Chapter 22

The party spent six days in the newest dungeon. Tom spawned another two Korgoath to help keep guard, as the one-eyed monsters’ had the sharpest senses of any of the creatures he could summon so far. To Lo’s great joy, one of the freshly spawned monsters was female.

To his utter disappointment, she immediately expressed disdain in the possibility of having him as a mate. He hadn’t even begun expressing an interest, believing that the gentlemonsterly thing to do would be to wait until she was at least five days old. She had simply shut him down cold without prompting. His only consolation was that she was likewise shut down the other males in the pack. And while she wasn’t interested in him as a mate, she did respect his leadership.

He couldn’t force her to be his mate, but he would not stand for insubordination from any of the newly spawned pups.

Once the older two spawned Korgoath had recovered from the initial culling of the dungeon, the five member pack led the remaining Rock Spiders to clean out the remaining fourteen Giant Spiders and the seven Asps.

Tom couldn’t identify their locations exactly, but he could confirm their numbers, and he was relieved when the final Asp was slain and the inhabitants tab dropped down to zero. It then immediately changed, representing the party’s numbers. Tom was surprised at that, as he hadn’t been expecting it.

The time they spent in the new dungeon wasn’t idle. Antoine spent a bit of time drilling Sevin, both above ground in the light and in the depths of the dungeon, so that the boy got used to fighting with more than just his eyes. The lighting in dungeons was unpredictable and often very dim, so any delver worth their salt would try to unlock the Blindfighting Skill.

The males were all surprised when Jessica carved herself a quarterstaff and asked Antoine if he could teach her how to use it.

“My magic is great and all,” she explained, “but I need something other than the dagger you gave me to defend myself if I run low on Mana. Preferably something with a bit of reach so that I can keep the creepy crawlers away.”

Antoine needed no further convincing, carving out a second quarterstaff and giving Jessica exactly the lessons she was asking for. He didn’t pull his punches one bit, and between drilling with him and drilling with Sevin, she went to sleep exhausted and sore. She was satisfied with the results, however, as on the second day she unlocked the skill Quarterstaff Proficiency, and on the third day she unlocked Blind Fighting. Sevin unlocked those same skills, and although he got the proficiency skill before she did, she earned Blind Fighting two days before he did.

Tom wasn’t idle either. Antoine spent some time drilling him as well, but not as much as the other two teenagers. Most of his time was spent manipulating the Linked Cores.

Among many other discoveries, he learned that he could Customize the names of the cores, so he named his original core “Alpha,” and the new core which had just been captured “Beta.” He had gotten Beta out of the ceiling, but then he’d stuck it into the ground just so that it was easier to reach. He hadn’t shrunk it; he’d discovered that doing so impacted the Core’s properties when he’d done so to the Alpha core. Larger cores had larger capacities, both for mana and territory.

Of course, they were also significantly less portable, so he left Alpha the size it was.

He spent some time Customizing the new dungeon, spawning a lot of the luminescent moss and the glowing mushrooms which he had just unlocked after claiming the new core. He rearranged the rooms slightly, making them more square to suit his preference, but left the general layout the same otherwise.

While the Cores were Linked, Tom discovered that their respective dungeons could be separated. Doing so allowed him to interact with them each independently. When he separated Alpha from Beta, he would no longer sense the layout of Beta. He discovered, however, that he could switch his perspective by communing with Alpha and activating his Link ability, allowing him to modify the freshly conquered dungeon (Beta) from a distance. How far he remained uncertain, but he traveled five kilometers to test the ability and found the connection undiminished.

Another advantage he discovered was that the mana of the two cores was linked. While the transference was not instantaneous, he could discharge the mana of Alpha and it would rapidly equilibrate with the mana of Beta. Once they had equilibrated, they would regenerate mana at the same rate.

After some experimentation with this, he set Beta’s territory (the sedentary Core) as large as possible to have its mana regeneration as high as he could get it. This lowered its maximum mana cap significantly, but he offset that by shrinking the territory of Alpha down to two hundred square meters. The result was that he could burn through a significant reservoir that his portable Core contained while the link with the sedentary core would constantly refill it.

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The primary reason for staying in one place for so long was supposedly to allow Tom to experiment with the new Core, but it was also to provide all three of the teenagers time to consider their situation.

Of the three, Sevin’s position was probably the most flexible. If his application to the Royal Knights didn’t work out, he could always return home to Tilluth valley. Or he could join any number of the other forces in the kingdom, from the noble’s standing forces to the wandering adventurers and dungeon delvers.

Jessica had no place to return to. She had about forty-eight marks to her name; Antoine had supplied the majority of her traveling gear. However, as a young woman, there were several items which Antoine wouldn’t have thought of which she, at least as a teenager from Earth, found absolutely essential. These items were mostly hygienic in nature. There was nothing particularly wrong with the hard bar of soap that Antoine had given her, but she much preferred the softer and sweeter smelling soaps she had found in the Tilluth village’s general store.

