Chapter Nineteen: The Neighbor

Things have been much more relaxed in the dungeon these last few days. The spiders have been busy disguising the secret entrance as just a rock with a bunch of smaller egg sacks on it. I was first going to try to disguise it as the kind of egg you might expect a baby Tiny to crawl out of, but then thought adventurers might actually want to smash something like that. A bunch of smaller sacks on a rock is way less interesting.

In the Secret Base, the kobold and the ants have been hard at work digging, though the kobold basically spent the night after the move over by the spring, cleaning her robe. Which was fine by me. It gave me time to get the ants and spiders to make her a gift of a bed.

I don't know exactly what kobolds like to sleep on, but I'd bet they'd prefer something softer than just the floor. I had considered just making a little nest of webbing for her, but decided to make her almost a hammock. I say almost because it's not particularly high up, nor is it designed to swing and potentially dump the occupant out on the floor.

It's more like a thick sheet of silk stretched over a divot in the floor. Because that's exactly what it is. I figure it should have enough give for her to be comfortable, and her confused look upon returning with her clean robe was worth the mana spent. When she figured out it was a bed for her, she even smiled over at my core. I like having a Resident.

Oh, I've gotten my new form of invader now, too. I've been spending mana on getting more mining nodes growing. I've got copper, iron, marble, and a minor green gem. It says it's peridot, but I thought that was yellow? Whatever it is, the Delvers love it. And so do the gremlins.

The gremlins are little twisted bipedal things, makes me think of a scaled lemur or something. Thankfully, the slimes seem to love the things, and the dire rats like them, too. I don't know if the spiders don't like them, or if they just have difficulty hunting them, but I've only seen a few spiders get one.

They love to go after the various mining nodes, and since I don't get any mana for them sneaking off with some, I do my best to keep that from happening. I've also had a few more Delvers from the deep wander in, but they've all been less interesting than the first pair. They're mostly various critters that I can quickly defeat, and most run away from encounters, and then away from my demesne.

Operation: block the tunnels has been proceeding well, which also means operation: bigger secret base has been going well. Everything that gets dug out of the base gets taken to the various tunnels to choke them down.

The library is now an actual book shelf in the wall, and I have a second book, too. The lab has become a full alcove now, and the ants are constantly expanding and adjusting the alchemical stuff according to Queen's will. She's been interested in iron since I wrote down a few examples of what steel looks like for its structure. I think she wants to either make some, or wants to extract some property of it.

I think steel ants would be cool, but I don't know if that's a thing. I don't hinder her efforts, though. She's definitely got the alchemy knowledge, not me.

Speaking of steel, now that the chimney in the house is open, I've turned the room with the fireplace into a little smithy/smeltery combo. Most of the miners don't bother with the place, but a few do avail themselves of it, and I eagerly take notes on how to actually process ore, and how they actually use it.

I've also made a workshop on the second floor of the house, a few rooms from the public lab. A few of the woodworkers and masons, and even a jewler like to practice their craft there, which means I get even more notes on how to craft things. I've been putting the notes in the second book, and making sure to illustrate as I can.

I don't think the kobold can read, but she likes to look through the book and she tries to copy some of the crafting advice. She even mined a bit of copper and processed a small bar. I don't know what her plans are for it, but she was definitely proud of it.

Elsewhere in the tunnels, Jello has been growing by leaps and bounds. I wonder if she could somehow hear when I thought that gelatinous cubes are cool. She's hardly a cube, but she's definitely getting bigger and a bit more transparent. She's basically taken to just sitting at the smallest tunnel exit she can fit in, and practically filter-feeding on gremlins and mice.

Works for me.

What doesn't work for me is some of the reports I've been getting from my expedition birbs and bats. They've been steadily expanding the map on the wall for a while now, and I've been steadily expanding the 'war room' to fit it. If I can web a library to a wall to make a sign, I can do the same with a war room to make a map. Anyway, the town is actually pretty big, and it looks like I would not be able to take the whole thing with an expansion, even with that massive price tag. But that's not what's not working.

They've found the wall and what looks like a bay to either a lake or ocean. I actually just sent an expedition to see if it's salty or fresh. No, seagull invaders don't mean it's an ocean. Those pestilence birds will live anywhere with food, not just on beaches. But that's also not what's not working for me. I mean, it's technically not working for me, because seagulls suck and I want to know if I'm on a lake or an ocean.

No, what's not working is a new label on my map. I mean, it is working, but I don't like what it's saying. See, I had never really stopped to wonder why people would be jonesing so hard for herbalism stuff, or for the mining stuff I have now, too. I just figured I'd want to have some healing potions if they're a thing where I lived. Probably wouldn't have helped me with the semi-truck, but still.

There wouldn't be all that demand for my supply just because people want it to put on their mantle or in their medicine cabinets. And if I was the only supplier around, there wouldn't be alchemists and such handy to use what I have. I had never considered that, though people seem to make a lot of healing potions at my workshop, people don't tend to drink a lot of them on my grounds.

But now I know why. The map doesn't lie. It might be vague at some times, but it doesn't lie. And now it's showing another dungeon on the other side of the town. My expeditionists say people seem a lot more cautious around it than with me. I'm not sure how far I'll trust a bird's word on how people act, no matter how many have heard.

Still, it'd make sense. Elf guy was very cautious the first couple times he visited, and mentioned something about me potentially being murderous. I had thought he was talking about some other dungeons far away, but now I wonder if it's a lot closer to home than I had originally suspected. For what the other dungeon seems to be, I wouldn't be surprised at all if it's murderous. I doubt there are many cemetery dungeons that are all sunshine and rainbows