“The Crown first and foremost would like to extend its warmest welcome to you. It hopes that our association will be long and mutually beneficial. I would also like to add that the Adventurer Society would like to thank you for sparing the assessment team. They were-”
“YOU WOULD DARE PRESUME TO SPEAK FOR THE ADVENTURER SOCIETY?!” A voice boomed.
A man flashed from the sky, smashing a crater in the ground so wide the resulting wave of dirt nearly buried the archway. When the dust settled, it showed him holding a perfect three-point landing. Waiting just long enough for the sheer awesomeness of the pose to sink into his audience’s psyche, he stood to his feet. He was a giant of a man, seven feet tall if he was an inch. His large, bushy black beard contrasted sharply with his pale skin. Unlike his counterpart, he wore heavily enchanted gear clearly made for battle, contrasting sharply with Zimisite’s rich court apparel.
“Sigmundr.”' Zimisite said the name with disdain, like the word was dirty in his mouth.
“You dare to show your face here!? This is the Adventurer Society's domain, and you know it!” The man’s every word seemed to be a shout, despite the quiet atmosphere.
“I was not informed the Society would be sending a representative.”
“Ha! So I suppose you’ll just be leaving then?!”
Zimisite remained silent, glaring at the newcomer.
“Who are you?” The words came out in a small, half strangled voice as I watched two people who could probably rip me apart about to throw it down literal feet from me.
“I am the director of the local Adventurer Society!”
“Then who’s he?” Sigmundr smirked at the question, glancing over at Zimisite.
“Indeed, who are you?!”
Zimisite sighed.
“I am the representative of the Crown in this affair. We wish to enter into a pact with Granite here. As I was saying-”
“A PACT! WITH THE CROWN!?” At this point, I could feel my nonexistent ears bleeding.
“Yes, a pact. Isn’t that why you're here?”
“Ha! There's a heck of a difference between… ”
As the two began to bicker, I kept one ear on the conversation while I scrambled to reinforce my walls, sealing the shaft that led to the surface while infusing a good third of my mana into strengthening the stone around me. I didn’t know these people or their motivations, but as soon as the man said he was the director of the local Adventurer Society, I knew I was in way over my head. When the two finally noticed my silence, they calmed down, coming to a sort of truce.
“Dungeon?” It was the first time I had heard Sigmundr not shout something.
“Zimisite darkened this archway before Sigmundr ever approached. It is only right and proper that he is allowed to present his case first in the natural and proper course and nature of things.” I was doing my best impression of their formal speech, but their confused glances told me I’d messed up. Zimisite shook it off and stepped forward.
“As I was saying, the Crown would like to negotiate for the right to purchase items and materials. The Crown recognizes the potential in Cores and would like to propose a trade. In exchange for a regular supply of materials, the Crown will ensure you remain unharmed and there will always be mortals to walk your dungeon. In addition, we will spread your fame far and wide, attracting many more people to your hall than a new dungeon could ordinarily engender. We will provide you with materials… ”
Sigmundr had a perpetual grimace on his face, but remained silent as Zimisite continued to talk about all the benefits a deal with the Crown would offer. I was moderately interested, but not wildly enthusiastic. I did wonder how a situation like this came about. Did the Adventurer Society really have so much power and influence that they could directly clash with the Crown over something as unimportant as a new Core?
What had started out as a dry proposal had morphed into a truly epic speech that probably would have moved any mortal audience to tears over the glory and prestige of the Crown. Zimisite used intractable logic, beautiful metaphors, and appeals to my natural sense of loyalty to the rulers of the land.
Bla bla bla.
Honestly, all I cared about the crown was what they could do for or to me. I had no illusions about the authority this man held, that there would be real consequences for turning down his offer. No matter what the Adventurer Society offered, ticking off the kingdom you were stuck in was generally a very bad idea. I was about to open my mouth to accept the man’s offer when something strange happened.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Sigmundr, who had somehow managed to fall asleep on a nearby burnt stump (cough cough, wonder how that got there?), suddenly jerked his head up and glared at Zimisite, who stopped his speech mid word and suddenly looked very, very nervous.
“By the horn of the Red-Eyed Nether Lizard you people are despicable.”
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Ryia once more tried to rise.
She didn’t know how many times she had attempted it, all that was left to her rapidly fading consciousness was to rise, to not fail her Core again. Because Granite was her Core, even if she hadn’t been acting like it. If anyone was going to tell him what to do it would be her.
