by Dakota Krout
“Yeah. I see, that makes sense. So, most of the groups should be rather weak. I propose that we give regular fights to most of them, and only wipe out a party once a week or so. Enough people are showing up out there that I think that could be attributed to poor group decisions.” Dani amended my plan, prototypically making it a better one.
“Hey!”
“I agree.” She brightened considerably, “How is the place looking?”
She agreed with my estimation, “Sounds good, did you have any ideas for the acid yet?”
She dimmed, and turned a bit green in a way I had taken to mean ‘disgust’. “Wow. That is horrible. Also, I don’t know what you are talking about, Cal. I think that you forget that when you absorb things you learn their name, and what that name means. When you say those words to me, they have no meaning and I can’t remember them... Just tell me what you are going to call it.”
She looked at me questioningly, “When did you make this stuff?”
“And when Cal gets bored he creates deadly stuff for entertainment.” She interrupted dryly.
She started considering something, and spoke slowly after several seconds of intense thought, “Well, I think you have enough understanding of how things work, so now it is a matter of raw power. When your Chi spiral fills two thirds of your Core, you should break into F-rank nine. At the rate you are going, it should be only a few weeks, faster if you get large influxes soon.”
I did some quick calculations in my head, judging how much Essence I was gaining recently.
“No rush, Cal. Slow and steady makes for a strong power base. I was actually thinking you should try and compress that Chi spiral down. I don’t want to sound mean, but I think you’ve been getting complacent and layering it on without using all the available space. It’s a bad habit.” Dani admonished, directing my attention to all of the space I was wasting in my Core.
She was right, and under her watchful eye I worked on compressing it down as much as I could. There was a lot of empty space that I was not using, it turned out. By the time I was finished working to improve myself, I had a significantly smaller, but far denser spiral spinning at greater speeds.
“Good work! Remember that the faster it spins the more well refined it will be, and faster spinning makes for faster Essence gathering as well.” She sounded very pleased with my effort.
I knew she was right, and my laziness may have really been costing me, especially now that I saw how fast the spiral was spinning.
She beamed at me, “I’m proud of you Cal! You don’t shy away from your faults, and work hard to improve yourself when you find them. Ooh! By the way, I think a new group is coming in!”
She was, of course, correct. I decided to follow her plan and give them a regular fight. When they came in to the first room, I ambushed them at the center and watched as my bashers got in several nice shin-shots before they finally took my minions down. Retreating at about half losses as usual, I watched as they paused in the room for a bit to recover and gather the loot. While they did so, I scanned their auras, double checking and pleased upon finding that this was a D-ranked group, none past the fifth ranking.
They continued onward, pushing through the pain as the promise of treasure stirred them from inaction. Already a few coppers richer, apparently the equivalent of a week's pay in the area, they were determined to make it big. The second room was harder for them, as I attacked with the rabbits before they killed off the Shroomish, making them work harder to block the poisonous thorns while their legs took a beating. By the time half the swarm of Bashers were defeated, inspiring a retreat, the men looked exhausted and filthy. Covered in blood from my rabbits, and bruises of their own, they certainly looked ready to call it a day. Most of them at least. One of the men, trying to convince them, pulled off his helmet and started arguing energetically for the group to continue.
He began stalking toward the next tunnel, very inspirationally shouting, “To money!!” I saw my chance. The Bane on the ceiling by the tunnel took a clean shot, impaling the man with a hand-sized thorn directly through his temple, piercing the skull in one blow! Even if the initial attack hadn’t been enough to kill him (it was), the poison though weak was administered directly to the man’s brain. He fell, and as soon as his aura winked out I was able to work on directly dissolving his armor with my influence, the process essentially aging them until they fell apart as tattered, useless chunks while I took the pattern I needed to recreate it. The suddenly rusted remnants of his armor clanging to the floor startled his team greatly, their eyes showing white as their faces drained of blood in shock.
