Digging increased – 1.2%
Secondly, my lovely essence seeds had begun to spread!
On the wall opposite my tunnel, the seeds had sprouted moss-like vines that glowed a deep green, and they’d risen two feet up the wall.
The essence vines are flourishing!
Your essence now regenerates 5x faster.
That wasn’t all.
Oh no, that wasn’t everything. As well as all of that, something wondrous had happened!
There, affixed to one of the vines, was a little green bud.
The greatest bud I ever saw.
CHAPTER 2
As amazing as my new bud was, it presented me with quite a dilemma. A serious one.
Then again, was it really serious? Or did I have so little to do here, that any old dilemma took on more importance to me? Either way, I had to decide what to do.
This little green nub fixed to one of the vines was an essence bud. These things sprouted randomly from seeds, so not every network of vines would produce one. If they did, you were a very, very lucky core.
They were great. This one was only tiny, but if I ate it, it’d increase my total essence by 2 or 3 points. Thinking about how much more digging I could do with 3x the essence made me excited.
On the other hand, if I was greedy, I could risk splitting the bud. If I drew it into my core and split it into three or four pieces and then placed them back on the vine, there was a chance that all the split buds would all grow into fully formed ones. That would give me lots more essence.
Course, there was also a chance that the splitting process would kill the bud, leaving me with nothing.
Or, I could leave it a while, see if the bud grew any bigger on its own. Maybe big enough to give a real essence boost, like 8-10 points. That didn’t always happen.
“Sometimes,” Overseer Bolton had told me, “The buds die on their own if you leave them too long. If you haven’t used them before then, you’re outta luck.”
Decisions, decisions. It was almost as hard as trying to choose a new dungeon name.
The Tranquil Crypt?
The Scarlett Haunt?
Nope!
Back in the academy, whenever we were given an assignment and I was struggling with it, I’d always do something else to occupy my mind. It was like planting essence seeds; I would let the problem sit there in my brain, and then go and do something else. If I was lucky, my subconscious would water the seeds and they’d grow into an answer.
So, it was time to do something else to occupy myself. Trouble was, there were only a few things to do around here.
I could whistle. I could think up some more dungeon names.
Or…I could dig. I took two more chunks from the wall, keeping the arch shape that I’d formed, but this time digging deeper into the mud.
Phew. Lookin’ good. Only another century before I can carve out a new room, at this rate.
Digging increased – 1.3%
As I let my essence take a rest and replenish, I realized that my plan had worked, and I knew what to do with the essence bud now. There was a trick you could use to make the most of essence buds, and not many cores knew about it.
This was a trick that I’d read about in the academy library. Most cores, they were so desperate to graduate that they whizzed through all the set assignments and took their dungeon exam as soon as they could.
That was the thing; cores could graduate at different times. One core, Albin, had graduated after just a week. Word was that he was already running a mid-tier dungeon near a heroes’ guild out west. What a guy.
And what an idiot.
Running a dungeon near a heroes’ guild was insanely dangerous, but then again, it gave the greatest rewards. I guessed that the overseers hadn’t placed me anywhere near a guild. They’d probably put me somewhere really remote, maybe with a town or village nearby. They wouldn’t stick me anywhere risky until I’d proven myself.
But anyway, the average graduation time for a core was six months. I felt like I could pass the exams after two. Overseer Bolton agreed with me. Even so, I held back.
I wasn’t in a rush to leave the academy. The way I saw it, the academy is such a treasure trove of resources and knowledge, that it’d be stupid to just whizz through. Oh, I knew what the other cores were thinking. When someone is reborn as a core, the first thing they wanna know is, ‘when do I get my own dungeon?’ The other cores didn’t get why I held back a little.
The answer was for the knowledge.
In the academy library, there were all sorts of books. Books on monsters, traps, essence, gems. Even fiction books. My favorite was a series called The Soul Bard.
In the academy library, I came across a book about core gem calitropics. For a human, this would be like a warrior finding a book on strength exercises. It was filled with all kinds of weird techniques and things a core could do to himself. Some of them were terrifying. In fact, I would go as far as to say they shocked me to my very…
I’ll stop.
In the gem calitropics book, I read about a technique concerning essence buds, and my brain must have squirreled the information away. Here I was now, a new core with barely any essence, and I was contemplating doing something risky.
The question I had to answer was, should I do it?
I mean, it’d help a lot.
Or it might put me in danger.
Hmm.
