by Dakota Krout
I told my favorite Goblin. I focused on Dale and pushed my thoughts at him. Ever since he had set up mental defenses–and actually gotten good at them–I had needed to work to project my thoughts at him. I was careful to never tell him this. If he knew I was using his defenses against him, he may lower those defenses a bit. Then I couldn’t have private conversations while he was around anymore!
Dale then blatantly lied to his teammate about what I told him.
Bob was still looking stunned. “You are going to learn how to fly?”
Bob seemed a bit out of it this morning. He blinked blearily before responding. “That seems… difficult.”
Bob smiled. “Ah, yes. Travel the world, see the sights…”
“Well, Great One… may I speak freely?” Bob seemed to be psyching himself up. That or hyperventilating. “I must warn you; you won’t like what I have to say.”
“You are kind of being a… whiny little toad,” Bob announced as soon as he got permission. I released a sharp gasp of bewilderment. “You hold the power of creation, life and death! You can create stone from air and fire from water! You plan to make a mountain fly, for abyss sake! Now you are allowing yourself to be held up by ‘what ifs’? No! You enter the Mage ranks! You become powerful enough to shake the heavens! And, blast it, you go rescue your Wisp!”
Bob was glaring around him, looking for a focal point. Deciding that I was the wall, he jabbed a finger at the granite. “Do you understand me?”
I yelped in consternation. Then I went silent.
“Everyone needs tough love sometimes.” He smirked as he leaned on his staff. “Even overpowered rocks, apparently.”
Bob slowed down. “You will need to teach me how to reach the Mage ranks someday.”
I let him leave as I started rearranging my short and long-term goals. I felt like I had my purpose back, a direction in life! Reaching for the Mage rankings would leave me potentially defenseless while my mind expanded, so I needed to set up the dungeon to survive without my guidance for a few weeks.
Sealing off my doors would still work, potentially, but I felt like it would be a bad idea now. The last time I had done so, it had only been for a few days. A few weeks? Ha! Being the impatient creatures that they were, I was sure that some annoying human would decide that they ‘needed’ to get some money. There were ways to get in if they really felt the need to do so. Most of those ways involved direct damage to me, so no thank you.
My guardians needed to stay strong and plentiful. To this end, I needed to create a template for their pattern that didn’t rely on my influence. Currently, I had my aura mimicking their pattern and absorbing ambient Essence to create young versions. That would soon be impossible because I was fully removing my aura from the area, albeit temporarily.
I pondered this issue for a while, but finally decided on a course of action. If Cores could be modified to hold memories, why couldn’t I use them for other things? I created the pattern needed to generate a Basher and pushed it into a Core. Happily, it seemed to successfully etch itself into the interior of the gem! Good, all is well… I poured Essence into the template. The Core stored the power for a moment, filled with blood and exploded!
When I was using my aura to create items or creatures, they were created on the spot. Right in the center of the template. Putting the pattern in a Core was essentially an attempt to do the same thing. Unfortunately, generating something inside another thing didn’t really work. There were space requirements after all, and two things cannot occupy the same area at the same time. The Essence was flowing in, activating the pattern, and creating something simultaneously. I needed to find a way to change that.
Would it be as easy as adding an Essence output Rune? *Paff* Nope, it exploded again. What if I added more Essence at once? *P-PAFF* Drat, just a larger explosion. What if I tried… hold on a moment, I have an idea! There was a type of technique that Dwarves had created, an illusionary projection they used to design models before building them. They used this for many things: buildings, weapons, armor. What if I did something similar?
It took the better part of the day, and the only thing that caught my attention in this time was Dale’s group fighting Snowball to a standstill. My massive fourth-floor Boss was hesitant about dying, and if it took too much damage it would retreat into the deep steamy areas of its territory to heal. Hans was complaining about the lost profit potential. Heh. If you really wanted a trophy, you should have killed faster! Smelly humans. I made a rock fall on them, and Tom got a nasty cut on his head.
My experiments came to fruition, and I looked at the ungainly system I had put in place. A sprawling ritual covered a ten-foot span and a dozen utility Runes were spaced equidistantly around the ritual diagram. Sympathetic links connected all of them, some of the Runes connecting to up to eight points at a time. Even though it was a giant mess, it worked in a fairly straightforward manner. The Mob I wanted to spawn would have its pattern recorded in the Core. This Core was then placed in a socket in the exact center of the diagram.
