Chapter Seven

The gem watched John, Bjorn, Sam, and Camille as they decided to leave its territory. It knew they were unlikely to die even if they were ambushed, plus they were the only team that it had trade deals with right now, so the gem sent out a general order to not attack them unless they started to move deeper instead of leaving. With that handled the gem focused on learning from their attack on its territory. The first place it went to was Venti and the canopy since they were the ones to turn them away.

When the gem got there Venti stopped zipping around and said “Hi Boss! Didn’t I do great? I sent them packing before they could steal any of your flowers. It was super easy!”

“That’s great, but you still need to learn from everytime you fight them. What could have been better?” Said the gem

“Weelll,” Venti drew out the syllable while thinking “The birds of prey and smaller birds are nice and all, but can’t I have something bigger? Right now they are just getting scratched and clawed unless I manage to blow them off. It would be way better if I had a defender that could really give it to ‘em! That’s how it could have been better!”

The gem paused to think for a second before saying “I was more talking about how you could use your wind manipulation to either support the birds better or to push them off the platform, but that is an interesting idea. For now I don’t have a defender that fits those requirements, but I’ll make sure to keep it in mind.”

“Thanks boss! Right now I can only kill the stupid ones so make sure to think of something fast.” As soon as they finished saying that Venti dashed off bringing the wind along while moving. All the leaves and flowers among the canopy shook and watching them reminded the gem of something it was surprised to have forgotten

“Come back Venti. It’s not quite the showstopper you wanted but I thought of something to help give you a finisher.” Venti stopped flying through the canopy once more and the gem started talking again. “I have a few poison spitting flowers. I haven’t been able to get much use from them because their range is really quite short, but you can fix that. Tedru told me that one of the flowers that causes hallucinations can affect a wide area if there is enough wind. I’ll plant some of them up here and you can direct the pollen towards the invaders.”

“That’s great! You still have to find me some defenders that really pack a punch but at least for now I can get them all high and make them fall down. It’ll be great. Thanks for the present boss!” Then Venti went zipping away again leaving the gem to focus on its next improvements.

The most important of which was teaching the drybolds how to farm. Now that there were enough tusked defenders to have a stable population in the territory the consumption of fish went way up. Teaching the drybolds to farm would ensure that there is excess food that can be used to sustain larger fish populations than would normally be possible. The gem went straight to Mav and said

“I have a new job for all the drybolds. Bring everyone who doesn’t defend the territory to learn about it.”

“What is the new job?” Mav asked

“I am going to teach you how to farm. There will be more food for the drybolds and for the rest of the defenders.”

Mav nodded and scurried off to gather the other drybolds. Soon enough she was back with a number of drybolds who were all ready to learn.

“The first step is cutting down all trees marked with a scythe symbol. You can use the wood from those however you please as your reward for clearing the land. Once you are done with that I will give you seeds to plant.”

From there the gem went into detail on things like how to deal with pests and how to use the waste from the tusked defenders to fertilize the fields. It took quite a while to explain, but after half a day all the free drybolds seemed ready to start farming. The gem then left them to start work and moved onto its next task.

Now that John had brought the map it was time to confirm that expanding downwards was the correct decision. Looking to the sides of its territory showed that expanding to either side would not have any interesting territory before working through nearly a mile of stone. That was enough to rule them out for the foreseeable future. The next thing to check was potential expansion behind its territory away from the human settlement. To its surprise, there was another settlement on the map. It was under a mountain to the northeast of its territory and was labelled as a suspected Sanguine Empire settlement. That wouldn’t do at all. If they came straight towards its territory from that settlement then they would probably find the less defended back entrance to the valley. That threat was enough to stop any plans the gem had of focusing on its downwards expansion. Instead, it was necessary to place traps in the outer valley that might give it some warning if they showed up.

The traps weren’t going to be managed by the gem or any assistants so they had to be triggered by the invaders and make enough noise that the defenders would be alerted in to to prepare for incursion. The first trap that seemed obvious was a rockfall trap. It could be placed right at the entrance of the valley, and if it was made large enough then it would make plenty of noise. The only problem was that it wasn’t guaranteed to trigger. To decrease the odds of that happening the gem also placed pitfalls at the entrance. Past experience had shown that it was unlikely for anyone to fall in them, but they would force any invaders to walk right past the trigger to the rockfall trap.

