"There are. Three that are safe to enter. I've blocked the last. There's also a portal to a ruined city, but it's blocked for safety as well." Cain explains, mentally sending the Oath Breaker to place a large stone over this side of the portal to Muzz so none of the Guild members accidentally get harmed. No need to leave it as a trap when it's inside their castle.
"Sweet, I'm so very close to level 100 you see. All I need is one good dungeon." Belle smiles hopefully, looking at Cain.
"Well it's been a while since I was on an adventure with most of you, how about we head into the one I'm most familiar with after the tour? I haven't had the time to fully inspect one, and the third might be a bit difficult for some groups, there's a lot of flying creatures."
"Like Harpies? I got a lot of them in the Beastkin dungeon the other day, what a nightmare." Dimnys asks, her brown leather smithy apron scorched and her hair sweat matted from working in the heat of the forge all day.
"Seraphim Warriors actually. They're mostly close combatants, but there's a lot, and flying lets them attack from every angle." They almost overwhelmed even Cain's forces of Dragons and Drakes.
The rest of the Guild is starting to file in now, coming to see the new castle. There's a lot of new members for Cain to meet, and then promptly forget their names. But that's fine, he can always check with the interface, right? Char must have her hands full with so many low level new people, but she looks happier than Cain has ever seen her, surrounded by young adventuresome transfers.
Within a few minutes, only three people are missing, Misaki's boyfriend the Elven Ranger Lysander, Cixelcid and Lickity. Cain is about to ask Misaki what he's up to when Belle discretely waves him off, signaling that it is a bad idea. They must have broken up. He's still a Guild Member though.
Cixelcid and Lickity come through together, glowing with happiness and the Oath Breakers merged with Cain begin to chuckle in his mind.
[What's so funny?]
[The Vampire has been practicing his Merger Technique too. With the little Succubus.]
Cain does his best not to laugh out loud at the voices in his head, but looks Lickity over closely. Yep, that's definitely a baby bump. Good going Cid.
"Now that we're all here, let me begin the tour. We're currently in the basement of the central keep, but if you follow me up the stairs, you'll see the main floor. It's the only one furnished so far, and I think we will need to call in Profesional sculptors to address the blandness." There's a happy noise at that and Cain sees that Symbia accompanied Carlos, Misha and Kone here through the portal.
"Exactly the person I wanted to talk to. How would your Guild feel about a long term contract to decorate all the new structures in the castle? It will take a LOT of time though, so they'd basically be living here."
Her face goes blank for a long while while she sends text messages to her friends. "How would you feel about an artistic division of the Guild? Our moms are threatening to repossess the Guild House because we can't afford the property taxes between the five of us. If they do, we'd have to disband."
There's only 5 of them? Well, it's certainly not a hardship to Cain to take them in, especially if that means he doesn't have to pay full price for their work to get an entire castle and underground town renovated.
"I don't see a problem with that. You can go get them after the tour if you like. There's still going to be a lot of work for them to do though, even if they are Guild members. You'll understand why in a little while."
The Sculptor nods happily and Cain continues the tour. "There's four more floors like this one, then the top floor of the keep is just open area, with lots of window slots to use as a defensive position. Let's move outside. As you can see, the castle grounds are filled with these dark stone buildings. The Elementals took the liberty of reconstructing the old village when they removed the sand from the castle grounds, so we've got houses, a park, a public bath, many shops and some stables, all missing furniture, but well built by the Schaub Empire thousands of years ago."
The Guild spreads out for a while, looking over the buildings, seeing the layout and checking the amenities. The lack of plant life is pretty evident right now, but Mythryll, who is a nature mage, is talking with the young Druids, so that might change soon.
"Big plans?" Cain asks the little group as they huddle together, all talking at once.
"Yep, we're going to rebuild the park. There's a type of grass that would do well here, then we can do a few trees that don't need much water and store what they get. It will add a lot of shade to the Castle grounds." Mythryll says happily.
"Do you need to go get them, or can they be placed with magic?" Cain asks hopefully.
