Stepping Wild (Dungeon Runner 04)

The essence within the wall changed as Tibs ran.

The dungeon had gotten over the surprise of how easily he'd killed the powerful creature, and was trying more direct ways of killing him.

He jumped over the crystal spear that flew out of the wall, then under the next one. A metal shield blocked those he couldn't avoid when the dungeon sent multiple. Having to stop at one point and encase himself until the attack ended.

"Just let it happen," it ordered, as Tibs ran again. If it had been a person, he'd have thought they sounded out of breath. "I am going to drink you up."

Ahead in the oddly straight corridor, it did something to the floor, and under it. Since it had absorbed its helper, it should know what it had, so why weren't there rooms? Added twists, at least. Had it purposely ignored how dungeons functioned because…. He didn't know why it would do that, other than it felt there was no point in using that essence since it wouldn't let anyone further than the entrance.

The modified section came into view, and the floor fell away. No normal person could jump that gap. Even him, as good as he was, couldn't make it without use of essence. He set the Air etching at the edge of the pit, and it exploded under his foot, sending him up over the crystal spikes, and toward the other side.

The dungeon was already changing things. Stone rose along the pit where his trajectory took him. He waited until he was at the top of his arc before forming the Air disk, then kicked off it, sending himself to the other side of the 'room,' where the dungeon hadn't—

The stone rose there too. "I knew you'd do something," it taunted, then, as Tibs formed another disk, what was left of the opening closed.

He timed the ice ledge so the dungeon couldn't react to it, and landed there.

"You can't do that!"

"You set the lack of rules."

"Well, I'm saying no ice ledge allowed." The stone shifted against the ice, and Tibs moved that along. It forced him to adjust his footing, but that barely required thoughts.

"Rogues don't care about rules."

"Stop that!"

He snorted and focused on leaving this 'room.'

The wall was dungeon made stone, and they could be made to resist nearly everything. Sto had made his impervious to Corruption after Bardik's had used that to try to reach his core and destroy him. But they had limits.

Those were, in part, dependent on how strong a dungeon was.

He knew this wasn't what they were, but Tibs only thought of dungeon made walls and items as a form of etching, even if there was something of weaving in them. That meant a dungeon needed to focus on them. That Tibs could steal that essence, if he was the stronger of the two.

"What are you doing?" it asked as Tibs pushed strands of stone essence into the wall. It resisted, tightening its essence, but it remained woven, etched. So, no matter how solid it looked and felt to his touch, his strands slipped through the gabs among the dungeon's essence.

He wrapped a strand around one of the dungeon's. "Teaching you a lesson." He made it his.

"What was that?"

He moved his control along that strand, while wrapping another one. He lost count of how many strands he was gaining when it understood and fought back.

"If you think I'm letting you just steal from me."

"You shouldn't have let a Rogue in, then."

The dungeon had strength. He couldn't sense its reserve, the way he could with adventurers, but to be able to make as much as dungeons did, he wouldn't be surprised to find it rivaled his nearly bottomless reserve.

What it lacked, was skill.

It tightened its will, but Tibs maintained his strands within that. Moving against it in the sections it focused on was impossible, but it wasn't focusing on the entire wall. Tibs extended his control to any parts it wasn't holding, forcing it to shift its attention, and loosening its control over others.

Slowly, Tibs gained control of the—

"That is enough." The essence in the wall became solid in a way that caught him by surprise. "I am done playing with you." It had taken hold of all the essence.

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That was impressive.

Or possibly not. Neither Sto nor Firmen had had to do that against him. Maybe every dungeon could.

Still, this wasn't over.

"If you had been willing to let me teach you." He added his will to his essence locked within the wall. "Learning there is always someone stronger than you wouldn't have been this painful." He pushed.

"No."

The cracks filled as they formed within the essence, but not entirely.

He pushed harder.

"You can't do this!

The wall groaned. The essence bowed away from him, then reformed with more groaning as the dungeon fought back.

Tibs put his hand on the wall, anchored his feet and will, and pushed.

The stone moved.

"No!"

His physical push didn't help, but made him feel good about the stone shifting under his hands.

He pushed.

"Stop it!"

Crack formed on the surface, and he filled them with his essence to keep the dungeon from reinforcing it.

He pushed.

The dungeon screamed in pain as the wall broke; a crack from ceiling to the bottom of the pit the wall was part of. It was everything it made within its influence. It could shift its attention to another part and lessen what it felt, but it was entirely focused on here, on Tibs, on this wall.

He screamed as he pushed.

The dungeon screamed back, but in pain.

