Dungeon World 3: A Dungeon Core Experience Page 8

  “You’re crazy! What if it didn’t work?” she yelled at him quietly, remembering at the last moment to keep her voice down.

  “Oh, I knew it would work as soon as I felt it. And besides, my own Mana would regenerate it after a while, though not nearly that fast,” Fred replied, tensing up as Eisa canceled her Earth’s Renewal on him. “I was going to suggest selecting a healer of some sort as your class, but now that you have that, I don’t know if that’s the way to go. Whatever you do choose, though, keep in mind that I’ll try to Teach you some of my Adapted Abilities later.”

  That’s right, I forgot about his ability to Teach me with his Instructor Class.

  “Wait a minute, what are you talking about?” Regnark asked, after overhearing Fred mention teaching. Fred explained it quickly, recounting how he could “adapt” abilities that he saw being used for his own and in turn Teach them to people via his Instructor class.

  “So why don’t you teach me some things right now?” the big man asked, though more out of curiosity than insistence.

  “Because every time I use the Teach ability, it will drain both of us of all our Power; it wouldn’t affect you too much, but it will take me three or four hours to recover from that, and I don’t think it will be a good idea to have any of us low on Power – especially since we’ve just regenerated up to full.”

  Fred had a point, and it also tempered Eisa’s choice in class. She had forgotten that he could teach her some abilities, and she knew from when he was teaching the townspeople of Gatecross that there was a higher chance of success when their class matched what they were trying to learn. As a result, she decided to take Mage as her first class and Fighter as her second; she wanted the extra protection and strength that having a melee class would benefit her Earth Elemental Form, while having the ability to use long-range attack skills that a Mage would have access to.

  Anything that she unlocked wouldn’t necessarily be that powerful, because she wasn’t planning on upgrading them with extra Essence. The cost of 100 to at least have access to them wasn’t too bad, but she wasn’t planning on unlocking them until she needed them; that way, if or when she changed her class to obtain a permanent ability from Fred, she wouldn’t lose much of her Essence in the process. She did end up using a little of her stored Essence to bump her Stats another point, but that was all she spent for now.

  Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate Interface

  Name: Eisa Howells

  Class: Mage-Fighter

  Rating: F-2nd

  Essence Needed to Rate-up: 550

  Total Essence: 103250

  Available Essence to Distribute: 41890

  Body: 11 (0/20480)

  Brawn: 11 (0/20480)

  Mind: 11 (0/20480)

  Vitality: 50/220

  Stamina: 52/220

  Power: 52/220

  Base Physical Attack: 11

  Base Physical Defense: 11

  Power Regen Rate: 2.2/min

  Class Traits (Mage)

  Your available Power is increased by your Mind stat

  Your Power Regen Rate is marginally increased by your Mind stat

  You now take less damage from magical sources (10%)

  Class Traits (Fighter)

  Your Vitality and Base Physical Defense is increased by your Body stat

  Your Stamina and Base Physical Attack is increased by your Brawn stat

  Your Class Abilities use Stamina instead of Power to perform

  Class Abilities (Mage)

  Magestrike 0 – 0/100

  Barrier 0 – 0/100

  Magelight 0 – 0/100

  Flamestrike 0 – 0/100

  Froststrike 0 – 0/100

  Minor Shock 0 – 0/100

  Class Abilities (Fighter)

  Power Blow 0 – 0/100

  Focused Strike 0 – 0/100

  Deflection 0 – 0/100

  Shield Slam 0 – 0/100

  Double Assault 0 – 0/100

  Focused Irritation 0 – 0/100

  With that complete, Eisa was ready to go – armed with a larger maximum Power and Power regeneration from being a Mage, an Earth Mana-based healing ability, and extra Vitality and Stamina due to her Fighter class. She stored the Class Selector back into her PIB and turned to the others.

  “Alright, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 9

  Fred thought that the change that had come over Eisa was exhilarating. He felt a lot less worried that she was going to end up getting killed by a stray attack compared to when she was just “reborn” as what she was now; according to the Status screen Eisa told him she could see, she was something called a “Shard”. He didn’t know exactly what that was, but he suspected that it was the same thing that Deecy was – though she seemed not to have any knowledge about it either. The Dire Wolf couldn’t pull up a “Shard Status” like Eisa, but Fred had an idea about that.

  Because the recently resurrected woman hadn’t seen the screen until she had increased her “Shard Level”, he figured it was something like what had happened to Fred himself. While he had always technically been a Dungeon Core, nothing had really activated inside of him until he had absorbed the Mana left behind by his two deceased bodyguards – Firbey and Frozzles. Since Deecy had been inadvertently Created, the Dire Wolf really hadn’t had a source of Fire or Water Mana that she could absorb from a defeated dungeon defender. She could absorb the ambient mana in the environment to “recharge”, but there hadn’t been anything to increase her maximum mana like Fred had been able to give to Eisa.

  Therefore, he had been slowly feeding Deecy globules of Fire and Water Mana over the last couple of minutes – pretty much as soon as he woke up. He would love to give her more than the single or double units of mana that he could spare, but just like the reason he didn’t want to consume all of his Power to Teach the others, he wanted to ensure he had enough available resources to help defend themselves. Still, he was banking on the random influx of Mana from him – which she was absorbing just like Eisa did with Earth Mana – triggering some sort of change in her. He just hoped it was something positive.

