“Huh?”
“Protection. Security. I think we’ve been bought to guard something, Core Jahn.”
“I’m worried.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said, feeling bad for him. “You technically graduated from the academy. Whatever happens next, you can cope.”
“But I failed my evaluation.”
“You failed because you absorbed all your essence moss in one gulp, instead of cultivating it. Just control yourself.”
“Thanks, Beno.”
Suddenly, daylight emerged above me. Colors streamed in. A bright orange sky that looked like it was burning. Orange sky…where in the world of Xynnar had an orange sky?
Wherever it was, someone had opened the rucksack to let the outside air in. I chose to allow myself to feel it. This was something that cores could do; our default state was a kind of numb void, but we could choose to feel heat and cold. We could choose to smell things. I kept my senses working as much as possible, though it was advisable to mute them when dealing with certain dungeon creatures. I mean, come on…you’ve smelled a kobold after he’s spent hours digging tunnels, right?
Still, it was a good trait to be able to ignore my senses, for a time. See, dungeons cores spend quite a lot of time in dungeons. And dungeons are cold. Being able to willfully shut the cold out helps a lot. They don’t make gem core-sized wool coats.
Note: Future business venture to explore.
So I enjoyed the breeze now, and I looked up at the orange sky above and tried to remember how long it was since I had even seen a sky. It was probably when I was still a man, and I couldn’t remember that.
The sky was then replaced by a kind of black mass. Dark, impenetrable, and completely covering the newly created opening in the bag. Like the soul of night itself, some evil, all-encompassing presence here to spread doom and desolation over everything.
“Core Beno?” asked Jahn. “What…argh!”
Jahn was lifted from the bag, leaving me alone.
Only when a hand reached inside and pulled me out of the bag, did I realize that the dark mass was a face covered by something, and it belonged to a person.
Two metal hands lifted me aloft so fast that I felt a phantom queasiness. I was about to protest at how much I hated being picked up like a puppy, when I stopped.
The sight before me took my imaginary breath away.
There, held up so high, I could see my new surroundings. I was in a bazaar of some sort, with dozens of market stalls all around. One stall had scented candles and incense sticks, and another stall had a cauldron with steam rising from it, which must have accounted for the stew smell.
But there were no houses around. No buildings whatsoever. In fact, for as far as I could see there was only a desert wasteland, the ground dry and cracked and baking under the orange sky.
It sure as all hells wasn’t the Endless Gardens in the King’s palace, let me tell you. Then again, I’m a dungeon core. Home comforts mean as much to me as a towel means to a fish.
It gave me a weird feeling deep inside my core. As if I was floating at a great height and scared of falling. Maybe it was anxiety because it had been so long since I was outside.
Yes, I still get anxious. All cores have their quirks. Anxiety is a remnant of my first life that sometimes creeps back into my second, or so the academy core physician once explained.
The most breath-taking thing was the crowd staring at me. There must have been more than a hundred people. Judging from their varying shapes and sizes I guessed that not all of them were human.
Guessed, Beno? I hear you ask. How can you not know for sure? Surely it’s easy to tell a human from a non-human?
It is, with some notable human exceptions. But these people were wearing suits of a thin metal. Liquid metal, I suppose I’d call it, in that it seemed to reshape itself when they moved. These liquid metal suits covered them head to toe, with only a semi-transparent panel in front of their faces giving me any indication of what they looked like.
I turned to Jahn now, who was also held aloft, also held by this same person.
“The people can’t survive on the surface,” I told him. “See the sky? The air, the way it seems to shimmer and burn? And their suits…”
“Overseer Bolton told us about something like this. Gas? No…no…come on, Jahn! Think! I hate it when things get stuck in my brain.”
“Don’t worry, Jahn, I don’t have a clue either.”
I felt myself lurch, and the person holding me lifted me higher, and every suited person looked up at me and Jahn now.
