CHAPTER 1
Just relax. This is my first dungeon, and they don’t expect me to work wonders, right? I’m a new core. I only resurrected a year ago, and I only just graduated from the academy. They can’t expect too much.
What if no heroes come? Or what if they do, but my traps are too easy? Or my monsters are weak and crummy, like blind, one-legged goblins?
Those were the thoughts that rushed through my head after the academy overseers carried me, a little green core gem, from the academy and to my first dungeon. My very own dungeon, one that I would be responsible for here on out…or until they finished evaluating me.
If my dungeon sucked by the end of the evaluation, that was it. They’d smash me up and use my gem parts in the resurrection of the newest academy goers.
As much as I tried staying calm, it was a hell of a weight to put on a poor gem’s shoulders.
When I woke, I saw that I was alone in a square room 6x6 feet. I was in the middle, raised on a pedestal.
This must be my core room. Out of all the rooms in a dungeon, this was the most important, because if a hero ever reached here…if they got through all my traps and my puzzles…
No use thinking about that. Better to act.
I already knew the first step, because I had actually paid attention in class. Becoming a dungeon core was resurrection. A second chance at life. I’d breezed through my old life and gotten myself killed while I was still a teenager, and I wouldn’t mess this one up.
So, to begin.
Initialize.
I felt myself glow. Light shot out from me, filtered green by my gemmy surface. The light spiraled around me, finally presenting as words written in the air that only I could read.
Beno - Dungeon Core
Level 1
Core Purity: 100%
Essence: 1/1
One measly essence point. There wasn’t a lot a core could build with that, was there?
To test it out, I focused on the wall ahead of me.
Dig.
A chunk of mud dug out from the wall, splattering on the ground.
Skill gained! Digging – 1%
I checked my essence again.
Essence: 0.5/1
What was my regeneration rate? Hmm. At level 1, something like .4 per hour. Damn it. I’d need to dig out my own rooms in the dungeon, but at this rate, it’d take me a hundred years.
Nope, that as slow going by any core’s standards, so I’d have to grow a little. My total essence would increase when I leveled up, and I could only level up by killing things in my dungeon. Or by having a bunch of monsters do it for me, of course.
Maybe I could…
Ah-ha!
I looked around. I knew that the overseers never started a core in a room that had no resources, and I also knew that cores weren’t just pretty little gems. My body was useful for more than that! You’d never find a dungeon core gem sitting on a pretty lady’s ring finger!
Swiveling around in my pedestal, I saw that on the mud wall behind me, there was a tiny patch of glowing green moss. Maybe an inch of it, so not much at all. It isn’t the size...it’s what you do with it.
Draw, I commanded.
A tendril of light spun out from me, forming an arm and a hand. I guided it across the room, aiming for the glowing moss. My first attempt missed, and I hit the wall. There was no pain, and nothing happened to the wall.
That would have been too easy; if my core arms could actually lift things, I’d just dig a room without using essence. But that wouldn’t be very core-like of me, would it?
My arms could, however, manipulate essence and all the things created from it, and this was why I needed them to help me with the moss.
Thing was, I’d practiced with an illusionary core arm back in the academy, but using the real thing was different. They just couldn’t get the weight right in the simulation.
So I tried again and again, finally grasping the moss on my fifth try.
Careful now. Don’t drop it.
I guided the hand back to me until the moss reached my body.
Absorb.
The moss seeped deep inside me. It tasted delicious, and it made me want to absorb it fully. Doing that would heal me if I were hurt, but it wouldn’t help now. It’d leave me with nothing, and then I’d truly be screwed.
So I resisted temptation. I fought really, really hard. I let the moss sit there, brewing in my core soul.
One hour.
Two hours.
Three.
I distracted myself by trying to remember things from my past life, but the memories wouldn’t come. The overseers said that would happen. Shame; there were some people that I felt like I missed but I just couldn’t remember their faces.
After a fifth hour, I had almost dozed off. For a resurrected immortal core that does not need human things like sleep, that was quite a feat.
Then a message appeared to me.
Dungeon moss converted into essence seeds!
Ah. Here we go. We’re in business!
I used my arms to remove the essence seeds from my core and place them back on the wall where the moss had been, but I was a little choosier this time. See, essence seeds grow best lower on the ground, because they only spread upwards, and placing them at the top would be a waste. I hate wasting things. The overseers said that preference would make me a good core.
Where there had only been one inch of moss, the converted seeds actually covered ten inches of wall space. Using my core arms, which were configured to let me handle things like essence but nothing more than that until I leveled up, I planted the seed back in the mud, at the bottom.
Now it was time to wait again. How long did it take essence seeds to grow, anyway?
My favorite overseer, Bolton, had taught me about that. He said they grew much quicker than plants and flowers. It felt good to replay his voice in my head. It was like having a friend here.
How long until I could create real friends?
