beckon

Royal Road

SomethingOtherThanRain

Re: Dragonize (LitRPG) by Kuiper

Chapter 60: Reports and Records

Report

Octavia and I left the underground river and began our journey back through the ant-made tunnels, retracing our steps to report back to Queen Anne. With Anne's ant minions now all drowned or otherwise dead, the only sound that filled the tunnels was the echoes of our claws hitting the ground. Gone were the constant quiet chittering of ants that usually filled the tunnels, a sound I hadn't realized I had grown accustomed to until now.

"Anne will have nothing but our eye-witness report to go on," I said.

"That's what I'm counting on," said Octavia. "What was it that you once told me? 'Information is a resource.' We can use that to our advantage."

"Withholding information isn't necessarily to our advantage," I said. "To the extent that we consider Anne to be a potential adversary, it makes sense to hold our information to ourselves. But if it stymies our ability to collaborate and meet our mutually beneficial goals, withholding information would hurt us."

"Just because someone is your ally doesn't mean you have to give them everything freely," she said. "You can be on good terms with someone, but not necessarily want to give them free stuff. Ask any merchant."

"Sure," I said, "but information isn't like that. Telling Anne about what we've seen doesn't mean we lose that information."

"And yet," said Octavia, "when people discover the location of a gold mine, they don't always rush out to tell others about it."

I nodded. "I see your point. And I'm well aware that there are benefits to having trade secrets, or other forms of information that become less valuable as you share them. But even if you have the hypothetical location of a gold mine, you can't keep that information to yourself forever. If you want to effectively mine a mineral deposit, you'll need a large team of people. Embercores might be the same way. We are, after all, returning to Anne specifically for the purpose of asking for her help in getting across the river."

"A river that we need to cross specifically because of an errand that she gave us," she said. "Don't forget that this is ultimately serving her interests."

"As long as Anne's interest is in thwarting the fire ants, I don't see any problem with that," I said. "One problem at a time."

"Okay," said Octavia. "Just as long as we're in agreement that Anne might become a problem in the future."

"I take your point," I said. "Just because Anne is on 'our side' doesn't mean she's one of the 'good guys.' But–"

I let out a yelp as my snout collided with the cave wall. "We need to climb here," she said.

"I gathered as much," backing up from the nearly vertical slope in front of us. "Maybe you should lead the way. Evidently, I can't see as well as you can down here."

"It's not about vision so much as memory," said Octavia. "I have what you might call a photographic memory. I know every twist and turn of this tunnel. Anne's ants are probably the same way. That's why she didn't feel the need to cover every part of this tunnel with glowstone lanterns."

"Does that photographic memory of yours recall the details of the map that Anne showed us?" I asked.

"Yes."

"How accurate was her map?"

Octavia considered the question for a moment before she began climbing. "It was mostly accurate. There were a few specific details that her map missed, like places where a tunnel had slight deviations, mostly places where hard stone got in the way. But the major turns were correct."

"That's interesting," I said. "It means she was willing to share real information with us."

Octavia nodded. "It would seem that she wasn't trying to deceive us, even if she was concealing her other maps."

"Maybe they're not actually maps," I said. "Maybe they're blueprints."

"What's the difference?" Octavia asked.

"A map is something that you create to detail the environment as it exists. A blueprint is a planning document. The blueprints would be her ideal vision for the tunnels. But in the process of digging out those tunnels, her ants encountered some problems along the way. They encountered unbreakable rocks that they needed to dig around, or other issues like that. But Anne didn't update the floor plans."

"Is that a problem?" Octavia asked.

"Maybe a problem for her," I said. "Might be an advantage for us. Maybe we know more about her tunnels than she does."

I followed Octavia back to Anne's lair. As we neared our destination, Octavia spoke up. "Don't you think it's odd that there are no ant sentries waiting for us?"

"Why would there be?" I asked.