When the first Rune was activated, it would make a replica of the Core suspended in the air. This replica would slowly spin, helping to maintain the illusion. For some reason, if it didn’t move the image would begin to distort and warp. This Rune was followed by another that was a… well the best way to describe it would be a representation of time. It was a constant switchback of Essence–a maze of sorts–that slowed down the flow of power and would allow an interval between Mob spawns. Roughly ten minutes after the ritual completed, it would begin again. This meant that a Basher was made almost every ten minutes exactly. Cats were made every twenty-five, and Goblins could be done in about forty. My only explanation for the discrepancy was that perhaps sentient creatures were harder to make than animals.
The next Rune limited the Essence that would go into the process or else a single Mob could be continuously pumped full of power. Usually this would create… erm… really fun to see fatalities? The kind that used to make Dani leave the experiment room gaggi
ng. Was it common knowledge that a drop of blood caught in an Essence stream would make an erythrocyte swell to the size of a watermelon? This is what I imagine blood cells in continent-sized monsters would look like. Very squishy. Hmm… I might have to drop one of these on Hans, just to see his reaction.
After a quick chuckle at my evil thoughts, I inspected the next Runes. A stabilizing Rune to keep the pattern intact, a containment one to force it to follow the pattern, then size, shape, and control Runes. Looks correct now... all that was left was to activate it! Here we go! Essence flowed in, following the symbolic links. Good, good, the image is taking the Essence, the shape Rune is activ-
*EEeeeiiieeEEEiiiEEE*
I blinked, trying to see through the haze and distortion of frantically twisting Essence. Rock dust was thick in the air, and my sense of hearing seemed to be damaged. All I could hear was a high-pitched noise. I moved the main part of my consciousness out of the twisted distortions of Essence, and all of my senses were instantly restored. I didn’t use the same type of easily damaged sensory organs that humans did, after all. Mine were attuned to the flows of my aura. I looked at the twisting confluence of Essence and corruption, and the damage to the rest of the area.
The stone for forty feet in all directions had been fragmentized, a blast comparable to B-rank zero cultivators intentionally shattering their Center. There were a few screams that drifted into the open air above the room, the weakened ceiling had collapsed, dropping a few unsuspecting humans through the unexpected hole. Heh, that’d be a good trap name. Pitfall? Nah, ‘unexpected hole’! It seemed that the falling humans had been non-cultivators, as none of them survived the measly fortyish foot drop.
I quickly extended my influence upward, gaining control over an area that reached all the way to the surface! Who said good things can’t come from failure? I patched the open area, quickly weaving it shut so that more humans couldn’t gain easy access where they weren’t allowed. Crisis averted. I worked my mind into the tumultuous energy in the room and brought it under my control. It took a minute, but the Essence was quickly re-integrated into my aura. A few minutes later, I had recreated walls and a ceiling, filling in the spherical emptiness that had resulted from my failed ritual.
It took me an hour to reset and redraw the ritual, and I griped at the lost time as I inspected the diagram. I think I found the issue, though. The ‘control’ Rune needed to be activated before a few of the others. The segment that contained that portion would generate a fault in the links if it was referenced last, so I placed it before the ‘follow pattern’ portion. Hopefully this would allow me to avoid a segmentation fault, but I didn’t know for sure. I really wasn’t able to gain any useful information from the last one; the diagram had just blown up without any warning.
Ritual adjusted, I began the process again. I winced as Essence entered the ‘shape’ Rune, but the ritual stayed stable this time! There was a charge building in the air, enough to make a human’s hair stand on end. With a *pop* the Essence compressed like an imploding bubble, and a Basher fell to the floor! Sure it broke a leg, but it worked! You would think a second-old Mob would have better instincts for landing while falling, but I guess not everyone was perfect.
I exchanged the Basher pattern Core with an Impaler pattern, and repeated the process. Sure enough, it worked as well! It failed for a Cat, but after a few minutes of dumbfounded rage I found that the Essence provided wasn’t enough to create this type of Mob. I allowed more to flow, and a mewling kitten appeared.
I set up a ritual above each treasure chest which allowed for an exchange of tokens, and created a large variation of the wooden coins. The ritual would stay one step from completion, and the token would focus the Essence into the configuration of the reward, like Cores were currently doing for Mobs.
This led to the problem of how to distribute rewards, the part that I was the most excited about. The Mobs that were killed in an area now had a certain… weight to them. When they were killed, their Essence would have a numerical value associated with it, which would, in turn, affect the nearest non-hidden chest. The longer the chest went without being opened, the more valuable the tokens inside would become. As long as Mobs died nearby, that is.
