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Jack of it All
Chapter 60

Chapter 60

I was happy when Sienna grabbed the red core and hoped it would offer her the same fireball that the goblin had thrown. Both because it would keep her to the back lines and out of danger and also because it would be a major upgrade in our firepower. Aspen had chosen the gold core, and I had to wonder how good of a fit it was going to be for him. Typically in the wuxing system; metal represents discipline, order, and focus and how much was a twelve year old boy really going to exhibit those attributes? I thought about trying to stop him but decided that in the end, it wasn’t my place to say. To be fair he had just been through a horribly traumatic experience, so If those cores are more likely to help strengthen those feelings then maybe it would be good for him.

In that case, do I need to worry instead about Sienna taking a fire core? If that was going to encourage destructive tendencies how might that go? Forcing myself to stop my instinctive desire to interfere and make sure they were making the right choice, I instead sat back and let them continue on. I just don’t have enough information to bring myself to question their choices. Forcing myself not to butt in and ‘help’ with their selection was hard, but I managed to keep my mouth shut, it was helpful knowing that they wouldn’t be able to understand what I was saying anyway.

I watched as they picked up their chosen stones was almost mesmerizing as they moved with so much care. They picked them up so gently, almost like they thought if they did the slightest movement wrong the cores would shatter. After retrieving their selections they both sat cross legged on the ground and held them up to eye level, seeming to examine them in detail before staring off into the distance. With nothing but walls and glowing mushrooms around us, I found myself wondering what they were doing. Having no idea what I looked like when at the times I found myself disappearing into my core, I had to consider that maybe I looked just as distracted.

Fortunately, I continued to watch them instead of glancing around to see what they might be looking at, or I would have missed it when the cores dissolved into light and melted into their bodies. All I could do was hope that was what was supposed to happen as the light disappeared so quickly I had no chance to prevent it, not that I would have done that. It just goes against a parent’s instinct to see a rock melt into a child and not try to stop it.

I noticed that the red light dove into Sierra’s head, while Aspen’s golden light went into his navel area. Taking that to mean the girl was going to follow the mage’s path, I wondered if the boy would be seeing an increase in size. The Wood and Earth cores I had found in the bruiser’s had both been in the stomach area, while the spear holder’s metal core had been underneath the heart, which had me wondering if the boy was making a mistake. Wishing I had a wiki I could dive into, I hated that events weren’t letting me speak to them before they were making life altering decisions.

I was too used to my own kids acting like idiots every chance they could. That isn’t to say they weren’t smart as a whip, but I’ve always found that the smarter someone is, the bigger of a mistake they will make when they are blindsided because they were sure they knew all of the answers.

Watching them collapse to the ground, I was about to jump forward and shake them awake. But when I looked at their sister standing there like nothing was wrong, I had to assume that this was what was supposed to happen. Sighing I looked over to her and held out a piece of the dried fruit which she eagerly took and immediately stuffed into her mouth, quickly holding her hand out for another bite. Hearing the bear get up behind me, I pulled out another couple of pieces for him as well, already knowing he was going to ask. Taking a piece for myself, I tucked the rest of the package away in my pocket for later. Looking at the two bodies slumped over, I wondered if I was supposed to move them to be more comfortable but in the end decided against it. I would hate to mess up their gains because I was being stupid. The most that they would get laying like that was a sore neck and that sounded better to me than a broken core so I left them alone for now.

Not knowing how long they were going to be out, I decided to leave Lotus to her vigil and refill our water reserves while I had the time. So I got out both the bucket and filter baskets I had made in the rabbit glade. Turning to bring them across the room to the water that was dribbling down from the ceiling I found myself stopping in shock. All of the bodies had disappeared! I was positive I hadn’t heard anything come in and take them, and besides anyone coming into the room almost certainly would have attacked us based on everything I had observed in monster behavior so far. Dropping the implements for now, I felt Gaian bounding to my side as he picked up on my alarm. Grabbing my spear I started walking around the perimeter of the room, looking out through all of the tunnels but not seeing any drag marks to indicate the bodies had been taken that way. Part of me wanted to stick my spear through the openings to see if they were an illusion, but I was hesitant to do so while the kids were still out. If that was something that started a wave of monsters I wanted us to be at full strength when they attacked.

