ensured that no dungeons near the border became too powerful, too quickly, as they could threaten the people of the Kingdom by sending strong armies of monsters to cross into it.  Normally, this meant just checking on and destroying those closest to the border, but it obviously meant scouting out any other problems that might just be near enough to cause problems.

Obviously, her dungeon was close enough to be a threat, even if she wasn’t right on the border.

Tempara thought about the situation and possible solutions.  Eventually, coming up with nothing, she took the time while construction was ongoing to explain everything to her assistant, to see if she had any advice.

* The way I see it, you have four options.  One, if you can, as you say, go back in time and choose a location for your dungeon, simply choose a location much further north; that way, it will be very unlikely the Defenders will journey that far. *

Tempara was hesitant to do that, because she wanted to stay near, visit, and ultimately defend her pack’s den, which was her entire reason for being this close to the border in the first place.

* Two, you could start designing your dungeon to counter the Defenders when they eventually visit, though this may not be the best solution; eventually, they will notice their missing people and send a group that you will not be able to defeat. *

That was likely true as well; despite the strength of Jonas and the rest of his group, they paled in comparison to Horad and the group that Tempara remembered being a part of during that disastrous dungeon delve.

* Three, you could stay at Core Level 2 or 3, which would dramatically reduce the number of monsters flocking to your dungeon, thereby calling less attention to yourself. *

That was tempting, but it would also cut back on her progress, as well as giving her very little to work with when the Defenders eventually came to kill her pack.  A dozen or so monsters were not nearly enough to stop them, even if they were relatively powerful.  Tempara had a feeling that in order to stop the Defenders, she needed monsters that were much more powerful than what she currently had access to, which meant that they were likely to be expensive to create, in terms of EP.  Having a low Core Level meant she wouldn’t have as much Elemental Power, as well as having a horrendously low Accumulation Rate.

* And four, you could prevent the other dungeons from sending so many monsters to your dungeon. *

What do you mean by that?  How?

* Simple.  You ensure that they don’t have any monsters to send in the first place. *

How—?  Oh.  OH.

It took her a few seconds to comprehend what her assistant was getting at, but as soon as she did, she seriously considered it.  There definitely was a way to ensure that none of the Dungeon Cores around her location could send monsters to her dungeon; if she wanted to be more precise, there were actually two options, but she wasn’t sure if she could even do the second option.

Basically, she could send her own forces into the nearby dungeons preemptively, and either kill all of the monsters inside, destroy the Core, or both.

How much control do I have over my monsters inside of foreign dungeons?

* Unfortunately, very little.  Your viewpoint is restricted from entering foreign dungeons, and your control of them is limited to ordering them to enter or leave a dungeon.  Once they are inside, they are on their own. *

From what she inferred from the information, she wouldn’t be able to tell them to destroy a Dungeon Core if they were able to reach the foreign Core room – so that option was out.  But killing all the monsters inside, so that the Cores had none to send to harass Tempara?  That was something they could accomplish.

Whether or not she could actually acquire Elemental Power from them and not have it shatter her Core was something she would have to discover.  If it worked, that meant she would have another source of EP, which could be a huge advantage to her development.

She hadn’t really thought about turning the assaults on her dungeon around and directly attacking those that perpetrated the acts before this, mainly because she wasn’t driven to do such a thing like the other Cores were reported to be.  She had been more focused on surviving as long as possible, but it was shown that survival was only going to lead to more attention being paid to her dungeon from the Defenders in the Kingdom; if she was going to keep her Core from being shattered until she could save her pack, then she needed to adopt a different strategy.

After thinking about the different options her former master provided her, there really was only one choice that had a chance of working.  In short, she would have to go on the offensive, if she wanted to stay alive, while keeping as low of a profile as possible.

The problem was that she didn’t really have many monsters that would be appropriate for attacking a foreign dungeon, especially since speed was a factor that needed to be considered.  Snow Hares, Winter Wolves, and even Whiteout Panthers were fast, but the first 2 were so common that most defenses would likely be set up for them to be repelled.  The Panthers relied on snow being present to be highly effective; without it, they were only marginally better than the Winter Wolves when it came to strength and speed.

Cold Slimes were too easy to defeat unless they were in very high numbers, but they were also very slow.  Snowballs were fast, but they weren’t exactly the best attackers unless they were used in specific situations; against a ready defense of Wolves, for instance, the quick canines could avoid being run over by the Snowballs, and then tear them apart when her monsters turned to attack again.  Granted, if she had dozens of Snowballs, that could be an advantage, but having that large of a force running around, especially multiple forces of them – which was what would likely be needed in order to deplete all or most of the surrounding dungeons – was the opposite of keeping a low profile.

Frost Elementals were an option, as they didn’t leave tracks, which meant that Tempara could create hundreds of them without calling too much attention to themselves, but the problem lay in the Elementals’ offensive capabilities.  She had already seen repeatedly seen during her last incarnation that they were relatively vulnerable, and while they helped immensely in slowing down the attacking groups – thereby making it easier to defeat them with minimal casualties – they weren’t exactly great at actually killing anything.  With enough of them together, that might change, but she would have to run some experiments.

That left the Snowbeast and the Snowflake Pixie.  The first was powerful but slow, as she had found out when directing them around her dungeon.  They were faster than Slimes, if barely, but they still lumbered along with their short, stubby legs. Their travel speed was the main issue she could see with them, as it would take a while to traverse the miles in between her dungeon entrance and the foreign dungeons.

The Snowflake Pixies were actually a good idea for attacking dungeons for a number of reasons.  First, they could fly, which meant no tracks and the ability to stay above threats on the ground.  Second, they could attack at range, putting them out of harm’s way.  Lastly, they were fairly quick to travel, as they could move at approximately the same speed as a Winter Wolf.

The downside to them was that they were physically weak, and if they went into rooms with low ceilings, they were almost guaranteed to be caught and killed.  Tempara had seen both Hares and Wolves jump fairly high, and anything under 12 feet or so could be dangerous to them.

Then there were Dungeon Bosses to worry about.  If any of the Cores had the same Winter Wolf as a Boss like she did, then it could take dozens of icicles to kill it, all the while the giant Wolf would have a much easier time of reaching the Pixies in the air.

The advantages of the Pixies outweighed the negatives, as far as Tempara was concerned, but she also didn’t think the monster was enough on its own.  That meant she was going to need something else to accompany the Pixies; while the Snowbeasts were a potential option, they were comparatively slow and wouldn’t be able to travel to dungeons quickly.  In short, they weren’t meant to travel, which meant that she would need something else.

Previously, Tempara hadn’t selected any monsters from the Advancement Options available to her based on attacking; instead, she had wanted ones that were better with defending.  That had obviously worked, as evidenced by her last incarnation, at least until the Defenders had shown up.  Contemplating the Options she hadn’t chosen, however, the Dungeon Core could only think of a few that would be suitable to accompanying the Pixies in their assaults on other dungeons: Polar Bears, Yetis, Winter Dire Wolves, and Ice Golems.

She dismissed the Yetis immediately, if only because of their 800 EP cost; with Pixies being 400 EP by themselves, spending 800 EP for a single monster was something she couldn’t imagine doing at the moment.  Polar Bears were another option, because she could imagine that they could run quite quickly if necessary – even if not as fast as a Wolf – but they were also flesh-and-blood; based on her experience as a Dungeon Core, if there were Frigid Blast or Icicle Rain traps in the dungeons they assaulted, they would be vulnerable to the extreme cold.  That was the same with the Winter Dire Wolves; while they were larger than Winter Wolves, they didn’t have quite the same power as a Polar Bear, and she would need to have many of them to make up for the difference.

That left the Ice Golem, which was something she had dismissed before because of its high cost of 500 EP.  Given that it was the same cost as a Snowbeast, which she was considering, the expenditure didn’t seem so prohibitive anymore.  The Golem also had a lot of benefits to it that were hard to ignore.

It couldn’t run, but it could move much faster than a Snowbeast, even at a brisk walk.  It was made of ice, which meant that Frigid Blast would likely have no effect on it, and even Icicle Rain would be less effective.  Because it was made of ice, it also wasn’t as susceptible to bleeding out from bites by opposing monsters; and if it met any Slimes, she doubted they would be able to do much harm to it.  Lastly, it was large enough that any Pit Traps it encountered could be circumvented by simply stretching its arms out to the sides, preventing it from falling in – as long as it was able to pull itself out, of course.  She’d have to experiment, but she had a feeling that it was strong enough to do so.

Looking at her Cold Slime Monster Details, she saw that she still had quite a bit to go before she earned another Advancement Option, but the gap wasn’t unsurmountable.

Monster Details

Cold Slime

25 EP

Creation Threshold: 120/250

Battle Threshold: 57/100

In fact, she might even be able to reach those Thresholds during her current incarnation.  All she had to do was repeat what she had done last time, and she’d be seeing them unlocked sooner rather than later.

With that thought in mind, Tempara went about repeating what she had done during her last incarnation; the only thing different about her experience was that she was not surprised in the least when the Defenders showed up to shatter her Core.

Chapter 22

Even though I died again, I can’t say that it wasn’t worth it.

Surviving for multiple days was an excellent way to progress in her development, especially since her monsters were almost constantly under attack.  Not only did she manage to squeeze out enough Cold Slimes to reach their Thresholds, but her Hares, Wolves, Snowballs, and even her Frigid Blast trap had also unlocked their Advancement Options.  Her newest monsters were still going to require at least a few more incarnations, if only because they weren’t replaced as often, but she figured it wouldn’t be too long.

As she had already planned, she chose Ice Golem for the Cold Slime’s Advancement Option, and the Armed Snowball for the Snowball’s – given that it was the only one available.  From what she was told by her assistant, there would be no more Options available from the basic Snowball; a look at its Monster Details afterward showed that it didn’t even have Thresholds anymore.

Monster Details

Snowball

100 EP

Creation Threshold: --

Battle Threshold: --

Of course, that didn’t mean that the Options she unlocked because of the Snowball – the Armed Snowball and the Snowbeast – couldn’t still acquire Advancement Options, but the basic Snowball was essentially done.

For the Hare and Wolf, the choices she made required a little more thought.  For the Hare, she had the choice between a Snowdrift Hare, an Icicle Spider, and a Freezing Salamander. Among all of those, she decided on the Freezing Salamander, if only because she wanted to start acquiring powerful monsters to start on the path of defeating the Defenders in the future.

For the Wolf, the choice among the Winter Dire Wolf, the Polar Bear, and the Yeti was another difficult decision for Tempara, but she finally settled on the Yeti – for the same reason she chose the Freezing Salamander.  She had plans to start inserting the two new monsters into her Snow room or even throughout her dungeon at different points when she had the ability to do so, if only to advance the progress toward their Thresholds.

Lastly, she looked at the Frigid Blast trap, which had some interesting new Advancement Options.

Trap Details

Frigid Blast

0.5 AR

Installation Threshold: 50/50

Usage Threshold: 250/250

Potential Advancement Options:

Extended Frigid Blast

0.75 AR

Chilled Feet

1 AR

Blizzard Block

1.25 AR

Ice Wall

1.5 AR

Unlike the Pit Trap, which had extremely expensive Advancement Options, the highest AR cost Option for the Frigid Blast was only 1.5 AR – which was much more reasonable.  She also saw that they were all following the same elemental theme of cold, snow, and ice, which – according to her assistant – was why they were more affordable.

Again, the first option was a better Frigid Blast.  The Extended Frigid Blast simply had a larger area of activation and lasted longer for an extra 0.25 AR more than the original, which would allow it to hit more victims with its supercooled mist.  Both of those would be quite advantageous, so Tempara seriously considered the Extended version to be a contender for her choice.

Next was something called Chilled Feet for 1 AR but it wasn’t nearly as innocuous as it sounded.  The trap had the largest area of effect that she’d seen thus far, at 20 feet in length and 5 feet in width; within that length, anything walking over the activation area would have their feet quickly frozen, to the point where ice would actually form along the outside of their feet and adhere them to the floor.  While it wouldn’t necessarily severely hurt any victims, they would essentially be immobilized for a short time.

After that was Blizzard Block for 1.25 AR, which had an effect that lasted the longest of any of her other traps – if one didn’t count the hole left by the Pit Trap.  What it did was produce a blizzard of snow in a 6-foot-square area up to 12 feet in height, which was so dense that nothing could see through it.  When a victim entered the “block” of snow, the cold winds inside the contained space were so powerful that they could literally pick up and turn the victim around to the point that they would become confused.  When they exited the trap, they would temporarily be unable to tell in which direction they had emerged, and they would be highly disoriented from the experience.

The blizzard effect lasted a whole minute, which was quite a long time – especially to invading foreign monster groups.  Tempara could imagine taking advantage of their disorientation immediately following their exit, as they would be unable to defend against a Snowball slamming into them, for instance; better yet, she could have a Pit Trap as close as possible to where they would emerge, thereby having them fall inside because of their disorientation.

The last of the Advancement Options was Ice Wall, which turned out to be exactly what the name implied.  When triggered, the trap would produce a thick wall of ice 8 feet tall, 6 feet wide, and a foot thick. This wall of ice could temporarily block off access to a tunnel, for instance, without compromising the required openness that her dungeon needed to maintain. It only lasted 60 seconds before it would start to crack and fall apart, and then the monsters could continue on without any harm being done to them by the trap.

To Tempara, the Ice Wall seemed like a waste, but she was sure there were some points where it could be useful.  For her own dungeon, though, she passed on that for the time being, as there were better Advancement Options for her to choose from.

She didn’t even need her assistant’s advice this time, because she was absolutely certain of which trap would be the most useful to her.  While finding some interesting uses for Blizzard Block would be intriguing, and the Extended Frigid Blast would improve what she already had in her dungeon, it was the Chilled Feet trap that she decided would be the most beneficial.  Not only could she use it in her Snow room to hold enemy monsters in place while they were bombarded by icicles from her Pixies, but it could also be used in her Ice room to freeze victims to the ice and make them prime targets for her Snowballs rolling down the ramps.  It was a way to make the room even deadlier than it originally was, and it also wasn’t very expensive in terms of AR – which was an added benefit.

With all of her selections behind her, and after waiting until she was Core Level 2, Tempara began construction of her Snow room.  Knowing that she needed at least some defenses before she could start sending out her own monsters, she kept to the same setup as she had been using previously, because she knew that it worked.  She didn’t think she would be able to avoid calling attention to herself in the beginning by acquiring Core Levels 3 and 4, because they were necessary for their increased Accumulation Rate. Once things started to get going, she would start the process of seeing if her plan would work.

So, a little less than 24 hours later, as the first handful of groups assaulted her dungeon and were summarily destroyed with only a few casualties on her force’s part, she started to create her first attackers.  As soon as the first Pixie was created, she sent it flying out of her dungeon, where she positioned it slightly to the west of her entrance.  The first Ice Golem she created was even more impressive than she originally thought.

The combined chunks of clear ice were a lot sturdier than she expected, and as it walked along at a decently brisk pace, she could tell that it was more than just solidly built – it was also quick in its movements.  This was demonstrated shortly after it was created, as it didn’t make it outside of her dungeon in time for the next group to arrive.  In the lengthy tunnel leading outside, it was forced to stop and fight 6 Winter Wolves and 6 Snow Hares by itself.

It was a slaughter – but not without cost.  The foreign flesh-and-blood monsters attempted to bite or kick the Golem, but most of their attempts at doing damage simply slipped off the slick ice from which her monster was formed.  A few managed to make contact, shattering off pieces of ice or creating serious cracks in the Golem’s structure, but none of them got anywhere close to the glowing blue ice gem on its chest.

The ice monster was entirely too quick for them to get close.  Even as a few jaws closed around its legs to do damage, the Golem’s arms were moving rapidly around its front, using the sharp ice blades that constituted most of its arms to slash and eviscerate anything that got too close to its vulnerability.  The ice blades were so sharp that they carved through the fur and flesh of the foreign monsters without difficulty, and there was very little that they could do to prevent their complete annihilation.

Despite the sheer domination, the Ice Golem appeared so damaged by the end that she thought it might shatter if it got into another fight.  Instead of sending it out to fight at another dungeon, she instead eliminated it and created another one – along with a second, because she had acquired enough EP from the deaths of the Wolves and Hares to pay for another Ice Golem.  As a pair, they walked out of the dungeon and met up with the Pixie waiting for them to the west, even as another foreign dungeon group ran through her entrance.

The area that was within range of her dungeon was full of 21 dungeons in different directions, though one-third of those were close enough to the border that they weren’t really a problem for her – because they were low Core Level and were constantly sought out and destroyed by Defenders from the Kingdom.  The other 14, however, were the majority of the ones that kept sending groups of monsters to her dungeon; now it was time to see if she could do something about that.

The nearest one was to the west, located just under a mile away along the same small mountain range where her own dungeon was located.  From there, another was located a mile along the range, and then another a half-mile from that one.  To the east, there was another mountain range that held another 4 dungeons, located across the large open area that was the local epicenter of the feeding frenzy that occurred not that long ago, and it was also the location of her pack’s den.

To the north was a collection of much smaller mountain ranges, in between which were narrow valleys of snow that divided them, and even further than those were some wider fields intersected by mountain ranges.  Tempara couldn’t see quite that far right now, but when she had been Core Level 6 in her last incarnation, she’d been able to range a little farther and had seen it.  She had also seen that the dungeons were a lot more concentrated than they were where she was located, which made her glad that she hadn’t chosen a location north of her current one for her dungeon.

She sent the two Ice Golems toward the nearest dungeon, which was the one that always attacked her first, following the feeding frenzy, with 2 Wolves and 3 Hares.  From her viewpoint above, she could tell that it was only a Core Level 2, so it wasn’t very powerful, but it was still gathering monsters right outside of its entrance to send toward her own.  At the moment, there were a total of 4 Wolves and 2 Hares, but it appeared as though it was waiting to create more before the entire group was sent out to harass Tempara again.

Her trio of monsters was still walking in that direction by the time the group that had just invaded her dungeon was killed, and after replacing the Frost Elemental and Slimes that were killed during the defense, she had enough EP left over to create another Pixie.  Once it was done, she sent it flying quickly out of the dungeon to join the group before it arrived at their destination.

She was pleased to see that her Ice Golems, even at a walk, ate up the distance quickly enough that she wasn’t too afraid of them being too slow.  Seeing how they moved through the snow with ease, she momentarily thought about how her Snowbeasts would’ve been so much slower to cross the same amount of distance, and it made her happy with her decision to include the Golems in this enterprise.

Flying ahead of the Golems as they neared the foreign dungeon, the pair of Snowflake Pixies engaged the growing group of monsters before they even knew there was any danger, as 2 icicle projectiles pierced through a pair of Snow Hares in quick succession, killing them instantly.  The now 6-strong group of Wolves and 2 remaining Hares whirled around to attack the one that killed their own, but they couldn’t reach the Pixies floating in the air.  What they could do, however, was see the next icicle projectiles coming and avoid them, but then they were quickly confronted by the 2 Ice Golems that strode into the battle without hesitation.

Blood and fur started to fly everywhere as the Golems tore into the monsters, and Icicles continued to rain down from above, with the majority of them striking because the Wolves and Hares were too distracted to dodge them.  In less than a minute, all of the foreign dungeon’s monsters were dead, with only a few scratches on her Golems to show that they had suffered a few bites of little effect.  It only took that long because there was more room for the Wolves to circle around and attack the Golems than they had in her dungeon tunnel, and the foes were subsequently able to avoid more attacks than in close quarters.  Despite that, the advantages her Golems had over the flesh-and-blood monsters were significant.

After the battle ended, it was time for them to enter the dungeon.  She instructed them to go inside… and then it felt like she lost connection with them.  Digging a little deeper into the feeling she had with all of her created monsters, she found that it was still there, but it was so faint that it was barely noticeable without concentrating on it.  She instinctively knew that she could order her monsters to come back outside of the dungeon at any time, but that was all the influence she had over them right now.

She attempted to follow them to see how they were doing, but her viewpoint basically slammed up against the entrance as if it were some sort of impenetrable wall.

I guess my assistant was right; it’s out of my hands now.

All she could do now was wait and see what happened.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed before she detected something happening; all she knew was that another group had entered her dungeon and was currently fighting in her Snow room, so she assumed it was probably around 15 to 20 minutes after they had entered.  What she detected wasn’t her monsters coming out of the dungeon, but a change in the strength of the foreign Dungeon Core.

It was now Core Level 1, dropping down from Core Level 2 all within a few seconds.

Does that mean they did it?

* That is correct.  When your monsters successfully reach the Core of a foreign dungeon, they will siphon out as much Elemental Power as they can hold.  This also can lead to stripping away Core Levels, though a Dungeon Core cannot fall below Core Level 1. *

How much Elemental Power can they hold?

* Each monster that reaches the Core can siphon out and contain 5 times the amount of EP that was originally invested in their creation.  For example, each your Snow Hares cost 50 EP to create; that would mean that each would be able to hold 250 EP before they cannot siphon any more. *

Doing some quick calculations, which was becoming much easier as Tempara became more familiar with numbers, she estimated that her Ice Golems could contain 2,500 EP each, with her Pixies able to hold 2,000 EP – more than enough for a Core Level 2 Dungeon Core, and even a Core Level 3.

A few minutes later, her monsters departed the dungeon – or at least most of them departed.  It seemed as though one of her Ice Golems had been killed during the assault on the dungeon through some unknown means, and her remaining Golem had cracks running through its legs.  As for her Pixies, both of them appeared entirely unharmed as they accompanied her ice-constructed Golem on its way back to her dungeon, the direction of which seemed automatic, because Tempara didn’t instruct them to head back.  It was where she wanted them to go, however, because she could detect that her Golem was filled with an energy she hadn’t seen in it before.

It only took her a moment to realize that this was the same thing she had observed happen in some of the other monsters that she’d seen come out of foreign dungeons, when she had first become a Dungeon Core.  Her Golem was full of Elemental Power and she needed to get it back to her dungeon if she wanted a chance to obtain it.  She still wasn’t sure if she could do it safely without shattering her Core, but there was nothing for it other than to try.

If it didn’t work, she’d know for next time.

Getting the Ice Golem back to her dungeon was easier said than done, however, because just as Tempara could tell that her monster was full of Elemental Power, so could all of the other Dungeon Cores around.  Her briskly walking Golem was now a prime target, and she could see the closest monster groups divert to its location.

Tempara immediately sent her 4 Pixies in her Snow room flying out of her dungeon’s entrance, which they accomplished quite speedily.  Her outside forces were just engaging a foreign group of Wolves and Hares when they arrived, and with the help of the extra flying, long-range attacks, they were able to quickly eliminate those that were trying to steal the extra Elemental Power.

They were attacked twice more, with her Ice Golem suffering from even more damage to its form, to the point where one of its arms had crumbled to pieces when it was forced to block a Wolf from attacking the vulnerability on its chest.  There was a fourth group nearing her beleaguered forces when the Ice Golem finally limped into her dungeon, followed by the Pixies acting as a rear guard.

It's in.  How do I test to see if I can absorb the Energy?

* Simply eliminate it like you would any other monster in your dungeon.  Keep in mind that you would still need to have enough monsters to account for the Monster Threshold— *

Got it.

Seeing the foreign dungeon monsters approaching outside, Tempara immediately thought about eliminating the Ice Golem, and it quickly froze in place while it disintegrated.  No more than a second after she initiated the elimination, a large influx of energy broke off from the disappearing monster and raced toward her Core down in her Core room.

Mentally bracing for the impact, Tempara was surprised when nothing happened.  Well, not nothing; more like, nothing bad happened. Instead, she felt an infusion of Elemental Power flood her Dungeon Core without harm.  A quick check of her Core Display showed that she had acquired a total of 1,415 EP from the Ice Golem; if she considered that she likely received 250 from the elimination of the Golem itself, then that meant she had stolen 1,165 from the other Dungeon Core.  Even with only receiving 50% back from the one she eliminated, and the loss of the other Ice Golem when it invaded the other dungeon, she still came out a little over 400 EP ahead.

Of course, acquiring EP from the other dungeons wasn’t exactly Tempara’s goal as much as simply depriving them of monsters that could be sent to accost her, but she supposed it worked just as well.  If she had depleted essentially all of the other Cores’ EP, then it would take them a while to get to the point where more monsters could be sent out.  Considering what her assistant had mentioned before, every Core reached Core Level 2 before they started attacking other dungeons; if it took another 3 hours or so to accumulate enough EP to do that, then another few hours to acquire enough EP to restock the dungeon with at least 12 monsters to hit the Monster Threshold, then she was looking at probably 8 hours of peace from that dungeon.

Tempara just needed to increase production of her Ice Golems and Snowflake Pixies so that she could do the same with most of the other dungeons.  Her test proved that it could be done; now all that she needed to do was expand.

Chapter 23

There turned out to be a price for success, which Tempara discovered was two-fold.  The first should’ve been obvious, because as she increased production of her attacking forces and started to delay one dungeon after another from sending out monsters, her own dungeon began to face fewer and fewer attacks.  From the outside, that seemed exactly what she wanted, because then all of the tracks of the monsters wouldn’t be seen heading in her dungeon’s direction; as far as that went, it did exactly that.  Granted, there were still the tracks of her own monsters leading out from it, but they were many, many fewer than before.

But the lack of attacking monsters also meant a lack of battles inside of her dungeon – which was detrimental to her development.  She steadily watched the Pixies and Golems reaching their Thresholds as she was forced to replace a few here and there when they went into a dungeon. Occasionally, her entire force would be destroyed and none would return, but she still considered it to be a success; she was sure her attacking monsters had caused some serious attrition to the foreign dungeon’s monster population before they were destroyed, which would still delay another attack on her own dungeon.  Better yet, while she couldn’t see the battles that her attackers were participating in, they still counted toward the Battle Threshold.

So, while those two monsters were advancing, the ones in her dungeon began to see less and less action.  While she could spend time and Elemental Power eliminating and then recreating them in order to reach their Creation Threshold, there was no way to artificially increase the Battle Threshold.  With the EP she obtained from the other dungeons, she was able to rebuild the Grid, the Ice room, and the Slide; but with nothing attacking, their presence didn’t really matter.  After a handful of days, she was even able to accumulate the 21,000 EP needed to reach Core Level 7, and the Fox kit was well on her way to acquiring 28,000 EP for Core Level 8 when the other price for success made itself known.

Defenders.  More specifically, the same ones that had attacked her last time.

“Something is going on with this one, I tell you,” Mitchell stated as soon as they walked into her dungeon entrance, much to Tempara’s disappointment.  “I scouted around earlier, and almost all of the tracks I’ve found originate from here.  I’ve found very little coming from any of the others, which is more than just unusual – it’s unheard of.”

Great.  Was I too successful?  Did that cause them to seek out my dungeon again?

She had considered that most of the tracks outside of her dungeon – and the ones within her range – were created by her own Ice Golems, but she thought that they were spread out enough and few enough in number that they would be overlooked.  But Tempara hadn’t thought about what it would look like when there weren’t as many tracks coming from other dungeons apart from her own monsters.

It looks as though I’m going to have to rethink my strategy.

As long as the Defenders were here, though, the Dungeon Core figured she might as well see how the little changes she had made to her dungeon worked against them.

At the top of the Slide, she had replaced the two Snowballs there with Armed Snowballs, but she hadn’t really been able to see them in action since all of the monster groups stopped coming.  As the Defenders repeated very similar actions as their last visit, when Mitchell jumped off the wall and landed behind them, her Armed Snowballs were able to run an arm along the wall to stop them from rolling downhill, before turning around and rolling back up.  The scout’s eyes grew wide at the abrupt change in direction, but he wasn’t caught too off-guard as he leaped over them again, though going back down the hill toward his group.

When the Snowballs chased after him to the bottom, they were stopped by Jonas and his shield, before being systematically cut apart.  Overall, it wasn’t a huge improvement, but it also showed that any weaker Defenders caught on the sloped slide of ice would be hard-pressed to recover from large balls of compacted snow that could turn around in mid-roll.  Any monsters that went up against them would have similar difficulty, she supposed.  Sadly, her Frigid Blast traps had also been deftly spotted and avoided, even when Mitchell was jumping through the air in order not to be run over.

In her Ice room, the only difference was the Chilled Feet trap she placed along the center path on the ice – which was also avoided by the entire group.  She really wanted to see it work, but traps were definitely not the best when there were alert Defenders in her dungeon.

Her Grid rooms were relatively the same, but she also placed a single Ice Golem into one of them, if only because it was the only one of her newest large additions that could fit within the small rooms.  As she had suspected when she first learned about the Golem, it was easily felled when an arrow expertly shot out by Mitchell pierced her monster’s glowing vulnerability on its chest.  It took one step toward the scout before the ice chunks it was made from broke apart and collapsed on the ground, all life in it gone within seconds.

Tempara’s Snow room had some changes, as well, though it was simply changing 2 of the 3 Snowbeasts to a Freezing Salamander and a Yeti, diversifying the defenses on the center snow platform.  Similar tactics from the Mage of the group led to a protective bubble that prevented the Salamander’s breath from affecting them, but it did absolutely nothing against the Yeti that attacked Jonas with a powerful overhead strike with its fists, which sent the Defender to his knees despite blocking with his shield.  The distraction among the others was enough for a Panther to burst out of the snow hill behind the Mage, killing her very similarly to before, with the same quick shot from Mitchell knocking it off her.

The healer, Georgie, died from overhead attacks by the Pixies while trying to heal her corpse – the same as before – but after that was when things changed from her previous incarnation.  When Jonas and Mitchell went berserk at the deaths of the others, they alone weren’t enough to overcome the Freezing Salamander, the Yeti, and a half-melted Snowbeast.  The combination of the Yeti’s strength, the freezing breath of the Salamander, and icicle attacks from above worked to kill the armored Defender before he could finish them off.

That left the scout, who immediately ran…

…right for her Core room.

He triggered the Icicle Rain near the Snow room’s exit, but he was moving so quickly that only a single icicle from above hit him, cutting a slice in his back through his fur-lined leather.  The small wound didn’t seem to deter him, even as he was chased through the tunnel by a pair of the remaining Pixies.  The Defender saw the massive Boss and completely ignored it standing between him and her Core when he quickly dodged to the right and then threw himself to the left with such speed that he flew sideways.  In the middle of his flight, he nocked an arrow to his bow and released it when the Wolf fell for the original feint and moved out of the way, leaving a clear shot at her Core.

There was a good chance that Mitchell wouldn’t leave the dungeon alive, but Tempara would never know. As her Dungeon Core shattered from the arrow impacting it, all she could think about was her next incarnation.

* Select your starting location…. *

Tempara had some time to think about what changes she could make to her strategies while she was waiting for enough Elemental Power to increase to Core Level 2.

It seems as though I can’t win no matter what I do.  I could choose not to attack, like I did in the beginning, but that will inevitably lead to calling attention to my dungeon.  But attacking all of the other dungeons seemed to have the same effect.  I could always take a much slower approach and reach the Thresholds for all of my monsters by staying Core Level 2 and sending them out to attack, but what happens when I’m finally strong enough to defeat the Defenders that go after my pack?  I’m going to need to greatly increase my Core Level in order to have enough monsters to repel them, which will take days or even weeks to accomplish, so I’ll call attention to myself sooner or later.

The more she thought about her pack and what was to happen to them, the more she began to think it was all a dream.  The slaughter of her parents and the others seemed like a lifetime ago, and as much as she had always thought it would be seared into her memory, it was starting to fade as if it had never been.  With her recent inability to even survive long enough to see if anything could be done, she was beginning to lose hope that it could be done.

Tempara didn’t even want to think about what would happen if she actually succeeded in helping her pack and then was subsequently destroyed by the periodic Defender sweep of the Frozen Reaches.  She figured that she would deal with it then, if it happened – which wasn’t looking too promising at the moment.

* I couldn’t help but listen in on your internal debate, and I think I have a solution. *

Tempara was momentarily startled, because her assistant had been unusually silent since the Dungeon Core had restarted during this particular incarnation. She suddenly realized that she had been mentally having a conversation with herself, which of course meant the woman could pick up on and listen to all of it.  She was momentarily embarrassed that Kiana had heard her despairing over the fading memories of her pack’s slaughter, but she pushed that aside.  She was interested in hearing what the woman had to say, especially since her tone was as like the former Mage as she had heard since becoming a Dungeon Core.

I’m listening.

* It seems as though you’re having problems with Defenders ultimately destroying your Core because your dungeon is drawing too much attention.  While I cannot entirely understand how this would work, as you believe you are being transported back in time when your Core is shattered, I think there is only one solution that would ensure that you are left alone: Blend in. *

Blending in?  What do you mean by that?

* I can tell that you are not the usual Elemental Spirit that normally inhabits a Dungeon Core.  As such, it seems as though you are leaning toward two extremes – either going full-on with the defense of your dungeon or completely wiping out any chance for the other dungeons to attack you.  What you need to do is find a balance, where you are attacking other dungeons while still being attacked in turn. *

Tempara thought about it for a short while, and she eventually thought that her assistant had a point – but it was incomplete.

In addition, I could even create large groups of Hares and Wolves to travel between foreign dungeon entrances, which would appear as though the other Cores were attacking each other.  It would camouflage my own actions while still allowing enough foreign monsters through to my dungeon, thereby helping to increase Battle Thresholds.  In short, I would be doing what you said: Blending in.

* Precisely. *

It would take some work to get it to that point and figuring out how to properly control which dungeons could be allowed to attack her and which ones she needed to suppress would be a challenge.  Thankfully, she didn’t have anything but time to spend on figuring it all out.

During this incarnation, the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core alternated creating her attack groups between the Golems/Pixies and Wolves/Hares, and she attempted to mix them up a little in where they went – though the Wolves and Hares were entirely present as decoys that she literally had run from one entrance to another without going inside.  Once she got started with that, Tempara belatedly realized that, if she wanted to, she could still wipe out the monsters in all of the nearby dungeons and then fake their travel to her dungeon along with all of the others.  She immediately dismissed that idea, though, because she still needed to increase her Battle Thresholds for most of her monsters.

She lasted a total of 7 days before more Defenders showed up, because she could never really figure out the timing of her attacks with those that attacked her own dungeon, and as a result there were still too many tracks leading straight to her.  Her defenses inside nearly killed a few of the new Defender group that happened to investigate her dungeon, but they were actually quite a bit more skilled and powerful than Jonas and his team.  Her Core was destroyed after she managed to injure most of them, but their healer was able to pull them through without any permanent damage.

During her next try, she used her experience from the previous incarnation to start predicting when each dungeon was ready to release their group to attack her dungeon.  She still had trouble keeping them all straight, but after struggling for a while, she realized her assistant could probably help.  Unfortunately, the woman wasn’t able to keep everything in order, but Tempara learned that her former master could remember the schedules for up to 3 dungeons without trouble.  That left the other 10 or so for her to memorize, which was a lot harder than she expected.  She felt she was getting there, but it certainly wasn’t going to be during her current try.

Things fell apart when she lasted longer than her previous incarnation, as it seemed as though schedules kept changing in ways she couldn’t predict.  It got even worse as there was another weekly feeding frenzy, because all of the nearby Cores used that time to build up large groups of monsters that were all focused on her dungeon. More than that, she started to see Polar Bears, Yeti, and even a few Snowflake Pixies show up in their group compositions, which meant that the foreign Cores had created and battled with enough Snow Hares and Winter Wolves to reach their Thresholds.

It was after the second feeding frenzy that she ended up being destroyed, not by Defenders, but large groups of stronger monsters.  She made the mistake of pulling everything back when the feeding frenzy was going on, like the other Dungeon Cores, and had paid the price by not being prepared for the sheer onslaught after it was done.  Of course, raising her Core Level up to 8 had certainly helped to make her an even bigger target, but even the higher Monster Threshold wasn’t able to stem the tide of literally hundreds of monsters that streamed into her dungeon within minutes of each other.