First things first, Beno, I told myself. Beno was my name now, but I’d had a different name in my first life. The overseers said we couldn’t keep our old names. We had to cut ourselves off from what we used to be. That was okay with me.
In the hours that it had taken for me to convert the seeds, my inner essence had replenished back to 1. As a level 1 core, there was little for me to spend it on yet since I hadn’t earned any of the skills that the best cores had.
So I used the dig command again, taking another block of mud from the wall. This time, something very pleasing happened. Something that made me smile…and I really liked to smile.
Dig increased to 1.1%
Ah-ha! Self-improvement is the key to enrichment. Overseer Bolton taught me that.
Excited, I used Dig again, and drew another chunk of mud from the wall. Unfortunately, the effect of .1% improvement was barely noticeable. And…I’d used up all my essence. Sigh. Nothing to do but sit.
And wait.
And whistle.
The overseers, except Bolton, got a little annoyed by my whistling back in the academy, but there was nobody here but me. This was my dungeon.
“I hereby proclaim that whistling is forever allowed in Beno’s dungeon,” I said.
My voice sounded strange, using it in this little room. A first lifer would have said it sounded strange in any room. Have you ever heard a gem talk? Until you do, you can’t really appreciate its strangeness.
I decided that Beno’s Dungeon was a crummy name for my lair. While I waited for the essence seeds to grow and my essence to replenish, I thought about different names.
The Spirit Tunnels?
Lair of the Vanquished Demon?
Bloodfall Caverns?
Nope, none of th
em sounded right. The trick as a new core was to choose something that didn’t sound too tough. See, I’d eventually need to attract heroes to my dungeon, but I didn’t want to entice ones that would breeze through all my traps and monsters, reach my core room, then pummel the hell out of me.
The best heroes would look for the dungeons with the meanest sounding names. I didn’t want those guys coming here. Not while I was a newbie core.
I also didn’t want to attract a bunch of pansies, either. I wouldn’t level up much from killing low-level sword schmucks.
There was so much to do before I could even think about getting heroes here. I’d have to create rooms. Spawn some friends. I mean, monsters. Create traps, find some loot.
Then I’d have to think about hiring a surface liaison who could handle stuff for me. See, I’d be able to learn crafting if I chose to, and I’d be able to create my own loot, but some cores found it easier just to buy it.
Then again, wasn’t it always great when you made something yourself? It made it feel like it was worth more, somehow.
Anyway, I was way, way behind all that right now.
Luckily, in my hours of whistling, pondering over dungeon names, and making plans, two things had happened.
Firstly, my essence replenished again, so I dug some more. I had now taken four decent-sized chunks of mud from the wall, forming a kind of archway that would one day become a tunnel.
Digging increased – 1.2%
Secondly, my lovely essence seeds had spread!
On the wall opposite my tunnel, the seeds had sprouted moss-like vines that glowed a deep green, and they’d risen two feet up the wall.
Essence vines are flourishing!
Your essence now regenerates 5x faster.
That wasn’t all.
Oh no, my friend, that wasn’t everything. You see, something wondrous had happened!
There, affixed to one of the vines, was a little green bud.
The greatest bud I ever saw.
CHAPTER 2
It presented me with quite a dilemma, though. A serious one.
Was it really serious? Or did I have so little to do here, that any old dilemma took on more importance to me? Either way, I had to decide what to do.
This little nub of green fixed to one of the vines was an essence bud. These things sprouted randomly from seeds, so not every network of vines would produce one. If they did, you were a very, very lucky core!
They were great. This one was only tiny, but if I ate it, it’d increase my total essence by 2 or 3 points. Think how much digging I could do with 3x the essence.
On the other hand, if I was greedy, I could risk splitting it. If I drew it into my core and split it into three or four pieces and then placed them back on the vine, there was a chance that all the split buds would all grow into fully-formed ones. That would give me lots more essence.
Course, there was also a chance that the splitting process would kill the bud, leaving me with nothing.
Or, I could leave it a while, see if the bud grew any bigger. Maybe big enough to give a real essence boost, like 8-10 points. That didn’t always happen. Sometimes, Overseer Bolton had told me, the buds died on their own. If you hadn’t used them before then, you were outta luck.
Decisions, decisions. It was almost as hard as trying to choose a new dungeon name.
The Tranquil Crypt?
The Scarlett haunt?
Nope!
Back in the academy, whenever we were given an assignment and I was struggling, I’d always do something else to occupying my mind. It was like planting essence seeds; you let the problem sit there in your mind, and then you went to do something else. If you were lucky, your subconscious would water the seeds, and it’d grow into an answer.
So, can you guess what I did to take my mind off it?
No, I didn’t whistle.
I dug. I took two more chunks from the wall, keeping the arch shape that I’d formed, but this time digging deeper into the mud. Phew. Lookin’ good. Only another century before I could carve out a new room, at this rate.
