Dungeon of Assassins [LitRPG Through the Eyes of the NPCs]

Selvara had really enjoyed her nap. No disasters, no adventurers around... It had just been quiet enough. She had enough faith in Malvorik by now that she trusted him not to get into mischief if she left him alone for a few hours. She walked through the tunnel from her room and opened the door to the heart room.

"What have you done now!"

The floor was covered in silver lines, runes and symbols. Magical energy twitched through the room. Pieces of metal whirled through the room without any recognizable system. Selvara stopped in the doorway. A metal blade cut the air directly in front of her and then continued to swirl in a spiral through the room.

<Not now.>

Selvara refrained from answering. Malvorik had never been so short and concise. He sounded extremely focused. She carefully took another step back and watched. The chaos of lightning, magic and metal grew wilder and wilder. When it seemed as if everything was going to explode and Selvara was on the verge of slamming the door shut and putting the iron bolt in place.... everything stopped.

For a heartbeat, even the lightning seemed to hang in the air. Then everything was pulled to a point in front of the heart crystal and slammed together. A short sword hung in the room with the blade pointing upwards. Only the hilt was missing. A four-step-long metal rod floated below it. The two connected. Magic runes circled the connection point and more glowing signs flashed on the surface. The staff slid upwards into the underside of the crossguard until only a short piece protruded as a handle. Then only a simple short sword hung in the air. Slowly, it floated to the ground and fell the last handbreadth to the stone floor with a clatter.

<So. I am finished. You can come out. I actually wanted to have the artifact finished before you woke up. I enchanted the components individually. Putting the enchantment matrices together was more complex than I expected. Balancing repulsion effects and divergences required extensive modifications to the local magic field.>

"Please wait. Start at the beginning. Is this a magical short sword? Then what was the metal rod for? Did you use the extra mass to make the sword heavier or harder?"

<Is that possible? But no, I had a completely different effect in mind.>

One of the lurking stranglers came waddling into the room and picked up the sword. In his hand, the hilt seemed far too small.

<Now pay attention.>

The strangler swung the sword a little and stopped it with a jerk. The blade hissed forward while the handle grew longer and longer. From one heartbeat to the next, the short sword had become a polearm. The blade bent down briefly before the strangler grabbed the pole further up with his other hand and stabilized the weapon.

"A spear?"

<I modeled it after the old Cathurian bladestaffs. Only with a variable staff length. From four paces, far longer than even the aforementioned bladestaff, to an easily portable short sword. Strictly speaking, the handle does not extend. It's a long metal rod, that is now located in an extra-dimensional space within the crossguard.>

Selvara flew down and the strangler held out the blade in both hands for her to examine.

"The handle is round."

<Yes, this corresponds to the original design.>

"Have you ever heard of blade alignment? How is the user supposed to recognize in which direction the blade is aligned when striking? If it's not exactly right, the blow will bounce off."

<Ah! Yes... I see. So that's what this part of the enchantment is for... I had wondered why a mental connection with the sword was necessary. Of course. The wielder always knows exactly how the sword is aligned. It also makes it easier to hit gaps in the armor or vulnerable spots. Interesting. The authors of the old works on the magical wands of the Imperial Guard probably took this so much for granted that they never mentioned it explicitly.>

"Wait, wait! How did you create a mental link to the carrier? Don't you need some extremely rare crystals for that?"

<I used a little of the crystal powder that those mute invaders used to kill the townspeople. I'm almost completely certain these are cerebrum crystals. Ideal components for mental magic and spirit connections.>

"Why did they have cerebrum crystals in their bodies?"

<A very good question. I would venture the theory that there was a special salt solution in the liquid that was fed to the prisoners. Powdered cerebrum crystals were dissolved in it. A spell or alchemical process was used to stimulate the crystals to grow at a massively accelerated rate. However, this theory has several problems: firstly, there is no logical reason to grow crystals in a body. Except perhaps blood crystals, but that is something completely different. It should not work at all in a living being. Crystals are grown in large vessels with salt solution. Not in host bodies. Secondly, it happened far too quickly. Even with magic and in the right containers, crystals grow very slowly. We're talking months here. Not a few hours. Thirdly, there is no way to grow cerebrum crystals. You can with other crystals, but not with these. That's what makes cerebrum crystals so valuable.>

"I don't understand. What does that mean?"

<I don't understand it either. That was one of the reasons why I chose this type of enchantment. That way I could prove conclusively that they were real cerebrum crystals.>

Selvara fluttered around the room for a while, thinking.