From their perspective, it had been over in an instant. The fallen man’s teammates saw a thorn impact their friend, then saw him drop and hit the floor, for some reason almost naked. I left his wool clothes on his corpse as I already had a few sets of those to work with, but I got all of his armor and his well-made sword. Neat, apparently he had been fairly rich, the sword was really well made! They tried to pick the remains of the fallen gear back up, but I had bound it all to the floor by growing a layer of stone around it while I worked to break each piece down and study it, making it impossible for the frustrated humans to take. Furious, they grabbed their fallen comrades’ corpse and departed, faces grim, when the dead man’s Essence finally made its way to me.
She looked on, hungry but unable to touch the Essence until it made its way to her through our bond. “Brute, you know I can’t take that directly. And, what happened to taking out groups slowly?”
I thought quickly, we had made a plan after all. Finally, I mentally shrugged.
“To be fair, he only removed his helmet, you removed his armor. You dirty dungeon!” She chuckled at her own joke, “But you make a good point. Congrats on the Essence! I’m glad to see that that worked out so well. Also, how good is that armor?”
“How so?” She was rather impatient today, wasn’t she? I smiled to myself.
“Oh?”
“Sounds correct so far. Just so you know, cutting those in is called ‘inscribing’ and when done properly, it is called a ‘Rune’.” She took a quick second to boost my knowledge.
I acknowledged her input, and continued.
Dani went quiet for a moment, “Well, in theory. It is possible to use specially refined Beast Cores as Mana accumulators, but the cost is usually so high for even a normal Core that no one - that I have heard of anyway - has tried it for just Essence.”
“What? Corrupted stones are useless. No one can manipulate it so...” She went silent, realizing that I had been able to move the taint around rather easily.
She walked right into my trap!
“I don’t know,” Dani slowly thought through the implications. “It is an interesting idea though. Go for it, I mean, you can always make more Cores, right? Remember though, you haven’t encountered all of the different Essence types that exist, so make extras.”
I set up a few more Cores next to the ones I was planning on using for Essence overflow, then increased the amount of them to six each. One for fire, water, air, earth, infernal, and celestial Essence. Since my main prey was humans, I figured I could eventually fill them all up. Next, I looked at the sharpening augmentation on the sword. An enchantment is just a specific pattern of Essence placed onto an item, and if it was inscribed without mistakes it could become a Rune, which is a permanent enchantment powered by Essence only when you wanted to pass energy through it.
The reason permanent enchantments, or ‘Runes’, were rarer was due to the pattern needing to be perfect. If there was a flaw, the Essence would flow out of the Rune and the pattern would be useless, at best. At worst, it would activate and have an unintended effect. Conversely, when done properly, it was difficult to remove an enchantment because the Essence that flowed through it would eventually strengthen the pattern, again known as a ‘Rune’ or ‘Inscription’, placed on the item, to the point where if it were made on wood, you could burn the log away and the Rune would still be stable. Not that they were indestructible, far from it really. It would just take a lot of strength - or applied knowledge of where to strike - to destroy a well-used Rune, but it could be done.
The downside to using a Runed versus an enchanted item was obviously that you needed to provide Essence to it, in order for it to function. This is where the Beast Cores would potentially come into play. With Mana being a far more potent source of energy that would last far longer, I could see why people would wait to get Mana accumulators set before going to the expense of creating really good ‘Runed items’, as correctly and permanently inscribed items were properly named.
I had some time before the next party would come to fight, so after resetting the place - not hard as the last group barely made progress - I tried to apply the enchantment to the daggers I could make. I was quickly frustrated, as I could not directly integrate the Rune into the pattern. I could splice creatures together for goodness sake! Did I not have enough knowledge to cut a pattern into a chunk of metal?! Oh. Wait.
