Chapter Three Hundred and Ninety-Six — Core Strength
Chapter Three Hundred and Ninety-Six — Core Strength It took another hour to cut through the tunnel, but at least we had something of a system in place to help us push through by the end.By rotating which friend would let me take a bit of mana, I could steal mana from someone who was topped up already, so my worries about harming them through the theft were pretty low. Amaryllis also said that it wasn’t dangerous, not unless I really went all out and pulled too hard at someone’s magic all at once, but I wasn’t so sure about that and preferred to err on the side of caution.The worst that could happen here was that we’d take a bit longer to get to the end of the dungeon, and that wasn’t that big a deal.In any case, we did make it to the end. I chopped the end off a last branch of the Evil Root then I passed the bits back to my friends. The core was just ahead of me, in a large more or less open room.I turned back and looked down the length of the tunnel. It was very satisfying to see not one sign of the Evil Root infection left behind. All the smaller roots had been disintegrated by my Cleaning aura, and the bigger bits had been chopped up and thrown out. We had done good work.But we had another step ahead of us. I waited until my friends were back from tossing out the last of the root before I turned towards Mister Puffles. “We’re almost at the core, but where’s the exit?”“On the other side of the core. There’s a door that opens up into the dungeon’s entrance. It shouldn’t work that way, but it does,” he said.“Strange. Usually dungeons have their core away from the exit. But I suppose this isn’t too unusual,” Amaryllis said. “Are we going to clear the core room out entirely?”I looked into the room. It was going to be impossible to walk through. There were roots all over. The room was round, like the inside of a large sphere, with big cuts missing from the walls around it that overlooked the massive tree that we’d climbed. Interestingly enough, there were sort of natural catwalks leading across the room, which left gaps through which I could see the ground far, far below. A number of roots had wormed into those openings to reach the core.“I think I’m going to cut off all the roots on the outside. We can toss them off the sides. Then I’ll clean out the core itself. We should be close enough to the core to get lots of mana by then, especially if we stop the roots from absorbing it.”“It might be wise to clear a path to the exit, then,” Caprica said. “You’ll be turning that mana into a weapon against the root, but the rest of us don’t have that option, and I’d rather not get mana poisoning from being so close to a core today.”That was a fair point. So with that last change to my plan, I got to work. First I started cutting across all the roots and such on the right side of the room, pushing towards the exit as I did. My friends helped me toss the roots to the ground below, so as we pushed through the brambly mess towards the exit door, the room slowly cleared out of roots.The roots nearest the core had big leaves on them, all of them turned so that their flat was towards the core, like a sunflower chasing the sun.Amaryllis poked at one of the leaves, then made an interested noise. “These can sap your mana,” she said. “I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t been practising with Broccoli. It’s very weak, very subtle, but definitely there.”“So they’re part of how the roots take the dungeon’s mana, then,” I said. “Kind of obvious, really. We knew that already.”“The way the leaves are placed, ah, I think they’re more to capture the mana escaping from the roots wrapped around the core,” Awen said.That made sense too. In any case, though, we were here to destroy the roots, so I let my aura out and pushed it towards the leaves, which caused them to wither and die on their stems. I noticed a slight increase in the rate that my mana grew after that. Not as much as when I’d stood next to an uncovered dungeon core before, but still more, and that was extra handy now that I was using up my mana as quickly as I could to burn through the roots.If I was a very patient bun, I could have sat on the edge of the room and just let my Cleaning aura burn through the roots slowly and surely. Eventually that would clear the room out, but I also wanted to get back to the Beaver before nightfall.The door at the far end of the room was a wooden door that, when opened, revealed the same tunnel that we’d walked through to arrive at the first floor of the dungeon.That didn’t make sense, of course, since we were at the end of a big branch of the tree way, way above the first floor, but a lot of the geometry in this dungeon didn’t make sense, so I decided not to think about it too hard.“Okay,” I said as I finished chopping up the last of the branches. We had cleared out the longer roots, and now all that was left was the bundle in the centre of the room.They were already growing. Tiny, seeking tendrils were pushing out and away from the core, growing very, very slowly, but not so slowly that I couldn't see them grow. If left all on their own, I was certain that they’d eventually reconnect with the other roots in the dungeon and the whole Evil Root network would be back.But I didn’t plan on letting that happen. “Alright, now’s the complicated part,” I said. I reached for the core, letting my Cleaning aura push ahead.My initial probing attacks did little more than scrape against the roots — so far, this was the densest Evil Root material I'd encountered.I narrowed my eyes, rolled up my metaphorical sleeves, and gathered my mana into a drill around my outstretched hands. With an audible hum, I spun it up and began grinding forward. Dark chips of root spewed out, disintegrating to nothing as they collided with my aura. Centimetre by centimetre, I carved deeper, and soon, I broke through the roots covering the core and my fingers brushed against it. I felt an electric tingle running down my arm and down my back until my tail poofed out and I let out a small gasp.