No Need For A Core?
271: Suriving the Mountain

Kazue was quite pleased with how well things had gone with Krystraeliv. For all of the living crystal's utility and power, it had little potential to become more than a tool. To invest that ability into a compatible being and empower it felt so much better, and the world tree had adapted so well once the process of integration had proceeded far enough.

For all of that potential, however, there was not yet a soul. Krystraeliv's mind simply wasn't complex enough to initiate that final condensation of spiritual energy. The same was true of the dryad spirit inside of her, who would still be 'sleeping' for some time.

They would need to decide on a name for her eventually; Norumi had left them with a long list of names she thought suitable but left the naming of the dryad to them as they would be raising her.

Kazue thought it a bit unfortunate that her boon couldn't come into play here, not even with the enhancement that she'd focused on when they'd claimed their most recent zone, as neither tree nor dryad were inhabitants. Krystraeliv was simply a part of their realm, and her dryad companion would awaken as a member of their Court.

The two halves of their realm were even more closely tied together now, and that also made Kazue happy. While this should make them stronger, Kazue's primary concern was to avoid having their people feeling divided into two groups. If both could cross to the other side easily and interact, this should help the populations mingle.

Not, admittedly, that they had a lot of fey citizens outside of her pixies yet. But that was slowly changing.

For now, it was time to focus on the inhabitants for their new mountain survival training zone.

She started with the squirrels; though evil incarnate they might be, they were her little evil minions, and she would put them to good use. All of the squirrels were getting upgrades to being shade tails of course, but as 'juvenile' ones, compared to those in the wetlands area. Creating a weaker version that would grow stronger also mean that shade tails could be found in all of the underground zones without there being any power issues.

There were some tree-dwelling creatures of similar nature such as chipmunks. Modifying the shade tail template to fit them as well was fairly simple.

As for their primary duty in the survival zone: they were to follow their nature and become little thieves. It was up to delvers to guard their gear properly.

This duty was aided by Mordecai's new boon: All inhabitants were granted a limited amount of shape shifting, enough to allow them to stand upright comfortably and change their front paws into hands, or equivalent appendages or special abilities for other anatomies, along with full speech abilities.

This was less powerful than the shape-shifting that some inhabitants already had, but this ability was on top of any power already invested in their inhabitants, rather than being part of the power of each one. They should be able to enhance this ability with later boons, and Kazue hoped that they would eventually be able to grant everyone a similar level of shape-changing as usagisune.

Kazue's next set of inhabitants to upgrade were the corvids. She had initially been thinking of ravens and crows, but when she focused her thoughts upon them she found how many related species there were. This gave her a larger pool to draw upon and evolve toward becoming the same species of inhabitant.

She had been uncertain of what she was going to name her new species, but grouping all the corvids into this evolution made it easy to name them corvidians.

Corvidians were notably larger than any of their mundane counterparts, with adults weighing about five pounds. The other easily distinguished visible marker was that they had three eyes.

Their third eye became the focus for some of the abilities that Kazue granted them, starting with their ability to see magical auras and look past minor illusions. They also had the ability to mildly hypnotize people who looked directly at their eyes, though this came with the drawback of requiring the corvidian to stay still in order to maintain the hypnotic state.

Kazue also enhanced their vocal mimicry ability to the point that they could sound exactly like specific people they'd overheard talking, as well as being able to make a lot of normally non-vocal sounds. But while that was useful for trickery, she also gave them an offensive power: Their caw could be loud enough to inflict damage if they focused the sound into a cone, and the sound always carried an ominous sense of doom, dread, and death that could potentially paralyze a person or cause them to flee.

Both of those abilities were greatly enhanced if a murder of them chorused together, growing ever more powerful as more individuals joined the group.

And like the shade tails, one of their primary duties was to steal from delvers.

Kazue grouped most of their other birds into two groups: songbirds and hunters.

Songbirds were, simply put, spies. They were adorable and innocuous, their songs were soothing, and if they nestled down into place they could camouflage themselves very well. After all, Kazue and Mordecai were not going to be supervising the entire zone all the time, so their inhabitants needed to be able to work together in teams, and reconnaissance was an important role that needed to be filled.

But Kazue did give them one important bit of self-defense: their beaks and talons were razor sharp and carried a paralytic toxin. She also gave them a few minor spells that created short lived auditory or visual illusions and similar effects, though nothing that was damaging. If they got into a fight, their job was to flee.

The hunters were made larger, stronger, and more resilient, especially their bones, plus Kazue gave them all a couple of ranged options. Their first option was to swing their wings in a sharp arc that flung special, metal-edged feathers at their target. The second option varied by individual preference; some were able to fly in a burst of speed that left a wake of wind blades, some could scream loud enough to damage opponents in a cone before them, and the third option was to have access to a minor spell.

While most of those who went for that third option selected directly offensive spells, a few did select options that created brief protective barriers or wards.

The hunters would not be directly participating in harassing most survival-focused delvers, or survivalists as Kazue had started to think of them; they were part of the combat force for those who had chosen to participate in battle.

That was the selection factor for survivalists and combat delvers; survivalists either ran away from large creatures or shooed off/chased away smaller creatures. The moment that weapons were drawn or other serious force used, those delvers had chosen to experience the combat path. A fact that was going to be advertised to everyone and on everything as much as feasible. The path was metaphorical instead of physical, but it was still there.

With her aerial forces selected, it was time to focus on her ground 'troops'. Kazue continued to work with creating templates instead of creating specific species; there were just too many variations of different animals that had been incorporated into the expanding zones.

