Digital Me

by Alston Sleet

  The King seemed to find this to be reassuring, I could see him assigning me to the ‘madman’ category in his mind. I needed to shake them both up and get them to see things from my perspective or I will actually have to destroy the capital as I’ve threatened. I know that eventually this kind of threat will be needed, but I plan to put this off as long as possible.

  “You are thinking on the wrong scale here. I simply need to continually destroy the roads, put up small walls to halt caravans, block off the gates at night, slowly redirect the river upstream so that you can’t use it to feed your people. When food becomes difficult to buy and trade dries up, the capital will fall apart quickly enough. It may take me ten or twenty years of constant harassment to do it. Even sending out patrols to constantly hunt for me would be a slow drain on the capital, eventually, though…I would win. The capital would be destroyed.”

  There was a long pause as both the King and Jofrem considered both the effectiveness of my plan and the odd inhuman seeming methodology. A plan of ten or twenty years in order to pay back a slight of a moment seemed excessively lopsided, but it really wasn’t. I needed to make an example of someone eventually. I needed agreements with me to be clear in that breaking them would always be worse than keeping them. I also needed this to be spread far and wide. This seemed like an epic fight of one against an entire Kingdom, it would take a taxing amount of work and mind numbing tedium, but it would work and that was the most important part.

  The King slowly seemed to come to a conclusion, “So if I am to believe your claim, then killing you would result in you destroying the capital over ten or twenty years…but simply power-leveling you and paying the agreement to the village Melcot would result in…what?”.

  With a smile, I answered the King, “Nothing further. Remember, your Hand bound you to this agreement for me to meet with you, nothing more. I have no obligation beyond meeting you and not harming you or yours unless harmed myself. I’m not unreasonable. I may be open to future agreements. I love to create and I want to explore this world, building, and learning, but I won’t swear fealty, I won’t be joining anyone’s cause or Kingdom. I plan to be neutral as much as possible. I might decide to conquer, rule, or even serve some time in a few thousand years but not yet.”

  Both men seemed a tad uncomfortable with my words. I am not sure if it was the casual mention of large time scales or my willingness to completely buck the political system in an almost carefree manner. Either of those should have upset them, both together probably made me seem odd and alien to their view of the world.

  “Very well. I will think of this and discuss things with you later. I trust that you will give me due time to consider things and call for a power-leveling team? I don’t need to expect you to attack simply because it takes an extra week for a team to arrive?” the King asked in a bit of a gruff manner.

  “Oh no, take your time. I had expected at least a year of wandering around the capital doing odd jobs and such trying to learn about this world a bit more. If you want I can stay in the castle so that you can keep an eye on me. Jofrem here could spy on me if he would also discuss magic with me. How magic works here is something I’m keenly interested in.”

  Again, I don’t think my blunt way of speaking was something the King was comfortable with, but seeing as there was no rush he summoned a servant to see to my comfort and excused me to my rest. I am sure that the King and Jofrem would be discussing me further. As long as no one tried to poison me or stab me in the night, this seemed like a successful meeting. I chuckled to myself as I realized how much my perspective had shifted to consider that low bar to be successful.

  Chapter 8

  Training Montage to the Gut!

  A spear entering your stomach feels like being shoved back strongly at the waist, while also a wet dark pulling sensation as the spear is removed. It’s painful, anyone would guess that, but it’s surprising that the body has some other sense, some other way to indicate, ‘this wound, it’s so bad, it’s probably mortal and we are going to die here’.

  I hadn’t known that the body could deliver that message. It wasn’t pain, it was a darker more dreadful signal. It’s probably something you have to practice to get used to. Since the message means ‘you will die soon’, it’s probably more difficult to train to recognize it. Lucky for me, I have a healer and I’ve been getting lots of practice at learning this message.

  “No! Left arm block, turn your waist along with the strike, keep your legs bent, then right arm strike. Kill it and do it again!”

  While my instructor/teammate/guard yelled at me, I felt life and vigor flowing into my body from the spell of my other team mate. It’s been two weeks of fighting in the dungeon core room of Berthan and while my legend doesn’t exist yet, it’s starting to form. Semi-Unfortunately, it’s not from my multi-decade long task of destroying a Kingdom’s capital. It’s for spending weeks on end fighting in the dungeon core room of Berthan’s dungeon.

  Berthan was the village with a dungeon we had passed through on the way to the capital. It was the dungeon the King had written a royal script for that allowed me and my companions to have unlimited access to any section of the dungeon, replacing the normal workers in the area.

  Entertainingly enough, the script stated specifically that all proceeds were to go to the normal farming team. I think this was a bit of petty revenge the King was taking in an effort to repay me for the work. It was fair, we never argued about who would get the proceeds, and it seemed even fair to me for the power leveling team to pass it on to their House. After all, this team is from one of the deeper tunnels of the harder dungeon further on past Melcot. This team could be making far more for the Kingdom in that dungeon than here.

  Again I stepped back as I felt my intestines slither back into my body cavity before it sealed up. I waited till the Orc thrust his spear forward. I swiped my dagger to the left away from my body using my left hand, turned in while attempting to avoid stepping as I moved forward, and then slammed the sword held in my right hand into the Orcs neck trying to jam it through till the flesh reached my knuckles.

