“I’m so sorry about that, it was entirely my fault. I was doing something I probably shouldn’t have, and I caused your Scorpion to disappear. Are you okay? Did you get hurt?” Fred said quietly as soon as he was close enough that he didn’t have to yell.
“Yes, I’m fine. I only got a little scrape on my knee because you, uh, broke my fall.”
He looked back at the scene of the accident and saw a huge pool of blood covering the leaves and when he looked down, he saw that his left pant leg was essentially gone. His bare leg appeared to be healthy and whole, and there were only a few bloodstains where he had likely got them from laying in the bloody leaves.
“How bad was it?” Fred couldn’t help but ask as he repaired his pant leg with his Power-based Repair Object ability. It only took a few units of Power and it was done, so he joined Eisa, who was already settling up on top of the Crystal Scorpion.
“Oh, uh…let’s just say it was pretty bad, and leave it at that,” Eisa whispered to him, laying her head on his back after wrapping her arms around him. “I didn’t like seeing you like that, and I almost broke down myself when I saw you in such pain.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that; like I said, it was my fault. You don’t have to tell me, but I’m thankful for the healing – that new ability of yours is a literal life saver!” Fred told her, patting her arm consolingly as Deecy, back in her Pup form, jumped up and settled in front of him. “To change the subject to something positive, I think I absorbed the Crystal Scorpion’s blueprint—”
“If she won’t tell you what happened, I will. I tried to talk to you when you hurt, but it was like there was some sort of painful mental block you threw up. Anyway, when you hit the ground initially, you snapped your ankle as you impacted a hidden rock underneath the leaves, but when Eisa landed on you, it continued the destruction and essentially shattered your leg into pieces. It turned out that the rock was actually quite sharp in a couple of places, and I think your foot almost detached itself; there was so much blood everywhere, squirting out and—”
“Thanks, Deecy – but I think I agree with Eisa; I don’t even want to think about that.”
Fred could’ve sworn he heard Deecy snicker at him as they started to move westward through the trees again.
Chapter 10
Luckily for everyone, the next few hours were quite uneventful. Fred could finally see the ending of the territories coming up and he could sense that Eisa and Deecy had detected it as well. As they got closer to the open stretch of space, he could almost feel the pressure of being constantly surrounded by other Cores’ territories start to lessen and a big weight was lifted off of his shoulders.
Fred hadn’t realized how pervasive the feeling was; while he was in Gatecross, he had his own territory and things felt, if not normal, then at least like he was free to grow and expand however he wanted. The constant presence of foreign territories enveloping him was strangely difficult to become used to, even if it had only been relatively recently since he’d had the ability to see and create territories. He was looking forward to being able to “stretch his legs” a little as the end of the Nature Core territory approached.
It was probably going to be another hour or so before they actually got there, and Fred used the time to continue to pump Deecy full of Fire and Water Mana. While the Mana was useful for making defenders and defenses, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do with it when he didn’t have his territory surrounding him – unlike Eisa. And even when he did establish another territory, he couldn’t even create the Crystal Scorpion he had acquired the blueprint for, because it required more Earth Mana than he could supply. There was a possibility of creating some sort of hybrid which would lessen the cost, but he still couldn’t even do that until he had a territory.
Therefore, he continued to build up his reserve of elemental Mana bit-by-bit, while funneling what he thought he could spare towards Deecy. His Unconverted Mana was starting to get a bit low again and he was planning on converting Essence to Unconverted Mana when he had the chance; he had been saving a little bit over 166,000 available Essence to distribute for that purpose, which equated to over 16,000 Mana when converted. Right now, ensuring that his Cores didn’t run out of Mana took priority over improving his Human Adventurer stats, mainly because even small changes to them now took quite a bit of Essence.
Fire Mana: 48/139
Water Mana: 48/138
Nature Mana: 50/138
Earth Mana: 50/50
Unconverted Mana: 792
Eventually, his efforts with the Dire Wolf that contained specialized dungeon core knowledge – as well as the scattered memories of his parents – paid off. After sending another two orbs of Water and Fire Mana containing two units each into Deecy’s alert form watching the surroundings in front of him, the intensity of the blue and red aura in the Wolf Pup’s form flared brightly for a moment to his Mana Sight, before fading back to its previous level.
“I…think it worked! Hold on…well, this is interesting. Here, I think I might be able to send this to you like I did with those other packets of information about creating your dungeon.”
Fred was ecstatic! Deecy had gone along with the process of absorbing the Mana because it wasn’t hurting her, but she admitted to him that she didn’t think it would do anything. Honestly, Fred wasn’t entirely sure if it would do anything, either, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to try.
