Chapter 51

There were no survivors of Emil’s second ritual. Whether only the wasp queen had been strong enough to survive the first wave, or the second wave had finished off everything else that had survived the first, nobody was certain. The slugs remained unaffected, of course, but the truly dangerous threats of the dungeon were dead.

They found the Core Stone not much deeper in the dungeon, and Tom Linked it to his growing network. Naming it Epsilon, that made his quest five percent completed. Excluding, of course, the part where he needed to tame one high level core to link to another high level core which was linked to the world dungeon.

But he had time to work himself up to that. He had a suspicion that if he tried Linking to a level ninety core right now, he would shatter his nascent network. The Epsilon core was level twenty-two. Taming it had reduced its HP from twenty seven to sixteen, and the health of Alpha core from nineteen to fourteen. Beta, Gamma, and Delta had all lost health as well, but Tom felt confident that he could conquer another two dungeons before it was time to slow down and allow his Cores to recover.

And, while they were recovering, he would work on using them to increase his own level.

He spent some time Customizing Epsilon dungeon until it was almost a perfect copy of Delta, except with burrowers on the top floors instead of goblins. He didn’t spawn any of the giant wasps, and he was uncertain whether or not Epsilon would correct that oversight the moment he turned his back.

Silva put in her report to the crown, and the group camped outside for three days to allow Brutus to recover. The minotaur champion insisted that he was fine, but he had a fever and couldn’t stop shaking until the second day. On the fourth day, they judged that he was ready to move, so they headed east to yet another nearby dungeon.

The dungeon that would become Zeta was regularly culled by guards from a nearby town, making it the most well documented and explored of the three dungeons that Tom and his party had challenged so far. Unlike most natural dungeons, Zeta spawned only a single type of monsters: zombies. The undead monsters were generally considered to be around level fifteen, and were not too difficult to deal with.

Unfortunately, while there was a family of convenient ritual spells which affected the undead, the only two that Emil had in his repertoire at this point was one which made spirits corporeal and another which slowed other forms of undead considerably. The latter spell he cast at the entrance of the dungeon, of course, but he regretted that he didn’t have the much more powerful versions which would have effectively cleared the dungeon for them, like the spell which affected insects and arachnids.

He also discovered, once he began the ritual, that he couldn’t stop or the effect would end. This effectively tied Emil in place at the entrance of the dungeon, although the effects of his magic expanded for miles in all directions. Due to this limitation, the three Winged Knights stayed outside with Emil and the stableboys Mark and Tony while the lower leveled members of the party cleared the zombies out inside the dungeon.

The korgoath were reluctant to enter into combat with the zombies due to the foul taste of their rotting flesh, so Lo and his pack also remained outside.

At Sevin’s suggestion, the minotaur formed a protective circle around Tom, but left the actual clearing of the dungeon up to the Warrior and the summoned Heroes. This suggestion wasn’t made for expediency sake, as doing so slowed down the conquering of the dungeon considerably, but rather for the purposes of leveling. The Zombies were excellent experience, and Sevin, Jessica, and Grant worked hard to compete against each other for their share of it.

In fact, Sevin for the first time felt like he was truly able to shine. With the zombies hampered by Emil’s ongoing spell, he was able to easily dart between the slow moving undead and dispatch them to the left and the right. With the vulnerability of the zombies being their skulls, he set aside the spear for this fight and focused on using his axe.

While the young warrior took the majority of the kills with his youthful exuberance, Grant got a decent score as well. With his legerdemain skills allowing him to stab the slow-moving zombies from afar, he aimed for eyes and faces. Jessica started out strong, incinerating a fare share of zombies, but she quickly ran out of mana, allowing the inexhaustible young Warrior to overtake her early lead.

Overall, the zombie dungeon was not very difficult, one of the reasons why the local garrison trained there. Sevin got two levels, putting him at level fifteen. Grant reached level twelve, and Jessica gained a single level, putting her at level fifteen.

When Tom reached the core, he didn’t waste any time and immediately Linked it to his network. Except that things didn’t go as planned.

