Golem Core

Inert Sentience Core.

Mana: 5/100000

Quality: Epic

I was not quite sure what to think of this. The Core was inert and seemed to be gaining Mana very quickly, though it could also hold an absolutely staggering amount.

Golem Core

Inert Sentience Core.

Mana: 31/100000

Quality: Epic

I waited a time, as I tried to grasp how fast the Mana regeneration of the Core was. A few moments later I shook my head at the absurdity; as far as I could judge, it would take somewhere between eight and nine hours for the sphere to absorb the full amount it could contain. Pushing that marvel aside, I decided this was as good a time as any to sleep.

Apparently Charles had reached that very conclusion at some earlier point, no doubt watching me sit immobile with glowing hands for close to an hour was not interesting enough, and so he was asleep already.

I felt rather bothered by the lack of indoor plumbing as there were only unpleasant solutions to that problem.

**

When I woke, I was surprised into alertness at no longer holding the Core. I sat up in confusion, only to see Charles sitting cross-legged with the sphere in his hands, looking thoughtful.

At my movement he looked over at me, "This thing is drawing in the ambient Mana at an astonishing rate! I wonder what will happen when it is done."

I got to my feet and walked over to him. I had not taken note of it before, but by his earlier comments, starting with the stone of Fire Burst, he should have the Inspect Ability or something similar. It was a curious Ability to choose, and it made me wonder just how powerful he was, to feel comfortable with such a choice. Life as a Guard should not have made him seek power any less.

"Charles, what level are you?" He looked at me askance, which was quite understandable as the question was not exactly polite.

"I am just past my sixty-eighth level." While I thought I had managed not to look as surprised as I felt, Charles' smirk gave lie to that hope.

His high level compared to mine reinforced my earlier reasoning that the Power Charles and I shared with the horse could not possibly be Health. If Charles had fifty-eight levels on me, with a physical class, his Health should outstrip mine by a large margin. But it did bring up another question though.

"How dangerous is this floor? If you are at risk here, will I be of any assistance at all?" Charles was shaking his head before I finished speaking.

"No. None at all."

Feeling dejected and more than a bit worried, I asked, "What will I do then? Can you defeat this floor on your own?"

Charles grimaced, "While I am certain I can defeat or even clear out this floor on my own, it is unlikely to be all that easy. I will probably be hurt, but nothing to threaten my life. This floor is appropriate for a group of people near to level forty if they know what they are doing, and closer to fifty if they do not. You will follow me, keep your head down, and not die."

I looked around at the room we were in, feeling confused, "Why would I not just stay here then?" Apparently that was amusing, as Charles chuckled in response.

I enjoyed that he was more as when I had first met him; the forlorn version I had not appreciated as much. While I could understand his earlier reactions, as circumstances had seemingly brought many things into question for him, his emotional response was quite unrestrained for someone with his age and experience. I could grasp the why but the how bothered me somewhat, which might be unfair of me: I had never trusted as he had.

But even so, it was possible that there was more to it, as one did not have to contradict the other. Might the undead material have a mental component to it? Willpower reduction perhaps? I had considered earlier that the Champion of Truth was unlikely to be a willing subject of the undead, giving strength to the argument that there was some form of coercion involved, though I had no idea how or in what form. I was lost in thought considering how I could possibly find that out, as Charles interrupted with the answer to my earlier question.

"A safe room is only safe as long as all who entered through it remain. As soon as I leave, there is a chance of creatures making their way here. You are safer with me than staying here, in a confined space you can not flee from." I nodded, as that made sense.

I had heard that the Order governed places like Dungeons in a far more direct manner than most other locations, enforcing rather strict rules at times. I wondered why though. Why were there Dungeons in the first place, and why the rules? What did the Order get out of the arrangement?

Getting myself back on track with a shake of my head, I did feel a bit worried about Charles, and at the risk of sending him into another emotional spiral, I asked, "How much Constitution did you lose?"

He did flinch and sounded a bit strained as he answered, "I lost thirty-seven Constitution, but the Order has offered to restore me and grant me two levels, if I can safeguard you along this floor."

I warred with the realization that he had lost enough Constitution to all but kill me twice over, along with the reminder that he was supposed to try to keep me safe when he had more than six times my level.

I rubbed my forehead as another thought came to me, "Why did you not use Inspect on the flakes? I assume you have some such Ability."

Charles nodded, "Yes, I do have Inspect, but it does not work on the flakes. That will happen sometimes with strange items, especially as I only hold the first rank of the Ability." After he spoke, he handed me the Core back.

