“So you relented in the end?”
Gill shook his head. “Our academy was hundreds of years old. The empire was barely twenty, at the time. We refused to hand over centuries’ worth of teachings. The ensuing battle between our cores and the empire soldiers is the reason that this place is a ruin and the landscape above dead. Nothing will ever grow above this place.”
“What happened to all your cores?”
“Dead.”
“And your overseers?”
“To my shame, I left the battle when it was clear that not only were we going to lose, but that the empire would not hold any prisoners. They had decided to destroy every overseer and core completely, and then empty our archives. As head overseer, it was my job to protect everyone, yes. But ultimately my main priority was towards the academy itself. If all the others died, the academy would have been forgotten about. The empire would make sure of that. So, to my shame, I saved my own life.”
“There’s no shame in that. If the battle was lost, why add your life to the tally?”
Gill ran his hand along a mural on the wall. “I spent so many years here, forging cores, and then teaching them their abilities. In the end, it was all our own fault. We could have stayed out of the war with the Shielded Republic. The empire didn’t know the existence or location of every academy. We could have stayed out of it, and they would have been none the wiser about us. But because we felt the right thing was to help the emperor, we ensured the destruction of our own establishment.”
“The empire has a lot to answer for,” I said.
“It does, but who is going to ask the question? It also has a lot to be praised for. Everything is a balance, Beno. Before Xynnar was united, rival territories warred incessantly. By bringing them all together under one flag, the empire has saved millions of lives over the years.”
“All the same, what they give comes at a price.”
“It does. After I fled the academy, I spent decades traveling Xynnar and finding out the cost. Not only that. I began to see what its rewards were, too. I’ve come to make a certain peace with what has happened. Instead of brooding on everything that was lost, it is much less stressful on my soul if I try to appreciate what the empire has given us.”
“If everything was taken from your archives, why are we here?” I said.
“When I was traveling, I wasn’t just seeing the sights. Our academy wasn’t the only one to resist the empire’s efforts to restrict its teachings. Some were more successful in moving their archives to different locations. Moreover, other academies stayed out of the fight with the Shielded Republic entirely, and continued to forge and teach their cores away from the glare of the empire.”
Gill crossed the room until he was standing in the center of it, directly over the mural of himself. He took a small, cylindrical piece of metal from his robe. He ran his fingers over it while muttering, and the metal extended into a six-foot-long rod.
He placed it on the ground, moving it until he heard a click. He rotated it, and the belly mouth of the mural began to open. It grew wider and wider until it revealed yet another sloping passageway.
“I knew that the empire would never return here,” said Gill. “After all, they had killed our overseers, destroyed our cores, and then emptied our archives. What was left for them except an underground ruin? You can find hundreds of those around Xynnar. So, I would periodically return here with the teachings and techniques I had learned from other academies on my travels.”
I stared at the passageway, eager to see what was hidden at the end of it. “You have other technique tablets hidden here?”
Gill nodded. “I was never sure what I was going to do with them, other than a vague notion to protect some of the ancient teachings from the empire. I certainly never planned to teach them to any cores.”
“I thought you recently taught at an academy?”
“Sure, I spent some of my days overseeing in the various empire–approved academies. But that was to fund my travels, and I only ever taught what the government allowed.”
“Not to be rude, Overseer, but when you taught at these academies…didn’t the empire ever realize that you had survived? Wouldn’t they have wanted to hunt you down again and get rid of any trace of this academy?”
“That was the least of my problems, Beno. Where’s your imagination? I simply used one of my faces. I think this was the one I wore.”
A face appeared on Gill’s head. Narrow eyes, a craggy forehead, and a thin, red nose. His cheekbones thinned, and a row of pearly teeth formed in his new mouth. With his face where it should be and his robe drawn shut, he easily passed as a regular person.
More and more, I couldn’t help but feel tremendous respect for Overseer Gill. I thought back to when I’d first met him in the tavern, pouring pint after pint of beer into his belly mouth. If I hadn’t needed an overseer to open my academy, I wouldn’t even have looked at him. How wrong I had been. I felt ashamed that I had judged such an esteemed overseer so harshly. I was just a Base-quality core, who was I to judge a man like Gill?
“Why did you agree to help us?” I said. “It wasn’t just about beer money.”
“I only met with you because I owed Gulliver a favor. I was fully prepared to tell you to get lost. But after hearing what you planned to do, I sensed something in you. I knew your core quality was poor immediately. Not Base–poor, but poor all the same. Even so, something was lurking in your inner core that even UpperFoundation quality cores don’t possess. Core quality isn’t everything. Determination can count for so much more, and can be a difference between a core reaching Foundation, and climbing even higher. Talent is the spark that sets a flame going, but it is determination that sustains it.”
“Thank you for your faith in me, Overseer Gill.”
