Red floated in the void, staring at the flashing red border of the map.
[ ENEMY MOBILIZATION DETECTED ]
[ ESTIMATED FORCE: 500 UNITS ]
The ground beneath the mud trap was trembling. Gorr wasn't making the same mistake twice. This time, he wasn't sending a patrol, he was sending a battalion. Five hundred bronze-clad heavy infantry were marching up the tunnel.
Krug and the Kobolds were cheering, high on their victory, poking the trapped corpses with spears. They thought they were invincible.
"You idiots," Red whispered. "You poked the bear."
Red paced in the air. He ran the numbers. Gorr was a Rank 4 Deity. That meant he had access to [ EARTH MANIPULATION ] on a massive scale. If Red tried to hold the cave mouth, Gorr would just collapse the ceiling on top of the Kobolds. Or he would open a fissure and swallow the tribe whole.
"I can't fight him," Red admitted. "He has more money, more men, and better tech. If I play his game, I'm dead in an hour."
He looked at the map of the sector. Gorr's territory was a vertical cylinder going deep into the crust. Red's territory was the surface.
"Why hasn't he killed us yet?" Red asked himself. "He could turn the surface into a crater."
He looked at the iron vein.
'Because he wants the ore.'
Gorr was a "God of Labor." To him, this wasn't a holy war. It was an industrial dispute. He wouldn't use nukes because nukes would ruin the mine shaft. He needed the infrastructure intact.
"He's a businessman," Red smiled coldly. "So I need to make this transaction too expensive."
He zoomed in on the surface terrain above the mine. The Molekin were biological. They needed oxygen. A mine that deep required a complex ventilation system to keep 3,000 workers breathing.
Red switched his vision to [ THERMAL SCAN ].
He scanned the rocky hills above the mine entrance and saw them. There were dozens of small, rhythmic puffs of hot air rising from concealed fissures in the rock.
[ OBJECT DETECTED: VENTILATION SHAFT (NATURAL) ]
"Krug!" Red's voice slammed into the Chieftain's mind, cutting off his celebration.
'STOP DANCING. THEY ARE COMING.'
Krug froze. "We fight? Make more mud?"
'NO. MUD WON'T STOP AN ARMY. WE ARE LEAVING.'
Krug looked disappointed, but he obeyed.
'TAKE THE FIRE,' Red commanded. 'TAKE THE ROTTEN MEAT. TAKE THE FUNGUS.'
Red guided Krug's eyes to the edge of the Fungal Deep, where massive, yellow [ SULFUR-CAP MUSHROOMS ] grew. They were useless for food, and burning them produced a thick, choking yellow smoke that smelled of rotten eggs and death.
'WE ARE NOT FIGHTING THE SOLDIERS,' Red projected, a cruel plan forming. 'WE ARE GOING TO SMOKE THE HIVE.'
Twenty minutes later.
The Kobolds were scattered across the rocky hill above the mine. They weren't guarding the entrance. They were crouching over the natural fissures, which was the lungs of Gorr's city.
Down below, the Molekin army breached the surface. Five hundred soldiers in heavy bronze armor marched out, shields locked, expecting a battle. They found nothing but an empty mud pit and a pile of their desecrated dead.
The Molekin Captain roared in confusion, banging his hammer on his shield, challenging a ghost.
High above, Red hovered over Krug.
"Now," Red whispered.
Krug dropped a lit torch into the fissure. Then, he threw in armfuls of the Sulfur-Cap Mushrooms and the rotting entrails of the dead Molekin. The other Kobolds did the same at twelve other ventilation points.
Red didn't use a massive miracle. He didn't need to. He just needed to direct the flow.
[ MINOR MIRACLE: AIR CURRENT ][ COST: 500 DP ]
[ PURCHASE SUCCESSFUL ]
He forced the air down. The thick, yellow, toxic smoke didn't rise. It was shoved violently down the shafts, deep into the earth.
[ UNDERGROUND VIEW ]
Deep in the bronze halls of Gorr's city, the "God of Deep Labor" was likely watching his army march out. Then, the alarms started. The smoke hit the lower levels first. But it wasn't just smoke, it was sulfur and burning biological waste.
It burned the eyes. It filled the lungs with fluid. The Molekin were blind and they relied on smell. The stench blinded their primary sense. Panic spread instantly. Three thousand workers dropped their picks, coughing, retching, stumbling in the dark. The carefully organized mine turned into a stampede.
[ SYSTEM ALERT: ENEMY CITY STATUS - PANIC ]
[ ENEMY PRODUCTIVITY: 0% ]
Red watched the notifications scroll. He wasn't killing them. The smoke wasn't lethal immediately, but he was stopping the work. And to a God of Labor, stopping work was worse than death.
"He has to heal them," Red analyzed. "Every minute that smoke is down there, he has to spend Faith or DP to purify the air or heal his workers' lungs."
Red looked at his own cost. [ TOTAL COST: 500 DP (Air Current) + Scavenged Trash ]
He was spending pennies. Gorr was hemorrhaging his life savings.
The obsidian slab vibrated violently. The "Server Chat" opened again.
[ INCOMING TRANSMISSION FROM: GORR ]
"YOU PEST!" The voice was louder this time, shaking with genuine rage. "YOU POISON MY HOME? YOU FIGHT WITHOUT HONOR!"
Red typed his reply. He didn't use caps lock. He kept it professional.
[ SENDER: RED ]
[ MESSAGE: ] "I am not fighting. I am negotiating. Your army is on the surface. My smoke is in your basement. I can keep this up all week. I have a lot of mushrooms. Do you want to rule a graveyard, or do you want to talk deals?"
Red waited. The Molekin army on the surface was looking around wildly. They could hear the screams of their kin echoing up from the tunnels. They turned to run back inside, but the smoke billowing out of the main entrance stopped them. They were locked out of their own home.
Gorr was checkmated. He could kill the Kobolds eventually, sure. But in the time it took him to hunt down 24 lizards in the rocky hills, his entire underground city would suffocate.
The vibration stopped. A new message appeared.
[ GORR: ] "What do you want?"
Red smiled. It was the question every terrorist waited for.
"Krug," Red said, looking down at his Chieftain who was grinning manically while feeding the fire. "Stop throwing the shit. The Boss wants to talk."
Red looked at the interface and muttered. "I don't want the mine," Red muttered to himself. "I can't operate a mine with 24 lizards. I want the product."
[ SENDER: RED ]
[ MESSAGE: ] "1. You keep the mine. 2. You provide 100 ingots of refined iron per week to the surface. 3. You provide 20 sets of discarded bronze tools immediately. 4. If you agree, the smoke stops. 5. If you refuse, I will throw the carcass of a toxic slime down the shaft next."
It was a protection racket. Pure and simple.
There was a long pause. Gorr was running the numbers. 100 ingots was nothing more than a rounding error in his production. But fighting Red was proving to be an infinite hassle.
[ GORR: ] "Agreed. But if your lizards step one foot inside my tunnel again, I will collapse the mountain on top of them."
[ CONTRACT ESTABLISHED: TRADE ROUTE (HOSTILE) ]
[ REWARD: +100 IRON INGOTS / WEEK ]
[ REWARD: +20 BRONZE TOOLS (ONE TIME) ]
Red exhaled, sinking back into the void. He hadn't won the war. He was still Rank 3, and Gorr was still Rank 4. But he had secured a resource stream that would push his civilization out of the Stone Age.
"Smart," Red whispered, closing the chat. "We survive to be annoying another day."
[ SENDER: RED ]
[ MESSAGE: ] "Well then, let's get along, neighbor."
[ GORR: ] "You BETTER keep your PROMISE!"