Tempara corrected that mistake during her next incarnation by sending groups around the perimeter of the main feeding frenzy to attack the assembled monsters, which helped to thin out their numbers significantly.  She only lasted another day after that, though, because she made the mistake of letting a few of her successful attack teams full of energy head back to her dungeon at the same time, which prompted attention from yet another Defender team sent by the Kingdom to scout.

She was starting to learn the patterns and schedules of the nearby dungeons, however, and she was incrementally surviving longer and longer during each incarnation. It was still going to take many, many more resets to get to the point where she could save her pack, but her hope had finally returned.

I can do this.  It’s just going to take some time and patience….

Chapter 24

As Tempara’s length of survival continued to improve, so did her choice of monsters and traps.  Once Glacial Ooze was made available, she discontinued the creation of Cold Slimes in her dungeon in favor of the Ooze, as there was nothing else that could be gained from using what she now considered a very weak, nearly unusable monster.

And to think, I had wanted to make an army of them to stop the Kingdom’s Defenders!

That was no longer the case, as she had personally seen groups of 4 or 5 Defenders defeat many monsters more powerful than Slimes, and in higher quantities.

The Snowdrift Hare and Icicle Spider were also gained from the Snow Hare, and just as she stopped using Cold Slimes, Snow Hares were a thing of the past.  Snowdrift Hares soon replaced them as her go-to Hare, if only to see what else she might be able to unlock once it had reached its Thresholds.  The same thing went for Winter Wolves once the Polar Bear and Winter Dire Wolf were made available, as she essentially upgraded all of her base monsters with better versions.  They cost more EP, of course, but they were well worth the expense.

When some of her other monsters started to hit their Thresholds, she was inundated with choices once again.  Thankfully, most of them only had 2 Advancement Options to choose from instead of 4 like the Slime, Hare, and Wolf, but it was still a lot to choose from.

The first to achieve another Advancement Option was the Ice Golem, because it was constantly getting into lots of fights and Tempara had to replace them quite frequently.

Monster Details

Ice Golem

500 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Ice Knight

1,000 EP

Ice Worm

5,000 EP

As was typical, the Ice Knight was a taller, stronger, and deadlier version of the Ice Golem for 1,000 EP, and it had a small shield made of ice that was essentially its left arm and a long, sharp, icicle “sword” that was its right arm. Like the Golem, however, it had a vulnerable spot on its chest that glowed blue, but it was also buried a few inches inside the ice instead of being outside for all of the world to see.

The Ice Worm was entirely different.  While it was technically not made of ice like the Golem and Knight and was instead made of flesh and blood, the 40-foot-long and 5-foot-wide worm had plates of thin ice around its entire body, allowing it to withstand quite a bit of damage.  Its giant maw located on the front end of the Worm was nearly the width of its body, filled with a nightmarish combination of icicle teeth and what appeared to be sharp slivers of stone.  The ice plates around its body weren’t just for protection, but were angled in a way that aided it in traveling through densely packed snow and even ice, as it rotated its entire body to push itself forward quickly.  From what Tempara could understand, it was even faster through snow than her Snowdrift Panthers – but that was understandable for the low, low cost of only 5,000 EP!

Tempara wasn’t quite ready for that kind of monster, so she chose the Ice Knight instead, for now.  She was sure the Worm would be a worthy addition to her repertoire when it came time to finally defend her pack, but she thought she had some time before it would be useful.

Next up were her Snowflake Pixies, as they were frequently participating in attacking other dungeons – and protecting her Snow room, of course.

Monster Details

Snowflake Pixie

400 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Snowstorm Pixie

800 EP

Coldstriker Verrant

4,000 EP

The Snowstorm Pixie, as typical, was larger than the Snowflake Pixie, but it also appeared to have stronger elemental spells that it could cast beyond simple icicles at range or cold slowing spells up close – like spells that were nearly the equivalent to her Icicle Rain trap, though such spells weren’t able to be cast constantly.

The Coldstriker Verrant, however, was something entirely new to her.  Everything else she could picture either through her own memories as a Fox or from knowledge gained from her former master, but the Verrant wasn’t present in any of them.  For 4,000 EP, she expected something huge like the Ice Worm, but the impression she received of what the Verrant was turned out to be only about 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall – one of the smallest monsters that wasn’t a Slime or a Pixie.  It wasn’t either of them, but was instead was something that Kiana’s memories said was similar to a toad in shape and form; this one, however, was pale white, had a dozen eyes that circled its head so that it could look in all directions, and had very thin skin over thin, fragile-looking bones.

By all appearances, it didn’t seem to be worth investing 4,000 EP into; that was, at least, until she learned about what it could do.  In short, this Verrant was a magical powerhouse full of spells and effects that were quite devastating.  Its fragile appearance belied the capability for it to freeze everything in an entire room, to bombard a victim with balls made of ice that were 5 feet in diameter, or to call up spikes of ice from below a target’s feet, any of which could deal incredible damage.  In the end, it was extremely strong magically, albeit not physically; as a result, the Verrant’s defenses were almost non-existent, and it would probably die from even a single shot of an arrow or cut from a sword.

Tempara wavered back and forth between the two choices, but in the end she went with her instinct and chose the Coldstriker Verrant.  It had an exorbitant cost, but she thought she could make use of it in her dungeon more than she could something like the Ice Worm, which only cost 1,000 EP more than the Verrant.

After the Pixie had reached its Threshold, the Frost Elemental was next, as it suffered the most casualties in the Snow room compared to the others.  Considering that they needed to get relatively close to an enemy in order to surround their victims with supercooled mist, and then act as bait, their attrition was understandable and necessary.

Monster Details

Frost Elemental

200 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Froststrike Sentinel

400 EP

Orb of Chilling

2,000 EP

A quick look at the Froststrike Sentinel showed that it was basically a slightly bigger, more solidified version of the Frost Elemental, shaped in the form of a bipedal person – though it still floated a foot above the floor.  It had stronger abilities and could affect targets further away, but that was about the extent of its improvements.  Overall, it would definitely benefit Tempara to have them in her Snow room, as that would allow them to survive longer while being more effective.

The Orb of Chilling was a 6-foot-wide, glowing sphere made of multiple thin frost layers that floated 5 feet above the floor, and it radiated a constant, chilling cold that slowed anything within 10 feet of it, with the slowing effect only becoming more intense with closer proximity.  The cold effect was so strong that it acted like a natural shield against any fire-based spells or effects, and basic projectiles – such as arrows – had their momentum slowed and stopped before they could hit the Orb.  It didn’t really have any other abilities beyond the chill, but any flesh-and-blood victims caught within the cold effect would quickly freeze to death if they weren’t able to power through and strike the Orb – which was delicate enough that nearly any attack that hit the frost sphere would destroy it.

Tempara only thought about it for a few seconds before choosing the Orb of Chilling (even though it cost 2,000 EP), as she could see multiple uses for the powerful monster – especially when used in conjunction with other monsters.  On its own, it wasn’t as useful; as part of a team, it could prove to be even more influential toward a successful defense than anything else she could create.

The next of her “older” monsters to hit its Thresholds was the Whiteout Panther, which didn’t have quite as exciting of Advancement Options as the others.

Monster Details

Whiteout Panther

350 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Arctic Tiger

700 EP

Iceback Prowler

3,500 EP

With the Arctic Tiger basically just a larger, more powerful Whiteout Panther, there wasn’t really much to investigate there.  It cost twice as much as the Panther at 700 EP, but that appeared to be the norm for upgraded versions of the original monsters.

The Iceback Prowler was certainly more expensive at 3,500 EP, but Tempara wasn’t convinced it was worth it.  Standing 8 feet tall at the shoulder, the Prowler appeared to be very similar to the Panther and Tiger, though there was a ridge of ice spikes along its back that likely gave the monster its name.  From what she understood of its abilities, the Prowler was not only able to move through snow as fast as a Panther, but when it was fully hidden by the white, powdery substance, it could magically teleport up to 100 feet away into another large pile of snow, as long as the destination was hidden.  While she thought this would be useful in her Snow room, she didn’t think it would be worth the expense to use at the moment when there were other options.

With such thinking, she chose the Arctic Tiger for her Advancement Option and moved on.

The last of her monsters at this time to reach its Thresholds was the Snowbeast – and she was presented with only one Advancement Option instead of two.

Monster Details

Snowbeast

500 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Elder Snowbeast

1,000 EP

Without any other choices, Tempara chose Elder Snowbeast, which was approximately 50% larger than the original Snowbeast, but instead of just 2 appendages that came out of its back, the Elder had a total of 6.  With its size increase, it had a larger maw into which to shove victims, and with its longer legs, it could move just a little bit faster than the original.

After acquiring the Elder Snowbeast, when she looked at its Thresholds, she was surprised to see that they were actually there, along with a mystery Advancement Option.  She had mistakenly thought that the Elder version of the Snowbeast was the pinnacle of Snowbeastiness, but apparently she was wrong.

After all of the monsters that reached their Thresholds, Tempara also had one of her original traps finally achieve the chance at an Advancement Option.

Trap Details

Icicle Rain

1 AR

Installation Threshold: 50/50

Usage Threshold: 250/250

Potential Advancement Options:

Icicle Deluge

1.5 AR

Ice Spikes

1.5 AR

Shaved Ice

1.75 AR

Ice Bomb

2 AR

As she could’ve guessed, the 1.5 AR Icicle Deluge was simply a lengthier and denser rain of icicles from the ceiling – with a wider area of effect.  She would definitely be employing them in her dungeon whenever she unlocked them, because Icicle Rain didn’t last nearly as long as she would like, and it was easily avoided because of its relatively small area.

Ice Spikes seemed very much like the Spear Impalement Option from her Pit Trap, but at half the cost at 1.5 AR.  Essentially, instead of being impaled by ice from above like with her Icicle Rain, any victims would be impaled from below by large spikes of ice that topped out at 8 feet high. Since they were ice instead of stone, they were easier to break apart; but for such a relatively small AR cost, they could still be extremely deadly.  The best thing about them was that, when triggered, the spikes would immediately impale whatever crossed over their area of effect, instead of falling from the ceiling; many times, by the time the icicles from Icicle Rain hit the floor – especially in her Snow room – the victims had already passed by.

Next was Shaved Ice, which she thought was an interesting name for what it actually was.  This trap was installed in a wall, and when activated, 3 thin, 5-foot-long, curved blades of very sharp ice would emerge from a slit in the wall at different heights – one at 1 foot, another at 3 feet, and the last at 5 feet – and slice across whatever was in range.  She supposed that the blades were sharp and thin enough that one could shave the fur off of a beast, which is probably how the trap got its name, but she knew the intended result was likely to lop off limbs or cut a victim in half.

The last Advancement Option was the Ice Bomb.  Unlike most of the other traps, this one wasn’t hidden in the walls, the floor, or the ceiling.  Instead, it was essentially a sphere of clear ice, 2 feet wide, that hovered 3 feet above the ground.  Also, unlike the other traps that had a trigger that needed to be pressed or activated in some way, the Ice Bomb was set off by simple proximity to a victim.  Whenever anything came within 5 feet of the Ice Bomb, it would explode violently, sending shards of sharp ice flying in all directions at incredible speed. Her assistant said that it could still be deactivated by a Defender with that kind of ability, but just about any monster that came close to it would inevitably set it off.

Tempara didn’t even hesitate to pick the Ice Bomb, despite its 2 AR cost, and she resolved to get the other ones as soon as possible – because they were all good for different reasons.

As the incarnations she experienced became more extensive as she survived for longer periods of time, the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core slowly introduced some of these new additions to her dungeon.  With an increased Core Level, such as Level 10, for instance, she was starting to be able to hold quite a few more monsters in her dungeon with a higher Monster Threshold.

Core Display

Core Name:

Tempara

Core Level:

10

Designation:

Frozen Cohort

Level Threshold:

55,000 EP

Elemental Power (EP):

4,351 EP

Accumulation Rate (AR):

30 (-20) EP/minute

Defensible Rooms:

32

Available Monsters:

22

Monster Threshold:

64

Available Traps:

6

Monsters:

Cold Slime

Snow Hare

Glacial Ooze

25 EP

50 EP

50 EP

Snowball

Snowdrift Hare

Winter Wolf

100 EP

100 EP

125 EP

Armed Snowball

Frost Elemental

Icicle Spider

200 EP

200 EP

200 EP

Winter Dire Wolf

Whiteout Panther

Snowflake Pixie

250 EP

350 EP

400 EP

Polar Bear

Ice Golem

Snowbeast

450 EP

500 EP

500 EP

Arctic Tiger

Freezing Salamander

Yeti

700 EP

750 EP

800 EP

Elder Snowbeast

Ice Knight

Orb of Chilling

1,000 EP

1,000 EP

2,000 EP

Coldstriker Verrant

4,000 EP

Traps:

Pit Trap

Frigid Blast

Spiked Pit Trap

0.5 AR

0.5 AR

0.75 AR

Icicle Rain

Chilled Feet

Ice Bomb

1 AR

1 AR

2 AR

Core Abilities:

Construct Dungeon

Create Monster

Install Trap

(EP cost – varies)

(EP cost – varies)

(AR cost – varies)

Skills/Knowledge:

Monster Creation

Trap Installation

Temporal Manipulation

(Total Available: 22)

(Total Available: 6)

(Total Available: 1)

With a Monster Threshold of 64, she could technically have up to 96 monsters in her dungeon at one time with the extra 50% overage until she hit the limit, which meant that she was able to diversify and upgrade her monster selection as well as add a few extra rooms.  After replacing all of the Slimes, Hares, and Wolves with their upgraded versions in the Grid Room, she did the same for her Ice room with Armed Snowballs, and then added an Orb of Chilling right in the middle of the ice, in between two Spiked Pit Traps.  The presence of the Orb made it nearly impossible for any monsters to sneak by, not that they tried; instead, the Wolves and Hares that assaulted her dungeon attempted to attack it, but slipping on the ice meant that they couldn’t get close enough to reach it before they froze to death.  Later on, as more-powerful monsters invaded, it wasn’t as effective, but for a while it worked to keep almost everything from progressing further.

She also constructed a room past the Slide that she mentally thought of as the Column room, which held dozens of tall columns of cloudy ice, 2 feet wide, all equidistant from each other in the 100-foot-wide space.  Inside of the Column room were 8 Icicle Spiders, which she learned actually spun strands of thin ice from their rear ends and could connect them between the columns.  The strands weren’t particularly strong, but they required a moment to tear through them, which allowed the Spiders to descend along the columns, which they stuck to with amazing alacrity.  Their attacks were almost always unexpected, which was a bonus to the deadliness of the special arachnids.

Tempara also added a few other small rooms ahead of the Column room. One featured a Freezing Salamander surrounded by Glacial Oozes. Another held two large piles of snow on opposite sides of the room, each of which held an Arctic Tiger, with 2 Ice Bombs between the snow piles. A third held a Yeti with two Polar Bear guards, along with not just 1 but 3 Chilled Feet traps to freeze whatever invaded so that they could be savaged by her strong monsters.

The biggest change she made was when nearly 2 weeks had gone by, and the need to upgrade her Snow room was required.  As such, she eliminated every monster inside and replaced them with a Coldstriker Verrant on the center platform, surrounded by 8 Ice Knights.  The Verrant could cast cold-based spells that had a wide range without hurting the Ice Knights, which in turn protected the powerful spellcasters with their shields and sturdy construction.

For her Dungeon Boss, she eventually eliminated the giant Winter Wolf and upgraded to an Elder Snowbeast – though she made sure that she increased the size of her Core room first.  The Boss took approximately 6 hours to finish being created, and with the cost of 15,000 EP, it was certainly worth the wait.  Standing 40 feet tall and twice as long, the Elder Snowbeast Boss had 12 appendages along its back and sides, and its two mouths could probably swallow an Ice Worm easily, though whether or not it would be able to actually eat it was something else entirely.  Regardless, it was a worthy Boss to protect her Core, which then stood on its pedestal at the back of a 200-foot-wide room, out of the way of the giant monster.

Yet, even with all of these advancements to her dungeon and monsters, there was always something that happened to cut her survival short.  After 2 weeks, many of the other dungeons had started unlocking more monsters as Thresholds were met, and those invading her dungeon began to get closer and closer to her Core.  When she started to experience new situations that she hadn’t seen before, as she survived longer than she had before, something would inevitably surprise her.

Such as at 15 days, her range expanded enough to reveal that there were some higher Core Level dungeons to the north, around Core Level 5 and 6, which immediately stopped fighting each other and sent everything they had toward Tempara’s dungeon.  It was almost as if, when she increased her own Core Level and expanded her range, those Dungeon Cores further away could now sense her – and acted accordingly.  It took her a few tries to survive the initial onslaught of monsters, but that wasn’t the only obstacle.

The Defenders were out in force now, patrolling the area around the border more frequently, and journeying a little further north.  Kiana’s knowledge told her that in the time between the periodic sweeps, the Kingdom was extra diligent in rooting out any nearby problems, because they knew that the rise of a few powerful dungeons was not only likely but inevitable.  By nipping those that were near the border in the bud before they could become a problem, they ensured that the likelihood of a devastating horde of monsters crossing the border before the sweep was very, very small.  Any powerful dungeons a lot further north would be eliminated by the sweep later.

The increase in scouting Defenders made it difficult – but not impossible – to avoid detection, but she needed to see where they were coming from in order to take steps to stop them looking in her dungeon’s direction.  As she became more powerful, she was actually able to defeat a few of the less-experienced groups of Defenders that located her entrance, such as Jonas and his team.  Of course, once she did that, she was inevitably visited by a stronger group of Defenders, including once by Horad’s familiar team.  Despite her having powerful monsters, the combination of Horad, Fimble, Sylvia, and Mortimer was enough to destroy all of her monsters, while only suffering very minor injuries that were quickly healed.

It just went to show that she had a long way to go if she wanted to save her pack – but she was getting there.

She spent countless incarnations inching her way to longer and longer survival times, unlocking a few more Advancement Options along the way that she already knew about, so there wasn’t anything that helped her immensely.  Instead, she relied on repetition and memorization to navigate her way to success, as she identified which dungeons would attack her when, created false routes of monsters moving between dungeons, covered up her own monsters’ tracks when at all possible, and learned the arrival times of the Kingdom’s Defenders and worked around them.  When she couldn’t completely avoid attention, she took to sending out small groups of her monsters either west or east before turning south, creating an easily trackable route from dungeons nearest the borders as a distraction.  Anything and everything she attempted, all to avoid attention.

Eventually, through many battles and constant management of her outer and inner forces, Tempara was able to survive nearly the entire time.  She narrowly missed keeping her Core intact when she made the mistake of raising her Core Level once again to 13 to prepare, which brought her into range of some Cores up top that were Core Level 10 and 11.  The resulting onslaught of monsters sent in her direction was too much for her, and she drowned under the sheer numbers.

* Select your starting location…. *

This time, though, she thought she finally had it figured out.

Chapter 25

The trio of Yetis were trying to force their way through her own Yeti and Polar Bears, but the foreign monsters were having problems moving thanks to the Chilled Feet trap that they were stuck on.  The two Snowflake Pixies she added to the room on a whim took advantage of their inability to move to fling icicles in their faces, which cut them up pretty badly; more than that, though, the wounds infuriated the enemy Yetis enough that they took their eyes off of Tempara’s own powerful monsters.

A powerful swipe of a Polar Bear paw sent a hollow *crack* reverberating through the room as one of the invading Yetis suffered a broken leg, and an outraged yell of pain was evidence that her other Polar Bear had dug down deep with its own swipe, tearing furrows in the thick fur and skin of another.  Her own Yeti slammed its fists down on the head of the third distracted Yeti, breaking its neck in the process, which made it collapse into the others.  Her Polar Bears moved forward when the foreign Yetis started to fall to the ground from the wounds and the weight of their comrade, and they quickly tore open the invaders’ throats, despite the arms attempting to hold them back.

One on one, a Yeti was usually able to overcome a Polar Bear, but when they were frozen to the floor and distracted by icicle projectiles, their height and maneuverability advantages disappeared quickly.

Sending her viewpoint outside, she looked to the west to see three of her groups moving from one gathering of monsters to another.  Over the last few days, she had learned that it was too costly to continue attacking dungeons, because the defenses were typically too much for her groups to handle easily.  When Wolves and Hares were replaced with Polar Bears, Yeti, and Freezing Salamanders inside, it was much easier to wait until the Cores sent out a few monsters to gather outside of their entrances and eliminate those foes then and there.  It meant that she was receiving less Elemental Power from reaching the Cores inside, but it was much safer and more expedient this way.

Checking to the north, she saw that one of her groups was being overpowered by the monsters the Sneaky dungeon was sending out, so she funneled over a second one close by to back them up.  She called it the “Sneaky” dungeon because 3 different times she had been caught off-guard by the Core Level 8 dungeon sending out a sizable force all at once, which must have been everything but what it had to keep inside because of its Monster Threshold.  They were trying to do it again, but she had backups in case it happened, which she employed with her second nearby group.

All of her attacking groups of monsters were what she spent most of her Elemental Power on over the last week, because it was the only way to maintain any sense of order outside of her dungeon.  She needed fewer of her most-powerful monsters, because she couldn’t send them out, since she had learned that they tended to garner more attention than usual.

I think… yes, it’s time.

Looking off to the east, she saw what she hoped was the last Defender scouting group for the day looking over the dungeons a little further away from the border.  Anticipating their presence, she had already moved most of her groups away from that location, but there were two groups of Hares and Wolves that were pretending to be coming from another dungeon there.  She sent both of them toward a single entrance from different directions, creating quite a few tracks that would indicate to the scouts that this particular dungeon might bear investigating.

She had absolutely no problem sacrificing another Dungeon Core in order to move suspicion away from her own dungeon.  She’d already done it a dozen times during this incarnation, after all; sometimes the only way to get the Defenders to leave was to give them a target and let them tire themselves out dealing with another dungeon.  Sacrificing her two groups of Wolves and Hares was a more than fair trade.

Looking at her Core Display, she was holding steady at 78,000 EP at Core Level 12, which was the maximum she could hold before reaching Level 13 – which she didn’t want to do.  That was what made her dungeon become overwhelmed when her range expanded last time, and she would rather not have to restart again.  With a Monster Threshold at 87 and a maximum of 130 monsters inside of her dungeon, she had already amassed an army of monsters that she would send out the next day, when she expected the periodic sweep to happen.

How did she know it was the next day?  Because she had been keeping an eye on her pack, and especially her younger self.  When she saw that the Defenders had taken the bait to the west, she moved her focus there now, and was thus rewarded by seeing her month-old self acting out the scene that she vaguely remembered occurring the day before everything went wrong.

While she couldn’t hear the mental conversation the young Fox – which was Tempara in another lifetime – was having with her parents, she recognized the annoyance, determination, and rebellion in her former body.  This was the point where she was arguing about being able to leave the den and see the falling snow outside for the first time, because she thought she was more than old and mature enough.

Oh, how naïve I was back then.

Having seen the land around the den, which was constantly full of dungeon monsters and even some natural beast predators, she knew how dangerous it really was.  But to her younger Fox self, it was like an adventure that her parents were deliberately trying to keep from her, and so she was determined to sneak out of the den the next day.  Of course, that didn’t work out so well for her or her pack, so now she was going to do her best to try and stop it from happening.

Looking toward the border as the sun set, she could see lots of activity around the Kingdom’s forts.  All day, thousands of Defenders had been arriving all along the border and gathered in the forts, waiting for the next day when they would go forth in a wave and wipe out all of the dungeons in the Frozen Reaches.  Of course, there were only a few hundred that were going to participate along the range she could view, but the border was dozens of miles long; they would go forth from all of the forts simultaneously, sweeping across the Wildland area like a wave of destructive pestilence.

With them were the ones that had – or would – slaughtered her pack and captured Tempara.  She had trouble remembering how many there were, but she suspected that there were at least 15 to 20 of them – and none of them were those she recognized from the regular patrols and scouts that investigated the border.  Granted, she never actually saw the one that had initially captured her, but the rest that she remembered seeing she thought she would be able to recognize.

Tomorrow, though, she would find out who they were and stop them.  Once she did that, she had vague plans of blocking off her entrance to prevent the Defenders from finding and destroying her Core; it was a massive risk and could still end up with her destruction, at least according to her assistant, but it was worth a try.

Now that it was the last night before the sweep and the attack on her pack, she sent out even more groups of her monster forces in order to keep all the other Cores in line.  She was in a period of time she hadn’t experienced before – as a Dungeon Core, at least – so she didn’t want any other interruptions or surprises.

Dawn marginally lightened the sky as the sun slowly rose, but it was mainly obscured by the clouds and the snow that still fell over the Frozen Reaches.  Looking at the border, the massive army of Defenders was already amassing, dressed in their thick furs as they ventured forth to start invading and wiping out dungeons. Tempara looked to see if she could find anyone that she remembered from that day she was captured, but either her memories were faulty or they weren’t there.

The crowd of people increased as the sun continued to rise, until the land all along the border was thick with so many of them that it was difficult to tell which ones she had already looked at and which she hadn’t.  Despite the difficulty, she could reasonably say that she couldn’t recognize any of those who would do the deed in just a short while.

Suddenly, movement to the east of where she was currently looking caught her attention, as a small group of about a dozen people broke away from the crowd and crossed the border.  Tempara expected the rest of the Defenders to follow soon after, but they stayed in place, as if they were waiting on some sort of signal before they advanced.

Focusing on the group that had broken away, recognition immediately bloomed within her mind as her memories identified at least two of them.  One of them had a uniquely black set of fur clothing, which was rare in the north; most of the fur on dungeon monsters and natural beasts was in shades of light blue, silver, grey, and white, so a pure black set of fur was quite distinctive.  The other one she recognized wasn’t wearing furs at all, but was an Elven woman wearing a short, dark-red dress with black leather boots up to her knees, and she carried a wooden staff that seemed to glow red on the end.  There was also a haze around her that Tempara had come to recognize as magical; whatever it was, her former master’s memories didn’t seem to identify it.  It soon became obvious that the least of what it did was keep the cold and snow away, as none of the falling flakes touched her when they fell near her person.

As for the rest of the people, most of them looked vaguely familiar, but they were wearing almost identical fur clothing that was more typical of what the Defenders who scouted wore, so it was difficult to tell them apart.  The only outlier was a tall Human wearing a dark-blue robe of some unknown material, which appeared to be lined in fur on the inside.  He had a thick, silvery hood that hid most of his features, but the blonde-colored beard that stuck out at least told her that it was a male; more than that was hard to discern.

What she did know was that she didn’t recognize him in the slightest.

Is that the one that captured me?

Since that was one of the only people that had attacked her pack that she hadn’t seen, she thought it more than likely.

Whether that person was the one who had captured her or not, she started to send the army of monsters she had been hoarding in her dungeon outside, where they would assemble a distance away from her pack’s den.  She also started the process of sending out all of her powerful monsters that defended her dungeon, replacing them with Slimes so that she kept to her Monster Threshold.

If something attacked her dungeon now, she would only have her traps to help defend her Core – but if this specific sweep of Defenders was going to wait to sweep through, then she wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to get as many monsters out as possible.  She even strategically started to move her roaming attacking forces to the same place, as she was more concerned about this group of people heading north than the Dungeon Cores that could attack her.

Groups of Ice Knights, Polar Bears, Elder Snowbeasts, Yeti, and even a few Coldstriker Verrants were accompanied by packs of Arctic Tigers, Winter Dire Wolves, and even a few Iceback Prowlers that she had recently acquired by hitting the Threshold for her Whiteout Panthers again.  For support in the air, dozens of Snowflake Pixies were accompanied by a half-dozen Snowstorm Pixies, the upgraded version of the original; below them were a dozen Froststrike Sentinels, which she had unlocked from Frost Elementals, along with a few Orbs of Chilling.  The latter didn’t move very fast, as they floated over the snow at a walk, but they would arrive in plenty of time.

There were a few monsters that she had access to but couldn’t send, if only because she couldn’t get them out of her dungeon.  When she hit the Thresholds for the Yeti not too long ago, she had the choice between an Abominable Yeti and an Ice Giant.

Monster Details

Yeti

800 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Abominable Yeti

1,600 EP

Ice Giant

8,000 EP

The Abominable Yeti had been her choice, because 8,000 EP for an Ice Giant was entirely too much to spend at the moment.  It wasn’t just the expense, however, because the Ice Giant was over 50 feet tall all by itself; there was no way to fit the blue-skinned monster – which looked similar to the Yeti except for the fact that it had absolutely no fur or hair – out through the tunnels in her dungeon.  It was completely smooth-skinned everywhere over its body, and it held a large club of ice in its right hand, which she could only assume could be used to great effect to smash something into paste.  Even without any fur to catch on anything, there was no way it was leaving.

For 1,600, however, she thought the Abominable Yeti would fit – but it wouldn’t, at least not easily.  At over 15 feet tall, the Yeti could crouch and slide through some of the tunnels, but it had real difficulty getting through her Grid section without completely altering the rooms and tunnels located there. Therefore, she used her EP on other monsters instead.

She also unlocked the Ice Worm, but just like the Giant, there was no way to get it out of the dungeon without having it make its own hole somewhere.  Since she was still concerned about other dungeons attacking her own, giving them another access somewhere wasn’t conducive to a lengthy survival.

The Freezing Salamander also hit its Threshold, but both of its new Advancement Options were too large to fit through her dungeon.

Monster Details

Freezing Salamander

750 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Iceshard Salamander

1,500 EP

Frozen Drake

7,500 EP

The Iceshard Salamander wasn’t just longer than the Freezing Salamander, it was wider.  While she widened the tunnel leading from her Core room and her Snow room, the Iceshard version of the Salamander had legs that made it too wide to fit through the rest.  The same was true of the Frozen Drake, though she didn’t choose that one at the moment, because the 50-foot-long, winged lizard was also 10 feet at its widest, which wouldn’t allow it to squeeze through in any shape or form.  In order to accommodate it, as well as any of the others that were quite large, she would either have to widen all of the tunnels and the Grid rooms, or she would have to create a large tunnel just for them to exit her Core room.  Due to their expensive cost, by the time she would be able to create, she wouldn’t have had time to work on that construction.

In fact, the Elder Snowbeast was the only large monster she was able to fit through her dungeon, and that was only because the snow it was made from was able to contort, stretch, and maneuver through the tunnels with the aid of its appendages, which pulled it forward.  She didn’t think it would happen when she first attempted to move it through her dungeon, but she was very surprised and thankful.

In all, she had a force of a little over 150 monsters assembled, against a group of Defenders less than a tenth of the size.  Most of her monsters were relatively powerful in their own right, but working together like she had been using them in her dungeon, they would be unstoppable – or so she hoped.  Thankfully, if she didn’t stop them this time, she knew how to get to this point now and could alter her approach in future incarnations; still, now that she was here, she didn’t want to lose.

I’m going to stop them here once and for all.

Chapter 26

The last of her monsters were getting in position in the large force she had assembled when the incoming Defenders arrived.  Having seen the devastation the people of the Kingdom could visit upon her monsters in her dungeon, she opted to break them into groups of around a dozen so that they wouldn’t be wiped out as one big group by a powerful spell or two.  She had no idea what these people could do, other than slaughter her pack, so she was being extra cautious.

Each group held an assortment of different monsters, each with some that were best for running straight in and doing damage, a stealthy contingent such as the Arctic Tigers that could slink underneath the fallen snow, and some support at long-range by some Pixies.  The only exception to this were 2 groups that contained Ice Knights and Orbs of Chilling, as the Orbs would help to protect the Knights from offensive fire-based spells while not hurting them in the process.

She was as ready as she was going to be.

When the Defenders were approximately 150 feet away from her monster army positioned in the field in front of her pack’s den, they stopped, having just barely seen what was waiting for them through the falling snow.  Tempara didn’t hesitate to order her own groups forward to where they were located, not wanting the Defenders to have too much time to prepare something nasty that could kill a lot of her monsters.

As her monster force walked or ran forward, the Dungeon Core watched the people take a momentary step back, before all but one of them looked in a specific place: right at the individual with the blonde beard, wearing the dark-blue robe with a silver hood.  That person seemed to look out at the approaching army of monsters and then calmly pushed back the hood.

Tempara figured that she was looking at the Human that had captured her so long ago, but she didn’t recognize the entirely bald top of his head, his glowing silver eyes, nor the way his ears seemed to be notched, as if someone or something had taken evenly spaced chunks out of them.  The Dungeon Core could only assume that this was the one, based on how all the other Defenders with him seemed to be deferring to his leadership, but she was unable to confirm it.

It really doesn’t matter, though, because I’m going to stop him.

Nobody moved from the Defender portion of the field, which was good news for Tempara and her monsters.  Most of them seemed tense, but not in any defensive formation, even as they all kept looking at the bald-headed man with the beard.

He, however, appeared calmer than the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core thought he should have, considering what was bearing down on him.

Just as her Pixies formed icicles up in the air and started to rain them down on the seemingly defenseless Defenders, the blue-robed man finally moved.

* Select your starting location…. *

What was THAT?!

Tempara found herself back looking down at the Kingdom and Wildlands landscape so quickly that it took her nearly a minute to collect her thoughts and figure out what happened.  Finally, after the shock of the abrupt transition to the start of her Dungeon Core existence wore off, she began to piece some things together.

The last few things she remembered had happened so fast that it was difficult to separate them all.  First, the man had made a gesture with his hand that largely looked like a circle, and a glowing, blue trail had followed his fingers.  Inside of the circle had been some lines that were connected to the center and splayed off in two different directions, with each line slightly different lengths.  A quick search of the memories imparted into her mind by her former master told her that this was basically an outline of a clock – a way for the people of the Kingdom to tell time with a visual aide.

Next, everything in the vicinity except for the man and the other Defenders seemed to halt in place, which included all her monsters and even the snowflakes falling from the sky.  She only witnessed that for a tiny fraction of a second, though, before she felt something trace the connection she had with her monsters back to her Core.  When it got to her, she felt it pierce her mind and her form all at once, shattering her Core and sending her back to the start.

Throughout all of the times she’d had her Core destroyed, none of them had been anything like what she just experienced.  Somehow, it seemed impossible that she could have been shattered like that, through some spell or effect that did something with the connection she had with her monsters.  It just didn’t make sense, and nothing in any memories or experiences thus far as a Dungeon Core explained it.

* Select your starting location…. *

It had been a while since she had let the annoying voice repeat itself like that, and she immediately shook off the bewilderment and chose her customary location.  Before too long, she was back in her empty dungeon, where she was forced to do everything all again.

While she waited for her Elemental Power to accumulate, she tried talking it over with her assistant after she had taken the time to explain her life story, but the woman didn’t seem to know anything about who that man was or what it was that he had done.  However, they did manage to figure something out.

* We can only assume that he was doing something related to time, which is what the clock would indicate, though it is unknown how that relates to the supposed destruction of your Core. *

Tempara had some guesses, but nothing certain; her Temporal Manipulation skill had something to do with time, so it might have interacted with whatever that man had been doing.  As it was, there wasn’t much that she could do to find out, especially since she still wasn’t entirely sure of how she got her ability to loop back in time in the first place.

Regardless of her lack of knowledge, she was determined to succeed in this incarnation.  As she survived over the next few weeks, she reached the Threshold for another 3 monsters.  The first was the Glacial Ooze, which provided her with another two choices for Advancement Options.

