by Dakota Krout
‘Feel free to choose another. Unlike them, I won’t be angry. I won’t refuse you when you come back to me. I’ll be here. I will always be waiting. Willing.’ Madness tickled my ear, causing me to shudder. ‘If you live long enough, you will be mine. You almost were… so recently.’
I looked at the other two laws wide-eyed, trying to see the secrets they held without committing to them. The entire time, they were an undertone to all noise. They enticed me. Offered glimpses into their power, always tantalizing, never committing to me. I sighed and thought. I meditated, trying to decide, all the while they slowly got louder. Suddenly, I came to a realization. My head snapped up, and the laws went silent, even Madness, though begrudgingly.
I began to break. All of me, everything that I am, was beginning to fracture. My Essence began to vanish at a horrendous rate. Unbeknownst to me, at that point in time my Silverwood roots surrounded my body and somehow entered the trial with me. The roots punched through my consciousness, penetrating the darkness above. The roots writhed, pulling open holes in the barrier. I strained as my thoughts began to fade, but I began to pass through! Every inch was a battle, but I was going higher! Higher! Yes!
I stood on a platform of slowly swirling darkness, looking up at a shining, iridescent, flawless node. The paths from below all stemmed from this, and it was the only law on this tier. Unlike all the others before it, this one was silent.
It uttered a single word to me. ‘No.’
The force of this word sent me flying, crashing into the floor miles away, yet not having moved at all in relative position. The node was still directly above me. I tried again.
‘No. Go away.’ I was sent away again, this time with far more force. I landed in a piteous heap, a jumble of soul and thought. I rose again. I would always rise again.
I screamed up at the pulsing node
‘We won’t.’ I’m flying again, but not really in the way I’ve dreamed about for so long.
~ Dani ~
Dani watched in horror as the infernal Core was force-fed sacrifices. There seemed to be an endless trail of creatures: Beasts, people, Runes, weapons, and other various artifacts. The wealth of a kingdom could not have purchased all of these goods. The influence of the dungeon was exploding outward, all the while it had reaffirmed its loyalty to The Master and was beginning to reproduce the artifacts that had been brought to it. A huge pile of weapons, armor, and accessories sat off to the side. Runes covered them, and most were inset with at least one chunk of flawless opal.
“What a good pet,” The Master spoke, smiling as he watched the pile of weapons grow. His gaze turned and landed on Dani, his smile falling away. “You are bound to this place. We feed you. Why are you refusing to cooperate? If you don’t start soon, you will become just another sacrifice.”
“What you are asking is impossible!” Dani yelled at him, having held her thoughts back too long. “I’m bound to my dungeon, Cal! And I will stay that way till we die!”
The gaze turned thoughtful. “Oh? Or will you stay that way until… he dies, I wonder?” The Master began thundering orders as Dani became speechless.
“Cal,” Dani released a horrified whisper.
~ Chapter Sixteen ~
‘You are flawed. You are imperfect. You are broken. Joining with you would be a waste, as my power would likely only shatter what is left of your wasted soul.’ The voice was still as potent as before and still without anger or malice. I didn’t get blasted into the distance at least. That was a plus. At least we were on speaking terms now.
‘Untrue. For I am not.’
I screamed in frustration.
‘Yes. I am all laws perfected, and all laws stem from me. Arrogance was a third-tier. Which you silenced, if you recall.’
I smiled. I had it now.
‘Even your logic is flawed.’
‘I don’t…’ I waited a while, but no further response seemed to be forthcoming. An hour passed, and right as I was about to try again, the law finally began to speak. ‘You are not going to go away, are you?’
I agreed, settling in for the long haul.
‘I think that would be sooner than you seem to think. But…’ the law hesitated, ‘it may be interesting to be used in the world. My descendants seem to enjoy it. Madness even more so than others. Plus… you have fulfilled the requirements.’
The law was silent for long enough that I thought it had changed its mind. It did speak eventually, to my great relief, ‘You pushed higher than anyone before you in the tower of ascension. You work to purify your Essence to the best grade possible. You refuse to settle for less or an easier path. There are other reasons, but those are not for you to know. Are you sure you want me? Your path will be harder, slower to grow than other, easier paths. With your knowledge and understanding and a lesser law, you could enter the Spiritual realm in only a few years.’
‘It is decided. Allow me to explain what happens now. The cultivation of laws is not as simplistic as the cultivation of Essence. To advance, to grow stronger, you must form deeper ties to me. You must deepen your understanding of me and become closer to our shared purpose. Still, you must draw in Essence and use it to feed the portion of myself that resides within you.’
