Silver Spoon Series

"So, any idea where that thing came from?"

The monster they had fought just didn't seem like it belonged. Not only was its level higher than anything else around, but it just didn't seem to fit the area. Identify had described it as a swamp-based creature, and this was not a particularly wet area. Something was up and Alan hoped Tamee could shed some light on the issue.

"Yes, and it is going to be a problem." was her answer.

"What else is new? Just when things seem like they are going alright, something has to crop up. What is it this time?" Alan griped.

"So, remember how there should be thousands of you running around? Well, not now because most people are in stasis at the moment, but during tier two there should have been."

"That was a little rambly, but yes, I shouldn't have been alone."

She took a steadying breath before going on. "Right, well, there were a ton of dungeons spread around the tier because there should have been lots of people looking for challenges. That would mean most dungeons would get cleared every couple days if not sooner. Instead, you rarely did a dungeon more than once, and many you never cleared, or even entered."

Alan had a bad feeling. "I think I know where this is going."

"Yeah, dungeons are always looking for people to clear them for two reasons. One is that they gain more power when adventurers enter them. The other is that their lair, the dungeon, generates its own type of energy as it sits. It is a kind of aura leak from the dungeon core. By clearing out the monsters and killing the boss, it requires the dungeon to use that energy to refresh itself.

"If, however, no one clears a dungeon, that energy will just build and build. Eventually the lair can no longer contain the pressure, and the dungeon will 'leak'. This is a term we use for the venting of energy. All of that energy has to go somewhere, and it ends up creating monsters. Sometimes it is a single burst of a powerful creature, like you faced, other times it is a longer release that creates a wave of monsters."

Alan's stomach was somewhere around his knees. "And since none of the dungeons in tier two were being properly cleared, that means that all of the dungeons are going to start leaking. This could get really bad."

Tamee came to his rescue. "There is some good news. Depending on the strength of the dungeon core, their lairs can hold different amounts of energy before leaking, and they also generate that energy at varying rates. So, while at least one dungeon has leaked, and others will if nothing changes, you still have some time to try and get this under control."

She was right, that did make the situation seem a little more doable. One totally unworkable solution would be for Alan to rush around and clear all the dungeons right now. Besides the fact that he didn't know how many there were, or where to find them all, there just wasn't time for that. Plus, Alan had other things he needed to be doing.

The only solution that Alan could see was to get more help. He had already begun making plans for that to happen, he would just need to accelerate them and hope nothing terrible happened in the meantime. It did mean he had to have a tough conversation with Two Socks.

"I don't know how much of that discussion you understood, but more of these creatures could be coming. I can't say how long until you see more, but it is almost guaranteed to happen again. Do you want to come back with me to stay safe, or are you willing to stay and guard the egg. I don't think I can move it from its placement in the magic circle until it hatches."

Alan could sense worry coming through their link when he started to explain the situation, but when he mentioned keeping the egg safe he felt a fierce determination from the wolf. It seemed he took his job as protector very seriously.

"The egg is my responsibility, Two Socks, you don't have to stay to protect it. If you want to bring your she-wolf and move to the village with me, then I will figure out something else for the egg."

Both through their link and just by looking at the wolf, Alan could tell that Two Socks wasn't going to leave the egg. In truth, it was what Alan had been hoping for. He didn't know of any other way of safeguarding it, unless Alan stayed himself. That was again not an ideal solution to the problem, so the fact that his friend was willing to stay made things simpler. He would still need to get some help down here quickly to try and stave off disaster.

As they continued their run back to the house, Alan rubbed his friend's fur. He didn't know how the wolf pup had ended up here, but it had really changed things for him. Not only had he gained a friend, but also a fellow warrior, someone else to help shoulder the burdens. Alan decided to try and come up with a present to thank Two Socks for everything.

It was only midafternoon when they returned to Amthraxia, the name Alan had chosen for his faux village. The plan had been to spend the whole day exploring, but after their last encounter, they both felt the need to get moving. Once back at the farm, Alan began his preparations for leaving.

