Dungeon Core Academy 2

by Alex Oakchest

  I could already feel the tiny patch of vines nourishing me. At their present size, I was only getting .2 essence per minute, but that would soon change.

  Now, I had to think about the red essence. I had a vague idea of what it would do, but the tricky part was cultivating it. I had to be careful because it might not work the same as the purple essence. I wish we had covered this more in the academy.

  Using my core arms, I pulled just a tiny patch of red moss away, leaving seven-eighths of it on the wall.

  I brought this toward my core. Even without absorbing it, it was like I could already taste it. This thing was potent as hell, much more so than purple essence. Rather than giving off a sweet smell, the red moss was spicy, like a hundred chili seeds mashed up into one fiery ball of throat-burning hell.

  I let it absorb into my core, without fully digesting it. Already I could feel it burning me, but it was a rather pleasant warmth.

  The temptation, though. Hells, it was strong. My desire to absorb this moss completely was so powerful that I thought it would break me. It was only by concentrating hard that I battled it, and I then tried to manipulate the moss just as I had with the purple kind.

  Wait. No.

  This wasn’t working! As I gently twisted and pulled on it, I felt the heat leave me in one big gust.

  I felt it then, a horrible sensation inside me. The essence had died.

  I let the moss fall out of my core, where it landed on the ground beneath my pedestal. It was completely black now. Dead.

  Hmm. So the red essence wasn’t cultivated in the usual way. I’d have to think about this, but I only had a finite patch of moss. Better to leave it for now until I had a better idea.

  More time must have passed than I realized, because when I pulled up my map, I saw that Warrane had traveled through most of the vast network, filling in the spaces that had once been black.

  On the southern-most part of the map was the giant cavern of the Wrotun. North of that was the bunch of tunnels that Warren and I traveled through. Then there was my core room and my current location in the essence room.

  Then, ranging north, was a great spread of warren-like tunnels. Hundreds of them, so that they looked like a crisscross of veins. There were no more rooms, though. Just places where the tunnels were a little wider. It seemed that the Wrotun hadn’t dug out any more besides the core room and essence room.

  There was a sense to it. The tunnels to the north were a giant mess, intersecting, looping, hitting dead ends. It was like the maze at the King’s palace, except a maze that looked like hundreds of snakes all slithering beside each other.

  It must have been designed this way to confuse any Seekers who made their way through the surface door, seeking the mana spring. No doubt the Wrotun had laced the tunnels with traps, too.

  Though it suggested they had some knowledge of defense, my presence here indicated something else; the Seekers were getting better at finding their way through the tunnels. Otherwise, why bother paying for a core?

  The thing was, even the most sophisticated trap system could be defeated. If a rogue or a mage was a high enough level, they could use their skills or spells to unmask and disarm traps. That was why any good dungeon also had puzzles and creatures.

  So, I had the beginnings of an essence vine patch, I had two pedestals, and I knew the layout of my dungeon.

  What I needed next were rooms, traps, puzzles, and monsters. Before I could plan what to build and where, I needed to know more about my enemy.

  “Warrane?” I shouted, hoping my voice would reach him through the tunnels. Alas, a gem core’s voice sounds strange. I had been working on deepening it.

  There was no answer.

  In less than a blink, I hopped from the pedestal in my essence room and emerged into my core room. The mana spring was to my right, with mana gently dripping from it. Six different tunnels were sprouting off from here.

  According to my map, Warrane was northeast of me. Unfortunately, without more pedestals, I had no way to travel to him.

  “Warrane?”

  Again, there was no answer. It seemed that sound didn’t travel well through the tunnels.

  That was when I heard a shout of pain in the distance, and realized I was wrong. Sound actually traveled quite well through this place. Just not the kind of sounds that I wanted to hear.

  CHAPTER 8

  Footsteps came toward me, starting quiet but growing in volume and echoing out through the dungeon. My map showed Warrane heading my way, and soon he stumbled into the core room.

  His face was a mess, and his right cheek had ballooned to the size of a… balloon. His green skin had turned purple. His leather armor was covered in flecks of dust and splotches of blood.

  “This leaf was attacked,” he said, getting his breath. “The Seekers are here.”

  I felt a jolt of panic now, and I realized just how different this situation was to what I had been trained for.

  When you were building a dungeon, it didn’t open until you were ready for it to. That meant you could prepare yourself before any heroes came to loot it, and you could leave lots of nasty surprises for them.

  Here, I had made no traps, no puzzles, and the only creature in my army was a leech named Sixth-leaf who lived in Warrane’s inventory bag. As situations went, it wasn’t ideal.

  “The Seekers? Where did they come from?”

  “The surface door, Core Beno. As always.”

  “Of course. How many of them were there?”

  “This leaf was blinded by a spell before he could see. If felt like a blow to the face, but made from mana. His vision only cleared in time for him to see the nearest tunnel, and run.”

  “So we have no idea how many Seekers are here, who they are, or what skills they have. The only thing we know is they have a mage who can cause temporary blindness.”

  “This leaf apologizes. Self-preservation wears the same cloak as cowardice. In the heat of the moment, his senses were not his own.”

