"Where is all the rock powder going from this vast cavern?" said Ceras as he looked at the worms.
"All of the rock is being taken to the surface where your friend Grikius is building what looking be one of the largest fortifications in this province," said Hidden-Caverns, "he wants to build a fort with accommodation, shops, and a hospice."
"This is all amazing," said Ceras in awe of what was happening to the dungeon," but I need to get back to studying."
"I've been wondering what we might be missing some information that would help you progress more with the improvement of you mana channels," said Hidden-Caverns in a questioning voice, "you only have books at mostly the journeymen level, and the higher levels might have more information about expanding your magic. Maybe you need to go to the guild library in town and check it out for more information on magical improvement techniques."
"The only problem is that it will take forever to read through all the book, and the information would still only be in my head. It has been you that has the memory that's making the connections easier to learn," said Ceras as he thought about the slow study process by himself.
"I think that I've got a solution for that," said Hidden-Caverns with some excitement in tone of voices.
--
Ceras was at the exit of the dungeon in his smart new clothes and armor with his bag of holding at his waist, just passing the spider webs that marked the entrance to the dungeon. As he had passed through the first level of the dungeon, he had noticed that it was being expended significantly by working monsters that seem to be happy working away under the direction of kobolds with tools on their leather belts, all with scrolls of parchment that seemed to give a blueprint to an overall design.
The cold wind hit him as he exited the dungeon into the rocky grassland. Blinking in the brightness of the midday sunlight what he saw surprised him again, he had been expecting to see a rough, rugged landscape that surrounds the mine entrance but now area had been filled in with a large amount of rock forming a solid platform that building was taking place on.
In the center of the building, work was Grikius bending down to pet Apollo as he was feeding the larger puppy a treat from a bag. The dog had certainly grown since the last time Ceras had seen him and was no longer small enough to be ridging in Grikuis clothing.
Approaching, Apollo looked at Ceras with an intelligent look in his eyes, seeming to appraise the possibility of being feed from Ceras bag, but as no food was forthcoming, he went back to his master for more treats.
"This is going to be a massive fort," said Ceras to Grikuis." Hidden-Caverns says that you have big plans for the adventure when they start to come to the dungeon."
"That right, it should be good to make the dungeon and us some more money," he said back, "as it's far enough away from town from needing some amenities."
Ceras talked to the excited Grikuis for a few minutes about his plans but soon was heading down the mountain toward the guild. As he got lower, on the road, the day turned pleasant, with only a few clouds in the sky and the direct sunlight heating him up. Soon Ceras could see the wall of the town in the distance and was able to join other foot traffic into to the town humming to himself happily. When he was passed the large gates of the town and walking through the cobbled streets with people carrying goods, he noticed a group of adventure walking toward him. At first, he did not recognize them, but then he saw the boorish man he had beaten, dressed in fine armor. Worried that the group might recognize him and have to deal with them, Ceras pulled his new hood over his head, hoping that his face not to be seen. To his relief, the loud group of young rich men and women passed him by not even noticing him as he was well dressed like them.
Relived that he did not have to deal with their kind of trouble, at the moment, he continued onto the guild hall, just of the bustling market square, but bought some food from a stall on the way. Before he entered the guild library, Ceras had cleaned his grease hands with a cloth from his pack, knowing that the librarian would be unhappy if he got grease onto the library books. He already was feeling guilty, of what he was going to do that he did not want to be a bigger problem to the nice librarian.
Entering the library all was quiet as it was later in the day, and only the librarian was present in her usual place reading. Ceras smiled at her still feeling slightly guilty, but went over to the index cards and started to look for books on magical improvement technique's. Finding a whole section in the higher-level magical books, in the library, he started to pull them off the shelves and stack them beside himself and started to read through the most promising one.
After about an hour, the librarian came over and said, "I'm leaving for the night; make sure you put the books back before you leave."
With that comment, she picked up a bag and left the library with only Ceras inside it. Ceras waited for a few minutes before checking the corridor outside the library was clear of people, and then closed the door firmly. Using his immobilization spell, he locked the door from the inside of the library and put his bag of holding on the tiled mosaic floor of the tidy library.
Opening the drawstrings, a far as he could, making a two-foot hole Ceras reached into the bag and pull on a wooden stick, that eventual appeared as the top of a ladder. He placed the ladder against the inside of the bag. Whistling into his bag, he gestured for them to come up the ladder, and moved back as the first goblins and gremlins appeared from his bag. Making sure they were quiet by placing his finger over his lips. He watched as more and more creatures appeared in a steady stream.
The goblins sat in all the chair at the desks in the library while the gremlins started to bring books for them to read quickly. Ceras even noticed that many sat on the floor as they looked through magical books. As the night went on in a similar manner, to its start, as the goblins read through the entire library with the gremlins moving the book around as if an orchestrated machine with wonderful precision, Ceras watch the door and corridor to the outside as he nervously passed. It was in the early hour of the morning that they had finally finished reading everything in the library, and climbed back into Ceras bag of holding for the journey home that allowed Ceras to relax when his closed his bag with a sigh of relief.
