Raphael was holding his band, looking at something, and cursing under his breath.

“Is something wrong?” I asked him curiously, while we started getting ready to head into the final boss room.

After a moment he refocussed on me. “Sort of. When I got my paste eater achievement it was transmitted.”

“Transmitted?” I asked.

“Yes, there was a zone-wide announcement. Meaning the players in Rhydia. A bunch of other people started trying it out, and other people got the fire-breather and death breath achievements. They are unique. But that’s not the bad part.”

“What is the bad part?” I asked like he clearly wanted me to.

“100% toxic resistance isn’t 100% toxic resistance.”

I looked confused, so he explained, “Poisons and toxins are rated in strength, based on how powerful they are, what level they are, and how much damage they do. Resistance percentages decline as things get more powerful than you are, so… we are all level 19, a 100% resistance to a level 29 poison would only be 50%. not to mention that poisons can have an enhanced toxin, above 100%. So if someone hit me with a toxin from a greater basilisk, which is supposed to be 129%, I would still take that 29% damage. If that toxin was level 30, which is normal level for greater basilisks, I would take 84% effect from it, which is way more than enough to kill me in no time.”

I shook my head, “So you are worried that a monster that is eleven levels higher than you are, over half again your level, can still kill you?”

He scratched his head and grinned, “Okay, good point. We just kind of blew through that megaraptor, which was 3 levels higher than us and an elite, pretty easily. Easily meaning no one died. I was hoping that was some sort of sign that we were beyond badass and were getting special abilities that would make us killing machines. To be honest, we are still darned close to the top of the heap in levels, but I expect I will come back from my break and find out some coolpod trust fund is going to be level 30 already.”

I shrugged, “Why is that important, exactly? While you are on break we are going to head to Rabbit run and try to sell, and whatever we make, a big chunk of that is your money. You are probably doing more damage faster than most other players using your real skills instead of just techniques, and you have an absolutely amazing set of armor for your level.” I chuckled. “Is being at the top level that important?”

He shook his head, “No. it really isn’t. Not important in any possible way, and it might even be a bad thing to be famous, even for a little while. But, the boys in my family are very competitive. It’s kinda stupid, but it would make ME feel good to be at the top of the lists for once. It’s utterly meaningless, but seeing guys who can just… throw money at everything to get to the top wears on you after a while.”

I nodded, “That’s always been a problem. It’s pretty much human nature, and no matter how hard anyone ever tries, what laws they pass, there will always be haves and have-nots, and some of those haves will be there because they were born lucky. The only thing you can ever do about it is work on your own little corner, do your best, and squeeze out a little have of your own.”

Raphael nodded and grinned, “True. That and the knowledge that in a fair contest, the fakers are going to be nothing more than meat.” And he started laughing.

I was sort of laughing a little along with him, but I kept getting the weirdest feeling that what he meant by that and what I thought he meant by that were two different things.

I was actually considering his problem as I scouted out the next rooms after the miniboss rooms. The first one, where I supposed the small swarmers were, was a giant jungle room with weird sunlight barely visible through the tops of giant trees. It was crisscrossed with tiny streams that would not even slow the short raptors down, and the room felt almost twice as large as the prior ones, almost a kilometer across.

The last room before the boss room was dry, with tall grasses, and was also very large, even bigger than the last jungle room. The jungle room hadn’t possessed much in the way of useful vegetable wealth, save for a shelf fungus that had to be strained of toxins before use but could be used to temporarily increase poison resistance, but the tall grass room was more of a dry plains environment, containing dozens of special grasses that had various potential utilities even though they were not something I would use in a food recipe. Teas, though, teas had huge potential, as did salves and balms.

Gingerbread man had not made it. When we had finally butchered the megaraptor, I found a half-melted puddle of Bronze and limbs underneath its flank, and the monster core was entirely gone. I was startled, until Kalika explained that while cores could slowly recharge when not being used, draining them completely destroyed them. This was not as much of a tragedy as Raphael thought since fire cores almost always drained and destroyed what they were used for. They were a poor choice for a golem for that exact reason, but considering the situation we were moving into, they were the perfect, if disposable choice for dealing with the horde of beasts. Because of Raphael’s rapidly-approaching deadline, we reluctantly agreed to face the boss this evening.