  “You don’t need to say sorry. Fear isn’t a fair fighter,” I said. “It’s there to keep you safe, but it can turn on you. Don’t blame yourself. How far do the Seekers usually get when they attack? I take it Tavia’s traps hold them off?”

  “Further each time, Core Beno. May I see your map?”

  I mentally commanded my map to appear as beams of light. They formed as straight, yellow lines that hovered in the air so that Warren could see them. It cost me .1 essence per minute to show my map this way, but my essence vines covered that.

  Warrane pointed to the map. “The furthest they reached was here,” he said. “That was many moons ago, and it depleted them, I believe.”

  Hells, that was worryingly close. Warrane had pointed to a section of tunnels not too far north from the core room.

  “Can’t any of the Wrotun come and fight? It’s ridiculous you let the Seekers get that far. You can’t rely just on traps.”

  “The leaf that struggles against the wind soon falls off the branch. That is what first-leaf Godwin says.”

  “You mean he’s scared to die.”

  Warrane nodded. “As are many leaves. We are not a fighting people.”

  I thought I understood. These people used the mana springs to extend their lives way beyond their mortal reach. They had built their whole culture around it. But the thing about extended life was that it made you scared to lose it. These people were too frightened to defend themselves, so they first relied on traps, and now they had bought me to battle for them.

  Fine. I’d do what I had to do.

  “First, we protect the spring at all costs. If the Seekers launched a full assault recently, they’re probably weakened. If they have any sense, this is just a scouting party here to see how many traps you managed to rebuild. Is there any way to speak to Core Jahn and see if they’re attacking that door too?”

  “This leaf could run to him.”

  “That’d take hours. We need a better way of communicating across both doors, but
that’ll have to wait.”

  I felt my mind narrow into an intense focus now. That was the perk of my academy training; my whole second life thus far had been designed around fighting heroes. When it came to a battle, I felt at home. Tense, anxious, but at home.

  So, I had 340 essence points to spend, and I needed to make sure I used them well enough to repel the Seekers. To do that, I needed to know what I was dealing with.

  Looking at Warren, I realized I couldn’t send him back through the tunnels. I knew what I could do.

  Create fire beetle.

  A squat black beetle appeared in front of me. It had bulging eyes, skinny legs, and streaks of red light ran up and down its dark shell.

  “Kill?” it said.

  I suppose that it is a proud moment in any parent’s life when their offspring says their first words. For me, I had come to know that a fire beetle’s first words are always, fight or kill. Not exactly heart-warming, but a lot more appropriate for the circumstances than dad or papa.

  “I don’t need you to kill,” I told it. “See this map?”

  “Fight?”

  “No. Listen to me. Head north to the door you can see way, way at the top. As soon as you see anyone, watch them. Do not fight. Do not kill. Don’t even whisper harsh words under your breath. I need you to stay in the shadows and watch them.”

  “The beetle is a spy?” asked Warrane.

  “Of sorts. Once I do any kind of work in a dungeon tunnel or room, it technically belongs to me, and that means I can see it no matter where I am. Right now, I haven’t done anything to the northern reaches of the tunnels, even if I have mapped them out. So, I’ll need this vicious little creature to be my eyes.”

  The fire beetle scampered off toward a tunnel entrance, and it soon disappeared out of view. I watched its progress on my map, and once I was reassured it was heading in the right direction, I closed my map.

  “It’ll be a while before he gets to them,” I said. “We need traps for the core room.”

  “Tavia is away, Core Beno.”

  “That’s why you bought a core. No offense to Tavia, but I doubt her traps are as sophisticated as mine. They won’t have the same level of complexity, of artistry, of elegance. Now, do I want a giant hole with spikes at the bottom, or a metal bear trap?”

  Traps were a real essence drain, so it was difficult to get a balance. In total, six tunnels led into the core room. One of those went all the way back to the Wrotun cavern, so there was no threat of an attack from that side.

  That left five tunnels I needed to make safe. I had very little time, so I’d have to lay some bear traps or pitfalls. Pitfalls were much more effective, but they cost 100 essence points each. I couldn't hold 500 essence points at my current level.

  Even if I did, it might not be the way to go about it. If I blew all my essence points on defending the core room, I’d having nothing left to use on making creatures. This meant I wouldn’t be able to take the fight to the Seekers, and I would effectively be tempting them toward my core room in the hope that my traps could get them. It was riskier than pulling on a dragon’s tail.

  Either I created monsters and sent them to kill the invaders, or I relied on defense to do the job. The present state of my dungeon meant that neither option appealed to me.

  I decided it had been a while now, so I used my core vision to see through my fire beetle’s eyes.

  The room around me grew hazy, almost as if a giant was shaking it, and then different images snapped into place.

  I saw a tunnel, the stone walls passing by either side as the beetle scampered down it. I couldn’t hear anything, which was a drawback of only being a level 5 core, and having little affinity with this particular beetle. The more I leveled up, the stronger my core senses would get, gradually introducing sounds, smells, and feelings into my core vision.

  Not only that, but the longer a creature spent in my dungeon, and the better we bonded, the more attuned I would be when looking through his or her eyes. Right now, I had to make do with just the sight.