After those traps were in place it started to get more difficult. The center of the valley was open without tree cover or walls nearby. That meant that none of the traps the gem was currently using could be placed there. One solution would be putting drybolds there to guard the entrance. Unfortunately that would mean taking drybold warriors away from the side of its territory that was being actively attacked. Currently the second entrance was just a possible risk so that didn’t seem like a worthwhile trade off. That left designing a new trap and not having invaders to test it on or finding an animal that could thrive there and fight off invaders without the gems control.

Previous traps that had not undergone trial and error all failed, so finding territorial animals to inhabit the valley was the choice the gem went with. It found a few nests filled with the meanest noisiest birds that lived in its territory and had the drybolds move them to the second entrance. The birds were small, but they had attacked even the tusked defenders if they got to close so it seemed likely they would attack any invaders. Even if the birds did not attack the invaders it was likely that the invaders would attack the birds. The traps at the entrance would make sure they knew this was part of the gem's territory. That meant they would likely treat all animals as a threat. On top of that, the birds wouldn’t be able to hide. They had a distinctive and easily visible coloring. They were black and their wings were bright red. The defenses at the second entrance were still insufficient, but the gem did not have any ideas on how to improve them at the moment. Since it had already spent quite a bit of time on that it decided improving the lower portion of its territory enough to open it to invaders and grow more quickly was the best way to make itself safer. The gem shifted its focus from the second entrance and got to work.

Right now the only defenders it had down there were its headbutting fish. There were some smaller fish and the plants necessary to feed all of them, but none of them would trouble invaders. The easy addition was traps. Its pitfall traps wouldn’t work since they would just fill with water, but rockfall traps looked like they would work extremely well. The water would hinder the movement of the invaders without slowing the rocks much. After placing those just about everywhere, the hard part of opening up the lower floor began. More creatures needed to be adapted to the environment.

Most of the lower floors were flooded and all of its fish that could live there had already been adapted, so the gem started working on making it viable for some of its plants that could defend themselves. That proved to pose considerable problems. To live on the lower floors they needed to keep their original earth mana while also becoming adapted to water and fire mana, and attempts to make that happen had been extremely unsuccessful. When the gem had added the fire attribute to the fish there was a small percentage of them that survived from the start. When the plants had both attributes added to them there was a zero percent survival rate. It was apparent that adding two attributes to the plants was not the way forward.

That wasn’t to say that the gem didn’t get any benefits from these efforts. Even though there were no tri-attribute plants, it had managed to make plants that could use water and earth mana as well as plants that could use fire and earth mana. The ponds in its upper floors now had plants with razor sharp leaves sitting in the water in case anyone fell in and the man eating plants now lit whatever it was eating on fire on top of dissolving it. They were nice improvements, but not what was most needed for the territory right now so the gem got back to improving its lower depths.

If improving the plants it wanted to use as defenders was not going to work then it would need to change the territory the plants were going to live in. to do this the gem took some of its fire attribute cores and imprinted mana in them so that they would push heat away from them. Then those cores were embedded into the wall along the edge of the pond. Next some of the plants that could survive in water were placed into the now cooler areas. Examining the areas showed that not only had the defensive plants been put in place, but the water itself was now more traplike. The invaders would get in the water where it was cool, but as soon as they left the area protected by the fire cores they would be scalded by water that was even hotter than the rest of the spring. Satisfied with its relocation of the plants, the last step to finish the lower floors before opening them was to make some of its defenders other than fish suitable for them.

Surprisingly, after searching through all its creatures, the most heat resistant ones were ants. They could crawl along walls and plants and swim well enough to get to shore if they were knocked into water. To get them suited to the environment some of their queens were given cores and then relocated along with plenty of food. Soon there would be swarms of ants ready to attack any invader that trespassed. More land based defenders would be added in time, but the ants seemed like enough to start so the gem started working on its final defender for the lower floors. The one that would strike fear into the invaders and make them think that its core was there.

It went with the obvious choice and gave a pair of tusked defenders fire attribute cores. Once that was done they were herded to the lowest floor of its territory, and then there was only one step left before the lower floors could be opened. There needed to be bait. The obvious choice was blood river flowers. Every single invader that came seemed to prefer those over almost all other bait. They couldn’t be placed in the lower floors as is so the water attribute versions were made and put in along with fire attribute cores to keep them cool. Fire attribute versions were made as well and they were put in alcoves built along the walls. With that done the gem opened the pathway to its newest area, and waited eagerly for invaders to come and test themselves.