The fire beetle scampered off toward a tunnel entrance, and it soon disappeared out of view. I watched its progress on my map, and once I was reassured it was heading in the right direction, I closed my map.
“It’ll be a while before he gets to them,” I said. “We need traps for the core room.”
“Tavia is away, Core Beno.”
“That’s why you bought a core. No offense to Tavia, but I doubt her traps are as sophisticated as mine. They won’t have the same level of complexity, of artistry, of elegance. Now, do I want a giant hole with spikes at the bottom, or a metal bear trap?”
Traps were a real essence drain, so it was difficult to get a balance. In total, six tunnels led into the core room. One of those went all the way back to the Wrotun cavern, so there was no threat of an attack from that side.
That left five tunnels I needed to make safe. I had very little time, so I’d have to lay some bear traps or pitfalls. Pitfalls were much more effective, but they cost 100 essence points each. I couldn't hold 500 essence points at my current level.
Even if I did, it might not be the way to go about it. If I blew all my essence points on defending the core room, I’d having nothing left to use on making creatures. This meant I wouldn’t be able to take the fight to the Seekers, and I would effectively be tempting them toward my core room in the hope that my traps could get them. It was riskier than pulling on a dragon’s tail.
Either I created monsters and sent them to kill the invaders, or I relied on defense to do the job. The present state of my dungeon meant that neither option appealed to me.
I decided it had been a while now, so I used my core vision to see through my fire beetle’s eyes.
The room around me grew hazy, almost as if a giant was shaking it, and then different images snapped into place.
I saw a tunnel, the stone walls passing by either side as the beetle scampered down it. I couldn’t hear anything, which was a drawback of only being a level 5 core, and having little affinity with this particular beetle. The more I leveled up, the stronger my core senses would get, gradually introducing sounds, smells, and feelings into my core vision.
Not only that, but the longer a creature spent in my dungeon, and the better we bonded, the more attuned I would be when looking through his or her eyes. Right now, I had to make do with just the sight.
For a while, it was just an endless stream of darkness, with the beetle scuttling through it. I decided that I really should get some mana lamps fixed to the walls. Not too many, because I didn’t want the place lit up like the academy dining room. But careful placement of mana lamps was actually a good form of defense; you could use it to draw invaders’ gazes to the right (or wrong) places.
I was about to leave my core vision and focus on my core room problem again when I saw something.
Just ahead, at the end of this particular tunnel, I saw lights.
Okay, now we were getting somewhere! The beetle crawled on, getting closer and closer until the lights got brighter.
The tunnel opened out just ten meters away. I saw that the lights were in fact little balls of burning goo squashed atop metal rods. There were eight goo torches, and eight figures holding them. It was still just that little bit too dark to see them properly.
Suddenly, the core vision turned black, and I was yanked out of it. The sensation was a jarring one, and it made me feel like someone had picked me up and shook me around.
I gave a mental command for my feelings to fade. Though I usually wanted to keep my feelings with me as much as possible, they had no place in a battle.
“Are you okay, Core Beno?”
Warren was staring at me now, concern written on his green face.
“Fine,” I said. “There are eight Seekers. Tell me about them, Warrane. What race are they?”
“The Seekers are like the Wrotun; they attack with different races.”
“So we could be dealing with anything. Fine. What weapons do they generally use? What spells? Do they have mages, archers, illusionists, barbarians? I need to know everything.”
“The Seekers’ attacks take many forms, Core Beno. This leaf has seen men who can grow spheres of trembling purple energy on their palms. Not as bright as the First-Leaf’s staff, but enough to hurt. He has seen flaming arrows fired from a great distance. Orcs with swords made from glass. Chimeras who can follow a scent miles through the tunnels.”
“We’re dealing with eight enemies of unknown race or powers. Hmm. At least I know where they are. I don’t have the essence to create eight creatures of any kind except leeches and spiders, and I doubt that would be a fair fight. We’ll have to be creative.”
“This leaf is yours to command.”
“You’re a little too subservient sometimes, Warrane.”
“It is his only way of restoring honor.”
“Even so, be your own man. Surely you won’t do anything that I tell you to?”
“This leaf will act on any command if it means he can gain back his tree’s honor.”
“Okay. Go fight the Seekers by yourself.”
Warren’s lips twitched. “Core Beno? This leaf would offer advice; it wouldn’t be in either of our interests for him to fight them alone.”
“Ah, good. You do have your own mind! I’ll need you to use it, okay? You’re here to help me, and you’re worth more than just carrying me around. Tell me, in your best judgment and from your knowledge of the Seekers, what is it most likely we will face? If you’re wrong, I won’t hold it against you because I know this is a blind guess.”
“This leaf knows there is a magic user,” he said, rubbing the swollen part of his face. “He is most displeased with his way of finding this out. The Seekers rarely send just one kind of attacker.”
“They mix things up, like a party of heroes. Maybe this isn’t so different from what I’m used to.”
