Thankfully, Regnark was there to draw the attention of some of them, as was Eisa’s two Crystal Scorpions she had created with her Earth Mana. Fred had actually ended up emptying his Earth Mana to feed her almost 50 more, which was just enough for her to bring forth the two – albeit only at the bare Level 1 minimum. When you added in Deecy in her Giant Dire Wolf form, there were now five close targets for the Demonlord to contend with.
Both Metlin and Fred ended up using the Nature’s Breath Druid ability to speed everyone up – which confused the heck out of everyone at the sight of yet another ability he shouldn’t have access to – and it ended up stacking, giving them a significant boost to their sword-dodging ability. Lasgo was apparently low on his special steel arrows, so Fred Conjured up a few bundles, which made the Sniper extremely happy – and the greed practically shone from the Druid-Thief’s face as he saw him do that. Fred ignored it and knew he would face some uncomfortable questions later – if they all survived.
Refelynn was keeping her channeled Light Explosion spell in the Demonlord’s face as much as she could, though Fred wasn’t sure if it was making much of a difference. Eisa was tossing out Lightscythes one after another – while doing little to no damage – and Lasgo was firing non-stop at every body part he could target. Despite the strength of his bow and the use of his abilities, very few arrows actually penetrated the massive demon’s skin, let alone actually harmed it. A few accurate shots towards its eyes only managed to bounce off its fiery embers without harm.
It was all good, though, because their objective was to keep their gigantic opponent busy, not to actually kill it. That job was supposedly for Fred and Pollianne, who were circling around to attack from behind. He had told them that he had a special ability to heavily damage or even instantly kill the Demonlord, but it was something that had to be done to an unaware target. And as he had to physically touch it, the best way for that to happen was to come at it from behind.
They were nearly to the opposite side of the entrance when Pollianne turned toward the center of the room with Fred in tow. He could vaguely sense her in her invisibility state with his Mana Sight, because even though she didn’t have any inherent elemental Mana inside of her, he could partially sense the movement of her passing through the strong ambient Dark Mana filling up the entire dungeon. It was almost like watching the tiny ambient Mana particles in the air part around a void in the shape of a person.
They “snuck” up on the humongous demon and took their time not alerting it to their presence. His friends – old and new – were doing a great job distracting it, but he could see some of them tiring already; despite only fighting for over a minute, they were constantly having to dodge and avoid attacks, because even a single strike could prove deadly. In fact, as Fred and the Assassin were closing in on the demon’s left leg, Trenk took a glancing blow to his armor – and was launched across the room to impact against the nearest wall, colliding with a cacophonous crash of metal. He slid down to the floor and lay there unmoving – but with a quick check at his Vitality, Fred saw that he was at least still alive.
With one less target, the others were in danger, so Fred hurried to reach the leg he was aiming for…when the inevitable happened, and the Demonlord lifted his foot up and tried to stomp Fred flat into the ground. Strangely enough, that was what Fred had been waiting for; as Pollianne dived forwards out of the way, he flung himself backwards and cast Windbreak on himself while in the air. A fist of air slammed into him – which hurt quite a bit – and turned his little backwards dive into something like a skipped stone across a pond towards the back wall of the room.
Luckily, he rolled to a stop before he smashed into the hard stone, but it took him a moment to recover and get to his feet. Looking up, he saw the Demonlord looking straight at him stomping his way, despite the lack of light; since Demons could apparently see in the darkness as if it were daylight, Fred quickly used a Magelight spell and turned towards the wall.
He ran his hands over the rough stone projections of the wall, desperately running back and forth over a section. Where is it? Where is it?! He kept searching, hoping to find what he was looking for, when some sixth sense told him to duck; throwing himself flat to the ground, Fred felt the wind of a sword’s passage half a foot over his body, striking the rock and causing sparks to flare out. It was one of those sparks that he happened to see out of the corner of his eye that showed him the opening he was searching for.
He immediately got to his feet, ran three steps forward, and dived straight ahead into the spot where he had seen the spark disappear – all the while hoping he didn’t slam straight into solid rock or get chopped in half by a sword. By whatever fortune favored him, Fred managed to fling himself into a small crevice in the seemingly solid stone wall, just as another sword slammed on the ground outside, causing the ground to tremble a bit at the impact.
I found it!
He had done what he had briefly thought might be impossible by getting past the Demonlord and finding the small crevice in the massive stone wall; indeed, that was hard – but the next part was going to be even harder.
Chapter 29
Fred didn’t want to deceive both his old friends and the new group of Adventurers, but he had no real choice. Any plan he conveyed to them was bound to be picked up by the Dark Core listening in, and even trying to softly whisper his plans into their ears would’ve likely resulted in the same problem. He personally remembered being able to observe and hear everything located in his territory, and he would be a fool to expect that this Dungeon Core was any different.
Therefore, he had to tell them a little lie; while their jobs distracting the massive Demonlord was important, it served a different purpose from the one they thought. Fred didn’t have any type of ability that would allow him to kill anything by touching them, but they didn’t know that; based on the strange abilities the others seemed to have, it was just another surprise that he had yet to show.
