Chapter 60 Time (Patreon)

            With so many projects needed to make the dungeon’s essence creatures effective against the mages, years began to pass. Although the dungeon was hard at work, he was not the only one. Once the mages figured out that the dungeon had created a new material to give his electric core creatures flight, the mages brought in new specialists to figure out how to replicate it.

            For nearly two decades, the mages invaded the labyrinth twice a year and killed anything that had a mind that was within three hundred yards of the mages regardless of line of sight. These mages were able to spot and kill essence creatures when there were over a hundred yards of earth, metal, concrete, and carbon nanotubes between them. The mages were able to do this thanks to a spell they called soul sight. It allowed them to see through matter and look directly at a soul. Apparently, it had variable range, and generally, the mages used a variety of spells that allowed them to kill the dungeon’s creatures before the dungeon’s could react, as there was a hundred feet or more material between them. Thanks to the various biomes in both the root and branch system of the labyrinth, the population of the dungeon’s essence creatures never fell to critical levels, but it was utterly frustrating to the dungeon that they fought so conservatively, especially when they had so many defensive spells protecting them. Fortunately, they never came close to the nest housing the labyrinth humans.

            Each time the mages came, they collected the cores and bodies of the electric core creatures. It didn’t take long for the dungeon to realize that the reason why they took out the core before taking the bodies was to keep the core alive, albeit they had to put the cores in their familiars. As for the bodies, they did not use them for food. Instead, they brought them to their mage's tower and had some specialists attempt to figure out how to independently grow more of the metallic hydrogen. The dungeon almost wanted to call the specialist some sort of necromancer, except this specialist was able to bring life back into the parts that they wanted.

            Over the years, the dungeon spied on them as they did their best to use the living material of essence creatures to attempt to grow more metallic hydrogen. At first they did simple things like grafting on the limbs to various livestock, but at first, the livestock were not able to survive the grafting process. When that went too slowly the mages captured the dungeon’s deer until they had a couple of breeding pairs, but it turned out that the deer’s ability to fly made them very difficult to stay caged, and over time, a few dozen breeding pairs escaped and went out into the world.

            A few years later, one of their offspring even returned to the labyrinth and was killed. The dungeon absorbed and then examined it and found that its genome was stable. Then more began showing up, and the dungeon realized that deer can breed every year, starting the year they are born and that it wouldn’t take too many years for those deer to change the food chain on the planet. Albeit considering the immortal's plans, they may find that useful.

            Eventually, one of the mages managed to graft the bone that grew metallic hydrogen to saplings, and they were able to grow as much as they wanted, albeit the metallic hydrogen grew very slowly and created a lot of heat as the plant-animal hybrid stripped hydrogen off of molecules and used it to make metallic hydrogen. The research took decades, though, and even then, the dungeon wasn’t sure what they wanted metallic hydrogen for. That said, it was clear that they were trying to take what the dungeon had created and make it their own. They were adjusting the metallic hydrogen so that any farmer could grow it. The only thing was that thanks to the nature of growing metallic hydrogen if they used their various spells that made plants grow faster on this new plant, it would burst into flames as the process created a lot of heat. They had no choice but to wait the years it took to grow a significant portion of metallic hydrogen.

            Although the dungeon was amused by the antics of the humans, he still had his own research, and that was going very slowly. For instance, making an essence creature able to resist vacuum required a complete redesign. The dungeon needed to create something similar to a whale, dolphin, or crocodile. An essence creature able to breathe oxygen while also able to resist the lack of pressure in a vacuum. Where a whale or dolphin was able to use their blowhole to keep intense water pressure from drowning them, this creature would need something similar to keep its insides from being pulled out, thanks to the lack of pressure. Furthermore, it would need extra lenses like a crocodile had to go between vacuum and normal pressure. This creature absolutely needed lungs and the ability to hold extra oxygen in them, as a creature able to breathe through its skin would not do well in vacuum.

            The one major advantage the dungeon had was that, thanks to metallic hydrogen, his next essence creature would be able to swim through the magnetic field of the moon, but that created more engineering problems. For instance, where to place the metallic hydrogen and how to wire its essence channels so that it could move swiftly as it fought the mages.

            Although the dungeon needed the essence creature to move swiftly through air and vacuum, the dungeon also needed this creature to be able to have long-range attacks. The dungeon figured that it would use metallic hydrogen as rails for a rail launcher for the prototype creature, but later on, changed to a coil gun so that the heat didn’t kill the creature. The only issue with the coil gun was that it was much more complicated than a pair of electrified rails. That said, a coil gun would allow his creature to fire multiple shots.

            The surprisingly simplest problem to fix was the vision problem. The mages liked to make themselves invisible AND create illusions of themselves to distract the dungeon’s essence creatures. The dungeon decided to try to make a radar with a radio transmitter and three receivers on a test bear with an electric core. It took a few years to figure out how to make a radio and a few more years to make a receiver. The reason why the dungeon was so focused on radar, like in aircraft from the dungeon's homeworld, instead of bat sonar, was because bat sonar relied on sound to work. Sound doesn’t go through a vacuum. That meant that even if it took a few years, the dungeon needed radio to get past the illusions of the mages. Whether it would work with the whole light bending thing was another question, but the dungeon could only work on one thing at a time. Sonar would definitely work on the whole light bending invisibility spell, but that’s probably one of the many reasons why they put a vacuum around themselves, but Radar was definitely at least half the answer, as the dungeons new creatures would not attack the illusions anymore.

            The essence creature’s core powered the transmitter and receivers, which were biological in nature, but still took more power than any of the dungeon’s creatures could create naturally. Since this bear was designed to see with radio, there was no need to keep the eyes and ears of the bear, so instead, the dungeon wired the parts of its brain needed for sight and sound to the receivers. Considering this was meant for an essence creature intended to fly through vacuum, the ability to listen to sound was not needed. The dungeon was shocked when the first test bear it tried this on was able to use its biological radar to navigate the world. Sure, it took a few minutes for the bear to get used to it, but afterward it had little problem. It was even able to react to things that were behind it, so the radar gave it a type of three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sense. The dungeon just needed to make a useful creature to put the radar on.

            That said, with the invention of radio, the dungeon had a new toy to give his growing human population. At this point, the human population inside the labyrinth was over seventy people, and the dungeon was able to easily make radio-controlled cars and boats for them. After they played with them for a little while, the dungeon broke their toys and let them know if they wanted to play with them, they would have to fix them. It didn’t take long for them to do so, and after that, the competitive humans began trying to figure out ways to beat each other in races, and other games with their radio-controlled vehicles.

            The dungeon was intentionally echoing Nicola Tesla, whose first use of radio was directing a model boat in 1898. The dungeon was hoping to encourage his people to get into electronics. The dungeon had lots of plans for computer chips, for instance, automated drones to go after these mages who overused soul sight. As soon as the dungeon had the ability to send weapons with no soul after the mages, things would change; until then, the dungeon would have to build essence creatures that could somehow get around all their advantages.


Authors note- So we are probably going to be bouncing back and forth between upgrading essense creatures and impriving tech, or at least the humans who will make the tech.