--
The librarian entered her domain that she had been in charge of for so many years, she first noticed that something was different as she stepped over the doorway. It surprised her but was not upsetting, as suddenly overnight the library was immaculately clean. Looking at all the books on the selves, she saw none of the normal dust that collected over time. Smiling with happiness just glad that it had happened she started to go to a shelve that had been messed up by some lazy wizards that could not be bothered to put anything back where it was supposed to be. But as she started to look at the order of the books, she saw that it was all in the correct indexing order.
Surprised at this, she quickly checked most of the library and found that everything was in its correct place, and all the book were clean. She even noticed that some of the selves had been repaired and were standing perfectly. Wondering what had happened, she sat down and opened one of her research books and just blessed the goddess for more time to study.
Chapter 11 Magical Discoveries
Ceras placed his bag of holding on the floor in the center of his living room, in his apartment after a long journey home from the town that he had had to complete early in the morning. When he had entered the dungeon Hidden-Cavers had been asking him to allow the creature in his bag of holding out so he could gain the knowledge from the library, but Ceras had just ignored him and silently walked towards his apartment on the lowest floor in the dungeon. As he had walked down into the dungeon, the voice of Hidden-Caverns had a first pleaded with him, then threated Ceras with dire consequences if he did not open the bag, but Ceras was enjoying annoying the dungeon too much to give in.
Finally, as the language was getting to be obscene, from the over-excited dungeon, with a flair for the dramatic Ceras opened the bag
in one grand motion and pulled up the ladder allowing the goblins and gremlins to climb out. As they exited the bag, Hidden-Caverns went quiet in mid-course and stayed silent for the next hour seeming to be busy processing all the information.
By the time the dungeon broke his silences Ceras was reading one of his magical theory books checking out some question he had while eating a meal that a small gremlin had brought to him from where ever the food was produced.
"It going to take me a while to process all this information, "said Hidden-Caverns excitedly but in a distracted voice that seemed to be far away, "why not have some rest and by the time you get up I should have made some progress."
Yarning Ceras agreed with the idea as he had been up all night in the library with the creatures reading all the library books, so he finished his meal heading for being as would do well with a good night sleep for whatever Hidden-Caverns had found out to teach him in the morning.
Ceras woke up early in the morning to the quiet of the dungeon and walked into the bathroom to try out a hot bath to relax him, while he waits for Hidden-Caverns to speak to him about what he had potential discover. By a bit of trial and error, he managed to get the bath at the correct temperature that did not hurt but was a relaxing bath, to just soak in and feel his muscles relax.
As he was just about to get out the excited voice of the dungeon announcing the discovery.
"It's all to do with gaining knowledge and using your knowledge," said the loud dungeon with an excited voice as if he had discovered the elixir of life, "we were trying to do it artificially with meditation, while the most efficient process is to practice magical puzzles that not only teach you spells but also clean out the pathways. It all about gaining experience, so the more you do magic, the easier it gets, which also help with the ranking system. "
"Does that mean that all I have to do is practice a spell again and again?" said Ceras in a questioning voice.
"Well yes and no," said Hidden-Caverns not really helping Ceras understanding with his answer, "it like practicing any sport or combat ability. You need to do it correctly and then make it increasingly harder so that your ability increases. This is why combat is so good for gaining experiences; it makes sure that you are fully engaged and doing your best."
"Humm"
"The more fighting you do with magic, the better you will be, but I also need to set up magical puzzles that allow you to build up your magical muscles, so to speak. If you get dressed and follow my instructions, I started to set up a training area for you."
Ceras was soon dressed and holding his staff entering the hall where he had been directed by the dungeon to be taught by the dungeon how to use magic that could expand his efficiency. The room now had a solid wooden double door that gave some level of protection to the rest of the dungeon from the stray magical blast. Entering the room, Ceras found that the size of the room had increased to the size of a large field and was full of the stone target that some of the dungeon's gremlins were just finishing setting up. The floor now had sand on it as if it had been placed there to make falling on it easier than the hard rock.
"Let start with the fireball spell first," said Hidden-Caverns in a serious tone of voice as the sound echoed around the cavern, "I show you the way to cast it that is calibrated for your pathway and will improve your magical ability."
"Ok, I'm ready."
As Ceras stood in the middle of the cavern an image of his body appeared in front of him, on the image the flesh turned translucent allowing him to see the magical channels all connected to his brain, reaching to the extremities of his body. Hidden-Caverns started to show him the way his magic energy slowly flow through his body as the mana color red like fire twisted and spiral through his magical pathway seeming to build up a feedback loop that amplified the power, when it was projected from the images hand, the red energy swirling to form a ball of fire that blasted forward hitting a bursting target flame.