Walking over to the center of the room, I could still see where the blood was still puddled on the ground indicating this was where I had butchered the elites. I jumped up and down several times but didn’t even get the slightest feeling that something might be wrong with the floor. Running the point of the spear’s blade through the dirt certainly had me thinking it was solid and that there weren’t any trapped doors.

Running over to our packs, I had to check that the weapons and shield I had looted were still there, as everything else the goblins had been carrying and wearing had disappeared with the bodies. I was relieved to see the weapons I had appropriated were still all where I had left them. Sighing at yet another mystery, I resolved not to put my spear anywhere it might be grabbed. Looking at the bear’s and my packs I thought about putting mine on, but they hadn’t been taken yet and there was no way I was going to be able to wear it every second of our time here.

Going back to my plan I placed the baskets so it was pulling some of the water from the wall and put the bucket underneath to hold it. With four layers of baskets woven together, there were three chambers, holding everything together. First, there was moss to catch most of the particulates, followed by charcoal and sand to help filter out everything else. Only having charcoal from the fire I was sure it wasn’t as good as activated charcoal. But that was impossible to make on your own so I was just trusting this to do the best it could. I was sure the earth was already doing a good enough job already but I figured if I spent the time making it, I might as well use it.

As the basket started filling up, I moved it backward a bit until it seemed like the level of incoming to draining started holding even. Leaving it alone for now I headed back over to Lotus who was sitting next to her siblings apparently happy to ignore my strange behavior. Deciding to work on my dexterity with nothing better going on, I picked up three rocks and started juggling. Not having done it in ages I was constantly dropping one to the little girl’s delight. Every dropped rock elicited a small giggle, so I was happy to keep going for now. I really wished I hadn’t knocked myself unconscious with that flower when Gaian absorbed his own core so I had a better idea of how long this would take. Although he had swallowed his, instead of turning into light and absorbing it, so I wasn’t sure how good of a metric that was for understanding.

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After about a couple of hours, I could feel myself getting hungry, but I just didn’t want the magic to stop. I had found that the more I practiced the more I was improving, and while that was true of most things in life, the rate I was finding I was improving at was bordering on insane. I was up to six rocks now, and they had been in the air for almost fifteen minutes now, on earth the best I had ever managed had only been four, and that had lasted all of fifteen seconds before I lost track and they all came clattering down.

Calling out to Lotus, she took her cue and tossed up another rock to add to the difficulty, and despite almost losing the whole group I managed to keep everything going. I don’t know for sure if I was getting stronger but I could now say with some certainty that whatever the green stuff was I was taking in, it was definitely doing something to improve my body. Or it was the results of my time in the ball… or it was my newfound cores inside of me. I hated not having definitive answers! No matter what was going on I knew I was improving, but without a way to isolate the factors I feared I would never have definite answers.

At a sudden scream from Lotus, all the rocks came clattering down as I quickly dove for my spear, only to stand up sheepishly as I realized she had just noticed her sister waking up. Looking at the amazement that was starting to form in Sienna’s eyes, I could see what was coming a mile away. I was sure if I had awoken magical powers when I was a kid the first thing I would have done was test them out. Not wanting to summon any more enemies until we were ready for them, I called out her name, waving my arm across me to signal not to do it right now. I was surprised when she dropped her hands without any of the belligerence my own kids would have shown at not being able to throw fire around, or myself for that matter…

When it seemed like her brother wasn’t going to immediately awaken as well, I decided to break out some food. Pulling out more of the jerky and dried fruit, I also grabbed one of the water skins I had recently refilled. Handing everything out, I wondered if Sienna would be able to have any kind of control over her magic or if it was one size fits all. Trying to mime it took a little bit of time, but eventually, I got my point across. She seemed to once again be accessing her core area as she started staring off into space. It was a little odd to me that it took so long because every time I had gone into mine, it seemed like everything was happening instantaneously and I would step back out with no one else being the wiser. But I also had spent subjective millennia building it, so maybe I just learned to ignore the perception of time in that space.

When she came back out she waved her hands no and I wondered if it was worth the hassle of suggesting she try to modify it on her own. In the end, I held off. With the lack of clarity in all of our conversations and the devotion they seemed to show to me, there was too much room for a misunderstanding. If she were to take it as some kind of order from her boss, there was too much of a chance of her hurting herself in her enthusiasm to succeed for me. In the end, it was just an idle thought and when playing with fireballs, fourteen year olds perhaps weren’t the best ones to be doing said experiments. Whatever a misspent childhood playing with fireworks unsupervised might tell me to the contrary.