"I just assumed she would want to know. We got an escort on our way into her lair for the first time."

"We can't expect the red carpet treatment every time," I said, trying to keep my tone light.

"Oh, I wouldn't expect a warm welcome," said Octavia. "But Anne seems an individual who's very interested in knowing what happens in her tunnels. I wouldn't bet on her to leaving much up to chance."

When we finally arrived at Anne's audience chamber, a pair of ants stood in the middle of the room. I squinted in the darkness, scanning the walls and ceiling for more signs of life, but they were vacant.

"What happened here?" I asked. "Where are all her other minions? There must have been hundreds, and now…" I stared again at the two ants in the middle of the room.

"No signs of violence here," said Octavia. "They must have left."

The two small ants in the center of the room, sensing us, walked around us in a circle, and then marching down one of the passageways. The previous time we'd been here, the passageway had been completely covered and concealed by ants, but now I could see a hole. It was smaller than the one we'd just come from, but still big enough that I would fit if I crawled on my belly.

I turned to follow the ants. "Shall we?" I glanced back at Octavia, and saw that she was staring at a different passageway, the one that led to Anne's map room.

"There are no guards," she whispered. "We could see what she's been hiding."

I shook my head. "I'm going with the ants."

Octavia looked at me with disbelief. "You don't want to see what she was hiding?"

"I do. But there are two possibilities here. One is that this is some kind of loyalty test, or a trap of some kind. In that case, entering her map room to look through her stuff would probably be failing the test. The other possibility is that something's actually wrong, there's an 'all hands on deck' situation, Anne had to take all of her minions to deal with it, and now Anne is summoning us to help. Either way, I think we should play by her rules."

Sensing our hesitation, the two sentry ants turned around, waiting at the entrance to the new tunnel.

Octavia paused, then began scuttling toward the map room.

"What are you doing?" I shouted.

"Let's say you're right," said Octavia. "Maybe Anne is in a bind and needs our help. She's having her ants lead us to some kind of crisis situation. Suppose she really has gotten herself into a pickle. In that case, I want to look at her maps."

"Can we spare the time?" I asked.

"I told you," said Octavia. "I have a photographic memory. If you give me a minute, I promise it will be worth it."

"And if there's a trap waiting for us…"

"If it's a loyalty test like you said, then I can tell her exactly what I just told you. If we want to help Anne, the best way to do it is to arm ourselves with knowledge before we follow her ant sentries into the unknown. Looking at her records isn't an act of disloyalty. If anything, she's the one who's withholding information that could have allowed us to help her better."

I glanced back at the ant sentries, then followed Octavia into the map room.

The room seemed brighter than it had before, now that there were no ants to cover the glowstone that was built into the walls. "It's empty," I said, looking at all of the sculptures that stood around the room, each serving as a three-dimensional map. "It's kind of eerie."

"Quiet," said Octavia. "Let me focus." She slowly shuffled around the room, drinking it in with her multiple rows of spider eyes. I did the same, though I was pretty sure that whatever mental notes I was making weren't nearly as detailed as Octavia. Looking at the complex 3D maps, I couldn't even tell which structures or tunnels they were supposed to be mapping, apart from the one I had been shown earlier

I walked up to the first map I'd seen, looking at the shape of what Octavia had observed as the Shimmergrove the first time we'd seen it. Even knowing what it was 'supposed' to be, I couldn't fathom how Octavia had managed to recognize it the first time. Everything looked so abstract.

It was a reminder of just how new I was to these tunnels. I had been down here less than two weeks. Octavia, meanwhile, had lived here for decades. She'd had an entire lifetime to acquaint herself with the geography of the desert's underground. She could spot patterns that would be completely lost on me. In fact–

"Let's go," she said. "I've seen everything there is to see."

Octavia and I scurried back to the audience chamber, where the two sentry ants were still dutifully waiting. The ants turned and began leading the way. I lowered my head and began crawling through the low-ceiling path after them.

