Dungeon Core Academy 1

by Alex Oakchest

  “Tomlin agree! Tomlin thanks you, and wishes to express that he didn’t expect this of his core master.”

  I grinned.

  (I did this inwardly, by the way. Can we just assume that most of my expressions are inward, now? Given I don’t have a face? Thank you. That’s very kind of you. It will save me time repeating things.)

  “Beno is pleased that…” I began. Damn, his way of talking was infectious. “I mean, I am pleased we could agree. Now, Tomlin, if you would begin digging, I’d be most appreciative.”

  Relationship status with Tomlin improved from [compliant] to [loyal]!

  “By the way, there’s something you should know,” I told him. “If you want to whistle while you mine for things, that’s totally fine here.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Overseers Evaluation Report

  Overseer: Rivers

  Graduate Core: Jahn

  Graduate Core Jahn was rather fortuitous in his placement. His dungeon is in the middle of iron-rich land, with a town nearby that is especially tolerant of the kobold and goblin races. This should stand him in good stead.

  Not only that, but there is a giant iron deposit just five feet east of his coal room. I could sense it as I evaluated him.

  Unfortunately, Core Jahn may be a simpleton. I mean that with no insult; I actually believe that Core Jahn is simple-minded.

  Jahn, when he began in his room, absorbed his inch of essence moss and then fully consumed it. This increased his total essence to six, but left him without any means of regenerating it.

  He then wasted his 6 essence points digging a hole in the core room ceiling, trying to reach the surface. Which, as we know, is impossible with just 6 essence points.

  As such, Jahn now has no essence points, and no means of regenerating them. He is completely stuck in his core room with nothing to do. I recommend he is hammered into dust and the dust thrown into the sea. That is how useless core Jahn is.

  Result: Condemnation, with recommendation that Jahn is removed. I write this with regret; in my ten years as an overseer, he is the first core I have made this recommendation about. I’m not as harsh as Bolton.

  Vedetta Costitch had almost made it out of her house without waking anyone, when a voice called out.

  A shiver crept down her spine. She paused at the doorway and held her breath. She stayed real, real quiet.

  “Vedetta?” called the voice. “Vedetta?”

  Damn. It was mom. If it were one of her useless brothers, she’d have ignored them, but she’d never ignore her mom.

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “I need you, dear.”

  Mom never asked Vedetta’s brothers for help. Even though they were nineteen and twenty years old, mom always asked for Vedetta, because she knew that Vedetta would help without complaining or making excuses.

  The problem was, Vedetta had important stuff to do today. Stuff more important than helping her sick mom. What could be more important than that?

  Finding the stuff the alchemist needed to cure Mom.

  Vedetta could never refuse her mom, so she went to her room and helped her get comfortable and fetched her a jug of lukewarm nettle tea.

  “You’re a good girl,” said her mom. “I raised you right.”

  “It’s nothing. I’m going to head out now, Mom.”

  “Nowhere dangerous, I hope?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Vedetta…”

  “I promise. Nowhere dangerous.”

  Ugh. A promise. You weren’t supposed to break those, were you?

  What if you gave a promise to make someone you loved feel better, and you broke it to save their life? If there was someone in charge of tallying who kept their promises, he’d take that into account, wouldn’t he?

  Vedetta knew she had to break it either way. She’d take whatever punishment she earned for it. Deciding that, she left the house.

  The bag on her back was really heavy. Too heavy for an eleven-year-old. If she were outside of the town now, she’d be a target for brigands and horrible people like that.

  Luckily, it was dark, and Vedetta knew where she was going because she’d been sneaking there every morning for two weeks. She left town, took a route past Farmer Yorke’s field, and then headed south a little, to where the muddy ground started to turn really dark, and where it stank like a giant’s fart.

  It was here that Vedetta found the hole she’d dug in the ground. She put the metal basin that she used as a mining helmet on her head, and she strapped her little mana lamp to it. She climbed into the hole using the ladder she’d stolen from Farmer Yorke’s outhouse.

  She went down, down, down, and finally, her feet touched the ground. Even with her lamp glowing, it was darker than a demon’s bum down here. It was wet, and things scuttled around.

  Vedetta wasn’t scared. That was something the rest of the town always said was strange; nothing scared Vedetta. When the other kids were playing in the forest and they heard wolves howling, they fled for their homes. Vedetta always wanted to stay and meet the wolves and she only left when the others dragged her away.

  She’d once heard the elders discussing it. “The girl’s fearlessness isn’t something to be commended,” they said, whatever commended meant. “She is fearless to the point of it being dangerous.”

  Oh, well. At least she could use it to help now. She’d heard that there was a potion that could fix mother, but it cost more gold than the entire town had put together. She couldn’t buy it.

  But…it could be made. If a person found the right, rare ingredients, an alchemist could make it.

  This was why Vedetta spent her early morning down here, in this dark, wet place way underground. Where she was alone. Where, if the hole she had made caved in, nobody would ever find her.

  Vedetta wasn’t scared. She wasn’t like other children.

  CHAPTER 9

  While Tomlin mined the wall of room three as I ordered, I hopped back to my core room. Even far across the dungeon, I could hear Tomlin’s efforts. His pickaxe hitting the wall. Mud crumbling away. Tomlin whistling to himself.

