Chapter 53

Tom was surprised how comfortable he felt walking through the streets of Caseville. It was not the same level of comfort he felt while inside of a dungeon that he’d claimed, nor even while at his manor, with the comforting presence of Alpha Core nearby. But he did not feel the exposed feelings that he had come to associate with being outside of a dungeon for an extended period of time while on his trip south from Tilluth Valley.

“I think it’s because I accidentally claimed the city core,” Tom said after explaining the sensations to his companions. “I sort of feel exposed and vulnerable while I’m challenging a new dungeon as well, so I think maybe what I’m really feeling is the clash of my claimed core against one that I haven’t claimed. Maybe it has something to do with the network I’m forming. I don’t know.”

“So that’s how you’ve been interpreting it,” Antoine said. “It’s well known that Controllers feel most comfortable in dungeons or the territory of Cores they’ve Claimed, but in your case you carry a Core around with you most of the time. I have definitely noticed turbulence in the mana field while you bring two cores that are unrelated in close proximity of each other, but that goes away when you Link them. I was uncertain whether or not you were aware of this turbulence until you said something.”

“Yeah. I first noticed it when I went into town to get supplies with you guys and it just felt awkward,” Tom explained. “I thought it was because I’d left the dungeon, but now I think it’s because I didn’t claim the town core at the time.”

“If you had, it might have overpowered you and shattered Alpha core,” Antoine pointed out. “You have both gained levels since then.”

“Yeah, I know,” Tom agreed. “I’m just relieved that I don’t feel so exposed this time.”

They traveled through the small city. Emil had a notepad out and was scribbling notes and sketching as they went. Jessica was minding him, ensuring that he didn’t walk into anything or anything didn’t walk into him.

They had left the mounts in the care of Mark and Tony, along with Nolan, one of the winged knights, and the monsters in a burrow dug by Alpha Core. They didn’t want to stand out, so leaving the pegasi behind had been a necessisity, and it would have been awkward to ride double or have some of the party on foot while the rest rode. Tom had left Alpha behind as well, expanding it to its maximum size before allowing it to sit sedentary for a few days to stabilize itself. He planned to level it again to heal it once he returned.

The city of Caseville was not large, nothing like the sprawling metropolis of Profons. Tom had never actually been to Profons, however, which made Caseville the largest city that he had seen. He was not overly impressed. The buildings were mostly one or two story affairs, and for the most part the warehouse his family had owned in Tilluth village were larger. There were more people around, of course, but it was not so crowded that their party couldn’t navigate through the streets.

Despite having left the winged mounts behind, the party was quickly noticed by the natives. They were accosted by a pair of guards, who questioned them as to their purpose. Jessica was surprised at the diligence of the local constabulary, but the natives didn’t seem bothered. Silva presented her credentials as a knight of Welsius and promptly asked if anything strange had been going on in the last few days.

The guards exchanged glances, then the elder spoke. “There’s something wrong with the Core,” he admitted. “It changed color, and since then it’s been behaving strangely.”

“Define ‘behaving strangely,’” Silva pressed.

“It might be faster to show you,” the guardsman said, and he accompanied them to the Core. They arrived faster for having the guide, but they would have found the nine-foot tall monolith before long regardless.

They arrived to the scene of two men about to start brawling with each other.

“Give me my damn money, Jaques!” one was shouting.

“I’m trying to, dammit,” the other one, Jaques, shouted back. “You know I’m good for it, Yute. How about a little faith?”

“I’ve got faith in cold hard coin!” Yute answered. “Which you are decidedly lacking.”

The constables stepped in at this point, and both men backed down before it came to blows. They allowed them to be separated, and the elder of the constables motioned to the party.

“This is the sort of thing I was talking about,” the constable explained. “Ever since the core changed color, it hasn’t been accepting transactions like it’s supposed to. You can try it yourself if you’d like. Us guards have been breaking up near-fights like that constantly over the last few days. We’ve just been saying that it will get fixed soon, but no telling if that’s the truth or not.”

“That’s concerning,” Grant said, stepping forward and placing a hand on the Core. “I’d like to transfer five marks to Tom Weaver.”

Tom blinked at the message that popped up.

Grant Peterson wishes to transfer *$#5Error to you.

Network error. Unable to reach financial records.

Transaction canceled.

“It says network error,” Tom pointed out. “Do you think it’s because this Core is on my network, instead of the one that all the other cores are on?”

“I think that’s a real possibility,” Grant agreed. “And it’s a real problem, Tom. As I understand things, one of the important features of Core Stones is that they serve as a sort of pseudo-bank. I’m not entirely clear on all of the details, except that the king transferred five hundred marks to each of the heroes that you summoned. How exactly does one traditionally make a deposit?”