I peeked around the edge of the last tunnel and saw the last room. Inside, a man was sitting on a rock. There was something very strange about him. He was dressed simply, in a sort of wrap-around black tunic like a Gi, a pair of trews, and footwraps. He was slender, and tall, far from the Ogre I was expecting. His hands were, indeed, shaped like the heads of a pair of T-Rexes, but his face was what caught my attention. There was something… off about his smiling expression, I couldn’t pin it down, but whatever it was delved deeply into uncanny valley, worse than a dead actor CG ‘cameo’ in a modern movie.

He didn’t seem to respond to my hidden form and before I retreated I used [observe].

Rexus (Critical Threat)

Martial Artist Chiropractor(20)

Rexus does not exist. He is the echo of a beta tester who was supposed to be removed when the bands went ‘live’. He was apparently delving in this dungeon when the interworld connection was disabled, and the dungeon core managed to gain control of the character before it was deleted.

As such, its combat abilities are unknown. It could be immortal or could be fragile. Since it does not have a player feeding its essence and is reliant on the dungeon core’s energy to exist, and might not be damaged in the traditional ways.

That was… worrisome, so I quietly retreated back to the party to discuss the development. Like Raphael, Rexus appeared to be an energy construct to [observe].

After mentioning what I had [observed], Raphael said, “Well, I see two problems. We outnumber him, so if we draw him back into the tunnel with an attack, he would gain more of an advantage from the bottleneck than we would since we would only be able to melee with two people at a time instead of three. Unless you think you could drag him back here to where it opens up again?”

I nodded, “I might be able to do that, we could set up some traps, and I could run back here and jump over Cassie, but if we are meleeing I don’t dare use any bombs. I do have one of the toxic bombs left, though, I could use that to pull him and hope it weakens him before we have to deal.

Raphael nodded, “Yeah, traditionally, if this were a movie, we would surround him and then attack him one at a time so he could kick our asses individually, so let’s not do that.”

I grinned at Raphael, “Not getting my butt kicked like a disposable minion in a chopsocky flick sounds like a very good Plan. How are your skills at moving your mouth rapidly while grinding out badly dubbed phrases like ‘your school is pathetic’ in a squeaky voice?” I started setting up a cold trap. I was experimenting and was happy to discover that I could set up a line of thin, and hopefully invisible, animation magic from my finger along the floor, tied into a knot of frost mana. It was not as awesome as throwing fireballs, but I was a lot more confident in it than in my martial arts prowess. Yeah, I had a couple of good maneuvers, but I wasn’t even remotely a master of melee, which was probably why my skill was only ranked as adept fair.

Kalika chose what was probably the perfect moment to interrupt us. “Okay, we know what not to do. So what DO we do? I can use a snare to slow him down, as long as we are not on bare rock, so I am in favor of dragging him back here if we can.” She tapped at the dirt in the area with her toe.

In a few moments, we had a plan.

My expensive poison grenade, when hurled, ruptured at Rexus’ feet and had zero effect. He simply stood up, looked at me, and then waited, refusing to chase me. I even shot a stone at him, and it simply thudded off, with zero effect. I returned, disappointed, to the party, who had been arrayed around the exit ready to tackle him when he followed me through the line of traps.

“It’s not going to work.” I sighed, shaking my head, “The poison didn’t work at all, and his energy pattern wasn’t disturbed in the slightest when I shot a rock at him.”

Kalika nodded, “He is a room guardian, then. Unless the room is occupied, he can absorb or reform instantly and cannot be affected in any way. That means that to fight him, we actually have to be in the room with him interfering with the dungeon’s respawn ability. In effect, he is immune to anything if we are not there fighting him personally, but he cannot leave the area. I suspect the core made him as powerful as possible to protect it, but that sort of power comes with limitations. If we retreat from the room, even if we have almost beaten him, he will instantly reform, which means we are stuck there until the end.”

I nodded, “My guide has informed me that the core is insane. I think we might need to destroy it or it will keep spawning more and more powerful monsters forever.”

Kalika raised an eyebrow at the statement, “It has no guiding intelligence?”

I shook my head, “No, apparently it… ate its helper.”

Kalika looked a little confused, “Then your guide is correct. We will need to find the core and eliminate it, either through draining it or destroying it, but destroying a core like that is not as simple as destroying a monster core.” She tilted her head and gave me an odd look. “I guess it’s just fortunate that we have a channeler here that’s capable of draining it. Otherwise, it would require a very powerful warrior to shatter it or a mage to purge it.”