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.My mana was full. More than full, even, it was overflowing, and I basically ripped open the tap on my Cleaning aura, letting it burst out of me in every direction.I knew that I was pretty much spotless, normally. After all, I had my aura running pretty frequently and it did wonders in keeping my squeaky clean, but I’d never pushed it to this degree.It started to hurt. My skin felt like it had been exfoliated all over and I noticed some of the colour fading on the edges of my gambeson, the bright blues turning slightly paler as the dye was washed away.I yanked my hand back with a tug, and for a moment it felt like I was pulling metal away from a powerful magnet until I got some distance. “Whoa,” I said. “Is everyone okay?” I asked.My friends seemed fine. The roots... not so much. All of those on the side of the core I was on were flaking away as though I’d attacked them with a blowtorch and even the roots on the other side seemed like they were withering.I walked around the core, then pushed some Cleaning magic at the remaining bits. The core glowed. It was a big ball of something almost glass-like with a powerful inner light that shone brightly now that it was cleaned off.Still, just to be safe, I flooded a mist of Cleaning magic over it, to get rid of any lingering root particles.“We should get moving,” Amaryllis said. “We’re approaching a pretty high level of mana saturation here, and that’s just not healthy.”“Right,” I said. We didn’t want to get sick so close to the end!I didn’t get any quest updates from Mister Menu, so I decided to just sweep the room one final time, then after glancing around to make sure it was all good, I followed my friends out of the door and tugged it shut behind me.“That’ll set things back to right for a while,” Mister Puffles said. “We’ll have to be more diligent about trimming those vines from now on.”I brushed down the front of my skirts, then pinched the material between my forefinger and thumb. Was it getting a bit thin? Maybe I would have to upgrade soon. In any case... "let’s go back to the first floor,” I said. “We’ll see if the dungeon’s started to fight the roots or not.”He looked a bit confused, but didn’t argue when I stared back down the tunnel leading to the first floor instead of towards the dungeon’s exit.What we found was... the normal first floor: a bunch of passages in a zig-zag with giant ants in them and a lot of big roots.What was different was the reaction of those ants. They were attacking the roots, chomping at them with their mandibles and shaking their heads to saw through the roots.They weren’t getting much done just attacking the roots like that, but I did see that their bites were slowly chopping through even the tougher roots bit by bit. Whenever there was an ant that was infected by the roots, the others would turn on it and attack, and it would turn to dust.“Never seen the like,” Mister Puffles said.“The dungeon’s reacting to the roots!” I cheered. “That’s great! We’ve seen a few others do that once you’ve cleaned the core. I... don’t know if that’ll prevent it from being entirely infected or not, but at least this time it’ll help fight against the roots, you won’t be the only one working to remove them.”“Well, I’ll be,” Mister Puffles said. “You might have just saved us a whole lot of trouble, misses and sir.” He tipped his hat to my friends and I.Grinning from ear to ear, I lead my party back towards the exit. I was a pinch tired, but the good mood that came with a job well done was keeping me afloat.Near the exit, we finally got a message from the dungeon.Dungeon Cleared!All adversaries within The Golden Light Dungeon Defeated.All Bosses DefeatedBroccoli Bunch, Cinnamon Bun Bun, level 14, Wonderlander level 5, is awarded the Mothman class.All class slots filled.Replace current class with Mothman?Replacing your current class will reset your level 0.That was a nice reward! Of course, I said no, I was quite content with my two classes already.Then, out of the blue, Mister Menu hit me with another message.Bing Bong! Congratulations, your Cinnamon Bun class has reached level 15!Stamina +10Flexibility +5“Level up!” I cheered.We were laughing, and I got a number of nice pats on the back as we exited the dungeon as a tight-knit little group with our prizes in tow. Mostly that was the shield that Amaryllis had picked up, and that staff Awen now carried with her.We were met by a welcome wagon of mothfolk, including Mister Lepido who seemed to take in our good mood and decided that it was a good sign. “Hello, adventurers! How did it go?”“Looks like they might’ve fixed our problem,” Mister Puffles said. “Not entirely sure yet, though. No offence.”“None taken,” I said. “But, ah, we promised some of our younger, newer crewmates on the Beaver Cleaver that they’d get a chance to run through the dungeon. Do you think we could arrange something like that now? You’ll be able to see if the dungeon’s cleared of roots all the way through at the same time.”“That sounds perfectly reasonable,” Mister Lepido said.
