Dakota Krout - Dungeon Born (The Divine Dungeon Book 1)

Dale tried to inject some humor, “Spikey ball goes into the enemy?”

“Correct! I think we found the armament for you.” Frank grinned and handed the weapon over.

They moved into a tent with the purchased equipment, and the staff helped him put on all of his new, shining armor. It was a matching set, so Dale thought he looked rather dashing. The layers kept coming on, first the padding, then the chainmail, and finally the plate armor. It was so heavy that Dale could barely move, if he hadn’t been fairly used to hard work, he wouldn’t have been able to stand. Finally, Frank came over with a shield, presenting it as a short term gift.

“This is an enchanted training buckler. It is the smallest shield type, but I really don’t think you should carry too much more weight.” Frank looked frankly at his already straining and sweating initiate. “It is called a ‘training’ type armor because it helps you to learn to block correctly.” He demonstrated by swinging his fist, and the shield pulled Dale’s arm into position to stop it. “You are going to want to learn how to use a shield correctly as fast as possible, it’ll save lives; especially yours.”

“Wow! Why is it short term? This is great!” Dale enthused, happy that this shield could block attacks for him.

“Allow me to demonstrate.” Tossing a rock to the side of Dale, Frank moved in and slapped him in the face as the shield swung to knock the rock away. “It tries to block the first threat, and it’ll take more muscle than you have to put it somewhere else.”

Dale felt his teeth to make sure none had loosened. “Well. Point taken.”

“I’m just glad we waited before putting on your helmet.” Frank mentioned, Dale groaned internally at the thought of more armor.

Frank did not take kindly to the whining. “Until sundown, you are going to wear that armor, each day until I tell you otherwise. You are far enough behind your group that you will need to train constantly to catch up. Your muscles will hate you now, but you’ll thank me later. Eventually, you might move to a different fighting style, and wear less armor, but for now we do things my way.”

A staff member walked over, and handed Dale his bill. “Here you are Sir Knight, we have applied the Guild discount, of course.”

Dale’s eyes nearly left his skull as he saw the total. One platinum, thirty gold, forty silver, and six coppers. That was more money than everyone on this mountain combined had ever seen before. Would he ever be able to pay this off?

“You are going to need to work hard, but I think you have what it takes to succeed. I sense serious ambition in you lad.” Frank spoke kindly. Dale’s mind flashed to murdering Tim, and he nodded. Dale had ambition in spades. “I’m going to send you to your tutor now, pay attention to what he says, because that armor will mean nothing if you fail to improve yourself.”

They walked over to a group of men preparing their armor and weapons. Unlike Dale who had shining armor, those in the group who wore it had scratched, dented, well worn, and patchwork armor. Walking directly to a man wearing only wrapped cloth, no discernable armor at all, Dale introduced him as Craig, a monk and Essence specialist. A monk was not a religious man like a cleric, but someone who focused on their chosen martial arts to the exclusion of all other knowledge. As an Essence specialist, he would have focused all of his life on cultivation and Essence management, making him an unmatched expert and teacher in his area of study.

“Craig will be your supervisor and tutor. He also has an affinity for earthen Essence, so he will be able to give you the very best guidance.” Frank handed a memory stone to Dale, telling him that it would allow him to skip a few steps in learning how to control his Essence. “Craig, if you would be so kind as to teach him how to properly cultivate, I would appreciate it. It’ll be better if he knows now, before we strip him. Last time didn’t work out well.” With this ominous foreshadowing, he handed Craig a small item, wished Dale good luck, and set off to start working for the rest of his busy day.

“Nice to meet you all, my name is Dale.” Dale stated, “So… How do we start?”

“You the guy who found this shithole?” One of the men grunted, polishing a massive shield.

“Um. Yeah.” Dale stammered. The other man coughed, hawked up some mucus and spit to the side.

“Great.”

Craig spoke then, ignoring pleasantries and launching directly into lecture mode. “Dale, you are what we call a ‘fishy’. This means you are an F-ranked newbie, thrashing around trying to figure out what is going on. You are going to be useless in there today, and even more so tomorrow. Let me be very clear about what we want you to do. Your job in the dungeon is to not die . No heroics, you do only what we tell you to. That is it , you follow?”

“Yes. Sorry.” Dale apologized, not even sure why he was doing so.

“Don’t be sorry, just pay attention. We were all there once, but for us it was many years ago. I’m going to give you a cultivation technique, and since it’ll be going through a memory stone, you’ll be able to use it without years of practice. That’ll let you catch up quick, once we fix this…” waving his hand at Dale’s entire body, “cesspool of a center you have going on here.” He reached out and motioned for the stone Frank had given Dale. Dale dropped it in his hand as he wondered what could possibly be so bad about him that everyone kept mentioning that he was filthy on the inside.

Craig took the memory stone and placed it against his head. Focusing intently for a few moments, a silvery light streamed into it. Handing it back to Dale, he told him to press it against his forehead and try not to fall over. He enunciated ‘try’ a bit too much for Dale to be happy about.

“That’s it?” Dale inquired, looking at the glittering stone in his hand. The light inside of it seemed to whisper to his senses.

“That’s it.” Craig promised.

Pressing the stone against his head, knowledge of how to consciously pull in Essence from the earth and earthen sources flooded his mind. Dale saw how to control the Essence, allowing it to flow through into his body to his center without damaging himself or gaining too much corruption, and how to begin a Chi spiral so he didn’t waste the Essence he gained. Most importantly to Dale, he could finally see what his own center looked like.

The clearer the energy, the better, as it showed high refinement and low corruption. When it was poorly processed, it would look more like the Essence it came from. While Craig's memory of his center, which came along from the memory stone, looked quite clear with only a tinge of coloration showing his affinity, Dale’s looked like a mixture of mud and feces. Cesspool of a Core indeed.

“Oh my.” Dale nearly gagged and tried to start the Chi spiral like he was supposed to, but the thick Essence in his center only bubbled and moved like mucus, refusing to do more than ooze in a circle. “What actually is this corruption?”

Craig was watching him, and nodded when he saw him try to move the corrupted Essence. “Good question. Listen up, I’ll only explain this now, and never again. Corruption is a side effect of the energy of the heavens and the earth being turned into the universal basic elements. Everything begins as purest energy, but the world creates things out of it, yes?”

Dale nodded. “So, rocks and stuff?”

“Pretty much. To do this, the item is formed, but then it's ‘identity’ seeps into the pure Essence, corrupting it. A rock, which at its basic form is this stored energy, adds it's ‘identity’ to the energy, which then becomes earthen Essence. Essence joins together in complex ways, to form combinations which form what we call higher Essences. Fire and water to form steam, water and earth to plant, and so forth. Those lucky enough to gain affinities in multiple elements can become higher level cultivators very quickly, if they have access to all of the elements they need. For instance, fire, water, and earth form a ‘soot’ affinity. The combinations are endless, allowing for any kind of material, or even life.” Craig lectured briefly. “Essence is endless, and the more of each type of basic Essence in an area, the more Essence is generated. If you somehow got all of them to coexist together, you would have a very powerful Essence generator.”