89
Master Garmstooth stood on the platform beside the dungeon portal. His hands were behind his back as he tried to maintain a somber demeanor.
“The next dungeon will test your endurance beyond anything you have ever dealt with before,” he announced. “This is why you will be given a longer preparation time. Don’t waste it.”
Beside him, Master Barrowclough nodded. “It is advised that you focus on your class synergies and maximize your focus on teamwork and support.”
“Your enemies will be dwarven constructs,” Master Garmstooth continued smoothly. “Golems like the ones you see around the city if you’re unlucky. Monstrous things of dwarven bronze and steel.”
“And the map itself has many traps.”
“That’s right,” Master Garmstooth grunted. “It ain’t an easy map this one. It’s tough. Brutal. We expect some of you to die.”
“But we hope you do not,” Master Barrowclough said with a kind smile.
“Hopes are for kids,” Master Garmstooth said. “If you want to survive, attend your lessons. Study dwarven constructs. Spend your time developing your strategies. The map and details will be released tomorrow. Any questions?”
Tania’s hand shot up.
Master Garmstooth squinted at her. “What is it, Tazzlefoot?”
“Can I go to the bathroom?”
A few chuckles turned to laughter as the tension broke. Even Master Garmstooth managed a little smirk after rolling his eyes.
“Get on with ya all, then,” he growled, dismissing them.
A few days later, Mila and Milo were in the library. He was tucked into a corner with a dozen thick books stacked in front of him. He was flipping through them to see if they had anything he could use.
It wasn’t the first time that the fortress had been used as a staging ground for a dungeon map. But it was the first time dwarven golems were being spawned.
Milo was excited and afraid at the same time.
How would his golems battle them? Tania’s blades were tough. They were dwarven bronze. But could they penetrate the thick dwarven bronze plating of massive golems?
Even Selma’s sword would have trouble.
That might leave Milo and Mila to blast them with their mana rifles. But would that be enough to blow holes in the golems’ plating?
He wasn’t sure.
He opened a large tome and was surprised to find a chapter describing a short battle that took place in a dwarven ruin to the north. Three mages had discovered two hefty golems guarding the ruin. When they got close, the golems had attacked.
The mages had fought using pyromancy and geomancy.
Fire and earth.
One geomancer and two pyromancers.
It had eventually proved effective, but the battle had lasted a long time. Both mages had to keep dropping back to recover their mana, losing precious advantages as the golems seemed to regenerate slowly between engagements.
It had been a battle of attrition.
Long.
Slow.
Painful.
The geomancer had lost an arm in the fight. He’d been saved only because one of the pyromancers had cauterized the wound which kept him alive long enough to get help from proper healers.
The arm had been sawn off by a spinning blade weapon the golems had used.
Milo shuddered reading about it. Despite the Prime’s assurances that he was mostly safe, he was as wary of the fortress as the other students. Which left mental scars.
He’d heard of some students who’d gone crazy. Others who couldn’t handle loud noises anymore.
The technique the trio had used to bring down the two golems was to try and melt their insides by superheating their metal plating. It took a long time to build up that much heat in their armor, though.
When they finally managed to do so, the golems had slumped.
Then they exploded as one last final trap tried to take the lives of the mages attacking them. Fortunately for the men, they’d been too exhausted to approach too quickly and were outside the initial blast radius.
Lucky for them.
But Milo wasn’t sure if he could replicate that tactic. His explosive grenades didn’t have that kind of heat. And he wasn’t sure they had the force to tear apart dwarven bronze.
Although, they did have the force to blow holes in thick granite, so maybe they would be helpful.
The problem was Spragg had run out of the material he’d used to create them. The shopkeeper had been apologetic, saying it was only a limited supply that he had in the first place. He would try to source more, but couldn’t guarantee it.
He thought about the mods Selma and Mila had given him. There’d been some which would let his golems spray flames from their hands. But from what he could understand, the time they could use it was limited. It relied on a compressed fluid in a small tank which would need refilling.