“There are several money-changing houses throughout the kingdom, but they ultimately report to the kingdom’s central bank,” Silva explained. “If you have excess coin that you wish to deposit for safekeeping, you take it to one of those locations. They validate the transaction and inform their local core of the deposit, after which point one can access their deposit from any Core in the nation. Except those of wild dungeons, of course. And, apparently, ones that have been Linked onto Tom’s new network.”

“This is going to be a huge problem, isn’t it?” Jessica asked. “I mean, the Cores have basically been working like ATMs for forever, right? But Tom’s ability takes them off of the internet, so they can’t access their bank records any longer. I mean, that seems like a bad thing if nobody can access their money or pay their bills, right?”

“It’s most concerning,” Grant agreed. “I’m not certain that there’s anything we can do about it for Caseville, however. Unless Tom has the ability to un-Link cores, at least.”

“If I do, I don’t know how it works,” Tom admitted. “I don’t know how to fix this. But I’ll try.”

Tom stepped forward and began communing with the Core Stone, placing one hand on it to bring up the menu.

Core Name

Caseville

Controller Options:

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Link

Level

40

Level

HP

30/45

Expand

Mana

17225/18000

Reduce

Territory

816 kM^2

Evolve

Floors

1

Summon

Inhabitants

11624 humans

Spawn

Experience

7.8*10^14

Customize

Seed

There was nothing obvious in the main menu, but then there hadn’t been any obvious way to increase the number of floors until he’d stumbled upon it either. Of all of his abilities, Customize had the most nuance and depth to it, and he still hadn’t explored it completely. So he selected Customize.

After exploring the menus that populated for some time, he discovered an option listed as ‘financial records.’ He selected that, and it prompted him to ‘define currency.’ He frowned at that, but he entered the conversion rates that he remembered. One mark equals four quarters. One quarter was eight shillings. Four farthings was one shilling. The system dutifully accepted the definitions, translating them into decimal notations of each other.

Once he had everything entered, he tried to initiate a transfer.

“I wish to transfer one farthing to Grant Peterson,” Tom said. The system message popped up asking him to confirm his intent.

“It worked that time,” Grant said. “I just got a notification.”

“Go ahead and accept it,” Tom said. He then went to check his balance, but he could only frown at that.

It listed his balance as negative 0.0078125 marks. He should have about ten thousand to his name, mostly ‘spending money’ gifted to him by the king. Tom thought about the problem for a minute.

“You can use the stone to record transactions now,” he informed the constable, “But it still won’t access the central bank. I think that the only way to get this fixed is for the local bank to manually put in everyone’s current balance.”

The constable’s eyebrows went up. “Young man, do you have any idea how much time and effort that will cost them?”

Tom simply shrugged. “I’m just reporting the options as I see them.”

Silva stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll contact the banks and have them investigate this matter for you, Tom. It’s very concerning that your cores do not have access to financial records, but perhaps it’s not to be unexpected. One of the things which separates the six kingdoms is that we each have our own financial records. It seems that the new network your Quest has you creating will do much the same.”

“So I’m going to be causing this problem throughout the kingdom?” Tom asked.

“Not if we only claim wild cores,” Silva said. “But I expect that this problem will happen to any city that is claimed, either intentionally or accidentally, as Caseville was claimed. Were it not a system quest, we might ask you to stop linking cores onto this new network. However, the system’s desires supersede our own, and so the crown will have to find a way of managing the issue going forward. Now that we are aware of the problem we will begin seeking a solution, but it’s not something that you’re expected to solve on the spot, Tom.”

“That’s a relief, because I really have no idea how to fix it,” Tom admitted.

“While this is very concerning, I’d like to remind everyone that we came here to investigate how the city would react to the destruction of the Zombie Dungeon,” Antoine pointed out. He turned to the constables and asked “Have there been any sightings of monsters lately? Or perhaps people have begun suddenly going missing?”

“Nothing like that,” the elder constable said. “Just the trouble with the Core Stone is all.”

“They’re the same problem,” Antoine said. “Tom, the Core is confused right now. But if the king is right about the Zombie Dungeon being the outlet for Caseville’s Core, then it’s only a matter of time before it begins spawning monsters in the city. How will you resolve this problem?”

Tom frowned at the reminder. “The only way I can think of is to create a dungeon,” he said after a minute, “And trying to teach the Core to spawn its monsters inside of there. It seemed to work with Alpha Core. The entire time we were at my manor, it never once spawned a monster outside of the dungeon.”

Antoine nodded. “It’s worth a shot. Silva?”

Silva frowned. “While I dislike the idea of opening a powerful dungeon underneath of a city, I don’t see many options. It’s either that or wait until monsters begin spawning in the streets. Tom, using my authority as a knight, I hereby authorize you to create a dungeon under Caseville.”

Tom nodded. “Alright then,” he agreed.

He touched the monolith to refresh his connection, and he began customizing. A hole opened up in the ground nearby, and the two constables just about fell over in their shock.

“What’s all this now?” the older one exclaimed. It took both Antoine and Silva working together to calm him down.