Dungeon Core Academy 1

by Alex Oakchest

  There was nothing I could do but be hopeful and keep my mind occupied. Even whistling wouldn’t help this time.

  The first thing I did was to check my stats again. Sure enough, it was unpleasant reading.

  Beno - Dungeon Core

  Level: 1

  Core Purity: 95%

  Essence: 1/1

  Skills:

  Digging: 1.3%

  I’d lost 5% of my core purity. That felt bad, but what could I expect? I’d willingly given a part of myself up. Secret technique or not, I sure as hell couldn’t make a habit of it. I just had to hope it was worth it.

  Guess what I did next to pass the time?

  Yup.

  For 2 long days, I got into a routine of digging away at the wall, then waiting for my essence to replenish. It came back a little quicker on account of the lovely essence vines spreading over the wall, but it was still slow.

  All the while I tried with every fiber of my core to not check the buds every 5 minutes.

  So I whistled. That got old real fast.

  I tried to remember some of the Soul Bard stories in my head, seeing them as pictures in my mind. I began making up my own Soul Bard stories, but I wasn’t as good a writer as the Soul Bard guy.

  I did other stuff. Like digging. Why not, huh? Might as well do that. I dug two feet deeper into my new tunnel, so that now it really started to resemble one, and I even leveled my digging skill to 1.5%.

  Then, something happened.

  Let me tell you how I felt about this.

  Let’s see…what’s the best way to explain it?

  Ah. Yeah.

  Overseer Bolton. I’ll explain something about him. You see, Bolton used to be a core once, and he was such an amazing core that he rose to Master tier, and he created the Necrotomitlita, one of the greatest dungeons ever made. The name really doesn’t do it justice.

  He was so good that the ascended into his 3rd life, which was another chance at being a human again. This was something that most cores strived for. After becoming a man, Bolton took a job at the academy, teaching cores like me how to get by in this cruel, cruel world.

  For all his brilliance, Bolton had a problem. He knew it. All us students knew it.

  He was going bald.

  Not a biggie in the scheme of things, is it? But Bolton loved his hair, and when he realized he was going bald, he started checking his hair all the time. Looking in the reflection of windows, even casting mirror spells in the palm of his hand, that he thought we couldn’t see. He couldn’t help himself from checking, and every time he thought he saw his scalp shining through, that made his anxiety even worse.

  So how does this relate to me, an entirely hairless dungeon core?

  Well, after digging a while, I glanced at my buds.

  And saw black spots.

  Yup, three of the buds had developed tiny little smudges of black on them. My brain screamed at me. They’re rotting! It said. This didn’t work! I split a part of myself for nothing!

  Just like overseer Bolton, I kept checking on my buds every five minutes. Then every minute. Then every second. I was convinced the black spots were spreading.

  I needed to get a closer look, but removing the buds from the vines for a second time would almost certainly kill them.

  I could split some of my core again. Give them another coating and see if that helped…

  …no. I had learned about a thing called sunk cost fallacy in the academy. This was where you carried on doing something that wasn’t getting you the right results, just because you’d already invested something into it.

  The one thing about plant-based problems was that, even though essence plants grew a lot faster than normal plants, I still had plenty of time to decide what to do.

  I thought about it again and again, until I was repeating the same things in my head. Eventually, I decided what to do.

  Rot spreads in essence plants, and right now only three showed the black spots. The black spots might have just been natural blemishes, but I couldn’t take the chance of the other buds getting infected.

  I snipped the three offending buds off the vine and brought them into my core. As always, I could taste them inside me now. Rich with essence and almost fruity. They hadn’t quite spoiled yet.

  This time, I didn’t fight temptation.

  I absorbed all 3 buds, letting their deliciousness cascade inside me. It filled me with vigor and strength, and I basked in the warm feelings crashing around in my core.

  Essence increased – 1.5

  Essence increased - 2

  Essence increased – 3

  Woo hoo!

  Absorbing the buds so early had robbed them of some of their essence-increasing potential, but at least I didn’t have to worry about rot. What’s more, my total essence had trebled, which meant that I could dig for 3 times as long.

  I had rescued the rest of the buds, hopefully, and I had increased my essence. It was the best of a crummy situation, right?

  I noticed the difference straight away. Three times the essence meant three times the digging, which meant that I carved chunk after chunk away from my tunnel. The more digging I did, the more my skill increased.

  For the next two days, I let my vines grow, and I delved deeper into the mud tunnel, eventually making an arched passageway that was six feet high and ten feet long, and wide enough for monsters of many kinds to walk through.

  Digging increased – 3.1%

  Dungeon fixture created: Tunnel

  That was that. Tunnel complete. Now, I had to dig out my first dungeon room.

  CHAPTER 4

  If digging a tunnel had taken me almost a week, then centuries would have passed in the time it would take me to carve out a full room.

  Luckily, my buds had bloomed!

  Yup, the remaining 7 buds had grown on the vines like the good little buds they were. Now, they were at that precarious size where they were ripe for plucking, but it was also tempting to wait and see if they’d get bigger. After all, the bigger the bud, the more essence.