If the group opening the chest had gone past a certain threshold of ‘weight’ to their kills in the area, there would be more tokens. This was a complicated process to automate, but I couldn’t expect a Goblin to go around putting presents in boxes. Even if they stocked them from below, some cultivators were fast. I would become a laughingstock if someone noticed a Goblin’s hand dropping tokens through a hole in the back of a chest. Hopefully, no one would catch on to the system and find a way to abuse it. I can’t think of everything, so I would need to make adjustments on the fly!
The reward system took another day to perfect, leaving me just four days before I would attempt to ascend. A stray thought crossed my mind; what has Dale been up to for the last few days?
~ Chapter Eleven ~
“Ugh. Stupid Cat. Why did it have to run off?” Hans grumbled impatiently. “Now I have to stand guard while these munchkins cultivate on the off chance that a giant Cat is sneaking up on us.” He let out a long-suffering sigh.
“Oh, woe is you~u~u,” Rose sang softly, making the others snort. They were all sitting with their eyes closed, greedily absorbing the Essence of the heavens and the earth. This area next to the Silverwood tree was filled with enough Essence that it physically affected them when they walked in. Like strolling through a warm mist in the early morning with a lover, they felt both cleansed and joyful.
They were the only people in the area as far as they knew. Now, there were a few Dark Elves guarding the tree that they didn’t know about. So long as they didn’t try to damage the tree, Dale’s group wouldn’t ever know about the guards. The party sat quite a distance from each other so they could cultivate without disturbing the Essence around the other members of their team.
Anywhere else in the dungeon, Dale and Rose’s cultivation would draw complaints from other people. Simply put, they took in so much Essence that they were able to deplete the area temporarily. Here, they both had their affinity channels opened to the maximum, and there was barely a tremor in the air around them. With every breath, they pulled in purified Essence along with oxygen, allowing Essence to travel unaided through their systems.
Dale began grimacing as he tried to wrangle the new mass of Essence that was flowing into his Core. It was unruly, and he was having trouble making the spinning Essence into Chi threads thin enough to not disrupt his Chi spiral. To his great annoyance, he had to cultivate in short spurts, stopping and starting constantly as he pulled at the strings.
Rose was drinking in huge amounts of Essence as well, but her body was trying to pull it away from her Center to use for its own purposes. Twenty years of being unable to cultivate had made her body damaged, and the repairs were taking far longer than she wanted. Her cells–like everyone else’s–pulled Essence specifically into the powerhouse, the mitochondria, which allowed her to become stronger at a cellular level. Being starved for Essence for so long, they tried to take more than they needed. If she didn’t carefully regulate her cultivation, her body would literally fight itself for greater access to the life-gi
ving power.
For differing reasons, the two of them both muttered the same phrase, “This is so annoying!” causing them to look up in surprise and guffaw at the coincidence.
Hans rolled his eyes and took a few moments to inspect the others. His student, Tom, was sweating profusely as he struggled to surpass his previous limits. The amount of fire corruption in his Center was already making it difficult for him to progress, so Hans made a mental note to be stricter with his training regimen in the near future.
Adam was cultivating with a serene expression on his face, and the light in the room coupled with his pure white robe made a halo of brilliance radiate near his head. The celestial corruption in Adam was at a point where it should have been lethal, yet it didn’t seem to be having an overly detrimental effect on him. Hans shrugged. Only time would tell for sure.
Eventually, Tom stood up, looking nauseous. He waved to Hans, who correctly took the gesture to mean that Tom had absorbed as much Essence as his body could handle and would be taking over the guard duty.
“Thanks!” Hans collapsed to the floor and began greedily absorbing the abundant Essence in the air while writhing around. Unlike the others, he was an intentionally loud cultivator. “Uhhhhhgh. This feels so good. Oh, yeah, fill my affinity channels.” His antics always made Rose scowl and the others laugh.
It took about an hour for the entire group to finally admit defeat. There were legends of people that could continuously cultivate for years at a time, but the reality was that too much Essence for long periods could permanently damage the meridians; damage similar to having lightning traveling through your body. Literally, for some cultivators. Short bursts were possible, but there is only so much of a foreign substance that the body could quickly turn to its own use. This is why cultivation techniques that allowed for large amounts of Essence to be held were so sought after; if you had as much as you could handle, you could ‘store’ the Essence in a holding pattern, slowly adding it to your Chi spiral. Dale would have had one if he hadn’t lost it to his gauntlet. A frown crossed his face at the memory.
