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Core Collapse Chapter 18
🕑 Added 2024-03-24 22:53:01 +0000 UTCChapter 18
Vella strained her mind as she floated the pen in the air in front of her face. She’d never known before awakening her class that she could strain her mind like it was a muscle, but she definitely could. And she was supposed to, because just like a muscle straining it beyond its limits increased its power.
Finally, she could hold the effort no longer and the pen fell. She caught it, and her tutor scratched down a number on his pad.
“Twenty-three seconds,” Ubo Urban said. “While the Urban family would consider that barely passing at your age, for an outsider and a first generation Mage it is a fairly impressive effort, for which I commend you.”
“Thank you, Master Ubo,” Vella said, wiping her brow.
“Unfortunate that you’ve spent so much time reading the drivel of the publicly available books. They’re filled with nonsense and poorly worded exercises. I wish that you had come straight to us rather than waste the time in that effort.”
Vella winced. She had delayed coming to the capital by two weeks to finish her private studies with the books she had gotten from Anaxis and Nelz, intending to impress the Urban family, which had agreed to sponsor her education. Instead they had insisted that she forget everything that she’d learned and start afresh.
Using the Urban family exercises was a bit easier than using the exercises she’d read about in the books. She would admit that. But that was mostly because she actually had someone to walk her through the mental exercises and guided meditations rather than having to read and memorize them before hand.
“Now then, we will move on to the Candleflame spell,” Ubo said. “To cast this spell, you must picture a flame in your head, and shape your mana into a knotted ball the size of your fingertip. When you--”
“Master Ubo, I know the Candleflame spell,” she said. And without thinking too hard about it, she cast her special spell, the one that she had learned from watching Jessica. She realized, belatedly, that she should have cast the other one instead. The one that was a scaled down version of the fireball spell.
Ubo was looking at her, a sharp expression on his sharp face. She supposed he wasn’t particularly ugly, but his nose looked like it could cut cheese.
“Where, exactly, did you learn that spell?” Ubo asked. His voice was calm but intense.
Vella paused as she considered how to answer. She considered making up a lie, rather than reveal the secret. But that was stupid. Ubo was her teacher; he was meant to help her. So she told him about Jessica, and the magic room at Weaver estate where she had watched the flows of the sorceress’s magic until she’d deciphered them.
Ubo smiled at her and asked her another question. And then another question. And before long, Vella had run out of secrets to tell her teacher. In exchange, she got praised for her intelligence and given a new exercise that would help her develop her levitation spell to the next level.
Ubo excused himself while she practiced. He had a report to file to the head of the family. Because if a child could develop that sort of a free-form spell based on watching this unknown sorceress’s magic, then it was difficult to imagine what sort of spells a fully trained mage could uncover.
Not that the Urban family would do anything nefarious, of course. This was all in the pursuit of knowledge. Surely the sorceress would appreciate the talents of the Urban family mages in assisting her to develop her powers?
Where did this sorceress come from? Vella had said that Jessica Small was a Heroine from Earth, but that was preposterous. Everyone knew that the portal to earth was not so easily opened. Wherever she was from, her abilities required analysis. Instinctive magic was so incredibly rare in the world that every instance of it needed to be categorized and studied to make certain that the knowledge was not lost.
For that matter, who was Tom Weaver, and why had the king granted him an estate?
~~~~~
Tom spent the next several days in a bit of a funk. Caseville Dungeon had killed three people, and Tom was the one who had set that dungeon up. If Tom hadn’t created that dungeon, then those people would still be alive.
It wasn’t quite the same as having killed them himself. He had made the dungeon dangerous, but he’d alerted the city above to every hazard that he’d put in it. There was no such thing as a safe dungeon. The entire point of dungeons was to risk your lives in exchange for levels and powers. Being an adventurer, someone who delved into dungeons, came with risks which matched the rewards of the profession.
He didn’t have the entire story. Just the saved system messages which had alerted him to the deaths.
Warrior Lorn has perished in Caseville Dungeon. Awarding Experience.
Rogue Shirls has perished in Caseville Dungeon. Awarding Experience.
Rogue Sal has perished in Caseville Dungeon. Awarding Experience.
The system messages really didn’t help Tom feel any better, that was certain. He was uncertain whether it was better or worse to know the names of those who were going to die in the dungeons that he created.
He would have to get more of the story in Caseville when the party moved through that city on the way to Torren to set up the dungeon there. While strictly speaking Tom didn’t need to go to these three cities to set up the dungeons there, as he could manage a dungeon over long distances through the use of his network, there were several reasons to make the journey.
Primarily that he wanted to tailor the dungeon to the city above it, and that required learning what the city above it was like. For example, the city of Irshen relied heavily on river trade. Unlike Nashak, it had a natural source of fish and plenty of water, so there was no point in creating a lake biome for it. Instead he created two floors of grasslands and two of woodlands in order to provide both food and timber. The final floor he set to a subterranean biome and set it to seed mushrooms.
