Chapter 61 Void Dolphin (Patreon)

                   Forty more years passed as the dungeon tinkered with the locomotion ability of its new essence creature, the void dolphin. Although figuring out how to make it see with radio turned out to be simple, nothing else about the creature was. The problem was that the dungeon had to make the essence creature able to fly through the void, survive the void, and survive the attacks of the mages. That was proving to be a challenge. Making something able to survive the void was easy; making something that could fly through space using the moon's magnetic field was not super hard, at least not since the dungeon got ahold of metallic hydrogen. Combining speed and defense was a real headache… no wonder why the mages left all this tedious work to the dungeons.

                   While the dungeon figured out how to make the void dolphin work, it continued working with the humans. For instance, the dungeon was surprised at how slowly the essence humans he made aged. When he made them, they had the appearance of being in their twenties and they kept their youthful appearance until they were fifty years old, and even then, they only started to look like they were. Each one of them had children who appeared to be older than them. Apparently, when the dungeon made them, he had made them with completely new cells, and since they were fully grown when they got them, their cells had split far less often than the children born to them. Their children were starting to get old and have all the issues associated with old age. It was disappointing to the dungeon, as the dungeon was about to lose its most experienced and knowledgeable people. If the dungeon had emotions, he knew he would feel disheartened and melancholy, but he couldn’t feel emotions per se. He could logically feel disappointment that when they died, his plans would slow down.

                   Although his people were dying of old age, that did not mean they could not help him expand his knowledge. Up to this point, the dungeon refused to experiment on his humans because the dungeon did not want to become a murder monster churning out thinking people just kill them to slake its thirst. The dungeon had arm bears for that. That said, the arm bears could not give him feedback, so the dungeon started by giving these older humans electric cores.

                   The dungeon was relieved when there were no ill effects from taking on the core, albeit the dungeon made sure to put electric immunity essence channels in each of the humans. Once that was finished, the dungeon gave them a metallic hydrogen coating on the bones of their hands and feet. Within days, they were walking on air without fear, and soon, the rest of the humans were begging for the upgrade. The dungeon only promised upgrades if they helped with his research on computers. Within a year, someone managed to invent a simple abacus that ran off of electricity. Once they were able to walk on air, electronic research really began to take off.

                   Once the dungeon saw that those modifications were stable, the dungeon put radio transmitters and receivers in the humans’ heads. After nearly three years of adjustments, they were able to talk to each other using their radios. They were also able to control the various remote control devices with them.

                   At first, it gave the impression as a knockoff of telepathy, it didn’t take long for the dungeon to realize it was its own unique thing. For instance, the humans were able to turn it on and off at will, change the frequency they listened to and spoke in, and they were able to communicate much more quickly. This last ability is why the dungeon soon gave each human the radio ability while also making it so that the biological radio transferred onto their children. It allowed the humans to begin teaching their unborn children while they were still in the womb, and it was amazing to the dungeon how quickly the fetuses learned. In fact, the dungeon took great joy in watching the radio humans grow up because they appeared to maximize each of their milestones.

                   As for the mages, although they came to the dungeon twice a year they only took a human every decade. It took them a while to find the first human after they took Ernest, as by then, all the humans had been moved up to the branches in a nest. The mages had to come back three times over several weeks to find a way through the wall of the nest. What they ended up doing was turning rock into a liquid and using that as a bubble as they made their way to the top of the Great Black Tree Labyrinth, killing anything with a soul that came within range of their various attacks. What they were doing reminded the dungeon of hunters who brought all the equipment necessary to kill a deadly creature without being hurt themselves. Fairness wasn’t the objective, getting the job done was. Once the mages reached the wall of the nest, they overloaded the wall with the liquid rock, turned it into magma, and made the magma significantly hotter than it could be without the use of magic. Then, they took one of the male humans and left the others alone.

                   The next decade, they took a female. Then a male, and finally another male. The last male they took had the radio in his brain, so he was able to tell the rest of the humans how he was treated. According to him, he was treated very very well at first, with the mages throwing pretty girls at him, only for them to disappear once they knew they were pregnant. The first part of the message made the males in the dungeons community excited, but the second part of the message dried up the excitement, as they felt there was no fun in becoming a father if you didn’t actually get to be a father to your child. Even when the fetuses woke up the radio in their heads, their mothers were often moved so far away they could not contact any of the other humans who also had a radio in their heads.

