Dungeon World 3: A Dungeon Core Experience

by Jonathan Brooks

  Of course, it came with the drawback of sapping his own Vitality in the process, but the pain was worth it.

  Fred felt the Power inside of him flowing towards Regnark – encompassing the big man with dark-colored healing energy – and stabs of pain echoed throughout his body, causing him to double over in temporary agony. The torturous pain only lasted for a couple of seconds each time he used the ability, but it still hurt quite a bit. I don’t know how Eisa can stand to use this ability more than once a day.

  Speaking of Eisa, he looked around for her, expecting her to already be nearby and helping to heal, but she still stood in the exact same place. The expression of shock or dread – he wasn’t quite sure which one it was – on her face was new, however.

  “Eisa, hurry up! I need your help!” he whisper-shouted to her, more than aware that right now was not the time to attract attention from passing Earth Core scouting parties. He turned back to Regnark to see that his healing via Vitality Transfers was finally making a difference; the bearskin-covered human’s Vitality had stopped dropping so precipitously and was slowly starting to rise. Regnark still had a way to go before he was fully recovered from whatever injuries he had sustained, but with a little time and prodigious use of Power on the part of Fred and Eisa, he’d be fine.

  “I…can’t, Fred. It’s…all gone,” Eisa said hesitatingly after another moment.

  Fred paused in the middle of starting another Vitality Transfer, after recovering from the last round of torment. He looked back at Eisa in confusion, before he really looked at her – and he felt his eyes open wide in astonishment.

  Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate Interface

  Name: Eisa Howells

  Class: Unselected

  Rating: G-1st

  Essence Needed to Rate-up: 100

  Total Essence: 0

  Available Essence to Distribute: 0

  Body: 2 (0/20)

  Brawn: 2 (0/20)

  Mind: 3 (0/40)

  Vitality: 10/10

  Stamina: 10/10

  Power: 15/15

  Base Physical Attack: 2

  Base Physical Defense: 2

  Power Regen Rate: 0.1/min

  (Additional stats and abilities available once class is chosen)

  Apparently, when Fred brought her back to life, whatever process he used didn’t transfer over any of the Essence she had collected over her lifetime. It made a bit of sense, he supposed, as he hadn’t thought about that particular aspect when he brought her back; he had been concentrating on who she was and what she looked like – and not about how much Essence she had. Unlike what happened to him, she had actually died; all of her Essence was lost when she perished, and it wasn’t something he thought he could actually bring back.

  While he could transform Unconverted Mana into Essence and vice versa inside his own body, he couldn’t just make it appear out of thin air. At least, I don’t think I can. Either way, he thought that even if he could’ve brought back Eisa with all of her Essence – based on his own conversion rate – he thought it would’ve cost hundreds of thousands of Unconverted Mana to do that.

  With Eisa’s lack of Essence came the removal of all her abilities and even her Class. She now looked almost exactly the same as Fred did when he joined the Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate, though with just a Mind stat of 3 instead of the 4 he had started with. From what he had learned, her stats were actually high for a novice Adventurer; he thought that the initial bump was likely due to the transformation she had undergone when Fred brought her back to life.

  Fred pulled his attention away from her and focused back on Regnark, who was starting to wake up after his Vitality had stabilized enough. The big man opened his eyes in a flash and sat up quickly, his hands out in front of him like he was ready for a fight.

  “Where are they? We have to keep moving!” he shouted, looking around frantically.

  “Whoa, keep it down, my friend,” Fred said softly, trying to calm the big man down.

  Regnark turned toward Fred with wild eyes when he heard him speak and lifted his hands like he was going to hit him, but he stopped himself before he made contact. His eyes cleared a little bit and he lowered his arms as he asked, “Fred? Is that really you?”

  “Yes, it’s me. Now, why don’t you tell me what happened while I heal you some more.”