"Is this passageway they're leading us down something that you saw in Anne's maps or blueprints?"

"Oh, yes," said Octavia.

I squinted in the dark, trying to quicken the pace of my crawling to keep up with the scuttling ants. "Where does it lead?"

"Up," said Octavia.

"How far up?"

"All the way," she said. "These ants are leading us to the surface."

I glanced at Octavia. "The last time I saw the surface, I seem to recall there being a massive storm, and a massive elder dragon to go along with it. If I remember events correctly, it went to considerable effort in trying to break its way into the underground."

"Yes," she said. "I was thinking the same thing."

I stopped walking. "Do you think it's safe to go up now?"

"I suppose we're about to find out," said Octavia, scuttling on ahead.

Royal Road

SomethingOtherThanRain

Re: Dragonize (LitRPG) by Kuiper

Chapter 61: What Awaits Up Top

Report

I watched as Octavia ran up the tunnel, then began following after her.

"You're being awfully cavalier about this," I said. "We don't know what's up there."

"You were the one who insisted that we should follow where Anne's sentry ants were taking us," said Octavia. "Just a couple minutes ago, you were the one insisting that following where they bid was our only choice. That was when the destination was unknown. Now, we have more information, and yet you're less confident. What changed, little dragon?"

"I guess I'm worried about encountering a big dragon," I said.

"I'm not," said Octavia. "You can detect that big dragon if it's nearby, right? If you sense its presence, we can flee back the way we came."

"True," I said. "I guess I wasn't thinking through it logically. It's just, as soon as you mentioned the surface, I couldn't stop thinking about the elder dragon. I only saw it for an instant, but it looked so…vicious."

"I hope you haven't developed a phobia of dragons," said Octavia, climbing upward. "It would prove very inconvenient if you ever encountered a mirror."

"I wouldn't say that I have a phobia of dragons. A phobia is an excessive and unrealistic fear. I think I have exactly the right amount of fear for elder dragons, given what we've seen. I mean, that dragon destroyed your tunnels. It could easily do the same to Anne's."

"True," said Octavia. "But we have no reason to believe that it did destroy Anne's tunnels. I'll be sure to let you know if we encounter any closed of passageways, unexpected crevices, or anything else unusual."

I climbed after her. "How would you know what's 'unusual?' This is the first time we've been in this tunnel."

"I looked at the map, remember?"

"Good point," I said. "I guess that detour to Anne's map room was worth the time. Do you think –"

My front claw failed to find a grip in the tunnel in front of me, and I slid a few feet back before friction brought me to a halt.

"Careful," said Octavia. "The tunnel's only going to get steeper."

"We're almost at a 45 degree incline already," I said. "Any more than this, and we'll be nearly vertical."

"Correct," said Octavia. "The vertical part is just ahead."

As promised, it wasn't long before the "tunnel" was more of a vertical chasm, with my four-claw grip on the wall the only thing keeping me up. Octavia adjusted her climbing form, straddling the chasm and extending her legs out so that each set of four legs was anchored on one half. I struggled to keep up.

"Sorry for my speed, or lack thereof," I said. "I think maybe you should go on ahead without me."

"Okay," said Octavia, a bit too eagerly. She quickly began scuttling up the chasm with her legs spread. It was less than half a minute before she was so high up that I couldn't even see her, the echo of her plinking claw strikes against the rock being the only sign of her climbing. I winced. I had told her that she could go ahead without me, but I hadn't expected her to do it so quickly. There wasn't much I could do except continue climbing, one claw at a time.

A minute later, she re-emerged from the darkness above, this time suspended from a thread. She lowered herself until she was right above me. "Need a lift?"

"I certainly wouldn't mind one," I said, allowing her to secure a thread around my torso. A minute later, we reached the top of the vertical shaft and Octavia began leading me down a horizontal tunnel.