“My friends, my family,” said the benefactor, and I realized she was a woman. A woman with big hands, apparently. “We gather today on the surface of our dying land, a gathering we have not undertaken for many, many moons. I have returned from the west with our salvation.”
Salvation? That didn’t sound good. I had never had to bear the burden of being someone’s salvation before.
Wait – did this mean these people believed that a dungeon core could adapt the surface atmosphere? That we could make this placed hospitable again, or something?
Oh, no. I hoped they hadn’t paid much for us, because they were in for a surprise. Nah, they wouldn’t have paid much for two failed cores…right? I mean, cores were rare, yes. But we were classed as failures. That had to have come with a discount.
I felt a little more reassured now. There was no way these people had paid a fortune for us hoping that’d we’d save them or something.
Willful self-delusional is a powerful medicine, by the way.
“We have all sold everything we owned, we have put all our hopes and dreams on this,” continued the woman. “All our dreams of the future, our very existence as a people.”
I felt an imaginary lump form in my imaginary throat now.
“Hail the Cores!” shouted a person in the crowd.
“Hail the Cores!” the others said, all of them carrying the chant until it became quite uncomfortable. Jahn and I exchanged looks, but Jahn seemed to be basking in it.
The woman slowly lowered us onto two metal rods fixed into the ground, with little holders on top. We fit snugly into them.
Half the crowd bowed to us, while the other half folded their arms, or scrutinized us with looks that seemed intended to bore deep into our gem souls. Not everyone was as hopeful about us, it seemed.
I decided it was time to address my benefactor now.
“I suppose we haven’t been introduced,” I said. “I am Core Beno, and this is Core Jahn. We are grateful that you saved us from being pulverized into gem dust. It’s a sure way to become my friend. But please, let me ask; what is it you would like us to do?”
She stared back at me now. She wiped the dust off her face panel, and I saw her eyes. Wide, blue, and with a kindness in them. “It is simple, honorable gems,” she told me. “You and Core Jahn will save our people.”
CHAPTER 2
“I am Galatee,” she said next. “Second-leaf of the Godwin tree.”
“Galatee…Galatee…” said Jahn. “Yeah! I remember. Galatee; she was the god of fortune.”
Galatee smiled at him. It was hard to see through the mask film on her face, but her lips definitely creased. “You are as knowledgeable as they promised, little core. I hope your friend is as wise as you.”
I looked at Jahn now, wondering where in all hells he plucked that information from. Then I remembered; Jahn was the class joker, he never listened, and he couldn’t read you the rules of coredom from memory if you paid him all the gold in the King’s vault. But, his memory worked in such a strange way that certain facts stuck to him like pollen on a bee’s arse.
“You will now receive your gifts,” said Galatee. She addressed the crowd. “The five-leaves will begin, and then fourth, third, and thus.”
The crowd began to approach us, each person bowing respectfully and leaving a present at the base of the rods we rested on. None of them spoke and few of them even looked at us, though some of the younger
ones sneaked a glance.
Galatee had said the five-leaves should go first, then the fourth. At first, I had no idea what this meant, and then I realized that the crowd was approaching us in age groups, beginning with the youngest. I could only guess that your leaf meant which generation you were born in.
She had mentioned she was a second leaf in the Godwin tree. Godwin must have been a family name, and she was perhaps one of the oldest.
Finally, after all five leaf groups had given us gifts, I had amassed a pile of treasure below me. Daggers, leather chest pieces, boots, rings, necklaces.
There wasn’t much that I, a core gem with no arms, could do with those. Still, I wasn’t going to appear ungrateful.
“Thank you, wise leaves,” I said. I was really winging this. “May…may your branches be sturdy and not bow to even the strongest…strongest…wind. Yes.”
Galatee stared at me for what seemed like hours. “You would be wise to hold your words, like your knowledgeable friend,” she told me. “Core Jahn can be an example to you.”
Core Jahn? An example to me?