  As for himself, his own Earth Mana maximum was slowly increasing, and the six hours of sleep that they had gotten had converted over a hundred units of Unconverted Mana (UM) into his available elemental Mana. Fortunately, even though he was low on UM after healing Deecy, he had taken half of the Earth Mana that had been dropped by the random groups of Earth-based defenders they had been forced to fight in their flight to the west.

  Dungeon Core Status

  Fredwynklemossering

  Core Faction: Fire-Water-Nature-Earth

  Core Age: 2

  Core Structure Level: 8

  Fire Mana: 40/139

  Water Mana: 40/138

  Nature Mana: 43/138

  Earth Mana: 43/43

  Unconverted (Unusable) Mana: 852

  Unconverted Essence: 16647

  Skills

  Master Mana Sight: 100%

  Master Territorial Sight: 100%

  Expert Mana Absorption: 12%

  Expert Mana Conversion: 15%

  Intermediate Mana Communication: 69%

  Intermediate Core Crystallization: 30%

  Intermediate Defender Creation: 70%

  Intermediate Mana-formed Object Creation: 35%

  Intermediate Sentient Mana-formed Object Creation: 1%

  Novice Essence Conversion: 11%

  Novice Dungeon Core Absorption: 87%

  Novice Dungeon Creation: 98%

  Novice Defense Creation: 79%

  Dungeon Information

  (none)

  Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate Interface

  Name: Fredwynklemossering

  Class: Instructor-Researcher

  Rating: E-7th

  Essence Needed to Rate-up: 61947

  Total Essence: 869053

  Available Essence to Distribute: 166466

  Unconverted Essence: 8520

  Body: 14 (0/81920)

&
nbsp; Brawn: 13 (0/40960)

  Mind: 16 (0/327680)

  Vitality: 130/180

  Stamina: 150/160

  Power: 1200/5100

  Base Physical Attack: 13

  Base Physical Defense: 13

  Power Regen Rate: 25/min

  Class Traits (Instructor)

  Your available Power is increased by your Mind stat

  Your Power Regen Rate is increased by your Mind stat

  You are able to pass along the knowledge of your spells and abilities to another (success is variable)

  Class Traits (Researcher)

  Your available Power is greatly increased by your Mind stat

  Your Power Regen Rate is greatly increased by your Mind stat

  You have a much-heightened ability to adapt known spells and abilities for use in other applications

  Class Abilities (Instructor)

  Teach 4 – 0/27000

  Class Abilities (Researcher)

  Experiment 0 – 0/100

  Adapted Abilities

  Animate Dead 1 – 0/1000

  Repair Animation 1 – 0/1000

  Vitality Transfer 3 – 0/9000

  Vitality Explosion 1 – 0/1000

  Shield of Darkness 1 – 0/1000

  Lifedrain 1 – 0/1000

  Repair Object 1 – 0/1000

  Conjure Object 4 – 0/27000

  Disarm Trap 3 – 0/9000

  Sudden Shock 1 – 0/1000

  Fireblast 3 – 0/9000

  Flamestrike 1 – 0/1000

  Spike Arrows 1 – 0/1000

  (List truncated due to space – focus here for additional abilities…)

  While he had increased his Rating over the last day, nothing much of note had changed with him. There were a few random increases to his Dungeon Core skills, but nothing significant – he had been more of a passenger and support through the battles than a significant participant. There was one exception, however – his Novice Sentient Mana-formed Object Creation was now Intermediate. Fred assumed that it was due to what he did to heal Deecy when she was dying from the Scorpion poison; if that wasn’t it, then he wasn’t sure what else it could be.

  Unfortunately for their flight through the forest in the dead of night, he hadn’t been able to establish a territory since Gatecross; while the actual Nature Cores (and a few scattered Earth Cores next to scattered hills or miniature mountain ranges) he could sense were sometimes distant, their territories extended out significantly wherever there was room. However, with a quick look at his Territorial Sight, he could see that they would eventually come to an area where there weren’t any territories at all. After that, he could almost sense more territories even farther distant, but they were a dark, almost-black color compared to the browns and greens he was used to seeing.

  Fred didn’t know what the Dark-element Cores had in store for them, but he figured that anything was better than being constantly chased and corralled by the Earth-based defenders hounding them at every step. He was glad that he hadn’t seen signs that the townspeople of Gatecross or his Core Power Guild had been caught and attacked, but then again it was a very large forest; they could’ve missed almost anything last night, even though they did their best to come back to their westward heading whenever they got waylaid.

  With everyone ready to go – Eisa had stowed the Class Selector back into her Pocket Interface Bag – they got back on her Crystal Scorpions and set off heading west again. For the first half-hour they didn’t see anyone or anything, but they didn’t let down their guard; in fact, the lack of attacks set them all on edge. Fred knew that it was just a matter of time before more defenders descended on their location as the Cores around the area zeroed in on where their Goblin Gnomes were just killed. And he didn’t want to be anywhere near there when they arrived.

