authority gaffe
Success.
That was hoped.
The mana stone attuned to void corruption was created and given to High Healer Selmum. She was guarding it in a hidden location until she needed it. The stone could safely contain a certain amount of corruption. Once filled, it would be returned to the Dungeon to be disposed of.
Selmum was preparing to witness the Core remove the corruption from other patients and create several more void stones, which would then be used to remove the corruption from others. The Dungeon Core was planning to make as many void stones as possible. They are hard to create, which makes them incredibly valuable and dangerous.
"How confident are you that you can remove void corruption?" Ranus asked the High Healer.
She looked thoughtful before speaking. "I have observed the Dungeon remove void essence from two patients. We have arranged three more viewings while more void stones are created. Each time I witness it happening, I grow more confident in my ability to recreate the process."
"Excellent." Ranus was happy to receive some good news at last. But he knew he had to ask another question. "How are the other healers reacting to what needs to be done to remove void corruption from the patient?"
"Due to what happened to Comus, we already had several specialists within the city. They have been reviewing my notes and observations of the process. We have decided to ask that the next patient be unconscious during the removal, as it is a great deal of strain on both the mind and body of the afflicted." Many nodded in agreement to this simple idea.
She continued. "Words of a possible cure to void corruption have spread worldwide, and I'm getting many messages daily from healers and concerned parties. We have managed to contain knowledge of what needs to be done for the moment, as we fear that once it becomes widely known, desperate people will take action that will lead to unfortunate consequences. A flood of people will come to the city seeking a cure, another possibility. We wish to avoid both outcomes as they will cause greater problems in the long run."
Again, everyone nodded at her concerns as they were ones that many others had recently voiced. Around the world, the effects of what happened on that day are still being felt, and people are becoming desperate as void corruption spreads amongst the populations of different lands.
"We must be ready in case either possibility happens. Our resources are limited and severely taxed after the recent events in the temple district, but we should be ready as best we can be." Ranus spoke to the group with another series of nods from them.
## ## ## ## ##
I felt terrible.
Three more people from the city had their bodies cleared of void essence. I tried it on an infected man asleep at the healer's request. It had gone badly; the essence was far harder to remove from the unconscious patient, and I almost lost it on several occasions. We both discovered that removing the corrupted essence was somehow tied to the mental state of the person from whom it was being removed. They needed to be awake and aware of what was happening for the process to work efficiently.
This meant that the person involved went through a great deal of pain and physical trauma, but that was the price that needed to be paid, it seemed.
This had deeply upset the healer, but I believe she had accepted that this was how it would happen unless she discovered another means of doing so. I successfully created another three mana stones attuned to the void.
I was dealing with the last corruption I had removed from the city locals.
Adventurers were in the Dungeon, and I was interested in them as I was close to my next floor and hoped to pass the threshold soon. They were above the fifth and did not appear to be going lower. I suspected the fifth might be too much for them. I should see, and I am expecting one more adventurer group to come through with the miners today.
The spiders on the fourth were pushing them hard. This group had been coming around for the last few months of the classic mixture of fighters and support. They usually hung around on the third floor, rarely venturing beyond it. When they did leave, there was one to the fourth like they were now.
The problem was that they had not yet learned to pace themselves on the third floor. They burned through most of their available skills, clearing the floor. Now that they were on the fourth level, they were being pushed hard by the spiders and had no tricks up their sleeve. Normally, they would go only a few rooms in, but this time, they were pushing through the eighth in the main hall I had created on the floor.
The spiders were dying but had wounded several of the adventurers' team members. I suspected they would turn back now, as this was the limit of how far they could go safely.
It didn't take long for the last of the spiders to die, and they collected the rewards for their victory. I was almost ready to turn away from them and focus on other things when they did something that surprised me. They went on.
More improved spiders attacked them in the next room, and the group just let off a fireball at them. Luck seemed to favour them today, as it exploded right between them as they advanced on a group. They were quickly transformed into flaming torches as they ran around, causing the fires to spread through the spider webs.
The group quickly attacked and killed the distracted spiders. Now they had to turn back.
They collected the rewards, and it seemed that their victory had greatly inflated their egos. The team captain should have seen sense and turned them back, but he did not, and they advanced to face the floor Guardian.
Queen was going to have a field day.
They did at least wait a few more minutes to treat their wounds before going into the next and final cavern. In that time, I alerted Queen to what was coming.
The fight wasn't even close.
She dropped from the cavern ceiling as she normally did, which did not surprise them as much as I expected, as I believe they had been warned. However, she was far more flexible with their battle tactics and began to dismantle them.
Using her spells, she tripped them up and quickly jumped on the fallen adventurers, killing them quickly. This rattled the others, but she continued her assault relentlessly, and one by one, they fell. The last tried to flee, but they, too, died.
The essence of the kill travelled down into the Dungeon and to my Core. When the last died, I got the notification.
Floor 10, here we go.
## ## ## ## ##
"Errwww."
My awareness snapped back into focus.
I looked around, finding Larry and Puck guarding my dungeon core while I was indisposed.
It took me a few moments to gather my thoughts and focus on the Dungeon around me. Before anything else, I did my usual checking of the Dungeon and found that everything was in its place and ready to go again. I looked at the roof of the surface building and the tower, seeing that it was nighttime, as there was no sign on the building in any location.
The front doors closed and locked, and I left that way.
Time to get to work, and I started with myself. I looked at my Core and found it had grown once more. I still had plenty of room in the alcove, but things were getting tight with all the other mana stones around. Many of the stones were dull as I had been using the mana from them to fuel the Dungeon, which was resetting. I knew that would change soon as they started to charge again.