<We can't do any more at the moment. We have to wait until the intruders become active again. Next time we'll try to capture one of them.>

"And who will you give this blade stick?"

<The Assassin Shepherd. Did you see how he fought?>

"Of course. I thought he was dead a dozen times. But somehow he wriggled out of every mess."

<I think he'll like the artifact. With my current skills as a mage, this is by far the best I can create. Each piece is a single artifact, as steel can only hold one spell at most. The blade is reinforced with a weapon spell. The hilt-staff contains the mind link and the crossguard contains the extradimensional space.>

"Too bad you didn't get any XP for saving the duskgnomes. Maybe that would have been enough for another level as a mage."

The crystal next to her suddenly turned pale.

"Malvorik?"

<It was quite hectic shortly after the battle. I haven't even looked at all the messages yet.>

Previously unread messages from the voice of the world flashed past on the mirror wall. He stopped at one of them.

Quest completed: Save the duskgnomes

Success rate: Significant contribution.
Bonus for long-term accommodation
Reward: 500 XP
Material reward (gold) cannot be applied to dungeon hearts.
Alternative reward required...

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Additional patterns learned:
Simple furniture (chairs, tables, stools, beds)
Simple household items (wooden buckets, wooden plates, wooden spoons, wooden cups)
Simple house components (doors, windows, trap doors, shutters)
Food (gnome bread, trail rations, mushroom stew, mushroom soup, rat goulash)

Malvorik's crystal sparkled with delight. <That's what I call a fitting reward.>

"Yes, great. We get a horde of gnomes on our doorstep and as a reward for taking them in, you get the necessary interior design patterns."

<I am satisfied. So, before another catastrophe requires me to raise Dungeon Master...>

"Feel free to increase your mage class. More than two levels difference will result in heavy deductions on further XP gains. I don't want that either."

Character class increased: Mage to level 6

Cannot increase mana capacity: Incompatible race.

Cannot increase mana regeneration: incompatible race.

Select Level 3 spell from list...

<At last! Level 3 spells. Now I just need a few more years of peace and quiet in the spell workshop to put together new spells from the existing modules. But for now, it's just one spell. What do I need the most...>

"Battle magic?"

<I can only use it when an intruder is standing right in front of my crystal. An event that I would like to avoid.>

"I actually meant for me. I don't want to be selfish, but..."

<Oh, oh. I'm sorry about that. I hadn't thought of that. You need magic more than I do at the moment. Although I do have a few ideas of what I could do... But good.>

A long list of spells appeared on the mirror. Selvara read through it with increasing confusion.

"I don't understand most of the names. With the others... What's the difference between a firebolt and an ice projectile? There are quite a few spells that sound like battle spells, but which is the strongest?"

<That depends on what's important to you. Fire hail is an optimized and strengthened version of flame projectile. Instead of a single fist-sized fireball, you can throw a whole swarm of them. If you're looking for the level 3 spell that does the most damage, this is the one they'll recommend.>

"I can tell from your emotions that you don't agree."

<Correct. It's hard to direct the swarm at a single target. Hitting multiple targets at once is almost hopeless without a master-level control skill. This is a level you can only reach if you work for years to improve your precision and control. However, battlemages usually focus on skills that increase the range or sheer power of spells. Legendary revenants often chose this spell. Against an onrushing horde or a giant, the spell is indeed extremely effective. Otherwise, the collateral damage is often considerable. Even a skilled battlemage will only be able to hit a single human-sized target with about half of the projectiles. This reduces the effectiveness considerably. In unprotected forests, the spell easily causes forest fires and if you even think about using it within a city, you should be grateful if you are only thrown into prison and not immediately hanged.>

"What would you recommend then?"

<The spells differ in range, accuracy, damage effect and side effects. No fire. Causes too many problems. Water spells are only really effective against fire creatures. Air does even less damage, but pushes the target away from you. Can be useful.>

"Keep it short. No matter how hard I try, I have too little prior knowledge to make a decision here myself."

<You want to be part of a team. Both here in the dungeon and with the others on quests. Anyone can hurt monsters. We can buy support and protection magic at the academy. You can only get combat spells if you have an excellent reputation. Therefore, I would take the spell frost breath. Medium damage, short range, versatile. Often slows or paralyzes enemies. Additional damage against cold-blooded enemies and both fire and water elementals. You can also use it to extinguish fire, create a slippery ice surface or freeze water.>

Selvara thought about it for a moment: "Sounds good. I'll take it."