  It was nice to feel like I wasn’t alone here anymore. Another sentient being sharing the same dungeon as me. It was a bit of a novelty after a week of seeing nobody but Overseer Bolton.

  As Tomlin toiled away, I had time to think. You probably wouldn’t need many guesses to know what was occupying my thoughts.

  It was the new knowledge that monsters were bred in the academy. This knowledge put everything I knew into question. If they’d held back this secret, what else were they hiding?

  It tallied with something I had come to suspect about essence.

  It was both easy to understand, and incredibly complex. I knew that the overseers could directly manipulate essence. If not, how could they reward or condemn us after evaluations?

  At the same time, I was taught that essence was a naturally occurring material. This was backed up by the essence vines and buds, and how much quicker my essence regenerated when they grew bigger.

  What if it was all a sham? What if the academy controlled everything like how essence points depleted when I did something, how fast they grew back, that kind of thing? What if the loot chest that I had conjured in my loot room wasn’t made of essence converted by me, as a core, but instead had been sitting in some dusty room the academy until I spent my points?

  Hmm. I wasn’t sure what to think. I’d have to ask the next overseer who came to evaluate me, even though I knew what they’d say.

  “We can’t answer technical questions. It isn’t fair to the other cores.”

  It was fair enough, but still…screw the other cores.

  While Tomlin mined the wall on the far side of the dungeon, there were other things for me to be getting on with.

  Firstly, I spent a long time working on the essence vines in my core room. You should have seen their progress! They had covered the first wall entirely and had spread halfway across the second wall I had planted them on. It meant t
hat my essence regenerated much, much faster.

  Here was the bad news, though.

  Remember when I kept one essence bud back? Instead of eating it, I split it into 4 new buds, even though it was incredibly unlikely that they would grow. They were just split too many times, and I had pushed my luck with their vitality.

  Yeah, they died. They shriveled on the vines, growing black and smelly. Luckily I got to them before they spread to the vines themselves. If rot set in on my essence flora, I would be screwed. Imagine if I lost my only means of regenerating essence?

  Man, I’d rather not think about it.

  Then again, I have to.

  This was a quandary I had. See, I was reliant on the vines growing on my core room walls. To me, as a core, they were like my only sources of oxygen. If the vines died, and I used up my essence, I would have no means of regenerating more.

  I wouldn’t die like a person would without oxygen, but a core without essence is just a big, useless gem. No guessing what the overseers would do to me if I let that happen. Surely no core would be stupid enough to leave themselves no way of regenerating essence? If I did that…

  Condemnation? Nah. They’d have me destroyed.

  I needed to make a life preserver for myself. Something to fall back on if the worst happened and my essence vines were destroyed.

  For a few hours that afternoon – no idea if it actually was afternoon or not, but it helped me to pretend knew what time it was – I thought about it. I thought until the imaginary veins in my imaginary temples throbbed.

  My first thought was to just snip a few vines away and keep them separate from the others, and store them somewhere. Then I realized that if you snip a vine and don’t plant it, it’ll just die.

  So, why didn’t I just plant some vines in one of my other rooms?

  Good question.

  Essence vines, as important as they are, are incredibly fragile. Seriously, imagine a new-born puppy. One with three legs, blind, and no sense of smell. That’s how bloody fragile essence vines are.

  Planting them in my loot room would be a waste of time because I would one day have a big boss monster in my loot room. It’d be the setting of glorious battles, with a party of soon-to-be-dead heroes fighting whatever leviathan I had spawned to guard the loot chest.

  Assuming I had a monster better than Tomlin, of course.

  In the mayhem, with hero mages casting fireballs and stuff like that, my essence vines would die, and my cultivation time would be wasted.

  So, why not use one of my as-yet unassigned rooms?

  Well, I had set those aside as puzzle and trap rooms that the heroes would have to beat before they got to the loot. That made them a poor place for essence growing, for two reasons.

  One, there was a chance of the aforementioned stupid mage fireballs and stuff.

  Two, essence vines had the annoying property of sending out healing energy. If I put them in rooms where heroes might walk through, my vines would heal them.

  Why, I the name of all the demon lords of the underworld, would I want to do that??

  No, planting more of them in my dungeon rooms wasn’t an option. Nor could I use another wall in my core room, because I’d need to create defense and traps to protect my core. I had to leave some wall space free for that.

  So I pondered, and I whistled, and I lost focus and started thinking about my Soul Bard story, and then I got my focus back and thought some more.

  Another solution hit me like a slap from an angry ogre.

  Any idea what it was?

  I’ll give you a hint. Overseer Bolton got his undies in a twist the last time I did it.

  Yep, one way to keep some emergency essence vines would be to snip them away from the others. Then, I’d split some of my core, and use the resulting liquid to keep the vines alive even when they were separated from the others. Then I’d be able to dig a little hole in my core room, store the vines inside, then fill the hole.

  Just like that, one emergency stockpile of essence vines, hidden and preserved.

