"And that is … what exactly?" Ari was obviously very excited about this "dungeon seed" thing, but I had no idea what it was. Perhaps it was somewhat similar to a dungeon core?
Ari had to visibly calm herself down as she got ready to explain. "A dungeon seed is an item produced by something called a mana tree. They went extinct long ago, but a few dungeon seeds still exist, and occasionally a dungeon finds one. Most powerful dungeons have at least a few mobs out looking for dungeon seeds, they are incredibly useful to a dungeon of any strength. Finding one this early is quite possibly the best thing that could have happened for you."
She thought for a second. "Each dungeon seed has two ways it can help the dungeon. The first is if the dungeon absorbs it. This will generally give a benefit directly to the core's abilities in some way. The other option is to bond with it, somewhat similar to the bond with me, except the seeds aren't sentient beings. This way, the seed will become an object of some kind that will grow with the dungeon. Some dungeons have gotten a powerful weapon they arm their final boss with, others have gotten various magical items with different purposes, some have even gotten a body for their core. In any case, the item increases in strength with the core it's bonded to, so you never outgrow the item. Look closely at the seed to see what the absorption benefit would be. You never know what kind of an item the seed will become until you choose to bond with it instead of absorb it."
Ari made it sound like bonding was the better option. I looked closely at the seed. Nothing happened. Then I realized she probably meant to look at it in a different way than normal. I tried to focus my vision on the seed, something I hadn't tried to do since getting the 360° vision from being a core. Suddenly a box popped up, like when Ari tried to create the bond with me or when I pulled up my menu.
Dungeon seed!
Absorption bonus:
Maximum essence ×5,
All essence collected from influence ×5
Absorb
Bond
I wasn't sure what a normal bonus was, but that was insane. A ×5 bonus to all essence I collected from my influence sounded great! To be fair, Ari had made it sound like much of my essence gains would eventually be from adventurer deaths, but still. Especially for now that would be an incredible benefit! "It says it would increase my maximum essence and essence collected from my influence by a factor of 5."
Ari's eyes almost popped out of her head again. "By 5!?!" She went over and looked at the seed herself. "Congratulations on your first time examining something, that's how you can get information about it without absorbing it. It is how adventurers gain information about things in your dungeon. As far as the seed goes, that's an incredible benefit. Just the bonus to maximum essence is really good. The bonus to essence produced by your influence is more helpful now than later, but even then your influence isn't an inconsequential part of your essence generation. It would take an impressive item to compete with this bonus, so it's up to you."
I thought of the saying "better one bird in the hand than two in the bush." As I was about to hit absorb, I had the strangest feeling. It was as if I felt a tiny voice call out to me. It was there and gone in an instant, but I knew that whatever it was didn't want me to absorb the seed. I sat there thinking for a moment. The bonus from absorbing the seed might be exactly what I needed to help the humans. Still, there was that voice. So desperate. Pleading, begging, that I not absorb the seed. I thought for one last second, before deciding that I'd bond with the seed. Maybe it was a mistake, but my gut was telling me to bond the seed. I selected Bond, ready to see what glorious item it would become. I saw a trickle of light flow from my core toward the seed, just like when Ari created the bond with me. When it reached the seed, I saw a new box pop up.
Bond created!
Essence: 0/2000
I wasn't quite sure what that meant. Perhaps it was some kind of essence storage device? That could be useful! "I bonded with it. I think it may be some kind of essence storage device."
Ari smiled sadly and nodded. "That could be useful! Depending on what you can do with the essence stored within it this could be a very useful item. Even if it just increases your essence capacity, that's still pretty good."
I wasn't sure why she seemed a bit sad, but I hoped it wasn't because I chose to bond the seed. And for the benefit, I sure hoped it was going to be more than that, because I was less excited about the storage increase than the ×5 benefit to essence generation I would've gotten from absorbing it. Still, I'd made my decision and there was no point looking back. I opened my dungeon menu to see if I had any essence to test putting it in the seed.