Digging increased – 1.3%
As I let my essence take a rest and replenish, I realized that my trick had worked, and I knew what to do with the essence bud now.
This was a trick that I’d read about in the academy library. Most cores, they were so desperate to graduate that they whizzed through all the set assignments and took their dungeon exam as soon as they could.
That was the thing; cores could graduate at different times. One core, Albin, had graduated after a week. Word was that he was already running a mid-tier dungeon near a heroes guild out west. Imagine that!
Running a dungeon near a heroes guild was insanely dangerous, but it gave the greatest rewards. I guessed that the overseers hadn’t placed me anywhere near a guild. They’d probably put me somewhere really remote, maybe with a town or village nearby. They wouldn’t stick me anywhere risky until I’d proven myself.
But anyway, the average graduation time for a core was 6 months. I felt like I could pass the exams after 2 months. Overseer Bolton even agreed. Even so, I held back.
See, the academy is such a treasure trove of resources and knowledge, that it’d be stupid to just whizz through. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. When you’re reborn as a core, the first thing you wanna know is, when do I get my own dungeon? Right?
In the academy library, there were all sorts of books. Books on monsters, traps, essence, gems. Even fiction books. My favorite was a series called The Soul Bard. But I digress.
I came across a book about core gem calitropics. As a human, this would be like a warrior finding a book on strength exercises. It was filled with all kinds of weird techniques and things a core could do to himself. Some of them were terrifying. In fact, I would go as far as to say they shocked me to my very…
I’ll stop.
In this book, I read about a technique concerning essence buds, and my brain must have squirreled the information away. Here I was now, a new core with barely any essence, and I was contemplating doing something risky.
Should I do it?
I mean, it’d help a lot.
Or it might put me in danger.
Hmm. Rewards, or danger. Which to choose?
Safe to say, you have probably already guessed my decision. I’d like to think you know how my mind works by now, even though we barely know each other. If not, perhaps this will be the thing that shows you.
Holding back my nerves – yes, cores have emotions – I stared at the little nub of essence nestled amongst the vines. Such a beautiful little bud.
So powerful, yet so fragile. A little like the Soul Bard. Man, I wished they’d let me bring books to the dungeon. I mean, I wouldn’t be able to turn the pages, but I’d have worked something out. It would have helped with the boredom while my essence replenished.
I reached out with my core arms. Firming my resolve, I used them to pull the bud off the vine.
There – decision made!
I dragged the bud back to me, and I brought it into my core. I could taste it then, like the moss from earlier but so much sweeter. If I had saliva glands, they’d have been working in overdrive.
I forced myself not to absorb it. Instead, I did something else.
Hoping to all the demons of the underworld that the book I’d read wasn’t written by some crackpot core who suffered an early second death, I split a shard from my core, and I attached it to the bud.
Then I felt really, really nervous about the whole thing.
CHAPTER 3
Overseer’s Log: Bolton
Core graduate Beno, tier 1, has begun his first dungeon. Initial progress was as to be expected; graduate has made slow headway into his first tunnel, and he has cultivated essence seeds. I felt neither alarmed nor hopeful at first.
However.
There has been a development. Beno has been lucky enough to find a bud. I expected him to absorb it immediately, given it would double or treble his essence capac
ity. He has surprised me.
Core Beno has applied a technique I did not expect him to know. Then again, perhaps it is my own failing I didn’t expect this of him. We all know that Beno doesn’t like to do things the normal way, do we not? The technique brings rewards, but it is dangerous. Beno is showing the same blend of practicality and recklessness as a core, as he did in his first life.
Now…now I am both alarmed and hopeful.
It was hard to tell if it had worked.
I mean, at first I wasn’t even thinking about whether it worked or not. I was more concerned with the tremendous, soul crunching pain that came with willingly separating a shard of my core. It’d be like a man cutting off his own finger.
When the sliver of my core broke away, it lost its form, and it became liquid. I mentally commanded this to wrap around the bud, coating it in that watery piece of myself.
“Hope this works, little bud,” I said.
Now, I split the bud. Not into two pieces. Not three. Hell, even four would have been pushing it for most buds. Five would have guaranteed that I killed it.
I split it into ten pieces, each a centimeter wide.
Yes, you heard me – ten!
If an overseer was watching me, and I guessed they had the means, they would have thought I was insane. Splitting a bud into ten pieces was a sign of greed, and a sure way to kill it.
My hope that was by using the core split technique that I’d read about, my liquid core would give the bud extra vitality and toughness, allowing it to survive even after being split so many times.
It’d be a while before I knew. I used my core arms to blend the ten pieces back amongst the essence vines on the wall – which had grown another foot taller – and then I waited.
The first signs of bud death would be them turning black. They’d stink to all heavens, and then they’d drop from the vines and lay uselessly on the ground, laying there stinking and reminding me that I’d just wasted a great opportunity to boost my essence total.
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