  Remembering how it felt when I almost lost the 3 buds, I decided to just absorb them. It wasn’t worth the risk of them reaching the end of their growing phase and dying on the vine.

  Feeling hungry and excited, I did this, using my core arms to bring them to me.

  I could have just absorbed them all in one go. Cores can do that, you know. Instead, I did it one by one so that I could savor each of them. After all, who knew when I’d next find an essence bud?

  Sometimes, it’s good to just take your time and enjoy life. A dungeon core is nothing if not patient.

  So I absorbed 6 of them, taking in their sweet essence one by one until finally, I felt really, really full.

  Essence increased – 49

  Holy lords of all the underworlds! Consuming my buds had given me a whopping 46 extra essence points! To think, if I’d eaten the original bud without coating it in my core and splitting it, I’d have earned maybe 8 points at most.

  It made me feel like it was worth it. Losing 5% of my core hurt, but I guessed that having so much essence so early put me ahead of some of the other newbie cores.

  You might have noticed that I only absorbed 6 out of the 7 buds. You’re really observant, you know that?

  I decided to take a little risk with the seventh. I wouldn’t do anything as drastic as splitting part of my core again, but I did split something else…

  I carved the last bud into 4 pieces, and then I melded them back into the essence vines, which had now spread to cover a full quarter of the wall behind me.

  It probably wouldn’t work. Back up on the surface of the world, farmers had to be careful how often they planted things in the same soil, because getting too greedy could use up all the soil’s nutrients and ruin it.

  It was the same with buds. These 4 new little budlings were all descended from the first one I’d found, and their starting vitality was weak. Poor guys didn’t have much of a chance, but I decided to cross my metaphor
ical fingers.

  I felt great now. Full of vigor, full of essence. Ready to go! Carving out a full dungeon room didn’t seem like such a massive task anymore. It was time to get to work.

  I thought back to how, when I first arrived here, it had been hard to dig even a small chunk from a wall.

  Now, with my digging skill improved and with all my new essence, I made great progress. Leveling my digging skill meant that I worked faster and more efficiently, and each use of it cost less essence and dug out more mud.

  For the next week, I dug out a room. I didn’t stop there, though. I got a little carried away, which happens to me a lot.

  I first made a room that connected directly to the tunnel. This was right next to my core room, so dungeon law dictated that I would have to leave loot there.

  I know, right? Why should a core have to cater to the needs of heroes who he was destined to try and kill?

  It was the rules. When you’re living your second life, you have to follow rules.

  Right now, all I had was an empty space. You could hardly call it a loot room; I mean, it didn’t have loot, and there was no boss monster to guard it…yet.

  After finishing that, I created a tunnel going north from the loot room. It ran for twenty feet, which would be enough room to put a few traps and stuff. I made this tunnel split at the end, going off in two directions for another twenty feet. At the end of both tunnels, I made two new rooms.

  Digging increased – 11.2%

  Dungeon Structures Created:

  Tunnel x3

  Loot room x1

  Unassigned Rooms x2

  So, after starting in my core room with just a pedestal, an inch of moss, and a whole heap of nothing, I now had the basis of a dungeon.

  The thing was, I couldn’t call it a dungeon yet. Not officially. To be recognized as a fully operational dungeon, it needed four things.

  The first was loot in the loot room. The boss monster guarding it was optional, but what right-minded core would let heroes just stroll in?

  The second requirement was at least 1 monster and 1 trap. Again, most cores would have more than one of each, unless they were really crummy at their jobs, or if they’d just given up on their second life or something.

  The third, and easiest, requirement was to have at least one means of entry. If heroes couldn’t get into your dungeon, how could you kill them?

  Finally, a dungeon needed a minimum blueprint of 1 core room, 1 loot room, and 2 puzzle, trap, or battle rooms.

  I still had a whole heap of work to do, but what do you think? Was I making progress?

  I thought so.

  Requirement 4 satisfied!

  You have created the bare minimum rooms needed in the dungeon blueprint.

  Now, my friend, you can probably imagine that I was absolutely sick of digging. Seriously, carving this all out by myself had put me off digging for the rest of my second life. As soon as I conjured a monster with hands, that sucker was going to dig for me.

  This brought me onto the next stage in my dungeon construction; filling it with things.

  I had only barely begun to think about what to do when I suddenly heard a voice.

  “Good evening, Core Graduate Beno.”

  CHAPTER 5

  It was the voice of an overseer. I could sense them standing behind me, having pedestal-hopped into my core room. I couldn’t put a name to the voice because I had been too busy thinking about my dungeon to concentrate, and I didn’t want to turn and look yet.

  See, the academy often sent its overseers to evaluate cores in their first dungeons. There was no guessing when they’d come and do it, because overseers loved to spring that kind of thing on you.

  It was always a worrying thing, or so I’d been told. After their evaluations of your progress, the overseers would give you either a boost or a punishment, accordingly to how they felt.

