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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/OriginalButtopia on 2024-12-22 05:48:32+00:00.
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The dungeon core had broken free of the trunk in the same explosion. I crashed into the ground, badly bruised but mostly unbroken. Pain flared, and I was forced to toggle back to my life orb to blunt it. I looked up at the floating core, which seemed to be glowing. I had no idea what it was doing, but I couldn’t afford to waste time finding out. My mana was already quickly draining from the healing work.
I threw my mallet at the core, wishing I had invested anything into accuracy. I got lucky, and the mallet hit the core with a clink, knocking it out of the sky. The brothers charged towards its falling destination, and Cecile smashed it the second it hit the ground. This time, the experience window did pop up, signaling our actual victory.
| Monsters Defeated | | |
|
| | Fallen Elder Oak | 100 Experience | | Experience Gained | 100 Points | | Multipliers Applied | | | No Armor | x1.1 | | No Weapon | x1.1 | | Dungeon Core Boss | x2 | | Total Experience Gained | 242 Points |
“Was that normal? Do higher-level cores tend to do that?” I asked. The brothers both shrugged. We were moving into unknown territory for all of us it seemed. We spent another hour or so gathering up what shards we could find until each of us received the completion quests for the dungeon. It seemed there was nothing else of note here. The experience, less than five thousand total, hadn’t really done anything for me, but to the joy of Cecile and Elicec, it had pushed them both to level sixty-six.
Apparently, they had completed a couple of quests beyond the dungeon exploration itself. I was just happy to see how happy they were about the leveling. Elicec had System quests to collect various knowledge skills, and Cecile had his own for plant life. Luckily for him undead plant life still counted.
The return trip was spent in silence as they allocated their growth. I checked how long the whole trip had taken us, and as it was a little less than three hours, I was debating trying another dungeon or two today. I examined all the wounds and found the vast majority of them were already mostly healed. There was a single deep cut on my arm that I seemed to be having the most trouble with. Remembering I still hadn’t unlocked stitch from the life orb, I pushed that up to my cap as well.
It was a strange feeling watching a thread of mana slowly work its way through a slash in my flesh, sewing it shut. There was no pain, the opposite in fact, once it finished, I felt the mana usage of pain management decrease. I checked my mana and saw at my current usage I was going to run out before the healing had time to finish. I toggled off my body-enhancing orbs, and the drain radically decreased. No more mental and strength training for me at the moment, not if I wanted to be healed and try tackling another dungeon today.
“Dave, how you doing over there?” Cecile asked, breaking the silence first.
“I’m alright, a little banged up from the big guy at the end, but the healing magic is going to work. I wish it didn’t drain so much mana, though. I’d like to keep my body-enhancing orbs active at the same time,” I said. I knew it was a petty complaint. Virtually no one even had access to more than one orb at the same time, and I was here whining that I couldn’t always actively use both.
“It’ll get better; well, you’ll get more mana and be more efficient at using what you have, at least. I guess with the multiple orbs, it’s always gonna be harder than for us,” Cecile replied. I appreciated the effort to cheer me up, even if it didn’t really work.
“How would you feel about another dungeon today? I figure we can grab some quick food and see about the next easiest. Honestly, that place seemed easier than Mel sold it as,” I said.
“I’m game if Elicec is, and yeah, Mel’s just really worried about us. I think there’s a lot of stuff brewing behind the scenes he can’t tell us about,” Cecile replied. I had been considering the same thing, especially when his early warning had been taken into account. Every time I went down that path I got stuck at one point, though; if things were moving in a way that Mel was very aware of them, why am I still here? Why not just deal with me and Sanquar right now? Was it just a matter of red tape or strange legal questions I didn’t understand? I knew I’d have my answer soon enough and worrying about it now was just a waste of time, but pushing it out of my mind was something easier said than done.
“I’m also game. Those levels were what I needed to start on my planned path. I’ve got several nodes unlocked in my elemental orb now, and with the dendrology skill we gained from that dungeon, I’ve got enough knowledge skills to start figuring out monsters’ weaknesses,” Elicec said. I checked my skills, and he had been right. We had gained that skill. Why hadn’t I gotten a notification?
“Congratulations, that should be a pretty big asset. Question though, why didn’t I get a notification on the new skill? I checked just to be sure, but it’s there, just nothing to inform me,” I said, confused.
“Oh, after the first species knowledge skill, it doesn’t bother telling you. I assume you get notifications about most attributes anymore, either,” Elicec said, and he was right. None of the sub-attributes had alerted me. They had just been there as things I could invest in.
“Fair enough. I suppose I was getting tired of the endless notification windows,” I said truthfully. They had rapidly grown annoying. The door swung open, signaling the end of our trip. We all hopped out and made our way back to Mel to report our success and see about another dungeon.
Pushing through the heavy exterior door, I looked around the adventurer hall as we reentered, and for the first time, I noticed how empty the place was. I knew we rarely had any kind of wait to interact with Mel or do any of our business. Was that normal? Before the thoughts really settled into the forefront of my curiosities, Mel spotted us from behind one of the weapons racks and floated out, looking glad to see us alive. Cecile spoke first, and Elicec and I let him tell the story in silent agreement.
“Look, I’m glad ya did as good as ya did there, but are you really sure you want to tackle another dungeon right now? With how quickly you grew, it’s possible, but the next two are directly on top of each other and may even be linked. We don’t have the full details there yet,” Mel said after Cecile finished.
“We’ve gotta push through this as fast as possible, right? We won’t gain much besides a little extra healing time sticking around here right now, so I figure we grab some food and get going,” I said.
Mel sighed before speaking. “I already ordered yer food. I figured there was no talking any of ya outta this, and I didn’t wanna waste any time. The next two dungeons are the Froggy Swamp and the Caverns of Sparkling Death. I strongly suggest you try to take out the first one before the second, but depending on how linked they turn out to be, I don’t know if that’ll end up viable or not,” Mel said.
“What makes a linked dungeon special? Oh, and before I forget, any guess why my mana orbs haven’t ranked up? I’m still double their level, and yet they’re beating me there,” I asked, both questions itching away in my brain for answers.
“I’ll get to that second question in a second, but first up, a linked dungeon means the cores are working together somehow. It could range from a simple agreement of non-hostility towards each other all the way to a weird type of romantic partnership, so ya gotta be careful as you figure out exactly what it is,” Mel answered the first question, pausing to grab some of the food that had appeared, and quickly gobbling it down before he continued. “The orbs, now that’s a hard question, tell me how your simulations work exactly.”
In between my own eating I did exactly as Mel asked, receiving several nods as I did so. “So the only real differences I can see between the simulation and the real thing are my injuries don’t last other than backlashes, and none of that feeling of being in a dungeon,” I said, wondering if it was either of those.
“The first is very unlikely to be a negative for anything, but some weird pain builds. The second could be a problem, though it won’t really ever put you behind since I guess you will still be doing the same number of dungeons generally. You just get a lot of extra fighting in you. That dungeon feeling yer describing, though, that’s your soul being pressed down on by an external force, it will learn to fight back against that more and more. That also ain’t the reason for the orbs. It’s gotta just be yer core ain’t big enough to give them all the energy for ranking up yet. You will probably always be a bit behind due to that, but the sheer volume of spells yer gonna have access to should greatly make up for it, and who knows, once your core is big enough, it might be able to push out more energy than the orbs can even take in daily,” Mel explained. That did make the most sense, there was only so much ambient core energy I had at the moment, and mine was being divided by six. I should have thought of that on my own.
“Yeah, that’s likely it. Thanks, Mel,” I said. I wished I had more time ...
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