Before I could do anything else, a notification forced its way into my attention.
Congratulations!
You have achieved a great thing by reaching the 10th floor of your Dungeon.
As a reward, you will gain an extra 25 CP per level with the bonus of an additional 50 for this one.
"What?"
I quickly opened up my status screen to see what was going on.
Name
Bhaldor
Essence
0%
Race
Dungeon Core
CP
238(1200) 11.5 phr
Level
10
Corruption
2%
Floors
10
Health
100%
Skills:
Mana Manipulation: 9 - 78%
Core Refining – 25%
Mana Sight: 18 – 6%
Aura Manipulation: 8 - 45%
Herb Lore: 2 – 0%
Spell Casting: 1 – 0%
Alchemy: 10 – 0%
Enchanting: 5 – 63%
Perks/Restrictions:
Godless
Affintyless (++ ERROR! ++)
Companionless
Limitless Monsters/Traps
Core Refinement max – 90%
Spell Casting (++ ERROR! ++)
Mana Stored
Illusion – 140(140) / 0.01 phr.
Shadow – 140(140) / 1.1 phr.
Light – 140(140)/ 0.1 phr.
Earth – 140(140)/ 0.9 phr.
Ice – 140(140)/ 0.012phr
Fire – 140(140)/ 0.1phr
Air – 140(140)/ 0.35phr
Death – 140(140)/ 0.2phr
Infernal – 140(140)/ 0.1phr
"Bloody hell!"
200 CP gains in this one level up. I had options!
I was momentarily stunned, not knowing what to do for a few seconds.
Looking over the rest of my sheet, I could see the improvements to Mana Manipulation and Mana Sight. Both of these were achieved through dealing with the infected in the city. Several level improvements in both skills have made each of the following void essence removal easier.
Looking at the rest of my sheet, I realised I'd promised to focus on more core refinement, as I'd been neglecting it again. All of the mana types I checked on were fully charged and ready to be used.
I had a lot of work to do, and I was excited.
I reached the ground below my core room and started claiming it. It was solid rock and slow going, but I was making progress. I had planned out this floor extensively and…..
The ground below me, I was claiming, had suddenly dropped away into a cavern of some type.
"Dammit!"
I quickly changed tactics and began exploring the outside of the cavern. I had a lot of CP available, but I promptly exhausted it. This cavern was massive, and I was discovering some exciting things along the way.
Regarding the surface building, I noticed that sunlight was beginning to appear, and I was to open up the Dungeon. I left the cavern, partly claimed, and turned my attention to the doors above, opening them.
A flunky from the adventurer's guild came in and ran down the stairs quickly. The younger ran straight down to the bottom floor and checked how far the stairs went. As there was no sign of the 10th floor, she returned to the surface as fast as she came down.
The adventurer teams appeared shortly after.
I listened to the conversation briefly, as most were interested in knowing when the next floor would open. They were betting on the environment and the type of monster that would be found there.
Most of the team stayed above the fifth for the rest of the day, which allowed me to move into the cavern more slowly. My regeneration rate was decent now, meaning that I only had to wait a few hours before I could claim a bit more. I could now work day and night.
This was not going to be a quick process.
The second day followed the same pattern as the first, and then the third day followed. Then the fourth and then the fifth.
The sixth gave me a good idea of what I will work with, as it claimed nearly the entire cavern.
Oh boy, this was going to be interesting.
The cavern was a vision of what many would call hell.
Lava flowed through the ample space, lighting everything with its orange glow. A river of lava flowed through about two-thirds of the cavern, and several other flows were running into it. I didn't know where it was going or where it was coming from. This granted me access to Molten Mana.
I gained access to it yesterday, and it was quite an interesting interpretation of how elements in the world could work together. Initially, I thought it should have been called lava mana, but as I researched it more, I realised its name was quite apt. This type of mana was formed whenever an element came together with fire and formed a molten state. In this case, it was a combination of earth and fire.
Access to this molten chamber produced two units of mana per hour for me to use. I have not yet created mana stones, but I was seriously looking at that. The only issue was, once again, where to store them, as my alcove was getting very crowded.
I had broken into the very northern side of the cavern. The cavern headed in a southwestern direction, with the river of lava flowing from the north to the south. The cavern was of uniform shape, with numerous large rock outcrops, stalagmites, and stalactites covering its surfaces.
That was not all that I discovered in this cavern. The fire essence had formed natural mana stones, but they had not been sealed properly and had propagated into a cluster in one of the corners near the entrance of the river of molten lava. They had merged with some form of mushroom to create something new to me.
Fire Crystal Mushrooms.
I have, of course, absorbed them at the first opportunity I could. I didn't take the whole crop of them, but a hefty sample. They were listed as a rare resource used in numerous enchantments and alchemy concoctions. It looks like I found the hook for the floor.
I was going to have to reposition them, though they were too close to the entrance to the floor with a stairwell. I also discovered a substantial iron deposit in one of the walls, which led me to consider another potential resource node. It seems that the quality of the iron was exceptionally good as well, which could act as an additional lure to greedy adventurers.
But that wasn't all. I found a small deposit of rubies on the southern side of the cavern, close to where I was thinking about putting a new stairwell. The layout of this cavern made me decide whether or not to split the stairwell. From here on, any adventurer going deeper into the Dungeon won't have to cross the floor.
"Yes, this could work very well."
I had plans for the 10th floor, but this could actually work better for me in the long run. I went through the cavern one more time, taking note of everything and the locations of various resources. I was going to make some changes, but I think I can work with this as it is.
Even with my large amount of CP, what I was planning was going to take time, especially the creation of the single minion that will be the floor guardian of this floor.
There is no time like the present, so I got started.
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