  It wasn’t all about the quality of your dungeon, though. Nope. Overseers were human, after all, and they had biases. If an overseer didn’t like you, they might let that affect how they evaluated you.

  I needed to get a good evaluation. I couldn’t afford a punishment now, and I could really use a boost.

  So right now, I was praying that overseer Bolton was behind me.

  If it was Overseer Clifftop, I was screwed.

  Slowly, I turned on my pedestal. My nerves jangled. I could feel the tension all around me.

  Phew!

  “Evening, Overseer Bolton!” I beamed. “Your hair is looking excellent tonight. Really thick.”

  “Oh? Thank you, Beno. I bought a paste from an alchemist who visited the academy. The overseers said it was a scam, but you have made me feel better.”

  Overseer Bolton was a rather lanky man, with a kind face and a greying beard. Despite his age and his academic profession, he had kept himself in decent shape. “This is my third life,” he’d say, “and I want to live it for as long as possible.”

  “I assume you’re here to evaluate me?” I asked.

  “Your name was randomly selected, yes. How are you feeling? It’s all well and good studying to be a core, but it feels different once you’re left in your dungeon. Are you okay?”

  “I could use a little company, but I guess that’s down to me to create it. Other than that…I’m doing pretty good.”

  “Let’s hope so, young core. May I take a walk around?”

  Bolton didn’t need to ask that. I was a lowly core and he was an overseer, what was I going to do? Say no? It was nice that he thought to get my permission.

  “Go ahead. I’d make you some tea, but I don’t have a pan. Or fire. Or water. Or tea.”

  “I had a luncheon with the academy sponsors earlier, so I’m full to bursting. Anyway, let me see what we have here. Moss vines. Okay…”

  It was a strange feeling. I’d known that overseers would come evaluate me from time to time, but it was different actually seeing it happen. I felt a little defensive of my dungeon, and also a little ashamed. It really wasn’t much yet.

  Bolton kneeled beside the essence vines for what seemed like an hour, studying them intently. I guessed you didn’t become as knowledgeable as him without paying attention to detail.

  “Can you tell me what effects the essence vines have had on you, young core?” he asked.

  “The more they spread, the faster they regenerate my essence after I use it. I’m currently regenerating 2 points per minute.”

  “Not bad. Not bad at all. And these buds? Hmm. Very strange.”

  “I…uh…experimented a little.”

  “I can see that, Beno. I can tell what happened by looking at them, and at you. Are you out of your mind, young core? You split a part of yourself so you could grow more buds, didn’t you?”

  “I figured that in the early stages, the core with the most essence will outperform all the others.”

  “At the expense of his own defense. That is a very dangerous technique, and there is a reason we do not teach it. I really should speak to our librarian about some of the books he lets you cores read. What happens if heroes find a way into your core room? You’ll already be down to 95% purity.”

  “The way I figured it, if heroes get into your core room, you’re dead already.”

  “Not always the case, let me tell you. Hmm.”

  Bolton walked out of the core room and down the tunnel now, headed toward the loot room. I watched him go, feeling a growing unease. This wasn’t going well. Maybe I’d gotten the wrong overseer after all.

  I knew that Bolton liked me. We weren’t friends, since he was an authority figure, but we got on well. That said, Bolton liked to have rules, and he liked to follow them.

  Maybe if an overseer like Chompit or Buttabun had visited to evaluate me, this would have gone better. They were well known for encouraging their cores to try something new.

  I listened to Bolton’s footsteps way beyond the room. He sounded like he’d reached one of the other rooms I had made, beyond the loot room. Well, he wou
ldn’t find much there yet.

  Nope, this wasn’t going well at all. At this rate, I was heading for an evaluation punishment.

  Maybe I should have played it safe like most cores, and just taken the single bud as a gift and absorbed it. Then again, if I had done that I would only have around 10 essence points now, and I wouldn’t have finished the loot room, let alone two more.

  “Thank you for your hospitality,” said Bolton, suddenly standing next to me. I hated it when overseers did that. They couldn’t just walk into a room like normal people, could they?

  I sensed that the evaluation was over, and he was about to leave. I couldn’t read his expression, but I guessed he wasn’t impressed.

  I had to do something.

  “Can I ask you something, Overseer?” I said.

  “Of course. As long it isn’t a technical question. You know I can’t answer those now that you have graduated. It wouldn’t be fair to the other cores.”

  “Sure. My question was about the others, actually.”

  “Oh? Go on.”

  “I was just wondering how many have been evaluated so far?”

  “Four of the core graduates have been visited.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “How many of them have managed to dig out a loot room?”

  “Hmm. A couple of them.”

  “Of those two, how many have extended their dungeons further? How many have already managed to dig two extra rooms, thus satisfying requirement number four, that governs a dungeon’s blueprint?”

  Bolton smiled at me for a second, and then hid it. “A good question, Beno, and very timely asked. I should go now. Good luck, young core. Keep building. You will learn the results of your evaluation shortly.”

  With that, Bolton was gone, leaving me alone again. I had gotten used to being on my own down here, but now that Bolton had visited, I was keenly aware of how silent the place was.