No Need For A Core?-354: Moriko Makes Some New Friends

No Need For A Core?-354: Moriko Makes Some New Friends

With the issue of expanding their inhabitant selection resolved, Moriko turned to filling in her boss nodes, starting from their top-most tower layer and working her way down. She briefly wondered if adding her core’s power would aid them in instigating a system to move challengers more easily through the nexus sooner, as there were jumps in the power of adjacent zones with the current layout.
Though Sarcomaag also lent his aid quite often. It would be a shame for people to lose the ability to travel down from the earth or metal zones on a puff mushroom, she thought as her focus watched a challenger trying to hold on to a puff mushroom for dear life as it floated down to the ground.
For their metal zone, she created a giant metal slime that she named Simay because, in its round form, the slime made her think of a silvery moon. It had all the abilities common to their other slimes, but it had a lot more flexibility in the range of its shapes, including the ability to flatten out to the point of being effectively invisible along the ceiling or walls, or possibly looking like a pool of water or quicksilver on the ground. Also, when Simay hardened its outer surface, it formed layers of amorphous metal backed by layers of crystalline metal, making it rather difficult to harm. As a final touch, any of its substance that it flung out as part of its attacks remained alive and under Simay's control.
With their earth zone, Moriko simply found one of their new dire foxes that had already been attuning herself to earth, named her Rikune, and upgraded her into being a three-tailed kitsune martial disciple focused on earth based techniques and chi.
The nature and hunting preserve zone made Moriko pause to think a little bit; they already had Belle, Freya, and Menhit as bosses. She eventually decided that contrasting them with someone more magically inclined felt appropriate, though she was a little surprised when the pixie who was interested in the role evolved into a more masculine form, though still slender and lithe. Their new nature guardian was about the same size as the mer-pixies and had a strong talent for druidic magic, along with being an excellent shot with his bow and the associated small but very sharp, and often toxin-tipped, arrows.
She decided to continue with the magic-focused theme for the mountain survival zone and consulted with Machineel as well as Mordecai and Kazue to awaken one of the older pine trees into a young xyloid named Oren, who was also focused on druidic magic. As for innate weapons, Oren could throw his pine cones and make them either explode to fling sharp shards and hard nuts outward or burst into fire, as well as bludgeon anyone who came too close to his branches or roots.
Their central trading hub was a little trickier, as the theme of the bosses here was to test and evaluate delvers to make sure they were ready to tackle the challenges ahead. They already had martial combat and magic covered by Kuni and Seon, along with skills and lore covered by Jiah, but Moriko decided that the balance could use a bit of refinement. General magic skill was not quite the same as skill in divine magic, and there were skills and lore that were more specific to priests and champions than what Jiah was focused on.
One of the caracal cubs proved interested in Moriko's idea, and soon Moriko had helped Ubasti evolve into a white-furred carakin, as she had named the step between dire caracal and nekosune. Ubasti was gifted with the cores' understanding of religious duties and rituals, along with the powers common to most priests and champions. As these concepts were bound to Ubasti and her boss node, there was a sudden shift in the pattern as the node drew in more information from connections throughout the nexus, even following some paths to people currently outside of the nexus.
"What?" Moriko muttered in confusion.
Ubasti drew up the medallion hanging from a chain around her neck to examine it with curiosity. Upon one side, six pillars radiated outward from the center, as if holding up the edge of the medallion. Upon the other side, the symbols for three of the elemental lords were etched, with plenty of room for all to eventually appear. The three symbols were for earth, metal, and mud, representing their three dedicated zones.
Mordecai started laughing, clearly pleased. "Oh, we have to make her a raid boss as soon as we can. A priestess and champion of the empyreal pillars and, eventually, all the elemental lords? She currently has incredible breadth, which will certainly help with the role you had in mind, and if we can grant her depth of power, she will be absolutely terrifying. Well done."
"But, that was more than I intended, it wasn't me."
"No," Kazue said, "It was you, in that it drew on your intentions and resonated with what we were already doing. I've had stuff like that happen before, too; sometimes the nature of the nexus as a whole synergizes with our initial intention to create something more. That's sort of what happened with Zushi, and Sarcomaag's growth and abilities have far exceeded what Mordecai had in mind, even for a raid boss."
Conceptually, that seemed like it should be scary, but Moriko found it exhilarating once she got over her initial surprise, and she eagerly continued on.
Dipping down to Zushi's zone, Moriko called upon one of the other young dire caracals, a boy whom she named Rito. Rito would also be able to take advantage of drawing power from Zushi when Zushi drained energy from a delver or their attacks, but unlike the two dracobits, he would not be flying around to attack his foes. Instead, he would be stalking them in order to ambush his prey. He would be able to use the same hidden doors that Ryohoho and Haruka could use, but he could also shadow jump for his ambush and retreat, making him a very dangerous skirmisher. His big limitation was how often he could shadow jump; he would be able to recover his use of the ability faster when he was empowered by his connection to Zushi.
Now, with the crystal zone, they already had Crios for a large and powerful defender, Hildegard with her magic for defending and healing, and Beeatrix's sonic and psychic attacks, which filled the role of offensive magic. A fast martial disciple seemed like a good fit to round this group out, and one of their pink-furred foxes was happy to become a three-foot-tall foxkin named Neolanai, attuned to water and air for her chi-based powers. The combination worked rather well here, with Crios already having a pool of water to emerge from.
Moriko was rather amused by the pink fur — it seemed that by copying Kazue's template, she had copied Kazue's desire for brightly colored friends that had made her dire rabbits so visible in the first place.