Golem Core

Inert Sentience Core.

Mana: 85675/100000

Quality: Epic

I shook my head, once more stunned by the amount of Mana it drew. In less than two hours I would find out if anything happened as it reached its capacity.

Charles got to his feet and stretched, before pulling his sword out a bit and then releasing it back into its sheath, probably to check that it was not stuck. I scratched my head, as I watched the hole in his coat on his right, stretching from just under his armpit and quite some distance down. His wound had been just below the ribs, and I had cut away quite a bit of the coat, which now seemed rather excessive.

He followed my eyes and shrugged, "Better than dying. We should get started. While we are not exactly in a hurry, I assume you have no food or water with you?" The only place I could possibly carry any such would be my satchel, which was empty of edibles, unfortunately.

"No." I was still unsure if the items I created from enchantments were truly permanent or not, and I did not want to find out what would happen if I drank something that then disappeared. At least, I would not experiment at this point. I would need to be far more desperate to think that the wise course.

Charles stepped up to one of the doors and peered out, before closing it and moving to the other. I looked at him in confusion and he explained, "That door leads to the stairs up to the ninth floor, so the other one is the entrance to the tenth."

He repeated his actions at the second door, opening it and peering out, before stepping through. Past him, I could see a long corridor of unadorned stone, or at least parts of one where Charles did not obscure my sight. I activated the two Minor Shield beads I still had in my pockets as we moved out.

We left the room and stalked down the corridor silently. In Charles' case, surprisingly so, for someone his size. All large men I had seen before had been slow and stiff in their movements, Charles was anything but.

It did not take us very long to reach a door on the left hand side of the corridor. Charles moved past the door, waving for me to stop where I was. He then pushed the door open, while standing to the side. When nothing had happened for a moment, he peeked into the room beyond.

He swiftly pulled his head back, as a knife came flying through where he had been moments earlier. It slammed into the opposite wall, with enough force to shatter the blade into fragments, which went flying every which way, as the handle bounced to the floor.

I stared at the space where the knife had hit the wall, as shivers went through my body.

Would that have killed me? With shaking hands I patted myself down, finding no wounds, but still unsettled.

Charles drew his sword, and stood motionless for a moment until a soft green sheen came off his weapon. He then turned swiftly to face the open door, meeting another dagger with his sword, causing a thrumming note to ring as the dagger was sent spinning upward. Charles disappeared into the room and out of my sight, and sounds of fighting soon reached me.

I stood where I was, shivering slightly. There really was not much I could do to help, if this was the kind of attack I could expect; it would be foolish of me to even peek around the corner, never mind trying to engage in combat.

I had either been too distracted before, or too locked down, because as I stood there warring with my fear and sense of inadequacy, I could sense there were five gatherings of Power in the room Charles had entered. One matching what I had sensed from Charles earlier, he shared two Powers with me and had one unknown. The other four shared the same two Powers but held no third at all.

Then, in one of these binary Powers, one drained away swiftly and disappeared, followed very quickly by its match. Leaving only four clusters of Power left in the room.

I was partly lost in thought, as I followed the fight with Sense the Flow, perceiving Charles moving through the room while I heard the clang of metal and dull thudding sounds.

I thought on what I had felt from what was no doubt the death of one of the creatures Charles was fighting. The Power Charles and I shared had been the first to disappear, followed by the one I had felt from both the forest and the horse, but not from the undead hamster.

It stood to reason, that the first thing to go would be Health. That would also be supported by Charles having more of it than I, which then meant that what I had sensed from the horse was something else.

But what was the second Power? And why did I have more of it than Charles? What could I possibly have more of, that seemed to be so prevalent? At first glance the problem was not to come up with something, it was to limit the possibilities. I decided to leave that for now.

As everything inside the room except Charles had perished, I entered after him. He had gotten some splatters of blood on his coat and hands, and a cut that marred his left upper arm bled slightly. He did not seem bothered by the wound as he cleaned off his weapon, thus I followed his lead and refrained from worry.

There were four dead hobgoblins in the room, which was just shy of four meters across. I felt a cold shiver go down my back, as I had not even considered the size of the room when I had deemed it safe. I silently berated myself for this stupidity, as cold sweat dotted my brow.

I did soon realize that while the basis for my conclusion had been flawed, I would still have heard fighting had any creatures remained. Though this demonstrated the limitations when relying on Sense the Flow in lieu of sight, in a rather frightening fashion.