A flash of inspiration struck, and I ‘grew’ a dagger in the Boss room. Then, with infinite patience and precision, I formed the most accurate lines possible, by creating acid molecule by molecule onto the blade. A new group had entered the dungeon and cleared the first room by the time I was finished with my newest creation. Now, to test it! I extended a few lines of Essence into the Rune, and... It flared to life!
Under my watchful gaze, the edge of the blade constricted at the molecular level, forming tighter bonds along each edge. Along the entire blade, tiny imperfections fixed themselves, leaving no space for blood or gore to find a foothold. It had worked! Now it would never need to be sharpened, and a quick flick of the blade would cast off all viscera that it accumulated.
Now for the dangerous part, as I might lose all of my effort. I absorbed the dagger and looked at the pattern that appeared in my mind. Yes! I could now directly create this dagger, with a Rune attached! I called it a ‘Honed Steel Dagger’, and I was very proud of my work. Turning my attention to the fighting happening in, oh my, the third room already? I quickly and gleefully took control of a large Basher and made a concentrated attack on the group attacking me. Bashing into the legs of the least armored human - as the creature’s namesake suggested - the archer stumbled and I was able to do some considerable damage to him before his pals finished off my remaining defenders.
I watched the man cry in pain. I casually informed Dani.
“Mmm. That sounds dirty! What do you mean?” Dani lecherously inquired.
I breathed a snort at her odd sexual humor.
“Ah. Got it.” She seemed less interested now that she realized I wasn’t playing along and making a sexual reference.
I watched the man sob on my floor as he writhed around.
She looked at them through her connection to me. “I doubt it. Plus, they’re already healing him.”
“Your Boss Mob can heal by hurting people, so why is this a surprise?” Dani did not seem to understand my indignation.
“I will, thank you.” She replied primly.
They attacked my Boss, the Bloody Bane, with everything they could muster. I directed a few Bashers into the fray at critical times, knocking them off balance long enough for a spike to la
nd in an arm, or a vine to whip someone across the helm. The fight lasted much longer this time around, since the group was already tired and in pain.
Finally, the Boss collapsed. I had failed to take them out, but had still gained some important knowledge, so I dropped a silver coin for each of them, as well as the coveted holy symbol pendant thingy. Though lightly poisoned, the men still were wildly excited. The archer whose leg I had broken nearly wept, and kept repeating ‘I just knew it would be worth it!’ I was confused by this. Why were they so happy? I demanded of Dani. She informed me that the currency system was such that one hundred copper coins was worth a silver coin, one hundred silver coins were worth a Gold coin, and one hundred Gold coins were worth a ‘Platinum’ coin, whatever that was.
Apparently, I had drastically overpaid these guys. Silver and copper were easy to make, so I wasn’t worried about it until Dani informed me of what the consequences may be,” If everyone thinks you are going to be worth a month's pay for an hour of fighting, they will come in and kill absolutely everything over and over, just looking for a way to avoid working elsewhere. Humans can be rather… enthusiastic in their greed.”
I winced at this,
“I agree, and am glad you realize it.” Dani watched the men who were wandering around the room.
Each of the men who had taken a thorn and become poisoned pulled out a vial and drank something. Then the man with the plant affinity worked for a while to get his team healed up enough to stop their bleeding as they relaxed and cultivated for a while.
“Probably an antidote for the poison.” Dani whispered, since the men were so close and her voice was audible if humans paid attention.
I tried to keep my curiosity under control, but couldn't manage it.
Dani couldn’t refuse an opportunity to educate me. She glanced at the humans focused on their Chi spirals, then moved into a furiously whispered lecture. “No, actually all of them can heal. There is a solid reason they don’t all do it though, apparently the problem is that they feel the element used. So, being healed by a fire cultivator is not that pleasant, as it tends to feel like your body is being cauterized. Earth grinds really badly, as if your bones were being crushed. Cool and soothing water cultivators are sought after, and apparently plant or wood feels like roots or worms squirming through you. Since he is a wood cultivator, he is not the ideal healer for a group this size, but most likely he was the only trained healer they could find.”