This also made it very easy to find a female fox with vivid and almost metallic-looking dark red fur, which retained its color as hair when Moriko evolved her into a kitsune named Sunniva, with dusky skin the same shade as Betty's. While most of Moriko's other choices had been to round out the abilities of the zone bosses, this choice was for a different theme. Sunniva and Betty were going to make a visually stunning pair, matching in skin tone but with brightly contrasting hair.
Enough people, men and women alike, tended to have trouble when faced with fighting a beautiful woman like Betty, so Moriko anticipated this combination to be even more impactful. Naturally, Sunniva's martial powers were going to be fire-based.
Even Annur, the opalescent crystal dragon who was the zone's third boss, was going to have trouble standing out against these two, which should also make Umbrowl's job as an ambusher much easier.
Now for the library.
Moriko had no ideas at all at first, and looking at all the creatures there gave no inspiration. Biblios and Horace were already awesome, and Aiden, the crystal spell slime who was their third boss for the zone, already had the brainy spell caster role.
Inspiration struck when she recalled something from one of Kazue's, or rather, 'Raimi Darlington's', books. This role was perfect for a kitsune anyway, so she found a dark-furred vixen who was already showing a promising amount of curiosity and playfulness, and evolved her into a kitsune woman named Vidya. Vidya was to be a priestess of Thoth, the god of knowledge and wisdom.
She was also a stunningly beautiful librarian, complete with thin-rimmed spectacles that she did not actually need.
Not only was she well-suited for work on either path, but she was a nearly ideal boss fight for when delvers showed an insufficient amount of respect to the books and the knowledge they contained. Even though there already was one grouped with the other shrines near the entrance to the dungeon, Moriko made sure to add a shrine to Thoth in both versions of the library, though she was not dedicating the zone to him the way the elemental zones had been. It just seemed a fitting thing to do if one of their inhabitants was going to be a priestess of Thoth.
Now, onto the mushroom forest.
The zone itself didn't directly inspire her, but when Moriko considered her own theming, she immediately knew what sort of martial disciple would fit. A caracal responded to her search for someone to fit her concept, and soon Moriko had a nekosune named Dunstan. His abilities were going to focus on a mix of shadow and earth-based abilities, which in this environment would allow him to potentially disguise some techniques of one type as techniques of another type, such as coming out of the ground only inside of a dark shadow. It amused Moriko to create a boss whose abilities were so similar to the living desert storms she’d fought in Svetlana’s sixteenth zone while also being nearly the opposite in every other way.
He was also their first nekosune, and with earth as one of his elements, Dunstan was a bit more broad-shouldered and built than almost all of their usagisune. Moriko anticipated that some of their visitors would be stalking him for non-combat-related reasons. Kazue may have unintentionally influenced some of the way their nexus had grown, but Moriko was deliberately leaving her mark.
For their river zone, Moriko decided to take a look at their fey citizens who had also decided to become inhabitants, and found one that was perfect who was interested in the job of river zone boss. Undines were fae so in tune with water that they bordered on being elemental spirits, and as such, all Moriko really had to do was imbue Iara with a bit more power to make her suitable for a zone boss. For the most part, Iara's magic was simply made stronger, but in remembrance of her own battle as a boss upon the lake, Moriko made sure that Iara also had a variety of ice spells at her disposal.
With that situated, Moriko proceeded to completely cheat at coming up with a zone boss for the wetlands. She made Carmilla's familiar Udup into a zone boss, enabling him to become larger than ever, while also keeping his and Carmilla's size switching options available. With Carmilla now a raid boss, it also kept their relative power in balance with him as her familiar.
She finally turned her thoughts toward their ocean zone and began examining their mer-pixies, finding just the right one for the role that Moriko had in mind.
Many of the older pixies had begun evolving into various other fey creatures, though mer-pixie seemed to suit many of them just fine for now. The one that Moriko selected had named herself Neaera, and she loved to sing and was always thrilled whenever people stopped to listen to her singing.
A sea spirit that loved to sing and was both a flying creature with wings and a mermaid — what more could a woman ask for when looking to create the ultimate version of a siren?
By appearance, the imbuement of the nexus's power mostly made Neaera larger, standing about as tall as Moriko when she had legs, but her mermaid-like form could be up to twelve feet long, with options for sharp teeth and claws, no matter what her size or form.
Naturally, her songs now carried powerful magic in a variety that would make most bards jealous. Moriko had seen no reason to hold back and had ensured that Neaera had every form of bardic magic that Moriko could infuse her with. The final touch had required some fine adjustments from Mordecai to achieve Moriko's desired results, but when they were done, Neaera could maintain three different vocal harmonies or songs at the same time, thanks to the modifications to her vocal chords. And each song could carry a different magical effect.
Neaera could amplify almost any emotion or desire, along with songs to allure, pacify, induce sleep, heal, or bolster an ally's strength and stamina, plus some more specialized songs.
Mordecai sounded amused when he said, "So you added a siren to our zone with the onsen? Between her, Betty's new fiery friend, and that librarian who manages to look both innocent and entirely not innocent at the same time, I think I am detecting a theme. Kazue's rampant imagination is one thing, but yours is rather more deliberate."
"Oh," Kazue said with a groan, "I just realized, all of Moriko's more, um, entertaining additions are probably going to be seen by my parents before too long."
Moriko started to laugh, then stopped suddenly as realization struck. "Oh no, even worse. I forgot how often Galan delves here." And her little brother was smart enough to figure out who had created the brand-new floor bosses. That was just a touch embarrassing.

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354: Moriko Makes Some New Friends