As a species hobgoblins were somewhere between a goblin and an orc in stature and mass, quite similar to that of humans. Their morphology differed though, with longer arms, shorter legs, and a broader torso. Their skin tone also had a different range, from a darker green to a deep brown and almost black.

The hobgoblins had been all but cut apart, splattering gore everywhere. I decided I did not really need to study this room any further, and left Charles to the search he had begun.

I was peering out into the hallway when he stepped up next to me, taking a look in both directions himself before holding up a small gem.

"We need four more of these, and we can enter the final room and defeat the floor guardian in this section. Once that is done, we have defeated the floor."

I stared at him in surprise, "Is that it?"

He nodded, "Yes. Most of the time though, unless you are far more powerful than warranted by the floor you are on, this is not the way. Far better rewards and Experience are gained by clearing all rooms you can access. But getting past the final guardian is all that is really needed to move on. It should mean the completion of my quest, and give us a safe room at the end of the floor to hold golem parts for you."

"Will the final room be safe, if the first one was not?" I asked, slightly confused.

Charles gave a small shake of his head, "Not exactly safe but I am suggesting we leave items there, not that you stay there alone."

I nodded at that, "There is no risk of other people coming down and leaving with what we have gathered?"

Charles shrugged, "It is possible, but it rarely happens this far down. The Order seem to prefer to send people to different parts of the floors, and there are limits to how much of a floor you can access from any given entrance. While it does happen that you meet people you did not enter with, it is very rare. Further, Golem parts, while technically valuable are bulky and heavy; they are not something people will want to carry with them, when going deeper."

I considered all that he had said for a time, "Does that mean that just reaching the safe room at the end of a floor is enough to defeat it? That does not seem as if it would take very long."

Charles grinned at me, shaking his head, "Sure, that is enough to defeat a floor in the sense that you can leave, so why would the Order bother stopping you? If you walked down to a floor too strong for you and managed to somehow sneak to the end, you could enter another floor even harder, or leave. But why bother?"

It seemed to me as if Charles' quest was quite uncomplicated with his high level, if I could refrain from stupidity and stay safe. While the making of a Golem was important to me, I honestly doubted it mattered much to the Order. It felt more like a carrot, leading me along. Possibly as a distraction, or would this Golem save the world perhaps?

We both stiffened in the doorway, as we could hear the thudding of approaching footsteps.

**

Eric got slowly to his feet, feeling more than a bit strange. He felt different but could not pin down why. He found himself in a brightly lit room, with doors on two of the adjacent walls.

Eric shivered in the cold, which surprised him. It had been so long since he felt cold that he had almost forgotten what it was like. He held a hand out in front of himself and marveled. His gray and flaking skin had been replaced by gray skin sans the flaking. He also stood straight once more, instead of being hunched over as he had been.

A memory pulled at him, of something just out of reach.

"Status!" He shouted out.

Eric

Age: 19

Level: 1

Experience: -11578/100

Race: Aberration

Class: Summoner

Strength: 4

Dexterity: 3

Agility: 3

Constitution: 3

Endurance: 6

Intelligence: 8

Wisdom: 5

Willpower: 11

Perfection: 1

Charisma: 2

Health: 30/30

Mana: 160/160 (8/minute)

Stamina: 60/60 (9/minute)

Unallocated Attributes: 0

Eric took in his Attributes with some confusion. He scratched his head as it felt as if thoughts warred within his skull, some memories saying one thing only to be contradicted by others, moments later. Why did he have such a massive negative amount of experience?

"Abilities!"

Summon Blood Beetle, rank 1

You can summon a creature to serve you.

Cost: 65 Mana

Cast Time: 12s, Intentional

Range: 2 meters

Upkeep: 15 Mana per minute

Drain Life

Rip the Life out of a creature, to feed your own. A contest of your Perfection and Constitution against the Perfection and Endurance of your target.

May be used once per week.

Drain: 4 times the combined difference between contesting Attributes as Life.

Cost: 10 Life

Cast Time: 11s, Intentional

Range: Touch

Upkeep: N/A

A grin split Eric's face as he nodded happily, this was very good. Another shiver interrupted his thoughts, and with a frown he rubbed at his unclothed legs to warm himself. Wearing only a torn and bloody nightshirt was not the best attire in any circumstance, and certainly not here.

His hand touched something he had thought gone for good, and surprised he leaned over to check himself.

Eric took in his negative experience once more and nodded sagely. Clearly worth it.