He had already resupplied his fruit reserve, and collected seeds from some of the herbs and other plants. The only other thing he really needed to get was the dungeon core. Having learned that all these dungeons were about to send dangerous monsters out into the world, it didn't seem like adding another was a good idea. This dungeon, however, would be under Alan's control, and it was a crucial part of his plans.

The core was currently the focal point of a magical diagram, and even Alan's limited experience with them was enough to know that he couldn't simply pick it up. He would need to shut down the circle first. As the creator of the circle, that was a relatively simple process. He had some experience with forcefully shutting down other people's circles, and that hadn't gone well. Fortunately, there was a connection between the one who drew the diagram and the circle itself, and that made it so much easier.

Starting at the second of the three concentric circles, Alan linked his aura to the energy flowing through the diagram and slowly drained it off. This was a large working that had lasted for weeks, so there was a lot of energy to drain. After about fifteen minutes the central circle started to dim. Finally the whole thing disappeared, including the quartz powder he had used to draw it.

Without moving, Alan continued to drain energy and the lines between the circles disappeared a little at a time. Now all that was left were the inner and outer circles themselves. Starting from the outside, Alan drained each of them in turn. This went much faster now that the connection portion was no longer functioning. In the end it took just under an hour to fully remove the circle that had been empowering the dungeon core.

He couldn't store the glowing crystal in any of his storage devices, so he took out a backpack and placed it inside. He could still see the glow with his aura senses, but the visible light was contained within the bag. He now had everything he needed, but there was one more thing to do before he could go.

Of course Alan would say goodbye to Two Socks, but he had to check in with the egg. He still wasn't sure if he had actually heard the creature inside of it or not. The backpack with the dungeon core was left at the door, he didn't want its magical radiation to affect the attunement circle around the egg. Once more, having carefully walked through the many lines, Alan stood before the dragon egg. It looked no different from before, and even his aura senses told him nothing since they were incapable of seeing past the shell.

Reaching out he placed first one hand and then a second on the egg. That caused the tiniest reaction in one of his soul links. It wasn't strong enough for him to read anything, but it had definitely happened. Now that he was touching it, he tried to sense if it felt any closer to hatching. It had been less than a day since he stood here last, and he couldn't tell if there was any change.

Slowly, Alan rested his head against the shell, just like last time. He waited for several minutes, but no voice spoke to him. With a sigh, he thought about what this creature could mean to him and to the people of earth. If he could bond with an actual dragon, what other group would be able to match him. Sure, the dragon wouldn't be very big to begin with, but Alan should be able to handle the next tier himself with little trouble. Hopefully by then the little dragonette would have a chance to grow big enough to dominate any battlefields.

"Soon…" Alan whispered back before pulling his head away.

After a dusty goodbye for Alan and Two Socks, he was once more on his way back to Elstree. It had taken him days to make the journey here, but it wouldn't take nearly as long to return. He had already made a path through the grasslands, and he wasn't interested in expanding on it at the moment. Alan wanted to get to work on his grand plans.

On the way out of tier two, Alan ran into two more MOUS's (Monsters Of Unusual Strength). These must have been dungeon leaks as well, but neither was as dangerous as the catoblepas. Two Socks would have been able to handle them on his own, he thought. It helped make him feel better about the wolf's decision to stay behind. Perhaps the monstrosity they had faced together was an anomaly.

The first one had been a giant ant, three meters long and over a meter high. The second had been a blobby, gelatinous thing that could control the nearby vegetation. The ant had lost its legs before being put out of its misery and the blob he chose to rain fire upon. Neither fight was a challenge and the monsters had only been level ten.

And so while it had taken him almost three days to return to his house in tier two, six hours of running saw him back at Elstree. It was almost midnight by this point, and much of what Alan wanted to do would involve the mayor. The man still needed sleep since he didn't have a quartz aura to keep him going, so Alan had a dilemma. What should he do until morning? He could try and track down Lyonel's group and see how they were doing, but they were probably either sleeping as well, or out on a bounty.