Shard Status
Deecy Greymane
Elemental Origin: Fire-Water
Shard Level: 2
Next Mana Threshold: 250 Fire, 250 Water
Fire Mana: 100/100
Earth Mana: 100/100
Defense Creation Options
Fire Wall (Base Cost: 20 Fire Mana, Base Upkeep Cost: 1 Fire Mana per hour)
Ice Spear Barricade (Base Cost: 20 Water Mana, Base Upkeep Cost: 1 Water Mana per hour)
Special Abilities
Giant Dire Wolf Form (Activation Cost: 5 Fire and 5 Water Mana, Upkeep Cost: 1 Fire and 1 Water Mana per minute)
Dire Wolf Form (Activation Cost: 0)
Dire Wolf Pup Form (Activation Cost: 0, Ambient Mana Absorption increased)
“That’s amazing, Deecy!” Fred told the Pup in his lap. “Eisa, do you think we can stop for just a moment to try something out?” he asked the woman who still had her hands wrapped around his waist.
“Sure, just as long as it’s not something like last time,” Eisa replied, referencing his experiment where he had absorbed the blueprint from the Crystal Scorpion.
“Don’t worry, it’s not me this time – it’s Deecy.”
Eisa slowed the Scorpions to a stop in a small clearing between some trees, and Deecy immediately transformed into her normal Dire Wolf Form, landing lightly on the fallen leaves underfoot. Regnark looked over at them and asked, “What’s going on? Why did we stop?”
Fred was just about to answer when he saw Deecy extend her aura out – similar to Eisa when she created a defender – and a wall of fire erupted out of the ground in front of her; while it was only about a foot wide, it was ten feet long and the flames reached half that high, and they burned with such an intensity that Fred could feel it even from where he was nearly thirty feet away.
“Wha—?” Regnark and Eisa exclaimed at the same time, before watching the Dire Wolf literally walk into the wall of flames like it was something that she did all the time. Fred jerked in surprise but didn’t do anything to stop her, though he did hear Eisa inhale sharply and out of the corner of his eye he saw Regnark tense up. However, their worry over the Dire Wolf’s safety was short-lived; as soon as Deecy touched the Fire Wall she had created, it shrunk down and disappeared, flowing back into the Wolf as Fire Mana and replenishing her aura.
“Deecy, did you just…I don’t even know what to say…what was that?” Eisa asked, shocked at the events.
Regnark loosened up and shrugged, the events over the last few days apparently numbing his shock at all of the strange occurrences that were hap
pening. Fred made a mental note to talk to him later; the big man had been unusually quiet since he had shown up in Gatecross last night. Not that he could blame him, after all of the death and destruction he had likely seen and experienced – which Regnark had alluded to but didn’t expand on when explaining what had happened – but he was worried about the first friend he had made in the human world.
Deecy turned around after the wall had disappeared and faced Fred and Eisa, with a self-satisfied wolfy smile on her face.
“Yes, that was me. Fred has been feeding me extra Fire and Water Mana from his Cores and I achieved a Shard Level increase from it. I can now see the same Shard Status screen that you had reported that you have access to, and this Fire Wall was one of the new defenses that I have access to.”
“Is that as big as you can make it? Does it cost anything to maintain? What else can you do?” Eisa asked excitedly, beating Fred to the same questions. He was frankly amazed at how quickly she had adapted to her new way of life.
“I can make the wall bigger and…I think I can even change its shape…but it would cost a lot more Fire Mana in the process. The cost to upkeep the defense is only one Fire Mana per hour for this size, so it’s not very cost-prohibitive. And like you with your defenders, I can absorb the Mana again when I touch it, and it won’t even hurt me.
“As for what else I can make, let me show you.”
At that statement, the Dire Wolf turned back to the area where the Fire Wall had been – which he noticed hadn’t even burned the leaves underneath (that’s interesting) – and Fred could see her aura extend out again, though this time it was the blue half. Within seconds, a four-foot-tall, five-foot-wide cluster of sharp, thick ice spears appeared, the individual spears pointing in every direction except down. They were all attached to each other in a cluster in the middle, making the relatively short wall of deadly frozen water sturdy enough to likely withstand a bit of impact.
It was impressive, to say the least.
Deecy touched one of the ice spears with her nose and it – and the entire structure – melted into the ground, before turning back into Mana and being absorbed by the Dire Wolf. She walked back to the Crystal Scorpion that she had been riding with Fred and Eisa like what she had done wasn’t amazing – but it was. And now Fred was wondering if he could learn how to create those traps the same way he had acquired the blueprint for the Scorpion he was riding. He just didn’t relish the thought of having to touch the burning flames for more than a second in order to do so.
“That was awesome, Deecy! I wish I could do something like that,” Eisa gushed over the Dire Wolf’s display of her new abilities.
“Thank you, Eisa. Maybe someday you will; this whole shard business is new to both of us and we don’t know what we’re capable of yet. Now, we better get moving – we’re not out of the range of those Earth defenders yet.”
She was right, they needed to get moving. With all of the delays, he was surprised that they hadn’t been caught already; he figured that they had acquired quite a bit of a head start, but that advantage could be eaten up quickly by the pursuing dungeon defenders heading in their direction. Of course, he could be wrong and perhaps the Earth Cores had given up the search and pursuit because they had run out of Mana, though he doubted it; from what he could tell from the range of his Territorial Sight, there were some fairly large Earth territories surrounding the hundreds of relatively smaller Nature ones near Gatecross. While he had seen some powerful defenders, he didn’t think they were anywhere near being out of Mana.