  At the mention of healing, Regnark sighed and slumped with relief; the pain must’ve been excruciating for a while and Fred was glad that he had some healing capabilities. The big man started to recount his tale but froze when he saw Deecy sitting quietly – back in her Dire Wolf Pup form – nearby, watching them.

  “Boy! Get back – there’s a wolf!” he exclaimed, before picking himself off the ground and pulling out a beat-up sword from somewhere inside of his furs.

  Fred quickly stepped in front of Regnark, blocking his forward progress as Deecy got up and backed away behind him. “Stop! She’s a friend!” he pleaded with the fur-covered man, holding up his hands in a “hold” gesture.

  “What? What are you talking about, boy? These beasts aren’t anyone’s friends!” The wild look was back in Regnark’s eyes, and he took a step forward as if he was going to bowl over Fred like he wasn’t even there. Fred thought that was an apt description; despite still having only about 500 of his 4000 Vitality and dangerously low Stamina, the bigger man could knock him out of the way with ease.

  Deecy’s rescue came from an entirely unexpected source.

  Chapter 3

  “Stop! Deecy really is a friend!” Eisa shouted, louder than she probably should’ve.

  She had never met this giant of a man covered in furs before, but she recognized his name from the stories that Fred had told her. Regnark was the first person that he had met after journeying for nearly a year and a half after his parents died up in Northend; she felt a kind of kinship with the big man because of his relationship with Fred. But now he was threatening Deecy, who she knew only had their best interests at heart – and who was strangely more akin to Eisa than even other humans now.

  Although she wasn’t sure what had happened to Regnark to bring him to his half-dead state, she could guess. If he was up in Northend, it was likely that the roaming packs of Earth monsters that Deecy had mentioned had attacked them, looking for the people of Gatecross and Fred in particular. In fact, it was a wonder that he was even still alive, as not many people that weren’t Adventurers could stand up to even the lowliest of monsters.

  Her words didn’t seem to have any effect on him, though, as he easily pushed Fred out of the way. Fred’s stronger than a normal person due to his status as an Adventurer; this Regnark must have an SDIA as well, otherwise he couldn’t manhandle my love like that. The thought of calling Fred her love even in her mind made her blush a little bit, but it also spurred her on to action.

  Normally, she would’ve had a few abilities to choose from to stop or incapacitate even a large man without harming him with ease; however, due to the absence of any Essence – that was an unwelcome shock, to say the least – she didn’t have any abilities. What she did have, though, was an instinctual feeling that she should be able to do something. She wasn’t completely aware of what it was, unfortunately, but she knew she had to act before Fred did something to attack his friend to keep him from hurting the Dire Wolf.

  Reaching down inside herself, she fumbled with the brown aura that permeated her body, looking for some kind of source she could tap into like she would her Power. Unfortunately, a quick look at it with her mysterious sight revealed no concentration of what she assumed was an aura of Earth – according to Fred’s description of it, at least – anywhere; her entire body was infused with the…Mana, she supposed.

  Rather than looking for a pool or a reservoir of the Mana, Eisa instead focused on extending the entire Earth aura surrounding her to a spot right in front of Regnark as he slowly stomped after Deecy, who was fleeing from him. Her intention was to somehow use the Earth-based extension of her aura to build a dirt wall o
r something along those lines, preventing him from moving any farther.

  That wasn’t quite what happened.

  She “felt” a tug at the end of her aura where she was concentrating, and a blob of what she assumed was Mana broke off and floated for a second a few inches off the ground in front of Regnark. Before she knew it, the blob of Mana materialized not into a wall – which she was halfway hoping for – but a ferocious…two-foot-tall Goblin Gnome. Shock – as well as fatigue – knocked her back on her butt as a good portion of the Mana that had infused her was consumed in the creation of the small, ugly, rusty-knife-wielding, greenish-brown creature with rocks imbedded within its skin.

