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

At this position, after creating weavings along its route, it traveled along the skin across his neck and cheek until it reached the outer corner of his eye, finally ending in his ear before somehow reconnecting into his center and joining the spiral from another small hole. Everything sounded a bit fuzzy, so he opened his eyes and blinked away tears. Wiping them from his check, he saw that it was actually blood dripping from his eyes.

Wiping at his ears, the fuzziness vanished as drops of blood were wiped away there as well. Surprised blood wasn’t coming out of his skin at this point, he asked why he was bleeding. Had he been hit while he was so focused? What he should expect now?

Craig waved at him to try and calm him down and slow the flow of questions. “As your meridians are opened, they are also cleaned. The impurities in your system that are forced away have to go somewhere, after all. That blood is helping the filth to be washed out, that is all. You aren’t damaged, actually you are now far healthier.”

“I see.” Dale murmured, thinking out loud about the incredibly foul poop he had taken after his heart meridian had opened. Now it made sense why it had connected to his intestines, it was depositing impurities.

“I bet you do!” Hans called, interrupting Dale’s reminiscence. “Your vision should clear up, any issues you had before are gonna be gone. Oh by the way… HA!” Dale gasped as Hans shouted next to his head, his hands clapping to his ears with a wet smack of blood.

“Yup, looks like your hearing is improving as well!” Hans laughed, grinning maliciously.

“ Mean !” Dale gasped. ‘Heh’ was the only apology he got.

“Get ready for a few sleepless nights, kiddo.” Steve rumbled fondly. “You are going to wake up to a herder on the next mountain farting tonight.” The men laughed uproariously at this.

“I know the one! He’s been eating too much roughage if you ask me! He needs to add some fruit to his diet!” Josh sounded off. The laughter only increased at this comment.

They calmed down after a bit, spirits much lightened. Craig continued the lesson, “As they say, eyesight and hearing will be better for you, and should stay that way. It is called the lower intestine meridian because as food enters your intestines, your body will now purify the food you eat much more efficiently, and you will even be using it for Essence gathering, as some of the... extra... will have the Essence drawn out of it.”

“Oh, that’s handy, I guess.” Dale was far more excited about the improved senses though.

“Your farts are gonna smell like death because of it!” Hans chimed in.

“You’re lucky ya have your own tent!” Steve crowed.

Craig sighed with a smile, “No manners, any of you. Alright, since we seem to have a surplus of energy, how about you start your punishment training with Josh, Dale. You did miss that trap.” Josh jumped to his feet face lighting up - he had forgotten that he got to beat up Dale by himself for an hour!

By evening, Dale was exhausted. With the intense day that he had, sleep was only seconds away when he finally got to bed. Enhanced senses or no, that night he slept like the dead.

The last group of people had finally left, making it far easier to alter myself. Those human auras inside of me had a nasty habit of making it difficult for me to directly affect things. I added openings from each cave to another, and let them level out the Essence in the air. It was slow, but I figured by morning you couldn’t cheat my empty rooms anymore. Not the way they had been, anyway. Just to be safe, I reconfigured the tunnels so that people couldn’t just retrace their steps.

Next, Dani flew out and looked around for a while. She came back with very interesting news, there was a giant sheet of quartz above us, not quite directly up, but nearly so from the Boss room. With her directing me, I moved the rooms above me out of the way, creating a cylinder of empty space up to the sheet while holding the integrity of the dungeon intact. Quite a lot of work, but far easier at my new ranking.

From my gem I had perfect vision in line of sight, but had mostly only seen the hole I was in and so used my influence to see. The downside was that I could only ‘see’ as far as that influence extended. Now, for the first time in my life, I looked up and saw the stars.

I articulated with a hint of jealousy, peering beyond the Silverwood tree above me and out into the stars.

“Most people don’t bother.” Dani quietly voiced, also enjoying the view. The sheet of quartz above us acted as a giant telescope, letting us see further and more clearly than usual. It was especially beautiful when the moon came into view, it seemed huge .

I asked quizzically, disturbed that people actually ignored this beautiful scenery.

She seemed to match my disappointment in others, “Most people tend to only look at, or think about, things that have value to them at that moment. They look so hard at what they want that they drown out the beautiful things that would give them hope, or allow them to look beyond their small lives.

They lose sight of living, trying to get to the next goal, the next important thing. They forget that everything is important, that the little moments of happiness added up overwhelm the greatness of the few large moments. Like making a friend smile, or making it to the two hundred and eighteenth page of a book. Sometimes, it isn’t about finishing your objective, it is about enjoying yourself on the way there.” She focused on me. “That’s why I have so much fun here, Cal. You put detail into the little things, and even when you are beat, you reward those who did well. You care more about being amazing than you do winning.”

I choked out, feeling overwhelmed with joy at having such a good friend.

“Well, I suppose the first thing you could do is build an exit!” She shouted, breaking the sober mood and startling me badly. We both laughed at how shocked I was.

Together we designed a gazebo-like structure made of thick granite. For the rest of the night, I carved a series of large Runes into the stone, about an inch under the surface. All of them linked together, so that I could use a single power source to activate them. When I finished it, dawn was only an hour away. I created a spiral staircase under the gazebo, building all of this in a small area just off of my Boss room.

I opened the ground up to the surface as far as I could reach, about three feet below the surface, and raised the gazebo on the stairs I was creating underneath of it. As it rose, it spun with the creation of the spiral under it. When it finally reached the edge of my influence, the top of my first building punched through the loosely packed dirt at the top. I could see the gazebo break into the surface through the clear quartz nearly one hundred feet above.

When it shuddered to a stop, I connected its corruption stone to the inscribed Runes and felt the gazebo become even harder. The energy sluggishly filled it, glowing with a harsh purple-brown color. I was pleased to feel that the runes were perfect. The door out could only be opened from the inside, anyone attempting to re-enter would be crushed like a bug, or find themselves in a stairwell that had no exit at the bottom when I dropped a wall in the way and let them slowly suffocate. Good times. Well. For me.

Catching my attention as I was looking up, I realized the Silverwood tree had seemed to enjoy the new light coming in. A few leaves had unfurled over the night as the moonlight bathed us. What was that? There was a person, wait, two people directly above me! I was suddenly worried looking at the quartz above us. That could be broken couldn’t it? It was at the edge of my influence, but if I strained, pushing really hard; I was still able to make molecule thin patterns in the sheet with acid, slowly widening them until they were useful Runes. Since quartz was just stone, I planned on hooking it to a corruption stone.