  While he was still paying attention to his surroundings, Fred was able to – for the first time – really look at the Crystal Scorpion he was riding on top of. Eisa was holding on to him from behind again and Deecy was back in her Pup form watching out for potential threats; now that it wasn’t dark, with their help – and Regnark’s – they would likely be able to see anything before he could. As a result of their vigilance, Fred could finally analyze what had been literally bugging him.

  The large Scorpion underneath him was reacting slightly to his touch.

  He had ignored it before, but now that he had a chance to really pay attention to it, he could feel as though it was calling to him somehow. Not as if he could control it like he could his own dungeon defenders, but almost as if he could reach out and understand it; in fact, he thought if he just placed his hand upon it, concentrated for almost a minute on the finer details and structure of the giant bug he was riding, and then “pulled” out the information…

  The Crystal Scorpion disappeared underneath them when it was striding forward at full speed; Deecy reacted quickly by changing from a Pup to her normal Dire Wolf form, but Fred and Eisa were taken completely by surprise. Fred managed to miss landing on Deecy as she wiggled out of his embrace and landed agilely on the ground, only stumbling a little with her abrupt landing. Fred landed awkwardly with his legs splayed in the same position they had been in while riding and he heard something *pop* in his left ankle – just as Eisa landed on his back with a quick cut-off shriek.

  Horrific pain erupted up and down his left leg as Eisa rolled off of him, unfortunately right on his injured appendage; he had to force himself to hold in the scream that threatened to erupt from the sheer agony he was experiencing. He lay there face-down on the ground, literally biting his tongue so that he wouldn’t draw any more attention to their little group.

  “What happened?” Eisa said as she picked herself up and brushed some leaves off her dress. “One moment I was looking around, trying to see if there were any—HOLY GODDESS! What happened to your leg?” she nearly yelled in shock.

  Fred couldn’t answer; the pain was extraordinary, and he was worried he was going to blackout from it. That doesn’t feel like just a busted ankle or something like that. While he had been hurt drastically before – including “dying” multiple times – most of the wounds he had taken had been largely superficial and had been healed quickly right after. When he thought about it – to distract himself from the pain, mostly – he realized most of his injuries had either been a few cuts here and there or outright “death”, there wasn’t much in between that wasn’t healed by either Eisa or another Healer-classed Guild member.

  “Hold on, Fred, I’ll heal you,” Eisa continued a little unsteadily, before her voice turned away. “Regnark, can you help me…uh…put him back together?”

  He heard Regnark jump down from the Crystal Scorpion and head towards him, the leaves crackling underneath his steps. With his eyes closed in concentration – trying to block out the pain – his other senses seemed to be amplified; he could hear some sort of liquid dripping and pitter-pattering on some leaves underneath him, the feel of the soil underneath his fingers was extremely gritty, and he realized he could detect Eisa’s earthy-yet-somehow-floral scent on the back of his shirt. With that concentration he was trying to maintain, he attempted to use one of his abilities to heal himself, but as soon as he tried to activate Heal Minor Wounds, all his thoughts scattered to the wind.

  In the few seconds before Regnark reached them, Fred decided to focus on something else. The first thing on his mind was that Eisa had said she was going to heal him, but she hadn’t started for some reason; actually, when he considered her statement about putting him back together and needing help to do that, he decided he didn’t want to know what had happened.

  Therefore, in another effort not to think about how much pain he was in, he instead tried to figure out why he was in that situation in the first place. What did I do? Why did the big bug disappear?

  Fred first checked his Mana to see if he had absorbed it somehow, but everything was largely unchanged; a few more Mana had been converted, but his totals hadn’t really changed. Looking at his
DAS Interface, he saw that not much had changed from that – except that his Vitality had taken a massive hit and was steadily dropping. He knew he wouldn’t die, but if he wasn’t healed soon by other means, his Mana would start to be consumed in an effort to heal him and keep him alive.

  So, what happened? His thoughts were a bit unfocused as the pain seemed to numb and he figured he had lost quite a bit of blood as he felt inordinately weak. Trying to organize his scattered thoughts, he tried to remember what he was doing prior to their ride disappearing…

  Then he remembered – he was trying to understand the Crystal Scorpion better. Connections fired slowly through his mind as he considered what that meant, which led him to open up his available Dungeon Defense Creation Menu. Aha! Ther iiit iss… His brain started to shut down as the blood loss hit him hard.

  And then it was like a shock ran through his body as it felt like someone was ripping his leg off. The pain that was starting to numb from the injury came back full force, blood loss or not; fortunately, it was short-lived as he felt the healing of the Earth’s Renewal ability that Eisa possessed fill his body. The healing energy started on his leg, thankfully, and numbed it completely at the same time. He wasn’t sure how long he lay there while his injury repaired itself, but by the time it was done and Eisa canceled the ability, he felt…great.

  Cautiously, he picked himself up and – feeling no pain or weakness – turned around to see Regnark already on his Crystal Scorpion again, and another of the giant bugs waiting near Eisa. She was a bit pale-faced, but she smiled as Fred got up and walked over, with what he hoped was an apologetic smile on his own face.