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

I was excited, ready to learn a new skill.

“You reach into the area around you, and tell it to move. Only you can really know what it will take, so if I can do anything for you, let me know.” Well. That was rather unhelpful advice.

I reached into the stone around me and eventually found what I needed in order to make it move. With horribly loud screeching, the entire stone area that was filled with my influence tore itself out of the ground and began jerkily moving toward the hole in the wall.

I shouted, stopping my momentum.

“That’s normal! If you left this area behind you would lose a lot of your power. Everything filled with your Essence is in reality your body, and you are the heart, the soul. You can never willingly move your heart from your body, but you can reposition it. That is how dungeons grow and evolve.” Dani explained courteously, then told me to hurry up.

Moving my form through the opening in the rock wall, I yanked my whole mass as far through the cave as I could, after hours I finally reached a wall and could go no further. I settled to the floor with great relief.

“How is your Essence doing? Did you use too much?” Queried Dani, fluttering about the cave, exploring its depths.

I was so ready for a nap. Too bad I couldn’t sleep.

“Close!” She sounded off brightly, “We got about forty feet or so before you hit a wall.”

I whined at her.

“I forgot that you can just barely see past your influence. How big do you think your body is?” She was leading the conversation somewhere.

I pleaded to her, joking weakly.

She dashed my hopes immediately. “Your stalagmite is about two feet tall and the ground you have at the base is about five feet in diameter. A bit lopsided where the moss was, because I helped you grow there.”

I was flabbergasted.

“Well you were a bit larger when you were a flawed gem…” She paused, dangling the information just out of reach, “but now you are the size of a one carat diamond. Soooo about six and a half millimeters.”

I had so many questions!

“Yup, that’s it. Stop being a narcissist! You can’t worry about things you can’t control, you have too much work to do if you want to become a big strong dungeon, and you can start by spreading your influence.” She was ignoring my questions again!

“Remember how I made all that Essence turn into a mist and spread it around?” She reminded me, “I need you to do the same thing, but with your accumulated Essence. Concentrate hard on making the surroundings… you.” Dani finished lamely.

Sure. Why not.

“Keep going until I tell you to stop or until you reach those mushrooms.” She directed, settling onto a grey stone outcropping to watch my progress.

Why was she being so unhelpful?

“You’ll know it when you find it.” She sing-sang in a know-it-all voice.

I tried doing as she told me. Nothing happened at first, but after a bit of trial and error a fine mist, more like water vapor began emanating from my puddle. The vapor went where I told it to, clinging to anything it touched unless some vapor had made it there previously. This vapor was true Essence, but I knew somehow that I could not reabsorb this. Is this what other people would come here to cultivate? Luckily for me, the amount of Essence I used to create the vapor, my influence, was miniscule.

Soon I was at the edge of my territory and began forcing the vapor to expand outward, gaining vision and knowledge with every fraction of an inch.

“Hey! Go up and down too.” Dani demanded, twitching up off her rock an inch to look at my apparently shoddy work.

There was so much to look at! I really did not want to waste time on empty space.

“Those need to be permeated with your Essence most of all!”

Why couldn’t she just tell me why? I sighed with frustration. She hadn’t steered me wrong yet, I guess.

I reached as high as I could go, and coated the ceiling and floor, then kept doing what I could to fill the chamber. Quickly I found that I had tripled my range of influence, and was just starting to get worried about the amount of Essence I had remaining, when I found mushrooms . As I learned everything about this type of mushroom, I tasted it for the first time. It was made of a mixture of plant and earth Essence, and both types of Essence were more abundant than either the rocks or the moss had been able to contain or give me. While it was more difficult to take the Essence from the mushrooms than the moss had been, it was still far easier than the stone, and so I began to eat. Cultivate. Whatever.

The flavor was reminiscent of sweet salad leaves dipped in the rich chocolate that is the earth. I ate much slower than ever before, the complexities of this Essence eluding my slavering “tongue” until I discovered the trick of it, breaking the complex Essence down to its elemental form, separating it into its basic Essence, finally absorbing it in a sweet and fulfilling rush. The flavor was so wonderfully potent that I was nearly unable to hear Dani when she started to talk to me. “You made it! That is surprising, it only took you a few days!”

I was still focused on the Essence I was acquiring, only listening to her with half an ‘ear’.

“Well, that isn’t surprising now, is it? Time doesn’t have the same effect on us as it does other living things.” Dani explained. “By the way, how do you feel now with your Essence?”

Turning my attention inward, it was obvious that the energy in me was less than it had been, but not nearly the amount that I had feared it would be. The tiny amount of the mushrooms overall energy had replaced this much?! Surprised by this development, I told Dani.

“That is great! It means that although you are unique in many ways, my knowledge isn’t entirely useless!” She boasted with a ‘wink’ that consisted of her light dimming and shining in a strobe-like way. “As the range of your influence increases, the Essence of the world will passively flow to you, very slowly filling your Core to replace what you use. Obviously, it is far slower than actively pulling the energy to yourself, but as your range grows, so will the passive Essence influx. Eventually, you may not even need to pull Essence to increase in ranking.”

I promised her, feeling happy now that I was gaining sustenance again.

“I don’t need to eat! The energy you provide me with directly fulfills those needs.” She assured me. “How is that Essence by the way? You having any trouble with it?”

I retorted, slurping in a long stream of earth Essence.

“Well, that is a more Complex Essence is all.” She told me carefully. “It is intrinsically combined earth and water Essence, right? That is known as ‘mud’ Essence, and is notoriously hard to cultivate from.”

I assured her, not stopping my gorging.

“You are going to be the most amazing dungeon ever. I just know it!” Dani then looked at the quickly wilting stalks of the mushrooms I was pulling Essence from. “Hey, you want to learn how to grow more of those?”

More would be good. Much more.

She looked at me oddly, “I thought you would be more excited than this.” Zipping over to me she looked at my Essence. “G-rank five already?! This is wonderful! You are growing so well! And so fast.” She murmured, almost with concern.

The ones I was ‘gnawing’ on were going to die soon if I did nothing to spread out the drain on their resources.