  For a while, it was just an endless stream of darkness, with the beetle scuttling through it. I decided that I really should get some mana lamps fixed to the walls. Not too many, because I didn’t want the place lit up like the academy dining room. But careful placement of mana lamps was actually a good form of defense; you could use it to draw invaders’ gazes to the right (or wrong) places.

  I was about to leave my core vision and focus on my core room problem again when I saw something.

  Just ahead, at the end of this particular tunnel, I saw lights.

  Okay, now we were getting somewhere! The beetle crawled on, getting closer and closer until the lights got brighter.

  The tunnel opened out just ten meters away. I saw that the lights were in fact little balls of burning goo squashed atop metal rods. There were eight goo torches, and eight figures holding them. It was still just that little bit too dark to see them properly.

  Suddenly, the core vision turned black, and I was yanked out of it. The sensation was a jarring one, and it made me feel like someone had picked me up and shook me around.

  I gave a mental command for my feelings to fade. Though I usually wanted to keep my feelings with me as much as possible, they had no place in a battle.

  “Are you okay, Core Beno?”

  Warren was staring at me now, concern written on his green face.

  “Fine,” I said. “There are eight Seekers. Tell me about them, Warrane. What race are they?”

  “The Seekers are like the Wrotun; they attack with different races.”

  “So we could be dealing with anything. Fine. What weapons do they generally use? What spells? Do they have mages, archers, illusionists, barbarians? I need to know everything.”

  “The Seekers’ attacks take many forms, Core Beno. This leaf has seen men who can grow spheres of trembling purple energy on their palms. Not as bright as the First-Leaf’s staff, but enough to hurt. He has seen flaming arrows fired from a great distance. Orcs with swords made from glass. Chimeras who can follow a scent miles through the tunnels.”

  “We’re dealing with eight enemies of unknown race or powers. Hmm. At least I know where they are. I don’t have the essence to create eight creatures of any kind except leeches and spiders, and I doubt that would be a fair fight. We’ll have to be creative.”

  “This leaf is yours to command.”

  “You’re a little too subservient sometimes, Warrane.”

  “It is his only way of restoring honor.”

  “Even so, be your own man. Surely you won’t do anything that I tell you to?”

  “This leaf will act on any command if it means he can gain back his tree’s honor.”

  “Okay. Go fight the Seekers by yourself.”

  Warren’s lips twitched. “Core Beno? This leaf would offer advice; it wouldn’t be in either of our interests for him to fight them alone.”

  “Ah, good. You do have your own mind! I’ll need you to use it, okay? You’re here to help me, and you’re worth more than just carrying me around. Tell me, in your best judgment and from your knowledge of the Seekers, what is it most likely we will face? If you’re wrong, I won’t hold it against you because I know this is a blind guess.”

  “This leaf knows there is a magic user,” he said, rubbing the swollen part of his face. “He is most displeased with his way of finding this out. The Seekers rarely send just one kind of attacker.”

  “They mix things up, like a party of heroes. Maybe this isn’t so different from what I’m used to.”

  “They are getting wiser to our traps. Each time they invade, we must lay twice as many to repel them the next time.”

  “As I thought; some of them have the rogue-like ability to disarm traps, or their mages know the right spells. Okay. I might have something we can do, but I’ll need to get closer to them. Since I don’t have pedestal points all the way up there, you’ll have to carry me.”

  “This leaf wonders, does your id
ea involve stealth?”

  “When its eight versus one, stealth is the only way. A core must work in the shadows. The closer he gets to the light, the nearer he is to defeat. I’ll be pushing myself as close as I can bear.”

  “The Seekers can detect when a leaf is nearby,” said Warrane.

  “Just a leaf? Or they can sense anything?”

  “Tavia once experimented with this. She released a trained dirtfox into the tunnels during a Seeker attack. It followed them for an hour, and returned unharmed.”

  “Interesting. Yet they notice you straight away?”

  “In an instant.”

  “Then they can detect the mana in you. They need torchlight to see, so it isn’t as if they have extraordinary senses, and they couldn’t spot Tavia’s fox. Yet they saw you straight away. I suppose you’ll have to stay here.”

  “How will you get close to them?”

  Create kobold, I thought.

  A kobold formed in front of us. I hadn’t warned Warrane, and he jumped when he saw the creature appear beside him. He recovered himself soon, since it wasn’t the kobold herself that worried him, just her sudden reappearance. After all, there was a kobold family in Wrotun.

  This was the third kobold I had ever created, and the first female. She looked much like my other two; a squat figure who stood upright, with the scales of a lizard and a wolf-like face. Her eyes were slanted, more feminine than my old kobolds’. She was slightly less muscular than them, too. She had a shock of black hair on the top of her head, which ran down her scaly back and stopped just above her tail.

  I was about the speak to her, when a message appeared in front of me.

  You have created three kobolds – [Minor] proficiency gained!

  Due to creating three kobolds, and in a large part thanks to the bond you fostered with your first two, you have earned a [minor] proficiency.

  You can now choose from the following roles when creating kobolds:

  - Miner

  - Scout

  - Shaman.

  - Cultivator

  Core List created: Creature Proficiencies