Antoine, for his part, had not actually forgotten to buy her tampons. He had simply thought that as a young woman she would prefer to make such purchases herself. He had discretely checked before their departure that she had not overlooked this necessity, but when he’d confirmed that she had he put it out of his mind entirely.

With no place to return should the knights not work out for her, and limited funds to her name, Jessica was less certain of her future than Sevin was and more determined to make things work once she reached the capital.

Tom had by far the most to think about. Antoine’s proposition weighed heavily on his mind. He couldn’t really see himself ruling anyone or anything. However, neither did he particularly enjoy the idea of a life of gilded servitude. A large part of him was regretting that he had unlocked this class.

Another part of him was simply fascinated with it. Every new ability or aspect of his Skills that he discovered made him hungry for more. The merchant part of his DNA kept asking how he could make a profit off of his skills. And the truth is, he didn’t know. He assumed that, working for the kingdom, he would be paid a stipend for his efforts. But the fact was that although everyone relied on Cores, did anyone actually pay for their usage?

Cores regulated mana. They helped the system function properly. They caused crops an animals to grow healthy and quickly. Children too, for that matter. But they were communal property, and if Tom started charging for the use of the cores that he personally managed, the locals would either revolt or move to a new village.

He thought about the problem for a long time before smacking his head when he realized that yes, everyone did in fact pay someone for maintaining the Cores. That’s what taxes were for! Granted the taxes went to far more than just managing the Cores themselves. They also paid for building roads and other communal projects, paid for law enforcement, funded the soldiers and adventurers who hunted and culled dangerous monsters, and probably did all sorts of other things which he hadn’t thought about.

From that angle, it sort of made sense that he work for the kingdom, since nobody would be paying him and the kingdom both for the same services. Even if Tom became the best Controller in a thousand years and singlehandedly maintained, expanded, or otherwise improved every tamed core in the country, he couldn’t perform the other services of government by himself.

Which brought him back to Antoine’s plan. He only knew the broad strokes; Antoine had been very clear that the project would be incredibly complex and had only explained Tom’s role in it. Which was, ironically, to do exactly what he had just done with the alpha and beta Cores. Conquer new dungeons in the wastes or the wilds and regulate them so that they were safe for human habitation.

Antoine had assured Tom that he would have allies to take care of the finer, more tedious points of rulership. Either by taking the responsibilities entirely onto themselves, or by teaching Tom what he needed to know in order to handle them himself.

But the question Tom was asking himself was “what is best for me?” He didn’t much like the idea of struggling to make a new kingdom when Welsius already had a foundation built and people to do everything except, apparently, for the things that Tom’s Class allowed him to do. And there was his family to consider as well; his Ma and Pa were selling their entire business to move to Profons to be with him. He knew that they’d be eating into their profits to liquidate their inventory like they’d said they were planning to. The merchant part of him rebelled at that thought, but the part of him that was their son was extremely grateful for their determination to keep the family together.

In the end, he decided that there was no need to decide right now. Even according to Antoine’s most audacious time frame, Tom wouldn’t likely be ready for five or six years. And part of the plan had always been to get whatever education about the Controller class that he could get out of King Fenard.

On the seventh day after conquering the dungeon, Tom announced that he was done experimenting and that he thought it was time to continue on their journey.

They continued to tunnel south. He quickly confirmed that distance seemed to be no factor in the mana transfer between the sedentary core (beta) and the one that he was using to travel. With the constant supply of mana, he was able to significantly increase the rate at which the tunneling dungeon passed through the earth, and instead of simply walking the horses they were riding at a brisk trot most of the time.

The tunnel Tom carved out was smoother than any road, and every twenty meters he would carve a skylight to move the entrance of the dungeon and bring in fresh ventilation. They slowed when Tom noticed another Core in the area to avoid another blind breech, but avoided such an accident this time. The second Core that Tom noticed belonged to a village, which they visited to resupply. Tom and the monsters, remained in the dungeon.

Tom had never been particularly antisocial before becoming a Controller. He still didn’t think that he was. However, leaving the dungeon behind felt a bit like walking around his home village without his pants on. He’d grown used to the sensory feedback that he got from Controlling a Core inside of a Dungeon. Being without those senses made him feel naked and exposed.

While he was waiting for the others to return, he returned to playing around with the alpha Core. He made two discoveries when he used Link on it. He already knew that doing so at a distance would make him aware of the beta core’s dungeon. His first discovery was that, in his absence, the beta core had spawned a Korgoath, two Gnolls, fifteen giant spiders, and two dozen burrowers.

The second discovery, however, was that a party of adventurers was presently delving that dungeon.