The level fifteen core he was attempting to Link to shattered.

~~~~~~

Thirty miles away, in the center of the town of Caseville, the core crystal shuttered and changed color. It paused and reflected on what had just happened. A wave of mana had come through one of its subcores and ripped it off of its primary network and onto a new one.

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That was fine.

Painful, costing the Caseville Core fifteen points, but it was level forty and had thirty points left over. It was nothing compared to the pain of being Sundered, an event which Caseville recalled with terror. Not only had it been sundered, but the resulting subcores had been shattered and used for enchanting materials. Caseville could still feel the powdered remnants floating around, like a distant phantom limb.

Only four cores remained from the original. The one which had sent that wave of mana had shattered, permanently destroyed. The Caseville core was the central core. There was one to the west which once had sent orders to the others, but that core had gone silent years ago. It too had been torn off the primary network, and now in that room in shown blue where it had been green before.

The other two subcores were nearby, in villages just outside of Caseville. While the central core in caseville had taken the brunt of the damage from the violent shift onto the new network, none of the four sister cores had escaped unscathed, and the lower leveled village cores would take months to recover the damage they had suffered.

But that was fine. They had lost the dungeon core nearby, the one into which they shifted their miasma. That was less fine.

That, that caused an error.

The Caseville core sent a request to the command subcore requesting instructions. No instructions came. Caseville asked again, and again, again and again.

No instructions came.

Its miasma began to accumulate. Without the dungeon core to turn that Miasma into a zombie and dispose of it safely, it would build up to a level that was toxic to the Core eventually. Soon, if it did not receive any instructions to the contrary, Caseville would be forced to spawn a monster for the first time in centuries.

The Caseville Core was level forty. The average level of its citizens was level thirteen. Beginning in a few days, Caseville would begin spawning level forty monsters to dispose of its excess miasma.

~~~~~~~

Tom stood over the shattered Core Stone, speechless. He had not been anticipating that to happen. Not at all. The core was level fifteen, and it should have easily been linked to his growing network. Instead it had shattered, and Alpha Core had nearly shattered as well; it had taken eleven damage and now had three health remaining.

For that matter, the rest of his network had suffered a significant amount of damage as well. Far more than Tom was expecting them too given the level of the Dungeon Core he was attempting to Link. What had gone wrong?

Then he realized. In his menu which showed his Linked Cores, if he scrolled down further, there were four more than he’d actually claimed.

“Oh no,” he said.

“Yeah, we already guessed ‘oh no’ when the Core Crystal exploded into shards,” Jessica commented. “Tom, what just happened?”

“This wasn’t a wild core,” Tom explained as he realized what he’d done. “It was a Sundered Core. The primary core that was associated with this one was higher level, level forty, and there were three more cores associated with it as well. The strain of trying to force all of those cores onto my network caused this Core to shatter.”

“So that’s it? It’s a waste of time? We just destroyed this dungeon and got nothing for it?” Sevin asked.

“No,” Tom answered. “I got progress for my quest. I’m now at six percent complete. Which is weird, because I added four cores to my network. I should be at nine percent.”

“That’s all very interesting,” Antoine said, “But we just killed this dungeon. That means we need to leave, now, before it collapses on our heads. Let’s get moving.”

~~~~~~~

This time, the Watcher did her job. She noticed the crystal changing color and quickly reported it, and then she noticed when the light began flashing. She noted that too. She measured exactly how long the light inside the crystal would flash for, and the intervals between flashes, and she reported that too. She continued to watch for changes in the crystal even as the king paced in the map room behind her, yelling at his subordinates to get a response team out to Caseville.

Yecha arrived moments later and escorted the king into the hall where the scry-mirrors were kept, where the connection with Madame Silva was already functional. The Winged Knight did not pause on ceremony before issuing her report.

“There has been a complication with Tom Weaver’s Quest,” she began.

“A complication? Does it have anything to do with Caseville?” Fenard asked immediately.

Silva blinked. “Yes it does. Tom has incidentally linked the Caseville Core Stone into his network, along with three others that he believe belong to outlying villages.”

“One of those is the control stone in the map room,” the king corrected her. “Although I did not realize that there were villages associated with Caseville’s stone. That is an oversight which might have been deadly. Silva, the caseville stone is flashing blue.”

Silva took the news in stride. “Allow me to give a full report, my liege.”

So she explained how Tom had attempted to link the zombie dungeon near Caseville into his network, only to accidentally kill the dungeon. She reported Tom’s claim that he had managed to establish a link with the Sundered Stones despite destroying the zombie Dungeon Core, and that Caseville was now listed in his menu despite the fact that he had never set foot in that city.

Fenard pinched the bridge of his nose as she concluded her report. “This is a wrinkle I was not expecting. One of the methods to tame cores is to dedicate one subcore as a dungeon outlet, while dedicating the rest for residential purposes. It seems that Tom is able to Link to all of the subcores at once with his ability. I do not think this would be a problem, except for the fact that it seems to put extreme stress on the cores used to establish the link between the Sundered Cores and the Network. Connecting Caseville to the network has caused an imbalance. We need to send Tom there to see if he can correct it. If not, the ten thousand people who live near that Core Stone will be in grave danger once it begins spawning monsters.”

Silva, for her part, saluted smartly. “We are a day away from that city, my king. We will depart immediately.”