Cave lantern

As sunlight shines through the branches of my tree I am preparing for my summons next outing, mostly everything is going to plan: the bone dolls have figured out how to channel their attack through the staffs and it can now leave a pretty decent bruise and the pikas have gotten used to their saddles but there is one thing…

I would like to go with them, not that I'd be very useful in a fight seeing as I can't move but I want to see what's happening, if only I could see through my summons eyes…

Wait! There's nothing saying I can't do that, I'll just make a new monster and focus on the ability to communicate with me that all my summons sort of have! Lumasyl naturally stores mana so I'll pump some mana into it and then I'll be able to do the same thing I did with the bone dolls.

After modifying the lumasyl and filling it with mana I begin the creation process. The new summon resembles a lumasyl statue of a small suit of armor with a bat head where it's helmet should be and bat wings where it's arms would be. I call them

Luma knights. As for their abilities; with {mana glow} they can change how bright the light they give off is, {infused} lets people store mana in the luma knights which they can use to heal themselves or use

{mind static} which attempts to telepathically connect with everyone nearby but ends up just causing a splitting head ache in the targets.

Yup I failed, instead of showing me what they see luma knights just give people really bad head aches…

Luckily there's some lumasyl left and after some experimenting I discover that by using the curse stones formed by my curse in the monster it will have a stronger connection to me which makes long distance communication much easier

[cave lantern: an observant spirit created by the cursed sword of

mt. Tulip]

like the name implies cave lanterns are lanterns carried by small, round, floating creatures made of lumasyl.

For their abilities they have {infused} just like the luma knights. Im not sure why they have this instead of {charged} but I'm going to guess it changes based off who puts mana into the stuff I used to make a monster and how they do it.

Then cave lanterns have {poison smoke} to defend themselves, it's basically a weaker version of my curse that lets me make poison mist except it can change depending on the lantern's fuel. Finally there's {linked} which was the whole point of doing this; I can see and hear though the cave lanterns as well as communicate with any summons nearby because of it.

A few minutes later once I've used my monster homes trait on my new summons and the access shoots in the blooming tunnels have been widened so they can move through them a foraging team consisting of bone dolls riding on pika, a cave lantern, and a few luma knight scouts exits my dungeon to gather food.

The plan- besides gatherings food for me and the pika is to circle through the less plant filled tunnels so I can map out the area surrounding my dungeon before moving towards the river, marking down the various tunnels that lead to it before moving up stream as the kobolds seem to have come from that direction.

So far mapping out the tunnels has been successful; the large circular cave my dungeon connects to seems to be a crossroad linking many different cave system so I hide a cave lantern between some stalactites on the ceiling and have some ladybugs hide in nearby caves and report to the cave lantern if anyone's coming so i know if someone might try to invade my dungeon beforehand.

As we mapped out the caves we stumbled across the ruins of a tavern, a large tree somehow growing underground, some hunting traps I assume belong to the kobolds, and tasty food like flowering moss. Now we're done with the caves closer to my dungeon and have just arrived at the river.

I have my bone dolls and pika start gathering clams and anything else they find at the river that looks good while I send the luma knights ahead to see if we'll run into any kobolds

As we begin to load our findings into the pikas saddle bags the luma knights returned, a kobold hunting party was heading our way on the other side of the river and a lone kobold in black robes was moving towards us as well.

The lone kobold will be here soon but we still have some time before the hunting party gets here and seeing as it's just one kobold I have my summons prepare for a fight. I fly my cave lantern to the ceiling of the cave, behind a particularly tall tunnel shrub and extinguish it's flame. The bone dolls create two makeshift trip wires before running out of time and rushing into the bushes to hide with the pika and luma knights.

It may just be one kobold but that doesn't mean we can't be careful, master had a quote carved into the gauntlet he wore while wielding me "overestimate the enemy and it costs you resource, underestimate them and it costs you your life" it will be a simple ambush the kobold will either fall for or notice the tripwires causing them to be distracted then- I guess then I'll find out if it works because the kobold is right there!

—————-

The robed kobold had been walking for a while now and had finally reached the general area the strange spirits had been spotted in when he sensed a ripple in the mana near him. slowly moving towards it he discovered the source of the ripple, a thin string made of greenery that had somehow been fused together was strung across the path like a trip wire. The ripple was from someone making the tripwire which meant whoever it was was probably still nearby…. He pulled a large book and a sickle from his bag as all of a sudden something attacked from behind!

———————-

While the kobold is distracted by the tripwire my Luma knights fly around him and attack from behind driving him into the second tripwire. The kobold rolls away as he hits the ground and tosses some arrowheads into the air then stomps his foot causing the arrowheads to shoot towards the luma knights as if shot by an invisible bow. The attack hits three Luma knights, cracking the armor of one and pushing back the other two.

I reignite the fire in my cave lantern and activate its poison smoke as I fly farther away from the kobold. Pika and bone dolls rush in to attack the kobolds ankles, being to short for the smoke to reach their mouths (not that bone dolls need to breathe anyway).

The kobold throws his book into the bushes and makes a sharp motion with his sickle causing a blast of wind to push back the poison smoke and his small attackers.