The wall exploded away from Tibs.

He straightened and dusted his hands off nonchalantly. Not giving away how doing this had strained him. He stepped over the rubble and walked further into the dungeon.

"I'm going to make you pay for this," it promised darkly.

"And I'm going to show you that working with a Runner is always better than working against them."

"You are nothing," it snarled.

A stone pillar erupted from the wall and slammed Tibs into the opposite one. He put his hands on each side, and his will on all of it, and heaved.

It shattered.

"I'm a Runner. I've gone up against a dungeon who was much stronger than you. He pushed me and my friends. Ate some of them. But he was a good dungeon. You don't even compare to him."

The next pillar didn't reach him, and the dungeon screamed in anger.

It screamed as Tibs walked, ripping essence from the pillars it tried to kill him with. It if wasn't so angry, it would remember stone didn't hurt him. Even dungeon made stone. And it was getting tired. Its hold over the essence on the pillars was weak, barely held together.

He paused when the pillars stopped, sensing for what the dungeon might do next. He proceeded cautiously when nothing happened. He saw the end of the corridor and figured the dungeon would try something before he reached it.

A dozen paces from the end, the corridor closed off behind him.

"Now I've got you." Crystal spikes grew from it. "You are never getting out of here. I don't have to do anything. There won't be much for me to drink up, but I'll be happy watch you wither away. However long that takes."

"Clever." The dungeon has linked the strands within that wall with so much Arcanus Tibs doubted he'd manage to break it apart.

"See. I don't need you to learn."

Tibs didn't point out that without him forcing them, they wouldn't have thought to try this. He figured that most people in this situation would spend all their energy on escaping the dead-end.

"There's only one problem."

"Oh?" The tone was mocking.

He turned away from the new wall and faced the end of the corridor; the chamber he sensed beyond it. All the essences funneling in and out of the cradle at the furthest point.

He stepped to the wall. "There's one room left for me to get into."

"No, there isn't. You reached the end."

The wall was the same as the others. Maybe it was so no one would tell there was something behind it, but Tibs figured the dungeon just hadn't considered anyone would make it this far. Or sense beyond the wall.

"Time for another lesson."

The snort could have sounded dismissive. If not for the hitch in it.

He channeled Purity. "Purity isn't only about healing." He sent raw essence at the wall, and immediately, it leeched some of what was there. The colors reacted first to the diminished essence, fading away.

"No. No, no, no! You can't do that!"

Then, its physicality changed. He made out details about the room through the fading wall. The veins of essence running along the room's walls and ceiling to the cradle. Their colors became more distinct as more of the walls disappeared under Purity's onslaught.

He didn't worry about damaging inside the room. Raw Purity was only dangerous when concentrated, and he had to will it so, otherwise it dissipated harmlessly.

The dungeon added essence in an attempt to reinforce the wall, but it was too late. And it didn't seem to have much to work with anymore. It leeched away as soon as it was pushed within the wall.

"How? You can't know about this. We're not supposed to tell anyone."

"No one told me."

He pushed through the nearly gone wall. It felt…odd. It resisted, the way a wall would. But at the same time, he slipped through what made the wall…real.

"You should have hidden your cradle better. If your helper was here, they would have told you under your floor is better."

The cradle was beautiful, all those colors flowing in and out of it without ever mixing into a muddled mass. Thick, like the roots of a tree, joining at the center of the back wall, at the crystal in the cradle; at the core.

It was his first time seeing an intact cradle.

Sto's had been destroyed by the Them; the colors had been draining away. The destroyed dungeon's cradle had barely been noticeable, without colors, without life. Just like the rest of it.

He took it in. He wished he didn't have to do this.

"Don't," the dungeon warned as Tibs reached for the core. "You can't survive touching that. There's so much essence in there that you'll just cease to be."

He sensed the core. There was a lot of essence there. More than he thought could be contained in something that small. "You don't have that much essence left." He closed his fingers around the core, digging into the stone of the cradle. Was there enough essence there to overflow his reserve?

"Please don't," they pleaded. "I'll do better."

"I don't believe you." He tightened his grip on it.

"I didn't know what I was doing when I drank my helper. I had no one to guide me. You can't hold me responsible for doing things I didn't know I shouldn't be doing!"

He hesitated, then shook his head. "You know what your helper did. You chose to go against that knowledge. I offered to help you, and you refused."

"There's no one anywhere around! What else was I supposed to do? How can I be a dungeon without people? Please. Have pity on me."

"No."

He pulled, and the dungeon screamed in pain as the core came free of the roots connecting it to the rest of itself.