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

I was a little embarrassed, but also glad she was starting to have a high opinion of me, even if it was a little dark.

She started considering something, and spoke slowly after several seconds of intense thought, “Well, I think you have enough understanding of how things work, so now it is a matter of raw power. When your Chi spiral fills two thirds of your Core, you should break into F-rank nine. At the rate you are going, it should be only a few weeks, faster if you get large influxes soon.”

I did some quick calculations in my head, judging how much Essence I was gaining recently.

“No rush, Cal. Slow and steady makes for a strong power base. I was actually thinking you should try and compress that Chi spiral down. I don’t want to sound mean, but I think you’ve been getting complacent and layering it on without using all the available space. It’s a bad habit.” Dani admonished, directing my attention to all of the space I was wasting in my Core.

She was right, and under her watchful eye I worked on compressing it down as much as I could. There was a lot of empty space that I was not using, it turned out. By the time I was finished working to improve myself, I had a significantly smaller, but far denser spiral spinning at greater speeds.

“Good work! Remember that the faster it spins the more well refined it will be, and faster spinning makes for faster Essence gathering as well.” She sounded very pleased with my effort.

I knew she was right, and my laziness may have really been costing me, especially now that I saw how fast the spiral was spinning.

She beamed at me, “I’m proud of you Cal! You don’t shy away from your faults, and work hard to improve yourself when you find them. Ooh! By the way, I think a new group is coming in!”

She was, of course, correct. I decided to follow her plan and give them a regular fight. When they came in to the first room, I ambushed them at the center and watched as my bashers got in several nice shin-shots before they finally took my minions down. Retreating at about half losses as usual, I watched as they paused in the room for a bit to recover and gather the loot. While they did so, I scanned their auras, double checking and pleased upon finding that this was a D-ranked group, none past the fifth ranking.

They continued onward, pushing through the pain as the promise of treasure stirred them from inaction. Already a few coppers richer, apparently the equivalent of a week's pay in the area, they were determined to make it big. The second room was harder for them, as I attacked with the rabbits before they killed off the Shroomish, making them work harder to block the poisonous thorns while their legs took a beating. By the time half the swarm of Bashers were defeated, inspiring a retreat, the men looked exhausted and filthy. Covered in blood from my rabbits, and bruises of their own, they certainly looked ready to call it a day. Most of them at least. One of the men, trying to convince them, pulled off his helmet and started arguing energetically for the group to continue.

He began stalking toward the next tunnel, very inspirationally shouting, “To money!!” I saw my chance. The Bane on the ceiling by the tunnel took a clean shot, impaling the man with a hand-sized thorn directly through his temple, piercing the skull in one blow! Even if the initial attack hadn’t been enough to kill him (it was), the poison though weak was administered directly to the man’s brain. He fell, and as soon as his aura winked out I was able to work on directly dissolving his armor with my influence, the process essentially aging them until they fell apart as tattered, useless chunks while I took the pattern I needed to recreate it. The suddenly rusted remnants of his armor clanging to the floor startled his team greatly, their eyes showing white as their faces drained of blood in shock.

From their perspective, it had been over in an instant. The fallen man’s teammates saw a thorn impact their friend, then saw him drop and hit the floor, for some reason almost naked. I left his wool clothes on his corpse as I already had a few sets of those to work with, but I got all of his armor and his well-made sword. Neat, apparently he had been fairly rich, the sword was really well made! They tried to pick the remains of the fallen gear back up, but I had bound it all to the floor by growing a layer of stone around it while I worked to break each piece down and study it, making it impossible for the frustrated humans to take. Furious, they grabbed their fallen comrades’ corpse and departed, faces grim, when the dead man’s Essence finally made its way to me.

I moaned in pleasure. The D-ranked man had far more pure and abundant Essence than any I had ever had the pleasure of absorbing. Carefully adding it to my spiral as densely as possible, I watched as my energy re-grew to nearly half, this time much stronger than before I had compressed it. I groaned in ecstasy.

She looked on, hungry but unable to touch the Essence until it made its way to her through our bond. “Brute, you know I can’t take that directly. And, what happened to taking out groups slowly?”

I thought quickly, we had made a plan after all. Finally, I mentally shrugged.

“To be fair, he only removed his helmet, you removed his armor. You dirty dungeon!” She chuckled at her own joke, “But you make a good point. Congrats on the Essence! I’m glad to see that that worked out so well. Also, how good is that armor?”

I left off tantalizingly, knowing her rabid curiosity would make her ask...

“How so?” She was rather impatient today, wasn’t she? I smiled to myself.

“Oh?”

She was keeping up with me so far, I could tell.

“Sounds correct so far. Just so you know, cutting those in is called ‘inscribing’ and when done properly, it is called a ‘Rune’.” She took a quick second to boost my knowledge.

I acknowledged her input, and continued.

Dani went quiet for a moment, “Well, in theory. It is possible to use specially refined Beast Cores as Mana accumulators, but the cost is usually so high for even a normal Core that no one - that I have heard of anyway - has tried it for just Essence .”

From her reaction, I think the answer I was about to get was ‘no’.

“What? Corrupted stones are useless. No one can manipulate it so...” She went silent, realizing that I had been able to move the taint around rather easily.

She walked right into my trap!

“I don’t know,” Dani slowly thought through the implications. “It is an interesting idea though. Go for it, I mean, you can always make more Cores, right? Remember though, you haven’t encountered all of the different Essence types that exist, so make extras.”

I set up a few more Cores next to the ones I was planning on using for Essence overflow, then increased the amount of them to six each. One for fire, water, air, earth, infernal, and celestial Essence. Since my main prey was humans, I figured I could eventually fill them all up. Next, I looked at the sharpening augmentation on the sword. An enchantment is just a specific pattern of Essence placed onto an item, and if it was inscribed without mistakes it could become a Rune, which is a permanent enchantment powered by Essence only when you wanted to pass energy through it.

The reason permanent enchantments, or ‘Runes’, were rarer was due to the pattern needing to be perfect . If there was a flaw, the Essence would flow out of the Rune and the pattern would be useless, at best. At worst, it would activate and have an unintended effect. Conversely, when done properly, it was difficult to remove an enchantment because the Essence that flowed through it would eventually strengthen the pattern, again known as a ‘Rune’ or ‘Inscription’, placed on the item, to the point where if it were made on wood, you could burn the log away and the Rune would still be stable. Not that they were indestructible, far from it really. It would just take a lot of strength - or applied knowledge of where to strike - to destroy a well-used Rune, but it could be done.