Alex Johnson
Earth Core - G8
Essence - 1/60
Core generation - 3/hour (2/hour to bond)
Dungeon generation - 3 per hour
Dungeon actions:
Increase influence
Absorb matter
Create item
Create mob
Turns out the seed was taking essence on its own. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but there wasn't anything I could do about it now. I also tried in some way to put the 1 essence I had into the seed, but it wouldn't go. In fact, I couldn't seem to do anything with the seed. I was starting to regret not absorbing it. Especially since I realized I was now getting 6 essence per hour where I would've been getting 20. "Well, I can't seem to do anything with the seed. And it's taking 2 of my essence per hour. I guess it's back to increasing my influence, right?"
Ari nodded. "I've never heard of a seed becoming something useless, we'll just have to figure out what it does. Until then, yep. Time to start hollowing out rooms. One tip. First, you can push your influence into the rock a little ways before it starts becoming more difficult and essence expensive, so always keep a buffer around the area where you're hollowing out. This time a dungeon seed fell out of the wall where you couldn't see, next time it might be an enemy, and you're not ready for that yet."
That made sense. I would want to avoid burrowing into any areas with living creatures for now, until I had some way of defending myself. I settled in for a long time of pushing essence out.
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It had been nearly a week since I had found the dungeon seed. In that time I'd expanded my influence quite a bit. As Ari had explained, the more influence I had, the faster I got essence. Still, I was already noticing diminishing returns on the essence I was putting out. Ari explained this was because the area near me was actually the only area I pulled essence from, but the essence in the rest of my influence would slowly flow towards my core. Thus, my core room would slowly increase in essence density, bringing me more essence per hour as my influence grew.
Fortunately I hadn't had any problems with boredom during this time. Turns out being a core somehow reduced my sense of time passing. I could focus just as well as before, but if I was just waiting for something to happen I'd lose track of time until either it happened or something grabbed my attention. Ari also was spending a lot of time in hibernation, which basically meant she would fall asleep on top of my core until either a set amount of time had passed or I said something to her. She'd explained that she actually didn't need sleep, she could stay awake and alert indefinitely, so I didn't feel bad if I had to wake her up early.
Everything had been going well, but now I had a bit of a problem. "Hey Ari?"
Ari opened her eyes and sat up where she'd been resting on my core. "Yeah?" She asked as she twisted back and forth to pop her back.
"I've finished the first tunnel you told me to make, and there weren't any problems, but now I'm trying to make the first room." She'd called that the boss room and had explained that my strongest mob would stay there.
Ari smiled. "Great! You're making good progress! What's the problem?"
I looked at the end of the tunnel I'd made. Turned out what I'd thought was a tunnel was only about a foot long, but I'd extended it another 100 feet or so and added some curves and spots I planned to add more rooms later. Ari had explained that these would be rooms designed to kill anyone who entered them. The adventurers trying to get loot and essence would stop after my boss room, only enemies trying to capture or kill my core would go beyond that. At this point the whole tunnel was relatively narrow, Ari had recommended I only build my first large room far enough away from my core that if there was an accident there I would be fine. The problem came as I reached the place I wanted to build this first room. "The whole tunnel was through solid stone. The area I want to be my boss room, however, is soil of some kind."
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Ari frowned. "So what's the problem?"
Now I was confused. "If I start hollowing out a large pocket in the dirt, it'll definitely collapse."
Ari smiled. "Oh, now I get it. There are three ways to prevent your rooms from collapsing. The first is the easiest. Any matter in your influence will obey your wishes to some extent. You can't make a rock start floating, but if you want the dirt to support the roof, it will support more than it normally would."
That made some sense. I had some control over the area, so if I just told the roof to not collapse, it wouldn't. But I still wasn't sure how much dirt could hold, even if it was holding more than it normally could.