As Aspen finally woke up and joined us, he and his siblings began to talk excitedly, when they asked for my spear I was a little hesitant, but in the end passed it over as I still had a second one on the off chance things went wrong and he destroyed it. I was hesitant at first, especially after denying Sienna the chance to show off her spell, but after several attempts at charades, it seemed like they didn’t think this would cause a commotion. Handing the weapon over, the boy held it in his hands for a second with his eyes closed and I watched in awe as the blade seemed to grow bigger. Not much, it only added on maybe another six inches, while widening the blade by an inch, but in a fight with identical weapons that could make all the difference.

Taking it out of his hands to examine I was disappointed to see the modifications didn’t stick once he relinquished the weapon. Guessing it to be some kind of energy field he was overlaying, it looked like the spell would only be usable by him. He hadn’t seemed to have gained any height or weight with the absorption by the core, but maybe that was just how humans were supposed to react. I guess we didn’t get an instant evolution and power up. When I handed him a club to try it on, it refused to activate, so it looked like he would be trading up and inheriting the newly acquired spear. I handed him the shield to hold as well as he was about the same size as the evolved bashers. Holding it for a couple of minutes he seemed to be okay but after around five he had to set it down as the weight grew too much for him.

Telling him to put it away for now, I made a mental note to work on increasing his endurance later. For now, it was time to figure out where we wanted to go next in this labyrinth we had entered. The room had three exits, two were across the room from where we had come from while the third tunnel was maybe ten feet to the right of our entrance. The two across the room had a downhill cant to them that the water was running out of while it seemed like the one to the right looked to be pretty level. Taking that as the best way to escape, I decided we would go that way to start. Taking a right also seemed to agree with all the lore I had ever read so maybe the collective wisdom of Terra would hold true here as well. The quicker we got out of here before we ran into something we couldn’t handle the better.

Pulling my pack on, I held the bear’s pack to steady it as he shrugged it on, and we continued our journey walking in the same order we had entered this room. Only I swapped the older two kids around as it seemed better for the mage to be in the middle. Aspen had already lengthened the blade of his new spear, and he seemed pretty confident he could hold the spell for an extended period of time. Trusting him that it wasn’t too much of a burden, we headed into the tunnel. Without the water coming this way, the glow started to diminish, while there were still mushrooms shooting out the occasional glowing spore that had me slightly worried, the lichen the goblins hadn’t trampled around the edges didn’t seem to extend to this tunnel.

As we moved with a silence that wouldn’t have been possible had we brought along any kids of their age that I knew, I soon started hearing noises that indicated our next test was up ahead. Leaning slowly around the next corner, I saw that there was another room about a hundred yards further down the corridor. The tunnel seemed to be opening up directly into the room which would leave us with no cover as we approached it. But from the sounds coming from the room, it didn’t seem like the goblins were paying any attention to our tunnel despite the sounds of the previous struggle that had to have reached here. Either our long break had confused them or they weren’t the best creatures to have standing guard for long periods of time.

In true dungeon fashion, it looked like the difficulty of this was going to be a little harder than our first fight, but it wasn’t ramping up at an obscene rate. Two more elites had been added to this group while four of the fodder goblins had been removed leaving us with a total of fifteen to deal with in the upcoming room. The two added elites were another mage and another spear holder which gave them two of everything. From what I saw there was a group of four and a group of five fodder to either side of the room and they looked to be cheering on their favorite basher who had their shields pressed together and were having a shoving contest.

With the kids updated gear and spells this was going to be difficult, but if we could capitalize on the surprise we should be able to do this without too much trouble. Part of me was really wishing I had let Sienna practice her spell so we knew exactly how it was going to react. Heading to each of them, I first whispered to the bear his assignments before playing a quick game of charades with the kids to give them theirs. I had tried to find out from Sienna if we left the bags behind and if the dungeon could claim them while we were gone, but apparently, she wasn’t of the right class of people to know. Either that or she wasn’t willing to tell me something she was uncertain of and risk being wrong.

I appreciated her willingness to be honest rather than try to lie even if it meant we were going to have to take a bigger risk and rush to the room to drop our stuff. Sticking my spear into one of the bear’s bags for now, I held two of the extra goblin clubs we had found in one hand, while my right had hold of the dagger that had been passed to us by an incredibly brave woman. I was determined to see that it spilled its share of goblin blood.