There were a few more seeds in his storage devices that could be planted, but the farmers would need to tell him where they wanted them. It was they who were going to be working the fields all the time, so it should be they who decided where things went. Alan could work on some bounties himself, but was that really the best use of his time? He was itching to do something, and while the Army did a good job teaching you how to hurry up and wait, his recent encounters with dungeon leaks had him feeling pressed to act.

Another option Alan had was to do something with the dungeon core. It was why he had brought it back with him after all, but he didn't know much about how it worked yet. Tamee had once again been able to give him some vague information, but it was again not something she had first hand experience with. Such cores weren't unheard of in the network, but they weren't common either. The wiki was also of no help. Its entry on dungeon cores was as follows:

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

All dungeons have a core that creates them.

One of the things he was hoping Roger could help him with was getting a pamphlet to get a better idea of how they worked. Since he had some time, Alan decided to try and find one himself. Finding the Network store was simple, he had previously located it through the town menu when he bought the blueprint for a boarding house. Navigating through the store, however, was much more complicated.

The first thing he was confronted with was a list of everything he could buy, arranged alphabetically. The list was so long that there was no way to use it as is. Unless you knew the exact name of what you wanted to purchase, this first display was utterly worthless. Roger had shown him where the filters were earlier, but there were quite a few of these as well. He recognized the one for blueprints right away, but that was it.

"Tamee, can you help me with the Network store?"

"Sure, what are you looking for?"

Now Alan felt stupid. Of course she had used the store before. While those in the tutorial were limited in their access, Tamee was an orange grade adventurer who had lived a long time under the Network. Time to pump her for information.

The next ten minutes were spent as she showed him how to narrow down the original list. There were filters, different ways to sort, options for limiting the sources or the prices shown. Even a certain A to Z online store could have taken some pointers from the design of this thing. Tamee got so into showing Alan the different features, and he was enjoying it so much, that he started just playing around to see different things he could buy. That was another twenty minutes of his life, but he did end up finding a few interesting things.

Eventually he got back on track and found an information broker who wasn't too expensive. Some of these companies charged a fortune for their knowledge, and the price was probably worth it, but Alan didn't have unlimited funds. What he ended up with was a small packet that outlined the basics of owning a dungeon core, and it only cost him three hundred gold.

Alan didn't have a permanent residence in the village yet, and the town hall was locked since Roger was asleep. So he chose a patch of ground under one of the few lamps set up in the street and started reading. It didn't take him too long to skim it the first time, but he went back again to really try and figure out what was going on. After the second read through, Alan knew that he had gotten his money's worth, in both a good and bad way.

He now had enough information to set up a dungeon with his core, but there was so much that wasn't fully explained. At the end of most sections the pamphlet listed other knowledge packets that could be purchased that better explained the topics. It was frustrating to know there was so much more information to be had, but what he had gotten would be enough for now.

One thing he had quickly realized was that he needed to stop thinking of this core as his own. There was a reason that people talked about getting a bond with a core. They were much more like an ascended being than an item. The brochure didn't go into exactly how intelligent they were, but they could definitely think for themselves. He wasn't sure how they would do with the Turing test, but he never really understood how that worked anyway. The important part for him was that while the Network could impose its will on a core, with Alan's bond he could only offer suggestions.

Finding a location for the dungeon core wasn't tough. The only information the packet had on location was a suggestion for finding a mana dense area, as that was how they maintained their energy. However, as far as Alan had noticed, and Tamee had been able to share, the density here was fairly uniform, low to mid white. The only other consideration was that there did need to be some space between dungeons. With a few exceptions, the area a dungeon took up was real space. Usually it was located under the dungeon entrance, but at the very least it had to be attached to it. Alan had already encountered an exception to this with Dracon's dungeon. In tier two, Alan had discovered a wizard tower that was the entrance to a special dungeon where he gained his Mentor. Rather than being a normal entrance, this was simply a teleporter to a pocket world. Another example of a dungeon without an attached lair was the one that let him relive a war between two warring factions. These were very rare, and only possible for a Network dungeon.