I sighed. Right. Less than overpowered isekai superpower. It would probably involve ruining my clothes, horrible pain, and a long period of unconsciousness, again. Well, at least this time I was ready for it. Hard work is always rewarded with more hard work, but at least I was prepared for hard work if we survived this fight.

We entered the rather smaller cave, and Rexus stood, with a creepy smile on his face. “New victims! I will rip out your spines and feed them to you, or would you prefer I bend you into a pretzel and hang you on my wall?”

Bran, his mouth is not saying what we are hearing. I don’t know why, but what his mouth said was “Ah, new patients! Would you prefer a minor adjustment or a complete check-up?” The core is pulsing hostility, but the creature is not. It appears confused.

I said “Hold on a moment!” and was surprised when the boss stopped, both of his hands snapping their jaws hungrily. Our group was arranged in a typical fashion, Cassie and Raphael at the point, Shiana to the left, and Kalika and I to the right in a wedge as we exited the tunnel.

“We are here to deal with the core, it is… unstable. While we would appreciate treatment, especially from a licensed chiropractor, Our job is to repair your...office.”

Rexus looked around, confused, “I will bore a hole through your hearts and decorate my lair with your entrails. I am the master of my domain and my assistant can schedule a point through your soul.” I noticed that in the wall behind him there was a stone, slightly pulsing a pale green, not particularly attractive but about the size of an egg.

My office is unbelievably boring. I do not understand what is going on, but I keep getting attacked by unfriendly visitors. I am not currently available, but my assistant would be happy to schedule an appointment for my regular hours. Apparently, he has an incredibly low charisma, which, when translated through his band’s interface, is causing a disconnect between what we are hearing and what he is saying.

“Mnemosyne, if you would please keep him occupied, I will try and deal with the core.”

in a moment Mnemosyne appeared, hovering in midair while Kalika let out a surprised noise. Her wings were fluttering, but she started speaking in English, talking about how her wing muscles were constantly sore and most chiropractors were far too large to assist such a tiny creature. Rexus occasionally nodded, offering insights about ripping off wings and pinning her to a wall like a bug in a collection, but while it seemed to be making the rest more and more nervous, apparently what she was hearing didn’t match what he was threatening.

I slowly edged around behind the doctor, trying to be as stealthy as possible, and was finally able to place my hand over the core.

Touching the core must have triggered something, as I heard two loud roars, probably from the Doctor’s hands, and a set of loud clangs that sounded like Cassie’s shield. The moment I touched the core, I could see my soul space and aura getting overlapped by that of something radiating pure hatred. I recognized the hatred, it was something I pushed back behind my shield myself, but this was a thousand times stronger than any of the emotions I controlled regularly.

It burned, horribly, and was backed by what felt like enormous quintessence. It didn’t seem to have much power of its own direction, but the way the aura encompassed everything was a huge pressure. It was overlapping me, and I could feel it digging at my own aura, curls of power lapping at the outer rim of my space. I pushed out some of my own aura, and as I felt a weird sort of penetration at the outer edge of my zone, I reached out and grabbed it with one of those energy loops I had been trying to form based on the scroll, and dragged it in towards my core.

Power. Too much power. Way more than too much. I started pushing my core, trying to make it smaller so that there was more room, as the tentacle of essence lost cohesion the moment it passed my aura. I felt that if the probes managed to break my shield, I would lose my zone, but I started throwing out more and more loops. They were slightly more stable as they grappled and dragged in the essence, but I had to use the quintessence around my core to pull harder.

More and more power entered my core as I grabbed more of the tendrils and pulled, compacting the quintessence around my core and pressing down and inwards as hard as I can. In a moment Mnemosyne was there, and I could feel her encouraging presence as I unspooled more and more coils, weaving them into intricate knots that soon created patterns around my condensing core, a 2-dimensional fractal that eventually seemed to extend out PAST my aura and into the air.

I could hear the fighting behind me and had to hope that they could keep the boss off me as I worked. The fractals extending past my aura seemed to be grabbing more tendrils of essence from the air and from the core itself, the orbit of my core speeding up and sending the patterns further out from my zone, passing through the shield and sweeping up random fragments of mana outside of my shield. The energy passing through my meridians was similarly sped up, stretching the channels as I tried desperately to match them to what the scroll’s very first instructions said since I didn’t have any other patterns to follow.