"We can just create them here, but they'll need some water to survive and the ground is really dry." The little Spirit Folk Druid Cain recently equipped informs him seriously.
"The ruins had underground pipes, soaker pipes, with holes to let some water leak out, like an underground garden hose. They're attached to the new cistern, I just need to fill it and get the pumps running. They were designed to be manually operated, so I can run them with summons today if you want to create some life here."
Cain calls a full compliment of Greater Water Elementals, now epic summons, and instructs them to fill the cistern halfway and start pulling water through the city.
They simply sink into the sand, leaving a wet spot as they disappear, but soon afterwards Cain can hear running water from a nearby fountain.
"The bath water is filling, but it's all cold." Laura complains, but he can hear splashing, so she's definitely in it anyhow.
"Does it look like there's a bath attendant? I've got Elementals ordered to pressurize the system for now. It should get some water to the courtyard so the druids can place plants to keep the dust down, and give us running water in the keep. These buildings, other than the baths, never had it to begin with."
That might be because of the age, or it might be because of the level of magic in the ancient empire that they never needed it, with magical devices replacing mundane things like plumbing. Unfortunately, they're all long gone here on the surface. There might be some underground, but Cain is reluctant to loot the place.
The Guild members explore the courtyard for most of an hour while the druids work, until finally the park has a covering of the durable dune grass, along with date palm and a few Cypress trees. Desert thyme brushes decorate some buildings and the yard around the Keep.
The ground still looks dry, but to the nature sensitive mage and druids, it's perfect. Cain notices one large round building he had overlooked before, on cost inspection it is clearly a water tower, and it sounds like it's filling. That should keep things working even when he doesn't have Elementals running the underground pump.
Next up, they climb up on the walls, and Cain points out the ring of posts that should help keep the sand back from the walls by more than standard archer range, giving them some security. That about covers the aboveground sections, so Cain gathers everyone together again.
"Next up, we go back to the Keep to enter the underground portion. Symbia, this is where your friends will be spending a lot of time. Yes, the keep needs done, but the underground is much more than a basement."
The demons in Cain's mind laugh at the understatement, looking forward to her expression when she realizes that Cain built an entire city he wants decorated with artwork.
They file down the stairs carved into the light tan colored sandstone, topped with black Granite steps for durability, until they arrive at the first floor, glowing with the soft bioluminescent glow of the moss.
"Its pretty plain, just smooth stone everywhere. But that's where the artists come in. This floor and the one below it have hundreds of houses and shops carved along the walls of the central caverns. There's six main chambers like this in each of the first two floors, covering roughly one hundred acres per level, the extent of the castle walls.
The third one is wide open, except the support pillars, and the fourth floor is an intricate labyrinth, that also has an entrance to the underground cistern and water pumps."
Plain isn't the impression everyone else gets though. Empty, yes. But the moss covers the entire roof of each main cavern they pass through, much more than the single room Cain placed it in. It hasn't spread to the second floor yet, so Cain cuts a small section and brings it with him.
"Here you go. Another level for you to light up." He tells the moss, making the others laugh a little, but it quicky latches on to the roof and starts spreading.
"I think it's a magically engineered plant. It doesn't really spread anywhere but roof surfaces, it only grows upside down like that. But when it's introduced it expands rapidly, without need for water." Cain shrugs, not really understanding.
Seeing the first two floors underground is enough for everyone, this is more than enough of a bunker for their Guild, enough to create a small city under the castle, in addition to the one above ground.
"Looks like we've got a lot of work ahead of us. It will likely take months just to do a single floor of the underground." Symbia smiles happily.
"I'll also be wanting castle guards and staff and defensive spells added using your unique witchcraft. What good is a castle without an army to defend it right? Even a few dozen guards would go a long way to making the place look alive."
Cain can Summon clones of her to create the defenses, those will stay active, but the animated statues count as a type of construct and will deactivate if the clones are dismissed, so he can't just make an entire army to defend the place long term.
"I'll work out a distribution. Some for the bottom labyrinth, and some for general tasks, with half to serve as castle Guards." Symbia agrees, her dark eyes lighting up with excitement.
"This is going to be great."