Monster Details

Glacial Ooze

50 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Chilled Slime King

300 EP

Iceberg Ooze

900 EP

Both Options were large, with the Chilled Slime King 8 feet tall and wide, which was just barely small enough to fit through the tunnels if it squeezed itself within the passageways.  In many ways it appeared very similar to the Cold Slime and the Glacial Ooze, but other than its size, the major difference was that it possessed 20 different cores inside of its body, which meant that all of them had to be destroyed to kill the Slime King.  Unfortunately, it was still nearly as slow as its smaller brethren, meaning that it wasn’t necessarily something she would send outside of her dungeon.  It could form multiple appendages all over its body to try and drag victims into itself, which was the best thing it had going for it.

The Iceberg Ooze was huge – and slower than anything else, if that could be believed.  The massive Ooze was 60 feet long, 15 feet tall, and 40 feet wide, and it was more ovoid-shaped than spherical.  From what she could tell, it was able to shift its bulk quickly when a victim was near, essentially throwing itself on top of whatever was near, crushing and absorbing them into its “body”.  That was about the only offense it had; it was more of an obstacle to get by than anything else.

As the Slime King was more useful at the time, she chose that one out of the two.

The second monster to reach its Threshold was actually the Ice Knight, because she was using it extensively outside of her dungeon to help contain the other Cores.  There was only one Option, unfortunately, but it was a good one – if extremely expensive.

Monster Details

Ice Knight

1,000 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Ice Guardian

10,000 EP

The Ice Guardian was essentially a much, much larger version of the Ice Knight.  Topping out at 40 feet, the Guardian was made of chunks of ice like the others, but it was so thick in places that it was sometimes hard to see clearly through the ice.  The vulnerability on its chest was still there, but it was buried under feet of solid ice, meaning that it was much harder to kill, and it wielded a giant sword-like arm that could crush a victim while splitting them in half.  It was also capable of shattering on impact, sending extremely sharp shards of ice shooting off in multiple directions, and then it could pull a tiny portion of the ice that made up its body to reform the sword arm.

She acquired it, but other than as a deterrent for a late-day foreign monster assault on her Snow room, it wasn’t going to do much good.  Seeing that her strongest monsters couldn’t even leave her dungeon, she was slowly adapting to a new idea of making her dungeon large enough to fit them through – but she didn’t have the plan in place for her current incarnation.

Maybe next time… if a next time is even necessary, of course.

She was hoping that she would be able to stop the man and his Defender team this time, so she might not even have to worry about it.

The last monster to reach its Threshold before the day of the attack on her pack was the Polar Bear.

Monster Details

Polar Bear

450 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Polar Bear Matriarch

900 EP

Woolly Mammoth

4,500 EP

Tempara looked at the Polar Bear Matriarch and saw that it was a larger, more vicious version of the basic Polar Bear; it stood at approximately 7 feet tall at its shoulder and was 12 feet long, and it had claws that extended out from the Matriarch’s enormous paws at least 8 inches.  It also weighed nearly twice as much as the normal Polar Bear, as its bones were much thicker and stronger than its smaller version.

The Woolly Mammoth, on the other hand, wasn’t a bear at all.  The 14-foot-tall quadruped had thick, woolly fur all over its body – including its extremely thick and sturdy legs – and it had two long, curved tusks that jutted out from the sides of its mouth.  The pointed ends of the tusks seemed sharp enough to easily pierce through ice, and the long nose was very similar to an extra appendage, which would allow it to pick things up or smash against a victim in equal measure.  In addition, the skin underneath all of the fur was extremely thick and durable, able to resist minor stabs and cuts.  As a bonus for having so much fur, its resistance to cold effects – such as her Orb of Chilling – was increased dramatically, though prolonged exposure could still hurt it.

The Mammoth wasn’t very fast when walking normally, but when it got moving toward a victim, it could charge ahead and would be extremely hard to stop with all of the weight behind it.  In a way, it was similar to her original Snowball, which couldn’t stop easily and turn – but on a whole different level, of course.

Tempara decided to go with the Polar Bear Matriarch for now, if only because it could crouch down and slide itself out of her dungeon without her having to resize all of the tunnels and rooms.  It was still a tight fit, but she thought it would be the best use of her time and resources for now.

Finally, after a month of survival again, the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core finally arrived at the morning of the periodic sweep – and the appearance of the Defenders that had sent her back to the start during her last incarnation.  This time, however, she had a different plan.

During the night, far before the line of Defenders assembled along the border with the Kingdom, Tempara had sent out more than a hundred Arctic Tigers and an additional 30 Iceback Prowlers to the field where she had attempted to overwhelm them last time.  The snow was deep enough for the stealthy monsters to hide underneath the surface and then ambush the group of Defenders when they arrived.  Since she had a fairly good idea of exactly where they would be walking on their way to her pack’s den, the Dungeon Core placed them strategically so that they would all be able to attack at the same time, overwhelming the group and especially that bald man with the blue robe and silver hood.

In addition, hovering above the den were 50 Snowstorm Pixies spread out in a line and largely hidden by the snowstorm – just in case the Defenders survived the ambush and made it through.  She had dozens of other monsters on standby in her dungeon for backup, the fastest she could create, such as the Winter Dire Wolf and the Snowdrift Hare, though she doubted she was going to need them.

She watched the group she was waiting for break off from the main force of Defenders just as before.  Though she looked for them before they even started moving, she found that they appeared out of the nearest fort just moments before arriving at the line.  Her hidden monsters were already in place, buried under the snow hours ago, and the falling snow hid their tracks on their way to their hiding places.

The group took the exact same route as before, a fairly straight line that went around only a single hill in the landscape, and soon enough they were approaching her ambush site.  While she waited, she thought to look in on her pack, and she saw her younger self slowly inching her way toward the den’s exit while everyone else was distracted.  She knew that in a short time, the small form of Tempara as a Fox would make a break for the outside of the den, where she would be able to feel the falling snow on her fur for the first time – and would be captured if she didn’t do something to stop that from happening.

The next few minutes were tense as she saw the Defenders steadily walking into the trap.  When they were all directly within the circle she had mentally drawn to indicate when to strike, Tempara sent orders to all of the waiting monsters to move toward the blue-robed man.  In an enormous explosion of snow, more than 100 stealthy, cat-like monsters practically flew out of the ground where they had been waiting, with a half-dozen Iceback Prowlers within a few feet of the man when they emerged.

Yes!  He can’t possibly—

* Select your starting location…. *

NOOOO!!!!  HOW?!

She knew exactly how he had done it, but the man’s reaction had been so quick that it was nearly imperceptible.  With a quick jerk of his hands, the glowing clock had come back, freezing in place every monster jumping toward him and the rest of the Defenders.  A fraction of a second later, the spell hit Tempara’s mind, shattering her Core in the process.

Rather than despair at the failure, it only made her more determined than ever to stop these Defenders from succeeding.  She wasn’t sure how she could stop them, but she had all the time in the world to figure it out.

Chapter 27

Tempara tried everything she could think of to stop the bald-headed man and his group from getting close to her pack’s den.  Surviving until they arrived soon turned almost trivial, as over many incarnations she memorized the actions that needed to be taken in order to get to that point; it was only during the last few days that she changed things up between each incarnation, so that she could implement new strategies.

The first strategy was one that she had been thinking about for a while, which was expanding the size of her dungeon tunnels – and rooms, where it was needed – in order to utilize some of her larger monsters. Enlarging the tunnels was simple enough, if time-consuming, but she ended up skipping manipulating the Grid section; instead, she simply created a large tunnel that went around the entire section before reconnecting with the rest of the dungeon.  Even if something got through the massive Ice Worm she placed there as a way to plug up the tunnel, then they would still have to contend with the powerful monsters she had in her Snow room.

Through this enlarged tunnel system, she started funneling Ice Worms, Ice Guardians, Abominable Yetis, and anything else that had a difficult time fitting through the normal tunnels, and she sent them outside near the end of the survival period.  The thought was that they would be too strong, too powerful, and too deadly to be stopped by the bald man’s spell; when it failed, they would be able to crush him and the other Defenders with their large bulk and strong arms.  She ended up spending hundreds of thousands of EP in order to afford an army of giant monsters, by eliminating most of her monsters inside of her dungeon and even putting off a Core Level increase.

Unfortunately, even the Ice Worm that was located right below the blue-robed man’s stopping place had barely shifted the snow beneath his feet before Tempara found herself choosing her starting location.

During her next incarnation, she created hundreds of Pixies and sent them high above the snowfield, where they would stay just out of sight of the approaching Defenders.  The plan worked, as none of them were aware of her flying monsters high above their heads; when they swooped down in order to get into range of their attacks, the Pixies unleashed a torrent of icicles that would completely obliterate anything below—

But something seemed to warn the bald man as he froze all of the projectiles with a few gestures.  The biggest difference between this time and before, however, was that her restart wasn’t instant.  Tempara was able to see the blue-robed Defender cast his spell, and a wave of energy seemed to explode out of him quickly and expand like an inflating bubble; it took a little less than a second to reach her Pixies higher in the air, but it was the first time the Dungeon Core was able to witness the effect without being instantly restarted.

Sadly, that information didn’t seem to help Tempara any, because she was never able to see more than that, and the range of the spell seemed to be quite extensive.

She tried to hide Snowbeasts under the snow, with their appendages waiting for the Defenders to step close, but they barely even twitched before she was sent back to the start.

Orbs of Chilling were sent out in their dozens in another incarnation, creating a wall of cold that was impenetrable.  She ordered them to stay in place and make no threatening movements, but the man still cast his spell despite the lack of overt attacks, and she failed yet again.

One time she sent thousands of Snow Hares and Cold Slimes, thinking that they wouldn’t waste a powerful spell like what the man was using on such weak monsters… but she was wrong.

When sending her monsters to attack them didn’t work, she then turned to the Defenders along the border.  Her thinking was that if she delayed or altogether stopped their departure, the change would give her some sort of advantage.  As such, she sent dozens of powerful monsters south over the border the night before the sweep, and they managed to make it past the forts – but didn’t last much longer before they were overwhelmed and destroyed.  There were hundreds of Defenders, after all, and they worked together and chased after her monsters, killing them within minutes of catching them.

She wasn’t sent back to choose her starting location because of the blue-robed man during that incarnation, because the Defenders didn’t wait for the sweep to backtrack her monsters’ origin.  They came in a force of nearly 100, and though her upgraded traps and monsters killed over a dozen of them, they were too powerful for her to keep away from her Core.

She attempted multiple times to create tracks in the field that the bald man and his entourage would cross over, thinking that if she could distract them and lead them to her dungeon, she might have a better chance at surviving his spell, but they never took the bait.  She always had a backup force in place near the den during these attempts, but they never even got close to the group.

Tempara tried dozens of times to stop them at different points along their journey north, even having a large group of monsters pretend to come from a different dungeon to attack them, but she inevitably ended back where she needed to choose her starting location.

It was then that she began to think of alternative methods.  The first method was to try and get her pack to move and to hide somewhere else; it was obvious from as many times as she had observed the group of Defenders heading north that they somehow knew exactly where her pack lived, so she thought it best that they move.  Therefore, she sent a small force of Slimes to the den a few days after she restarted as a Dungeon Core, in the hopes that they would see that their refuge was found and depart.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.  The Foxes simply killed the Slimes and went on as if nothing had happened.  So Tempara sent a few Winter Wolves; after seeing her pack in a fight, she knew that they wouldn’t be in danger of being killed or even hurt.  She was able to see her kind’s abilities being used to protect themselves against the Wolves, by manipulating time around themselves to speed up, biting and crushing the throats of the Wolves before her monsters even knew what hit them.

She sent even more monsters of increasing power to the den after that, and each time her monsters were killed, though toward the end, one of the Arctic Tigers she sent managed to injure one of her packmates badly enough that she worried it would die.  It was at that point that she knew it was useless to try and warn them and get them to move, because they weren’t budging.

After that failure, Tempara turned to drastic measures.  Seeing that her own monsters were the problem, she begun manipulating the timing of the nearby dungeons – especially the ones that were across the field from her own – so that they would be sending out monster groups to attack her at the same time the blue-robed man and the other Defenders were journeying north.  It seemed to work, too, because the bald man didn’t use his spell on the groups that accosted them on their way, and instead destroyed any opposition in their path.

It was during those fights that she learned how powerful the two unique Defenders within the group were.  The man wearing the full set of black furs somehow pulled out a giant sword from underneath his furs and wielded it as if it didn’t weigh more than a wooden stick.  With the weapon, he was able to pierce through the defenses of anything he came up against, killing most of them usually with one strike, and he moved around the battle like some sort of dancer, flitting from one target to the next.

But the most horrifying part of his strength was evidenced when he had finished killing over a dozen Wolves and a few Yetis.  He suddenly stopped, stabbed his sword into the snow to keep it upright, and then raised his hands slowly into the air.  Clouds of darkness abruptly shot out of his hands and fell upon the slain monsters, which immediately started to twitch and shake as soon as the black clouds touched them.  A few seconds went by, and the monsters stood up from where they had fallen, and Tempara thought they would attack again – but she was wrong.

Dead wrong.

Instead of attacking, the animated corpses of the Wolves and Yeti now followed the black-furred man, as if they were there to protect or help him.  She had never seen anything like it before—

* He is some sort of Necromancer Class hybrid. *

The disgust in her assistant’s tone was plain enough when she heard it, but the woman either refused or couldn’t explain exactly what she meant by the Necromancer Class comment.  The memories in her mind told her very little more, other than Necromancers brought the dead back to life as undead and were not well thought of in the Kingdom.  Any more than that was a mystery – especially as the impression Tempara got was that this was some sort of hybrid; Necromancers were supposed to be a full spellcasting Class, not one that could expertly use a sword.

The Elven woman in the short, red dress was as powerful as the black-furred man, if not more – especially in the Frozen Reaches.  It was already evident that she had some sort of effect around her that kept the cold from reaching her, but her skills obviously also included just about anything that dealt with fire.  Superheated fireballs 4 to 5 feet wide were built between her hands and unleashed on the groups of monsters that attacked the Defenders; when they hit, even something relatively strong, such as a Yeti, was practically torn in half from the heat and the destructive force of the fireballs.  When any monsters got close to the woman, the red, protective barrier around her flared up and incinerated them into ash.  Unfortunately, the barrier didn’t seem to hurt the other Defenders; otherwise, Tempara could think of ways to kill the blue-robed man by redirecting friendly attacks.

Sadly, none of the nearby dungeon monsters were ever successful, and the force of monsters she had waiting for the group near the den always sent her back in time when the bald man used his special spell.  She was never able to tell why it wasn’t used on the other Core’s monsters and only hers, even when she only sent a few monsters that weren’t too much of a threat to them at all.

Months and years of time were spent trying everything she could to prevent the Defenders from reaching her pack’s den, until one attempt seemed to blend into another.  The only way she was able to keep track of the passing incarnations was by how much she was unable to unlock via reaching Thresholds for both her monsters and traps – not that any she obtained seemed to matter in the slightest toward her goal.

The Snowdrift Hare only had a single Advancement Option, which was a relatively unique monster – or monsters, if she was being more accurate.

Monster Details

Snowdrift Hare

100 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Snowbank Warren

1,000 EP

Costing 1,000 EP, the Snowbank Warren started out as a pair of what looked like Snowdrift Hares that were created at the same time; they moved and attacked together like they were one monster, however, which was reflected in the fact that they only counted as a single point in her Monster Threshold.  The interesting part was that every 4 hours, another Hare was added to the original pair, and there didn’t seem to be a limit.  At least, not that she had found, considering that she had a Warren that was over 100 Hares at one point.  Granted, they were still Hares, so they weren’t very strong, but it was certainly intimidating to see that many together.

The Icicle Spider was next, which gave access to the Icicle Spider Queen for an Advancement Option for 2,000 EP.

Monster Details

Icicle Spider

200 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Icicle Spider Queen

2,000 EP

The Queen Spider was huge in comparison to the smaller version of the Icicle Spider, as its body was 15 feet across, with legs that extended that distance by another 30.  The legs of the Queen reached up to 25 feet high, and the thickness of those appendages was such that the points could crush a Winter Wolf without too much of the canine being left unsquished.

Tempara also finally got to see what the Elder Snowbeast had as its only Option, but she found that it was something that she wouldn’t easily be able to afford anytime soon.

Monster Details

Elder Snowbeast

1,000 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Animated Avalanche

80,000 EP

The Animated Avalanche was an incredibly expensive 80,000 EP, and it was a monster that seemed impossible to contain.  What it consisted of was a central core that was a glowing ball of ice 5 feet wide, which was then surrounded by hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of snow.  The “avalanche” of snow could move like a wave down a slope or even over flat ground, like an incredible force of frozen nature, absolutely burying anything that it came in contact with.  It didn’t just cover them, however, but pounded them into mush with great heaps of condensed snow that acted like hammers.  It was so large that she didn’t even attempt to try and create it in her Core room, even after she expanded it quite a bit.

Moving on from the impossibly moving hunk of snow, the Winter Dire Wolf had an upgrade in the form of a much larger Wolf; it wasn’t quite as large as a Dungeon Boss, but it was large enough.

Monster Details

Winter Dire Wolf

250 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

Winter Dire Wolf Alpha

1,250 EP

The Winter Dire Wolf Alpha was larger than the regular Dire Wolf, standing 12 feet tall at the shoulder, and reaching up to 25 feet long from nose to tail.  It had a bite strong enough to snap up an Ice Golem and shatter it into shards, or to swallow a Winter Wolf whole. All-in-all, the Alpha was a force to be reckoned with. Moreover, it was quite fast – especially when compared to the speed of most of the other large monsters she had access to.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t any more durable as far as defense went, as its fur and thick skin were no match for even the icicles that a Pixie could toss out.

Tempara also obtained some of the monsters she hadn’t chosen from previous selections, such as the Woolly Mammoth, the Ice Giant, and the Frozen Drake.  The last monster that she found possible to obtain from an Advancement Option was from the latter of those, the Drake.

Monster Details

Frozen Drake

7,500 EP

Creation Threshold: 250/250

Battle Threshold: 100/100

Potential Advancement Options:

White Dragon

150,000 EP

Even more expensive than the Animated Avalanche, the White Dragon wasn’t the largest of her monsters (that honor was taken by the previously mentioned Avalanche), but it was most assuredly the deadliest.  Not only was it a giant lizard, 120 feet long, that could fly, but the scales covering its body were nearly impenetrable, with only a small patch on its belly being slightly weaker.  The Dragon could exhale a mist-like plume of supercooled air at a distance further than any of her other monsters, which made it like an Orb of Chilling but at much, much greater range.  It also radiated a temperature-dropping cold that acted as a resistance against fire-spells and effects, similar to the Orb, but on a greater scale.  It was the ultimate of monsters that could be created in a dungeon…

…and she couldn’t even afford it.  She would need to increase her Core Level at least a few more times before she would even have a chance of holding the 150,000 EP needed to create the White Dragon, which was nearly impossible in the time she had before the Defenders arrived to kill her pack.

Tempara also ended up hitting the Threshold for Pit Traps enough times to unlock the rest of the Advancement Options – such as the Javelin Launch, Spear Impalement, and Wall Crush – but she didn’t end up using any of them.  Their required AR was just too much to justify their use, and she had better options in her other elementally suited traps.

Frigid Blast and Icicle Rain were also installed and used enough to warrant unlocking all of their Options, which were a lot more useful than those under the Pit Trap.  Of everything she unlocked after the original 3 traps, she only frequently utilized another 3 of them: namely, the ones that she first unlocked. Spiked Pit Trap, Chilled Feet, and Ice Bomb eventually hit their Thresholds, with each of them revealing only one more Advancement Option to choose from.

Trap Details

Spiked Pit Trap

0.75 AR

Installation Threshold: 50/50

Usage Threshold: 250/250

Potential Advancement Options:

Camouflaged Pit Trap

1.5 AR

Trap Details

Chilled Feet

1.0 AR

Installation Threshold: 50/50

Usage Threshold: 250/250

Potential Advancement Options:

Frozen Sphere

2 AR

Trap Details

Ice Bomb

2.0 AR

Installation Threshold: 50/50

Usage Threshold: 250/250

Potential Advancement Options:

Ice Minefield

4 AR

The Camouflaged Pit Trap was simply a better-hidden pit, as the ice on top had its coloring changed to reflect the stone or ice around it, making it nearly impossible to detect unless the one looking was very sharp-eyed and intuitive.  It kept the spikes from the Spiked Pit Trap, thankfully, but the entire trap was enhanced by its camouflage.

Frozen Sphere was a slightly larger area upgrade from the Chilled Feet trap, but the main difference was that it formed a sphere of the same freezing air around their entire body, keeping them trapped in place and vulnerable to outside influence.  It didn’t inherently harm those victims caught within the trap, especially since most of the monsters that assaulted her dungeon were used to a bit of cold, but it certainly made it hard for them to fight back.

Lastly, the Ice Minefield trap created a series of smaller Ice Bombs in an area 20 feet by 20 feet and buried those Ice Bombs just underneath the surface of the floor.  The Bombs stayed intangible until they were activated; once they were, they would pop out of the floor while becoming solid ice, shoot up into the air 4 feet, and then explode.  Each of them only did a fraction of the damage that the larger Ice Bomb trap did, but there were approximately 30 of them scattered around the area of the trap – and each of them had a separate trigger mechanism.  The only downside to the Ice Minefield trap was that it required 4 AR to install, which was a significant portion of her normal Accumulation rate, even at higher Core Levels.

She had all of these incredible monsters and traps that could prevent just about anything from reaching her Dungeon Core, including most small Defender groups that walked in.  While Tempara hadn’t had a visit by Horad and his team lately, she was nearly sure that she could alter her dungeon enough to defeat even them.  She never really had the need at the moment, though, because the only time the Defenders invaded her dungeon again was when she drew a hundred or more at a time, which was way more than she could handle.  If she had more time to accumulate Elemental Power during her incarnations, she could keep expanding her dungeon and create some of her more-powerful monsters as obstacles in their way – but that was not to be.

She lost count of how many times she had reverted back in time long ago, but she stubbornly continued to try everything she could to save her pack from their fate.  Monsters big and small were thrown in their way; foreign monsters were lured out to attack them; and diversions to other dungeons were also ineffective.  She eventually shook up the routine and attempted to allow other Cores to start gathering Elemental Power after she stole it from one dungeon by allowing her monsters to be killed on their way back to her own dungeon.  This seemed to help create a free-for-all when the other dungeons fought over the Elemental Power her monsters held, but it was short-lived and didn’t accomplish much.  Ultimately, it seemed that whenever one Core would acquire that Power, they would inevitably use it on more monsters and not on Leveling up their Core.

When that didn’t work, Tempara even started to move her dungeon around while always keeping her pack’s den within range.  It took a little bit of adjustment to work with the changed locations, but she had enough monsters and traps in her arsenal to handle the alterations.

None of that seemed to make any difference.

Finally, after so many failures seemingly without any solution…

…she gave up.

Chapter 28

* Select your starting location…. *

Tempara let the pressure mount on her mind as the voice insisted that she select a starting location, but she just couldn’t care anymore.  She had chosen a starting location so many times before this, and nothing seemed to work to save her pack from their fate, so she didn’t even want to go back down to the Frozen Reaches to fail once again.

* Select your starting location…. *

The pain from the pressure was becoming nearly unbearable, but she ignored it the best she could.

I’m not doing it.  The constant work I’m putting in to try and save everyone, just to see myself fail, isn’t worth it anymore.  This pain is nothing compared to the sheer torture I’ve been going through every day down there.

* Select your starting location…. *

The next spike of pain was so powerful that she couldn’t even concentrate to select a starting location even if she wanted to.  Her mind nearly fractured from the pressure on it, but she stubbornly refused to give in.

* Select your— *

Tempara’s mind snapped entirely at the pain, and she felt her soul disappear from where it was being held by the voice, having been destroyed along with her mind.  There was a brief moment of painless existence and she desperately desired that she had just found a way to end the torture of her life – but she was denied even that.

* Select your starting location…. *

No!  Not again!

Tempara and her soul were back, right at the beginning of everything.  All of the pain and pressure was gone, but the landscape stretched out in front of her as the voice in her mind prompted her to select a starting location.  The memory of the pain that broke her mind was still fresh, however, and she wasn’t looking forward to experiencing it again.

Am I stuck doing this for eternity?

There wasn’t an answer to her question, unfortunately, and she wasn’t sure what else she could do to escape from her fate.

…fate.

The thought lingered in her mind as she stared down at the landscape below, even as she ignored the voice in her head a few times.  The pressure was mounting but wasn’t painful yet, so she was free to think.

Maybe it is my pack’s fate to die?  Maybe it was my fate to be captured?

The Fox soul within her wanted to deny that their fate could ever be that, and it almost felt like a betrayal of everything she believed in.  The more she thought about it, the more she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was right – as horrible as it was to believe that.

Perhaps I can find a way to free my younger self or enact revenge upon those Defenders for what they’ll do to my family?

Tempara had a hard time believing that there was anything that could be done, considering that every time she tried to interfere, something would go wrong.  However, she figured there wasn’t anything to lose by trying.

Nothing to lose but my mind when I see my pack slaughtered again, of course.

Needless to say, she wasn’t looking forward to that, but she thought that the more information she had about what happened after, the more she might be able to do something about it before.  It was probably a stupid idea, but she had already exhausted all of her smart ones.

So, without even considering it for more than a few seconds, she decided to obey the voice once again and chose her starting location, right where she was most familiar and had spent countless incarnations.

* Transferring control of new Dungeon Core now…. *

She barely registered that her soul was moving at high speed, and the arrival inside of her empty dungeon was barely noted.  Because it was more tradition than the thought that anything had actually changed, she took the time to seek out her pack’s den, saw herself as a young kit just after being born, and then brought her viewpoint back to her dungeon.

* To begin the process of creating your dungeon, please refer to your Core Display.  For more information, ask your system-created assistant for details. *

Her former master was already there waiting for her when she arrived back at her Core, but she completely ignored the woman as she let her focus and mind wander, refusing to do anything productive.  As far as she was concerned, there was no point.

Hours later, when she had accumulated enough EP to increase her Core Level, she ignored her assistant yet again when the annoying voice insisted that she wrap the Elemental Power around her Core to initiate the Leveling-up process.  Thankfully, the woman only said it twice more before she gave up, after seeing that Tempara wasn’t listening.

Every once in a while, she would bring herself out of her fugue state and look outside for a little bit.  Once she recognized some things along the timeline she had memorized, she would confirm that a few days had passed, though it was harder to do that after about a week – because the Dungeon Core landscape had changed dramatically without an interloper messing with everything. Cores began to increase their Levels consistently, rather than having their growth stunted by Tempara, and stronger monsters were seen roaming around between all of the different dungeon entrances.

All except her own.

As a Core Level 1, the potential Elemental Power her Core might contain wasn’t seen as desirable, so nothing even got close to her. She was essentially left alone, and that was exactly the way she wanted it.

It was almost… freeing, not having to worry about managing her dungeon, keeping an eye on the other Dungeon Cores, and doing her best to avoid the random Defender scouts popping up at seemingly random times.  Without the drive to get as powerful as she could be in order to stop what would happen to her pack, she eventually had the luxury to just watch and observe in between the times she let her attention lose focus.  She even had the opportunity to really watch herself growing up, getting larger by the day, and she saw how protective and nurturing her parents were as they took care of her.

Tempara felt as though her soul had aged decades since that time, and she could only look at her younger self with pity in how she had been too ready to take on the world, and how impatient she had been to see more of it.  The Frozen Reaches truly was a spectacular place, but it was dangerous, too; with how many times her Core had been shattered – and not just because of the blue-robed man – she was well aware that her month-old self was nowhere near ready for what awaited her out there.

Eventually, though, she started to recognize the signs that the periodic sweep was upon her, as she watched Defenders arrive by their dozens the day and night before.  She’d seen it many, many times before this, of course, but it felt just a little more intimidating knowing that she had absolutely no defenses in place when they came.  Whether or not it was some sort of Dungeon Core instinct, or was simply common sense, the lack of anything in her dungeon left her feeling naked and exposed.

It was a good thing that she didn’t care enough to do anything about that feeling.  That would require work and effort, which was the last thing she wanted to expend any thought on.

Tempara was beginning to despise the sight of the 13 people who broke away from the line of Defenders in the morning, because they were a living representation of all of her many, many failures.  She didn’t even know their names, because not once in all of the incarnations where she was trying to stop them had she heard them speak, but she supposed it didn’t matter.  Identifying them among the crowd of Defenders was no longer a problem, even with the 10 nearly identically dressed individuals that accompanied the bald man, the black fur-wearing man, and the Elf in the short red dress – or as she mentally labeled them, the “Time Man”, the “Death Man”, and the “Fire Elf”.

It wasn’t long before they traveled north, taking the exact same route that she had ambushed or attempted to redirect many times before.  She watched as a few stray groups of dungeon monsters crossed their paths, and they were summarily dispatched with the same efficiency and visible lack of effort that she expected, until they came to the large snowfield where most of her final defenses had been placed to stop them.

This time, though, there was nothing but a large, empty field without any type of obstacle to their destination.  As much as she wanted to look away, to not witness and reinforce the scene that was slowly fading over time, Tempara couldn’t tear her viewpoint away.  She told herself that she was watching because she wanted to see if there was anything that she could exploit in the future to finally defeat these Defenders, but in reality she highly doubted there was anything she could do.  Her earlier thoughts about fate and how there was no escaping it led her to believe that what she was about to witness was inevitable; at the most, she might be able to enact revenge upon the ones that perpetrated the atrocity.

“There’s a complication.  A young kit was born.”

Tempara was shocked out of her despondent state when she heard the soft but deep voice of the bearded man in the blue robe, as he and the others stopped 100 feet from the den’s entrance.  If she hadn’t been watching closely, she probably wouldn’t have even heard it; as it was, his voice didn’t reach very far, because none of her pack had apparently sensed it, either.  Especially not her younger self, who was slowly sneaking toward the entrance, ready to make a break for it to see the falling snow.

“But that will—” the melodic voice of the Elf whispered, before she was cut off.

“I know, Frella.”  The bald man pulled a very familiar cage out of a small bag on his waist and held it in his hands.  “Initiating the contingency plan will do the trick, though.  I’ll capture the kit, but you’ll have to handle the rest, Palax.  You got it?”

“I do.”

What is going on?  Did they not plan on capturing me in the first place?

With a nod, the bearded man strode forward quickly and slightly off to the left of the den’s hidden entrance, just in time for Tempara to see her younger Fox self race for the opening, dashing out into the falling snow without even bothering to look around first.  It was at that moment that two things happened, and if she hadn’t been accustomed to the blue-robed man casting spells so quickly, she would’ve missed it.

With a few quick hand movements, a series of blue lines appeared in the air in front of the man, creating a familiar clock, though this one was slightly different from the spell she’d seen him create each time her Core was shattered.  She mentally flinched when the spell seemed to activate, creating a shockwave that traveled up to a mile away; thankfully, it didn’t seem to affect her, and she wondered if it was because she didn’t have any of her monsters nearby.

Almost directly after the spell completed, she watched the man quickly reach over and pick up the younger Fox that had wandered outside, and then quickly shove her inside of the cage and lock it, before placing the cage on the snow just outside of the den.  At the time, she had thought that the placement of the cage had been incidental, but now she saw that the blue-robed man was placing it deliberately on the edge of the den, even shifting it slightly so that the young Fox could see better inside.

Multiple orbs of black smoke suddenly flew from the hand of the Death Man, or Palax as she had just heard him called; one of them impacted Tempara’s younger self, while the rest of them disappeared inside of the den.  The one she saw hit herself was quickly absorbed by the small Fox, without any visible sign that it was doing anything at first. Soon enough, though, she saw herself whining and whimpering, while pacing the edges of the cage frantically, before finally turning around and facing away from the den.  Another second later, the Fox’s eyes closed, as if she was asleep.

What?  I don’t remember any of that – and what happened with them killing my family?

Almost as soon as the young Fox in the cage had turned around and gone to sleep, the rest of the Defenders certainly did rush into the den – but they didn’t start slaughtering her pack.  Tempara witnessed her family acting very similar to how her younger self had just acted, whimpering and whining while pacing around helplessly, their eyes unfocused and unaware of the Defenders’ approach.

What made it even stranger to Tempara was that none of them seemed to be able to use any of their time manipulation abilities.  One look at the blue-robed man above her cage showed him slumping in place as he held one hand out before him, which seemed to glow blue with the same kind of energy that powered his spells.

He… he’s stopping them from using their abilities!

She wasn’t absolutely sure that was what was preventing the use of their abilities, but that thought made the most sense.  As for what else was happening to them, she had no clue what the Death Man had done to them – or to her, for that matter.

What occurred next was definitely not what she was expecting.  Each of the Defenders brought out a pair of metal crates with a few small holes located along the upper edge out of their storage bags, placed them on the ground beside one of the Greater Temporal Foxes, and then picked up her family one-by-one, placing them inside the open tops of the crates before locking them inside.  When they were all inside, another 15 seconds went by before the bald man and the Death Man dropped to their knees, exhausted by all the physical exertion of using magic upon the den.

Almost instantly after they hit their knees, whatever they had been doing with their spells dropped, and there was a cacophony of sound inside of the den as snarls and whines accompanied nails scratching on metal.  The Defenders had captured her parents and her pack, and the Foxes were obviously not happy about it.

“Nice… job, Palax.”  The bald man panted as he spoke, the exhaustion in his voice evident.  “And the rest of you, too.  We did it.”

The Elven woman sauntered over to the man with the blue robe, who was quickly recovering, and looked down at the cage that held Tempara’s younger Fox form.  “I know what we’re doing with them,” she said, pointing her thumb over her shoulder at the captured adult members of the pack, before gesturing at Tempara, “but what are you going to do with that one?”

“Nothing.  I’ll probably give it to the local Order branch as thanks for delaying the start of the sweep this morning, but I have no need for it.  Adolescents are no good for the ritual, as you know, and Palax broke the soul bond it had with the others.  I have no need to take care of useless things.”

Useless?  Ritual?  What is happening right now?

This was nothing like what she remembered happening to her, and she was having trouble processing what she was seeing.

“Creetim, sir.  We’re all ready to go.”

Creetim.  I don’t even like his name.

The bald-headed man nodded at one of his apparent underlings as they all started to pick up and physically transport the 24 crates that contained her family, each of them with two or three stacked on top of each other.  Even with the way the Foxes inside struggled to get out, the Defenders were easily strong enough to carry the crates, though they had to walk a little more slowly.  The Death Man and the Fire Elf had their hands free – along with Creetim – as they walked back toward the border, which allowed them to fend off a few other attacks by roaming monsters.

Tempara watched in shock, confusion, and more than a little anger at the group as they left the Frozen Reaches.

How come I remember them killing everyone but me in the pack?  What is this ritual the Time Man was talking about?  Where are they taking them?

While she already knew what became of her own small Fox self – being given to her former master, Kiana – Tempara didn’t know anything about the rest of her pack.  Neither did her assistant’s memories, as Kiana had heard no mention of anything regarding other Greater Temporal Foxes anywhere.

As the group was sighted by the Defenders along the border, a horn rang out among the assembled people, which suddenly spurred Tempara into action.

If they enter my dungeon, my Core will be shattered.  I really don’t want to return to the start now; I need to find out what happened to my pack!

With that thought in mind, the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core did the one thing her assistant warned her never to do, as it could end up damaging or destroying her Core.

She started to build a stone wall at her entrance, which would block off any access to her dungeon.

There was a brief pressure on her Construct Dungeon Ability as she pictured what she wanted to construct, like some sort of warning. Tempara pushed through it and a wall of thick stone started to materialize at her entrance, using her accumulated EP to build up a permanent barrier to her dungeon.  Unlike being unable to dig down, which just flat-out refused to work, there was no technical restriction on closing up her dungeon – but she had to be prepared to face the consequences of such an action.

When the wall was only about a foot high, an itchy tingle started at the back of her mind, which was annoying but easily able to be ignored.  When the wall doubled in height, the tingle turned to pressure, which wasn’t painful yet – but she could feel it getting there.  It reminded her a little of the insistent pressure when she was directed to select a starting location, which she had endured many times before.