It felt like every bone in my body decided to break at the same moment as my core suddenly shrank, becoming tiny in comparison to the great hulking gaseous mass it had been before, more like a star hovering over my inner landscape with a swirling pattern of fractal stars rotating rapidly through my simulated sky. The pain was submerged under the feeling of a warm fire, but not fire that was burning, through my whole body. To be honest, the only thing I could compare it to was the sensation of relieving yourself after a bad bout of constipation, total relief as the coils of essence got dragged more and more strongly into the tiny star.

Looking at it more closely, where before it had seemed like a gaseous mass of quintessence, now the shrunken core looked more… liquid. The strands extending from it flowed far more smoothly than they had as a gas, and as they ran through my newly-cut channels there was vastly more room for a heavier flow, and I could see the liquid mana cutting through more obstructions, cleaning the channels of impurities and carrying them to my dantians for elimination. I could sort of understand what the cultivation books meant by a ‘breakthrough’, and the coiled fractal patterns, similar but not identical to those in the scroll, were spinning madly and collecting essence even outside of my aura like a sea creature would collect nutrients.

The last of the invasive energy was drawn into my spiral and was replaced by what almost felt like another small core, connected to mine but separate, which was dragged into place so it looked like I had two stars above my landscape, one tiny and brilliant and the other somewhat dimmer and orbiting it. Strands of energy connected the two, and I could see energy passing along the lines from the larger to the smaller core, slowly brightening it. This was a serious break from the scroll’s patterns, as strands extended from the second core, passing energy from one to the other in its own smaller fractal pattern.

There had been nothing about two cores, and the fractals seemed to pass beneath and around each other’s patterns without intercepting each other, causing the entire flat pattern to spin around as they orbited. This seemed to improve my ability to gather the essence, however, but I needed time to figure out how this worked with the scroll’s instructions. I was clearly past the first diagram, but with this oddity, I had no confidence in the manual’s later usefulness.

The sounds of combat had stopped, and I slowly withdrew myself from the fascinating patterns of my fractal cores. As I withdrew, my concentration eased, and the patterns stopped spinning as quickly… this was not unfortunate, however, as the rapid spinning had seemed to collect the lion’s share of free essence from the core’s reduction.

The core in the wall was gone, and I could only assume that I had absorbed it, that that was the second core I had found in my zone. Cassie’s shield was in bad shape, again, Kalika was healing a large… what looked like a bite mark, taken out of Shiana’s arm, and both Rexus and Raphael were missing. “What happened?”

Shiana looked a bit upset, “Raphael was ripped in half. He said that if he died, Cassie should carry his band to a shrine near where we were going and that he would be back in three days.”

Cassie nodded and held up a band. “I guess this is what he would reincarnate from. Usually, these things disappear, but I guess because he decided to not immediately resurrect it stayed here so I could carry it, because we are in his party.”

Kalika nodded, “The moment you touched the core, Rexus took a piece out of Shiana and then just… ripped Raphael in half. He was far more powerful than anything this core should be able to create, but the core is just gone. When it disappeared so did Rexus, but I think he could have killed us all. What did you do to the core?”

Your body tempering, now that your meridians are linked, has become overall, so the list of tempered locations has been replaced with the ‘body tempering’ trait. You have gained the twin core and enhanced cultivation evolutions, as well as the sprite solidity evolution you had me choose while we were fighting.

Your foundation, energy circulation, and willpower have also improved due to your conflict with the dungeon core. I am WAY out of my depth right now, but I am trying to help however I can. Your draconic comparisons with known substances and mana types is nearly complete, and I think what you did with the cold traps was known as formations, a very challenging sort of magic usually only used by chi sorcerers and dungeon cores. Kalika might know more about it.

I took a moment to view my revised character sheet. I have no idea why, but I was quite pleased with the fact that it was becoming smaller and more compact. My new, liquid core and smaller character sheet made me feel like I was driving a sports car instead of a pickup truck.

