NOVEL NEXT 101 - Archmund Loses Track of Gelias But This is Completely Distinct from A Betrayal
And so Archmund decided the best way all of them could spend their time.
Archmund quickly explained his plan to his companions — his plan to get them all Gemmed up and up to his level by creating custom Gems for them, assigned them a group of undead each as starter, which would remain docile under his control — it was more efficient, he reasoned, to just use them as starter stock instead of letting them go to waste — and sent each group off towards spawning pools in the Dungeon, where the dead would rise.
If the dead started acting funny, if they gave any sign of deviating from their instructions, Rory, Gelias, Mary, and Beatrice were to put them down with prejudice. He didn't want any factors interfering with this totally amazing plan that would make them all extremely powerful without additional complications.
They could go and start generating strong, pure Gems, while he did a bit of tinkering to figure out if he could naturally shape Gems that would enhance their weak points. From what his allies had told him, all known methods of shaping Gems was inefficient — they required whittling down Monsters slowly and gradually to force them to adopt certain attributes, or they required synthesizing hundreds of lesser Gems with terrible yields.
"I don't like the idea of splitting up," Rory said. "Beatrice doesn't either."
"I told you not to tell him! I don't want to look bad in front of him!"
Gelias gave them both a withering look.
Gemmy?
A few displays flashed on the Gemstone Tablet. An elaborate animation played. A tendril of magic entered a Gemstone Keycard. The clash of the foreign magic with the Attuned magic caused the card to vibrate as crude text appeared on its surface, though the vibration stopped once the text fully formed.
Archmund tried to ignore how dark and muddy the magic looked, how it was clearly the Dungeon's and not his own. It was fine. As long as it obeyed him, it would be fine.
But he got the principle. He sent a simple test message to their cards, entirely telepathically. They jumped when they got it and felt the vibration. In a world where cell phones didn't exist, the strongest vibration most people would ever feel was the rattling of a carriage, not the incessant daily reminder of vibrate mode.
"Huh," Rory said. "So if you need us, you can just send us a message?"
"What if we need to report back to you?" Beatrice said. "To keep you updated on our progress?"
Archmund checked the screen again. "It's an Attunement benefit. A Skill so minor no one bothered ever documenting it. You can change the words on the Keycards, and they'll get sent back to me."
Rory, Mary, and Beatrice sent him test messages.
"What about Gelias?" Rory said.
Gelias gave a thin smile. "I'll be fine."
"Yeah," Archmund said. "He's self-sufficient."
Gelias made it five hundred feet into the Dungeon, the restless dead moaning behind him, before he drew his bow and shot them all those zombies through the heads.
True to Archmund's word, they remained docile until the very moment they dissolved into black miasma.
This was, all told, not good.
Archmund wasn't acting like himself.
No, that wasn't true. Because all told, Gelias agreed with some of Beatrice's thoughts about her cousin. He was glory-seeking hubristic tryhard. He was a crafty bastard who kept secrets. He had major blind spots when it came to how he saw the world.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
But he was also smart. He was also a prodigy in magic. He could grasp higher concepts like "organization" and "long-term planning" — concepts Gelias only barely understood himself due to the ancient whispers of his bow. He was capable of seeing the bigger picture. That made him dangerous.
But, Gelias had thought, he was also a friend. One who was bad at showing it, but he genuinely seemed to care about them enough to drag them along on this journey. Nothing else could explain why he'd bothered bringing them along into the Dungeon. They were nobles; even if they were stronger than the average peasant, they still weren't suited to be glorified pack mules — and he hadn't asked for that. Things just didn't add up fully.
It was surprising that he hadn't been more curious about why Rory and Beatrice been acting so servile. Even if he'd found it odd, he was insatiably curious. Why hadn't he pushed against their shifting attitudes?
Because Rory and Beatrice had jumped at the opportunity he'd offered them.
And even worse, Gelias knew they were acting like themselves. This was genuinely how they'd react in other similar situations. Beatrice jumped at the chance to get stronger, and Rory would gladly support her.
They might have been pushed over the edge, but they'd been blinded too.
By the same greed that wormed its way into all human hearts.
He wondered how much time he had remaining before something truly bad happened. Whether it was Archmund catching on to what he was doing, or his friends deciding that he had become a genuine impedient to their continued existence.
By now, Archmund would've seen the dots representing the Monsters vanish. Without a Keycard, Gelias would remain difficult to track, but the traces of his magic would leave a telltale signature, a ripple against the background of the Dungeon.
But he'd left some of his arrows scattered across the Dungeon from where he'd fought the Monsters. Those, too, carried traces of his magic, and they were scattered far and wide along the path they'd followed.
There was a chance they would work to cloak him, to distract from his current location.
Sighing, he wrapped his magic tightly around his body, as dense as he could while still being able to hear his bow, and set off to find somewhere the miasma and the watchful presence of Archmund wasn't so dense.
He would free his friends, all four of them, from the clutches of the Dungeon.
Archmund frowned when he noticed the dead near Gelias suddenly vanish from his tablet. Nothing happened to the colored icons representing Mary, Beatrice, or Rory, nor the dead around them. But Gelias hadn't bothered Attuning a Keycard, so Archmund could only suspect the worst.
"Mary," he said, before he remembered that he'd sent Mary out on her own to harvest some Gems.
"Looks like you're wondering what happened!" said Gemmy. "In cases like this, when Monsters vanish from the display, it means they've ceased to meaningfully exist!"
That sounded a little obvious. He wondered whether Gemmy existed for people who weren't familiar with video game mechanics, like the natives of this world.
"Do you think something happened to Gelias?" Archmund said. He preferred to say these things out loud, even if Gemmy could read his thoughts. That felt less invasive, even if the sprite's voice felt like the tinkling of bells inside of his skull..
"Can't say! Without capturing his Attuned signature, we can only trace him when he exposes his magic! As a foreign presence in the Dungeon, his magic will pop up immediately!"
Blinking green dots appeared on the Dungeon floormap. There were nearly twenty of them, many spread slightly off the path they'd come — far more than he'd expected.
Arrows, left behind from Gelias's attacks. Still holding traces of his magic.
"Here are all of the unidentified magic signatures in Tier 2 of the Dungeon, based on MADAR!"
"MADAR?"
"MAgic Detection And Ranging! It senses the positions of foreign elements based on how they displace the ambient magical field!"
Right. This place was screwing with him. He was certain of it now. MADAR was just too convenient of an acronym and he was almost sure it would never come up again.
"Can't you tell which ones are older?"
"All of them are about equal in timing! Without a full profile of the desired magic, it's impossible to know!"
"Then maybe we should recover those arrows he's been leaving behind."
This was work that Monsters could do. He tapped the spawning pools nearest to all of the splotches of Gelias's magic, concentrating the Dungeon's power to those pools. He could only control a small fraction of it through this interface, though it was shocking that a mortal such as him could control the vast primordial energy of a Dungeon at all.
But he had enough power in reserve to create a spawning pool right in his office. A corner of the office darkened, being filled with oily black miasma, between solid and gas.
As a precaution, he pulled out his Ruby of Energy, letting it float right above the pool, and he placed his Gemstone Rapier right on his desk, right within grasping range. He wasn't going to die to stupid mistakes if he could help it, and his reflexes were fast enough to knock any projectiles out of the air.
The spawned in three monsters. Then, he tinkered with his Gemstone Tablet until he could see their stats all next to each other.
They seemed to spawn with random qualities.
Willpower and Constitution were the limiting factors.
While his companions were building the strongest Gems possible, he was going to specialize.