With the deaths of the adventurers fresh on his mind, Tom was reluctant to put monsters in his dungeon, but he couldn’t avoid it. He once more placed a combination of wolves and wild boars in the top four floors, and on the final cavernous level he placed a single minotaur. He hoped that the somewhat intelligent monster would obey his instructions and only fight to defend itself.
Tom couldn’t force his intelligent monsters to sacrifice themselves. This was widely known throughout the literature that he’d read on his class; ordering a monster to lay down and not defend themselves would simply be a waste of breath. Ordering the minotaur he spawned for Irshen’s final floor to simply allow adventurers to kill him would break the bond between Tom and the monster. Ordering it to only defend itself when attacked already put a strain on their relationship.
Once the dungeon in Irshen was sorted out, the party moved on once more to Torren. They stopped in Caseville along the way to pick up Rory’s plate armor. And to attend the funerals of three adventurers who had gone missing in the Dungeon. It was simply a coincidence that Tom’s party arrived on time for that, but he insisted upon going when he learned of them.
He felt out of place among the adventurers’ friends and family.
He wasn’t the only one who crashed the funeral, however. While the family was wearing black in mourning, there was a significant crowd in mismatched adventuring garb. After the service broke up, Tom began speaking with the adventurers in attendance, trying to get a sense of the people who had died.
“How did you know them, anyway?” a gruff man that Tom was probing for information asked.
“Well, I didn’t, to be honest,” Tom admitted. “I just heard that they’d died in the dungeon and thought I’d pay my respects.”
The man nodded. “Dangerous work, adventuring. Well paying work, now that killing zombies makes coin just appear in your account, but no less dangerous for all of that. That’s what they were after, zombie bounties. The system awards the most coin for the zombies on the deepest floors. If they’d asked me, I would have told them it wasn’t worth it, fighting so high above their level like that.”
“I don’t really know the story, what happened to them?” Tom inquired.
“We’re not exactly certain ourselves,” the man admitted. “The search party found their armor, so we’re assuming that the dungeon reclaimed their bodies. Must have been around the same time that the Core Stone put on its little light show in the village square. Never knew that it did that to honor fallen adventurers, or at least that’s how I choose to interpret what it was doing. They were on the fourteenth and fifteenth floor, which, based on their levels, means they were trying to punch above their weight. Either exhaustion must have caught up with them, or else they ran into something down there that’s a little more dangerous than zombies.”
Tom swallowed nervously, remembering the minotaur that he’d spawned to ‘be the final boss’ of the dungeon. He had hoped that it would be a strictly symbolic move, and that nobody would actually end up fighting Cassius. Not that he knew for certain that Cassius was responsible.
“I didn’t think that Caseville dungeon was supposed to be dangerous,” Tom said.
“It’s not that it’s dangerous, but when you’re dealing with endless waves of zombies it can be a marathon,” the gruff adventurer explained. “If there was some way to get to the deeper floor without passing through the mazes of the upper floor with the weaker zombies wearing you down, it would be a much easier dungeon. But it’s still the best place to gain experience that I’ve ever seen. What’s your Class, boy? You don’t hold yourself like a Commoner or a Child, that’s for certain.”
“Oh, it’s sort of rare,” Tom said nervously. “I guess you could say I’m sort of a beastmaster? I can tame monsters to fight for me at least. I left my menagerie outside of town to avoid scaring anyone.”
“Sounds like a strong class. A rare one too,” the adventurer commented. “Are you looking for a party?”
“No, not right now,” Tom said. “I’ve got a group of friends to protect me, on top of my monsters. There’s actually quite a lot of us, but the others didn’t feel like coming to a funeral for someone they didn’t know.”
“Then why did you?” the man inquired.
“I’m not certain,” Tom admitted. “It just felt like I should pay my respects.”
“I see. Well, I can’t say that they’d mind having a large funeral. Anyway, if it is anyone’s fault, it’s the monsters that did them in. I don’t even blame the ones who set up the dungeon, if the rumor of it being man-made is true. Delver beware is a universal truth, and these three didn’t heed it,” the man said. “Not that I’m blaming them either. Delving is dangerous business. Keep that in mind, lad, if you keep pushing yourself like you have been. I see you’re level twenty-nine, and I doubt you got that way without putting yourself into some dire situations. You keep an eye out that you don’t end up like these three, you hear?”
Tom nodded and thanked the man for his advice. The rest of the crowd was breaking up, and the young Controller left to rejoin his companions at the inn they stayed at last time.
Comments
Frank Moore
TFTC
Stargazer_hfy
Good point. Ubo is more rank and file though, so it makes sense that he'd be in the dark about Controllers, imo.
ShadeByTheSea
I be surprised if their head of the family didn't at least hear rumors of a new controller.