  Unlike the creatures in the outer areas, this Orc attempted to bite my face as I pushed him off my blade. This was the core room, I could see the red ruby glow of the dungeon core less than thirty feet away, and like every time before, the death of the Orc resulted in a brightening of the core as it spawned another Orc which immediately went berserk and attempted to kill the closest enemy to the core.

  Me.

  It was brought to my attention eventually that no one fought in a dungeons core room since the dungeon core would perceive it as a threat and would constantly spawn enemies as fast as it could. I had initially been swarmed by enemies as the core spawned enemies as fast as it could. Without the healer and the power leveling team working to protect me from instant death, I would have fallen quickly.

  Now I found myself keeping up with the spawn rate, even if I did have such horrible swordsmanship that I took nearly fatal wounds in every encounter. At my rate of improvement, I could see myself being able to fight in the core room within a few weeks with only occasional heals. Since I’ve only gained a few levels, sadly without spells, since we had started, I was fully expecting this to happen.

  “OK, let’s bring it in for the day. You did all right out there,” said Felvers.

  Felvers was my weapon trainer on the power leveling team. He had been trying to get me to be able to fight using a dagger and sword, something I think he had expected me to utterly fail at on a regular basis. I’ve gotten the sinking sensation that the King had expected me to call off the power leveling after being mortally wounded a few times. For me, though, this is an ideal situation.

  I could feel the eyes of the other dungeon farmers on me as we left. My team of two mostly stood back and healed or shouted encouragement. Lendser was our healer, but the amount of healing he was required to do here was so little that it just wasn’t that strenuous for him. He chucked a couple regeneration spells on
me at the start of a fight and then a couple small heals when I was mortally injured, then let me do my thing.

  Of the trio, I was covered in blood and my equipment was mostly in tatters while Felvers and Lendser where both fresh and clean. The contrast between us was sharp enough that rumors were floating around town about how dangerous I was. The rumors had started to tick up lately since the dungeon core has started to delay spawns throughout the dungeon in an effort to keep up with my efforts. The slow trudge of servants through the dungeon during the day carrying spears and other gear from the core room also attested to my growing prowess.

  Oh, I wasn’t some masterful swordsman, I was middling at best. I knew which end was the pointy bit and where it was supposed to go. But the fact that I was slowly losing the fear of conflict and death while also practicing in a condition which drove my body to its limits and failure was punished with instant pain was providing staggering results to my learning rate.

  Initially, my fear was battle fatigue. I was afraid that I would develop something like PTSD or some other battlefield condition, but within the first week, I learned the skill ‘mental fortitude’ which I had built to 60% or so before the skill slowed in its gains. I now felt fighting in the dungeon was a mental strain, but it was no more annoying to my mentality then pushing to production had when I was an engineer.

  ‘Pain resistance’ was another skill I developed early on which gained quickly, all the way to 63%. It was rather odd in truth. I still felt pain just as sharply as before, it just felt like it was less important over all. Pain became more like a signal indicating injury rather than something so viscerally experienced.

  I’ve made an effort to eat in the inn’s main room, unlike my companions who would eat in their room or with the other high-end dungeon farmers in one of the expensive diners around town. I had answered a few questions for the locals about why I fought in the dungeon core room. I carefully answered that I was allowed to fight in the dungeon by right of the King and that it was part of an agreement between the King and I.

  Somehow people had morphed that story into me making some kind of insane wager with the King about my battle prowess and how I could subdue a dungeon core all the way to no longer spawning anything except in the dungeon room. At the rate of my leveling, that actually looks like how it’s going to go barring a change in my gear. Currently, I’m expecting at least a few years of farming here before I will need to move on. I hadn’t understood what it meant to be ‘power-leveled’ here and how hard it was for most. It would actually be faster if I had magic weapons and armor, but I would have to provide those, and it seems the King isn’t willing to.

  I never bargained with the King for magic weapons and armor, an inn and food, repairs and so on. The fact that he is willing to provide many of these but isn’t willing to supply even basic magic weapons and armor indicates to me that he is trying to keep me in one location pinned down. It’s a small bit of pettiness which I’m secretly glad for since the training and practice while great, the legend which is forming is even more important to me.

  I won’t be for this dungeon too much longer, the economics just doesn’t allow for it. I will be able to fight the dungeon core to a standstill eventually. At that point, the King will probably give me weapons and armor and move me to the more difficult dungeon. After all, a whole dungeon not spawning because I hold the dungeon room hostage to my ‘power leveling’ would be something he couldn’t allow. It would be financially ruinous not for him, but for the other teams, it would concentrate the wealth too greatly in one group and cut out existing farming teams.

  As I trudged back through the dungeon to rest for the night an interesting thought occurred to me.

  “Hey Lendser, what happens if someone tries to take a dungeon core from a dungeon?” I asked even as I hated bothering Lendser. Lendser was particularly annoyed with hunting in the lower level dungeon, even if the pay from the King was far more for the service, I assume, than he would normally earn.