At 4 feet, or halfway to the ceiling, that pressure started to turn to a dull pain in her mind.

* Any more blockage of the flow of Elemental Power could result in damage to or destruction of your Dungeon Core. *

Yes, I’m well aware.

She kept going, of course.  When it hit 5 feet, she suddenly lost all access to viewing outside of her dungeon, so she had no idea when the Defenders would arrive or when they would leave.  Before she was cut off, she had witnessed them systematically checking every possible opening along the mountain ranges, where they would go inside and start wiping out every Dungeon Core they came across.  Sometimes only a small group of Defenders would enter, while at others a much larger group of 20 to 25 would venture inside, coming out not too soon afterwards.  She was able to feel the Cores disappearing as they did this, so she knew that they were successful – not that she expected them to fail.

But now she was blind to the happenings outside.  From what she could tell in the last few minutes before she lost access, the closest group was around 10 minutes away from her entrance, so she hoped that she would be able to finish in time.

At 7 feet tall, the stone barrier was only a foot from closing off her dungeon completely – but the pain and pressure were now so great that she wasn’t sure if she would be able to survive closing it off completely.  Memories of the pain she suffered when she stubbornly refused to select a starting location filtered through her mind, and made her hesitant to deliberately enact that same pain on herself.

She allowed another 6 inches to build itself up, at which the pain in her mind was at a breaking point.  Tempara let the construction of the barrier cease, as she was fairly confident that any more would completely shatter her mind and her Core along with it.

While she couldn’t say that the pain lessened over time, she became accustomed to it enough that it didn’t feel like her mind would fracture even with prolonged exposure to it.  That didn’t mean she liked it, because it was still horrendously painful, but she could live with it for at least a few hours, or more if necessary.  Tempara also knew that if she had tried this at the beginning, she didn’t think she could’ve held on after 6 feet; only the torture she suffered in her previous incarnation allowed her to resist as long as she had now.

She tried to use the waiting time until the Defenders left the Frozen Reaches to think about what she had seen happen with her pack, but her mind couldn’t focus on anything for more than a few seconds.  Attempts to have a conversation with her assistant failed, as well, as she couldn’t even form any words with her thoughts, so she was forced to exist in a world of pain without anything to distract her.

After an indeterminate amount of time, Tempara couldn’t take it anymore.  Using another chunk of EP, she quickly started to dismantle the blockage of stone at her entrance, and there was an immediate easing of the pressure on her mind.  By the time half of it was gone, she barely felt anything at all, or at least she had become so inured to it that any slight pressure at that point felt like nothing.

As soon as she was able, she sent her viewpoint outside – and the lack of any Dungeon Core within range was shocking.  She was used to feeling the presence of Cores all around her in every direction, and their absence was a little eerie.  There was also no sign of any Defenders, which was her primary worry, though she saw the bare remnants of footprints in the snow caused by hundreds of feet as they passed by.

I did it.  I survived.  Now to see if I can find out anything regarding my pack.

That was going to take a bit longer than she expected.

Chapter 29

* Approaching temporal displacement event. *

What?

Somehow, Tempara could tell that the voice was not coming from her assistant, even though it used the same annoying voice.  Instead, it seemed like the voice was inside of her mind, like some sort of long-buried sense that was just now making itself known.

The Dungeon Core wasn’t sure what to make of the voice or the statement about a temporal displacement event, so she ignored it for the time being.  She was busy looking around the border with the Kingdom, because she had been watching and waiting every day over the last month for some sign of Creetim, the two unique individuals with him, or any Greater Temporal Foxes.

Unfortunately, despite trying to listen in on conversations from a significant distance away from the Defender patrols, the border forts, and even the scouts that ventured over the border, she discovered nothing that mentioned any of them.  It was like they had simply disappeared.

She was beginning to worry when she finally saw something along the border that caught her attention: A Greater Temporal Fox.  Not just any Fox, though, but Tempara’s younger self.

I vaguely remember this.

The Fox was walking next to Kiana, who was walking behind Horad and the others in his powerful group, and they were all traveling to the border.  Looking closer at her slightly larger self, she saw that the Fox appeared healthy and happy, without a care in the world other than to serve her master.

Darn that soul bond!

By the time the group had arrived across the border, she could see that the Fox’s eyes were almost lifeless, like there was nothing inside of them; Tempara remembered feeling like that the entire time she was bonded to that woman, though she had learned enough about the Defenders to know that she couldn’t entirely blame Kiana for her predicament.  The Mage was only Level 1 and almost as new to the world as Tempara had been, at least according to the memories she now possessed.

Kiana picked up the Fox, once they passed into the cold environment of the Frozen Reaches, and stuck her inside of her fur coat, which Tempara remembered was entirely unnecessary at the time and had been extremely hot.  However, a quick mental order had stopped the Fox from squirming too much, and when they arrived at the dungeon, the woman had let her out.

Almost everything about this situation was familiar, except that when they finally arrived at the dungeon they were headed toward, where Tempara and the woman would die to the Dungeon Boss, something seemed different.  Wrong.  She wasn’t sure what exactly was wrong, but she felt it down in her very soul for some reason, which was never a good thing.  As she watched them disappear into one of the dungeons that had popped up over the last month – one of many since the last periodic sweep – she looked around to see if she could figure out what was bothering her.

It wasn’t her own death, because she was fairly certain she had come to terms with that by now.  It wasn’t the death of the woman, either; although she hadn’t exactly forgiven the woman for what had been done to Tempara and her soul, she was more than aware that it wasn’t entirely Kiana’s fault.  Besides, the Mage was stuck as her assistant for eternity, so she supposed if that didn’t make them even, then she wasn’t sure what would.

So why does this feel wrong—?

Movement at the edge of her awareness to the north caught her attention, especially because it was out of place.  None of the dungeons were near her pack’s den, but now there was something moving toward it.

When she looked closer, she realized it wasn’t a something, but a someone: Creetim.  He was back, having slipped across the border at some point – likely when she had been distracted watching herself and the group of Defenders her former master was with head towards a dungeon.  With him was the Death Man, Palax, and Frella the Fire Elf, as well as another group of 10 Defenders – though these ones were unrecognizable. The group had also brought something else with them, which immediately caught her attention.

3 metal crates.

Unlike before, there was no rocking and scratching of Foxes inside trying to get out, but instead, the Foxes were as quiet as the dead.

I hope that isn’t the case.

“Get them out.  It’s time.”  The blue-robed man pointed at the crates, and a few of his underlings opened up the tops of the metal boxes. Tempara expected 3 Foxes to jump out and make a run for it, but all that happened was the Foxes inside stood up, stepped out of the crates, and then walked forward as if under some sort of command.  Looking closer at them, she recognized them as Aunt Chrona, Uncle Timo, and Uncle Ido – but they certainly didn’t act like what she remembered, though there wasn’t the same emptiness in their eyes that she saw in her own.  She could only assume that meant they weren’t soul-bonded, but what actually happened to them, she wasn’t sure.

As the other Defenders stepped back, the three Foxes of her pack surrounded the bald-headed man, each of them standing completely still as they stared straight ahead at seemingly nothing.  That was when Creetim raised his hands and gestured wildly with them, until bluish energy seemed to leak from them and pool at his feet.  At the same time, the statuesque Foxes whined a little as a very similar blue energy seemed to emerge from their bodies, out from their very fur, as it floated through the air and joined the pool located at the feet of the bearded man.

This lasted for nearly a minute before the energy stopped emerging from both the man and the Foxes, which caused them to slump visibly in exhaustion; her Aunt and Uncles, especially, appeared wiped out, as they laid on the ground when they were unable to keep standing.

After a short time, Creetim stood up straight from where he had been bent over with his hands on his knees.  Taking a deep breath, he began to move his hands again, though this time, his gestures were a lot slower and more deliberate than before.

* Approaching temporal displacement event. *

What?  Why now?

She could only assume that this event had something to do with what this blue-robed man was doing, as she began to see an intricate web of glowing lines forming around the three Foxes and Creetim.  The pooled energy at his feet was siphoned up by these lines, creating a sphere that was hard to look at for long, for a few reasons.  First, it was glowing brighter and brighter, making it difficult to see what was going on; second, the lines formed confusing swirls and symbols that somewhat hurt her mind to try and decipher, so she started to look at it from further away.

At one point, Creetim walked backwards through the forming sphere of lines until he was free from what he was doing – but Chrona, Timo, and Ido were still inside.

No!  What are you doing to them?!

Tempara didn’t know much about spells other than what the Mage Kiana had known before she had died, but she knew enough that having her Aunt and Uncles inside of whatever the bald man was doing was probably not the best for their health.  She suddenly wished that she had started to create some monsters to send out, but it was already too late; besides, with all of the Defenders with him, she doubted they would even get close enough to make a difference.

After what felt like hours, but was really less than 5 minutes since whatever this was started, Creetim lifted his hands over his head as high as he could, kept them there for a heartbeat, and then brought them down quickly like he was trying to hit something.  At the same time, the bright blue glowing lines seemed to solidify into an opaque sphere, hiding her pack members inside.

* Temporal displacement event inconsistent.  Initiating Auto-Skill. *

Huh?  Wait, noooo—!

* Select your starting location…. *

Aaarrggh!  Not again!

Tempara wanted to bite something, her natural instincts as a Fox coming out in her anger.  That was impossible, of course, but that knowledge didn’t help to dispel her anger.

Why?  What happened to send me back here?

She was almost entirely certain that nothing had destroyed her Dungeon Core, as there weren’t any monsters or Defenders even near her entrance by the time she was watching Creetim doing… whatever he was doing to her pack members.  Remembering the voice in her mind, she couldn’t help but notice that this was the first time that she had ever heard it say “Initiating Auto-Skill”; if that was what it actually did, and she had no reason to think otherwise, then she had been sent back deliberately.

All because the so-called temporal displacement event was “inconsistent”, whatever that meant.

What is that supposed to mean?  There’s no way I could affect Creetim and his “ritual”, if that was what it was, because I’ve already tried messing with him before and failed every single time.  So what else could it—

The dungeon.  The dungeon that Horad, her former master, and Tempara’s young self had entered.  It felt off or wrong the moment they entered that dungeon, though it took some moments of reflection to work out exactly why that was.

While she pondered the reason, she selected her starting location before she could suffer the penalties for taking too long, and all through the next few hours – while she ignored her assistant trying to give her helpful tips – she thought and thought and thought about what was wrong.

But nothing came to her right then, other than definitely knowing that something was off.

Following the same method she had used during her last incarnation to avoid detection, by refusing to increase her Core Level or do anything to her dungeon, she watched the world outside go by in familiar patterns while she continued to delve through her mind for the answer.  It wasn’t until she was closely watching a group of Defender scouts looking around the area down south that she had two epiphanies.

First, when the group of scouts started talking to each other, comparing their notes on possible dungeons that needed to be eradicated, it occurred to her that she heard very little conversation when she watched Horad and the others enter the dungeon that felt wrong.  Even while in the woman’s fur coat, Tempara remembered them conversing, though she wasn’t able to understand them at the time.

That led to her second epiphany, which was likely the reason there hadn’t been any conversation – there hadn’t been enough time.  Their journey to the dungeon didn’t seem as long as she remembered as a Fox, which means they didn’t walk as far.

It wasn’t a dungeon that felt wrong; it was the wrong dungeon altogether.

So which one is it?

Tempara remembered that the dungeon had been a little more difficult than Horad and the other high-Level Defenders had been expecting, but it also wasn’t too difficult.  Parsing through her own memories and the memories of her former master took a little work, but she eventually had a fairly good picture of what was inside the dungeon.

There was a total of 10 rooms including the Core room which held the massive Yeti Boss, and in each room there were different monsters.  Based on the variety of the monsters and their number, she estimated that that the dungeon would’ve had to have been a Core Level 9 or higher, as the Monster Threshold for Level 9 was 54, which was approximately how many monsters she remembered seeing in the dungeon.  Considering that most Dungeon Cores rarely kept any monsters over that Threshold, it was doubtful that a Core Level 7 or 8 had maxed out their limit and kept monsters inside instead of sending them out to invade other dungeons.

Thinking about the landscape around where her former master and the team of higher-Level Defenders had headed, she couldn’t remember any dungeons near there that were higher than Core Level 4.

Wait, there was a Core Level 5 a little to the northwest, but that would mean that their journey would take at least another 30 minutes more than what I remember it being.

When Tempara considered the time she was stuck in her former master’s fur coat on their journey, she estimated that the distance was at least another mile from where the Dungeon Core had seen them enter the wrong dungeon.  She wasn’t the best judge of distance, but when she lifted her viewpoint high up into the air over the landscape, she made a guess about the distance she thought they had traveled.

Starting from the location of the wrong dungeon, there were only 6 dungeons within a mile – at least that weren’t south near the border.  If she remembered correctly, 3 of them to the north had been Core Level 6 right before Kiana and the team of Defenders crossed the border; 2 of them to the north west were Core Level 4, and the last to the northeast had been Core Level 6.  She could’ve been mistaken on the Levels of 1 or 2 of them, but not enough to make a difference and produce a dungeon like she remembered.  Even farther north, outside of the range Tempara thought the group traveled, there had been some much higher Core Level dungeons, but she was almost certain they were too far.

So, which one is it?  There aren’t any more—

But she was wrong.  There was one more…

…hers.

But that can’t be right.  How is that supposed to work?

She tried to think of another dungeon, perhaps one that she had overlooked, but the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that there weren’t any others.  After her pack was captured and the sweep had gone through, there hadn’t been much else for Tempara to do other than watch the world outside, even if most of her attention had been on the border and the scouting Defenders who crossed over into the Frozen Reaches.  She was absolutely sure she would’ve remembered a much higher Core Level dungeon around if it had been there.

So what does that mean?  The dungeon we originally went through and died within was… mine?  But that doesn’t make any sense!  It’s not like we were fated to—

Fate.  There was that word again.

As soon as she thought about it, she realized that everything that was happening had already happened before; it was only Tempara’s soul that had gone back in time.  The Fox-turned-Dungeon Core’s parents had always said time was – for the most part – fluid, which was how they were able to affect it with their abilities so well.  However, they also told her that there were some events through the timeline that were static and couldn’t be changed, except in very minor ways that would not affect the outcome.

The Fox-turned-Dungeon Core had already seen this in action when she attempted to stop the Defenders from approaching her pack, as there was absolutely nothing she could do to prevent the outcome from happening.  Granted, it had been a much different outcome than she had expected, but that didn’t stop her knowing that it had been futile to attempt to change it.  She couldn’t help but think that Kiana and her younger Fox form were also fated to die, and when it likely didn’t happen in the wrong dungeon, that was why she had been sent back to the beginning.

That voice said it was a temporal displacement event and that it was inconsistent.  Maybe it was inconsistent because both I and my master didn’t die?

Whether or not that was the correct answer to the problem wasn’t something she would be able to find out unless she attempted to fulfill fate.  It wasn’t as if she had anything to lose by trying except a little time.

Chapter 30

This time around, Tempara didn’t watch more than the start of her pack’s capture to confirm that it was still the same, because it was mentally stressful to watch.  Not as bad as it would be if they were actually killed, but it was still something that she didn’t want to see more than once in any great detail. After that was done, she began sealing up her dungeon like she did last time, even though she wasn’t looking forward to the pain.

It was just as painful to her mind as it was before, but at least she knew what it was like going in.  After an appropriate time passed, she took down the wall blocking her entrance and started to plan.

She thought about repeating what she had done to get her to this point, by creating a powerful dungeon that none of the surrounding Cores – once they started showing up again – could fight their way through, but she scrapped that immediately.  First, she didn’t want to spend the next month trying to deflect attention away from her dungeon through numerous trial-and-error restarts; she didn’t know the schedules of the upcoming dungeons or the scouting Defenders, which meant that she would likely have to figure all of that out before she survived long enough to be the dungeon she needed to die in.  Or more accurately, the dungeon that her younger self needed to die inside.

That… messes with my mind a little.

That was the other reason she didn’t repeat what she did before, because she needed to be a whole different type of dungeon, one that wasn’t designed to kill everything that walked through the entrance.  Therefore, she needed a simple dungeon that was straightforward with no fancy Slide rooms, or Snow rooms, or Grid sections; from what she remembered, the dungeon she had died within was only 10 rooms in total, all connected in a straight line without anything that made it… unique.  From what she had gathered from hearing Defenders talk, that type of formation was the standard design they normally encountered, with very little variation between dungeons.  The only real differences were the quantity of rooms and types of monsters.

All of which meant that she needed to develop her dungeon like a normal Dungeon Core.  Not only would it be the same dungeon that had killed her younger self, but it would allow her to blend in with the others – at least until the very end.  She wouldn’t have to push ahead of the other Cores the whole time, staying at a higher Core Level than them because she needed to get and stay as strong as possible.  Instead, she would stay weaker than the nearby Cores and let them develop naturally; being the weakest ensured that she wouldn’t be a target, which was essential to survival.  With her dungeon being “standard”, it couldn’t survive an onslaught of monsters from multiple dungeons.

Therefore, she started slow, simply creating the rooms she remembered from her memories without even increasing her Core Level.  It was slow-going, especially since she didn’t have a very high Accumulation Rate, but fortunately she was left alone to work in peace; being Core Level 1, none of the Dungeon Cores that eventually popped up around the area even looked twice at her dungeon.  It took nearly a week after the capture of her pack for the Core Levels of those around her location to progress past Level 2, which meant that she could safely increase her own.

It was quite different for Tempara to operate in this way, since she was used to leading the pack in strength rather than lagging behind.  It was certainly safer for her, as she wasn’t being attacked from everything within range, but it wouldn’t have worked very well if she was caring about her development; not being attacked meant no progression toward Battle Thresholds, after all.

As the weeks went by, she steadily increased her Core Level by staying under the average Level of all of the ones near her.  Occasionally, one or another foreign Dungeon Core would drop below her Level because they were attacked by a different Core; during those times, she occasionally got attacked, but she had more than enough defenses to protect her – especially since she cheated and used some powerful monsters that she was planning on getting rid of later.

For instance, in the first room the monsters encountered, she remembered that there was supposed to be a half-dozen Snow Hares; instead, she had 4 Ice Knights backed up by a pair of Snowstorm Pixies that absolutely destroyed the Hares, Wolves, Yetis, Polar Bears, and Freezing Salamanders that were typically prevalent within the first few weeks of a new Dungeon Core’s existence.  Not once did she see a single Ice Golem or Frost Elemental, so it was obvious to Tempara that Cold Slimes were infrequently used within this time period.  Later, toward the end of the month, some few eventually popped up, likely because Slimes were sometimes used in defense of their dungeon; but even then, they were fairly rare.

In the second room, she started to fill up the dungeon with what was actually supposed to be there.  In the large, round room, Tempara simply created a dozen Cold Slimes and had them scattered around, moving wherever they wanted to go within the room.  There was no fancy decoration, nor environmental objects – just Cold Slimes.  She didn’t even place any traps in the room, just the Pit Trap in the tunnel connecting the first and second rooms.  If she remembered through both sets of memories, there weren’t any traps inside any of the rooms, just the tunnels; since the team hadn’t set any off, she had to guess at what they were and where they were located.

In the third room were 6 Winter Wolves, also just inside the space without any extra fluff.  They were all grouped up as a pack, to better attack single targets; but other than that, she left them alone.

The fourth room had a half-dozen Icicle Spiders, which could attach to the walls and climb up – and they did so shortly after she sent them there, where they hung off the ceiling, waiting for victims to approach from below.  Tempara remembered them starting up there, though they were quickly knocked off by both the Wizard and the Hunter from long range, meaning that they were basically useless in their defense.

Granted, that wasn’t necessarily the point of their presence there, which was simply to match what the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core remembered; if they died easily, then that was what they were supposed to do.

Tempara created and moved 5 Winter Dire Wolves to the fifth room, which certainly posed more of a threat than anything else she had in the dungeon, other than the first room, within which she had altered the monsters.

The sixth room held 5 Snowflake Pixies, fluttering around the air in lazy circles.  They were backed up by… nothing.  Not for the first time, the Dungeon Core couldn’t help but think that this “standard” dungeon design was foolish and a waste of resources, but then again it certainly helped her when she had been invading foreign dungeons.

The seventh room contained Ice Golems, 4 of them, which just went to show that the dungeon was starting to become slightly more difficult.  They hadn’t really been a challenge for Horad and his team of high-Level Defenders, but that wasn’t surprising after seeing what they could do.

The eighth room possessed a trio of Freezing Salamanders, positioned in an open ended, triangular formation so that the open end was pointing toward the entrance.  This way, their freezing breath would be able to attack whatever came through at the same time – just about the only concession to tactics in the entire dungeon.

A total of 6 Polar Bears inhabited the ninth room, which was the final defense before the Core room.  The powerful monsters would work together to overwhelm most victims who wandered into the space, which made them ideal to protect her Dungeon Core.

All told, when she eventually created the giant Yeti Boss in her Core room for a total of 12,000 EP, she had a total of 54 monsters – which she was just barely able to contain, being Core Level 7.  She waited until the last few days to increase her dungeon up to that point, electing to stay fairly even with or below the Level of the other Dungeon Cores, but eventually she had to pull ahead.  At that point, however, she found that only 1 or 2 Core Levels didn’t make as much of a difference in the number of dungeons sending their monsters her way as it did when the difference was 3 or 4 Levels, which meant that she wasn’t overwhelmed.

Soon enough, there was only approximately a day left to go before she expected the group of Defenders keeping her pack captive to journey over the border, but it also meant that Kiana and Tempara’s younger selves would be venturing north, as well.  In order to attract their attention to her dungeon, she sent out a small group of 2 Winter Wolves and 3 Snow Hares to cross the border with the Kingdom; she didn’t bother to have them camouflage their origin like she did in the past, but instead made it more than obvious where her monsters came from.

Soon after her monsters were killed by the Kingdom’s patrols, a pair of Defender scouts tracked them back to her dungeon.  By that time, she had already replaced the Ice Knights and Pixies in the first room with Snow Hares, and the two scout Defenders entered the dungeon, looked around the first room, and then left after a brief discussion about them calling for a Core Eradication Team.

Good.  Exactly as I wanted.

Now all she had to do was wait while fending off periodic attacks by some of the nearby Dungeon Cores.  The time seemed to stretch out longer the more she anticipated seeing the two very different groups arrive, to the point where she thought she may have estimated it as the wrong day.  Tempara mentally relaxed when she finally saw them both cross the border at different points, though of course she wasn’t really happy about what was going to happen to her Aunt and Uncles. She had briefly thought about trying to stop them, like she had tried to do before, but she was well aware of the futility of such an act; she wasn’t going to attempt it unless there wasn’t any other option.

Following the group with her younger Fox self, two things happened to let her know she was on the right path.  First, she finally heard:

* Approaching temporal displacement event. *

The voice in her mind was both familiar and annoying, but it also let her know that the same thing was occurring as the last time she was at this point.  But it was the words she heard from the people she was following that told her that what was happening was right – or at least more right than the feeling she had when the group went into the wrong dungeon last time.

“This is important, Kiana!”

Tempara couldn’t remember the exact words that Horad had spoken, but her former master’s memories recalled them perfectly.  It was one of the last conversations she had while she was alive, after all.

“I’m sorry, Horad.  I was listening, I swear!”

“Good.  Because if you die, then it’ll be my ass they’re chewing out back in Northfell, not yours.”

It was exactly the same as Kiana remembered, which made Tempara feel better about what she was doing.  There was still a small worry about the conclusion of this act, of course, but despite trying to ignore it, that worry was at the forefront of her mind now.

If they destroy me, triggering the events that lead to my eventual existence as a Dungeon Core, won’t I simply return back in time?  Will I be doomed to repeat this loop eternally?

She had no answers to that, but if that was indeed what happened when she was destroyed, she would look into alternate means of getting past this particular point in time.

“It’s just ahead!” Horad shouted back to the group when they were in view of her entrance.

As soon as they entered, she felt the uncomfortable shutdown of many of her dungeon functions, including a halt on her Accumulation Rate and inability to create or construct anything.  Having experienced it many times before, it didn’t bother her anymore; even if it did, there wasn’t anything else she needed to do, especially since she already knew the outcome.

Shortly after walking inside, the woman that had bonded with her soul brought her out of her fur coat and put a slightly larger Fox on the floor.

“Stay close, Tempara.”

That was very strange.  Not that it was different from what she remembered, but because it was odd hearing her former master calling Tempara by her name, and with a noticeable note of concern and affection to it.  Her own memories of that time were tinged with anger at her forced obedience, so she hadn’t really noticed how Kiana had really bonded with the young Fox – and not just the soul bond.  The woman seemed to genuinely consider Tempara as not just a companion, but perhaps even as a friend.

Some of the hatred she had held onto over all of these years started to erode in the face of the affection the Human held for the Fox, even if there was still an underlying note of soul slavery involved.  Her anger toward the woman faded a little further as she witnessed the group moving through her dungeon, absolutely devastating her monsters; Kiana was very attentive to the Fox, directing it where it was safest, as she genuinely considered Tempara’s safety.  That anger that faded from Kiana was then transferred to the people that caused her capture and subsequent slavery, namely the bald-headed man and those in charge of the Defenders that forced this to happen in the first place.

Tempara had avoided digging too deep into Kiana’s memories of their time together, but now that she started to think about them, she couldn’t help them from coming to the forefront of her mind.  It soon became obvious that she was right about her former master’s perception of their relationship, though, as she discovered that Kiana actually did think of the Greater Temporal Fox as more than just a pet or slave, but as an actual companion.

And now we’re connected as companions forever, though of course the dynamics of our relationship have changed a bit.

Soon enough, the group had fought their way through the dungeon until they were dispatching the last of the Polar Bears in the ninth room.  After they were dead, Tempara witnessed the look of disappointment on Kiana’s face, which the Dungeon Core knew was because of the slight lack of enough Elemental Charge to achieve Level 2.  None of the other Defenders seemed to see that, however, which is precisely why none of them were prepared for the tragedy that reached them in the Core room.

“This is the final room coming up, so we need to be a bit more careful.  Dungeon Bosses are typically stronger than anything we’ve seen in this dungeon thus far, but it’s nothing we can’t handle.”  Horad paused for a moment while talking to Kiana and Tempara, seemingly coming to some sort of decision.  “In fact, to ensure your safety, I want you to hang back in the tunnel and stay out of the fight.  This dungeon has proven to be stronger than we were estimating, and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“But—!”

“No buts; this is my final decision.  If you don’t like it, you can leave right now, and hopefully you’ll make it back across the border before something finds you.”

“Fine.  But I want in on the next sweep, so I can get enough Charge for my next Level.”

Tempara remembered being forced into a state of indignancy at this Dwarf not allowing her master to participate, but now that she had seen how powerful the giant Yeti was, the Dungeon Core knew that he was only looking out for her.

Then again, if she had actually been allowed to participate, even in the smallest way, would the same result have happened?

There was no way to know now, especially since Tempara couldn’t really influence anything in her dungeon at the moment, so she figured it didn’t really matter.  What happened next had already occurred, and changing most things around that had already happened weren’t exactly winning strategies for the Fox-turned-Core.

Looking outside of her dungeon briefly, during the time it took the group to walk down to her Core Room, Tempara saw that the bald man was just now starting whatever ritual he was doing with three members of her pack.  That meant that this part of what she had seen before was still progressing exactly as she remembered; it was up to her to ensure that her own part was played as well.

The few doubts that still ran through her mind that she hadn’t arranged her dungeon exactly like she remembered were dispelled as the fight with the giant Yeti Boss progressed exactly how it was supposed to.  Horad and his group of powerful Defenders quickly whittled away its health, and even the powerful fists of the monster couldn’t break through the shield that the Dwarven Defender wielded.  When the Yeti was nearing the end of its life, it roared loudly as Horad and the others stopped attacking, but there was Kiana already inching her way inside the room, releasing a tiny Flame Spark spell at the massive monster.

This is it.

The look of horror on the woman’s face was something that she saw for the first time, as Kiana’s memories of this event were a little distorted due to the unpleasantness of it, and because as a Fox, she hadn’t been looking at the Mage’s face.  As the Yeti’s fist moved so quickly that even the Dungeon Core had trouble tracking it, Tempara saw her younger Fox form move just as fast in an attempt to save the woman – but, of course, it was too late.

The fist smashed into Kiana with little resistance, whipping the Defender behind it as it followed through with the enormous swing of its arm, and the battered woman flew through the air – right toward her Dungeon Core.  From her perspective, it happened so fast that she barely had the thought to register it happening, but she remembered as a Fox activating her ability to slow down time in order to help her master – all to no avail.  Both the Mage and her younger Fox self crashed into her Core, shattering it into hundreds of pieces…

…and then everything went dark.

Chapter 31

Tempara expected a familiar and annoying voice to order her to “Select a starting location”, but that wasn’t what happened.  Instead, she was left in the dark for an indeterminate amount of time before the voice came back.

* Temporal displacement event has occurred successfully.  Required usage and knowledge for new Temporal Manipulation Skill had been fulfilled.

Establish a new temporal displacement point?  Yes / No *

Huh?

From what Tempara could gather from the voice speaking in her mind, she had successfully done… something.  She could only assume it was the temporal displacement event.

But what is this about establishing a new temporal displacement point?

As much as she tried to focus on what exactly the voice was asking her, so as to acquire more information about it, nothing was forthcoming.  The more she thought about it, though, the more she realized there really wasn’t any other choice; anything new right now was better than doing things over and over again with no end in sight.

Yes.

* Warning!  Establishing a new temporal displacement point will override previous temporal displacement point.

Proceed? Yes / No *

If she remembered correctly, her Temporal Reversion skill was what allowed her soul to return back in time to the point of the last temporal displacement.  What this was asking her was if she wanted to override the time she was being returned to, where her younger Fox self was being born, with a point that would occur… now?  Right after her Core had been destroyed, and some of her pack was used in some sort of ritual near their den?

She thought a long time about what that would mean, and there was fortunately no pressure on her mind to have her act quickly.  It was almost as if her soul was currently in a place where time didn’t exist, or that was how it felt to her.

If I do this, I’ll lose any chance of preventing my pack’s capture by that man.  I’ll also never have a chance of stopping whatever he did to my aunt and uncles, because it will have already happened.  Am I ready to let it go?  What if I finally find a way to change it all?

It was an extremely hard decision, because from what she could understand according to the warning the voice had given her, there was no going back from this.  No longer would she be sent back to her original birth, but she would have to live with the point in time she was in now.

In the end, there really was only one choice she could make, because otherwise she would simply keep repeating everything that had already occurred, as much as she didn’t want to admit that she was helpless to change it.  The future, however, was yet to happen.

Yes.

* Establishing a new temporal displacement point... complete!  Temporal Reversion in process… *

She recognized the name of her Auto-Skill spoken by the voice, and before she knew it, she was looking down at a landscape below her viewpoint.

A very familiar landscape that included the Wildlands with the Kingdom in the middle.

Did it work?  Did something go wrong?

She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but this wasn’t necessarily it.

* Select your starting location…. *

Oh, no.  Not again.

Tempara wasn’t sure what had happened, but she was almost certain that something had gone horribly wrong.

Maybe I took too long to decide?  Did I do something I wasn’t supposed to?

Whatever it was, she was determined to get it right this time, so she quickly sent her viewpoint closer to the Frozen Reaches and selected the same location she had chosen countless times before.

* Error.  Current location unavailable due to an abundant presence of foreign energy. *

What?

That had never happened before – she was fairly certain that she would’ve remembered if it had.  Thinking she somehow got it wrong the first time, she tried again and got the same message in her mind.

This is different.  Does that mean…?

Tempara wasn’t sure what exactly it meant, but different was new, and new was good.  Or so she hoped.

* Select your starting location…. *

The mounting pressure from the voice wasn’t different, sadly, but it did spur her on to choose something else.  Therefore, she picked a portion of the same mountain range, just slightly north of her normal area, for her new starting location.

* Transferring control of new Dungeon Core now…. *

Everything that happened from there was familiar, at least, as she felt her soul moving toward her chosen location, until she suddenly found her viewpoint looking out from a Dungeon Core.  Peering around her Core room, she couldn’t see any difference from how it usually appeared, with her room connected to a long tunnel that led outside.  Then again, even when she chose different locations before, they still looked exactly the same at the start.

She quickly sent her viewpoint outside, and she immediately found that she was about 800 feet to the north of her normal location, according to the landscape she was very familiar with.  When she looked at that spot, she suddenly understood why there was an error in her choosing – because there was already an entrance to a dungeon there.

Another Dungeon Core chose it ahead of me?

No.  When she looked closer at the entrance, she saw 5 sets of footprints leading into the tunnel that led deeper inside, and they weren’t from monsters.  They were from people, Defenders most likely.  If that was indeed the case, then that could only mean—

I wonder…

With just a small hesitation, she sent her viewpoint slowly into the tunnel—and nothing stopped her!  Emboldened, she shot down the tunnel until she reached the first room, which was very familiar, and then the second, third, and fourth – all appearing just as she remembered.  When she progressed through the 9 rooms and came to the Core room at the end, she saw Horad and his team leaning sadly over the battered form of Kiana and her own dead Fox body, and the Dwarf gently picked up the Mage’s corpse as a *crack* reverberated through the space.  As they began to run out of the dungeon, Tempara couldn’t help but remember the time when her soul had been free-floating, when it hadn’t been tied to a Dungeon Core.

This was that time, and she was witnessing the return of their bodies to the Kingdom city of Northfell, where her soul would eventually be released from her physical form.

As she exited the collapsing dungeon with the quartet of Defenders, she couldn’t help but marvel at what had just happened.

It worked.  It worked!  Oh.

She didn’t bother to follow Horad and the others back to the border, because she had already seen them accomplish that just fine after she had been killed the first time.  Instead, she sent her viewpoint toward her pack’s den, where she unfortunately found what she was expecting.

A glowing, blue, opaque sphere surrounded the forms of her aunt and 2 uncles, until they weren’t visible anymore.  Surrounding the sphere were a dozen Defenders, including the Death Man and Fire Elf, Palax and Frella, along with the 10 others that had accompanied them.  On the ground next to the sphere was the bearded man in his blue robe with a silver hood.  From what she could tell, he was still alive, because she saw his chest rise and fall with his breathing, but he was unconscious.

If only I had an army of monsters!  I could kill him right now!

Sadly, she barely had enough Elemental Power at that point to create a Cold Slime.  Even if she had enough to create some of her most powerful monsters, she doubted they would do much against the man in black and the Elf in red.

“He has succeeded!” the Death Man suddenly shouted, raising his arms above his head in what Kiana’s memories said was a victory pose.

“Is he all right?” one of the others unfamiliar to Tempara asked.

Frella answered, while Palax walked over to gently pick the man up and carry him in his arms with ease.  “Yes, he is simply drained of Mana.  Manipulating time like this is very Mana-intensive, even for a Chronomancer,” she explained, which told Tempara the blue-robed man’s Class finally – not that it helped to explain anything, other than the fact that he manipulated time.

The thought of a Human manipulating time, which was something that Greater Temporal Foxes excelled at, was very disconcerting.  While she wasn’t exactly sure what the ritual he had performed did, she was almost positive that it concerned time in some way.

“You all have your orders,” the Elf continued.  “In 7 months’ time, we’ll have finished our work, and you’ll have performed the ultimate service to the Kingdom.  Stay steadfast, let nothing disturb the ritual, and you will be greatly rewarded upon our return.”

With that, the Death Man and the Fire Elf left, carrying the blue-robed Chronomancer along with them.  Tempara watched them head south for the border with the Kingdom, but didn’t watch them walk the entire way.  Instead, she was more interested in what this ritual these people enacted had done to her relatives.

