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

“No, it did! Look at the horn !” Dani shouted.

I looked, and examining it, saw ‘Hardened: Armor piercing’.

Dani toyed with a few ideas, finally conceding. “No idea. Maybe it combined with its own natural Essence to produce it?”

I had already turned my mind to the next attempt I was going to make. Not waiting for her response, I turned my attention to the next Basher and began the process. I tried to regulate the celestial taint moving through it, but unlike the forceful joining that had been obvious with the other types of taint, this basher absorbed celestial taint like a sponge. Instead of a one to five ratio like the others, this type ended up gaining closer to one part celestial, three parts Essence, significantly more than the others.

Cutting the flow of Essence off at the F-rank six, I watched as the Basher twitched, absorbing the Essence flowing into it. Unlike the obvious pain the others had gone through, this one almost seemed to be writhing in pleasure. The fur along its body turned blond, nearly golden. Its body actually shrank a bit, unlike the others who had more than doubled in size. Its muscles reconfigured, gaining fast-twitch muscle, good for sprinting and fast reactions; whereas the others had gained tough, slow-twitch muscle for endurance and strength. The nub of bone on its head turned pure white with golden threads moving through it, looking like a vein of gold in a slab of marble.

“Well it looks adorable .” Dani cooed.

I whooped, We obviously had different priorities.

“I think so, it may actually be a stronger version of the healing ability we’ve seen. It’ll likely take a lot of energy to heal, so I don’t think it’ll be able to do it very often. I mean, look how tiny and cute you are!” She was talking to the bunny now, who rubbed at his face with his front paws.

Of all the taint we had accumulated, the smallest amount we had was by far celestial.

I lined all of my new Bashers up in the room, and made them race to the end of the room and back in a test of speed. The earthen, armor covered one was obviously the slowest, he also could not turn very well at speed, as shown when he rammed into the wall and shattered a large chunk of granite before turning around with no apparent damage.

“Damn!” Dani whistled.

The Air and infernal type were near matched for speed, the infernal winning simply by the length of its horn. In terms of top speed, none of them were able to match the celestial type. It took off, bounding to the end, jumped off the far wall to conserve momentum, and returned to its spot before the others had made it to the first wall. When it stopped, it sank to the floor, exhausted and panting heavily. This little guy was a sprinter, not a marathon runner.

It was almost time to reopen the dungeon, so while I wanted to run some more experiments, we needed to finish up.

“Sounds good, and how about we place warrens in the Boss room for the healing ones to hide? Then, when the Boss gets hurt too bad, they do a sprint-by healing, returning to hiding to avoid dying. Then you won’t need to spend more Essence to make new ones, and we can surprise groups who thought the fight was over.”

I wildly overacted, pretending she was even more helpful than she really was.

She was ready for my snarky-ness today unfortunately. “You’d likely still be gazing lovingly at moss.”

We got ready to create the new and enhanced Boss, marshaling our thoughts and readying my Essence, while we discussed the best way to proceed. After absorbing all of the new Bashers and carefully studying each pattern, I was prepared to begin. Applying the ideas of the last few hours, I made a new armored Basher and began to flood him with Essence and corruption, literally the energy of the heavens and the earth.

He began to grow again, and I applied more earth taint than I had originally planned. Slowly growing, he passed the F-rank eight. At F-rank nine, his armor fell off and new plates began to form. Collecting from the nearby granite, particles flew to join into the new, thick plating. The grinding rock segmented, allowing for greater mobility, while the multitude of plates themselves formed piecemeal as hexagonal chunks, which would make sharpened weapons skitter off without finding purchase.

At the end, this monster was near the size of what Dani called a ‘black bear’. Over waist height on a human, the creature weighed in at close to three hundred pounds. Due to the amount of time and Essence I had devoted to it, I decided that I would need to wait until someone killed it before absorbing the pattern. I saw that it had a new ability, but its aura was strong enough that without absorbing the Boss I could not tell what it did.

Placing hidey-holes around the Boss room, I directed a few golden rabbits to them, making sure they could help or escape from any part of the room. Then to fill out the second floor I made roving squads of the improved Bashers, and named them. The small Earth-types I named ‘Smashers’, the Air-types ‘Oppressors’, and the infernal ‘Impalers’. The Boss got an actual name, ‘Armored Basher: Raile’, while the golden ones had a slightly different flavor to their moniker, ‘Glitterflit’. (That one was Dani’s suggestion.)

I made squads of two Bashers, two Oppressors, and one Impaler each. I placed a few thorn-shooting Banes along the tunnel ceiling to make people look up instead of looking for traps, then, interspersing the rooms with several squads each, and a few Banes for ranged attacks, I was as ready to re-open as I could be. Confirming with Dani, I drew the Runed door into the ceiling for later use, then settled in to wait for the next group foolish enough to attack us.

After our normal morning routine of breakfast and boasting, we adjourned to the dungeon as per usual. To our great shock, the entrance was gone, blocked by a slab of stone that was obviously not a natural part of the surrounding landscape.

“What is this?” Dale murmured, poking at the obstacle.

“I'm unsure, but there is an energy moving in it that I am... unfamiliar with.” Craig sounded exceedingly confused. “Nothing for it men, let's alert the Guild Master.”

They climbed up the stairs, quickly moving toward the large tent housing the upper echelon of the Guild. They had to walk past the area which had been converted to glass, the rays of sunshine bursting from the glorious dawn glimmered off the reflective surface with awe inspiring intensity. They arrived at the tent, quickly being granted an audience with a harried looking Guild Master.

“What? What’s the matter? Why aren’t you in the dungeon?” Frank growled at a clerk as she dropped a stack of paperwork on his desk.

“That’s what we’re here about, Frank. Dungeon closed. There is a big ‘ol slab of rock in the entryway, and it has some kinda energy moving in it I can’t decipher.” Craig dropped into an unfamiliar cant of dialogue as he talked to Frank.

This got Frank's attention, as Craig was a well-known expert of all things Essence. He was widely thought to be the next man that would be moving into the Mage rank, great interest to the Guild as the Mage rank was something that was attained usually twice a decade or so. If Craig didn’t understand whatever the issue was, it could be very serious.

“Humph. Alright, I’ll send you a Spotter. Go check it out when he gets here, then have him report back to me. Actually, one of you come tell me what it is, they would stop to write a report for me to read. As if I didn’t have enough to do...” He scribbled out a note, and sent a runner to find the specialist. A ‘Spotter’ was a Mage-ranked person who specialized in determining the hidden properties of an unknown item. They could read Inscriptions, energy flows, and had a deep understanding of history and the lore of most abilities that had been seen before. They were often assigned to scout teams that helped determine when people, places, or items had gone down a dark path. Less well liked, the church had their own version called inquisitors.