  The thing was, I already likened splitting my core to losing a finger. No matter what the motivation for it, would a man who cut off one of his own fingers be advised to cut off another?

  Nope. The book I had found in the library said that with the core splitting process, came the chance your overall essence could decrease. Not only that, but the lower my core purity, the more chance a hero could kill me if he reached my core room.

  A nonstarter. A blunt sword. An arrow with a broken point. A mage spell with no mana behind it. That’s what my idea was.

  The only safe way of keeping my essence vines protected was to dig out a dedicated growing room, and then somehow get some spell-resistant protection inside it. The problem was, being a level 1 core meant I was limited to having 4 rooms in my dungeon, and Tomlin had already dug my fourth.

  Damn it all to the 12 hells. I’d have to wait until I leveled up.

  Lacking a way to keep emergency essence, I decided I had better take care of the essence vines currently flourishing in my core room.

  To do this, I wielded my spectral arms again. I painstakingly checked each vine, each leaf of essence, and I made sure they were all healthy and free from the dreaded black spots. I clipped a couple of leaves that I was unsure about.

  Not only that, but I gently moved certain leaves where it looked like they were growing too close to the others, and I massaged all the vines with my spectral fingers. That might have sounded stupid, but plants like that, you know. They enjoy a little affection from time to time.

  I was halfway through the first wall of vines when Tomlin shouted something. As I was his creator, he really didn’t need to shout, since we had a telepathic link.

  When I heard the words he shouted, though, I understood his reaction.

  As a core, there are some things you don’t want to hear from your kobold miner, and this was one of them.

  “Huh? Holy demons arse! Dark Lord, Dark Lord, come see Tomlin! Oh no. Oh no!”

  CHAPTER 10

  When I hopped to the pedestal point in room three, Tomlin was in a state of agitation. He was wringing his hands, and he could hardly stay still. Even worse, he looked petrified.

  There’s something you need to understand here. Along with kobold’s territorial instincts, comes a vicious streak. It is well known across the world of Xynnar that an angry kobold will take on anything. A dozen chimeras, an ice troll, a dragon. It doesn’t matter.

  So, for me to see my kobold friend with wide eyes, pacing to and fro…it was worrying.

  When he saw me appear, he pointed to the wall he’d been mining.

  “This is bad, Dark Lord. Look what Tomlin found! Look! No…don’t look. Be careful. Create a trap. Create a troll. Anything.”

  It would be at this point that I would hold up a hand and smile gently, two proven ways of calming people down. Since I lacked the hands and face necessary for that, I took a different tack.

  “Pull yourself together. Wow, Tomlin. If your litter mates saw you, they’d be ashamed. The Tomlin in the Soul Bard stories is fearless. He doesn’t scream, doesn’t get worried. Maybe I should rename you.”

  He pointed a claw again. “Look! Be careful!”

  I really couldn’t see what the fuss was about. Just like I had asked, Tomlin had mined a ten feet long tunnel, which opened out into a fourth dungeon room. With no lamps, the room was utterly dark. Luckily, being the core of this particular dungeon, I didn’t need light to see.

  So…casting my thoughts to my new room 4, I discovered what had agitated Tomlin so much.

  I looked at the tunnel, and then at Tomlin, my disbelief growing by the second.

  “This can’t be right.”

  “Tomlin doesn’t lie to you. You see?”

  “Did you did too far or something? Did you tunnel to the surface by mistake? Tomlin, what the hell did you do?”

  “Tomlin didn’t do it. I promise you, Dark Lord. Tomlin was mining when he heard a soun
d. Like rocks crashing. Then a shout. Then, the weakest part of the wall exploded, and…”

  “She fell through it. Underground places like this, they’re full of weak points and tunnels made by moles and that kind of thing. I shouldn’t have blamed you.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Tomlin…I have absolutely no idea.”

  “It’s coming!”

  I heard footsteps coming from the room. I saw her leave the room and walk down the tunnel, and then suddenly, there she was.

  Standing in the room with us, was a little girl with red hair. She was covered in mud, and she held a spade in one hand, and she had a bag strapped to her back. There was a ridiculous metal basin strapped to her head.

  “Can you tell me the way out?” she said.

  Tomlin suddenly leaped into the air.

  He wasn’t attacking her, though.

  No, he leaped up like a scared cat, his eyes bulging, his claws completely tensed. Then he backed away from her, all the way across the room until he hit the wall.

  “Pull yourself together, Tomlin,” I said.

  Funnily enough, it was Tomlin’s ridiculous fear that helped me keep a calm head even when the strangest of things had happened. After all, this was peculiar, right?

  A little girl finding her way down into a dungeon? A girl who looked like she’d been digging? A girl who showed not even the slightest fear of seeing a dungeon core and a kobold?

  This presented me with a problem. Technically, this girl had voluntarily made her way into the dungeon. She wasn’t a core, nor a monster…which meant she was, under the academy’s definition…a hero.

  Yup. I knew the definition of a hero off by heart, and there was no mention of age.

  A hero: One who is not a core or monster, and finds their way into the core’s dungeon by their own means, for their own motives.

  Well, this girl had her own motive for being down here, and according to Tomlin’s testimony, she had burst through the weakened wall.