Bran’s Character Sheet

Brantley Gallagher Winterborne

Ice Kobold

Body size: Medium-light

Evolution: 12%

Health: 100%

Body: Great

Mana: 100%

Mind: Superb

Fatigue: 100%

Reflexes: Extreme

Player level equivalent: 20

Speed: Superb

Unenhanced Skill Groups

Logic: journeyman poor

Mathematics: apprentice good

Acrobatics: apprentice good

Piloting: apprentice fair

Spellcrafting: apprentice good

Security: apprentice fair

Socializing: apprentice fair

Energy Circulation: apprentice mediocre

Enhanced Skill Groups

Survival: master poor

Martial arts: adept fair

Ranged combat: adept superb

Improvised Engineering: expert fair

Essence Manipulation: expert poor

Stealth: adept fair

Foundation: journeyman great

Willpower: adept fair

Physical Fitness: journeyman mediocre

Magical Lore: adept good

Innate

Ice Kobold Hybrid (advanced)

Unique soul

Kobolds innately gain trapmaking and scrounging at apprentice level, minor natural weapons, can swim at a trotting speed, darkvision, and minor regeneration.

Ice Kobolds in particular gain 75% cold resistance and 150% cold affinity.

Advanced Kobolds are nearly the same height as a short human, and gain a minor bonus to dodge and stealth.

Your unusual origins give you a unique soul for your species.

You gain combat meditation which includes mental time dilation, fear resistance, pain resistance, and the ability to access your soul space for mana manipulation and improvised spell creation.

Unfortunately, your special soul also gives you a minor penalty to social skills.

Evolutions

Silver Cord

Sprite Information Link

Sprite Materialization

Sprite Habitat

Intellectual Maturity

Twin Core Evolution

Sprite Solidity

Enhanced Cultivation

Gifts and Traits

Draconic Language

Rhydian Language

Enhanced Quintessence Body

Aura Domain

Moderate Foundation

Mystical Creation

Body Tempering: fair

“I guess that means that Raphael will be okay?” I asked curiously, looking at the band.

Shiana nodded, “From what I understand, yes. Cassie and I both obtained level 20 when the core expended its energy, and there’s no reason to believe that Raphael didn’t do so as well, but we will find out when we get to Rabbit Run and put it into the shrine. Otherwise, when he comes back, he will probably recover at Boar’s Den and have a very long run back to us.­

“Is anyone else weirded out by the idea that he can just die, and then get all better somewhere else?” I asked.

Shiana shrugged, “Considering that it happened to me several times, I am just grateful he can recover from it. What weirded me out was that he kept trying to do something during the fight that I didn’t understand. I could feel his energy pulsing, and I am not even a mage, but I think whatever he was trying to do was absorbed by the band, and it threw him off like he was expecting to use a special ability he had in his world that just wasn’t working here.”

I nodded, my head filled with ideas. He was from the future, and maybe in the future, they had some weird kind of adrenal implants or something that he was trying to use. In the Gibson books, everyone had nerve wiring and stuff that they could use, and maybe he was trying to activate it and the system didn’t allow it, like anti-cheating or something. I would have to ask when he came back.

“That’s one of the problems.” Cassie stated simply, “Now that we are level 20, we each have to do a quest for our next prestige class. Those quests are solo and can range from a couple of hours to several weeks, depending on which class we choose. If Shiana were still a pet, Rik could have gone with her and helped her do it, but when we hit the shrine in Rabbit Run, we are going to have to split up for a little while.”

I nodded, “I have a lot of stuff to do also, so I imagine we can agree to meet up in Rabbit Run after you are done with your quests?” to which both Cassie and Shiana agreed.

Apparently, eating a dungeon core, while it does not prevent the essence rewards from completing the dungeon, absolutely precludes its ability to create other rewards. There was no ‘finish’ chest and I could tell that the amount of essence in the air from the dungeon was gradually diminishing, due to both its lack of a continuing source as well as the fact that I seemed to have absorbed an enormous amount of it. The trip out of the dungeon was surprisingly uneventful since it hadn’t had the opportunity to restock while we were fighting its minions, but the entire cave system had gone dark as whatever had been creating the illusionary sky was gone.

More alarmingly, the vast majority of the plant life was dead, other than that which contained its own essence. The strangling willows were dark and motionless, and even the traps had ceased to function. The core powered everything in its dungeon, and without it, the whole system was simply a bunch of rotting holes. Searching out essence-infused herbs on our way out, however, became extremely easy in the wasteland of dying plants.