Almost as soon as the three powerful Defenders left, half of the remaining 10 started to set up a camp inside of her pack’s now-empty den, while the other half stood in a perimeter around the glowing sphere of blue energy, obviously guarding it.  Tempara watched them for a few hours, seeing no sign that they were getting cold or lax in their duties, before she was sure that she was full of enough Elemental Power to raise her Core Level.  She wanted to get as strong as possible soon so that she could create enough powerful monsters to kill those Defenders, and then try and figure out how to free her aunt and uncles before the next periodic sweep went through the Frozen Reaches.

When she looked at her Core Display, however, she was shocked at what she saw.

Core Display

Core Name:

Tempara

Core Level:

1

Designation:

Frozen Cohort

Level Threshold:

1,000 EP

Elemental Power (EP):

875 EP

Accumulation Rate (AR):

4.375 EP/minute

Defensible Rooms:

1

Available Monsters:

39

Monster Threshold:

10

Available Traps:

18

Monsters:

Cold Slime

Snow Hare

Glacial Ooze

25 EP

50 EP

50 EP

Snowball

Snowdrift Hare

Winter Wolf

100 EP

100 EP

125 EP

Armed Snowball

Frost Elemental

Icicle Spider

200 EP

200 EP

200 EP

Winter Dire Wolf

Chilled Slime King

Whiteout Panther

250 EP

300 EP

350 EP

Snowflake Pixie

Polar Bear

Snowbeast

400 EP

450 EP

500 EP

Ice Golem

Arctic Tiger

Freezing Salamander

500 EP

700 EP

750 EP

Snowstorm Pixie

Yeti

Iceberg Ooze

800 EP

800 EP

900 EP

Polar Bear Matriarch

Ice Knight

Elder Snowbeast

900 EP

1,000 EP

1,000 EP

Snowbank Warren

Winter Dire Wolf Alpha

Iceshard Salamander

1,000 EP

1,250 EP

1,500 EP

Abominable Yeti

Icicle Spider Queen

Orb of Chilling

1,600 EP

2,000 EP

2,000 EP

Iceback Prowler

Coldstriker Verrant

Woolly Mammoth

3,500 EP

4,000 EP

4,500 EP

Ice Worm

Frozen Drake

Ice Giant

5,000 EP

7,500

8,000 EP

Ice Guardian

Animated Avalanche

White Dragon

10,000 EP

80,000 EP

150,000 EP

Traps:

Pit Trap

Frigid Blast

Spiked Pit Trap

0.5 AR

0.5 AR

0.75 AR

Extended Frigid Blast

Icicle Rain

Chilled Feet

0.75 AR

1 AR

1 AR

Blizzard Block

Camouflaged Pit Trap

Ice Wall

1.25 AR

1.5 AR

1.5 AR

Icicle Deluge

Ice Spikes

Shaved Ice

1.5 AR

1.5 AR

1.75 AR

Ice Bomb

Frozen Sphere

Ice Minefield

2 AR

2 AR

4 AR

Javelin Launch

Spear Impalement

Wall Crush

2.5 AR

3 AR

5 AR

Core Abilities:

Construct Dungeon

Create Monster

Install Trap

(EP cost – varies)

(EP cost – varies)

(AR cost – varies)

Skills/Knowledge:

Monster Creation

Trap Installation

Temporal Manipulation

(Total Available: 39)

(Total Available: 18)

(Total Available: 2)

Not only was her Elemental Power not full, and thus not allowing her to raise her Core Level, but her Accumulation Rate had been cut by a full eighth of what it normally was. Instead of 5 EP per minute, she was down to 4.375 for some reason.

What happened?

* There is currently a temporal anomaly affecting the Frozen Reaches. *

The voice of her assistant startled Tempara, as the woman had been relatively silent after she first appeared and the Dungeon Core had ignored her instructions on how to set up a dungeon properly.

What does that mean?

There was no trace of Kiana in the voice at all when the woman responded, just the annoying monotone Tempara was sadly accustomed to hearing.

* The temporal anomaly has somehow halted all accumulation of Elemental Power in all Dungeon Cores located across the Frozen Reaches. *

Wait—all accumulation?  But mine is only reduced by an eighth.

* That is not possible.  All Dungeon Cores are inhabited by Elemental Spirits, which are intrinsically linked with the environment they are located within.  The local temporal anomaly has stopped time within any links found within the Frozen Reaches. *

And if I somehow wasn’t an Elemental Spirit?

* Again, that is not possible.  Hypothetically, if that were true, it would certainly explain the mere reduction in your Accumulation Rate, as you would only be partially linked to the Frozen Reaches. *

It took a few minutes for Tempara to wrap her mind around what she was being told.  Gazing outside, she looked for the roaming groups of monsters sent out to invade other dungeons, which had been almost constant over the last month since the last periodic sweep, but now she saw nothing.  There were still tracks of where some groups had obviously been not that long ago, but there weren’t any fresh ones coming from any dungeon – which was not only rare, but never seen before except when all the local Dungeon Cores were brand-new.

Is this temporal anomaly the ritual that the Chronomancer enacted near my pack’s den?

The question took some explanation on her part for it to make sense to her assistant, but eventually the woman had enough knowledge to answer her query.

* That does seem to be the most likely location of the temporal anomaly. *

Do you know of any way to get rid of it and free my family?

* No. *

Her former master’s answer wasn’t very helpful, but at least Tempara knew – somewhat – what was going on.  There was just one thing that was bothering her, however, so she had to ask her assistant one more thing before she looked more into how to free her aunt and uncles.

Why was my Accumulation Rate reduced by an eighth?

* At the same time that you are partially linked to the Frozen Reaches, you are also partially linked to the other 7 Wildlands.  If more locations suffer a temporal anomaly, then you will see further reductions in your Accumulation Rate. *

Hmm.

The number 7 stirred something in her memory, and it didn’t take her long to remember – since it wasn’t that long ago.  The Fire Elf had mentioned something about 7 months, and at the time it didn’t make much sense; knowing what this ritual did, however, and the fact that there were 7 more Wildlands….

Tempara was now convinced that this ritual with her pack in the Frozen Reaches wasn’t the only one this Chronomancer was going to enact, especially since she knew that they had taken 24 of her family members away – which meant that there were 3 for each ritual.  The bearded man was going to do the same thing in all of the Wildlands.

She thought about it for a minute or so, trying to work out what exactly that meant if he were successful.  For one, it would mean that no more dungeon monsters would threaten the Kingdom; not only that, but they also wouldn’t threaten the natural beasts that lived in all of the different locations.  The part of her memories that came from Kiana knew that the Defenders of the Kingdom would be overjoyed at this result, and her especially, since her own family had been killed by a dungeon monster horde when she was young.

But to do this, the Chronomancer would have to use her pack in a ritual of unknown impact on the Greater Temporal Foxes, themselves.  Were they being hurt, forced to suffer a torturous existence for however long the ritual lasted?  Were they dead inside of the sphere?  Or was it something even worse than she could think of?  Was the safety of both the people of the Kingdom and the natural beasts out in the Wildlands worth the sacrifice of her entire pack?

No, definitely not.

Apparently, her assistant thought the same thing – though for an entirely different reason.

* In addition, the longer the links remain frozen between the Elemental Spirits inhabiting Dungeon Cores and the environment, a catastrophic buildup of Elemental Power could occur. *

What exactly does that mean?

* Severe environmental devastation of the affected Wildlands, to start.  It is unknown what will happen if all 8 of the Wildlands are affected by these temporal anomalies. *

Tempara remembered when she first became a Dungeon Core, when she learned that the Dungeon Cores and their respective Elemental Spirits were integral to the regulation of Elemental Power within the Wildlands.  If she understood what her assistant was saying, then this temporal anomaly was interfering with that regulation.  While she couldn’t understand exactly what that meant, she imagined it wouldn’t be too terribly good.

Right.  So I should probably figure out how to stop that from happening here, at least.

The Dungeon Core looked at the glowing blue sphere again, trying to figure out how to stop the ritual.  As she looked closer at it, she could see very faint lines of some designs and perhaps runes of some kind that were embedded in the outside of the sphere, but they were difficult to make out without getting closer.  Tempara got even closer to the sphere, trying to make out what exactly she was looking at, and despite the bright glow, she was starting to understand a little—

No!  What is it doing?

She felt her viewpoint being pulled into the sphere, and even though she tried as hard as she could, the Dungeon Core couldn’t pull herself away.  Closer and closer she was forced to come, until she eventually touched the side of the ritual…

…and found her viewpoint frozen in place.

Chapter 32

Help!  I can’t move!

It sounded bizarre to Tempara, considering that she couldn’t technically move as a Dungeon Core anyway, but it was the truth.  She was stuck against the side of the blue ritual sphere and couldn’t move her viewpoint away, no matter what she tried.  Looking around her stuck location was possible, though there wasn’t much to see other than the backsides of the two nearest Defenders facing outward from it.  She thought there might be a way to look inside of the sphere to see what may have become of her family members, but it was still as opaque as usual.

The only good thing about being that close to the sphere, she supposed, was that she was able to get a really good look at the lines that seemed to make up the outline of the ritual – or at least as much as was near her. She resolved to study them a little more when she wasn’t involved in trying to get away from the sphere, but for the moment she was slightly panicked.  Nothing had done something like this to her viewpoint since she had died and her soul had been tethered to her body.

Kiana?  Can you hear me?

Nothing answered her, nor could she sense anything going on in her dungeon, which wasn’t a good sign.  She was well and truly trapped in place, and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to extricate herself.

Over the next day, Tempara constantly attempted to break free from the trap, hoping that over time the pull would lessen, but she had no luck.  The Defenders guarding the ritual shifted halfway through the day, with those that had been keeping guard disappearing only to be replaced with others – or so she assumed, considering that she could only see 2 of them at a time.  None of them spoke, as they were so focused on their duty that they barely even moved from where they stood guard.

Over the next week, she continued to try to move away every once in a while, but her efforts were in vain.  There was no getting away from it, it seemed, so she used the time to look more at her surroundings.

She had a fairly good view of the large snowfield located near her pack’s den, but it was as empty as it had been just after she had started as a Dungeon Core during this timeline.  Nothing moved, not even any beasts that she knew lived nearby, almost as if they knew to avoid the area.  The only exception was the day of rapid growth, where a feeding frenzy took place.

That was the only real reaction she saw from the Defenders as all of them were near the ritual sphere during that time, and they had to fight off a few larger beasts that came near, including a pack of natural, white-furred wolves that were just slightly smaller than the Winter Wolves she could create in her dungeon.  It was the first time she had actually seen any of the Chronomancer’s followers fight, and her hope that they were simply low-Level Defenders was dashed as they unleashed a fury of spells and physical attacks on the beasts that was far from low-Level.  They didn’t exactly have the same devastating fighting abilities as the Death Man or the Fire Elf, but they were powerful enough in their own right.

Seeing that many of their skills were defense-based, she could see that they were, in fact, perfect for defending the glowing ritual sphere.

After that, most of the beasts stayed far away from there, seeing that it would be futile to go near the deadly Defenders.  As for the guards, they didn’t settle down until all of the new growth had withered away at the end of the frenzy, and even then they all stayed alert until at least a few hours after things had calmed down.

They took their jobs seriously, she had to give them that.

The only other thing she noticed during that first week was what didn’t arrive: the periodic sweep.  She had expected it to have already come and gone, but for some reason it never appeared; the one hope that they would sweep through and see her entrance, destroy her Core, and restart her all over again was dashed when they never showed up.  The Dungeon Core could only assume that the Kingdom knew that this ritual was happening and had decided to send their people elsewhere.  As it was, there was absolutely no threat from the dungeons right now, as none of them had any extra Elemental Power to spend on creating monsters.  Since most of them were probably right at their Monster Threshold, they couldn’t send out what was already in their dungeons.

When nothing interesting happened over the week when she looked at the landscape she could see, Tempara turned her attention once again to the sphere.  She had a fairly good view of what she estimated to be about a quarter of the entire thing, and being so close allowed her to see the finer details in the lines that she hadn’t even noticed from farther away.

In short, it was very intricate, and while she had seen the bearded man at work creating the ritual, she hadn’t seen this much detail.  She could only assume that he had some sort of constructed spellform for the entire thing – at least that is what the knowledge granted to her by her former master hinted at.  The Mage hadn’t been very experienced as a Defender and a spellcaster, obviously, but she had heard about and seen some very simple spellforms that a few of the more-advanced Classes could produce.  As far as how they were constructed or formed, the woman hadn’t known, but she did know that even the simplest were normally powered by large amounts of Mana.

In the case of this ritual spellform, however, Tempara could only assume that instead of just Mana, it was powered by the time-manipulating energy that seemed to spill out from her aunt and uncles inside the sphere.  If that was the case, then it was possible that they were still inside the sphere, feeding it a constant stream of time-manipulating energy to maintain the spellform.

And if they’re still inside and likely still alive, then maybe I can break them free and save them.  It’s worth a try, at least.

Of course, that wasn’t happening right now, considering that she was stuck.  Nor did she know how to break them out of the ritual, though the fact that there were Defenders guarding it meant that it was probably fragile and prone to being disturbed or destroyed.

As the days and then the weeks passed, Tempara became quite bored without anything to see or anyone to talk to.  Even though she wasn’t the biggest fan of the woman that had soul-bonded her Fox soul and then became her Dungeon Core assistant, talking with Kiana was at least something to do – even if it wasn’t the most riveting conversation.  Trapped here, though, there wasn’t really much to do.

So she started letting all of the focus in her mind drift off for long periods of time, similar to when she had been despondent in her dungeon when she thought she had no chance of ever escaping the time loop she was in.  The weeks passed quickly like that, with her coming back to full focus every once in a while to attempt to break free again, only to fail and return to her unfocused state.

Then, approximately 30 days after she had started on this new timeline, Tempara felt something shift slightly inside of her mind.  She instinctively knew what it was, and she pulled up the Core Display she still had access to even though she was trapped outside of her dungeon.  She couldn’t delve into it to look closer at specifics, but that wasn’t necessarily needed in this case.  When she looked at the Display, her fears were confirmed.

Her Accumulation Rate (AR) was down to 3.75 from its usual 5 EP per minute.  Another eighth of her AR was gone, which could only mean one thing.

That dangerous Chronomancer has created another temporal anomaly.

There hadn’t been any noticeable changes in what she could see of the Frozen Reaches, at least as far as the environment went, but if the bearded man in the blue robe continued to use her pack to create these rituals all around the Wildlands, she could only imagine that she would see something soon.  She trusted the information her assistant provided her enough to know that “environmental devastation” wasn’t likely to be an exaggeration.

Another month passed without anything new occurring, as Tempara continued to deliberately lose focus for days or weeks on end.  When another 30 days passed, she felt another shift occur in her mind and her Core, and found that her Accumulation Rate had dropped to 3.125 EP per minute.

This can’t be good.

Unfortunately, it didn’t matter if she knew things weren’t going well, because she was in no position to do anything about it.

After 30 more days passed, another shift in her mind brought her down to 2.5 EP per minute, which was half of her normal Accumulation Rate, and she began to see the first signs that some environmental devastation was making itself known.  Approximately a week after this loss of AR, the rapid growth that triggered the feeding frenzy occurred – and yet it didn’t, at the same time.  Instead of large shoots of green growth that grew from underneath the snow, sickly, brown stalks of vegetation appeared, and what did push out of the snow barely reached a foot above the snowpack.

What she could see from her viewpoint showed the beasts running to feed looking extremely confused, but they still demolished everything that they saw, bringing what little they could back to their dens or lairs.  Tempara was almost certain that many would starve from the loss of so much vegetation, because these periods of rapid growth were what kept the normal beasts – like her former Fox self – alive in the Frozen Reaches.

The next week, when the sun shone down on the snow and raised the ambient temperature, nothing came up during the period of rapid growth.  The feeding frenzy turned into a real frenzy at that point as hungry predators chased down their equally hungry prey, their slaughter far above their normal levels because of the scarcity of food.

They’re all eventually going to starve.

The week after that, there were fewer prey beasts that showed up in the hope of finding vegetation to eat, but they were disappointed when nothing grew.  The large assortment of predators, finding their meals much diminished, started turning on each other.  The feeding frenzy turned into a massacre, and dozens of packs or families were killed during the fighting, decreasing their numbers yet again.

After that, no more even showed up to the snowfield, whether because they had given up hope that no more vegetation had grown, or they were all dead.

The month after that, when her AR dropped for the fifth time to only 1.875 EP per minute, the weather started to change.  The temperature dropped, more snow began to fall, and even the stalwart Defenders started to show signs of feeling the cold.  Their shifts became shorter and shorter as they stood guard over a glowing ritual sphere in an environment that had likely killed off everything that could’ve been a threat.  There were multiple times during the days that there weren’t any guards around her, for hours on end.

The next month dropped her AR down to 1.25, and she began to feel a strain on her Core back in her dungeon, as if the lack of accumulation was finally starting to affect it.  She briefly wondered what the other Dungeon Cores controlled by Elemental Spirits felt when they had all of the incoming Elemental Power stripped away from them – but decided that she probably didn’t want to know.

The weather grew worse, with the temperature dropping even further, to the point where she only saw the Defenders outside of the den a few times a day, and briefly at that, as they used spells and their own physical bodies to eliminate or move away the snow that was piling up around the glowing sphere.  Any snow that fell on the sphere seemed to simply disappear, but the area around the sphere was starting to become so full of snow that she thought that even if the Defenders wanted to leave right now, they would be hard-pressed to navigate through so much snowfall.

It was only when the next month passed, leaving her Accumulation Rate at a measly 0.625 EP per minute, that things started to go from bad to worse in the environment.  The snow stopped falling all of a sudden one day, which might have been a good sign, but in actuality it was because it was too cold to snow.  She could tell that the temperature dropped yet again as the snow around her viewpoint seemed to freeze solid, like opaque ice, and she rarely saw the Defenders.  A few days after it stopped snowing, there were heated arguments coming from what she assumed was the den, though she couldn’t tell what they were saying.  A few hours later, Tempara suddenly saw all of them pass by the ritual sphere and aim their spells at the wall of snow around them, blasting it apart in a way that allowed them to make a ramp up to the surface of the snowpack.

They never made it.  Despite their hardy constitution and the fur they were clothed in, one by one they collapsed to their knees, their bodies frozen to the point where they couldn’t move.  They survived a few more minutes before they entirely succumbed to the cold, having fulfilled their duty to the very end.  She could only assume that they were trying to head back south because, even in the den, it was too cold for them to survive much longer.

Regardless, they did their job, because there was no way anything living could survive in this cold.  Some of her monsters, like her Ice Golem and Snowbeast, would probably be fine, but even then she wasn’t sure how they would be affected by this kind of extreme freezing temperature.

I wish I was inside of my dungeon, so I could create some monsters and send them here.

Unfortunately, even the cold temperatures did nothing to disturb the ritual.

The environment continued to get worse, as the temperature dropped even further, which she could tell because the snow – which had frozen – eventually cracked, and started to crumble apart.  This was beneficial to Tempara because it allowed her to see the landscape a little better from her position, though there wasn’t much to see.  The snow had covered all of the mountains to the point where they weren’t recognizable anymore, so everything appeared as long stretches of white without any break in the monotony of color.

Eventually, the time finally came for the last of the temporal anomalies to initiate, and it came with a powerful spike of pain to her mind, with a lingering dull ache afterwards.  She didn’t have to check her Core Display to know her AR had dropped down to 0 per minute, because she could practically feel that all Accumulation had stopped.

Tempara expected something to happen fairly quickly to the environment after that, but nothing happened for nearly a week.  It was hard to tell if the temperature dropped any further, because there were no external indicators past what she’d seen already.

Almost exactly 7 days after the last of the temporal anomaly rituals was – assumedly – initiated, things started to change dramatically.  It wasn’t the weather this time, however, but the very landscape of the Frozen Reaches.

What the—?

She had been letting her focus drift off over the last few days, as there wasn’t much for her to look at or concentrate on.  Her attention was brought crashing back to her viewpoint after she found that her vision was shaking.  It started as a small vibration, but it eventually ended up with a violent rumbling, to the point where she was convinced she was being shaken by some giant monster.

The next thing she knew, a wave of frozen snow crashed into the ritual sphere, releasing her viewpoint and sending it shooting off into the air.  The change was so abrupt that she didn’t even get a chance to look back and see if the sphere had collapsed and whether her aunt and uncles were still alive, because the sphere was already covered in the same frozen snow that had freed her.

Looking down below her, she could see disturbances all over the land, as entire sections of the Frozen Reaches seemed to be bubbling up as if they were being pushed from below.  Entire mountain ranges were broken apart, snow and ice was flung in all directions with violent force, and all of it was overshadowed by the incredible rending sound that nearly deafened Tempara – despite not having physical ears.

Tempara thought about returning to her dungeon, but a quick look at her entrance showed that it was completely covered – not just with snow and ice, but also, a portion of the cliff face above had broken off and slid down to cover most of it with stone.  She thought she might still be able to get through it, as it wasn’t covered entirely, but she didn’t see the point.

It was too late, anyway, as she suddenly saw a massive wave of frozen land to the north flowing southward.  It was at least 500 feet tall and appeared to get bigger even as it progressed, picking up rubble from broken mountains and tons of snow and ice.  It rapidly closed the distance to the border, and as it passed over her own entrance, she expected it to destroy her Core.  Amazingly, as her viewpoint flowed by, she wasn’t sent back in time but was instead left to watch as the land wave crossed the Kingdom’s border as if it wasn’t even there, completely demolishing anything and anyone in its path.

From about a mile or so above the surface, Tempara watched the destructive wave slam into Northfell, the closest city that contained a Font of Elemental Mana, one of the Fonts that produced the altered version of Elemental Power that the Defenders used.  Soon after, the wave of frozen land covered the city, as nothing could stop it. There was an enormous explosion of energy that essentially blew up the entire city and the immediate area, completely obliterating anything nearby.  Some of the front portion of the land wave was also destroyed in the process, but it was only a relatively small part of the destructive force that was sweeping over the Kingdom.

In the very far distance, she could both see flashes of light and feel the release of even more energy, as other cities were destroyed, though she was too far away to see what exactly did the deed.  She supposed that if the other Wildland locations were also reacting to the extreme buildup of Elemental Power, then they might have something equally as destructive as this land wave from the Frozen Reaches.

The Fox-turned-Dungeon Core could only stay up there and watch as the Kingdom was destroyed, city by city, as the destructive forces killed everyone there.  As much as she knew that many of those people were innocent, she couldn’t help but think that all of this was their own fault for messing with the Dungeon Cores and the Elemental Power that they manipulated.  They were suffering the dramatic consequences of their mistakes, on a scale that was almost impossible to comprehend.

At least all of the rituals were probably destroyed.

That was small consolation for the destruction that was caused by those same rituals, however.  The problem wasn’t the land, because it would probably recover over time, but all of the beasts everywhere had probably been killed, meaning that there was essentially nothing left alive.  With the rituals gone, the Dungeon Cores would come back and operate normally again, helping to regulate the Elemental Power – but what was the point?  Everything and everyone was essentially destroyed or dead, including her pack, if they even survived the ritual.

So, what am I supposed to—

Her thought was cut off as she felt – but didn’t actually see – a massive explosion go off from the south, which was so much more powerful than the others when the cities were destroyed.  It was, in fact, so destructive that she eventually saw the results of the explosion – wherever it was – as a massive wave of fiery devastation at least a mile high that was spreading out from its epicenter.  It was pushing back against the frozen land wave and accelerating the farther it traveled.  In only a few seconds after she had spotted it, the fiery wave passed the remains of Northfell and shot across the non-existent border, slamming through the Frozen Reaches so quickly that she barely had time to think before it hit where her dungeon was located—

* Select your starting location…. *

Tempara had never been so happy to hear those words.

Chapter 33

Tempara kept her viewpoint far away from the ritual sphere, now knowing that getting too close to it was a superlatively bad idea.  She still monitored it from afar, however, because she needed to figure out not only how to get her aunt and uncles free, but also how to stop the destruction of the entire world.

There was a lot riding on her figurative shoulders, she knew, but she focused on one thing at a time.  Her most immediate goal was to save her pack; if doing so stopped what she saw happen in her last incarnation, then it would be like catching two victims in one trap.

The one good thing about Tempara being trapped near the sphere without being able to move, if there was anything that could be salvaged from the situation, was that she had a little knowledge about the Defenders guarding the sphere.  Nothing personal, of course, as she didn’t even know a single one of their names and could only guess at their Classes, but she had a fairly good idea of their schedules, how often they switched positions with those staying in the den, and the way they reacted to different threats – at least as far as the nearby natural beasts went.  Since none of the local Dungeon Cores had sent any monsters out, it was difficult to tell how they would react to seeing them.

Regardless, the knowledge was better than starting with nothing.  Because of that, as soon as the bald-headed Chronomancer was carried away down south, Tempara started to plan.

There were a few things that she took into account that were different from her experience trying to survive against all of the dungeons and Defenders scouting out the area around the border.  First, the fact that the other Cores weren’t going to send out any monsters to attack her dungeon was both a boon and a detriment; while she didn’t have to worry about gaining the attention of the other dungeons because of her Core Level, she also wouldn’t be gaining Elemental Power from killing their monsters in her dungeon.  That, and attacking the other dungeons for the Power in their Cores, were major resources that had helped her stay ahead of the attacks and develop rapidly.  While she could still technically attack some other dungeons, she didn’t want to call attention to her dungeon until she was ready; having roaming monsters running around would certainly raise some concerns among the Defenders near the ritual sphere.

Second, the lack of a periodic sweep through the Frozen Reaches meant that she had some time to develop her dungeon before she implemented any type of attack.  Tempara didn’t want to wait too long, however, because she wanted to try and stop the devastation of the environment before it got to the point where it would be irreversible.  From her observations, she thought she had a few months, but she would rather err on the side of caution and put a limit of a month, when the next temporal anomaly would happen somewhere else.

Third, she wasn’t sure what it would take to disturb the ritual, and whether attacking it directly would break the sphere or if it would harm those inside.  Knowing that would be something she might have to experiment with to be successful, Tempara was prepared to restart multiple times if necessary.

The last thing she took into account would actually help with that last issue.  When she had been stuck to the ritual sphere for months on end, she couldn’t help but notice that she now had another Temporal Manipulation Skill, but she hadn’t been able to access it while she was trapped.  Now that she was free, she was pleased at what she discovered.

Temporal Manipulation

Skill: Temporal Displacement

Usage Threshold: 1/1,000

???

Temporal Displacement is an ability that allows for the creation of a temporal displacement point for the purpose of returning an attached soul to that point upon destruction or release.  Temporal Displacement points can only be created while in proximity of temporal displacement events.

In addition, this skill can also be used to create a localized temporal displacement inside of a Dungeon Core, freeing a soul from its current housing and allowing the Auto-skill, Temporal Reversion, to apply.

Further Temporal Manipulation Skills can be developed with proper usage and knowledge of previous Skills, as well as the fulfillment of all requirements.

The Temporal Displacement Skill was what she had apparently used after the temporal displacement event, so if she wanted to use it again, she would have to be near another event for it to work.  The secondary usage of the Skill, however, was what she wished she had access to when she was stuck to the ritual sphere – and would help immensely in the future if she needed to restart.

Essentially, it allowed her to kick her own soul out of the Dungeon Core and go back to the start, where she could select another location for her Core.  Because it wasn’t likely that her dungeon would be attacked very often by monsters or Defenders, it was a way to start over without having to deliberately try and cause trouble and wait for her Core to be shattered.

Using all of this knowledge, she decided on her first plan to stop the ritual and free her family members from the sphere.  It was fairly straightforward and simple, but she figured it was worth trying to see if it would work without having to deal with anything more complicated.

The first thing she did was wait for the accumulation of enough Elemental Power to raise her Core Level multiple times.  The first Level took approximately 4 hours from the time her Dungeon Core appeared in her dungeon, which was a little longer than usual because of the reduction in her Accumulation Rate.

Reaching Core Level 3 required a little under 6 hours; Core Level 4 took another 7 and a half hours, while she had to wait approximately 10 hours for Core Level 5.  In all, even though it took more than 27 hours to reach Core Level 5, it was actually a little faster than it had been when she was defending against attack after attack by foreign dungeons, because she didn’t have to spend so much time constructing her dungeon, creating monsters, and installing traps.

She wasn’t quite done yet with her Leveling, so she kept going.

Just over 3 days later, she had reached Core Level 10 by doing nothing but letting her Elemental Power accumulate.  Even at 43.75 EP per minute for her Accumulation Rate at that point, it was still going to take nearly a day to acquire the 55,000 EP needed to get to Core Level 11.  She didn’t want to wait any longer, as she needed to know how effective her monsters were going to be against the Defenders.  The first thing she did was expand her Core room and the adjoining tunnel, spending the next few days making her Core room 200 feet wide and long with a 100 foot ceiling, and the tunnel leading outside 50 feet high and 30 feet wide.  Previously, when she was trying to stop the Chronomancer from “killing” her pack, she had expanded the tunnels a bit in order to allow most of her monsters access to leave, but it was nothing compared to what she could make now.

She didn’t have to worry about any Defenders seeing the much-expanded entrance, after all.

Thankfully, while the construction of her dungeon was relatively slow, it didn’t require all of her accumulating Elemental Power.  Therefore, while it was ongoing, she slowly started to create monsters that she thought would be effective against the Defenders guarding the ritual sphere.  There were some that she couldn’t afford right now, like the Animated Avalanche at 80,000 EP and the White Dragon at 150,000 EP, but pretty much all of her other options were available.

First, because this was outside and the ground was covered in snow, Tempara created 10 Arctic Tigers at 700 EP each to travel underneath the snow and ambush from hiding.  There were 10 of them so that they matched the number of Defenders, which would hopefully allow them to keep the guards busy while her other monsters could get close.

The second group of monsters she made were Snowstorm Pixies for 800 EP each, as she wanted to have something that could attack Defenders from above and from afar, because she had seen how effective they were against the natural beasts nearby when they were on the ground.  In total, she created 8 of the Pixies to accompany the other monsters she was planning on creating.

Next up was a quartet of Elder Snowbeasts at 1,000 EP each.  With their appendages, she was hoping that they would offer a multi-angled approach to attacking the Defenders and keep them just that much more off-balance.

After that, she included 4 Ice Knights, also at 1,000 EP for each one.  She had seen how effective they were against both monsters and Defenders, if only because they were completely made of ice and therefore had a little bit stronger of a defense against physical attacks.  Against fire-based spells, of course, they would melt quickly, but with the variety of monsters she was sending, Tempara was hoping that the guards would be too busy to target them specifically.

Those monsters totaled 24 already, but she wanted to send 32 in all during her first experiment.  The reason for that was because of her Monster Threshold, which currently sat at 64 at Core Level 10; that meant that she could create an extra 32 monsters in her dungeon before she had to send them outside.  She would rather not give the Defenders any warning about a potential attack by sending a few of them outside prior to the final assault.

Using those last 8 spots, she created monsters that were a little more powerful. First, she created 2 Coldstriker Verrants for 4,000 EP.  The strange-looking spellcasters would be a deadly addition to the group she was sending, as their spells were incredibly powerful, and they had a range unmatched by anything else she could create.

A pair of Ice Worms for 5,000 EP each were also added, which could also burrow under the ground and attack from ambush.  They were strong and powerful, and could move quickly to keep up with the rest of the group traveling above the ground.  When they attacked, she was hoping they would be such a surprise that the guards couldn’t formulate a defense fast enough to counter them.

For the last 4 spots, she chose a pair of Frozen Drakes and a pair of Ice Giants.  At 7,500 and 8,000 EP, respectively, they were the most expensive in terms of Elemental Power cost that she was including in the group, and they were also some of the biggest.  The Ice Giant was huge, standing so tall that it had to crouch a little as it walked through her tunnel, and the Drake was fast and nimble enough to work in between the other members of the group to do some serious damage to the Defenders if they weren’t ready.

Which Tempara hoped was the case.  With the variety of monsters at her disposal and working together, she expected the guards to have an extremely tough time surviving.

After the 3 days it took to finish her construction and with the expense of nearly 69,000 EP for the creation of her monster forces, she then proceeded to create 64 Cold Slimes – because they were the cheapest of her monsters.  The Cold Slimes were utilized to stay inside of her dungeon to satisfy her Monster Threshold, allowing her to release the others.  When they were all present, she moved the force she was going to be attacking with to her recently widened entrance, and she waited for night to fall.

The few hours it took for darkness to fall over the Frozen Reaches seemed to take forever, but the sun finally set; the snow deadened the sound of even her Ice Giants as they stomped out of her dungeon, following behind the Elder Snowbeasts, Ice Knights, and Coldstriker Verrants.  The Arctic Tigers and Ice Worms burrowed underneath the snowpack outside as soon as they exited, and the Snowstorm Pixies flew with the Frozen Drakes up and over the landscape, keeping watch from above.  The Frozen Drakes were very similar to the White Dragon in shape if not size, though they weren’t quite as durable and had no freezing breath.

She had to stop and start the Tigers, the Ice Worms, and even the Ice Giants so that they wouldn’t range ahead of the others, either because of their fast speed or because of their long legs.  There wasn’t more than a mile and a half for them to travel, though, so it wasn’t that much of a hassle.  She wished she could give them more specific orders beyond “stop” and “go here”, but that was unfortunately all she could do when her monsters were outside of her dungeon.

Watching from the Defenders’ viewpoint, she saw that they detected a rumbling in the ground when the leading edge of the monster force was about 200 feet away from them – an unfortunate side effect of the Ice Giant’s steps and the movement of the Ice Worms underneath the snow.  Thankfully, the glowing blue sphere could only light up about 50 feet from its location, so even Tempara’s largest monsters were still hidden.

All 5 of the guards on duty at that point looked at each other and nodded, before one of them flung out one of their arms, sending a small spark of bright, white light up and away from them.  It ascended in an arc that rose at least 80 feet into the air before it exploded, which created a flare of light that stayed suspended high above, illuminating everything within 300 feet.

Well, so much for surprise.

She expected the Defenders to panic a little at the sight of so many monsters headed for them, but they simply stayed exactly where they were, unflinching.  The one who had tossed the light up into the air, which still brightly lit up the landscape, suddenly looked at the ground beneath them.

“We have incoming below!” the Defender shouted in a higher-pitched voice than Tempara expected, and for the first time, she realized it was a woman.  Every time she had seen the guards, they were wearing thick, fur hoods that covered their hair and a portion of their face, so it was hard to see exactly who they were.  Even during the feeding frenzies, when the temperature grew warmer, only a few of them had pushed their hoods back – and those ones had been men – either Human or Elven.  Only one of the guards was small enough to be a Dwarf, but they weren’t with the current guard contingent.  While it was interesting new information, the presence of a female would not deter Tempara from doing what she had to do.

The Dungeon Core could feel her Ice Worms and Arctic Tigers getting ready to strike from below, which the “lightbringer” Defender had apparently detected, while at the same time her Snowstorm Pixies and Coldstrker Verrants were nearly close enough to attack from range.  Fortunately, though the Core’s ability to command her monsters outside of her dungeon was limited, she had learned that as soon as they were within range of an enemy, her monsters would attack without requiring her command.

Of course, their long-range attacks or attacks from below would be momentarily unsupported while the Snowbeasts, Knights, and Giants arrived due to their slower pace traveling across the snow.  The last of the attackers would be the Frozen Drakes, who could swoop down and rake their sharp claws over the guards; unlike the White Dragon, the Frozen Drakes didn’t have a frozen breath ranged attack, but the fact that they were large, could fly, and had some weight behind their attacks was enough to make them extremely dangerous.