                   It wasn’t all bad news. Between bouts of making babies, the essence human was able to read books, and since he had a radio in his head, he was able to send the contents of the books back to the labyrinth, and the dungeon enjoyed learning new knowledge. Most of which was useless to him, but not all. For instance, the dungeon found out about elementals, which were creatures made up of just a core and artificial channels, similar to how mages made channels in the air. The dungeon really hoped to come across an earth or wind one, as those appeared to be the most common as both earth and wind elementals could hide very easily. But so far, the dungeon did not have any luck with them.

                   Actually, one of the most interesting bits of news from the dungeon’s new mole was that the flying deer were being intentionally spread across the world by the mages. They wanted all the dungeons to play around with the metallic hydrogen that the dungeon had created, particularly the lightning dungeons since it was obviously useful for lightning creatures. It didn’t hurt that the flying deer were herbivores, so didn’t attack the human population and would easily serve as a source of food.

                   Despite all this, the dungeon was well aware of how difficult it was to make something that was useful against all of the mages' tricks. If it took the dungeon sixty years and counting to make a deadly dungeon creature with metallic hydrogen, it would probably take the other dungeons centuries. With that in mind, the dungeon continued working.

                   One of the most difficult things about the void dolphine project was making its outer shell flexible enough that it could move quickly but tough enough to survive vacuum. Speed in the void dolphin was mandatory as the mages tended to kill anything that came into range of their soul sight, with the exception of humans and any other creature they wanted to capture. The void dolphin needed to be able to get in range before the mages, which were able, through the use of magic, to move and react much faster than they should be able to without twisting the laws of reality. To test his creation, the dungeon even made a vacuum room, and thousands of void dolphins died before the dungeon could get it right. Any small tiny gap in their outside armor or hide meant that the inside tried, and often succeeded, in going through that gap. But that was just engineering.

                   The most tedious thing was making essence channels that allowed the essence creature to move essence electricity wherever it wanted to in its body at will. It took fifteen years before the dungeon admitted that the void dolphin needed so much fine control to move like it needed to that just connecting essence channels to each metallic hydrogen bone and shell would not work. This meant the dungeon had to try tens of thousands of essence channel variants to see which one allowed complete control of essence electricity inside of the void dolphin's body. Once the void dolphin had this it was soon able to move fairly well. Not as well as the dungeon would like, but at least it was heading in the right direction.

                   When the dungeon started this project, the dungeon did not have a dolphin to modify into this new creature, so it had to modify and Frankenstein various parts it had from loads of other creatures to make the body of the void dolphin. The reality was that the way a dolphin moved and breathed more or less was what the dungeon needed to fight the mages, even if the dungeon had to use substandard parts to MacGyver his way to making his void dolphin. Even when the dolphin sort of worked, the dungeon was not satisfied, and so removed the dolphin's fins, and where normal dolphins had a pair of fins, the dungeon made four arms with spindly hands. These four arms were covered in a thick carapace that was filled with metallic hydrogen, and the bones were made as tough as possible. The purpose of these arms were to be used in conjunction with its tail to move faster as it flew through the magnetic field and to give it more maneuverability. Thanks to these four arms, it could give itself a burst of speed, turn ninety degrees, and stop on a dime. With them, the dungeon had made something of an eldritch abomination.

                   On the head of the void dolphin were three protrusions in a triangle formation that acted as its radar. A mouth that was really a rail launcher; the dungeon had yet to work on coil guns as it was rather busy, but that was on its list of things to do. On the top of its head was its blow hole that allowed the void dolphin to breathe, or to close tight when it went into the void or water, although the creature had not been tested under water pressure, and since it was designed to survive in the void the dungeon doubted it would do well in water. On the bottom of its head was its actual mouth, which connected to a stomach, it was designed to close tight, keeping its inside from being forced out in vacuum. Just past that was its four arms, and beyond that was its tail. From head to tail, it was covered in interlocked metallic hydrogen pieces with very tightly threaded carbon nanotube fibers, keeping the metallic hydrogen carapace together while also keeping pressure inside the dolphin. Its one new and very special skill was a radio inserted into its brain so that it could talk to its pack as they swarmed any mages attempting to hunt in the labyrinth.

                   As the dungeon looked at its new abomination, it had to wonder if the eldritch creatures looked like abominations because someone had a cracked mind or if it was the most economical way to use their abilities. His new void dolphin seemed to suggest the latter.