Spell learned: Level 3 - Frost breath (Layman I)

Malvorik tested the spell and a light blue cone of concentrated cold traveled from the heart crystal across the room towards the entrance of the heart room. Frost spread across the floor where the cone touched it. Flowers of ice covered the stone wall around the door. The rat minotaur looked in through the entrance in alarm, but immediately calmed down at a mental signal from the dungeon heart.

Selvara whistled through her teeth in awe: "Wow. Now let me have a go!"

She concentrated on her familiar connection and the spell also appeared in the list of spells she knew. She carefully read through the detailed description of the spell, flew out of the heart room into the antechamber and beckoned the rat minotaur to take cover behind her. The massive figure shuffled reluctantly into the corner.

Selvara concentrated and cast the spell. As stated in the description, she deliberately exhaled strongly with the last syllable and a cone of cold spread into the room. However, it was much smaller and weaker. Where Malvorik had covered almost half the room with hoarfrost, in her case it was at best a two-step wide area.

<Rule request: Why was my familiar's spell effect so much weaker than mine?>

Information: The effect of spells of the "Breath" class scales with the size of the user. As a dungeon, Mage Malvorik counts towards the maximum size level and therefore achieves the maximum permitted effect for a level 3 spell.

<I was not aware of this. A note in the spell description would have been helpful.>

"That's all right. It's still very practical. At least I can use it near the rest of the group. At least indoors, otherwise it would be far too dangerous."

<Then we come to the last open point. A mage feat.>

Select feat from list...

Malvorik displayed the feats on the mirror wall. The list was almost endless. Advantages with certain types of spells. More complex artifact possibilities. The ability to create golems, animated armor or flying self-fighting weapons.

Names of feats appeared on another wall, where he sorted them and kept removing or adding them.

"There's no end to it. Mages who don't spend their lives on quests and in dungeons normally only get to level 6. Do they then have to choose six feats from this endless selection?"

<Indeed. One of the biggest dilemmas of mages. You can learn many feats this way, but it takes years of study. You also need a master who has mastered the feat. Of course, they charge exorbitant prices for rare feats. Novices often spend weeks poring over lists to plan their path in life. If you need a feat as a prerequisite for another and you only think of it at level 6, then that's it.>

"You did it pretty quickly the first time."

<I had years to think about what I wanted. However, I should have thought again about my changed circumstances as a dungeon. If I hadn't been so hasty, my choices would have been quite different.>

"What will you choose now?"

<There are many things I would like to be able to do. But I've narrowed it down to what I need most at the moment. That's equipment for our adventurers and gold. Therefore, I need artifacts that can be sold and that don't require overly exotic parts to make.>

"That means? Don't make it so exciting."

<Spell matrices. There are several variants of this. I will take the first one from the list.> Malvorik's mental voice felt very self-satisfied. He made the descriptions appear on the mirror wall, where Selvara could study them.

Limited Spell Matrices

Enables the creation of artifacts with spell matrices with spells up to level 2. Spell matrices can also be used by non-mages. The spells used must be defined in all variables and produce a significantly reduced effect. To use them, you only need to say a command word and physically aim the artifact. The artifact drains the required mana from the user, even if he normally has no access to his mana supply.
The mana consumption is adjusted in proportion to the reduced effect.
Predecessor (but not required for) spell matrices.

Spell Matrices

Prerequisite: Mage level 5+
Enables the creation of artifacts with spell matrices with spells up to level 2. The user can use the full scope of the spell cast with all variables.
Can only be used by mages. Requires the utterance of a command word.
Mana consumption increased by one level.
Prerequisite and required for reinforced spell matrices

Reinforced Spell Matrices

Prerequisite: Mage level 6 + and Spell Matrices
Enables the creation of artifacts with reinforced spell matrices with spells up to level 3. The user can use the full scope of the spell cast with all variables. One of the variables can be increased. Can only be used by mages. Requires the utterance of a command word.
The mage must be able to cast spells at least one level higher than the desired level of the artifact spell.
Mana consumption significantly increased.

"Isn't the one in the middle better?"

<Ha! You'd think, wouldn't you? That's why no one ever takes Limited Spell Matrices. The textbooks strongly advise against it. But I think we have a gap in the market here. Small, inexpensive artifacts that can also be used by non-magically gifted people.>

"What kind of spells do you intend to use for this?"

<Well... I don't have anything suitable at the moment. But level 1 spells are relatively cheap.>

"How exactly do you imagine that. We're broke. Should Weylan just bludgeon a novice in an alley and steal his grimoire?"

<I would prefer a more subtle method of acquisition.>

"I think Weylan and Trulda are already busy looking for work."

<True. Without contacts in the city and sought-after character classes or skills, it won't be easy. But at least they won't be in danger.>