While the monsters were getting closer, none of the guards seemed to move or even prepare themselves for the incoming attack.  She was quickly expecting some sort of magical shielding to spring up from one of the Defenders like she’d seen before, but nothing at all happened.

Something’s wrong.

She wasn’t sure what it was, but there was definitely something off about the entire thing.  She’d seen them defend against the attacks of beasts during feeding frenzies, and they had all reacted far before this point, either by attacking from afar or at least preparing to repel the beasts; and yet, nothing of the sort was happening here.

Alright, they’re about to attack… now!

The Worms and Tigers were poised to shoot straight up from below where they had burrowed under the thick snowpack, with the pair of Worms targeting one of the Defenders and the Tigers split up to attack the other 3 guards with either 3 or 4 of their number.  Thus far, none of the other Defenders had emerged from the den, which was surprising, but she did see them at the entrance, observing, for some reason.

The Pixies also fired out 6 ice shards from their hands, propelling the projectiles at incredible speeds toward the guards.  They weren’t as good at dispersing the attack, unfortunately, so only 2 of the 5 guards around the ritual sphere were targeted, but it should still be effective.  As the same time, the strange-looking Coldstriker Verrants entered range, and she could see a large rain of icicles forming above the guards and the sphere. It wasn’t exactly what she wanted, since she wasn’t sure if the icicles hitting the sphere would hurt those inside, but it was impossible to direct the Verrant to do anything more specific than “go there”.

Everything was coming together quite nicely for the attack, and still, the Defenders didn’t move at all.  A half-second before the first of the icicle rain, projectiles, and under-the-snow ambushes would hit the guards, the “lightbringer” touched the ritual sphere with her hand.

Everything froze.

The snowflakes falling from the sky stopped in midair, as if they had suddenly hit an invisible wall and couldn’t keep going.  The flung icicle projectiles sent out by the Pixies and the Verrants halted in their progress, stopping completely, and they hung in the air, still on their deadly trajectory.  Just barely poking out from the snow beneath the feet of the Defenders, Tempara could see the front paws of the Arctic Tigers beginning to emerge, as well as the gaping maws of the Ice Worms, ready to swallow the guards whole – and yet, they too were stopped as if the snow had suddenly become impenetrable.

Looking at the rest of her monsters, even the Ice Giants bringing up the rear with their long strides, they were similarly frozen in place, most of them in mid-stride or mid-flap.  Somehow, they were all stopped by something; even Tempara, when she tried to move her viewpoint, found that she was suddenly trapped in place.  A slight panic formed in the back of her mind as memories of being stuck against the ritual sphere for months came to the forefront, but she intuitively knew that this was different, more temporary than her previous experience.

It only took her a few seconds to recognize a couple of things.  The first was that when she looked around her viewpoint, a very faint, blue-ish haze covered all her monsters and their projectiles, and even the falling snowflakes.  When she looked farther away, perhaps 500 feet or so, snow continued to fall as if nothing had happened.

This blue haze looks just like the ritual sphere – and the energy that the Chronomancer pulled from my aunt and uncles.

There was only one explanation that Tempara could figure: The Defenders had used the sphere to stop time in the area, freezing everything in place.

Well, not everything.

That was the other thing she noticed as her monsters were all stopped from the time effect.  The Defenders seemed completely unaffected – and they finally began to move no more than a second after everything else froze in place.  Even the guards inside of the den emerged, joining the others as they responded to the attack.

With her Arctic Tigers just barely at the surface, one of the Defenders pulled out a long sword approximately 5 feet in length and stabbed straight into the snow, and through her monsters with simple efficiency.  They were killed almost instantly, though it was hard to tell because even the blood that would normally spill from them was frozen in time.  Only the wounds created by the weapon were present, but Tempara could tell that they were fatal even if the monsters didn’t show their death yet.

The Ice Worms met a slightly different fate, as one of Defenders reached with their right hand through the snow inside of their maw and held it there for about 5 seconds as a red light pulsed down their arm, before pulling it back up.  Tempara couldn’t see exactly what happened, but there was the sound of a muffled explosion and steam rose from the location of the Ice Worm; she could only assume that some sort of explosive spell was released inside of the monster, who couldn’t avoid the spell because it was frozen in time.  The second one suffered the same effect, and the Dungeon Core could tell that both had been killed as easily as that.

Next up were the Snowstorm Pixies, which were essentially obliterated by large shards of stone shot out by yet another Defender, one-by-one with brutal efficiency.  The Frozen Drakes were a little hardier, however, and a few stones wouldn’t necessarily kill them; instead, yet another guard flung out what appeared to be a lengthy vine that wrapped around their necks until they were secure.  The next second, there was a tremendous yank on the vine, bringing the Drakes down to the snowpack with bone-crunching force.

One of them that landed had their back was broken so badly that it was practically bent in half the wrong way, while the other Drake’s neck was twisted in an unnatural way.  She had no doubt that if the bone-breaking fall hadn’t killed them, then they would be extremely hard-pressed to survive a broken neck or a broken back like that.

That left the Snowbeasts, Knights, Verrants, and Giants.  A quartet of close-range Defenders ran forward, armed with a variety of weapons.  One of them held a pair of short swords, and deftly sliced the Verrants into multiple pieces, though all the pieces were all technically staying together because of the frozen time.

A different guard went at the Snowbeasts with a large battleaxe, which quickly chopped off their legs and then cut them in half, though her monsters stayed upright for the moment.  A few other slices cut their two “mouthed” ends in half vertically, which was more than enough to kill them once time unfroze.

The Ice Knights met their end from the blunt force of the attack when a Defender wielding a long-handled warhammer smashed them to pieces, the strength behind the strikes enough to shatter even the strong ice from which the monsters were created.  The smashed remnants of the Knights didn’t move more than a few inches from where the hammer hit them, as if their ability to move was totally dependent upon the weapon striking them.  Tempara couldn’t help but notice that the same happened with the spells that had affected her monsters, as well; for example, when the vines that had pulled down the Drakes disappeared, the flying monsters were left in their awkwardly broken states.

Lastly, the pair of Ice Giants were taken down by a single Defender wielding a fancy-looking, silver-colored spear.  The guard ran toward the first Giant with astonishing speed, before they used an ability that created a puff of snow on the ground that then froze in a cloud when it was caught by the time effect. Regardless, the ability launched the running spear-wielder high into the air like some sort of super jump, and they were aiming unerringly for the Giant’s head.  The next moment, there was a spear straight through the Giant’s eye at an angle that penetrated to its brain, and Tempara had no doubt that it was dead instantly.

The Defender was still moving as this happened, and they contorted their body so that they landed feet-first off the Giant’s forehead with a grip still on the spear. It was then that the guard’s hood fell, revealing the features of a male Elf, who had a completely dispassionate look on his face.  Even as he kicked off of the Giant’s forehead and ripped out the spear in the process, his expression didn’t change in the slightest.  Tempara thought it odd, but Kiana’s memories of social interactions with people told her that it wasn’t just odd, but strange and creepy.  Almost like they were fanaticized to the point where nothing else mattered.

I guess they did act quite fanatical in their duties when I was stuck watching them for months on end.  I think they only broke from their normal silence and routines when it was too cold to even exist safely anymore.

Another quick run and super jump was all that was required to take down the second Ice Giant, and that was essentially it for her entire monster force.  One last Defender, an individual that she remembered used a lot of fire spells against the beasts during feeding frenzies, created a wide area-of-effect flame that he raised into the raining icicle spell that the Verrant had created, melting away the projectiles in a matter of seconds, and then sent out small balls of fire at the ice shard projectiles the Pixies had tossed out.

Tempara wasn’t sure how long it had all taken, but she estimated that it was less than a minute.  Shortly after the last of the monsters was dispatched, Tempara started to see the blue-ish haze start to disappear, until it faded completely.  At that point, time seemed to flow normally again as snowflakes continued their fall—

—and the powerful force of monsters she had sent against the Defenders fell apart – in some cases, literally.

The only thing left alive when time resumed normally was the Frozen Drake with the broken back, though it only flopped around with pained spasms rather than being an actual threat.  It was quickly smashed entirely as one of the Ice Giants, who was essentially fine one second and dead the next, toppled over and landed on top of the Drake, finishing the job that had been begun by the Defenders.

Silence fell over the snowfield, now filled with the corpses of dozens of monsters and stained red from the blood that had spilled during their demise.  A few seconds later, the light that had been shot into the air sputtered a few times and then disappeared, dropping the landscape into shadow again, lit only by the completely unharmed, glowing ritual sphere.

Chapter 34

Well, I guess that didn’t work.

Tempara wasn’t as disappointed as she probably should’ve been, considering that all of the time and resources she had put into the extremely unsuccessful attack had gone to waste.  She put it down to the fact that, when she honestly considered her chances from the start, she hadn’t been entirely confident of success; she knew that the Defenders weren’t exactly weak, though she had been hoping that she might kill 1 or 2 of them in her assault.  While it was a loss, she also considered the gain of knowledge a win of sorts; she hadn’t entirely known what kind of defenses the ritual sphere guards had at their disposal other than what she’d seen them use against natural beasts, but that had barely even been worthy of being called a fight when all things were considered.

Now she knew that they could use the sphere to freeze time in an area, at least temporarily.

Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any ill effects from her viewpoint being frozen in time, and Tempara was glad that she hadn’t been forcibly sent to restart – such as when the Chronomancer had cast a spell on her monsters when they were sent to attack.

Was that the spell he was casting?  Something to freeze time?  It makes sense that he would be able to do that as a Chronomancer, I suppose, but why did that send me back to the start and not this?

She didn’t have the answer to that question, but she felt like she was getting closer to solving the conundrum the more she experienced all of this time manipulation.

Looking around the battlefield near the ritual sphere, she spent the next few hours letting her Elemental Power accumulate while she waited to see what the guards would do.  For the moment, they left all of the monsters where they had fallen, and then stood back in the exact same positions from before the attack.  It was only when they had a “shift change” that all 10 of the Defenders went around to the corpses and touched them, putting them into their special bags, which – according to Kiana’s knowledge – were able to hold almost any type of dead dungeon monster inside of them, regardless of size, apparently.  This was shown as even the massive Ice Giants suddenly disappeared, leaving nothing but a bluish blood staining the snow.

After that, things seemed to return to normal – though Tempara wanted to change that.

Using her accumulating Elemental Power over the next 12 hours, she created 2 dozen Snowflake Pixies, sent them outside of her dungeon to wait, and then created 2 dozen Whiteout Panthers.  She wanted to experiment with this time-freezing effect the ritual sphere seemed to be able to enact, to see what its limits might be.  As soon as they were ready, she sent a dozen Panthers and a dozen Pixies toward the Defenders guarding the ritual sphere, with the Panthers burrowing through the snow and the Pixies up above.

By this time, the new day had already dawned, so her monsters weren’t going to approach under the cover of darkness, but that wasn’t necessarily a concern to her right now; instead, she needed to know how the Defenders would react to another attack.  As such, the alert guards spotted her Pixies much sooner than they had noticed the Ice Giants stomping before in the dark, even through the snow.  In addition, there was one Defender who seemed to sense the Panthers under the snow, even though they weren’t making much noise, nor creating any kind of visible trail.

I’m going to assume from now on that sneaking up on them isn’t going to work.

Again, none of the guards moved from their positions other than to briefly shift when they spotted her airborne forces, and to offer a quick warning about the Panthers under the snow.

“Incoming from below.”

A familiar nod was all that was conveyed afterward, and soon enough her Pixies and Panthers were in range to attack – and were subsequently frozen when one of the guards touched the ritual sphere.  The elimination of her forces took even less time than her first assault, which wasn’t surprising, but she did discover that the length of the frozen time was exactly the same as her first experience with it: Exactly 60 seconds.

No more than a minute after the time in the area was released, her second group of Pixies and Panthers were on their way.  This time, she staggered the attack so that the Pixies would attack first, leaving the Panthers under the snow and relatively out of reach.  Tempara wasn’t sure if that would make a difference, but she figured it couldn’t hurt to try.

What she ultimately learned from this second assault was that it made absolutely no difference.  Tempara had been hoping that there was some sort of delay before the Defenders could use the frozen time effect again, like it had to accumulate enough time energy to work.  Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case, as time was frozen as soon as the Pixies attacked, and then again as soon as the Panthers attacked – leaving both groups dead.

What was strange to Tempara was the fact that none of the faces of the guards showed any expression, as she had seen before on the spear-wielding Elf.  Nor did they seem concerned that they were being attacked in the first place, as if they were expecting it.

Over the next week, she spent her accumulating EP to raise her Core Level, as she wanted to try out her most dangerous monsters, in the hope that they would be too powerful for the Defenders to kill, even in the minute they could keep the creatures frozen in time.  When she hit Core Level 13, which had a maximum EP of 91,000, she created an Animated Avalanche for 80,000 EP – after expanding her Core Room so that it was approximately 3 times the size it was before.  The process to create the expensive monster took about 16 hours, as well, so it wasn’t something of which she could quickly produce one after another even if she had the EP.

The Avalanche was huge.  When she created it in her Core room, it nearly filled the 350-foot-wide space, with a depth of about 10 feet.  The 5-foot-wide core of ice was right in the middle of the massive monster, and it was protected by the hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of snow; thankfully, even though it was 300 feet wide and long, it was able to squeeze its form through the tunnels – it was basically just snow, after all.  When condensed like that, it moved rather slowly, but as soon as it was outside of her dungeon, it moved remarkably fast.

Flowing over the snow at approximately the speed of a running Winter Wolf, the Animated Avalanche ate up the distance between her dungeon and the ritual sphere in a little over a minute.  For the first time, the guards showed a tiny bit of emotion, as they took a step back at the sight of the wall of snow heading in their direction.  However, there was still a look and a nod between the Defenders, and they froze time as the Avalanche advanced within 50 feet of the sphere.

Every guard that had access to spells or elemental abilities immediately cast them upon the halted cascade of snow, with hurled stone boulders ripping large chunks out of its form, vines swiftly burrowed upwards into the snow before moving sideways to slice off portions of the snow wall, waves of flames turning the front part of the Avalanche to steam in an instant, and even the melee fighters attacked the wall while activating interesting effects.  The battleaxe-wielding Defender cut through the snow easily, as flames erupted along the weapon’s length; the spear-user stabbed into the snow wall and a portion of it burst apart when a furious gale erupted from its tip; the one with twin short swords spun around and around quickly, practically drilling into the monster as they tore into its “body”; and the guard wielding a warhammer seemed to add massive chunks of stone to its already-large hammer head, and then started slamming it into the wall of snow, ripping off sections at a time.

It was a devastating attack – and yet they had destroyed only about a fifth of the monster by the time the minute was up.  Tempara saw the Animated Avalanche begin moving for all of a second before one of the Defenders touched the sphere, freezing time yet again.

Wow, there really isn’t much of a delay, is there?

The second of movement wasn’t enough to do more than move a few inches, but none of the Defenders were close enough to have any damage done to them.  When the time froze again, they went back to work, chewing into the massive monster bit-by-bit, until it was able to move again – and then it was returned to its frozen state when the guard near the sphere touched it.  It was during that round of frozen time that the Defenders found the ice “core” of the Avalanche, and the warhammer-wielding guard smashed it into pieces.  As soon as they let time flow naturally again, what was left of the Avalanche essentially collapsed and fell apart.

Despite the lengthy battle, none of the Defenders appeared weary in the least.  She wondered if they were getting low on Mana, which might be something that she could take advantage of in the future, but then her former master’s memories recalled how much Mana Horad and his team had used during their fight through the dungeon – her dungeon – and thought it likely these individuals had similar, sizable pools of Mana.

If they could defeat an avalanche of snow, they could probably defeat just about anything.  But could they kill a White Dragon?

That was what she wanted to find out.

It took another week to accumulate enough EP to increase to Core Level 17, which had a maximum EP just barely able to hold the required amount to create a White Dragon.

Core Display

Core Name:

Tempara

Core Level:

17 (+16)

Designation:

Frozen Cohort

Level Threshold:

153,000 EP (+152,000)

Elemental Power (EP):

151,125 EP

Accumulation Rate (AR):

74.375 EP/minute (+70)

Defensible Rooms:

1

Available Monsters:

38

Monster Threshold:

162 (+152)

Available Traps:

18

With a Monster Threshold of 162, she needed to create a lot more Cold Slimes to fulfill the requirement, but when she was basically accumulating enough every minute to create three of them, it wasn’t that big of a deal. When she was ready to create the White Dragon, she fed all 150,000 of the required EP into the process… and then she waited… and waited.  Over 30 hours later, the White Dragon finally appeared in her Core room, and she had to admit that it was a magnificent monster, if she did say so herself.

Suddenly, her previously silent assistant spoke into her mind with her annoying monotone, startling Tempara a little from the abruptness.

* Congratulations on creating the pinnacle of dungeon monsters available to the Frozen Cohort!  Since you have already unlocked access to every other dungeon monster available, you may start overcharging Elemental Power into your creations, which can produce different effects. *

What?  That’s new.

She supposed that she hadn’t actually created a White Dragon as of yet, mainly because when she was trying to survive long enough to protect her pack, Tempara never had the opportunity to reach Core Level 17 in the time allotted.

I wonder what I can create.

* There are no fixed effects recorded, so I have no wisdom to share regarding what you can create. *

That last comment was made with Kiana’s tone again, thankfully, but the Dungeon Core was disappointed not to have any more information.  She figured that although it was possible to reach the stage she was at, with the complete unlocking of every single monster, it was likely that no Dungeon Cores had ever stuck around long enough to reach that point.

Tempara wanted to play around with what she might be able to create, but first she had a Dragon to play with.  Or more specifically, a White Dragon to send out and see what it could do against the Defenders guarding the ritual sphere.

As she watched the massive, 150-foot-long, pure-white Dragon walk out of her Core room, she couldn’t help but marvel at how sleek and dangerous it appeared.  The scales that covered its outer body seemed to shimmer in the ambient light of her dungeon, and she knew that they were one of the strongest materials to be found in the Frozen Reaches.  Not even the metal of the Defender’s weapons could pierce through the tough scales, except for a very small spot on its belly, which was approximately the size of one of the guard’s fists.  Even though she knew where it was based on the information she gained by focusing on the White Dragon’s name in her monster list, actually identifying its location was almost impossible.

The Dragon’s claws tapped against the floor of the tunnel as it departed, leaving small gouges in the hard stone as if on accident.  She could see that they were made of identically strong material as the scales, but they were lengthened by about 2 feet and were extremely sharp – enough to carve through stone with ease, obviously.

It took only a few minutes for her expensive monster to depart her dungeon’s entrance and take to the air, its wings creating large whirlwinds as it lifted vertically into the air.  Soon enough, the Dragon was quickly gliding toward the location of the ritual sphere, eating up the distance with great strokes of its wingbeats.  It was moving so fast that the Defenders were nearly caught off-guard, because the Dragon lifted thousands of feet into the air and then dived at a tremendous speed, cutting through the falling snow as if it wasn’t even there.

When it was approximately 300 feet above, the Dragon started to even out its dive and level off, while at the same time it opened its mouth and released a blue-white breath beam of supercooled mist and ice, aiming straight for the guards down below.  The breath beam started narrow, perhaps a foot wide, but it quickly expanded in size, to the point where it would cover nearly the entire group of guards waiting unsuspectingly down below.

It was at this point that the guards finally recognized the danger, as the beam shot down at them, and one of the Defenders was able to get a hand on the sphere to freeze time in the area.  The breath attack stopped only 30 feet or so above the ritual sphere and its guards, and the 5 Defenders below looked up at both the beam and the Dragon behind it and flinched back with horror in their faces – showing that there was still some emotion in them, despite their fanatical attitudes.

The Defenders attempted to disperse the breath beam using their spells, but it was so powerful that not even a steady stream of fire and flames could make it go away.  When that failed, the guard who liked to throw out rocks attempted to create a large, floating shield made of stone that covered most of the Defenders and the sphere. But when time flowed normally again, the beam busted through the rock barrier as if it wasn’t even there – the beam was too powerful.

Though they tried a few other things, nothing impacted the White Dragon’s breath beam until the one Tempara was mentally calling the lightbringer tossed up a shield of intensely glowing light in the beam’s path.  When time was reinstated, the shield didn’t stop or disperse the breath beam, but instead reflected it off to the east, where it would churn up the snow and nearby mountain ranges when it finally got there.  The effort of reflecting such an attack appeared to tire out the lightbringer, as she fell to her knees shortly thereafter; but with the main danger to them being avoided, the others took up the slack and focused on the Dragon itself.

As her monster was airborne and nearly 150 feet above the group of Defenders, it was difficult for the guards to reach it – but they did their best, anyway.  Slivers of stone were flung up at it, which only served to *ping* off of the Dragon’s scales harmlessly; fireballs tossed from ground level got near the flying monster and quickly disappeared as the aura of cold around the Dragon reduced their effectiveness to nearly nothing; and vines attempted to wrap around the airborne lizard and missed entirely, as it was still too high for them to reach.  The Elven Defender wielding the spear did his super-jump and was able to barely reach the Dragon, but his spear bounced off of the scales just like everything else had, and he was forced to fall back to the ground when the cold aura of the monster forced him to retreat.

It was only when the earth-focused spellcaster formed a boulder to toss at the Dragon that they finally discovered a way to reach the monster.  When the boulder was ready to toss, the Defender who was carrying the warhammer jumped on top of it, riding it into the air when the large stone was released.  Just before the guard was going to slam right into the white-scaled lizard, they jumped off and above the Dragon, before enlarging their weapon with stone around the head.  When the Defender plummeted, they slammed their warhammer into the back of the Dragon, which made Tempara’s monster descend about 30 feet from the force of the hit before stopping as it was frozen in time again.

After that, it was just a matter of repeating the action a few more times, and the Dragon was on the ground.  At that point, they took all the time they needed to throw everything they could at it; even the durable defense of the scales slowly cracked, and they didn’t even need to find and assault the weakness in its belly to kill it – just time, and the fact that the Dragon couldn’t fight back.

Powerful, certainly; invincible, sadly not.

Seeing her investment of 150,000 EP wiped out so easily, Tempara thought about some other ideas that might work.  Obviously, sending her most powerful monsters against the ritual sphere guards was effective, but futile; the ability for them to freeze time and eliminate her monsters was too powerful.  Sending a lot of powerful monsters all at once was technically possible, of course, but would require days or weeks of simply creating them, since the higher the cost, the longer they took to create.  Even then, nothing about that idea gave her any confidence that it would work, as the Defenders had shown that they essentially had all of the time in the world to kill her monsters.

Perhaps it’s not quality but quantity that would make a difference?

Tempara thought about creating a massive horde of Wolves or even letting a handful of Snowbank Warrens propagate for a week or two, producing thousands of Hares, but she didn’t think it would really matter.  Basically it came down to the fact that if her monsters couldn’t move due to being frozen in time, then they were essentially useless, regardless of there being ten or a million of them.

Now, hundreds of White Dragons might make a difference, but even if I was able to accumulate that much EP, it would be impossible to create them before the world is destroyed.

Tempara felt as though the longer she waited to reach the ritual sphere, the worse off her aunt and uncles would be, not to mention the environment of the Frozen Reaches.  Thoughts of simply waiting until the cold became too much for the guards to stay outside in a few months went through her mind, but some instinctual part of her said that would be a mistake.  Almost as if she waited much past the first month, the pack members trapped in the sphere would be… permanently irretrievable?  She wasn’t quite sure why she felt that way, but she wasn’t going to ignore that instinct when it came to her pack.

So, how in the world do I get to them when the Defenders are guarding them?

It wasn’t until the next day when there was a feeding frenzy that she suddenly had the inklings of an idea.  A small pack of wolves attacked the Defenders guarding the ritual sphere, like they frequently did, and Tempara realized something.  Despite the danger to what they were protecting, the guards did not activate the time freezing effect – nor had they any of the times she had seen them protecting the ritual sphere from natural beasts.  In fact, as she watched in curiosity, the Dungeon Core actually saw some of the Defenders leave from their duty protecting the sphere and chase after some particularly stubborn wolves that wouldn’t leave them alone.  They only had to move away 300 to 400 feet, but she could see the annoyance in the way they ran the beasts down, as well as in their walk back to their accustomed positions guarding the sphere.

Hmm….  Why are they not using it against the beasts?  Does the time-freezing effect simply not work?

Tempara waited another week to see if this was true, as she amassed a large army of Winter Wolves and Snow Hares outside of her dungeon.  When the next feeding frenzy began, she started to move her forces across the fields of incredibly rapidly growing plants and various beasts; they stopped multiple times to kill whatever beasts they came across, but they arrived at the site of the ritual sphere approximately halfway through the frenzy.

Then they attacked.

At first, the Defenders were visibly confused at why there were so many beasts attacking them, but they weren’t fooled for long.  A touch of the ritual sphere was all it took to freeze her monsters in place…

…while the rest of the natural beasts still participating in the frenzy were completely unaffected.

I guess that proves that the natural beasts are immune for some reason.  Is it because the sphere is only attuned to dungeons and their Cores?

* That is unknown, but quite likely.  However, if you would like to learn about constructing your dungeon, I can help provide— *

No, I don’t want to construct my dungeon… hold on.  That gives me an idea.

It might not be the smartest idea, but it was worth a chance at least.  Since a lot of time had already passed with no positive results, Tempara decided she needed to start over.  This time, though, she was going to try something a little different.

Chapter 35

I think that will do it, don’t you?

* This is certainly a very thorough defense, though it remains to be seen whether it will be effective. *

Tempara ignored her assistant for the most part, as she was particularly proud of what she had accomplished over the last 25 days.  She used all of her experience trying to survive relentless assaults by countless dungeon monsters, as well as multiple invasions by Defenders, to construct a dungeon that would hopefully kill even the powerful guards out by the ritual sphere.

That all depended on whether she could manage to get them to come to her dungeon in the first place.

Tempara had gone back to her dungeon after making her decision to start over, and then activated her Temporal Displacement skill inside of her Core, which was a strange experience.  When she activated it, she felt her soul essentially scooped out of her Dungeon Core near-instantly; thankfully, it wasn’t painful or uncomfortable, just disorienting.  Her soul was detached for no more than a few seconds before everything went dark and her Temporal Reversion auto-skill activated, sending her back to select another starting location.

This time, instead of selecting the same location or even near the same location as before, she moved her selection to be very near her pack’s den and located in the same small mountain range.  It was only approximately 500 feet away from the ritual sphere, in fact, though it was far enough away that the guards wouldn’t be able to see more than perhaps a tiny glimpse of her entrance through the falling snow – or so she hoped. It was also, if her rough calculations were correct, just outside of the range of the time freeze, so that wouldn’t affect her dungeon.

After that, Tempara spent the first 14 days of her new incarnation simply accumulating Elemental Power and applying it toward her Core Levels, which brought her up to Core Level 17 – just where she had been previously before she disconnected her soul from her Dungeon Core and restarted at her newest temporal displacement point.  Theoretically, she could’ve kept going and continued to increase her Core Level, but she had a lot to do and didn’t want to spend more time simply waiting.

Tempara hadn’t even used any of the Elemental Power to experiment with her new ability to overcharge her monster creations with additional EP during that time, as much as she had wanted to.  Instead, she spoke with her assistant and used that time to explain everything that was going on to the woman, and to receive any potential advice that her former master might have regarding her plans.  Kiana’s personality emerged more and more as they discussed ideas, which was welcome to hear, because it made her advice more comprehensive and flexible, which was certainly the opposite of the annoying, monotone voice with which her assistant normally spoke.  The Dungeon Core thought that it was a shame her assistant didn’t remember anything of their previous conversations; while it helped to pass the time, explaining everything to the woman over and over again was getting a little old.

Once she achieved Core Level 17, with an Accumulation Rate of just under 75 EP per minute, she spent 4 hours accumulating enough EP to pay for 15 Snowbank Warrens at 1,000 EP each, and then stashed them in her Core Room to start increasing in size every 4 hours while she went to work on constructing her dungeon.

Whereas, in the past, she had started near her Core room and built toward the entrance, the first 2 rooms she constructed in this incarnation started only 10 feet from her entrance, and she made them appear very basic and akin to what she had created for Horad and his team to delve through with Kiana. Based on her experience with Defenders entering her dungeon, there were multiple times when the groups hesitated to continue further because they expected it to be too difficult based on the unique quality of the rooms they encountered. With the first 2 rooms theoretically appearing “normal”, she was hoping to extend a false sense of security for anyone who entered.

It was then that they would be too invested to turn back.  She was hoping to rile the guards up enough to lure them inside with the intention of destroying her Core, and when they saw that it would be quite easy, they would keep going.  That was the idea, anyway, and she was sincerely hoping that it would work.

In the first room, a collection of 6 Cold Slimes were waiting for anyone to come inside, though they weren’t just simple Slimes.  Instead, she had used her ability to overcharge them with EP to see what would happen – and discovered in the process that there was such a thing as too much Elemental Power.

The first attempt at overcharging her Cold Slime was a unique experience.  She found that there was a slight hesitation from the moment she started to create the Cold Slime and the moment it started to form, and she intuitively used that in-between moment to feed some more Elemental Power into the monster.  Unfortunately, she was a little overzealous and threw more than it could handle, which was exactly 1 more than its original cost; as the 26 units of Elemental Power streamed into the Slime, it exploded spectacularly, sending bits of slimy goo all over her Core room.  Thankfully, none of it landed on her Core, and she was able to clean it up shortly thereafter; sadly, for some reason, none of the EP she had invested in the Slime was returned to her, including its original cost.

After that, she proceeded with the process a little more slowly.  Tempara found that after the first 13 EP she funneled into the Cold Slime, there was an inaudible *click* in her mind.  She could only assume that this was meant to indicate that something had changed, and she stopped shoving EP into the monster.  When it completed its creation a few seconds later, she looked closer at it, and was happy to see that it had, indeed, been altered.

Monster Details

Cold Slime (Speed Enhanced)

25 (+13) EP

She wasn’t positive what “speed enhanced” meant until she had it move around her Core room and found that it was easily twice as fast in its movement as it was before – which was still relatively slow compared to many of her other monsters, but it was definitely a significant improvement.  For approximately half the EP of another Cold Slime, she could enhance a single Slime to greatly improve its fighting ability – which was amazing in and of itself.

Taking the process further, she created another Cold Slime and slowly funneled EP into it until it inaudibly *clicked* again in her mind, which turned out to be right at 25; she figured she must have blown through the two *clicks* when she had first started, which made sense because she hadn’t been sure of what she was doing.

Monster Details

Cold Slime (Speed and Size Enhanced)

25 (+25) EP

The Cold Slime with an extra 25 EP was about half-again as large as the original, though not quite as large as a Glacial Ooze.  What the “speed and size enhanced” Slime had going for it, though, was that it was faster than the Ooze, though it didn’t have the slimy appendages of the latter.  It was definitely something to consider when creating Slimes and Oozes for 50 EP; one was faster, while the other had little appendages that it could whip around to reach out and touch an enemy from a slightly farther distance away.

Later, Tempara would get rid of her smaller, speed-enhanced Slime and have 6 of the speed-and-size-enhanced versions of Slimes in her first room, but she had to wait until she had more monsters in her dungeon.  With a Monster Threshold of 162, she had quite a ways to go before that was possible.

The next room was going to be full of Snow Hares, but not just any Snow Hares – enhanced Snow Hares.  With a little experimentation with the process of overcharging the Hares, Tempara found that the results were very similar to the Cold Slime; namely, that at 25 and 50 extra EP (half-again and double the original cost), there were enhancements for the Snow Hare.

Monster Details

Snow Hare (Attack Enhanced)

50 (+25) EP

Monster Details

Snow Hare (Attack and Size Enhanced)

50 (+50) EP

While doubling the Snow Hare’s original EP cost produced a larger Snow Hare, nearly the same size as the Snowdrift Hare, it also acquired the “attack enhanced” quality of the lesser enhancement.  Basically, when she looked to see how it had its attack “enhanced”, the Dungeon Core noticed that the new Hare’s legs were larger than normal, and its front teeth were just slightly longer.  It wasn’t a huge improvement, but being able to kick and bite harder was beneficial.  Needless to say, she included the double-enhanced Snow Hares for the second room in her dungeon, where they hopped around aimlessly in a plain, circular space that was the epitome of “normal”.

She was also going to place a single, basic Pit Trap just inside of the room, which would be easy enough to spot, and a Frigid Blast trap in the short tunnel connecting the first and second rooms – nothing especially deadly to worry any incoming Defenders. While the enhancements in the monsters might be a tip-off that there was something different, she doubted that anyone but herself would notice.

After the second room was when she started to really alter the “normal” layout of a dungeon, using many of the things she had learned over years of protecting her Core against monsters and other Defender scouting groups.  In short: Ice, traps, and monsters.

With an extra 50% over her Monster Threshold allowed in her dungeon at Core Level 17, the number of monsters she could create and hold in her dungeon equaled 243 – a mind-boggling amount, but she wasn’t planning on using quite that many.  It wasn’t that she couldn’t, but she needed a little extra wiggle-room to store a number of monsters that she could send out to harass the nearby Defenders.

Over the next 11 days, construction of her dungeon expanded at a furious pace, as she utilized her accumulating Elemental Power to create a series of 10 rooms after the first pair, each one slightly more dangerous than the last.  She didn’t want to scare the guards right away so that they would turn around and leave, of course, so she expected the first few rooms wouldn’t be much of a challenge to them, but everything after that would certainly test their survival skills.

And I can’t wait to see how well it works.

Now it was time to see if she could coax the guards into her dungeon in the first place, which was probably going to be easier said than done. Near the entrance of her dungeon, inside of the enhanced Cold Slimes’ and Snow Hares’ rooms, Tempara had filled them with a little over 40 Winter Wolves, Snow Hares, and Cold Slimes – all of which were unenhanced.  She wanted them to be as basic as possible, though – of course – at one point she did end up seeing what overcharging the Wolves with Elemental Power would bring. In a combination of what was enhanced with the Slime and Hare, the enhanced version of the Wolves increased their speed and then speed and attack via stronger legs and jaws—but it provided no actual size increase.  She didn’t need to spend that much on any of these monsters, however, because they were essentially sacrificial, anyway.

* Are you sure this is the method you want to employ?  They are unlikely to even get close to the Defenders to hurt them. *

I know.  That’s precisely the plan, remember?

* I do remember, but it seems like a waste of your resources, nonetheless. *

It definitely is, but there’s no helping it.  I need to annoy them as much as possible, and this seems like the perfect way to do that.

With that last thought tossed out toward her assistant, she knew it was time for her to begin – and to see if her hard work was going to pay off.

She sent a Cold Slime outside of her dungeon and immediately created another one to replace it once it was past the entrance.  Once it was created, she ordered it to move toward the first 2 rooms near the entrance, to wait for its turn to leave.

With the Slime on its way, she waited about a minute and then sent out a Snow Hare – which was immediately followed by the creation of another Snow Hare in her Core room.  Another minute and a half passed, and she sent out a Winter Wolf, following the trails of the others she had sent, and then created another one in her Core room. No more than 30 seconds later, she sent out another Cold Slime – and the process repeated itself all over again.

Taking a quick peek outside of her dungeon, Tempara saw the Snow Hare had quickly run by the slow Cold Slime, which was rolling its way toward the ritual sphere, and ate up the 500-foot distance within seconds.  It didn’t take long for the guards to notice the racing Snow Hare, and one of them moved to intercept it; right away, she saw it was the Defender dual-wielding short swords.  The guard stepped quickly to match the trajectory of the racing Snow Hare and then with an almost negligent flick of his wrists, the two swords crossed with the Hare’s neck in between them, decapitating the monster and killing it instantly.

She was half-surprised that they hadn’t turned on the time-freezing effect from the sphere, but she realized that they didn’t really see the Hare as a threat worthy of such a powerful effect.