  Its appearance was a shock to everyone; everyone – including Regnark – froze as they watched the Goblin Gnome stand there with a vacant expression on its scrunched-up face, loosely holding its rusty knife down by its side. Fred was the first one to react, as he looked at Eisa and asked with amusement in his voice, “Eisa, did you just create a dungeon defender?”

  It took a few moments for her to wrangle up enough energy to speak; the strangely crazy process of creating the Goblin Gnome was exhausting. “Uh…I think so.”

  Before anyone could react, Regnark brought his beat-up sword down on top of the Goblin Gnome and easily sliced it in half like it was a hot loaf of bread, despite the dull edge of the blade itself. The two halves of the creature fell apart, splattering along the ground before it melted and disappeared into the ground…and an identical blob of brown Earth Mana appeared in its place, floating where it had been before it was transformed into the Gnome.

  All strength seemed to leave Regnark as he sat down right where he was, looking around incredulously at Fred, Eisa, Deecy, and the spot where the Goblin Gnome had disappeared. “Can someone please tell me what’s going on? And—” he looked around a little more outside the campsite for what appeared to be the first time since he arrived— “shouldn’t this be Gatecross? I could’ve sworn I had traveled far enough to reach it.”

  Now that Deecy seemed a bit less like she was going to be hacked apart, the Dire Wolf Pup came back to the campsite and lay back down – albeit as far away from Regnark as possible. Fred went over and sat next to the big man covered in bear furs and started to heal him again, trying to explain what happened over the last couple of months since he had left Northend. From their conversation and the shocked and disbelieving looks coming from Regnark, it was clear to see that the fur-covered man hadn’t known about Fred’s origins.

  Eisa stayed on the ground and listened as she slowly started to recover her energy. When she looked at herself, she could see that her brown-colored aura was a lot thinner and lighter in color than it had been before; bit-by-bit, though, it was starting to thicken and darken for some reason. She assumed that it was similar to Power in that she automatically regenerated some over time, and that was indeed the case. However, she was able to actually see the process; underneath her, very tiny dots of highlighted brown…somethings…slowly moved in her direction, where her body absorbed them and added it to her aura. The process was extremely slow, however, and she estimated that it could take a day or two of sitting there to fully regenerate her aura to the point it started out at.

  “That’s the ambient Earth Mana you’re seeing and absorbing. The ambient Mana around here in the north isn’t very concentrated, which is why you don’t see a lot of powerful Dungeon Cores around here, but it is enough to provide a little bit of sustenance to those who require it to live and function.”

  She jumped at the Dire Wolf’s sudden voice in her head, as she wasn’t expecting it. She looked over at Deecy and saw her staring right at her with a bored-looking expression on her face – as far as she could tell on someone not human. She spoke softly so as not to disturb Fred and Regnark as they finally got to the point where – as she suspected – the Earth monsters had attacked and ended up destroying the northern town where the big man was from. “What do you mean? Who needs it to live and function?”

  “Well, me, for example. I absorb the nearby ambient Mana – usually in the form of moisture in the air or snow along the ground, as well as heat from things like Fred’s floating flames here or even body heat from normal living creatures – to keep me alive and healthy. I also use the Mana inside my body, which I can see that you can sense, to change my form; the expenditure to keep my giant form is significant, which is why I don’t stay in that form longer than necessary. This smaller Pup form allows me to acquire ambient Mana with very little cost to me, so it’s what you usually see me in as I can accumulate it much faster than I would otherwise.

  “Dungeon Defenders – like the army that attacked us a month ago, as well as the Earth force roaming the forest right now – are constructs of Mana, but they don’t have the ability to accumulate ambient Mana outside of the Dungeon Cores’ territory. Eventually, if left outside a territory for long enough, they will cease to be and dissolve into nothing, not even leaving Mana behind as it was all consumed to ‘power’ the monsters – as you call them. If they had the ability to absorb Mana like you and I and survive longer, this world would be a whole lot different.”

