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.

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 Defeated

Broccoli 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 +10

Flexibility +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.

***