Phew!
“Evening, Overseer Bolton!” I beamed. “Your hair is looking excellent today, tonight, this morning, whatever time it is. Really thick.”
“Oh? Thank you, Beno. I bought a paste from an alchemist who visited the academy. The other overseers said it was a scam, but you have made me feel better.”
Overseer Bolton was a rather lanky man, with a kind face and a greying beard. Despite his age and his academic profession, he had kept himself in decent shape. “This is my third life,” he’d say, “and I want to live it for as long as possible.”
“I assume you’re here to evaluate me?” I asked.
“Your name was randomly selected, yes. How are you feeling? It’s all well and good studying to be a core, but it feels different once you’re left in your dungeon. I remember my first time in a dungeon…well, you don’t want to hear about my glory days. Are you okay?”
“I could use a little company, but I guess that’s down to me to create it. Other than that, I’m doing pretty good.”
“Let’s hope so, young core. May I take a walk around?”
Bolton didn’t need to ask that. I was a lowly core and he was an overseer, what was I going to do? Say no? It was nice that he thought to get my permission.
“Go ahead. I’d make you some tea, but I don’t have a pan. Or fire. Or water. Or tea.”
“I had a luncheon with the academy sponsors earlier, so I’m full to bursting. Tell me, Beno, how can I be living my third life, yet I still don’t have the discipline to say no to an extra plate of ribs? Anyway, let me see what we have here. Moss vines. Okay…”
It was a strange feeling. I’d known that overseers would come and evaluate me from time to time, but it was different actually seeing it happen. I felt a little defensive of my dungeon, and also a little ashamed. It really wasn’t much yet.
Bolton kneeled beside the essence vines for what seemed like an hour, studying them intently. I guessed you didn’t become as knowledgeable as him without paying attention to detail.
“Can you tell me what effects the essence vines have had on you, young core?” he asked.
“The more they spread, the faster they regenerate my essence after I use it. I’m currently regenerating two points per minute.”
“Not bad. Not bad at all. And these buds? Hmm. Very strange.”
“I…uh…experimented a little.”
“I can see that, Beno. I can tell what happened by looking at them, and at you.”
Here comes the praise, I thought.
Bolton glared at me. “Are you out of your mind? You split a part of yourself so you could grow more buds, didn’t you?”
“I figured that in the early stages, the core with the most essence will outperform all the others.”
“At the expense of his own defense. That is a very dangerous technique, and there is a reason we do not teach it. I really should speak to our librarian about some of the books he lets you cores read. What happens if heroes find a way into your core room? You’ll already be down to 95% purity.”
“The way I figured it, if heroes get into your core room, you’re dead already.”
“Not always the case, let me tell you. Hmm.”
Bolton walked out of the core room and down the tunnel, heading toward the loot room. I watched him go, feeling a growing unease. This wasn’t going well. Maybe I’d gotten the wrong overseer after all.
I knew that Bolton liked me. We weren’t friends, since he was an authority figure, but we got on well. That said, Bolton liked to have rules, and he liked to follow them.
Maybe if an overseer like Chompit or Buttabun had visited to evaluate me, this would have gone better. They were well known for encouraging their cores to try something new.
I listened to Bolton’s footsteps deeper in my dungeon. He sounded like he’d reached one of the other rooms I had made beyond the loot room. Well, he wouldn’t find much there. Yet another strike against me, no doubt. I could almost hear him thinking, ‘Why hasn’t Beno made any traps or monsters yet?’
Well, Bolton. I’m getting around to it, okay?
Nope, this wasn’t going well at all. At this rate, I was heading for an evaluation punishment.
Maybe I should have played it safe like most cores, and just taken the single bud as a lucky gift and absorbed it. Then again, if I had done that I would only have around 10 essence points now, and I wouldn’t have finished the loot room, let alone two more.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” said Bolton, suddenly standing next to me. I hated it when overseers did that. They couldn’t just walk into a room like normal people, could they?
I sensed that the evaluation was over, and he was about to leave. I couldn’t read his expression, but I guessed he wasn’t impressed.
I had to do something.
“Can I ask you something, Overseer?” I said.
“Of course. As long as it isn’t a technical question. You know I can’t answer those while you are being evaluated. It wouldn’t be fair to the other cores.”
“Sure. My question was actually about the other cores.”
“Oh? Go on.”
“I was just wondering how many have been evaluated so far?”
“Four of the core graduates have been visited.”
“Interesting,” I said. “How many of them have managed to dig out a loot room?”
“Hmm. A couple of them.”
“Of those two, how many have extended their dungeons further? How many have already managed to dig two extra rooms, thus satisfying requirement number four in the dungeon blueprints?”
Bolton smiled at me for a second, and then hid it. “A