Something he couldn’t do in a dungeon.
He wracked his brains as he kept flicking through the books. Trying to consider tactics, mods, and gear which could give him some kind of advantage.
“This is all nonsense,” Mila said, her face twisted in disgust as she read one of the tomes. She poked the book. “Look! It’s talking about how this mage brought down a giant golem. He says it took days, and that the golem attacked him with all kinds of explosive weapons.”
Milo winced.
If his team faced explosives, would they get holes like Selma had?
“That’d be painful,” he muttered.
“It’d be a miracle,” she countered with an angry hiss. “Listen. He describes the golem as tall and square, with a wide domed head and two green gems for eyes. They’re not eyes, but whatever. And he says it had a hose which sprayed acid.”
Milo gulped. “Acid?”
“Yeah. And it tried to slice him in two with large clawed hands.”
“Right.”
“See? What a crock of old gumbo.”
“Huh?”
“It’s clearly a seventy-seven-gee model,” she said with a sigh. “They were made to tend gardens. It didn’t spray acid. It would have sprayed fertilizer or water. And the big clawed hands were garden shears to trim branches.”
“A gardening golem?”
“That’s right.” Mila rolled her eyes. “They’re harmless. They don’t know how to fight. It would have just stood there. The reason it took him so long to destroy it was because he was weak.”
Milo blinked. “Wow.”
“Right?” She shook her head. “And it says he had to fight the local villagers afterwards because they were, in his words, greedy for the gold they thought they could make from his hard work. But that’s not why they were angry, I’m sure of it.
They were angry because he’d just killed the golem that was making them all free food. ”
Milo found himself smiling wryly at that. “So, what you’re saying is that a mage went out and found a harmless golem and figured he could make some profit selling it.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m shocked,” Milo said blandly, picking up another book.
She threw hers down with a heavy thump and looked at him. “Milo, what are ya trying to find?”
“Anything on golems, really.”
“But it’s all nonsense. Everything you need to know is in the Workshop’s library and archives.”
“Yeah, but the dungeon is something made by humans, right?”
“No. The portal is dwarven.”
“I mean, the maps and levels are made by us.”
“Modified by you, yes.”
“Right.” He waved a hand. “So, that means the constructs will most likely be spawned with human interpretations. So, instead of a gardening golem, we’ll get the literal acid-spewing limb-cutter.”
“I don’t know if that’s how it works,” she said dubiously. “Have you checked the dungeon options?”
He looked up at her. “What?”
“In your pad?”
“I don’t have those options.”
“But the Tinkers have them,” Mila said, frowning at him. “They have a pad they use, don’t they? It’s how they make the dungeons. If they can do that, why can’t you? You have more access than they do, I’m sure.”
“Wait. The Tinkers have a pad?”
He felt a knot of pressure in his guts at the thought. Could he steal it? No. Probably not. That would cause problems. But if they had one, why didn’t his pad update with those details when the Prime gave him access?
“I saw them with it when I was Fulka,” she said. “Don’t you have one?”
He hadn’t investigate the Tinkers all that much.
From what little he’d seen of them bumbling through fixing doors an sometimes getting caught in traps they didn’t understand, he hadn’t thought there was anything they could teach him.
He groaned as he realized he should have been thinking of dungeons from the opposite side to what he had been. He shouldn’t be thinking of how to resolve them by studying what the teachers were directing him to study.
He should simply look at the dungeon portal itself.
And a pad would be helpful.
This was another case of him thinking too much like a student and not enough like someone who had gained permission to access functions of the fortress no other human had ever had. It was also a reminder that he needed to understand what he had access to.
And how to use it.
He glanced up at a nearby grille and let out a long sigh.
“Can you please go check out the Tinkers? I want to know everything about how they design dungeons.”
A little chirp echoed softly and then a Click scurried away, eager to uncover the secrets of the Tinkers.