As there were so many species, Kazue offered any new inhabitants with close-enough biology to simply be evolved into one of their existing inhabitant species, though she made sure to also let the relevant creatures know about her plans for this zone. When that was settled, she moved on to creating her new evolutions.

For the snakes and lizards, she created two templates.

The first was 'shadow scales'; their name first came from darkening their scales with some of the compounds that they had worked out from the metal samples Satsuki had brought them, and then from giving them some basic shadow manipulation abilities. Additionally, all their attacks had a minor life-draining effect and they were given venomous bites if they didn't already have one.

The second was 'rainbow scales'; a different set of compounds gave their scales shifting hues, depending on the angle of reflection. This was combined with the automatic chameleon techniques that creatures like octopuses had and topped off with minor illusion magic to fine-tune the effect. Offensively, they could manipulate light and their scales to create multiple effects ranging from rippling hypnotic patterns to blinding scintillation, along with the ability to release sprays of rainbow colors that had randomized minor elemental effects.

For all the burrowing mammals, she simply gave the same basic earth template that Mordecai had previously created, which would enhance their burrowing abilities as well as make them tougher.

Like most of her previous templates, Kazue wanted her land forces to also focus on theft and sabotage.

This was certainly far more aggressive and egregious than a person would expect to find in most of the rest of the world, but that also meant that people who could secure and maintain their equipment and campsites in this environment would be very well prepared for normal environments and would not be inclined to careless mistakes.

For all the small animals that had not already been swept up into other categories, Kazue made them 'judges' for now, though the changes were minor enough that they would be able to select other evolutions in the future.

Becoming a judge first enhanced the senses of the inhabitant, along with their general speed, their reflexes, and the speed of their perception. That last upgrade was effectively a combination of making them think faster and making the world seem like it moved slower. Kazue was careful to make the perception speed trait something that they could engage or disengage with little effort, lest the world become painfully boring.

Unlike the rest, the judges were not going to interact directly with their survivalists, nor would they communicate information about what they observed to their fellow inhabitants. Instead, they would be creating certain types of minor rewards for the survivalists, based on the skills and techniques the survivalists displayed.

This idea had come from the realization that one of the major survival techniques was crafting snares and other traps. The idea of asking an inhabitant to willingly submit itself to a trap and the subsequent experience was rejected before it had even fully formed, and most appropriate animals who had not accepted the invitation to become an inhabitant instinctively left the zone and migrated outward.

Instead, judges would have a limited ability to tap into the dungeon's reward-creation ability, and make thing such as mana constructs of appropriate carcasses. It wasn't a perfect simulation of a real-world experience as many snares caught prey that was still alive when the hunter checked the trap, but it was the best that either Kazue or Mordecai were willing to do.

Fishing was at least easier; many fish species fell below the sapience/spiritual threshold that marked the boundary of creatures that were 'environmental' or not. Those fish were simply evolved to be faster at reproducing and growing.

This was something that had come up because their territory now encompassed a section of a large creek as well as several smaller ones.

In addition to the natural ones, Kazue created several locally contained creeks and ponds to provide water sources for the various terrains people would be training in. This was also another exercise: some of the water was not safe to drink. Naturally, she toned down the effects of certain pathogens, but they would still leave people feeling, um, uncomfortable and distressed for a day or two.

Kazue shifted her attention back to the fish above that sapience threshold and invited them to become inhabitants.

Those who accepted were moved to appropriate places in the mushroom forest, river, and wetlands zones, and then enhanced in the much as Mordecai had done with fish in the ocean zone, with the biggest difference being the lack of exotic metals in their biology.

Kazue was able to simply copy the rest as Mordecai had deliberately started most creatures in the ocean zone at below their their potential to create more room for growth. This was going to allow their new fish inhabitants to simply migrate to lower zones as they grew.

Those who did not accept were guided out of their territory. Even the most stubborn of fish could not resist the simple effects of terrain manipulation, which Kazue used to flush them out.

She did feel a little guilty about pushing them out of their homes this way, but it was a necessity. It was more difficult for fish to simply migrate to a different area, and she needed to not be responsible for them en masse.

But she also wanted to be careful about her ecological impact here, so all waterways that traveled across their borders were reshaped to run along the inside of their border instead. These waterways were then carefully sheltered with the thorny growth Mordecai had previously designed to ensure that no one would attempt to fish from them or anything similar.

All the water that their delvers were to interact with was entirely contained inside of their territory now.

So, that took care of air, arboreal, surface, below-ground, and water creatures.

That left bosses, which Mordecai had some ideas for, along with probably weeks of fine-tuning the experience, and Kazue wouldn't be surprised if they were still making tweaks months from now. There was a lot to account for and learn.

Rewards were going to be performance-based, as usual for Azeria. It was especially important in this case as there wasn't the normal condition of 'clearing' the zone. It was more a matter of how long a group or individual could survive in this environment and how well they fared.

Most rewards were going to be thematic: high-quality and lightly enchanted versions of survival and camping gear, right up to self-cleaning tools and large flasks that would automatically purify any water poured into them. It was a rather indiscriminate purification, so anyone who tried to store alcohol or other drinks in it would be in for an unwelcome surprise.

For combat survivalists, rewards might include similar tiers of weapons and armor.

Upon occasion, they might even reward survivalists with items of simple monetary value, such as minor gems or nuggets of precious metal. Those were especially likely for survivalists who were able to specifically prospect for such items while maintaining their survival needs.

Kazue was satisfied with her work, and eager to see what Mordecai had in mind.