"Ok," said Hidden-Caverns, "now you try to allow the magical energy to flow as the image. I'll show what's happening in your body next to the image of what you have to do to make the process easier."
"Thanks, here we go."
As the second image of Ceras body appeared next to the image, that had been used to show him how to flow the magical energies in his body. Slowly as Hidden-Caverns created the flow patterns of mana he had to duplicate, he tried to repeat the same pattern.
The first thing he was grateful for was he could get feedback from the images on how close his patterns were to what he needed to achieve. Over an hour of trying, that was mentally exhausting; he found that he started to be able to get the swirling flow pattern giving the required feedback loop. The first time the feedback loop moved through his body, he fell the channel that allowed his magical energies to flow expand slightly, with a slight throbbing in his body that was a tell-tale sign he had achieved the required pattern flow.
When he blasted fire out from the swirling patterns in his hands, he fell that the fireball was more powerful than he usually could produce.
"Wow," said Ceras.
"Great," said the happy Hidden-Caverns, "now we need to repeat that hundreds of time so it come naturally. But each time I need to you increase the power of the feedback within your magical channels."
The next few hours were reparative for Ceras as he practiced the energy flow pattern increasing the feedback giving him the tell-tale throbbing feeling. Then Ceras moved on to work with his other spell that all seemed to have a different flow pattern, that he had to master and then practices hundreds of times.
"The puzzle that I want you to solve, and it going to take some study is why the patterns are different for each spell," said Hidden-Caverns, that had been pushing him to improve his magical abilities all day, as if he was a slave driver, "then you're learn a new spell and see if you can predict the patterns that would be required to get the magical feedback."
It was now late in the night, and Ceras was sitting at his large table with several magical books layered out in front of him writing notes into his own magical book. He had enjoyed this exercise immensely as it had been like playing a game of detective work but with magical theory. Hidden-Caverns had helped him with understanding the theory as Ceras had asked so many questions, but it was up to Ceras to make the leaps of understanding that had to enable him to see the link between the spells patterns to produce feedback.
He was now working on writing up a new journeyman spell that created an illusion from his mind that could be used to project any imaged image. He was working on this as it was different from any spell, he currently was using, so if he could predict the correct magical flow to get feedback, he knew that he had achieved success in solving the puzzle Hidden-Caverns had set for him.
Placing his feathered quill down on the table, Ceras sat back and prepared to cast the spell, with the correct pattern to get feedback of magical energies in his body. Slowly he cast the spell concentrating on forming the required patterns that he had imaged in his mind, as he worked, he suddenly felt the throbbing feeling indicating that he had achieved the feedback.
"Well done, "said Hidden-Caverns with pride in his voice," that good for a start, but we have a long way to go still.”
Chapter 12 Dungeon Dive
It had now been a long exhausting three weeks since Ceras had been practicing the magical patterns for gaining the magical feedback in his body. In that time, Ceras had been practicing and reading magical books as he discussed the information in the library with Hidden-Caverns gain a deeper understanding of magic. Every few days he would meet up with other adventures and find out about the progress of the dungeon that seemed to be coming on with leaps and bounds but today was different, they were to do a quest set by Hidden-Caverns.
Quest Title
Test the first new level of the dungeon
Description
The forests level had been completed and Hidden-Caverns wants the adventures to test the level.
Level
&
nbsp; 7
XP
per team member 4
Reward
The monster will drop money as if you are normal dungeon adventures.
Ceras was standing next Rhef, who had been the main architect for the new level, in the reception area at the bottom of the stairs from the original dungeon.
"I love the way you had the cavern caved giving it images of tree caved into the ceiling and tree trucks as the columns supporting the roof. "Ceras said as he looked around the large open room leading to the cavern."
"Thanks, it nice for you to notices."
The rocks in the room were caved with the darker color in the pit of the caverning cut and lighter colors on the outside given the look of tree bark on the walls. The entrance to the vast cavern beyond had a large wooden door that was shaped in the forms of tree trunks reaching up into the sky with carved branches with leaves on the top of the door. The door stood five meters high it towered about the adventures standing ready before it to enter the new level.
Everybody was now at the journeymen level and had chosen skill for their class. Ceras had seen Rinaldo us his time dilation ability, in the fight against the orcs when on the quest for the rock worm sample. But he did not know what the others had chosen as of yet.
"What skill did you choose when you leveled up?" Ceras asked to Grikius
Who was beside him with his now much large dog that was two feet high, with a large head as if his body was trying to catch up to his head size like most young animals
"Oh," he said as he gazed on the carved wooden door and patted Apollo head, "I picked a communication skill with Apollo, so we can now talk into each other's mind over any distance. Mostly 'he's been asking for more food as the poor dog is so hungry all the time because he grew so much."
Ceras looked at the dog who was smiling at him as if to say, "Yes, I do need more food."
Dungeon Master Page 10
