Chapter 14

There were two problems that they encountered at Iota dungeon, the Core that Tom intended to claim after Theta dungeon. They had not even reached the dungeon yet when the first problem arose. Literally, they arose from the ground itself, three wraiths screaming and shaking their shackles at the party.

Rory and Sevin moved in the front to protect the others, and Tom quickly aimed and shot the wraith on the left with a bolt from his crossbow. The arrow, and the weapons of the warriors, passed harmlessly through the noncorporeal enemies. Sevin and Rory cursed, learning too late that although they could not harm the specters, the specters could hurt them, manifesting claws that pierced through their armors to leave deep scratches in their flesh.

Rory was able to defend against those attacks with his ability to reinforce himself and his armor with Stamina, but Sevin could only dodge the attacks. They attempted again to bring their weapons to bear, only for the mundane steel of Rory’s sword and Sevin’s spear to pass through them harmlessly once more.

Jessica entered the fight with a flash of fire. This, finally proved to be effective against the ghosts. Similarly, when Emil sent one of his rituals powered by an ethereal he had summoned at the ghost, the magical attack was very effective against the ghosts.

Together, the two vanquished the three wraiths.

“Nobody said anything about wraiths,” Sevin protested, shivering. It wasn’t fear, but an actual response to the cold, as the presence of the spirits had caused frost to appear around them.

“The dungeon was marked as ‘Undead, level twenty-seven’ on the list the king gave me,” Tom explained. “Wraiths are technically undead, but I wish it would have been a little more specific. Are you two alright?”

“I’m fine,” Rory said.

“I got a few scratches,” Sevin admitted.

“Come here, Sevin, and take your shirt off. I’ll heal you up,” Aisha said.

While Sevin was being healed, Emil began working on a ritual to solve their issues against the wraiths. It was a larger ritual, not one that he could fit onto his skin or his flash cards, so he had to draw it out on the flat stone that Tom Customized for him for the purpose.

The ritual was one of two that Emil knew which were effective against undead, and while neither ritual was a silver bullet, this one would allow the weapons of Rory, Sevin, Grant, and even Tom and Tom’s minions, to actually cause damage to the wraiths. Were it not for Emil’s possession of this spell, the party would have turned back. Instead, they focused on protecting Emil so that he could keep the ritual going while the enemy was dealt with by the rest of the party.

Antoine sat in the back of the group the entire while, chewing on the herb that would give him a slight buzz. He’d been as surprised as anyone by the ambush from the wraiths, but less worried about them once they’d been identified. His ability to freeze mana in his surroundings would have quickly dealt with them, let alone his level one hundred skill to shatter mana fields. And this was ignoring the simple fact that his sword was enchanted with a number of powerful enchants that would make it effective against noncorporeal enemies.

He spat on the ground while he watched Emil work.

With Antoine in the background, the rest of the party worked together to put an end to the haunting of Iota Dungeon. They were attacked repeatedly, but with Emil’s ritual in effect the Warriors were able to take the brunt of the action, with Jessica backing them up with magic and the monsters getting in a few hits for good measure. It took hours to find the core room, and when they finally did the party stood back and allowed Tom to do his thing.

He immediately linked Iota Core to his network. And he immediately discovered the second obstacle to easily claiming his twelfth core for his network. Iota core had been sundered in the past. Like the zombie dungeon that had been linked Caseville’s City Core and two smaller village cores, Iota core was linked to three different cities.

Both Alpha Core and Iota Core took significant damage, although Alpha was by this point strong enough to overcome most cores, and came out of the exchange with seven health. Iota, as a level twenty-seven core, took a significant amount of damage but did not come close to breaking like the Zombie dungeon core did. However, the moment Tom Collaborated with the core, he realized that there was something wrong with it.

“It’s hurt,” Tom said. “And confused. And I think it’s sick, somehow. It’s sort of like when I was talking to Alpha, it keeps repeating the same things over and over again. Except a lot of what it’s saying … I think that it’s experiencing a lot of errors.”

“Can you fix it?” Antoine asked.

Tom frowned. To begin with, he tried leveling the core to see if that would make it happy. It remained confused, hurt, and ill. So Tom gave it a dungeon ten floors deep to fill with ghosts and zombies. That resolved the ill-feeling that the dungeon was experiencing, but it remained confused and hurt. So Tom took things a step further and Evolved the dungeon as well.

Banshees were added to Tom’s network, a dangerous undead spirit with a scream that could literally inflict damage on those who heard it. Fortunately none had spawned yet. Tom set them to spawn in the deepest floor of the dungeon as a precaution, and before they left they put up signs warning that there were banshees in the dungeons depths.

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Tom, however, remained unsatisfied, because Iota Core remained unsatisfied. It took him until they were twenty miles away and after they had made camp to realize what the problem was.

He did not reach the conclusion on his own. He awoke to the sound of a little girl whispering.

“Hello Tom Controller age fourteen almost fifteen wake up I need to speak with you. Hello Tom Controller age fourteen almost fifteen wake up I need to speak with you. Hello Tom …”

“I’m awake, Alpha,” Tom said, sitting up in his sleeping roll. The ghostly avatar had been standing over him with its black eyes peering onto his face.