  “What do you mean, ‘you and I’? I’m not a monster, right?” Eisa asked, worried.

  “Do I look like a monster to you? Sure, I have the shape of a Dire Wolf, but I’m nothing like the relatively mindless Mana creations which defend dungeons. They have a rudimentary intelligence and can’t think for themselves – they can only follow orders; granted, the more powerful ones can follow more complicated orders, but they are still relatively unthinking walking blobs of Mana given form. You and I, on the other hand, are something else entirely.”

  “I have to admit, that makes me feel a little better, but what exactly are we? Does Fred even know?”

  “I…don’t think even Fred knows – and I certainly don’t know for certain. All that I’ve been able to determine is that we are flesh and blood, though we are powered by Mana and Mana alone. Unless I’m mistaken and you’re somehow vastly different than I, then you’ll notice that you’re probably not hungry; you’ll have no need of other sustenance other than the Mana inside of you, but you can still eat. I can hunt for prey – and I sometimes have natural urges to do that – and consume my kills, but I don’t need to.”

  Now that she mentioned it, she didn’t feel the least bit hungry or even thirsty. She felt a great wave of fatigue when the Goblin Gnome was inadvertently created by an extension of her Earth-based aura – which was slowly fading as she absorbed some nearby ambient Mana – but it didn’t make her feel hungry or starving…just a bit rundown. “What happens if we run out of…Mana?”

  “Well, don’t think of it like the Power that Humans seem to be able to manipulate, where if you run out you just have to wait for it to regenerate and everything will be ok. Instead, think of it more like…the blood running through your veins; what do you think would happen if every drop of blood was removed from your body?”

  Eisa shuddered at the thought; she knew exactly what would happen – there was no healing a total lack of blood inside of your body. “By doing…whatever it was that I did, did I almost kill myself?”

  The Dire Wolf snorted in what Eisa quickly assumed was laughter, before Deecy’s amused voice filled her head.

  “No, no – I don’t think you could accidentally do that. Even when I’ve pushed myself to the limit, my transformation just gets to the point where it shuts down, preserving the tiniest bit of Mana to keep me alive. I’m sure there is a way to voluntarily use all of your Mana if that was what you really wanted to do, but there are apparently limits to what your body and Mana will allow. While my transformations are a little different from what you can apparently do, my assumption is that if you try to Create a dungeon defender that would require too much Mana, it will just not work.”

  That’s a relief…wait. “You assume? You don’t know if I could accidentally kill myself?”

  “I was just created less than a year ago, you know – I’m stil
l learning my way through this as much as you. I may have a bit more knowledge when it comes to dungeons and the information that Fred requires, but as far as I’m aware, we’re the only two beings in this world like us. There’s no training or instruction manual for this – it’s all been a bit of trial and error. For instance, why don’t you go try to reabsorb that Earth Mana you used earlier?”

  Eisa thought Deecy’s reasoning was valid concerning her knowledge of their existence, but she was distracted from being more disappointed in the lack of information when she saw what the Dire Wolf Pup was talking about. The blob of Earth Mana was still there where the Goblin Gnome had disappeared when it was killed, though it had settled along the ground instead of floating in the air like it had been originally.

  She got up a little unsteadily, the fatigue from being low in her Mana “lifeblood” making her a little woozy, but she managed to make her way over to the blob without falling on her face. She knelt down heavily next to it – vaguely aware that the conversation between Regnark and Fred had stopped at her presence in front of them – and reached out to touch the amorphous globule of brown Mana. As she reached out with her hand and made contact, she could see and feel it being quickly sucked into her body through her fingers.

  It was incredible. The fatigue that she was starting to get used to immediately disappeared, leaving her with the feeling of being nearly “full” and satisfied. Eisa could tell that she wasn’t at her limit of how much Mana she could contain in her aura, though it was close. She vaguely wondered how she could increase her capacity so that she could hold even more as she let out an extremely content sigh and groan of pleasure.