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Chapter Three Hundred and Ninety-Seven — Live Free and Dine Hard
Chapter Three Hundred and Ninety-Seven — Live Free and Dine Hard The mothfolk decided to throw a small impromptu party. As Mister Lepido said, many of the locals had moved out, but those that remained were really happy to see the Evil Roots cleared out. Or at least, pushed back-we couldn't know for sure if the dungeon had shaken them off completely, just yet.The mothfolk here seemed hopeful, but they weighed their hope against an equal measure of caution. They’d believe that the Evil Roots were eradicated from their dungeon when they didn’t see even a single sign that they existed anymore. For now though, they were happy to celebrate us trimming back the roots and clearing out the core.Puffles promised-before he left with the Scallywags and a couple of others to face the dungeon again-that he’d be checking it daily until he was certain that the roots were all gone for good.That’d have to be enough.I... didn’t know if my way of clearing out the roots really worked in the long-long term. I’d never been back to a dungeon I’d cleared to check it out. Still...I put it out of my mind. The folks back at Sylphfree were monitoring the dungeon I had cleared for them. If the infection started showing up again, I was sure they'd tell us.With a big table set out in the glade before the dungeon's entrance, we sat down and had a big lunch.There were lunaflower cakes-which were strangely spicy-and a few different flavours of stew, as well as big round loaves of very pale bread that one local called sunbread and which tasted very nutty.I noticed that the average age of the locals was... older. Mister Lepido seemed old enough to be my grandpa, and he was about average as far as age went. A lot of grannies were bringing pots of stew over and cackling together off to one side. A number of them had brought out small stools and benches to keep the weight off their knees.The men were almost all wiry and tough and I heard a lot of ‘back in my days’ when I flicked an ear in their direction.It seemed as if the younger half of this village had almost all moved to greener pastures.Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing! The community seemed tightly knit, and it wasn’t terribly far from Codwood. And it wasn’t like there weren’t any kids running around.One nice mothlady told me that the two little ones zipping by with a flutter of wings were her great-grandlarvae, currently being taken care of by her daughter who was sticking around.They... weren’t actually larvae, were they?They couldn’t be that close to bugs, right?The twinkle in the old mothlady’s eyes suggested that I’d just been duped. Then she cackled and I found myself giggling too.I was kind of grateful, nonetheless, that I’d ended up a bun, because last I checked, rabbits were mammals too.“Do you think a lot of the younger people will come back?” I asked Lepido. It was a delicate question, but I felt like I should ask.He frowned, then nodded. “I think some of them will. They have children, and they’ll want them to go through the dungeon as well. It’s very limiting if they don’t. And we have some goods that can only be obtained here, and a lot of those youngsters were pushed out of the village by well-meaning parents. When things got lean here, it made sense to push our youth towards a better, safer place.”I nodded along. “That was very brave,” I said.“Maybe,” he replied. “I don’t know, really. In any case, the village will grow again. I’m sure of it. Ah, to be young again, though.”Amaryllis smiled. “If you keep saying things like that, you certainly won’t feel young.”Lepido grinned back. “That’s a fair point. I remember when I was around your age. I used to travel quite a bit around these parts. Never too far from home, but still, I fluttered about, chased the moon and let wanderlust carry me around a little.”“Oh? Have you been to Inkwren?” I asked. “That’s our next stop, probably.”“Inkwren! Yes, a number of times. It’s hardly all that far. Once in a while a fishing ship from Codwood will cross the Blue Lake then take a riverboat to get to Pollock. Then you can walk most of the way down to Inkwren. Big city, lots of folk.”I wondered how big it actually was. Meaning no offence to Mister Lepido (even in my head) I didn’t think he’d seen too many big cities if he never travelled all that far from home. Had he been to the Stormtower, or even to Farseeing in the Harpy Mountains, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from Inkwren.So I asked!“Hmm, well, the city’s one of the independent cities in that area, one of the bigger ones too, from what I gather. It was founded by a group of exiled human scholars, but nearly half the city is made up of harpies,” Lepido said.“I’d heard of that,” Amaryllis said. “The Wren clan lives there. They’re... not part of the Harpy Mountain clans, not in a big way like some other families. The Raven clan has a large compound in the city as well.”Lepido made an affirmative noise. “Yup. Saw plenty of those too. Hard to tell, with the uniforms. Ah, right, the city’s got a few big schools in it.”“The academies,” Amaryllis said. “I’ve heard that some noble families from the Harpy Mountains will send their children there to study. Some merchant families as well. It’s less expensive than the noble academy in the capital and the education is apparently second to none.”Caprica snorted. “I doubt that it’s that good.”