“You can thank me by working until your entire core feels like it is going to tear apart. Come, I’ll show you the archives.”
Gill led me down the passageway and into a secret archive. It was barely bigger than the smallest chamber in my dungeon, yet I stared with wonder.
The shelves were filled with technique tomes that Gill had copied from academies he had visited. There must have been fifty or so of them, each representing a different power or technique a core could learn.
I felt like a dog let loose in a butcher’s shop. I wanted to pore over every tablet and learn every technique until I was bursting with power. Then, I’d go back to the Dungeon Core Academy and show them how little their test meant.
“I want something powerful,” I said. “Something-”
Gill lifted his hand. I immediately fell silent. That was something I hadn’t done since my early days in the academy, back when I’d actually respected overseers.
“Only one of these techniques can be learned by a Base-quality core, Beno.”
Just one? Crestfallen wasn’t a big enough word. All these techniques, all these powers, and I could only use one?
But that was an ungrateful attitude. Gill had brought me here to show me a technique, and I would be a fool to waste the chance because I was greedy.
“I would be honored if you teach me the technique, Overseer Gill.”
Gill selected a tablet from the shelves. It was thicker than a doorstop, and bound in material as orange and red as autumn leaves, and made a similar crinkling sound when gill handled it. The overseer setting it down on the ground.
“I got this from an academy who dwell on a small island far out on the Caspyra Sea, on Xynnar’s western coast. You won’t find it plotted on any maps, nor have any trade routes been established. Yet, you won’t find a more picturesque place to spend your days.”
“What is the academy called?”
“The Academy of Plenty. There is a good reason they created the technique I am about to show you. As they are so remote, their cores have nothing to fight.”
“How do they level up? And how do their monsters level up, for that matter?”
“We come to the crux of it. Their island is o
ften besieged by serpents of the sea and giant gulls of the air, and they must defend themselves. Given that they cannot level up their monsters between attacks, they were forced to forge their own technique. This, Beno, is the technique of Essential Overflow.”
Light spun out from the book on the ground, gathering in mid-air and filling the archive with a glow.
The light began to form shapes. First, a star-shaped core appeared in the room. It hovered in the center, motionless to begin with. Then, essence wafted out from its five points, and another creature formed nearby. It was a rat. Normal sized, nothing special.
“What is-”
Gill held up his hand. “Watch.”
The core wasn’t done. More and more essence left it. Much more than it would need to create something as basic as a rat. I didn’t understand why it was being so wasteful.
As if in answer, the vermin began to grow. First to the size of a dog, then a wolf, and then even more, until it was the size of a carriage.
The star core looked visibly weakened now. I recognized the look. It had just emptied all its essence. Even if a core was besieged by a hundred heroes, it was never a good idea to use all your essence. It would be like a man exercising until he sweated every last drop of moisture from his skin. Less lethal, yet just as horrible to experience.
Gill gestured at the giant rat. “He’s a looker, no?”
“If you like your vermin to be house-sized. What did I just see?”
“Lacking anything for their core’s monsters to battle against between serpent raids, the Academy of Plenty created the Essential Overflow technique. The idea is simple. To create a rat, a core normally uses just a smidgen of his essence. All this will produce is a small creature. Level 1, tiny, and unable to devour anything but a block of cheese. But when the core employed the Essential Overflow technique…Well, I am not here to lecture you. How about you tell me what happened, Beno?”
I hesitated, not wanting to give a shameful answer.
“Don’t be coy, Beno. We learn better from a thousand wrong answers than an embarrassed silence.”
“The core used more essence than he needed to when he created the rat. The Essential Overflow technique converted the essence into something that made the rat bigger.”
“Not just bigger. The Essential Overflow leveled up the rat so that it was created not as a level 1 vermin, but level 50.”
I was astounded. Even after so many hero battles that I had lost count, I didn’t have any creatures who’d surpassed level 30. For a newly-created creature to be a level 50 was simply unbelievable.
“And I could do this, even with a Base-quality core? When can we start?”
Gill laughed. “Steady on. What you just saw was an Enlightened-level core using Essential Overflow. Even Base-cores can learn this technique, Beno, but your results will not be anywhere near what you have seen.”
“Not at first. But with time…”
“That’s the spirit! There was a reason I brought you here, Beno. As long as you carry that determination to your training, you will surpass the Base-core you were dealt. The tablet will show you the pulsing technique needed to learn Essential Overflow. You will watch it until the sight sickens you. You will practice until your core feels ready to fall apart. And then you will practice again. You are capable of mastering this Beno. The spark is already lit, and your determination needs to fuel the fire.”
Chapter 25
It took me four days to learn Essential Overflow. After that, we didn’t have long to prepare for the quarter-final fight with the Dungeon Core Academy. That meant I had to make the best use of every second. It didn’t leave Bolton, Gulliver, and I much time to talk strategy in my core chamber.