Ari continued. "This works for most moderately large rooms, especially when it's good dirt or clay. But for larger rooms without supporting columns or in materials like sand, you need something better. This leads us to another of your abilities. You can replace one type of material in your dungeon with another type you have the pattern for. So what most dungeons will do if they want to create a large room is they will tunnel up to where they want the roof to be. Then they work horizontally across what will be the roof, changing the top to stone. Stone will hold up almost any room you want when boosted by your influence. Then they go down around the edges of the new room, creating walls from stone in the same way. Then all that remains is to extend your influence into the space in the middle of the room and absorb the material, then change the floor to stone if you want uniformity."
As I thought about it, that made sense. I had forgotten that I could create stone using nothing but some time and my will. And her process made sense. You'd have to build the roof first, since it was going to be holding the most weight, then the walls to hold up the roof. The floor was kind of optional, but still probably a good idea. I didn't want to have accidental sinkholes in my dungeon.
Ari still continued. "The final option is the strongest by far, but is also the most time and essence expensive. You can push your essence into stone to increase your control over it. Once you add this additional essence, the stone is nearly impossible to damage, it would take a C tier adventurer with a sledgehammer some time to do any noticeable damage to your essence infused rock, and you can add more essence as you grow stronger, making it even stronger."
This gave me a whole horde of questions. "Why don't I just encase my core in this dungeon hardened stone? In fact, come to think of it, why do I have a tunnel leading to my core at all?"
Ari nodded. "Good question. Have you noticed that if you try to push your influence too far into the surrounding rock, it becomes far harder?"
I sent a mental affirmative. I could go a few feet into the rock, but then it felt like the bounce house I was pressing on became twice as pressurized, and it ate up my essence far quicker to continue expanding.
Ari continued. "That is one reason why dungeons keep a path to their core. The reason they use a path large enough for adventurers is two-fold. First, a narrow tunnel makes it slower for the essence to reach your core, decreasing the essence you get each hour. Second, the adventurers don't trust a core that tries to block all access to itself."
That second reason rubbed me a bit wrong. "So I have to endanger myself just because the danger tells me to?" That didn't seem very fair.
Ari shrugged. "Until you reach a certain level of strength, yes. And the adventurers actually don't destroy very many cores. Most cores are actually carefully defended by the adventurers. They realize that the cores are their livelihood, but occasionally there is a core that for some reason goes insane. These dungeons are just a danger to everyone, sending mobs on rampaging killing sprees. This is actually what the adventurers are here to defend against."
That actually made sense. I could understand how giving the wrong person the powers of a dungeon core could be really bad. "So, about the reinforced stone?"
Ari nodded. "Well, what happens with a few feet of normal stone happens after only a thin sheet of essence reinforced stone, and it blocks the collection of essence as well. If there's a wall of normal stone and something dies, you still get most of the essence. Not so for essence reinforced stone. You get basically nothing. Also, you lose control of any mobs past the stone. They'll still follow the last commands you gave them, but you can't give them any new commands."
That seemed like some pretty bad negatives to surrounding myself in reinforced stone. Still, I didn't completely forget about it. That was most of my questions, so I continued hollowing out my first room. Ari reassured me that the dirt would do fine with a medium sized room, so I left it dirt for now, figuring I could always change it to stone later.
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After I finished my first room, a cube about 15 feet to a side, Ari spoke up. "Hey Alex?"
"Yeah?"
Ari smiled. "I think it's time for something fun. It's about time you made your first mob. After all, we can't go undefended forever!"
I was more than willing to go along with her suggestion. I'd been dying to make my first mob for a while. Then I realized a problem. I hadn't found any mob patterns that I knew of. I had a number of different stone types, some different dirts, even a bit of plant material I'd found. But I hadn't found anything I thought might be a mob. "I don't know if I have any patterns. I haven't found anything I think might be a mob."
Ari nodded. "That's true, but remember what it said about free patterns? It doesn't alert you if you get one of those. Just try it, we'll see what happens."
That seemed good to me. I opened my menu and took a moment to see how far I'd come.