Nor did they think the Winter Wolf that had passed her Cold Slime on the way to the sphere needed to be frozen, either, as the guard wielding a battleaxe glided forward to face it.  A few seconds later, and Tempara’s Wolf monster was cut in half, unable to get close enough to bite anyone.

The Dungeon Core had dipped back into her dungeon at one point and sent out another Snow Hare before creating another one, and then went back to watch what was happening outside.  That Snow Hare passed both Cold Slimes on its way to the guards, though the first of the Slimes was starting to get close; regardless, it reached the Defenders first and was summarily shot with a simple dart of fire, burning up completely before it could close within 50 feet of the ritual sphere.

I guess they are taking turns.  This might take a little longer than I thought.

She had time, however, because her attacks were only beginning.

The first Slime she sent out was ripped apart by a vine that speared it from below, and the Winter Wolf that appeared next out of the falling snow slammed up against a barrier of light that appeared out of nowhere while running at full speed; its neck was broken upon impact, and her monster was killed instantly.

But none of that mattered to Tempara, because they weren’t meant to succeed, or even get close to the sphere – though she wouldn’t be mad if that were to happen.  Instead, they were simply attacking in order to annoy the guards with constant, relentless attacks, one after another after another.

Let’s see how they handle being attacked over and over again by monsters with no end in sight.

It was a bit of petty revenge for causing Tempara to be in her current state in the first place, but it also served a purpose.  The difference between a Dungeon Core and these Defenders, all of whom were currently surrounding the ritual sphere (after the other shift emerged from the den upon the start of the attacks), was that they were people.

And people get tired from constant fighting, or from disturbances in their sleep schedule.  Kiana’s memories tell me that much, at least.

Granted, these were powerful Defenders and had already shown that they could stand at attention for hours on end without their endurance flagging, but they also weren’t constantly being attacked by one monster and then another and another.

Tempara, on the other hand, didn’t get tired; she might become bored, but she didn’t need to rest or sleep. If she had to, with the way she was spacing out the departures and balancing her AR with the cost of the new monsters she was creating to replace those that died, she could keep this constant stream of attacks going until the end of the world.

* It won’t take anywhere near that long.  They’ll eventually crack under the constant assaults. *

I sure hope so, Kiana.  That’s the goal, at least.

It wasn’t going to happen quickly, but as Tempara looked at the already-annoyed expressions on the faces of the guards she could see underneath their thick hoods, she was confident that it would happen.

Chapter 36

It took almost 102 full hours before the angry murmurs that had been steadily building among all of the Defenders finally reached a breaking point.  Tempara had watched them consistently kill one monster after another, even going so far as to let their bodies start to pile up after hours and hours of constant monster death, before the stirrings of rebellion made themselves known.

After the first hour, the extra shift had gone back to the den in the hopes of getting rest for their upcoming shift, but apparently the knowledge that the ritual sphere was under unending attack was enough to keep most of them awake and on edge.  As a result, when they finally took over for the original group, there were complicated expressions on their faces that seemed to mix annoyance with anger, along with a tiny bit of exhaustion.  It didn’t help that they needed to go clean up the absolute mess the original group of guards had made of the environment with hundreds of dead bodies everywhere, which were not cleaned up because – apparently – the original guards couldn’t move from their positions for such a task unless the area was clear of threats.

It only got worse from there, as the guards who had been fighting appeared ready to get their own rest.  Even though their efforts to kill the weak monsters were relatively small, the constant battles took a toll on even their fanatic Defender psyches.  They were more than willing to stop any major threats that attacked the ritual sphere, but they obviously weren’t prepared for what Tempara had thrown at them.

Of course, getting restful sleep was difficult when they could hear the periodic exertions of their fellow guards as they continued to kill the never-ending stream of monsters that the Dungeon Core continued to send out.  At that point, it was almost an automatic process to Tempara, and she barely had to think about it after 6 or 7 hours of sending a monster out to attack, creating another one, and then ordering that one to move up to the first 2 rooms.

But for the Defenders, even the regularity of the attacks spread out in a predictable pattern wasn’t exactly the most comfortable routine for them.  The pressure of their emotions slowly boiled up to the surface over the next few days, as the expressionless faces of the Defenders started to disappear.  Angry mutterings could be heard from all of them at one point or another, and they were all focused on Tempara’s monsters – not each other.

That would’ve made it interesting if they fought with each other, but I’ll take what I can get.

When it finally boiled over into full-on rebellion against their duties, it nearly took her by surprise.  While she had been aware of their growing anger and annoyance, she had been unable to tell how far it had gone until yet another shift change of the guards occurred, and the lack of quality sleep among those just getting off their rest break left them feeling like they were being pushed too far.

“No!  I refuse to let this go on any longer!  I’m going to destroy that dungeon, even if I have to rip its Core apart with my bare hands!”

The mutiny seemed to originate from the large Human man who wielded the warhammer, who had thrown his hood back before he started speaking.

“But we cannot leave—” said the lightbringer, who was the calmest of them all, but she was cut off by 7 separate voices.  Best of all, they were agreeing with the warhammer man.

“Let’s end this!”

“I can’t take it anymore!”

“We’re going, and we’ll be right back when this dungeon is taken care of!”

A full 8 of the Defenders were fed up with the situation, and even as the man wielding the warhammer smashed another Snow Hare that Tempara had sent out, those who were with him started to follow its path back to its origin point.  It wasn’t as if it was difficult for them to track where the monsters were coming from, because there was a beaten pathway that had been trampled by the paws of Hare and Wolves, as well as smoothed out by the passage of hundreds of Cool Slimes.  It was an invitation to invade her dungeon that couldn’t have been made much clearer even if she had deliberately created it that way.

Only 2 guards stayed back at the ritual sphere – the lightbringer and the one who wielded dual short swords, and even the latter appeared ready to join the rest – but held back through what was likely a sense of duty.  Tempara didn’t care, however, because she had something else to worry about: 8 angry Defenders who were soon to be entering her dungeon.

* I think your plan to annoy them worked a little too well. *

You’re right, but I believe my dungeon can still handle them.

The Dungeon Core had been expecting only 5 of them to delve inside of her dungeon, as that seemed the most likely; with an additional 3 guards, however, she wasn’t entirely confident that her protections would be enough.  There was only one real way to find out, however, and that was to see how they held up.

As soon as she found that they were moving toward her dungeon, Tempara sent out one additional Snow Hare to join those still outside moving toward the sphere, and then pulled the rest back.  Her Slimes were the slowest, of course, but even so, they were already moving down the tunnel between the second and third rooms by the time the first of the Defenders walked into her entrance. She immediately felt her ability to change things within her dungeon stymied, but she was accustomed to the feeling by now.

Still angrily muttering, the Human holding the warhammer stormed into the first room – jumping over the obvious Pit Trap on the floor – and started swinging at the Cold Slimes with abandon, absolutely obliterating them without pause.  The Defender didn’t come away entirely without harm, as Tempara could see that the weapon was covered in frost due to contact with the Slimes, which meant it was probably chilling his gloved hands.  It was a small consolation for the complete annihilation of her first room, but she’d take whatever she could get at that point.

The others barely slowed as the man with the warhammer destroyed her Slimes, and they led the way into the next room. The two other melee Classes of this group, which included the Elf wielding a spear and – now that they had pulled down their hoods, so Tempara could see who they were – the remarkably tall, female Dwarf wielding a battleaxe, advanced up front of the others and ended up triggering the Frigid Blast trap in the connecting tunnel – and shrugged it off as if it was simply a cool breeze.  When they entered the larger space awaiting them past the tunnel, they tore into the half-dozen enhanced Snow Hares waiting for them without hesitation.

“Ha!  This should be easy; we’ll be in and out in a few minutes,” the Dwarf said after the Hares were easily dispatched.

That’s what you think; but there are some surprises waiting for you.

A dozen of her Cold Slimes, which had been waiting in the first few rooms for their turn to go outside, were caught still trying to flee further into the dungeon inside of the tunnel connecting the second and third rooms.  They were practically obliterated by a wave of flames from one of the two fire-based Classes that had accompanied the angry group of Defenders, and the presence of the Slimes barely even slowed them down.  Neither did the fact that the tunnel curved off to their left instead of continuing in a straight line.

It was only the sight of the third room that gave them a very slight pause, but their enraged fervor was so advanced that they didn’t bother to think about what they were walking into.  A pair of spellcasters, namely the one who liked to fling around stones and the one who attacked by growing plants and vines, were out front, and they immediately fell on their backsides when they walked into the rectangular-shaped, 10-foot-wide and 50-foot-long room that had ice covering the entire floor. As they fell, they slid a little bit forward in the process, which meant that they both triggered the Pit Trap located about 5 feet inside the entrance.

Of course, they weren’t going to allow something as simple as a hole in the floor to hurt them, as the earth-based spellcaster quickly created a horizontal, stone wall beneath them as they slipped inside, and they landed only a little roughly as they dropped a few feet down the pit.  They were easily able to stand up and hop out with no real injuries, but they were quickly set upon by the room’s denizens.

A half-dozen attack-and-speed-enhanced Winter Wolves were located just past the trap and set upon the recovering spellcasters, but they were intercepted by the Elven spear-wielder and the leader of this angry bunch, the Human swinging around a warhammer.  The two had caught up with the rest of the group after they had dispatched their targets in the previous rooms, and they immediately got to work killing the wolves, though the one wielding the large warhammer had a bit of difficulty moving fast enough to catch the speedy Wolves.  A spear quickly intercepted them when they attempted to run circles around the furious man, as the Elf was much quicker and had taken out his share swiftly.

That wasn’t exactly the only danger in the room, however, as they soon found out.

Advancing as a full group once the Wolves were dead, the 8 Defenders slowly made their way across the slippery ice, and for the first time, Tempara realized that they didn’t have any type of scout with them to detect traps.  From what she could tell, both the guard wielding short swords and the lightbringer back at the Ritual Sphere probably had some sort of skills in that area, but neither of them had accompanied this overconfident group.

That’s a bit of an oversight on their part.

The Dwarf holding her battleaxe led the way, as she was relatively steady on her shorter legs; it was she that ended up triggering the Chilled Feet trap that extended backward from her position, catching half of those following behind, trapping all 4 of them in place as ice crawled up their legs.  As they attempted to free themselves, which was accomplished through sheer strength and the application of fiery spells, 6 enhanced Glacial Oozes dropped from holes in the ceiling and landed on or near the trapped Defenders.

One of the fire-based spellcasters had one of the Oozes land on his head, completely covering him to the shoulders, and only a quick cast of some sort of self-immolating spell was able to save him from death. The flames sprouted from all over his body, ignoring his clothing, but it was more than enough to burn up the Ooze on his head.  Even when it was dead, the Defender’s facial skin was nearly blue from cold, though he quickly warmed up from the residual heat of his spell.

As for the others, the enhanced quality of the upgraded Slime monster – which was similar to the original in terms of an enhanced speed and size – meant that they had to scramble to fight them off, while having their feet still frozen to the floor.  The Dwarf in front got lucky that she was far enough forward from the rest that she wasn’t enveloped by an Ooze, and was able to quickly slash apart the Ooze that fell next to her.

The Elven spear wielder was next in line, and though one of the Oozes nearly fell on his shoulder as it fell to the ground, the Defender was able to sway out of the way of the danger.  It took him a few attempts to kill the pair of attacking Oozes near him, however, as they were too close to make effective use of his long spear.

The plant-based spellcaster, who Tempara noticed was a female Elf, was also caught in the trap, but she was able defend herself from the Oozes by growing vines from below, sending them into the monsters to grab their internal cores, and then squeezing them until they ruptured.  The extremely cold goo of the Oozes killed her vines in the process, but it seemed as though it was worth the expense of Mana.

As Tempara had thought, the third room wasn’t too much of a challenge, though some of them were hurt – if temporarily.  One thing they had going for the angry guards was that the final member of the group they had brought along was a healer of some sort, but she hadn’t seen the Human male cast much before this.  He seemed to soothe the chill brought on by the proximity of the Glacial Oozes and the Chilled Feet trap, however, through the use of a few spells, and the angry mob continued on their way without any sign of ongoing damage.

The tunnel to the next room led to the right and then opened up to a narrow yet lengthy room that went up at a fairly steep angle, though unlike her normal “Slide room”, there was no ice covering the floor.  Similar to her Slide room, however, there were a half-dozen Snowballs that rolled down the sharp decline from the top of the room.  They weren’t just normal Snowballs, however, but fully enhanced Armed Snowballs.

Monster Details

Armed Snowball (Size Enhanced)

200 (+100) EP

Monster Details

Armed Snowball (Size and Defense Enhanced)

200 (+200) EP

Not only were these snowballs much bigger, but they were able to almost entirely fill the 8-foot-wide and tall space of the room.  As they rolled down toward the group halfway up their 50-foot climb, they were much louder than normal, because their defense was also enhanced with streaks of ice running through the condensed snow, making them heavier and more resistant to attacks.

The warhammer-wielding Defender was in the lead this time, and he was more than prepared for the first Armed Snowball to reach him.  With a tremendous swing of his weapon, he practically shattered the first monster that rolled near him, sending chunks of icy snow careening around him and pelting those behind him with debris.  What he failed to consider was that the next sphere of heavy snow and ice was right behind the first, and he therefore was unable to recover from his previous attack.  Just as it was about to hit him as he attempted to realign himself for another attack, a massive fireball from behind slipped past his left side, scorching his furs in the process, and impacted the monster with an explosion of flames.

“Whoa!  You almost hit me—”

The angry guard with the warhammer wasn’t able to finish his accusation, because the Snowball that was hit had been half-melted from the flames in a second, but the rest of it was largely intact.  The lead Defender was clipped on his side as he struggled to recover his stance, and he was knocked into the side wall nearby, nearly falling in the process.  The others behind him luckily saw the danger, and a battleaxe quickly intercepted the half-melted sphere as it attempted to knock everyone down.  The strike was powerful enough to nearly shatter the Armed Snowball, even as an arm attached to the monster attempted to grab onto the Dwarf.

But that wasn’t it for the Snowballs, as there were still 4 more.  Luckily for the guards, the earth-loving spellcaster thought quickly and flung up a stone wall in front of the warhammer man in defense, and while it cracked and nearly crumbled apart when the next and subsequent monsters slammed into it, it managed to stop their downward progress – for a moment.  Within a second of the first one being stopped by the wall, the snowball was using its arms to start shattering the barrier, but the stoppage of their momentum was all the group needed to recover.

As the wall was brought down by repeated pounding by Snowball arms and their fists, a flurry of flame wave spells whooshed up the slanted room, quickly melting the monsters in the process.  Soon enough, a torrent of water flowed down to the bottom, which quickly cooled and started to freeze into ice once again.

There weren’t any more obstacles for the Defenders to navigate through after that, though the snow, ice, and water all over the inclined room was slippery enough in places that a few of the guards nearly slipped and fell.  Nonetheless, they managed to make it to the top without any other mishaps.

But their dungeon invasion experience was just beginning.

Chapter 37

The next room the Defenders encountered wasn’t much more challenging, but for the first time, the Fox-turned-Dungeon Core started to see a bit of confusion and hesitation in a few of the guards when they saw something else they weren’t expecting.  It wasn’t necessarily that they had never seen the types of monsters they were seeing, but the environment and format of the dungeon that was giving them a slight pause.

Thankfully, they are too incensed to think clearly right now.

The fifth room they encountered was large, at least 200 feet in width and length, and it was filled with massive piles of loose snow that nearly reached the 30-foot ceiling above.  The 20-foot-thick piles were scattered around in seemingly no particular order, but they ultimately required anyone moving through the room to pass by more than half of them as they navigated toward the exit.  It wasn’t a maze by any stretch of the imagination, as it was more of a series of obstacles that needed to be navigated around.

Inside of those snow piles were a dozen enhanced Whiteout Panthers and Arctic Tigers in total, just waiting for a victim to pass by so that they could ambush them.

Monster Details

Whiteout Panther (Speed and Ambush Attack Enhanced)

350 (+350) EP

Monster Details

Arctic Tiger (Speed and Ambush Attack Enhanced)

700 (+700) EP

Some of the more costly monsters in her dungeon became quite expensive in terms of EP when they were enhanced, but in these cases, it was worth it.  Not only could both the Whiteout Panther and Arctic Tiger move even faster through the snow, but their ambushing attacks were deadlier on a whole new level.

The Defender group experienced this almost immediately after entering, as one of the nearest piles of snow erupted in an abrupt flurry of blinding snow 5 feet wide toward the plant-loving guard in the middle of the pack of attackers.  The flurry of snow that suddenly shot out from the pile was so thick that no one could see what was inside of it, and the targeted spellcaster was suddenly knocked over by the Whiteout Panther that accompanied it.  As the flurry dispersed, Tempara could see that her monster was savagely clawing at the downed defender, tearing at the Elven woman’s furs powerfully enough that it was causing her to scream in pain.

The others were quick to react, however, and the Panther wasn’t able to do more than superficial damage to the Elf before it was smashed by a warhammer coated in a thick layer of stone.  Her monster didn’t even survive a single hit, as it basically had all of its bones broken almost instantaneously.

After that, the Defenders were a little more wary of the snow piles, but that also meant that they were vulnerable to the two Blizzard Block traps Tempara had placed on the route to the exit.  As one or another Defender stepped on the trap and activated it, a rectangular block of a dense snow blizzard sprung up, sending freezing and disorienting snowflakes at its victim.  At the same time, there were two snow piles near enough to each launch an Arctic Tiger in ambush at the one who had sprung the trap.

Unfortunately, both times it was either the warhammer-wielding Defender or the Dwarf with the battleaxe, who were quite a bit hardier than, say, a spellcaster.  Each of them was tackled in the middle of the Blizzard Block, and the man holding the hammer nearly had his throat ripped out by one of the Tigers. Unfortunately, some sort of skill he activated as his neck was being torn into caused some sort of repelling in the area around his body, sending the monsters piled on top of him flying out of the Blizzard Block, where they were finished off by the other guards.

Healing was needed for everyone who was attacked, because the ambushes always worked, though to varying degrees.  The Defenders were powerful enough that no one died, and some only had a few scratches, but it was enough to show that they could be seriously hurt.

The sixth room marked the halfway point through the dungeon of 12 rooms, and as such, the difficulty started to ramp up even more.  In this room, which was square-shaped with 100-foot-wide walls, the space was dominated by columns of compacted ice and snow, separated by only a few feet.  Toward the end of the room and near the exit, there was a square space approximately 40 feet wide that was free of columns.

All through the room, strands of delicate-looking ice were strung up between the columns, as well as hanging from the ceiling; the frozen spiderwebs were evidence that 20 Icicle Spiders had made this room their home.  The strands and webs of ice weren’t actually delicate, but they weren’t too difficult for the group of Defenders to shatter with their weapons as they progressed further into the spider’s nest.  Not once were they attacked by anything, despite the obvious presence of spiders somewhere, but that was all because of one specific monster: The Icicle Spider Queen.

Something that Tempara had learned about the Queen, and hadn’t had the need to fully utilize, was that the Spider monarch acted as the authority of all the nearby Spiders.  While the Dungeon Core could technically order the currently hiding Icicle Spiders in the room to attack, if Tempara didn’t actually give the order, then they would obey the orders of the Queen.  As the group made their way through the ice spiderwebs, there was an Icicle Spider Queen located in the empty space toward the exit.

“Are these spiderwebs?  I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many in one of these dungeons before,” one of the fire-based spellcasters asked.

“Who cares?  Let’s just get through them and destroy this dungeon’s Core.”

Good luck with that, Mr. Warhammer.

Soon enough, the group worked together to break through the icy obstacles, bringing them to the open space – and there was no sign of any Spiders.  They walked forward, wary of a trap along the floor, but Tempara had learned something over all of the restarts in the past, when both monsters and Defenders had invaded her dungeon.

Neither group of invaders did a very good job of looking up.

As soon as the angry guard with the warhammer passed the midway mark of the room, the giant Icicle Spider Queen dropped from where it had been sitting very still along the ceiling.  Sharply pointed legs made of ice slammed down on the unsuspecting group as it descended, its 15-foot-wide body suspended by legs that reached 25 feet into the air.  The man with the warhammer was hit from behind, sending him sprawling and with a tear in his fur coat, while the plant-loving spellcaster took a leg to the hip, impaling her completely and pinning her to the floor.  As for the rest, they miraculously managed to avoid being hit by anything, though they scrambled to escape the deadly natural weapons of the Spider Queen as it attempted to strike out at anyone in range.

As the screams of the Defender impaled by the Queen’s leg echoed through the room, 20 enhanced Icicle Spiders emerged from where they had been waiting along the columns and the ceiling nearby, descending rapidly as they moved to defend their Queen.  Even as the majority of the guards turned to attack the bigger threat, they were pounced on from above and behind by the smaller Spiders – though they weren’t so small anymore, thanks to their enhancements.

Monster Details

Icicle Spider (Size and Ice Poison Enhanced)

200 (+200) EP

Each of the enhanced Icicle Spiders was approximately 6 feet wide when counting the legs, which made them approximately 50% larger than their unenhanced versions.  In addition to their legs that were used to stab their victims like large icicles (which was how they got their name, Tempara assumed), the enhancement gave them the ability to bite a target and inject a special kind of poison.  This poison could apparently turn the very blood in a victim’s body to ice, though the potency of the poison was still to be seen.

The cluster of Spiders fell upon the group of 8 guards with a vengeance, immediately attacking anyone they came into contact with.  Many of them were immediately cut down once they were noticed, because they didn’t really have much in the way of defense, but others managed to stab their legs into the backs of the healer, the earth-flinging spellcaster, and even the Elf with the spear as he held off the Queen from attacking.  A lucky drop on top of one of the fire-based Mages managed to bite the Defender through his fur robe, dropping him to the floor.  Tempara witnessed him seizing up, and stiff lines of blue ran up his neck and into his face, following the blood vessels in his body.

I guess the Ice Poison really does work!

In anyone else, it was quite possible that such a poison would kill them; unfortunately for Tempara, the victim was an expert in heat and fire.  Suddenly, even as the Spider was knocked off of the bitten guard and killed, there was a red aura that seemed to emanate from the downed Defender.  As it grew in power, the ice in his veins seemed to melt, and in less than a minute he seemed to have recovered for the most part.

That was the closest Tempara came to killing any of the Defenders thus far, because the rest rallied to the attack quickly.  The Dwarf with the battleaxe seemed to be everywhere, chopping off limbs with a fiery effect on her axe; the other fire-based spellcaster was tossing out fireballs every which way, immolating entire Spiders instantly; and even those that were initially injured by the ambush participated in the counterattack, flinging spells or stabbing targets with speed and deadly efficiency.

In less than 2 minutes, the battle was done, with the Icicle Spider Queen having been impaled by a spear and set on fire.  The wounds that were inflicted upon the group were numerous, however, and the healer had to take the time to heal everyone – including themselves – before they could leave.  The plant-loving spellcaster actually ingested some sort of healing potion to help close up her massive wound to her body where the Queen had stabbed her, but otherwise the rest were ready to go within a few minutes.

Some of their anger started to dissipate after the dangerous run-in with the Spiders, but none of them seemed ready to turn back.  If anything, they appeared more determined to see the end of Tempara’s dungeon.

As they passed through the next tunnel, which turned back to the left, she knew that pressing on was a decision that wouldn’t be able to be taken back.  In essence, they had passed the point of no return – or as much as was possible in her dungeon.  Inside of the tunnel were 6 traps, all the same, which cost 1.5 AR to maintain – but they were worth it.  Each one of them had triggers placed in a way that only if someone was trying to leave would they be activated; otherwise, they would stay completely inert.

The half-dozen Ice Walls that were installed in the tunnel were relatively innocuous, as they didn’t actually do any damage, but they were designed to prevent anyone from leaving.  When triggered, they would materialize into existence and block the pathway back for 60 seconds, which would hopefully be enough to deter anyone from seeing escape as a way out.  Tempara needed them to keep going until the end, because otherwise she wasn’t going to be able to kill them all.

The group of Defenders knew none of this, of course, as they passed through the tunnel to the next room without being accosted.  The design of this next room was quite simple, though the danger to the guards walking through had just risen a notch or two.  Essentially, the room was another narrow one, with a space no wider than 8 feet and a ceiling no taller than the same length; it stretched for 100 feet to the exit, but the biggest difference between this room and any others was that it was actually two rooms, with one on top of the other, with dozens of holes in the bottom room’s ceiling just big enough for something like a Snow Hare to slide through.

That’s exactly what she intended it for, thankfully.

It’s time to see if keeping my Warrens around so long is going to pay off.

A total of 15 Snowbank Warrens had multiplied over the last 11 days, each of them adding a single Snow Hare to their total every 4 hours.  With each of them having around 65 Hares at that point – counting the original 2 – that meant that there were nearly 1,000 monsters waiting to attack the Defenders.  After having them wait on a large platform of stone located on the edge of the room above, as soon as she gave the order, the Snow Hares started to jump off the platform and slide through the holes located at the bottom of the room.

Right on top of the Defenders who were moving through the long, hallway-shaped room below.

Granted, Snow Hares – even dozens of them attacking all at once – weren’t that much of a threat to the powerful guards, especially those who wielded melee weapons rather than specializing in casting spells. Being kicked or bitten by a large Hare wasn’t too dangerous even to spellcasters, though it certainly hurt; they could shrug off most attacks of that nature without breaking a sweat.

The problem arose when the attacks came not in their singles, tens, or even dozens – but in their hundreds.  With nearly 125 Hares raining down on each of them in a relatively enclosed space, the room quickly became an absolute nightmare of bites, dead monster bodies, and blood, both from the slain monsters and the Defenders themselves.  It wasn’t as though the guards didn’t defend themselves, because they did – and quite well, in fact – but the constant inundation of Hares dropping down on them was too much for them to handle easily.

In the midst of spells being cast to destroy a dozen or so of them at a time, with fireballs incinerating or stones crushing or vines strangling Hares, and weapons being swung or stabbed at a frenetic pace to keep the monsters away from them, there was inevitably an accident on the part of the Defenders.  A flung stone the size of a guard’s torso was shot out behind the rock-loving spellcaster, which ended up ricocheting off the wall and then smashing or otherwise obliterating a half-dozen Hares, but it also clipped the side of their healer.

The unfortunate Defender had been swinging a heavy mace around to smash the wave of Hares trying to bite him, but being hit by the stone damaged something vital in his hip, bringing him crashing to the ground a second later with a pain-filled scream.  Once flat on his back, Tempara could see him trying to heal the damage that had been done to him, but then a Hare dropped from the ceiling right onto his face, before biting his nose clean off.

Needless to say, his concentration wavered a bit at that.  Unable to heal himself, he attempted to fight off the fluffy swarming monsters, but it was too late; he was quickly swarmed by more than a score of the Warren Hares, as his fur robe was essentially bitten apart around his head, exposing the healer’s neck to the now-deadly group of monsters.

The others were somewhat aware of this happening, but they were unable to get to the healer’s side in time to save him.  Both of the fire-based spellcasters attempted to use a wide-range flame wave spell to clear the way, but the close quarters made such spells dangerous; in the process of the spells, they nearly lit two other guards on fire, though disaster was averted when the wave was blunted by a fresh influx of Hares dropping down from the ceiling.

“Retreat!  We can’t handle this anymore – and they already killed Symann!” The spellcaster that specialized in plants shouted to the others as she ran backwards through the room, jumping over smashed, sliced, or incinerated corpses of Hares on her way out.  She barely glanced at the body of the healer as she passed, electing to put speed over sympathy for their fallen comrade.

“Lilly!  Don’t you dare run!  We can still destroy this Core!”

Either because she was overwhelmed by fear or didn’t want to listen to the man wielding the warhammer, Lilly ignored him as she ran back through the entrance to the tunnel connecting the sixth and seventh rooms, before she slammed into a wall of ice that suddenly materialized in front of her.  She fell back and landed on her rear end, slightly dazed from the impact, and was therefore completely unprepared for the surge of Hares that had followed her as they swarmed over her.

As the first few painful bites tore through her fur robe, comprehension of the danger to her seemed to set in.  Sharp thorns seemed to sprout all over her skin as she quickly cast a spell, causing damage to the Hares who tried to bite her, and that was followed up by a mass of vines erupting from underneath her.  The vines snatched up and strangled the monsters by the dozen, until Lilly finally had enough space to stand up, fighting for her life.

By that time, the last of the Hares had dropped down from above, and the others were quickly dispatching the remnants of the giant Snowbank Warren army that Tempara had assembled.  By the time they were able to rescue Lilly from the constant onslaught of Hares, she was exhausted and heavily bleeding from multiple wounds.

“You fool!  You left your group behind and ran!”  The Dwarf slung her battleaxe up on her shoulder when they managed to dispatch the rest of Hares, even as she accused Lilly of deserting them.

“You were supposed to follow!  And they killed Symann!” she protested weakly.  “What are we supposed to do without a healer?”

“We’ll be fine.  We all have potions, right?”

They all nodded, pulling some vials out of a bag at their side, which they quickly quaffed down with a look of distaste, but Tempara could see that everyone who had been injured was quickly recovering from their wounds.

“Don’t do that again, Lilly.  We need to stick together in order to destroy this dungeon, and we can’t have you running away like that again.”

Lilly still looked exhausted, but she nodded.  “It’s not like we can leave until this dungeon’s Core is destroyed; I think it means to keep us here.”

While the first Ice Wall had disappeared after 60 seconds, the woman had attempted to advance further down the tunnel, only for another one to spring up.  Technically, if they wanted to wait long enough, they would eventually be able to leave, but the others took the Wall’s presence as a sign that they needed to finish off Tempara’s Core as quickly as they could.  While some of the anger and annoyance was still evident in their facial expressions, most of it had been replaced with determination.

They quickly made their way back through the carnage and kept going, with only Lilly once looking at the way out, before turning back to the group as she followed them deeper into Tempara’s dungeon.

One down, seven to go.

Chapter 38

The attrition of the Defender group continued from there. After they left the slaughter of Hares where they left one of their number behind, the group came to a fork in the tunnel that Tempara had created.  Off to the right were 3 more rooms that would eventually lead to her Core room, whereas off to the left were 2 rooms that led absolutely nowhere.  There was no indication of which way was the correct one, and after a brief debate, they eventually decided to head left – to Tempara’s great delight.

There were no traps in the tunnel that led to the left, which probably should’ve been an indication that they had taken the wrong route, but the Defenders obviously weren’t thinking clearly.  When they finally arrived at the next room, they were confronted by a large, square room filled with gentle hills of snow, on which were arranged 20 enhanced Polar Bears and an enhanced Polar Bear Matriarch.

Monster Details

Polar Bear (Size and Defense Enhanced)

450 (+450) EP

Monster Details

Polar Bear Matriarch (Size and Group Rage Enhanced)

900 (+900) EP

With the extra enhancements, the Polar Bears were approximately 30% larger than they were before, which meant that they stretched nearly 12 feet in length and were 6 feet tall at the shoulder when they were on all 4 legs.  The extra enhancement at a full 450 EP additional overcharge toughened up their fur to the point where they would be more resistant to physical damage from melee weapons, though it did nothing to deflect any magical effects.

The Polar Bear Matriarch, on the other hand, received a boost in its size so that it was 15 feet in length over its previous 12 feet, and was 8 feet tall at the shoulder.  That was beneficial, of course, but it was the secondary enhancement that was even better.

As soon as the first of the Defenders, the Dwarf wielding the battleaxe, stepped onto the snow, the Polar Bear Matriarch reared back on its hind legs, stood up to the fullest of its 15 feet, and roared.  The sound was so loud that most of the guards were forced to cover their ears for a moment, but it didn’t last that long; soon enough, they were prepared to face what was coming for them – which just happened to be 20 enraged Polar Bears that seemed to swell another few inches in size and had an angry, red aura around them.  The Matriarch’s group rage enhancement affected every other Polar Bear in the room, and they raced toward the assembled group with murder in their eyes.

In the open, with more room to cast powerful spells, the spellcasters of the group immediately unleashed their volleys of flame waves, barrages of sharpened stone, and thorn bushes that sprung up within seconds, which both tangled up the Bears and stabbed them with thorns.  Or more accurately, the thorns would’ve stabbed them, but their defensive enhancement made them immune to their paltry physical damage.

The bombardment was devastating, as it managed to kill half of the charging Bears before they could even get close to the guards.  However, with 10 enhanced Polar Bears still in action, along with the Matriarch behind them, they still had a fight on their hands.

It wasn’t until the melee fighters – the spear-wielding Elf, the Dwarf with the battleaxe, and the Human holding the warhammer – started to fight, that a surprise addition to the danger was sprung.  From the left and right sides of the Defenders, seemingly innocuous hills of snow suddenly exploded from the inside, revealing 4 enhanced Elder Snowbeasts, 2 on each side.

Monster Details

Elder Snowbeast (Size and Appendage Enhanced)

1,000 (+1,000) EP

The Snowbeasts were huge in comparison to their former size, as they were at least 50% bigger than normal.  With bodies that were a little larger than the Matriarch, they also obtained an enhancement to their appendages – both in number and durability.  A dozen appendages reached out for the Defenders, who quickly turned to attack them with spells, but the abrupt attack left them unprepared to defend themselves fully.  Even as three of them were annihilated by massive fireballs and a huge boulder that smashed through the maw of one Snowbeast and tore it apart from the inside, Lilly – the guard who used plants in her spellcasting – was too slow.

She was on the edge of the group and was immediately snatched up by a pair of snowy appendages. The Defender attempted to sprout thorns around her body again, but it didn’t do much to deter the compacted snow wrapped around her, and while a few vines she grew in her panic managed to sever one of the appendages, the other appendage managed to hold on, tossing her right into the deadly maw of the Elder Snowbeast, wherein icicle-like teeth chomped down upon her.  It only took a few seconds for her screams to stop as she was pulled further inside the mouth of the beast, where her head was crushed.

Two down.

The rest of the battle was fairly uneventful, because the melee fighters eventually learned that they needed to employ elemental attacks with their strikes, and the Polar Bears – while strong – weren’t the fastest. As a result, the guards fairly danced around them and the Matriarch, while the spellcasters took out the last Snowbeast and helped to finish off the rest of the Bears.

Afterwards, they looked to where Lilly had fallen and shared a moment of silence, but then the spellcasters drank more vials of a potion, which was a different color than before.

* Those are Mana potions.  They’re starting to run out of Mana with all of the spells they are casting. *

Good to know.

The melee fighters, while dominating the skirmish, had taken some hits as well, and they ended up drinking more of their healing potions to fix any of their wounds.

* Each time they drink a potion, the quality of its effects is reduced by about 20% from the original potency for the next 24 hours.  That means that they can drink the same type of potion around 5 times before they gain very little benefit from them. *

Also good to know.  Without their healer, they’ll be in trouble soon.

After they recovered from the fight, the remaining 6 Defenders passed through another tunnel to the next room – and delivered Tempara’s very first disappointment.

“I don’t see an exit,” the spear-wielding Elf said when they looked inside.  “I think this is a dead end.”

The still-angry, hammer-carrying guard slammed his weapon down in frustration, chipping the stone of the floor.  “You sure it isn’t underneath that massive Ooze?”

Tempara had been looking forward to the Defenders fighting the enhanced Iceberg Ooze in the circular room, which dominated the entire floor, even as it was aided by a dozen Chilled Slime Kings surrounding it.  The enhancements for both monsters allowed them to move faster, which was sorely needed for the massive Iceberg Ooze, as well as doubling the number of internal cores they had inside of their bodies.  Now, though, the guards appeared to have taken the time to see that there was no exit.

“No.  Time to backtrack and take the other path.”

It was disappointing, but once they left, Tempara instructed the Chilled Slime Kings to follow them; they wouldn’t catch up for a while, since they were still relatively slow despite their enhancements.  They’d catch up eventually, though.