Well…fair enough. At least he’d kept his mouth shut. I had evidently said something wrong. I resolved to stay quiet too, until I had a better grasp of who these people were and how their culture worked.
“Core bearers, come forth,” said Galatee.
Two figures stepped forward, younger members of the crowd judging from their slender frames and what I could see of their faces beneath their masks. Jahn’s was a human girl, whereas mine was a green-faced teen with three eyes.
“We will descend,” said Galatee.
The core bearers each grabbed the rods Jahn and I were resting on and carried us, following Galatee’s lead. We headed away from the makeshift bazar and toward what appeared to be a completely desolate wasteland.
The green-skinned boy carrying me leaned closer. “This leaf is Warrane,” he said. “He is your bearer. It is an honor, oh powerful one.”
“The honor is mine, Warrane. I don’t think you’ll need to bear me much longer.”
“Oh? Can one such as yourself levitate?”
“No, no. I’m assuming I’ll soon be placed in a dungeon of some sort. I hope so, anyway.”
“You will still need this leaf to carry you, no?”
“No, Warrane. In a dungeon, I can create pedestal points that I can teleport to at will. There’s no need for a core to walk in his own dungeon.”
“Oh. This leaf thought…” his voice trailed off, and his shoulders slumped, the liquid metal forming around them and making the gesture more pronounced.
“Have I upset you? I have a habit of doing that. I once made Core Pollit cry.”
“Cry? You think a leaf of the Webb tree would cry?” he said.
“Warrane, until a few moments ago, I had never even heard of your tree culture. Whether the Webb leaves are criers or not is completely unknown to me. If you are, no shame in that. It’s good to let your emotions loose now and then.”
“This leaf does not cry. He comes from a tree with blackened branches,” said the boy, and he seemed a little older now as he talked. “He is a five-leaf, but will never become a first-leaf.”
“No? Don’t you just have to grow old to become a first-leaf, or have I got this wrong?”
“A leaf rises when a new one grows from the bud.”
“Ah. When you have children, you become a leaf higher than you were. It’s a little early to say that will never happen, Warrane. Take it from someone who was once a man, and now inhabits a gem core body. Life has a way of smashing you in the face with a big fist of surprise.”
“You don’t understand, wise core. The first, second, third, and fourth leaves in the Webb tree are blackened. Corrupted. Rotted. Dead on the inside, their foulness a blight upon the-”
“Okay, your relatives aren’t the best. But you’re right; I don’t understand.”
“The leaves above me left us. They joined the others, those who wish to destroy us. The Seekers. They tried to get this leaf to go with them. His grandparents, his mother…they begged him to leave, but he wouldn’t. First-leaf Godwin proclaimed that the Webb tree is wicked at the root, and he ordered that this leaf Warrane be cast out, but second-leaf Galatee…”
“She spoke up for you?”
“If it wasn’t for her, this leaf would have been dead. A corrupted tree spreads foulness through its roots and poisons the whole soil. That’s what first-leaf Godwin says.”
“Seems like a charming fella. They’re trusting you to carry me, though. Not to exaggerate my own worth, but that must mean something.”
“This leaf has for years tried to restore his reputation. He has volunteered for the tasks and labor that no other leaves want to do. He has never complained, never shirked. He has slowly won this reputation, and second-leaf Galatee has given him this chance to restore some pride to a withered tree.”
I sensed that this was an honor for him. Truth be told, I was a little uncomfortable being treated this way. Let me tell you, I didn’t see any honor in carrying someone like me around.
But, if somehow helping me would restore this poor lad’s family reputation, then I guessed I could play along. I didn’t enjoy having a servant – at least one not of my own creation – but I found myself liking Warrane immediately.
“Although I won’t need you to carry me around my dungeon,” I told him. “There may be other tasks.”
“Ones that will bring this leaf honor?”
“Lots of honor. More than you know what to do with.”
“Such as what, wise core?”
