“Good to know,” he mused, considering the display again. “It says its excavating right now. That’s what I want it to be doing, right?”
“Yes and no,” the dragonkin said. “It just says ‘excavating’?” He nodded. “Then it will just clear out anything in its way, with no real purpose. You need it to specifically excavate stone and have the other drones bring it back for you.”
“How do I order it to do that?”
“It’s fairly intuitive.” He tried not to snort at that. To someone who’s grown up with this stuff, maybe. “You just need to say something like ‘set drone leader task to Excavating: Stone.’”
Easy enough. Keaton did as she instructed, and the status screen change to reflect his order. A grin stole across his features.
“Hey, it worked.”
“Are you surprised?” she asked, her golden eyes glimmering with mild amusement as she looked up at him. “You are a dungeon lord now, Lord Keaton. Anima is yours to command.”
He gave her a sheepish grin, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Yeah, that’s going to take some getting used to. I’ve never had this much direct input over anything before.”
She giggled, her little pointed teeth glinting in the torch light. “You are a curious one. But enough of that,” she said, snapping back to a more serious expression. “Once you give your drone leader a command, you should notice the other drones follow it, too.”
He checked the status of the others and sure enough, they were also excavating stone.
“They should have something to share for it any mo—”
She didn’t even need to finish the statement. The click of claws on cave floors reminded him of a dog loping excitedly through a kitchen, but it definitely wasn’t a dog that came bounding up to him.
Three drones dropped what was frankly a crazy amount of stone right at his feet, their barbed tails thrashing behind them. They chittered, saluted, then disappeared into the tunnels again.
“Uhh…”
“Oh, you haven’t built storage yet. My mistake,” the dragonkin said, a pretty flush rising in her cheeks. “I can help with that, too. Stay interfaced with the crystal, and um… oh, what did the others do…”
Keaton watched her out of the corner of his eyes. Her hands were balled into tiny fists at her side and her eyes were scrunched closed. She was really going to have to stop being adorable. Either that or he needed to get a handle on just how easily distracted he was.
“Oh! I remember. You tell the crystal to make a blueprint, and then think of what you want to make and what it would look like.”
Another easy command, but this one left a lot of room for Keaton to fuck it up. He’d never been a creative guy. He didn’t even know where he should be storing things like this. What if he made it wrong?
“Any pointers? What have the other dungeon lords done for storage?” he asked, hopeful.
“I… am sorry, my lord, but I was never permitted to see.” Her ears drooped again. “I can tell you what I would do, but I do not wish to presume.”
“Please presume. Just… until I say otherwise, presume all you like. Seriously.”
Her eyes lit up at that, gold sparkling like the precious metal. That blush still remained in her cheeks, but it seemed to be borne more of excitement this time.
“Well, I would dig it well below what you intend to be the ground level and make it tiered. Stone jutting out for hand and footholds, until you can build a proper ladder or stairs. Make containment segments for each commonly used material, with the most used — like building materials — on the top…”
She continued, laying out more than what Keaton could follow in his mind. Grabbing one of the smaller stones he’d been brought, he used the edge of it like chalk to draw out the plan as she described it. The thing looked like a mess by the time he was done, but he thought he had a better understanding of what he needed to build.
Keaton returned to the crystal and interfaced again, telling Anima he wished to create a blueprint. With some effort, he transferred what was now in his mind into the crystal, adjusting details here and there to better match the vision his companion had laid out.
“Okay, I think that’s as good as it’s going to get,” he said, a touch of pride in his voice despite his words. “What now?”
“Now you just change the lead drone’s assignment again and tell it to build from the blueprint you’ve created.”
Keaton did so, the process taking less time and effort than before. He heard that telltale clicking again and looked over to see a parade of drones with stone overflowing from their arms. All of it was dumped at his feet again.
The dragonkin giggled. “Don’t worry, my lord. They’ll retrieve it and place it in the storage facility once they’re done. While they work on that, we should make some blueprints for the crystal defenses, then for the rooms we need to have.”
They worked together with the dragonkin as the main architect, though Keaton offered up a few suggestions here and there. Time didn’t really seem to pass. With no sign of the sundown here, it was impossible to tell, anyway, but Keaton felt like it could have been five minutes or five hours by the time they finally took a break.
By the end of it, they had designs sketched out for a mini fortress, a bedroom, and a room for food and water production respectively. Keaton stood, admiring the sketches when words appeared across his mind.
The Labyrinth has a new empty room.
The Labyrinth has a new storage facility.
There are drones waiting for instructions.
Drones have returned to their default duties.
Stone has been deposited in the storage facility and is ready for use.
He blinked as if to clear his vision once the messages finally stopped.
“Lord Keaton? Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I just… Anima I guess…? Tells me when things have happened. It just told me a bunch of stuff at once.”
She looked confused for a moment before it seemed to click. “Oh, yes. That will happen if you are engrossed in another task or actively manipulating Anima. I believe you can tell the crystal not to give you so much information, but I would recommend keeping it as is for now.”
“No arguments here,” Keaton said. “I need all the information I can get. Speaking of… I guess the next step is getting these blueprints into the crystal, then having them built?”
She nodded, smiling up at him. “That’s right. See, my lord? You barely even need me.”
“Oh no, I definitely need you. Badly.”
That passionate growl to his voice wasn’t something Keaton had intended. If anything, it was meant to be an expression of gratitude mixed with desperation. He realized that wasn’t how it sounded when her eyes widened and her cheeks flushed, though. She looked away from him, fidgeting nervously, and Keaton stumbled over the words to explain himself.
“For guidance! I need you for guidance. Building a dungeon. Doing dungeon things. Nothing weird or sexual about that, right? Hah.” Strained chuckling followed, and Keaton’s hand seemed doomed to remain at the back of his neck. He cleared his throat and continued, “Uh… anyway. Let’s just… get things underway.”
11
It took what must have been hours for the drones to finish just a couple of the tasks he’d assigned, and Keaton soon discovered why. After checking in on them and seeing their status was “Idle,” he and the dragonkin went searching. The drones were curled up in a pile in the corner of the room they’d recently built, all four of them snoring.
“Oh, that makes sense,” the dragonkin said, her voice dropped to a whisper.