Alan had been hoping to put this core right next to the town dungeon, but it seemed he would need to give it some space. Since both the town dungeon and his dungeon core were still just fledging dungeons they wouldn't need much separation. A couple of hundred meters should be fine. That was more than was strictly required, but it would be a good idea to leave room for growth. Moving either of the dungeons after the fact would be possible, but not advisable unless absolutely necessary.

The only real bad news he had gotten from the pamphlet was that there were limitations to what the core could replicate inside of it. Once placed, the core would establish a lair or domain around it. Mostly it would include the area below it where the actual dungeon would go, but also some space above ground. Inside this domain it could use its power to destroy or create almost anything it wanted. Except, anything meant things it had experience with.

That meant that a core fresh from being created and then placed in a giant field of dirt, would only be able to create dirt. No rocks, no plants, no creatures, just dirt. Oh, and air, assuming there was air above the ground. Alan didn't know exactly how 'new' his dungeon core was, but the pamphlet suggested that most dungeon cores that were gifted by the network were for all intents and purposes created at the moment they were purchased. Assuming Alan placed this core in the grasslands near the other dungeon, it wouldn't be able to create much. Dirt, grass, rocks, maybe some ore if there happened to be some in the ground, and that's about it.

The good news was that you could introduce new things to the dungeon for it to create. Even better news was that it didn't have to consume these things. If a kobold walked past the dungeon entrance, then the core would be able to scan it and create kobolds inside. When adventurers started exploring the core, it would also scan their equipment and could then replicate these as well.

The dungeon of course couldn't create anything with a soul, so a dwarf walking by wouldn't allow the dungeon to create dwarfs inside. To get around this, Network dungeons recruited sapient beings to be part of them. The people were offered rewards for their participation, much like Tamee was for being part of the tutorial. Since this core wouldn't be controlled by the Network, it wouldn't be able to do such a thing.

In his own exploration of dungeons, Alan had run into Ascended Beings as well. When the dragon egg hatched, the little dragonette should be one such creature. They didn't have souls, but they were more than other creatures. Many people with a spirit class, like his own inquirer one, would bond to these beings. In one dungeon, he had run into a succubus who had offered to bond with him, but Alan had turned her down. At the time he was leery about forming such a connection without more information.

Now Alan was glad he turned it down for a couple reasons. One was of course that he hoped to bond with the baby dragon. The other reason was harder to explain. The sapient beings, like Thadrick and Pixel, that he had encountered in the dungeon were real people, and after a set amount of time they would return to the universe with their reward from the Network for their participation. What he wasn't clear on was how that worked with Ascended Beings. Could dungeons create such creatures, or were they also brought in from outside? If they were created by the dungeon, then what happened if he bonded with one and then the instance ended and the creature ceased to exist? Alan was leaning toward them being actual creatures, and not dungeon created, because he had been offered a bond by one.

In a rare show of compassion by the Network, or possibly pragmatism, its dungeons tended to try and take care of the beings inside of it. It would influence those under its control so as not to screw people. For example, Alan had offered to enchant Thadrick's axe the last time he was in the dwarven dungeon. The dwarf had turned him down, though, and Tamee later told him it was because of the fact that if the axe had been enchanted there was a good chance that the dwarf would have had to leave it behind when he left the dungeon. The dungeon had bent the dwarf's thoughts and encouraged him to say no. Similarly, it would also probably have prevented the succubus from making the bond offer if it would have negatively affected either of them afterwards.

The pamphlet he had purchased did briefly explain the prohibition on sapient creatures, but it didn't go into Ascended Beings. He could of course purchase one of several suggested information packets that would discuss that topic more. Alan added those to his shopping list, but he wasn't going to spend the money now. For one, they were much more expensive, and two, maybe he wouldn't need them. That would be a discussion to have with Roger and Gaf.