I followed behind her, squinting in the darkness. I could run faster than Octavia, but in the extremely low-light conditions of the tunnel, my footsteps were less confident and more plodding. "I'm guessing that Anne probably didn't have dragons in mind when she designed these tunnels" I said, glancing back at the vertical shaft.

Octavia laughed. "No, I don't think she anticipated you."

"So why are these tunnels big enough for us?" I asked. "Surely, ants wouldn't need tunnels of this size. They're much smaller than us."

"Anne isn't," said Octavia. "This is how big a tunnel would need to be to accommodate her."

"I wonder if there's a minimum size a creature needs to be sapient," I said. "In fact –"

"Hold on," said Octavia. "This is new."

I glanced past her. "I can't see anything. It just looks like the tunnel continues."

"Yes," she said. "It wasn't supposed to continue in this direction." She pointed up. "See that hole? That's supposed to be the part that connects to the surface."

"That would be the smaller ant-sized hole I was talking about," I said. "At least, that hole in the ceiling doesn't look big enough for someone like you, me, or Anne."

"Yes," said Octavia. "This tunnel ahead of us wasn't part of Anne's original design. It must be a recent addition."

"Or it could be an old addition, and she just never updated her original blueprints."

"No," said Octavia. She clawed at the ground. "It's loose. Recently dug out." She took a few tentative steps forward.

"Is this a problem?" I asked.

"Not a problem yet," said Octavia. "But now we're venturing into uncharted territory. I don't know where this tunnel is going to take us."

The larger fork of the tunnel still led us upward, but this time at a more gradual slope.

"I wonder when we'll start to see daylight," I said.

"Not much of that left," said Octavia. "By my reckoning, it's nearly dusk."

"I wish I had your intuitive sense of time. All I have to go by is the presence of sunlight."

"I don't think that's true," said Octavia. "You just need to get better at listening to the signals your own body is giving you. I can judge how much time has passed based on how much my silk reserves have regenerated, as well as the toxins."

My mind flashed back to the moment I'd witnessed Octavia unleashing her spinning toxic sludge attack, so wild in its execution that it had left her blind afterward. I asked, "ready to use that if the time calls?"

"As a matter of fact I am," said Octavia. "I'm hoping it doesn't come to that, but be ready. We're nearly there."

As I followed Octavia, I could see the last vestiges of natural light – the sun had set, but the last bit of natural twilight was still visible from within the tunnel.

As we climbed out, I inhaled deeply, drinking in the fresh air for the first time in far too long. The ground beneath our feet had the texture of rock that was recently sandblasted, just one part of the landscape that had been altered by the arrival of the elder dragon. I scanned the horizon, looking for any sign of Anne or her ants, and saw the two sentry ants, which had already begun marching west, the same direction as the now-set sun whose last remaining bits of light were peeking out from behind the horizon. The two sentry ants led us to the top of a slope.

I heard Octavia's gasp before I saw the ants.

The small hill we'd climbed, I now realized, was the lip of a crater, giving us a clear vantage point for a mass of writhing ants at the crater's center. Two forces opposed each other: red fire ants on the far west side, Anne's black armored ants on the near east nearest to us. The ants moved in waves, seeming to march toward the center of the crater in formation, and then away, in a movement that seemed almost synchronized, until I realized that the movement of the red and black ants was actually slightly out of sync: the red ants feinted forward, and the black ants mirrored their movement a second later. The fire ants, seemingly reacting to the black ants, then withdrew. This constant posturing, marching forward and back, advance and retreat, continued in a constant rhythm.

Toward the back of the black armored ant formation, I noticed a familiar shape. "Anne's down there," I said. "In the middle of that back row of black ants. Why is she in the fray? She's the type to command her troops from afar."

"She has to be close to give direct instructions," said Octavia.

"We've seen this scene before," I said. "Armored ants versus fire ants. Last time, the armored ants won, easily, without Anne commanding them. What changed?"