‘Pah. Mana. Yes. Until you have formed a connection with me that has fused your spirit with my concepts, you will only be able to use the byproduct of that joining. Or Mana, as you so eagerly call the leavings.’
I thought of more questions.
‘Not in the way you ephemerals seem to think, but, yes, it will. Giving me offerings of Mana or Essence will allow me to generate more Mana within your soul and its container. The more dense the Mana, the higher the chances of you finding a new facet of me, deepening your connection and making you closer to me. Study everything, and look for my truth within it.’
‘No. It is time. Do you accept me as the law you will live by, my goals as your own, in an attempt to grow as the other does?’
‘Then I accept you. Come to know me and I will in turn grant you my power.’ There was light
streaming down, forming a path to step onto. I did, racing along it as fast as I could. At the lowest tiers, I felt that I could have dove in and soaked in the knowledge offered. Here I was barely able to brush the surface of the node before flattening myself against it like an unbreakable barrier.
‘I offer you this knowledge, as much as you can take without outright dying at this time. I hope that you will be the first to progress on my path and hope you get past the least and lowest of my names. For now, this will have to do. I am all that is. I am Quintessence. I am Acme.’
I screamed as my mind was flooded with thousands of images and concepts. My consciousness fluttered, darkness taking hold for a bare moment. When light returned, I was in my body again, looking out into my final room and up at the Silverwood tree. My mind shook as I worked through the meaning of the law I had attained. Acme. The definition of the word was hard enough: ‘The highest level or degree attainable, the peak of perfection.’ How amazing. How wonderful. How… the crap was I supposed to progress in that? Most of the flashes of inspiration had faded from my mind, and I was nervous about pushing too much right now. I felt so weak.
Too weak. Way too weak. I looked at myself and felt very confused. I was no longer a diamond. I was a hexagon, and I was huge. Well, comparatively. I was the size of a human fist, with six perfectly symmetrical sides. My concern at this moment was that I was empty. I could see my Chi spiral as only a pale, weakly spinning ghost of Essence, and not a hint of Mana to be seen. I looked outside myself, and saw a raging torrent of Essence bubbling around me. Odd. Normally, that Essence would be trying to force itself into me, why is it…? I looked at the shell of what I assumed to be Core material around me and finally noticed the truth.
I sat in the cistern of burbling food, quickly starving to death. What was the difference between what was out there and what was in here? I tried to think, but dying is really distracting. Maybe that is why Dale was so twitchy all the time. Heh. Maybe I should... no, focus! My Mana is based off of the ‘peak of perfection, the highest grade available’. Maybe that is why this Essence cannot get through? My Runes created a huge suction force for Essence, condensing it to this level and purifying it. Why would this not be the best available? Did I have the process wrong? …No. It is the Essence that is wrong. I looked at it closely, and with my discerning vision saw tiny flickers of corruption. Sitting here waiting to be used must have allowed it to interact with other types of corruption again.
I reached out with my Essence–luckily I could still do so–and with nearly the last dregs of my strength I willed Cores into being. They sat at the center of each face of my facets, one for each type of corruption. Then I pulled Essence through those Cores, and shouted in relief as Essence flooded into me from six angles. For a day, all I did was pull in all of the Essence around me, until finally all but the most recent drops were inside my Core. It was interesting to see, because while my outer shell was Mana, everything inside was either my soul or Chi spiral, surrounded by liquid Essence. I looked like a three-dimensional hurricane to the untrained eye. Dang-nab, I’m sexy.
All of my newly refined Essence was being filtered into the hole in my soul, the pocket dimension inside of me. From there I could ‘donate’ it to the law in exchange for Mana. I could do as much or as little as I wanted at a time, so long as there was a constant trickle going in. From this point forward, there was never a time that I could simply not have Essence. I would be forced to make a continuous effort to improve and provide Essence. Otherwise, I instinctively knew I would die.
The reward though… the sweet reward of Mana was worth every moment of agony I had been subjected to during my ascension. I mean that in every way possible. I would go through that torture again and again if that was what it took to keep this power. I had just donated over half of all my remaining Essence, and now the new energy was flowing through me. It began to take the place of all connections in my body. First, the pocket dimension of my soul was swept clean. Then the swirling galaxies of Essence were replaced by the icy perfection of Acme. The swirls became more pronounced, my soul being gently pushed toward the best configuration possible. I didn’t resist the change, knowing that every step closer to my law would help me move through the rankings.
The Mana flowed up and out of the hidden hole, bubbling out like water from a new well. It flowed over my Chi spiral, transforming the Chi threads to thin bands of Mana. The new threads set like stones dropped into the earth from a great height. They seemed immovable, yet followed my commands readily. Just like that, cultivation was changed for me. I no longer needed to do anything and I would still be drawing in the Essence around me like I had at C-rank nine. The Cores would collect the taint, and the Chi threads would take the Essence from my environment by force.