He could tell that Eisa and Regnark didn’t quite believe him, but went along with it anyway; Deecy, on the other hand, knew he was lying straight away. Fortunately, he had a way to privately communicate with her that the Dark Core couldn’t seem to pick up – at least it didn’t seem so from the few times he had done it in the dungeon – and so was able to explain his real plan. Once he had done so, she went along with it as well, as it seemed like the only option; though, she said that she had some advice to go along with that, but didn’t have the time to explain it because they needed to start the attack and didn’t want to distract him.
As soon as he had dived safely into the hidden crevice, though, she had Communicated with him again.
“You really ticked this thing off – it’s standing next to where you disappeared and staring at the wall like it was going to start trying to smash its way through. Anyway, there was something I was thinking about yesterday, but we were interrupted by attacking undead, I think.
“I don’t think you need to fully absorb and kill the Dark Core to obtain its element. With that first Nature Core you touched, you probably could’ve chosen to acquire just the Nature Element from it, but also leave it extremely weakened – but alive. The rapid Mana loss would’ve likely collapsed its territory as well, though only temporarily until they could establish it again. But, because you waited too long, your internal dungeon core system made the choice for you.
“For the Earth Core, that’s a little trickier; I assume that – since it was taken from its territory – it didn’t have the necessary Mana reserves to survive the acquisition of a new element and everything that goes along with it. Therefore, it would’ve been destroyed by you even touching it, which obviously started the process automatically.”
Fred squeezed himself through the crevice, which turned a sharp corner and led farther into the wall. It seemed to be a lot longer passageway than he had ever seen before, but he could tell he was going the right way – the Dark Core felt almost within touching distance now. “Then why didn’t I ful
ly absorb the other Nature Cores that were stolen from their territories,” he Communicated back to her, as he squeezed through another couple of feet in the tight crevice. He was glad that Regnark didn’t want to come, because the big man’s leg would barely even fit inside.
“Probably because you didn’t need the basic “building blocks” of their element, so there was no need to fully absorb them anymore. You were able to just acquire what you needed from them and that was it.”
Fred thought that made sense, though he wasn’t sure what to do with the information. He had been trying to work his resolve up to deliberately destroying the Dark Core, but if there was a way around actually killing her, he wanted to try that instead.
“Good luck…and hurry, I think I hear the undead approaching.”
Fred squeezed through even faster and felt the skin on his chest tear underneath his clothes in his hurry, but he ignored the flares of pain and pushed himself to move faster. He was running out of time and if he didn’t find the Core Room soon, he didn’t think—
He stumbled out into empty space and fell to his knees as the last of the crevice ran out, which led to a completely dark room. I shouldn’t be surprised – this is a Dark Core, after all. He stood up and used his Mana Sight to look around; he didn’t want to use his Magelight spell quite yet, as he wanted to save every drop of Power that he had just in case he needed it. Besides, he didn’t need it to see what he needed to.
“What are you doing here, fool? Why go through all of this when there is nothing you can do to me – I’m indestructible. And if you try to take me, there’s a horde of undead making its way down here that won’t let you get two steps past my Core Room. All your stupid livestock friends will die – and for what? To say you saw a Dungeon Core? You won’t live long enough to tell anyone—"
Fred stepped forward to place his hands on the Core, when he felt a piercing pain in his back. He stumbled and fell back to his knees as he looked behind him; a small, Level 1 Defiled Goblinoid was standing there with its steel knife raised to strike again. He hadn’t seen it because its small amount of Mana was eclipsed by the raging inferno that was the Dungeon Core.
“You know, I’ve had that Goblin in my Core Room for almost 300 years. I constantly thought about getting rid of it to use the Mana on something else, but something always told me to keep it around in case of an emergency. I guess I was right.”
The Defiled Goblinoid quickly stepped forward to deliver another blow and Fred raised his hands towards the out-of-reach Core as if in supplication. However, that wasn’t what he had in mind; since it had worked so well already, he used his Windbreak spell again and hit himself from behind, propelling himself forward and out of range of the Goblin’s attack. He managed to smash the fist of air right into the deep knife wound – which hurt quite a bit – but the spell also managed to get him close enough to touch the Dark Core with his outstretched right hand.
So…he did.
Time seemed to freeze again as his fingertips brushed up against the slowly pulsing Dark Core. Hundreds of things went through Fred’s head as he thought about what he had to do, his wound to his back, and his friends who were likely stuck in between the Demonlord and an army of undead coming to wipe them out.
Do you wish to absorb: Dark Core C-3rd-Rating? Yes/No
Fred thought about it for a half-second – which was actually quite a lot of time in that frozen state – before he chose No, refusing to destroy the Dark Core if he had another choice. If Deecy was correct, doing it a different way would net him what he ultimately needed – for the Core’s territory to collapse so that he could establish his own.
Nothing else happened, though, and he worried that he had still taken too long to decide. Finally, after he sat there with his fingers touching the Dark Core for what felt like hours, he experienced a weird shift in his entire perception.
