After what felt like forever, Jacob’s stupid ant was finally grown up enough to start nurturing the crystal bloom seed. After using the queen to get the ant to eat the seed and put it into the special pouch, now it was time for more waiting.
This was really inconvenient for him. Back in the game, a day would only last around thirty minutes depending on things like settings, with harder difficulty shortening the days. Despite this reality seeming to be based on the harder difficulties, the days were stretched to be more realistic and the duration of everything was stretched with it.
There had been calls in the community for time buttons to either speed up or slow down time, which wouldn’t have been that hard to do. Pausing essentially stopped time, giving the player the chance to breathe and strategize.
Unfortunately, the studio that made Dungeon Realm went radio silent not long after the game came out. Instead, the modders were the ones to add in these important quality-of-life features.
He hadn’t tried anything because he didn’t think that it would work. With nothing better to do, he wandered towards the dungeon fairy to ask it.
“Hey, Dungeon Fairy, I was wondering if there was a way for me to change the rate of time? Like to speed things up or slow them down?”
“There is a feature for that, Dungeon Lord. Use the command phrase [Time Speed: Set] to summon the screen, or you could replace ‘set’ with the speed you want.”
Jacob said “[Time Speed: Set]” before he wanted to kick himself again. There were several different speeds, from normal to super fast to super slow. If he had this, he wouldn’t have been as stressed with the waves or as bored as he was everywhen else.
The sunflower on the second layer was slowly developing and generating vines for his animals to eat. The production was slow, but it was helpful for giving food better suited towards herbivore digestive systems.
The deer was still boosting the ant to help it develop faster, and now Jacob didn’t need to wait drooling for it to happen. Jacob set the time speed to 2X, and everything around him sped up to a significant degree.
The ant continued to develop and eat. A benefit of the deer’s constant casting of its blessing spell was that the seed of the crystal bloom. The improvement to the ant’s mana system from the blessing helped to nourish the seed and help it stockpile mana for germination.
This allowed for the weeks of slow gestation to be completed in days.
While that was going, he had created a basic dungeon layout for his two layers. They wouldn’t last, especially as the ants would have limited terraforming capability, but it provided enough room for his ecosystems to get started.
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They also provided a benefit in case any of the humans decided to return. He wasn’t sure if it was worthwhile making weird art; after all he wasn’t sure what the culture of these individuals were or the other things of the world. For all he knew, strange murals grew on walls like weeds.
He guessed that he could just make up more murals this time. It would give him something to do and keep the dungeon fairy from being idle.
Jackal pulled his cloak closer to his body as the early morning mist chilled him to his bones. He had grown up within a more southern county or barony, meaning that this cold weather was unbearable to him. Despite being cold, the air was unbearably wet and humid too.
None of his other team members were in the talking mood, something that Jackal couldn’t decide was a problem or not. He did appreciate the quiet and despised people who couldn’t keep their mouths shut. However, talking and discussion was needed for team unity and synergy. This quiet could become a problem the moment they fell into a crisis.
Even then, so what? He had never been a charismatic individual, and there were plenty of valid reasons to not talk. All of them had too many things on their minds and didn’t want to call bad luck to them by saying too much.
They were also tired and hungry. An interesting thing about the Aseth forest was the concentration of mana. For wizards or elite adventurers, dealing with high mana wouldn’t be a problem, but for them it was hard for them to overcome the mana intoxication. Once they adapted, then they would have to deal with mana starvation on the way out.
They had medicine, but there was only so much that basic medicine could do. The only ones that weren't sick were the alchemist and the magic apprentice, but it took them a lot of effort to keep themselves healthy.
Out of the other reasons to be silent, the biggest one was how empty this forest was. He struggled to believe how barren it had become. They had seen a few animals and magic beasts, but all of them were skittish. It was as if there was a predator nearby, all of them were in a state of panic.
What was causing this? It was one thing to hear it from people that didn’t understand what it meant to be an adventurer. It was another thing for him to experience it himself.
No one wanted to talk because the absence had made every noise, every sound, whether it was the wind brushing grass or a stick snapping, feel dangerous. They were in a constant state of hypervigilance and stress, and were struggling to endure it. Jackal had experience from his other missions and bounties; the others and particularly the scholars were barely holding their nerves.
It was time for them to stop and have another short rest to help them all calm down. He signalled with his hand and they found a sheltered thicket to stay. He dismounted and started setting up his tent.
He kept thinking about the scared silence they were in and decided that he needed to do something about it as party leader. While talking when traveling wasn’t safe, their words probably wouldn’t attract much if they stayed in one place. Even if something did come here, the apprentice’s wards would help keep them safe.
What to say though. He didn’t have a speck of humor to save his life.
He thought about it for a little bit and realized that distracting them from their situation probably wouldn’t work. It might make them more scared, but having them talk about the current mission might help get it off their chests.