My body finished with its alterations for the moment, and I began to extend my influence back into my dungeon. Aura expanding like a forest of vines in explosive growth, I swiftly reached my greatest range and filled the room. I then flowed into the next room and allowed my aura to unfurl across the entire floor. There was a slight problem though.
Before my ascension, my aura was disparate, thin, easily ignored. Now as a B-rank zero being… when I extended myself, every Mob in the area died of sudden and massive blood loss. Their veins burst as I came in contact with them, so I quickly stopped my reaching. They looked like they had been crushed by a giant stone! What in the…? There was no help for it, I was simply too strong for these creatures. The pressure of my condensed aura in such close proximity was apparently lethal. Before I reconnected to my dungeon, I would need to add a new floor.
~ Chapter Seventeen ~
“What an odd day,” Rose commented as they entered the second floor of the dungeon. “Is it just me, or does this place feel kind of… empty?”
Tom nodded sagely. “I agree. The creatures of this floor are not attacking with their usual gusto! Come fight me, rabbits!”
“Maybe something happened after we left yesterday?” Dale offered his input, receiving shrugs in return. “I still think it was the right thing to do. We had to get that armor to the Spotters and warn people about the new Mobs we came across.”
“Eh, we figured it out. Why can’t they?” Hans complained darkly. “Take the warnings off of things, and let nature solve the problem that is annoying brats.” He got some shocked looks from the others.
“Are you feeling alright?” Adam gently placed a hand on Hans. “You look ill.”
“I’m fine, I’ve just had enough of this snow!” Hans kicked at the powder they were walking across. “Look at this, we are two levels down, and still the wind blew snow this far! I’m sick of this constant white bullcrap!”
“You should have been in the mountains two years ago when there weren’t walls up.” Dale laughed at the shivering assassin. “I think only Tom and I are hardy enough to make it through that kind of winter.”
“Well, you can have it!” Hans grumped, pulling his cloak tighter. “Let’s go somewhere warm! Not even a whole vacation. A day trip! We need a break.”
“Thou doth need a break.” Tom released a booming laugh, getting Hans to stick out his tongue at the small giant. “This weather is already a vacation for the Northmen like Dale and myself!”
Rose decided to join the conversation, “Dale lived here, way south of the northern kingdom. How is he a Northman? Also, while I hate to agree with Hans, a vacation to somewhere warm sounds nice.”
“I can already hear the wedding bells!” Hans exclaimed while dancing in place.
Rose closed her eyes. “And that’s why I hate to agree with you.”
“Well, maybe the dungeon will add some flame traps. Just for you.” Tom smirked at them.
&nb
sp; “Puh-lease don’t give it ideas,” Dale exasperatedly begged, waiting to hear a snarky comment in his head. He started to get a bit nervous when he heard nothing. “Something is strange.”
They completed their time in the dungeon with no incidents, getting lost in the labyrinth for only an hour today. Almost as though nothing were working against them. As they sat by the Silverwood tree and cultivated, Dale kept his eye on the area where he assumed the dungeon Core was. “Hans, you see anything different in here?”
Hearing the seriousness in Dale’s voice, Hans looked around the area thoroughly. “No, everything looks about the same. A little brighter, perhaps? Why, you think Snowball is trying to creep up on us? I’ll skin you, you giant ball of fluff!”
Snowball had gotten quite good at running away when it was seriously injured, and no one was foolish enough to chase it into the deep steams in its territory. Since they had been unable to bring him down today, they once again had to watch out for potential sneak attacks while cultivating.
“No, I just have a strange feeling,” Dale explained away his nerves.
“Maybe it is the fact that the dungeon hasn’t even bothered to look at us today?” Adam presented this idea quietly. His words made the others look at him, then at Dale for confirmation.
Dale nodded slowly. “Yes. No contact at all today either. Even when it was not exactly talking for a month, it would at least give us a cursory glare and mumble a few nasty slurs about our parentage.” He shuddered as he remembered the last month and a half. The people who knew about the dungeon being alive all found it odd that the being seemed to think it was perfectly sane, when it was obvious to most that its mind was slipping.
Normal details of the dungeon had been sloppy. Walls and floors that were damaged from attacks or traps remained scarred for days or, in some cases, indefinitely. Half-formed devices that failed to do anything, sickly mutant Mobs ran rampant. Most often killing the Mob was a mercy to the pathetic creature. Still, the denial the dungeon was hiding in had not fooled anyone but itself.