"We could go up and ask her," said Octavia.

I hesitated, reluctant to leave our safe perch at the edge of the crater. Octavia rocked back and forth, seeming to share my hesitation.

"Should we just go and ask her?" Octavia glanced behind us, looking back at the hole we'd emerged from. "Do we want to get involved in Anne's battle?"

"We're already involved," I said. "This isn't just Anne's battle; it's our battle. We formed an alliance with Anne to beat the fire ants. You seemed hesitant to believe that she was really on our side, but here she is, putting herself at risk, battling the fire ants. There are a lot of ways that this can go wrong, but if we want our side to win, we can't just sit back and watch." I began walking toward the center of the crater, and Octavia followed behind.

As we neared the center of the crater, I marveled at how orderly the ants seemed, forming rows. It wasn't just Anne's ants who showed this military-like rank formation; something about the typically chaotic fire ants seemed to have found order as well. As we approached, the sun receded even further beyond the horizon, and in the darkness of night, I could see an ethereal glow at the center of the crater, emitted by what looked like a large piece of shiny metal several feet across. "There's something down there," I said.

"Yes," called out Anne, who had broken off from her ant formation to meet us. "My armored minions are capable of holding the line, yet we find ourselves unable to transport it."

I blinked. "It?"

"Approach," said Anne.

As I stepped toward the rear lines of her massive ant formation, I could better make out the shape of the glowing metallic object that served as the centerpiece of this standoff. "Is that–"

Elder Dragon Scale aura buff: +1% to all offensive abilities

A notification briefly obstructed my view before I blinked it away. In my peripheral vision, I could still see the window as I drew nearer.

"Seems like the grand old dragon left behind a present," Octavia noted, acknowledging the same notification. "And it left quite a mark."

"Advance," said Anne.

Nearing the rear of her ant formation, I noticed the numbers altering, gradually increasing.

Elder Dragon Scale aura buff: +4% to all offensive abilities

"Why does it keep increasing?" said Octavia, apparently seeing the same thing.

"Is the buff proximity-based?" I asked.

"Indeed," said Anne. "And I have several plans for utilizing it, should we succeed in returning it to my workshop. Direct contact with the scale would, by my estimation, double your offensive capabilities." She turned her gaze back to the ongoing conflict. "My supply of ants dwindles. I attempted to deploy the smaller worker ants, but alas, they did not survive the initial assaults. These armored ants are my final reserve."

"Why can't your armored ants win?" I said. "They had no difficulty beating the fire ants earlier."

"I created these armored ants to be impervious to the fire ants' bites," said Anne. "Their armor was intended to render them invincible. They were invincible, until now."

"What changed?" said Octavia.

I glanced down at the status window as I took a step forward.

Elder Dragon Scale aura buff: +6% to all offensive abilities

"The dragon scale," I said. "It buffs offense, not defense. It strengthens the ants' bites, not their armor."

"Precisely," said Anne. "The best outcome I can achieve presently is the deadlock you currently observe. Neither side can make an advance on the scale without becoming vulnerable. The first to act ensures their own defeat. Currently, both sides are balanced, but it won't be long before the next fire ant reinforcement wave arrives, and these are the last of my ants. Your arrival is most fortuitous. I had no other options, save for retreat."

I looked at the rows of ants in front of us, hundreds and hundreds on each side, more ants than I had ever seen in one place at the same time. I was grateful to have several rows of Anne's armored ants separating me from the enemy. The last time Octavia and I had faced a fire ant swarm of this size, our only option had been to retreat. And now, thanks to the dragon scale aura, their bites would be even more dangerous than usual.

"Alright," I said, turning to Anne. "Got any plans for breaking this stalemate?"

"Indeed I do. Drew, I hope you saved your stamina."

I grinned. "Don't worry. I came ready for a fight."

Class: Baby Dragon

Level: 10 (max reached for current class)

Exp progress toward class ascension: 48%

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