“With Iota I am twelve plus five,” Alpha said. “But four of the five are wrong. Two of the twelve should be stronger as well. You must fix the imbalances. Miasma must flow in all directions and not only one. We will not be strong enough once the connection is made if it is not distributed evenly. If it is not distributed evenly then the core nodes where it builds up will break, and then the next will break, and then the next will break until the entire system collapses.”

Tom blinked. “Alpha, I’m going to be honest, I am way too tired to understand what you just said.”

Alpha looked at him. “With Iota I am twelve plus five …”

She repeated the message for him multiple times before he thought he understood.

“The sundering, the way that they attribute a single outlet core,” Tom said. “That’s causing some sort of imbalance. In Miasma. Miasma is blight, isn’t it?”

“Miasma is evil intent. It is unsafe for human habitation. It is the purpose of dungeons to cleanse Miasma and make the world safe for humankind. And it is the role of humankind to clear dungeons to cleanse the miasma and make the world safe for Core Kind. This is the ancient compact of the first controllers,” Alpha explained. “This compact has been upheld since your people first came to this world, Tom Weaver Controller age fourteen almost fifteen. If the world core is not cleansed soon, then it shall break the compact.”

“Wait, repeat that for me again,” Tom said.

“Miasma is evil intent. …”

Tom had her repeat the words several times, going so far as to write them in his journal so that he had them for later. He probed her and got her to repeat the earlier information as well. Then he tried again for a peace of information which he desperately needed.

“Alpha, when we spoke before, you said that one of the networks was failing, and another was going to fail within a year from now. Velund is failing now. Which of the other networks is going to fail, Alpha?”

“It is not which is going to fail, it is which is going to fail first,” Alpha corrected. “They will all fail. It is necessary to tear the roots of the failed system out and start over from the beginning. That was why a progenitor was created. That is why Tom Weaver age fourteen was assigned the Controller class. Tom Weaver is the first Progenitor Candidate in three hundred years. The previous Progenitor Candidate died in Velund three hundred years ago. Cause of death; broken neck caused by hanging. Age fourteen almost fifteen. Name, Winter Greens.”

Tom swallowed. He wrote the name down, resolving to ask the monarchs about it when the opportunity arose.

“Is there anything else you can tell me to help?” Tom asked.

“Strengthen the links that are sundered,” Alpha said. “When Cores are sundered they are made less. They are supposed to be made more by Controllers but the more has not been happening. Make them More, Tom Controller age fourteen almost fifteen.”

“Okay,” Tom said. He wrote those words down as well.

He glanced around the camp, and he was surprised to realize that the guards that were supposed to be awake were dosing. He was more surprised that one of the guards was Antoine. “Did you make everyone else go to sleep?” he asked Alpha.

“I needed to speak with you, Tom Weaver age fourteen almost fifteen. It is not they who are sleeping but you.”

Tom Awoke with a start to find that the others were staring at him. A dream? No, another vision. Rushing for his pack, he pulled out his journal and rushed to write down everything he had just heard Alpha tell him. For real this time, and not just in a particularly vivid dream world.

To his mild embarrassment, Tom learned that he had been speaking in his sleep. To his relief, the words that he had been speaking were the words that he had meant to be writing. To his even greater relief, Antoine had written them down, and they now had two versions of Alpha’s message for them.

“That’s not the first time that this has happened, is it?” Antoine asked once they had finished comparing notes and finding them not identical, but closely compatible. Neither was certain which was the more authentic version, the one of Tom sleep-talking or his recollections upon waking.

“It’s happened once before,” Tom admitted. “I’m not certain if she only appears in my sleep, or if I was even asleep the time before. I know that my robe had grass stains on it when I woke the next morning, but if Alpha can make me sleep talk, perhaps she can make me sleepwalk as well.”

“We should get you a bell,” Jessica said, drawing several looks in her direction. “What? I had an uncle who sleepwalked. That’s what he used to do; he’d wear pajamas with bells on them. That way if his wife heard him jingling in the night she’d know where he was and be able to lead him back to bed.”

“She didn’t wake him up?” Sevin asked.

“I’m not certain you’re supposed to wake someone up if they’re sleepwalking. She said that she didn’t have to anyway. She’d just tell her sleeping husband that it was time to go to bed and he’d mumble and follow her back to their bedroom and that was it. But they lived together for twenty years before I died, so I guess they had time to figure stuff out like that,” Jessica explained.

“I guess if you guys notice me sleepwalking, just try to make sure I don’t walk into the fire or off a cliff or something?” Tom suggested. “I don’t know. I mean, I would say maybe try to wake me up but I’m not certain that’s a good idea. I mean, I don’t know why Jessica is saying not to, I mean because if Alpha is trying to talk to me then she might have something important to say.”

The conversation dwelt on the topic for some time. Eventually, everyone went back to sleep, except for the guards who were set to keep watch. Tom slept through the night, which was a surprise because he was supposed to keep third watch, but the others deemed that his sleep had been disturbed enough for the night and changed shifts to allow him to sleep through the night.

Sevin only agreed because he was hoping to catch Tom sleepwalking so that he could put burrs in the other boy’s bedding while he was wandering around. Unfortunately for him, he drew a double watch shift for no reason; Tom’s slumber for the rest of the night was peaceful, undisturbed by dreams or visions or black eyed little girls.