MH2 - Chapter 6: Poison for Potions

“How many troops?” Greg asked in a muffled sigh. His face cradled in his oversized hands as it had been for the last five minutes as Dolli had dished all the details of her capture.

“At least a few thousand. There could’ve been more to the camp I didn’t see,” Dolli said, pouring hot water into the third pot of tea. She couldn’t enjoy it herself, but it seemed to help keep the others calm.

Nubiri snorted from the open window. “I circled several times; the camp was a mile long with creatures packed into small dens. I would guess four to six thousand.”

“Six thousand,” Julie whispered the words with disbelief.

Dolli took a seat at the round table they’d set up for these meetings, setting the pot of tea in the middle. “Our dungeon just leveled to six, we have two-hundred monsters and a maze of epic proportions below our feet. We can overcome them, or at least make the prize so painful, they give up.”

Rufus blew the air out of his lungs in a big sigh. “We lost about twenty people while you were gone. Defectors. Segri and Walden among them.”

Dolli maintained her cool though the news was a blow. Segrit and Walden were original villagers of Little Crossroad. They were also the dungeon jewelers, having crafted and repaired many interesting pieces for the dungeonfolk. Dolli had been very close to giving Walden a significant extension of his power to operate outside her quests for the good of the community. That apparently didn’t matter as much to him as she’d thought.

Greg clenched his fists on the table. “Dirty traitors. This is their home!”

“And that was their choice,” Dolli said. “We cannot control them or keep them locked in here. If they wanted to go, they had to go. But we cannot let that stop us from doing what’s necessary to protect our home.”

“What do you mean?” Julie asked with a scowl.

Dolli placed her hand on Julie’s. “Kelzoul will send them here to fight…”

“We’ll have to kill them, many times.” Nubiri finished Dolli’s sentence for her.

Julie’s eyes went wide and her jaw dropped. “Segrit, Walden, the others… we’ll have to kill them?”

“As many times as necessary to protect ourselves,” Dolli said with a nod. “But, I hope we can prevent war altogether. I have an idea that could easily end this all.”

“I won’t let you sacrifice yourself!” Rufus said, slamming his fists on the table and rattling the teacups.

Dolli smiled. “I’m glad you feel that way because that’s not my plan—not yet at least. We have valuable insight on their camp. Even if they packed up and got on the move tonight, which I doubt, they would have to stop again before getting close enough to Monster Haven to launch an assault. We have an opportunity for sabotage. A lot of it.

“And,” Dolli said with a smirk, remembering her prize. “I might be able to kill just Kelzoul. I got a bit of his hair.” She pulled the silvery braid from her inventory and laid it on the table.

“Ew, why?” Greg asked, his nose wrinkled in disgust.

Dolli’s brow arched. “I didn’t know you were squeamish, Greg… our battles could’ve been over a lot fast had I know that when we were still human.”

Greg rolled his eyes. “I’m not. It’s just weird. Like a crazy ex-girlfriend casting spells—”

“Exactly,” Rufus said with a clap. “That’s exactly what she plans on doing with it. Dolli, you’re a genius.”

Greg scowled. “I don’t get it. We’re going to make him fall in love with us?”

Dolli barked a laugh. “I hadn’t thought of that, but it might actually work.”

“They have to eat,” Rufus said with emphasis. “If we could design a poison targeted just at him, we could poison their water supply, or the food.”

“Why not poison everyone?” Nubiri asked.

Julie tutted, serious offense taken. “We would be killing our friends. They defected to that camp, remember?”

Dolli nodded. “Moreover, I’ve known men like him before. Without a doubt, Kelzoul watches his food supply carefully, and someone always eats before him. But in any case, I don’t intend to poison the food. We would get a limited window for it to work as food, but disguised as a healing potion it could sit for weeks without giving away its nature.”

Greg smiled. “Now I’m getting it. We don’t want to tip him off to the poison before some of it gets in him, so food is out, but battle potions will last, and not tip anyone off.”

“Yes, that and I didn’t want to have to murder everyone in his dungeon. Some of the monsters helped me escape. Many of them are slaves. I’m certain once Kelzoul is dead they’ll have a mutiny on their hands, one I’m fully ready to support if they promise to join us,” Dolli said, revealing her full, long-term strategy.

Dolli didn’t know how the ranking system of Warmonger dungeons functioned, but they would be in trouble if it was like a Defender. Rufus would become the caretaker of Monster Haven if Dolli somehow perma-died, and Dolli had to assume Kelzoul’s three generals could do the same. The methods for how Dolli could die without destroying the dungeon were few, but she knew of potions that could do it, and she didn’t doubt some existed in Hafheim.

With the Hero Quest system still open to Dolli, she knew just how she would get it.

“I’m going to figure out this potion, and we’re all going to bolster our defenses—then get to level 10.”

Her council sat in shocked silence.

Finally, Rufus spoke. “It took us weeks to get to level six. How are we supposed to get four more levels in half that?”

Dolli took a long inhale, preparing for their responses. “No more leisure time. We’ll put everyone on a new rotating schedule. Combat for five hours, tasks for ten hours, five more hours of combat, then four hours of rest. The extra hour of rest will boost us with an additional 25% XP generation. Since a portion of the earned XP returns to me and the dungeon, we’ll level up faster.”

No one protested, and a few of them nodded in agreement. Dolli went on. “We have limited time, but I know we can do this. We’ve survived far worse.”

“But what we had to do to survive…” Greg trailed off darkly, his teeth clenched.

Dolli winced. Greg wasn’t going to like the rest of her plan. “About that. To figure out the potion, I will need to be summoning a lot of heroes. Some of my quests will be fake, just a ruse to get heroes into the catacombs for slaughter, but some of them will be real. I need alchemy ingredients and I’ll need all the latest research from the kingdoms. The heroes are the only way to get that.”

Greg sighed, growling through the whole thing. “Well, make sure you’re the only one mixing the ingredients this time, yeah?”

He stood from the table and walked to the door.

“We’re not finished,” Rufus called after him.

Greg stopped in his tracks, but didn’t turn. “I’ve got iron to forge for traps and not a lot of time to do it. With your permission, Overlord, I’d like to get to it.”

Greg hadn’t forgiven Dolli for what had happened yet, and that was fine. Greg may not always be trusting of Dolli, but he was loyal to his home. Nothing alive or dead in all of Hafheim could get him to abandon Monster Haven, and that was what she needed right now.

She needed all her people present, focused, and desperate not to lose the place they called home. She needed them willing to do anything, to sacrifice the lives they had grown to enjoy over the last few weeks to put everything into this one plan. A plan that required them to trust where it had been broken, and take a gamble on heroes once more.

“Overlord?” Greg asked with annoyance. Perhaps he was bound by Rufus’ power over him. Dolli didn’t always keep her Overlord presence in check, either.

Dolli nodded, allowing her momentary frustration be just that—fleeting. “You’re right. There’s a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. So, let’s get to work.”