Rerouting absorption parameters. Do you wish to extract: (Base) Dark Element, (4) blueprints, and (161328) Dark Mana?
Warning! The rapid release of vast quantities of Mana will cause a temporary collapse in C-3rd-Rated Dark Core’s territory! Proceed? Yes/No
This must be what Deecy was talking about. It seemed as though he would be getting what he needed – which was the elimination of the Dark Core’s territory, however temporary it was. With his decision made, Fred chose Yes, and waited…and waited…
Hmm…something’s wro—
Suddenly, it felt like he had just been punched in the head by the Demonlord from the previous room, though he wasn’t sent flying across the room like Trenk had. Instead, time started again as his hand instinctively closed around the Dark Core he was touching as he continued his tumble forward, his Windbreaker spell finishing its knockback effect. He rolled to a stop against the far wall of the Core Room as it started to feel like his chest was going to explode.
“WHAT DID YOU DO!? No! Not all of my Mana! Nooooooo!”
Fred barely heard the Dark Core Communicating with him because he was almost delirious with pain erupting all over his body. Fortunately, he still had enough presence of Mind to check his Mana and Territorial Sight to see if he had succeeded, and he was rewarded by seeing that there was no longer a territory surrounding him and the dungeon. Before the Core could reestablish it, Fred reached out with his own senses and found faint traces of Fire, Water, Nature, and large representations of Earth; he tried to bring forth a territory…but nothing happened.
In the building pressure of his body as Dark Mana streaming from the Core in his hand continued to transfer to him, he realized he hadn’t included his new element. Along with absorbing all of the Mana, he had “extracted” the Dark element along with the process. Fred didn’t even have to look at his Core Status to see that he now had access to a fifth element – he could feel it all around him now.
Adding the Dark element to his territory was easy, as it was literally all around him. As soon as he did that, his territory snapped into place – and Fred could sense everything. He wanted to see if his friends were alright, but there were other concerns closer to hand; the pressure on his body refused to stop or even slow, so he looked with his Mana Sight to see what was happening.
There was a large conduit connecting his body with the Dark Core in his hand, and the constant flow of Dark Mana was filling him up – to overflowing. He peered at the Core system he had hidden inside of his chest and saw another elemental Core separate from his structure, pulsing to its own rhythm. That wasn’t really what concerned him, though, because large cracks were starting to form on his Human Core every few seconds, until it looked like it was going to burst any moment. The conduit started to shrink and sputter as the majority of the Dark Mana finished transferring to him, but the damage had already been done. He began to scream out in sheer torment as the Mana threatened to burst out from him from the inside.
(Warning! You are now holding 133,145 Unconverted Mana units over your current capacity of 40,000. Containing extra Unconverted Mana can damage your core over time without the appropriate Core Structure Level.)
Would you like to use 40,000 Unconverted Mana Units to increase your Core Structure Level? Yes/No
Fred instantly selected Yes and felt a lessening of the pain as his Human Core cocooned itself in Mana and filled in the cracks, enlarging the entire Core in the process. It helped, but the agony of containing too much Mana was still there.
(Warning! You are now holding 53,145 Unconverted Mana units over your current capacity of 80,000. Containing extra Unconverted Mana can damage your core over time without the appropriate Core Structure Level.)
Would you like to use 80,000 Unconverted Mana Units to increase your Core Structure Level? Yes/No
Fred, of course, selected Yes again and he almost instantly felt a relief as 80,000 Unconverted Mana was sent into his Human Core to increase its Core Structure Level, fixing the few small cracks that had appeared since it had just increased and wrapping the entire Core in soft, colorless light. As soon as it was done, there was a
brief flash as his Human Core appeared in his Mana Sight, huge in comparison to his Elemental Cores. With just a thought, he brought his new Dark Mana Core into the structure by rearranging the pattern to include it, separating them so that the entire thing looked like a five-pointed star. As everything clicked into place and Mana streams started running through it all, Fred felt relief and exhaustion run through his bones.
The sound of a foot scuffing the ground nearby forced him into action, as he remembered that he wasn’t alone. Not only were his friends still in danger, but that Goblinoid was still nearby and likely looking to finish him off.
“I will kill you for what you’ve done! I will watch in pleasure as my defender here takes its sweet time and carves you up slowly…wait…where’s my territory! Do you even know what you’ve done? You’ve opened up a gap in the border protecting the livestock pen! Tonight, the Horrors will have access to them all – you have to let me reestablish it before they all die, and everything is set back for decades! Just let me…what? I can’t access my Mana anymore? What does unknown element mean? WHAT DID YOU DO!?”
Fred wasn’t exactly sure what she was talking about, but he had a suspicion. When the prompt asked him if he wanted to “extract” the Dark element from her Core, he thought it was the same as absorbing the information on how to use it – like when he absorbed blueprints; instead, it looked like he actually “extracted” her access to the element instead.
Dungeon World 3: A Dungeon Core Experience Page 24