“What do we know about the way Aethos fights?” I said.
Gulliver flicked through the tournament notebook he’d spent the last few weeks scribbling in. “He’s a tricky one. He’s never used the same monsters in two different fights. He’s never conjured the same traps. Better trying to predict the weather by sticking your hand out of the window.”
“Randomness is a consistent behavior in itself,” said Bolton. “Something we can work with, perhaps.”
“The inconsistent enemy wears fickleness as his uniform. I remember that from Mid-Level Strategy class,” I said. “But I can’t prepare to face every possible monster and trap combination. Let’s think about what we know about Aethos. When he took the core test in the academy, it evaluated him as a Mid-Foundation core. That means he’s four steps further up the ladder than me, and he will be able to hold five different types of essence in his core. That means I have five different methods of attack to prepare for.”
“I am impressed, Beno,” said Bolton.
“Thank you.”
Gulliver tapped a page in his book “I’ve watched all of Aethos ’s fights. So far, he’s used monsters and traps with the magnet, air, and fire elementals.”
“That’s three types of essence that we know that he has. But Gill told me there are fifty different types out there. Maybe more. And the academy has resources to get them all.”
“There were five huge cultivation chambers in the academy when I was still teaching,” said Bolton. “I’m told that Overseer Tarnbuckle has expanded them further.”
“Then there’s no way to predict which essences Aethos will fill his core up with before the fight. That means I have no way of predicting what he’ll use. I suppose the only thing I can do is focus on my strengths and my strategies.”
Alone in the arena, I decided it was time to create some monsters for the fight. First, I checked how much essence I had to work with. Conjuring monsters during the tournament had taken its toll. Despite my new Essence Pulse technique and Tomlin’s cultivation efforts, my essence wasn’t completely restored.
Total essence: 5798 / 6982
That wasn’t a whole lot of essence to work with. Sure, it was probably more than Aethos had. He was still studying in the academy and probably wouldn’t have leveled up much yet. In fact, his battles in the tournament were probably his first taste of leveling.
However, as Mid–Foundation quality, he had the advantage of storing different essences in his core, which he could use on his monsters and traps. This gave him versatility that I lacked and would allow him to react to my attacks within seconds, using much less essence in the process.
I would have to be careful about how I approached the fight. After discussing it with Bolton and Gulliver, and thinking on my own for a while, I decided on a strategy.
My first plan was to create two undead spirit archers at a total cost of 900 essence. That was quite a chunk to take out of my core, but it was worth it. Because the archers were undead, they would be able to withstand physical and magic-based damage. Their archery skill would give me a bit of range, and allow me to attack any of Aethos’ monsters that were air-based.
With that resolved, it was time to create some dead guys.
Usually, I would just gather the appropriate amount of essence in my core, create a mental picture of the monster I needed, and then let the essence form a shape, gradually becoming a creature.
This time, I used Essential Overload. I practiced it the way Gill and his tablet has shown me. First, I gathered the essence I needed for the undead archers. I pictured the monsters in my mind, and then I pulsed my essence.
But before the monsters were fully created, I pulsed even more essence from my core. It surged out and then stopped, meeting resistance around the almost-formed undead.
I had already used the amount of essence I needed to create them, after all. The excess didn’t know what to do.
Gathering my core strength, I pulsed harder. The air seemed to snap, and the essence broke through the resistance and gathered around the undead archers. Essential Overload fired surplus essence at them.
I watched in amazement as they grew taller than usual. Their bones looked stronger, their eyes keener.
Soon, two undead archers stood in front of me, their bones
making click-clack sounds when they moved.
Normally, every newly-created monster started at level one.
But not today.
Essential overload had changed things.
Undead Archer 1
Level 23
Undead Archer 2 -
Level 21
To say I was impressed with the Essential Overload technique would be an understatement. My archers had skipped all the way past level 20, which normally would have taken many hero battles to achieve. During which, it was likely that at least one of them would have died before even reaching level 20. Using Essential Overload, the archers started with a better defense and much-improved archery skills.
It was amazing. I couldn’t help but think how higher their levels would be if I had all my essence. I could have pulsed more to them, and level twenty wouldn’t be the limit.
And what about if I had been a higher quality core? The core in the Essential Overload tablet had created level 50 monsters without much effort. If I could have done that, my fight with the Dungeon Core Academy would be over in seconds.
One of the archers saluted me, his arm bones rattling when he touched his head.
“Reporting for duty, Sir.”
“You’re disciplined. That’s good. See those practice dummies? I want you to train your archery for the next couple of days. I want you to shoot so many arrows that the dummies look like hedgehogs.”
“Yes, sir!”
Leaving the archers in the arena, I crossed through my dungeon until I came to a chamber that had served me very well in past battles. The sign at the chamber door read, ‘Monster Melding Room.’
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 147