It didn’t take long until they passed the last of the Nature territories and emerged from the massive forest of trees. Fred wasn’t sure exactly how far they had traveled but based upon the impressive speed and tireless walking/running of the Scorpions, he estimated that they had journeyed at least a hundred miles in the last ten hours. It probably would’ve been even more than that if they hadn’t had to avoid so many defenders last night, because the Scorpions were fast when they had room to run.
Other than the relatively clear area around Northend and Gatecross where the humans had set up their little village and town, Fred hadn’t been out of the forest in years – and it had only been a short distance between the barren nothingness of his parents’ dungeon and the massive northern forest. Therefore, when the trees started to thin out and then completely disappear from around him, he caught his breath at the view.
A large plain with very gently rolling hills stretched out as far as he could see in every direction except the forest behind them to the east. Relatively short green grass (about two feet tall), bushes, and other small plants dotted the landscape – and not a single tree could be seen. In the far distance to the west, he could see the vague outline of…something…but it was too far away to see it as anything but a pale-white streak stretching for what appeared to be hundreds of miles.
“What is this place?” Fred asked in awe, having never seen anything like it before.
Regnark was close enough on his own Scorpion to hear the question. “This is the Plains of Grass – I know, not a very creative name, but it describes it fairly well. It stretches in a large band that runs from north to south for hundreds or thousands of miles; even I haven’t been far enough north or south to see what’s at the end of it. Regardless, I’m guessing our destination is to the west in the Deadlands, as that is the only spot near here where there are Dark dungeons.”
“Have you ever been there?” Eisa asked.
The big man was silent for a moment before he answered. “Yes, a long time ago.”
When he didn’t expand on that, Fred ventured forth his own questions since Regnark seemed to be in a talkative mood. “Are there any dungeons out in the, what did you call it? The Plains of Grass? And is there anything we should be watching out for here? While we’re at it, what are the Deadlands?”
“Let’s get moving before it gets too late and I’ll try to tell you what I know along the way,” the Berserker-Marksman said, looking at Eisa to get them started again. She complied and they started to move again, staying close enough to each other that they didn’t have to yell to be heard – though the sound of the grass being pressed flat from the thick, crystallized exoskeleton covering the Scorpions’ legs was quite loud even in the open air. Fred looked back and was dismayed to see a clear trail through the grass leading back from where they emerged from the forest; while they were within the trees, there were faint signs of where they had traveled through, enough that someone could follow it if they knew where to look. It didn’t compare to the extremely clear pathway they were leaving behind them here, though.
There was no way around it, however; even if they abandoned the Crystal Scorpions, they would still likely leave a trail while walking through on foot. Not as big of a trail, but a trail, nonetheless. Because of that, he looked around as they trampled through the grass, hoping to see some sort of sign that the townspeople of Gatecross and his Core Power Guild had passed through, but he didn’t see anything. That didn’t mean that they hadn’t entered the vast Plains of Grass even a mile to the north or south; it was hard even from their slightly elevated position on top of their giant bugs to see something like trampled grass for more than a half mile.
Regnark didn’t speak for the first hour they were moving through the grass and Fred didn’t press him. He knew the big man would speak when he was ready and pushing him might cause him to reconsider sharing what he knew.
Eventually, though, Regnark’s story – as abridged as it was – began to unfold.
Chapter 11
“I never wanted to be an Adventurer when I was younger, opposed to many other young boys I grew up with. I was born to a family of hunters who made their living tracking, killing, and bringing back wild game for those in our village to survive on. Hunting was a good living and something that could be easily done and the deer in the forest were our main source of meat. However, even the rare lone wolf or bears nearby weren’t usually aggressive enough to attack anyone in
the forest – or at least not the outskirts of the small village where we lived.
“My younger brother, on the other hand, didn’t want to spend his life hunting game in the forest. When he foolishly decided to run away to join the Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate when he was 16, my parents urged me to go after him; if I couldn’t convince him to come home, they asked me to protect him. Despite being siblings, we were never very close; I was always one to stick to my chores and dutifully learned all there was about hunting, killing, and skinning animals as part of the trade.
“I was 18 at the time and I didn’t want to go after him, but he was my brother; even if we weren’t close, I still didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. I eventually caught up to him and tried to convince him to return home, but he was adamant about not wanting the life that I had been perfectly happy to live. Long story short, I ended up joining up with the Syndicate – if only to protect him the best I could.
“He was highly reckless, and his recklessness was only magnified as he took the route of a Mage; he would constantly send out his long-range abilities at the most inopportune times, calling attention to himself when it wasn’t necessary. He wanted to advance through the Ratings as fast as he possibly could and often went to dungeons far above what he should’ve – and almost died multiple times as a result.
“Without being modest, the only reason he lived as long as he did was because I took to the role of his protector like I was born to it. His mistakes that he made while delving through dungeons with random groups – it was rare that the same people grouped up with us again after the first time – I tried to rectify by throwing myself in harm’s way and apologizing for his multiple errors, but I knew it was only a matter of time before he made a mistake he wouldn’t survive.
Dungeon World 3: A Dungeon Core Experience Page 9