She could feel herself fading, feel the chaotic mana corroding her intangible body away, but she refused to stop. As she neared the surface for what she knew would be the last time, she once more felt an A rank aura wash over her. She braced herself for the inevitable rebuttal, the unstoppable end, but was shocked when it never came. It took her long seconds to realize this aura was different than that of the other, but she had no time to wonder about it as she finally, finally broke the surface, rising to hover in front of Granite’s domain.
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Out of the blue, Ryia flitted from the ground to hover in front of my archway.
She looked terrible. Like, really, REALLY terrible. Like how-are-you-still-alive type terrible. Her light, formally enough to illuminate a small room, was now so dim I could only tell it was her by her mana signature. Her color, normally a very pale shade of yellow, was now corroded by splotches of red and black, to the point she was visually unrecognizable. Even her mana signature had shifted, somehow informing me that she’d recently gone through something… bad. When she spoke even my senses, with the ability to pick up sound on a molecular level, strained to make her out.
“I’m… sorry.” She went eerily still, the tiny ripples in her mana that told of her thoughts, emotions, and feelings suddenly gone. The little orb of light that was Ryia slowly drifted with the breeze, coming to rest next to Sigmundr. He stood from the stump he’d been on, a look of fury and, surprisingly, pity written across his face. He turned his gaze on Zimisite, who’s face had gone completely blank.
“You poor fool.”
Sigmandr whispered the words, the pure distilled malevolence in them enough to freeze flame. But I barely noticed, all my attention on the still form of Ryia. Corrosive mana had begun eating away at her, her ethereal body particularly susceptible. When it had overwhelmed her normal mana storage, it had eaten at the mana that made up her being. The pain and trauma had shredded her consciousness, leaving only a decaying ball of mana behind.
She wasn’t dead yet, but it wouldn’t be long.
For the first time in my life, I felt truly and completely helpless. There was no technique that could cure this, no pill to make it all go away. The very fabric of her being was under attack, and all I could do was sit back and watch. It is said that anger is just sadness taking action. And right then, you would not believe how sad I was. It is also said that making even a weak dungeon angry is generally a bad idea.
I turned my gaze on the two representatives in front of me, and for some reason they both took a step back.
“Who did this?”
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Zimisite was a practical man.
Over the centuries of his existence he’d been called many things, a tyrant, a heartless murder, a conniving schemer, but that was the word he used to describe himself. Practical. When he’d heard of the new Physics Core and his assignment to it, his first thought was that he had angered some high-ranking senator. But after he had been informed of the…history of Physics Dungeons, he’d understood.
Things had been going well, the dungeon had seemed amenable to negotiation and strangely absent a bonded wisp, and for a moment Zimisite had thought this mission would be easy. Then that musclebound fool of a cultivator had shown up just as the wisp in question arrived. It had taken every ounce of aura control he possessed to rebuff the wisp without alerting either the Core or the other cultivator, and he had almost pulled it off. But apparently the Adventurer Society taught more than hitting things with pointy sticks.
Zimisite was unable to comprehend why the man would help a wisp, certainly experienced with negotiations and the subtlety of wording, enter the purview of a Core. All it would gain the man was harder bargaining terms.
But as the dungeon turned its gaze onto Zimisite, he understood why the Adventurer-why all Adventurers treated dungeons with such reverence. Cores were beings made of the magic of the world, able to influence the ambient mana because they, in their most basic form, were expressions of mana itself. While they could only act on mana aligned with their type, they were still powerful in their element. And what was the element of a Physics Dungeon?
Everything.
As the Core focused on him, he felt the mana around him stir. And not just the ambient mana, but all mana; from the ground to the trees to the air itself. The blood drained from his face as he realized that, to his horror, even his own mana responded to the dungeon's will, rising within him and forcing him to answer the dungeon’s question.
“It was I.”
Every particle of mana within a five-mile radius lurched, including the mana that made up his body. His blood fled, the air shredded his skin, the earth shattered upwards, the mana, once peaceful, suddenly became corrosive as it burned his cultivation alive. The A ranker, standing close to the pinnacle of cultivation, only had enough time to open his mouth to scream before the molecules that made up his being ripped themselves to pieces, his body dissolving into a cloud of ambient mana, fueling pillar of burning energy that scorched the sky. The archway was turned to slag, the heat eroding the very ground itself as the trees for two hundred paces instantly erupted in flame. The last wisps of the A rankers mana burned bright and angry, before finally succumbing to the inferno around it, converted to flame mana.
Thus passed Zimisite, elder of the Blowing Leaf style, representative of the Crown, and High A ranker.
Within ten years, his name would be forgotten.