“Oh, no, it is good,” Amaryllis replied. “But it’s fiercely competitive. The academies are constantly at each other’s throats and while you won’t get stabbed in the back or poisoned-"You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story."Wait, that can happen?" I asked, incredulous. "At a school?"Amaryllis looked a bit uncomfortable. "Well, it's uncommon-I mean, it hasn't happened in the Harpy Mountains... recently?"I gave her a long stare."As I was saying!" she pushed on, "The Inkwren academies are supposedly less violent, so being from the wrong family or having poor political standing will lead to, at worst, a minor scuffle or maybe a brawl."“Did you have any trouble there?” I asked Lepido.He shook his head. “No, never. I mostly kept to the docks and the small... hrm, I suppose they’re their own villages? There’s a number of small settlements, about the same size as ours here, all around the city. I mostly kept to those. Never had much of a reason to go to Inkwren itself.”“Ah, okay,” I nodded along.“The people I met were quite kind. Though I did encounter one biologist who wanted to poke and prod me, but I rebuffed them.”That was... a little concerning. Nobody would want to do biology of a bun though, right? I looked at my friends and winced. We... were probably all a little bit interesting to someone who was really into biology. Awen was the normalest one here, at least if Inkwren had humans.On the other hand, I was getting pretty excited about travelling to Inkwren. The city sounded neat!“We’ll have some time to explore,” Amaryllis said on seeing my expression. “But not too much. I’d rather arrive at Port Royal early as opposed to late.”“Okay,” I said. “Maybe they have bookstores there? I bet Booksy would love a heap of books as a wedding gift.”“Books are heavy,” Awen said. “But we can carry a few.”Right, that was something I’d have to keep in mind before I bought a whole pallet-load of books. The Beaver could only carry so much weight.The afternoon wore on, the feast turning into a dessert-sampling event as a number of grannies pulled out all their family-recipes and hidden tricks in the form of cupcakes and cookies and even a few pastries.I was going to need to be rolled back to the ship.“Where did they get the flour?” Amaryllis muttered as she picked up a cupcake.“We trade for it in Codwood,” Lepido said. “It’s a little pricey, but the taste is worth it.”“And where do they get it?” Amaryllis asked. “I didn’t see any fields when we flew over the town. A few gardens, sure, and maybe there are some farms on the edges, but not enough to account for lots of flour that’s easily tradable. Besides, I didn’t see a mill.”Lepido smiled. “They get it from the Endless Swells. They are part of the nation, you know.”Amaryllis huffed the huff of someone who decided to give up on the question.I was just starting to worry about the Scallywags when they burst out of the dungeon, all three of them loud and exuberant and bursting with humour.Then I noticed how dishevelled they looked. Oda had a piece of cloth wrapped around an arm which had soaked up a bit of blood, and Sally was walking with a limp.I gave up on the cupcakes and cookies and ran over to them. “Are you okay?” I asked.“We’re fine,” Joe said with a dismissive wave. He had a shield strapped to his back, the same sort that Amaryllis had picked up in our own dungeon run.“We had a couple of close calls,” Sally said. “But we managed to make it though!”I turned towards Mister Puffles as he left the dungeon behind the Scallywags. The older farmer looked a lot tired, but he nodded to me all the same. “Not the quickest run through,” he said. “And not the safest. But we made it out alive.”“The Evil Roots?” Lepido asked as he came over.A lot of ears were listening in, I noticed.“Still there, but not around the core, and the dungeon spent as much time fighting the roots as it did fighting us. It looks like it’s working hard to get rid of them,” Mister Puffles said.I clapped, and there was a cheer from some of the more exuberant listeners. “That’s fantastic!”“It is,” he agreed. “It’ll make keeping the dungeon clean a lot easier if it’s trying to help. Might even be enough to clear the entire infection away.”The mood in the village lifted at the news. The mothfolk who had been cautiously optimistic before let out a sigh of relief, then the chatter picked up and some of the more spry older folk even started to dance.Grinning from ear to ear, I looked at my friends. “We did it!” I congratulated. “Ah, but we should probably think about heading out soon. Did you three manage to take out the boss?” I asked the Scallywags, and got a chorus of "yeses" in return. “Perfect! In that case, I think we’re nearly done here.”There was a small frenzy of activity after that. A lot of folks were insisting that we load up on leftovers, and with the quality of the food on offer, we weren’t about to say no!Mister Lepido, meanwhile, pulled me aside. “I’m not one for big speeches,” he began with a grateful smile. "Thank you for everything you've done for our village," he said. "We will never forget your bravery and kindness. I wish you all the best on your journey to Inkwren and beyond."“Thank you,” I said. “But it’s all in a day’s work, right?”After saying our goodbyes to the villagers and promising to visit again someday, we boarded the Beaver Cleaver. The Scallywags had some bumps and cuts, which wasn't too bad, but I asked them to take a break to heal up faster. The airship's engines roared to life as we lifted off, leaving the village and the dungeon behind.
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