Back at the fork, they took the path to the right, with the three melee-based Defenders up at the front.  Miraculously, the three fighters managed to step over the trigger for the first Shaved Ice trap, but one of the fire-based spellcasters wasn’t so lucky.  As he was walking behind the others, his foot stepped on a portion of the stone floor that slightly depressed under his weight; he had all of a half-second to whisper, “Oh, no—”, before 3 blades of extremely sharp ice shot out from the nearby wall with incredible speed, moving in horizontal arcs that sheared straight through the Defender’s torso, neck, and ankles, cutting him into four separate pieces.

As his disconnected pieces tumbled to the floor, the others attempted to put him back together and administer a healing potion, but he was dead far before it could even begin to start working.  Something told Tempara that even if they had a healer, it wasn’t likely that anyone could survive that kind of damage.

That’s three.

There were 2 more Shaved Ice traps in the hallway, but even though all of them were triggered, the Defenders were wary enough of the danger that they tested every step and threw themselves out of the way of the emerging ice blades.  She wasn’t too disappointed, however, because they had at least been effective once.

Despite the deaths, the group of Defenders still pushed on.

The next room into which they arrived at was technically the tenth room they had visited, though they didn’t actually enter the ninth with the Ooze and Slime Kings.  In this massive room, with the floor covered entirely with ice, Tempara had spent days designing a maze of transparent and wavy ice walls that reached up to the 60-foot-tall ceiling.  The construction of the maze was designed to lead the Defenders on a confusing pathway filled with patrolling teams of enhanced Ice Golems, Ice Knights, and Snowstorm Pixies attacking from above.  There were also multiple Ice Deluge and Ice Spike traps along the maze, which were cleverly camouflaged within the ice so that they would be a surprise.  All told, there were 40 monsters within the ice walls and 9 AR worth of traps to kill the unsuspecting guards, and she was looking forward to seeing how well that combination worked.

Unfortunately, the Defenders didn’t want to play along and ruined all of her hard work.

“I’ve had enough of this,” the leader of the rebellious group, the Human wielding the warhammer stated as soon as he looked inside.  “Everyone stand back.”

They did as he said, and the guard walked in, all while the head of his warhammer swelled in size as stone suddenly sprouted all over it.  When it was nearly as wide around as he was tall, he stepped up to the first ice wall and started to swing his entire body in a circle, with the weapon extended but not yet touching the ice.  He spun faster and faster around in a circle, building up speed, and Tempara could immediately see where this was going.

When he had hit a point that his rotation was basically a blur, the man took a half-step toward the nearest wall in the process of his spin, and the head of the weapon slammed into the ice with such concussive force that a shockwave blew through the entire room, violently shattering every piece of ice – including the Ice Golems and Knights.  The ice fractured into shards that blew apart anything alive within the walls, which also included the Pixies, and as the walls fell and piled on the floor, they also covered all the trap triggers, which meant that those traps were basically useless now.

The Defender fell to his knees and bent over like he was in pain, his heavy breathing evidence that his attack wasn’t something that he could simply do whenever he wanted.  Blood ran from his nose and ears in little rivulets, dripping down and pooling on the floor beneath his head, even as he pulled out a healing potion and gulped it down.  The bleeding stopped, but the guard still looked extremely worn out from his powerful swing.

“I guess that’s one way to do it,” the Dwarf with the battleaxe chuckled, before helping the man to his feet.  After allowing him another minute to recover, they cautiously walked over the remains of the ice maze, which was basically now in piles of broken and jagged ice – but they didn’t have to fight anything or risk getting killed by a trap.

So much wasted effort for that room.  Hopefully the last few are enough to stop them once and for all.

The next room was a heavily upgraded version of her original Snow room, though there were a few things that were different.  First, the room was much larger than usual, mainly because she needed room for some gigantic monsters.  Secondly, she didn’t include any traps in the room, mainly because she had spent just under 30 AR throughout the rest of the dungeon – with half of that lying sadly unused in the previous room – and she hadn’t wanted to cut her accumulation of Elemental Power more than that.  She had needed a bit to pay for the constant annoyances outside, after all.

Lastly, instead of large snow hills surrounding a central platform, she simply made a ramp of snow up from the entrance to the main part of the room, which contained 20 feet of snow across the entire space.  Underneath the surface of the snow were 2 Ice Worms and 4 Iceback Prowlers – unenhanced, due to the costs – which would be able to ambush from below instead of out from the hills.

As for the gigantic monsters, there was a single Ice Guardian and an Ice Giant in the middle of the room, both of them topping out at 40 feet and 50 feet tall, respectively.  Along the sides of the room, out of the direct path of the Guardian and Giant, were 12 Woolly Mammoths spaced apart from each other and ready to charge ahead into the waiting Defenders when they appeared.  Set back from everything else were 4 Coldstriker Verrants, each of them with a small hillock of snow they could stand upon or retreat behind if necessary.  Finally, there were 16 Snowstorm Pixies in the air to provide even more ranged attack support, which were at the moment fluttering lazily around the room.

A formidable group of monsters, for sure, but it was time to see how they stacked up against the might of 6 Defenders – especially since there was no stoppage of time that would make her monsters vulnerable to their attacks.

When the guards arrived, they entered without hesitation, and the three melee fighters ran at a sprint inside of the room, aiming for the Guardian and Giant; the Dwarf and the Elf went toward the Giant, while Mr. Warhammer went straight for the Guardian.  As soon as they entered, the Pixies in the air immediately started to fire off icicle shards at the running Defenders, but all of them either missed completely or their projectiles were deflected while on the move.

Meanwhile, the pair of spellcasters gathered near the entrance and immediately began casting smaller spells, shooting flame darts and stones at the Pixies and hitting some of them, but her monsters also dodged quite a few of them in the process.  That was when the Mammoths started to charge the casters, and the guards turned their attention to stopping them – which was easier said than done.  Each of the behemoths was powerful in their own right, but with a dozen of them closing in on the small group, it was all the Defenders could do to cast the biggest spells they had and hope for the best.

A wall of super-hot flames suddenly sprang up between half of the Mammoths and the pair of casters, while a similar thick, stone wall emerged from the floor blocking the other half.  Tempara mentally scoffed at them, thinking they wouldn’t do much to stop her monsters, but that was before she witnessed them exploding outwards, with flames washing over half of them and the other half being bombarded by thousands of stone shards.  As the two casters dropped to a knee after such an expenditure of Mana, the Dungeon Core watched as 10 of her Mammoths stumbled and collapsed from the attack, either burnt so badly they couldn’t move or impaled by stone.  One from each side of the room managed to make it through the attack with minor injuries, which kept them moving, but most of their effectiveness had been blunted.

The Verrants struck next, sending out their own spells; they didn’t target the casters, however, but instead sent all their dangerous damage toward the melee fighters who were currently engaged with the Giant.  Icicles fell in a thick rain, multiplied by the fact that there were 4 of the Verrants, so that they came down from above in a sheet rather than sporadically.  Unable to dodge the barrage, the Dwarf was pinned down immediately and attempted to shield herself with her battle axe, which worked only slightly. Within seconds, any part of her body not blocked by the weapon was hit by the falling icicles, slicing through her fur and skin beneath; even with the help of the fiery aura around the axe, the Defender was still getting torn up.

The Elf barely outdistanced the barrage of icicles by putting on a burst of speed, and he jumped off of the snow, propelling himself up like Tempara had seen him do outside of her dungeon.  He appeared to have the plan of stabbing the creature right through its eye and into its brain, but now that he was facing a Giant that could move, that didn’t work out so well for him.  With a powerful swing of its ice club, the Elf was knocked out of the air and sent flying across the room, slamming into the far wall with such force that there was a small explosion of stone upon impact.  As he fell to the snow below, Tempara could see that most of his appendages and his neck were all bent in ways that weren’t conducive to a healthy life, and she nearly winced in sympathy as she remembered her former master suffering a similar fate at the hands of a giant Yeti.

Four down.

Having been successful with its attack on the spear-wielding Elf, the Giant turned its eyes to the Dwarf, who was still shielding herself underneath her battleaxe.  Even as the spells ended, she stood up and looked slightly worse for wear, but she was still able to dodge the club that swung down on her as she dove to the side.

What she couldn’t avoid, however, was the Ice Worm that emerged from underneath where she dove and rolled.  The large mouth of the Worm swallowed her up entirely, and she disappeared into its depths, leaving her battleaxe where it had fallen.

And now five are gone.

The Human wielding a warhammer managed to avoid being skewered by the Guardian’s sword as he approached, and he was able to smash his weapon into the ice monster’s lower leg, cracking it severely but not damaging it enough to make a difference.  He had to dodge backwards as he was nearly kicked away, and he glanced back at the spellcasters to see if he would be getting support.

The pair of casters had regained their feet, swallowed another Mana potion, and then sent out another fireball and boulder to stagger the Mammoths, slowing down their charge; as soon as they were temporarily safe, they tossed other spells at two of the Verrants, causing the monsters to hop down from their perches to avoid being hit, effectively stopping them from casting another spell right away.

Just as the man with the warhammer looked their way, however, all 4 of the Iceback Prowlers erupted from the snow nearby and slammed into the two spellcasters, taking them to the ground.  The one with fire-based spells tried to use a familiar self-immolation spell to remove the Prowlers with excessive heat, but before his spell could snap into place for more than a second, he had his head removed with a bite and a savage *rip* that made quite a mess all over the snow.

The stone-flinger was suddenly surrounded by stone covering every part of his body, blunting the damage that the Prowlers did to him – but it didn’t stop everything. Even as stone spikes emerged from the snow to impale the lower half of one Prowler, the other had bitten down hard on the caster’s stone-covered chest, cracking some teeth and the stone at the same time.  With a powerful blow from its massive paw, the stone cracked even further and broke apart – and the caster was unable to prevent the Prowler’s claws from savagely ripping open his chest and killing him.

And then there was one.

Seeing the rest of his group killed, the remaining Defender made a run for it.  He didn’t run for the safety of the entrance, however, but toward the next room.  Having anticipated that he would run the other way, the second Ice Worm erupted from the snow near where he just was as he put on a burst of speed toward the exit, dodging icicles flung out by Pixies as he ran.  One of them managed to impale his right shoulder and dug down a few inches before it stopped, but the man completely ignored it.

Running through the enormous tunnel and breathing heavily, he kept sprinting as fast as he could when he entered the very last room of Tempara’s dungeon before her Core room, before he slid to a stop.

“Who’d have thought—”

His last words were cut off by the White Dragon that was guarding her final room, as it snaked its head down and swallowed him whole, leaving the warhammer to drop from nerveless fingers as he was blasted by the freezing beam the Dragon breathed into his trapped form.

Just in case he wasn’t dead yet and all.

As silence descended across her dungeon, Tempara looked to see if anyone was still left alive, and was pleased to see that she could create monsters again – meaning that they were all gone.

Now, I just need to take care of two more little problems outside, and then I can crack open that sphere and see what – and who – is still inside.

Chapter 39

Tempara began the reconstruction of her dungeon immediately, expanding the tunnels of everything past the few rooms nearer to her Core room so that her larger monsters could more easily fit through them.  As it was, most of the tunnels past the room that had been filled with spiders were only large enough to fit some of the medium-sized variety; anything over 8 feet wide and tall would have difficulty exiting her dungeon.  At the same time, she started sending out the Hares and Wolves that she had moved back from the entrance when the Defenders had invaded, moving them from her Core room where they had been waiting with her Dungeon Boss, the trusty ol’ giant Winter Wolf.  She hadn’t bothered to create anything more lethal, because if they had gotten past her White Dragon in the previous room, then it was unlikely anything else would’ve stopped them.

To say that the two remaining Defenders were surprised when a Snow Hare suddenly showed up after the hour or so the guards had been in the dungeon was an understatement.

“Wha—?  But—” the lightbringer said, her hood pushed back as if she couldn’t believe it.  For the first time, Tempara was able to see that she was Human and had light blonde hair pulled back and tied behind her head. The Fox-turned-Dungeon Core wasn’t sure how light her skin was before, but it appeared to have lost a few shades because she was as pale as new-fallen snow when she saw the first of Tempara’s monsters resuming their attack.

The guard with dual short swords immediately stepped up to dispatch the Hare, but even they seemed confused and a little hesitant in their steps.  When a Winter Wolf showed up a minute or so later, they looked at each other without saying anything, but Tempara could tell that they didn’t even know what to think or how to react.

Essentially, it was just the two of them there to protect the ritual sphere, an almost impossible task now.  Still, these were a pair of the most dedicated of them all, which is why they had stayed near the sphere while the others went on their anger-fueled rampage in the dungeon.

For nearly 16 hours straight, Tempara continued to send out Slimes, Hares, and Wolves to harass the two guards, who both stayed near the sphere instead of letting one of their number get some rest.  It probably had to do with the fact that the lightbringer, who seemed to have primarily defensive-type spells such as light barriers, creating long-lasting illumination, and the ability to detect movement from quite a far distance, only had a few offensive spells, such as a light arrow that she was able to launch at will.  The problem with that was that it apparently drained her Mana quite a lot upon use, so she only used it when absolutely necessary.  As a result, most of the work killing the incoming monsters was pushed on to the guard with dual short swords.

And he is getting tired; so very tired.  Let’s see if I can’t shake things up a little.

In between the Slimes, Hares, and Wolves she sent out, every once in a while Tempara started to send one of her Snowstorm Pixies that had survived in her upgraded Snow room.  When the first one appeared, at least 50 feet up above the pair of Defenders, only the lightbringer noticed it at first.  A barrier of glowing, yellow light was hastily erected as soon as the Pixie shot out at a shard of ice, and it *pinged* off the shield without any visible damage.

“I have nothing that can reach that!” the other guard warned, so it was up to the lightbringer to take care of it.

Unfortunately for her, her arrows of light weren’t very fast, and the Pixie was agile enough in the air to dodge most of her magical projectiles, but eventually the guard managed to get lucky and hit the flying monster, killing it instantly.  The toll it took on her Mana, however, was such that she needed to consume a Mana potion soon after, which to Tempara just signaled the beginning of the end.

Soon enough, the Dungeon Core started to send out some of her other monsters that had survived in her dungeon, including her Chilled Slime Kings, as they were able to fit through even the smaller tunnels when compressed enough.  The first time they showed up, the lightbringer touched the sphere and froze time, and they both worked on killing the 8-foot-wide monster.  The problem was that there were 40 cores inside of the Slime, which meant that either spells had to be used to drill through the goo to reach them, or they had to reach inside with weapons – of which they only had two short swords that had difficulty reaching.  The melee fighter eventually used some sort of ability that created blades of air flung out from the rapid movement of his swords, which essentially tore the Slime King apart.  The Defender had to consume a Mana potion after the third of the Slimes, however, which meant that even he was starting to run low.

About 24 hours after the 8 Defenders had been killed in her dungeon, Tempara had finally expanded the tunnels enough to start moving some of her larger monsters outside – though the Ice Giant would have to crouch down a little toward the end.  The first to go outside was her Iceberg Ooze, which slowly rolled forward despite its speed enhancement, and Tempara could see the slight touch of fear on the guards’ faces when it appeared through the falling snow.  Added to that, the remaining Defenders were barely staying on their feet, as the constant attacks were wearing down any type of endurance they previously possessed – and the lack of sleep probably didn’t help, either.

With the help of freezing time approximately 50 different times in a row, the two guards finally managed to destroy all of the cores inside of the massive Ooze, and they practically collapsed in place when they were finished.  As Tempara had strategized, that was when an Ice Giant came to play, the 50-foot-tall monster stomping over the snow with its massive ice club.  Strangely enough, the Giant proved easier to kill in comparison to the Ooze, as the Defender with the short swords was able to essentially hack it apart, though his arms nearly refused to swing toward the end, he was so exhausted.

The Ice Guardian coming next was nearly their demise, because the melee fighter could barely scratch the ice of which the monster was made, and it was up to repeated strikes of light arrows from the lightbringer at the Guardian’s chest to bring it down.  It took all of her Mana, as well as the consumption of another 2 Mana potions, to break through the thick ice and strike at the Guardian’s vulnerability, and the drained lightbringer did collapse afterward, falling to snow with her body apparently refusing to get up.

That was all according to Tempara’s plan, of course, when her White Dragon left her dungeon, flew up above the ritual sphere, and released its breath beam of cold toward the two Defenders.  The lightbringer, who was typically the one to touch the sphere to stop time, was practically delirious with exhaustion and didn’t notice, and the guard wielding dual short swords was too slow to react.  The beam slammed into the two Defenders and the ritual sphere and Tempara momentarily worried that the attack had inadvertently destroyed the sphere and everyone inside of it; thankfully, as soon as the bright breath beam disappeared, all that was left were two completely frozen Defenders and a completely unscathed sphere.

We did it, Kiana!  It worked!

* Congratulations.  How are you going to interact with that sphere? *

That… was something she had only marginally thought about, as most of her focus had been on eliminating the obstacles preventing her from getting to it.  Now that those obstacles had been removed, she had to figure out how to actually save her aunt and uncles from the ritual.

I’m not really sure, but I suppose the only thing I can do is try.

Not with her viewpoint, of course, because she didn’t want to have gotten this far only to be stuck to the sphere again.  The only other type of intermediaries she had, however, were her monsters, and they weren’t something she could easily control outside of her dungeon.  It was more of a “go here” and “go there” kind of relationship, which might not really work for interacting with the delicate-looking ritual sphere.

But it was worth a shot to try, at least.

Since she still had some Snow Hares available, she sent one out of her dungeon even as the White Dragon hovered in the air above the sphere, flapping its wings steadily to maintain altitude.  The monster quickly arrived at the ritual sphere and ran right toward it as the Dungeon Core had instructed. When it touched the sphere, the Hare was immediately stuck to it in a parody of how her own viewpoint had been trapped by it.  After a few seconds, however, the Hare disappeared. The disappearance wasn’t like her monsters fading away in her dungeon, however, such as when she eliminated them; instead, it was simply there one moment and gone the next.

What was interesting, however, was that there was also a very brief flicker in the ritual sphere, like it had been temporarily interrupted.  Unfortunately, the flicker was too brief to see if any of Tempara’s family members were still alive underneath the sphere, but she still took that as a good sign.

Well, if a Hare did that, I wonder what a Dragon will do?

With a thought toward the hovering Dragon, Tempara instructed the massive flying lizard down to the sphere, and it immediately dove down toward the ritual with reckless abandon.  She thought it might have been a little much for the sphere and attempted to stop the Dragon from obliterating everything in its path, but there was no need; as soon as the barest touch of a Dragon scale touched the ritual sphere, it stopped in mid-dive like one of the guards had frozen time again.  A few seconds later, it disappeared just as quickly as the Hare had, accompanied by a slightly longer flicker – but that wasn’t what she was hoping to see.

150,000 EP wasted right there.  Perhaps more monsters is the solution?

Tempara didn’t have many monsters left in her dungeon, but she sent out everything she could while still maintaining her required minimum.  At the same time, she eliminated all of her traps so that her AR returned to normal, and then started to create one Cold Slime after another, pumping out 1 every 20 seconds or so, keeping up with her accumulation of Elemental Power.  It took them a little while to travel all the way through her dungeon, but once they were moving they quickly formed a massive line stretching from her Core room to the entrance.  Before long, she hit her maximum monster capacity of 243 and could only replace one once it went outside.

Ice Worms, Coldstriker Verrants, and Iceback Prowlers went outside of her dungeon first, running into the sphere and disappearing, but each one produced a very slightly longer flicker in the ritual.  The flicker was still so brief that Tempara still couldn’t see anything inside of the sphere, however, at least until the first of the Slimes started to arrive.  After approximately 30 of them being stuck to the ritual sphere and disappearing, she finally got a glimpse of what was inside.

She saw her aunt and uncles still in their positions facing toward the center of the sphere, but there was something odd about them.  It was only when the flicker extended to about a half-second that she realized what it was: They didn’t appear completely solid, and she could reliably say that the snow underneath them was visible through their bodies.

What did that Chronomancer do to them?!

The fact that she could see them, even if they looked odd, meant that she needed to free them – even if it ended up killing them in the process.  She knew that if she had been in their place, she would want someone to free her from what had to be some sort of ongoing torment.

It took another few hours of Slimes constantly touching the ritual sphere before the flickering lasted so long that she thought for sure it would break at any time.  Thankfully, she was correct, as what had to be at least the two thousandth monster touched the sphere and disappeared – but not like usual.  Instead, it was obliterated and its slimy goo spread at least 200 feet away in multiple directions, as the ritual didn’t just flicker – it exploded.  The nearest dozen Slimes on their way to the sphere were also ripped apart from the explosion, and a shockwave blew away the snowflakes still falling, leaving a bubble of destruction that was entirely unexpected by Tempara.  It was especially surprising when her own viewpoint was knocked out of the air and sent spinning away, ending up nearly a mile from the site of the explosion.

Uh, oh – what just happened?

Slightly disoriented by the relocation of her viewpoint, the Dungeon Core quickly zoomed back to where the ritual sphere had been, only to mentally breathe a sigh of relief at the sight of her aunt and uncles still standing where they had been the whole time, though they were somehow floating in the air and were completely unmoving.  The snow all around them had been blown apart, leaving a large 50-foot-wide crater that made their obvious lack of physical presence even more startling.

Aunt Chrona?  Uncle Timo?  Uncle Ido?

She tried to call out to them instinctively, but they didn’t react to her communication.  She should’ve expected as much, since she could only really speak with her assistant, but seeing them made her need to try and talk with them.

When that obviously didn’t work, she moved her viewpoint closer, hoping to see some sort of life in the vaguely transparent and unmoving forms of her pack members.  The only thing she saw was that they appeared to be real and not some sort of illusion, but what she was supposed to do with them to bring them back was unknown.

As she drifted just a little closer, she was startled to see them start to move.  Not in an animated sort of way, like they had just woken up and started moving around, but instead she saw their entire forms visibly shift – and shift towards her viewpoint.  She immediately backed it up and her pack members’ transparent forms stopped moving.

I didn’t imagine it.  They really are moving toward me – but how do they know I’m here?

It was something she had thought about frequently, especially after she had been stuck to the ritual sphere and how the activated freezing of time seemed to affect her viewpoint as well.  The only explanation she could think of was that part of her soul was leaving her Dungeon Core, and it was being affected by these different occurrences.

Hmm… I wonder if that’s the explanation for my aunt and uncles.

With only a slight hesitation, Tempara guided her viewpoint toward the forms of her pack members, until she was right in the middle of them.  With much faster speed than before, all three of them shot toward her viewpoint as if she were deliberately attracting them.  It didn’t take more than a second or two before they all collided with her—

* Select your starting location…. *

NOOOO!!!

Tempara couldn’t believe how close she had gotten to succeeding, only to be returned to the start.

What did I do wrong?

She wasn’t quite sure, but she had some ideas for when she got back to that point.  Quickly picking her location before the annoying voice could prompt her again, she found her soul being transported into her Dungeon Core inside of her Core room.  She had selected the same spot as before, because it had worked out for her last time – at least until the end.

As soon as her viewpoint appeared looking out from her Core, she started to make plans on how to change her dungeon this time to make it even more effective against the Defenders.  Her ice maze had been a waste of time and resources, after all, and if she could—

“Hello, young one.”

What?  What the—

She hadn’t noticed right away due to the distraction of her thoughts, but when she looked in her Core room, she wasn’t alone.  It wasn’t her assistant, though, but someone else.  In fact, it was three someones.

Aunt Chrona?

Chapter 40

There was amusement in her aunt’s voice as she answered, accompanied by the chuckling of her Uncles Timo and Ido.  The three of them were standing in her Core room and looking up at Tempara’s Dungeon Core, though they still had that ephemeral look to their forms – meaning she could see through them.  “Yes, you are correct.  I assume we have you to thank for our rescue?”

Yes, I suppose so – but I thought that I had failed!

It took a moment to realize that her Aunt wasn’t physically speaking, not like Kiana or the Defenders did; instead, Tempara was receiving more of a mental projection that was outside of her aunt’s transparent body – similar to how she remembered Greater Temporal Foxes communicating before everyone’s capture.

“No, you didn’t fail.  But you haven’t completely succeeded, either.”

Huh?  What do you mean by that?  Is it because your bodies look… like that?

The Fox-turned-Dungeon Core was glad to see that the trance-like state her aunt and uncles had been in seemed to have disappeared, as one-by-one they sat down on their hind legs, as if to get comfortable.  Whether they actually had bodies that they could feel was something Tempara wasn’t entirely sure of.

Her Uncle Timo answered instead of her aunt, his deeper mental voice a familiar bit of nostalgia that made Tempara suddenly lose herself in the memories of her life back when she was a living Fox.

“—and so we look like this.  Are you even listening, young one?  You still haven’t matured enough to pay attention?”

I’m sorry, would you be able to repeat that?

Uncle Timo shook his head in amusement, but there was a bit of bitterness in his voice when he went on.  “Sure, why not?  It’s not like we have anything better to do.”

What are you talking about?

“Well, before you rudely ignored my explanation, I was saying that you may have saved us from the ritual that Human put us through, but all you did was free our trapped souls that were caught up in it.  Our physical bodies are stuck in the focused time loop that our bodies and souls were forced into, so what you’re seeing now is only one-half of our beings.”

Wait… time loop?

Aunt Chrona took over for her Uncle Timo, standing up and pacing while she explained.  “Yes, a time loop, but one that is so focused on a specific sequence of events that there is no way out of it except for extraction by external means – meaning, in short, what you did.  You were able to pull our souls out from the loop, but our physical bodies are still inside.”

That’s wonderful and all, but why are you here?  And at this time period?

“When you freed our souls from our loop, they were essentially unanchored; I’m assuming that you did something that allowed us to anchor to your soul, so we now go where you go.”

Tempara thought back at how she had moved her viewpoint, which was likely a portion of her soul, in between her pack members; their attraction to her own soul must have been because they were looking for an anchor – any anchor.

I think I understand.  But how do we get your bodies back?

“That’s a little more complicated—”

Tempara’s assistant suddenly materialized in her Core room, staring at her Core like she normally did.  Her aunt and uncles immediately jumped back in surprise and anger, as they growled at the Human in their midst.

“What is that doing here?” her Aunt asked, anger and a hint of fear in her voice.

Surprisingly, Kiana actually seemed to see and hear the Greater Temporal Fox, the first time Tempara had seen her assistant react to something on a personal level, rather than as directed through her Core.  Her former master looked at the three Foxes in confusion, tilting her head to the side, seeming not to be worried at the way they appeared ready to attack.

Before Tempara could say anything, her Uncle Ido – who had been the closest to the woman when she appeared – jumped straight toward her assistant.  As soon as his teeth closed on her robe, she disappeared as if she had never been there, before popping up again on the other side of the Dungeon Core’s pedestal, completely unharmed or unaffected by the attack.

Hold on!  Kiana is my Dungeon Core assistant, and she is no threat to me or you.  Let me explain….

Tempara told her pack members about what had happened to her after she was captured, how she thought that her entire pack had been killed, and how she ended up as a Dungeon Core.  They seemed particularly glad that her former master, who had soul-bonded the young Fox against her will, had ended up subservient to Tempara; the Dungeon Core had definitely felt that way at first, but now she was just glad that she hadn’t had to go through her entire existence as a Core alone.

“That is curious why you thought we had been killed; we, too, had thought that you were killed instead of captured.  I assume it had to do with what happened to us after we were captured.”

That’s definitely something I want to know, because the next time I saw any of the pack, the three of you were docile and following orders as if you had given up all hope of escape.

Aunt Chrona chuffed sadly, nodding as she answered.  “In a way, we had – though not through any choice of our own.  The Human who was in charge of those that had captured us did something that separated our souls and our physical bodies, though both of them were anchored to some sort of ritual framework.  At least, that was the impression that I got from seeing it, though I had no idea what it was at the time.

“Anyway, the separation of our souls and physical bodies meant that we were unable to do anything that wasn’t part of natural bodily functions, such as sleeping and even eating, as well as following any orders given to us by our captors.  Anything else was truly impossible to enact, so we effectively gave up.”

I have seen what this ritual has done and will do in the future, and it’s not good.  It will eventually lead to the destruction of the entire world if it isn’t stopped.

“We figured that it had to be something horrific like that, because messing with time on such a large scale is never good.  The problem is, though, that all of the rituals are connected through time, forming this time loop that we were trapped within.”

What?  How do we stop it, then?

“That’s what I was trying to say before this… woman showed up,” her Aunt said, staring at Kiana with anger and annoyance – but not quite as much as before.  Tempara couldn’t help but be glad that the fear was gone from her voice, at least.

Go on.

“Well, as soon as the ritual was enacted, I could feel a connection with not just your Uncles Timo and Ido, but with all of our pack – including your parents.”

My parents?  They’re still alive?

“In the most basic sense, I can only assume that they are.  The point I was trying to make was that I could feel a connection with them through the time loop that we were forced into, as if we were all connected in some way.”

“I agree – and I think I know the reason why,” her Uncle Ido, who had been relatively quiet thus far, interjected.  “It’s the connection among all of us, through time, which is powering the ritual here and where it is going to be used in the future.  I can only assume that these ritual will be used throughout all the Wildlands, am I right?”

Yes, as far as I could tell, that is what it seemed like.

“Then that just confirms my assumption.  You see, our bodies are now part of this ritual that spans through the length of time the loop exists, and there is no way to stop it completely – except by disrupting every single ritual and extracting the entire pack’s souls.  Even with a single soul still anchored into the ritual, it will continue to exist in multiple physical locations and through time.”

Whoa.  That’s a bit too complicated for me.  What exactly are you saying?

“I’m saying that you’re going to need to extract our souls from the rest of the rituals after they are initiated; only by doing this will our physical bodies be released from where they are being drained of our energy, and we can re-anchor our souls to them.”

Why not stop the other rituals from happening?

“Did you have any success stopping our ritual from happening?”

No.

“That’s because they all have to occur, because they have already happened.  Even now, I can still feel the remnants of the other seven rituals being enacted in the future.”

Can you tell where my parents are from those remnants?

He shook his head, followed by the others.  Tempara’s aunt said sadly, “No, we can’t feel where individual souls ended up in the time spectrum as part of the loop, only locations.  Or, to be more specific, one location.”

Which one?

“The location where the next ritual will take place.  All of the others are jumbled together in my memories.”

Where is it?

“As far as I can tell, it is somewhere in the Nightgloom Swamp, far to the southwest.  I’m not sure how you’re going to be able to reach it from here, however.”

Oh, don’t worry about that.  I have a means of moving my location.  The only problem is that I don’t know much about the Swamp, other than what little Kiana’s memories and knowledge imparted to me.

“It isn’t our expertise, either, but I’m sure you’ll do fine.  You helped to save us, after all.”

Tempara certainly hoped so.  With a thought, she opened her Core Display and sought out her Temporal Displacement skill, but something caught her attention at the top of the Display.  Her Accumulation Rate, which had typically been reduced by an eighth since the ritual had been enacted so that she was only accumulating 4.375 EP per minute, was now at 4.5 – meaning that it was only reduced by a tenth.  It wasn’t that much of a difference, but it was something she mentioned to her family.

Surprisingly, it was her assistant that answered.

* I’ve been listening to your dialogue, and I believe that the extraction of the souls from this closed time loop that was referenced will reduce the effect the rituals produce in the environment.  With more souls extracted from the loop, the less the various environments will suffer. *

Do you think that means that the Dungeon Cores here in the Frozen Reaches will now be accumulating Elemental Power?

* Yes, though at a very reduced rate.  However, the more Greater Temporal Fox souls that you save, the higher their accumulation rate. *

Good.  That will at least slow down the degradation of the environment.

Tempara looked again at her Core Display and pulled up her Temporal Displacement skill, but she paused before she activated it inside of her Core, freeing her soul to choose another location.  Looking at her aunt and uncles again, she asked:

Are you ready to come with me to save the world?

At their solemn nods, she activated her skill.

* Select your starting location…. *

On to the Nightgloom Swamp, I guess.  I wonder what awaits me there….

The End of Book 1

Monster Progression Charts

Author’s Note

Thank you for reading Frozen Time!

I had a blast writing this story, because I’ve really been enjoying the idea of time loops as a mechanic in books, movies, and TV shows.  Adapting that idea to a Dungeon Core took a lot of thought, however, and I wanted it to be something different from what I’ve read before – which is why I decided that I wanted the MC to originally be something other than a person.  The manipulation of time is an awesome concept, and I’m excited to see where it goes from here!

Again, thank you for reading, and I implore you to consider leaving a review – I love 5-star ones!  Reviews make it more likely that others will pick up a good book and read it!

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Books by Jonathan Brooks

Glendaria Awakens Trilogy

Dungeon Player (Audiobook available)

Dungeon Crisis (Audiobook available)

Dungeon Guild (Audiobook available)

Glendaria Awakens Trilogy Compilation w/bonus material (Audiobook available)

Uniworld Online Trilogy (2nd Edition)

The Song Maiden (Audiobook available)

The Song Mistress (Audiobook available)

The Song Matron (Audiobook available)

Uniworld Online Trilogy Compilation (Audiobook available)

Station Cores Series

The Station Core (Audiobook available)

The Quizard Mountains (Audiobook available)

The Guardian Guild (Audiobook available)

The Kingdom Rises (Audiobook available)

The Other Core (Audiobook available)

Station Cores Compilation Complete: Books 1-5 (Audiobook available)

Spirit Cores Series

Core of Fear (Audiobook available)

Children of Fear (Audiobook available)

Carnival of Fear (Audiobook available)

Community of Fear

Dungeon World Series

Dungeon World (Audiobook available)

Dungeon World 2 (Audiobook available)

Dungeon World 3 (Audiobook available)

Dungeon World 4 (Audiobook available)

Dungeon World 5 (Audiobook available)

Dungeon World Box Set: Books 1-5 (Audiobook available)

Dungeon Crafting Series

The Crafter’s Dungeon (Audiobook available)

The Crafter’s Defense (Audiobook available)

The Crafter’s Dilemma (Audiobook available)

The Crafter’s Darkness (Audiobook available)

The Crafter’s Dominion (Audiobook available)

The Crafter’s Dynasty (Audiobook available)

Dungeon Crafting Series: Books 1 – 3 (Audiobook available)

Dungeon Crafting Series: Books 4 – 6 (Audiobook available)

The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Series

The Dungeon Fairy (Audiobook available)

The Dungeon Fairy: Two Choices (Audiobook available)

The Dungeon Fairy: Three Lives (Audiobook available)

The Dungeon Fairy: Four Days (Audiobook available)

The Dungeon Fairy: Box Set Books 1-4 (Audiobook available)

Serious Probabilities Series

Dungeon of Chance: Even Odds (Audiobook available)

Dungeon of Chance: Double or Nothing (Audiobook available)

Dungeon of Chance: All-in (Audiobook available)

Dungeon of Chance Complete Series: Books 1-3

The Body’s Dungeon (with Jeffrey “Falcon” Logue)

Bio Dungeon: Symbiote (Audiobook available)

Bio Dungeon: Parasyte (Audiobook available)

Bio Dungeon: Hemostasis (Audiobook available)

Bio Dungeon Omnibus (Audiobook coming soon)

Tales of Dungeons Anthology

Tales of Dungeons Vol. 2

Tales of Dungeons Vol. 3

Tales of Dungeons All Hallows 2020

Dimensional Dungeon Cores

Core Establishment (Audiobook available)

Core Construction (Audiobook available)

Holiday Dungeon Core

Christmas Core (Audiobook available)

Valentine Core (Audiobook available)

Easter Core (Audiobook available)

Independence Core (Coming Soon)

Halloween Core (Coming Soon)

Time Core

Frozen Time