Gaf was a recent addition to Elstree, and not one that he fully trusted. He had formerly been in a party with an odious Aristocrat named Chrisly. Just before claiming the village, Alan had kidnapped his entire party and sent Chrisly running home to his parents. As part of a prisoner exchange, Gaf had made it known that he didn't want to return to Dewhurst and Chrisly's parents, for fear of reprisal. Instead he asked to stay in Elstree. Lyonel and Alan had been wary of a ploy, but he represented too big of an asset to turn down. They were keeping an eye on him, but as far as Alan knew he had been a model adventurer so far. As someone from the outside Network, who also wasn't bound by the same strictures as Tamee, it was possible his knowledge could help them immensely. Maybe he even knew something about dungeon cores. It wasn't likely as Gaf was probably a loner, outcast, or degenerate on the outside. Happy, successful, well-adjusted people didn't normally join a tutorial.

Those were all issues for another time, however. Alan still had several hours before people would start waking up, so he decided to use his newly purchased knowledge and get started on setting up the dungeon. Also, the earlier he got it running, the sooner it could start scanning for new additions. It wouldn't have any creatures to incorporate into its lair, so he would need some of the wild monsters in the area to walk by. There weren't a ton of creatures around, so it wasn't super likely, but it would happen eventually.

With a plan in mind, he headed for the entrance to the town dungeon. It didn't take him long as Alan was capable of inhuman traveling speeds these days. Once there, he started scouting for the best position. He didn't want it any closer to the village than the current entrance, so he stayed to the east. If he went far enough he would hit the forest, which had a higher density of wild creatures, but was also much farther away from the village. He didn't think the trade off was worth it.

The land was pretty uniform out here. Slight changes in elevation, and the occasional rock, were the only features. Using his aura reading and earth mover talent, he scanned the ground as far down as he could go. It was only about ten meters, and it didn't reveal anything interesting. There were various types of rocks, and some small tunnels that were most likely from worms, but no ores or special deposits of anything.

With nothing else to go on, Alan paced off what should be around two hundred and thirty meters, approximately southwest from the dungeon core, and picked a spot that was on a tiny rise. Now that he had his location marked, he set down the core and got to work. In order to place the core, it had to be set into the ground itself. You could also put it inside a mountain or hillside, but there wasn't anything like that here.

Alan took out his shovel, and he had a moment to regret never getting a replacement. It was the cheapest thing he could find back when he was poor, and it was barely holding together. Many people didn't realize how difficult digging a hole really was. Fortunately Alan had methods of making this process easier. Using his earth mana, he weakened the aura of the dirt beneath him, and caused the one bigger stone to shift downwards. Now the ground was loose and his ramshackle shovel was able to excavate a shaft in no time. Standing next to his pile of dirt, there was now a hole a meter across and just over a meter down. If he had needed to go any deeper he would have needed to make it a lot bigger so that he could have gotten into the hole to reach the dirt.

Taking the core out of his backpack, Alan got down on the ground and leaned into the hole to place the glowing crystal at the bottom. He didn't need to bury it or anything, just get it into the ground. The next part was activating it. This was one of the few topics that the purchased pamphlet had been very detailed about.

Placing one hand onto it, Alan used the aura in his hand to send a string of energy out to the core. This wasn't mana, but the actual energy from his soul that moved through his aura. The pamphlet made this part seem more difficult, but Alan's energy handling skill was probably helping. The string latched onto the outside of the core and then he started sending pulses of energy down the string.

This was the moment that would determine if he could bond with the core or not. If he failed now, there were ways he could try and improve his chances for another go, but after the attunement array, everything else he could try was unlikely to make a difference. The first couple of pulses bounced off the crystal's ball of energy, but then suddenly it was absorbing Alan's pulses. After about a minute of this, he knew that the bond would be successful. It would still take a little more time to fully form it, but if it hadn't rejected him yet, it wasn't going to. He was about to create his first bond.