“They are getting wiser to our traps. Each time they invade, we must lay twice as many to repel them the next time.”
“As I thought; some of them have the rogue-like ability to disarm traps, or their mages know the right spells. Okay. I might have something we can do, but I’ll need to get closer to them. Since I don’t have pedestal points all the way up there, you’ll have to carry me.”
“This leaf wonders, does your idea involve stealth?”
“When its eight versus one, stealth is the only way. A core must work in the shadows. The closer he gets to the light, the nearer he is to defeat. I’ll be pushing myself as close as I can bear.”
“The Seekers can detect when a leaf is nearby,” said Warrane.
“Just a leaf? Or they can sense anything?”
“Tavia once experimented with this. She released a trained dirtfox into the tunnels during a Seeker attack. It followed them for an hour, and returned unharmed.”
“Interesting. Yet they notice you straight away?”
“In an instant.”
“Then they can detect the mana in you. They need torchlight to see, so it isn’t as if they have extraordinary senses, and they couldn’t spot Tavia’s fox. Yet they saw you straight away. I suppose you’ll have to stay here.”
“How will you get close to them?”
Create kobold, I thought.
A kobold formed in front of us. I hadn’t warned Warrane, and he jumped when he saw the creature appear beside him. He recovered himself soon, since it wasn’t the kobold herself that worried him, just her sudden reappearance. After all, there was a kobold family in Wrotun.
This was the third kobold I had ever created, and the first female. She looked much like my other two; a squat figure who stood upright, with the scales of a lizard and a wolf-like face. Her eyes were slanted, more feminine than my old kobolds’. She was slightly less muscular than them, too. She had a shock of black hair on the top of her head, which ran down her scaly back and stopped just above her tail.
I was about to speak to her, when a message appeared in front of me.
You have created three kobo
lds – [Minor] proficiency gained!
Due to creating three kobolds, and in a large part thanks to the bond you fostered with your first two, you have earned a [minor] proficiency.
You can now choose from the following roles when creating kobolds:
- Miner
- Scout
- Shaman.
- Cultivator
Core List created: Creature Proficiencies
Kobold – [Minor]
I would have made a fist and pumped it in the air, but it was pointless because Warren wouldn’t have been able to see my core hands. What’s a fist pump if nobody sees it?
I was happy, though. This was a great step in my core career; a creature proficiency.
Master cores, ones who had created many creatures in many dungeons, earned proficiencies over time. Some cores might prefer using goblins to defend their dungeons and thus might earn proficiency after creating many of them. The bonus they get could be anything; their goblins might be tougher to kill, harder to see, they might smell nicer.
But…not every core earned them, and not many got them as quickly as I had. See, I had earned my minor proficiency because I had made a strong bond with Tomlin and Wylie, my old kobolds.
Not everyone bothered with this. The traditional school of thought on creature treatment was cruel to be kind. Discipline your creatures, and they’ll follow orders.
I’d tried to follow the theories laid out by the more progressive core scholars like Atamir Puskin and Leroy Genava, who felt a creature would respond better when treated with respect. I even used to allow whistling in my dungeon.
Course, some cores took these nicer teachings too far. Discipling stone trolls by sending them to a place in the dungeon named the naughty corner - that was way too much.
As for the roles I could now give when I created kobolds, they seemed obvious.
You’ve probably worked out what a miner can do. And a scout kobold would be useful at times like this. I guessed they would have increased stealth abilities.
But a shaman kobolds?
Ah, that was the most interesting of all. Shamans, when they reached a high enough level, could raise the dead. They were similar to necromancers, in many ways. So similar that going into the intricacies now would take a whole book. If you’re ever interested in the subject, there’s a great section in the academy library on resurrection, necromancy, and shamanism.
It looked like my policy of treating my kobolds well had worked.
“I need to give you a name, and a role,” I said to my new kobold girl.
“I have a name,” she said, “If it pleases you to hear it.”
Wow, she was articulate for a kobold! As a species, they were a mixed bag. They could be sharp like my old kobold Tomlin, or dumber than a bag of smashed rocks, like another of my old kobolds named Wylie.
“I would very much like to hear it.”
“Breedmaster Hulle in the academy used to call me Pain in the Arse. However, my clanmates called me Shadow.”
“Shadow, huh? A very impressive-sounding name. Usually, when siblings give each other nicknames, they are joking ones.”
“No, no, they definitely called me Shadow. Of course, if you asked them, they wouldn’t remember. Most kobolds have very short memories.”
I was beginning to like this kobold already. “Tell me then, Shadow, where does your name come from?”
“From my many escapes from the cruel academy captivity.”
“You fled from the breeding grounds?”
“The first time, I spent a full month watching breedmaster Hulle. He takes his peppermint tea at the same time every day. Then, again at the same time each day, the peppermint gives him a poorly stomach. He then retreats to the latrine.”
“And you used the opportunity to sneak out.”