“You know. Core…stuff. In fact, I saw you collect the gifts your people gave me earlier, yes?”
“This leaf has a bag artificed to hold things many times its size.”
“Great. I might be able to use some of the things as loot for when the heroes come.”
“Heroes?” said Warrane, a puzzled look on his face.
Did these people not know about heroes? What had they gotten themselves into, pooling all their fortunes to buy Jahn and I? What was a dungeon core, if he didn’t fight heroes?
“Warrane,” I said. “It seems your people might not be as educated about dungeon cores as I thought. Is that right?”
“This core talks of heroes and loot, and it confuses this leaf.”
Yep, that sold it. These people didn’t know much about cores at all, and they’d somehow pinned their hopes of salvation on us. Though salvation from what, I didn’t even want to think. The people that Warrane’s family left to join, yes, it had to be them. What did he call them? The Seekers? Who were they?
I was sure answers would come, but for now, I was left with a feeling of a massive weight resting on me and threatening to crush me. So many people, so much hope placed in a couple of failed dungeon cores.
Ever had the feeling you’re about to disappoint a whole society of people?
We had only walked a hundred or so feet into the wasteland when Galatee stopped. There was nothing here. No sign of growth, not even any insects. I had already shut off my sensations, because a great heat was coming from the sky, and the smell of sulfur swirled all around me.
Galatee kneeled against the ground and placed both her hands on it. Light washed from her palms, forming an orange rune of light that spread out in a circle. The light solidified, becoming a door. She pushed on it, and the door opened inward, into the ground.
Galatee led us on, walking through this door and then deep into the ground, to a sloping tunnel lit by mana torches. The deeper we went, the further into darkness we traveled, the more at home I felt. Yes, there’s nothing a dungeon core loves more than a stinking, black space buried way, way below the surface.
Soon, the tunnel widened more and more, until finally, it opened onto an enormous cavern.
Ah. Here was their home.
It was a sprawling cave hidden way below the surface, lit by enormous mana torches as big as houses fixed at various points in the cavern. There were hundred
s of dwellings made from crystal-like materials of different colors, catching the torchlight like a prism and sending beautiful patterns of illumination across the space.
Bah.
Did I mention I’m a dungeon core? Beauty doesn’t appeal to us, I’m afraid.
This cavern was filled with people of all ages, races, genders. Here, at least, my suspicion was proved right. None of them wore their liquid metal suits in the cave, which suggested that the surface was deadly to them.
It meant I could see just what a multicultural society they were. I spotted orcs, dwarfs, merkins, humans. I even saw a group of kobolds pushing minecarts, which made me think of my kobold friends, Tomlin and Wylie.
Course, they were my creations, not friends. According to dungeon core rules, when a core made monsters from essence, they were just tools constructed to help part heroes from their lives. To me, though, the little kobolds were my friends, and we’d grown close. I missed Tomlin and Wylie.
“Bearers, bring your cores to the lightorium,” said Galatee.
“Yes, two-leaf Godwin.”
As Warrane carried me across this cavern city, it was hard to ignore the dozens of faces that looked my way, and it reminded me that I was a salvation of some sort to these people.
Galatee had mentioned that these guys had pooled their possessions to pay for me, and they had high hopes. They probably expected something from me that I just didn’t have; a kind of gravitas, I suppose. They would expect me to act all mysterious and powerful. Maybe I could play the part, and give them their money’s worth.
I addressed one orc male, who had two cute orc kids standing by his legs. “Yes, it is I, your core. May glory come to this fine settlement.”
“Shove it up your arse, gem,” said the orc. His children made a gesture with their fingers, which I guessed wasn’t a welcoming one.
Oh well. You can’t be friends with everyone.
The lightorium was the biggest structure in the city. Shaped like a sphere, and with a giant dome and crystal walls. On the inside, the dome seemed impossibly high, much higher than from the outside. I sensed the work of an artificer-builder, who were known to be able to craft illusions into their designs.
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 17