  “The dungeon core pulls out all the stops and tries to kill the adventurers, even if it requires the core to go into a magical stasis afterward. If you manage to make it out through all the nasty spawns then the core eventually wakes up. Everyone thinks that if it’s in another hole in the ground the core digs a new dungeon wherever it is, if not then we get a new monster waste.”

  I could hear the annoyance in his voice. But then everything about me annoys Lendser. I would think he had some kind of stick up his ass, but his magic would allow him to heal that so it’s got to be something else.

  “What’s a monster waste?” I asked having never heard of this one before.

  With a grunt, Lendser sped up. That was OK since I was expecting Felvers to take over the story. Felvers had developed a grudging respect for my willingness to risk death on every fight. Add in the fact that I would listen to any of his long rambling stories and Felvers was a fount of information for me.

  “Well, see, a few generations ago, the King, I think maybe great great grandfather to the current one, something like that…” I could hear Felvers gearing up into one of his longer rambling stories.

  “The Kingdom was in a pickle since trade had dried up a tad with one of the neighboring Kingdoms after it had made some kind of trade deal with one of its other neighbors. Well anyways, the King needed more cash for some reason. So his magic advisor of the time suggested they go and dig out a dungeon core and drag it back to a town. Dig a deep hole, plop it in, and tada! Dungeon comes to town rather than the reverse which is normal.”

  I could see how that would be useful. Two dungeons in the Kingdom were providing massive amounts of resources and wealth. A third would significantly improve things. Especially since the resources in finished goods is different in each dungeon. This one apparently focuses on a few crude metal weapons which they melt down, coins, and lots of large and giant rats. The rats provide meat, bone, teeth, leather, and low-level magic cores. It was a bit gross to a citified man like myself, but it made perfect sense.

  “So the King got the first army and the advisor to head into the mountains, dungeon cores form better under the stone so they are more prevalent up in the mountains. They were told to find a dungeon which had rich resources. Strong magic cores, magic casting sentients, what have you,” Felvers said as he waved his hand and slowly passed through the final checkpoint of the dungeon and out into town.

  “They head off and find a few dungeons, but they are low level see, and not worth much. Lower powered even then the ones we have now. So they keep trying till they find one which has earth, fire, and air elementals in it. I’ve heard the story told that they found elementals made of gold or silver or some such rubbish, but it was earth, fire, and air elementals.”

  I was curious so I interjected, “How do you know it was earth, fire, and air elementals?”

  “Ah! Now that’s the rest of the story. See, the first army were a good bunch of warriors at the time, and easily subdued the dungeon. Most of them had trained in dungeon farming as youngsters so it was old hat to them. They grabbed the core, bundled it up, and dragged it out kicking and screaming!”

  He punctuated this with a finger jabbed upwards as we reached the door of our inn.

  “The core went into stasis about halfway out of the dungeon, no dungeon core can fight off an entire army by itself, at least not one that young. So they drag it out and camp for the night to recover. They set out the next morning and slowly trundle their way back towards the town which will be the dungeons new home. Armies always trundle you know, too many to do anything else, slow as molasses armies.”

  I made an effort not to interrupt Felvers again. His asides were always a dangerous thing to interrupt into, he would go into long rambles on other stories if you didn’t strictly pay attention to the first story he told.

  “So the third night they make camp and prepare to bed down. Half the army has gear being repaired, many are asleep. The core comes out of stasis, or maybe it had come out of stasis earl
ier in the day and just couldn’t affect anything while it was being moved around, no one knows.”

  “But what we do know is that that’s when the core started spawning elementals all over and inside the camp. Suddenly the army is being attacked, had their gear off and many without their weapons. The core caught um with their pants down, it did!” At this point, I noticed that the rest of the room was listening in to Felvers story. I’m betting Felvers was going to get a few ales to wet his whistle and be coaxed into telling more stories.

  “Wiped them all out. But that wasn’t the real tragedy. No, the real tragedy is that the core didn’t dig down. It was left outside and as far as anyone knows it’s the only dungeon which has set up shop on the surface. Earth, air, and fire elementals roam the area. The lush farmlands in our north are now a barren burned wasteland. The Monster Wastes.”

  I sensed my next ‘legendary’ story forming as an idea slowly developed. This story would actually be legendary instead of just me being willing to fight where others would think me mad. I could win some favor, threaten others with my ‘power’ without directly threatening, and it would certainly be spectacular…also dangerous and potentially cataclysmic for people I actually liked. I’m going to have to think this through and plan ahead, but luckily I had at least a year or so to prepare.

  With thoughts of my plan flowing through my head, I stripped off my clothes, leaving the damaged equipment on a stool in the hallway. The inn keeper was paid well to have repairs or new gear in the morning for me. I wiped down the blood and sweat off my body with the bowl of water that was freshly kept in the room for me, an affectation which seemed to delight the innkeeper since he was paid a copper to make sure it was always there for me.

  Slowly I laid back in my bed and let thoughts of epic plans for the future rest and drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 9

  Dying is Easy, Living is Hard.