“After having spent the month digging under the fence. I only made it as far as the academy gates, when they caught me. The next time I escaped…”
“How many times did you break free?”
“12,” she said, clearly proud. “So they named me shadow.”
“Because you kept escaping?”
“Because I kept getting caught. They say I am like a shadow; you can’t get rid of me.”
Despite her repeated captures, I was impressed. With her intellect, with her guile, with her sheer determination. It made my job easier.
“Shadow,” I said, “your role in this dungeon is to be a scout.”
Shadow [Kobold] is now a Scout.
Due to your proficiency, she begins as a level 5!
“Scout?” said Shadow. “Hmm. May I have a few moments to take a walk, core? I like to think about things before I commit to something.”
“Of course you ca…Wait. Take a walk? Think about things? You’re planning to escape!”
She sighed. “You’re shrewder than Breedmaster Hulle at least.”
“And you don’t fully understand your predicament. You belong to this dungeon now, Shadow. It is your home, and you are a scout in my employ. I am the dungeon core, the feared overlord of this foul pit, a being at once all-mighty and fearless. And I need you to pick me up and carry me through the dungeon, please.”
CHAPTER 9
It was easy to see the difference in a level 5 scout kobold versus a regular kobold. Shadow’s footsteps were muted so that even I could barely hear them, and I already knew she was walking. Someone who wasn’t listening for her would not be able to hear.
She carried me through my dungeon, through one tunnel after another, each stretch of passageway a reminder of the hard work ahead of me. Luckily, I love hard work.
We finally caught sight of the Seekers way ahead of us. They’d moved further south from when Warrane had seen them, but the glow of their lamps was unmistakable.
“How close can you get us?” I whispered.
It might seem strange to you that this kobold was created just ten minutes earlier, yet I was already asking her for advice. I admit, it would have seemed weird to me.
It’s strange, how a dungeon core’s creatures are made. For one thing, they are not made completely from essence. They are bred and raised in places like the academy, but nor are they completely normal, either.
It is one of the greatest mysteries of our time, what happens when a core decides to create something and casts essence out from himself. We know that non-living things get constructed there and then; if I made a rug, its fibers would be made from essence. But living tissue? That had to begin up top, it had to be born the natural way, even if essence is what brought it to my dungeon.
Either way, the process that brought shadow to my dungeon also changed her from the inside. Essence can do that. Since I had given her the role of scout, the essence I had created her from made sure that the knowledge of what a scout is, does, and knows would have been bestowed on her.
This is why they call essence the aloof sister of mana. It would be fascinating to discuss what a core is really made from, and how essence fuels our abilities. I could talk about it for hours and hours, but this isn’t the time.
“Ten paces would risk alerting them,” said Shadow. “Twenty would make it a certainty.”
“Then let’s take eight. No point messing around with lady chance, she’s just as likely to kick you up the arse than a kiss on the cheek.”
Shadows crept forward some more. Eight paces weren’t a lot, but I could see the seekers in a little better detail. If I had created the tunnel ahead myself, or if I had modified it, I would have been able to cast my core vision forth and see them clearly.
As it was, my regular vision was still better in darkness than most people’s would have been. See, cores are creatures of the night. We have dark souls, and we love miserable poetry and gruesome watercolor paintings of vampires and things like that.
And we can see in the dark.
Ahead, I saw eight figures standing where the tunnel had widened, with four tunnel openings around them.
There were three men and one woman dre
ssed in leather tunics and jerkins, the kind you would see people wear in any town or city in Xynnar. They carried iron swords of no particular quality or description, weapons that said little about their owners.
Or did they?
Common armor and basic swords suggested that these people weren’t worth wasting better gear on. Either that or they hadn’t fought enough to loot better gear from their enemies. Whatever the answer, it spoke of inexperience or incompetence.
The other four members of the party worried me. They were better armored, better tooled. I saw metal cuirasses with intricate carvings on the front. Well-made leather that looked tough enough to take an arcane blast.
And none of these four were human.
Does that strike you as odd? That the poorly equipped four were human, yet the more suitably dressed ones were not?
There was something even stranger.
The four well-equipped Seekers were goblins. And that made me very, very nervous.
See, you can say what you like about heroes, even the toughest ones, but I’d rather face fifty heroes than four well-equipped, suitably motivated goblins.
They’re clever. They’re mean as hell. If you accidentally tripped up a goblin, he’d cut off the hand you put out to help him up.
Goblins are shrewd and have a way of seeing the world in a way that others don’t. It’s hard to explain, but they don’t think like a normal person. Goblins make very good lawyers, for example. They just have a way of seeing the world that goes against the grain of most civilized people.
That’s not to say they aren’t civilized; there is a goblin city out east that is welcoming to travelers, which Harry Belza listed in his book, 100 Places to Visit in Xynnar Before You Die. He was especially complimentary of the goblin theatre scene, which he described as being ‘eons ahead of its time.’
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 21