Alex Johnson
Earth Core - G7
Essence - 84/120
Core generation - 5/hour (2/hour to bond)
Dungeon generation - 20 per hour
Dungeon actions:
Increase influence
Absorb matter
Create item
Create mob
It looked pretty good. I'd hit G7 while digging the room, and like Ari had predicted, my essence from my influence had quickly outdone the essence from the core. I glanced over at the dungeon seed. Still nothing, although the number kept ticking up. I hadn't been able to put any essence in or pull any out, so I still wasn't sure what it was. I selected Create mob. The first box only had one option, Golem, so I selected it. That moved me into my next box.
Mob creation
Form: Select
Material: Select
It looked pretty self-explanatory. I selected form first. There were a few options available to me.
Humanoid
Mouse
Lizard
"It says I can pick a humanoid, mouse or lizard for the form."
Ari cocked her head to the side. "Humanoid? Really? Usually a dungeon doesn't get that until later, humanoid mobs cost a good bit more. On the other hand they can use weapons and other items you create."
I guessed I had access to that early due to being a human. I knew a lot about how that shape worked. Still, following Ari’s advice I picked a lizard. Then I went into the material list. This had a lot more options. I mentally made a couple of categories to help keep things simple. I was getting the hang of this dungeon menu.
Stones
Soil
Plants
Bone
"So, I have a number of different stone types, a few types of dirt, some plant materials, and bone." It looked like when I absorbed something that would work as a mob material I automatically gained it.
Ari nodded. "That's about what I expected. Now, you'll probably want to avoid bone, as that would probably be high in death essence, losing your 20% discount for earth based mobs. Plants are a mix of earth, water, and life essence, so it depends on the mob and plant material whether your bonus applies. Stone types are generally more expensive than soil or plants, due to being harder to damage. So for now I'd pick either a plant based material or a soil based one, and make sure you get the discount."
I looked at some of the options in those two and eventually picked basic Topsoil. Then it moved me into a thing that reminded me of the view if I was making an item. In the middle of the room was a semi-transparent version of a lizard made of soil. For such a small mob, it cost more than I expected, even with the discount it was 90 essence. I saw that I could adjust this mob just like the item I was creating, but I couldn't shift it nearly as much. Shrinking was possible, and even decreased the cost a bit, but making it very much bigger would reset it. I could make a few other small changes, but anything too large would cause it to reset. I finally settled on slightly larger claws and teeth and a slightly smaller size overall.
When it formed it was really cool. A wave of smoke swirled around the point where I wanted the mob, and it condensed into a ball just slightly larger than the lizard I was creating. Then it poofed outwards, leaving only a small lizard made of topsoil behind. I examined my first mob. It was made from topsoil, with small rocks scattered through it. The claws and teeth of the lizard were small pieces of stone. I sat watching it.
And watching it. It wasn't doing anything. "Hey Ari? When's it going to do something?"
Ari cocked her head to the side. "Did you tell it to do something? Remember, it isn't a living creature, the only thing it will do upon being created is attack intruders into your dungeon. You have to tell it if you want it to do anything different or in addition to that."
That made sense. I tried to tell the lizard to do something. Stand up. The lizard stood. Run around the room. The lizard started sprinting in circles around the room. This was pretty fun! Then it did something that surprised me! It ran on the wall for a few seconds during one of its loops. That made me curious. Walk to the ceiling. The lizard turned and walked to the ceiling of the room. "Ari? How does it grip the wall? It's made out of soil."
Ari smiled. "The different mobs will have different capabilities. Remember, this isn't just soil, it's soil infused with essence and a life-force. So it can do things normal soil can't do. For example, a stone bird mob could still fly, despite that not making any sense."
I smiled. Or, well, I felt happy and imagined that if I had a body I'd be smiling. I was still getting used to being a dungeon core. After a bit more playing with my first mob I started digging a tunnel that would lead to the next room. Being a dungeon core sure was cool, but it involved a lot of digging.