DungeonFall – [A Dungeon Creation / Cultivation Story]

Nate struggled to hold back his laughter as the teacher slapped down a pair of manuals on Angie and Lindsay’s desks.

“Do not take either of these outside of this room. You may, however, use your phones or notebooks to take copies of them if you wish.” He shrugged unconcernedly. “There are copies of them online already. One more won’t matter. I would say don’t spread them about, but it doesn’t seem to matter. People always do anyway.”

He turned away from the girls and focused on Nate, who had lost his grin by that point. “As for you. The principal has informed me that you are still unaware of what your element might be. I can’t exactly give you an appropriate ‘Meditative Art’ without knowing that. If you want to sit in the corner and do homework, then that is fine with me. Next week will be different.”

Nate nodded once and hurried to the back corner, where he could work in peace. Spreading his books out on the table, he propped a couple of them up and went to work on the wrist computer. It was at times like this that he was especially glad that no one else could see or even feel the device that had somehow come along with him to this world.

Within a few seconds, he was back to looking at all the orbs stored inside his storage space. He really wanted to find out what each of them was hiding, but wasn’t sure as to what effect that might have. Would they pop out of the storage space when they were revealed? He didn’t think so, but life had proven unpredictable.

Deciding to play it safe, he selected one of the rainbow-colored energy marbles. He was delighted to see that another menu popped into being. It was asking him if he wanted to remove the orb or absorb it directly. He hadn’t even thought about removing the rainbow energy orbs from his storage until that moment.

It was nice to know he could, even if it was almost impossible to get the things inside his storage in the first place. They were absorbed automatically when he touched them. That meant the only way to get them in storage was for him to die while they were on the ground. He would rather pass on that, if at all possible.

Dying tended to be a rather gruesome and painful affair each time it happened to him. Not to mention whatever it had to be doing to his psyche. Unless the bracelet also had a healing effect on his mind, which he wouldn’t put past it, then all of this was simply trauma building up.

Keeping an eye on the teacher, he made sure to do some actual homework occasionally while he was debating what to do.

His selection on the rainbow marble was still hovering above the computer on his wrist. It wasn’t bothering him, but it was distracting. There was nothing saying that he absolutely needed to do anything with the items now, outside of his own impatience.

He wanted to know what he had managed to get and if they were any good.

Finally, he removed the selection on the marble. Using the energy now would be a waste. He already knew how good they were, and there was no way he would be able to concentrate well enough in a classroom to absorb it properly. Not without attracting attention, anyway.

That was something he wanted to try at some point though. He needed, or at least really wanted, to find out how much different the experience of absorbing one of the marbles was in his regular body. This would give him a rare chance to learn how much energy was being transferred from the avatar to his actual body.

Granted, it wasn’t going to be a perfect experiment, and he knew that. Not all the rainbow energy marbles had the same amount of energy. If he was lucky, and concentrated on how it felt as it flowed through his body. Then it might work. He would need to compare it with the energy stat he had after a night inside the dungeon, where he had only absorbed a single energy marble.

Thinking about it in that way, the entire process began to sound as though it was too much work. Sure, he was curious, but did it really matter? Either way, he was going to absorb them as he found them, and the number of times he was going to have the marbles in storage wouldn’t be high.

Nate pushed the entire matter from his mind for the moment and selected one of the colored orbs. He avoided the blue one that held another weapon. On the off chance that this all did go wrong, the last thing he needed to have happen was a giant spear or sword larger than him appearing on the table.

Instead, he went for one of the green orbs. He had never seen one of them before and didn’t know what they might hold. The color itself was calming and wasn’t one that screamed out at him like the purple did.

Taking a quick glance at where the teacher was observing the girls, making sure they were properly studying the manuals, he decided to risk it. Bringing up the menu on the first of the green orbs, he selected it.

The screen that only he could see flashed momentarily white, startling him. When everything returned to normal in the slot where the orb had been was a perfectly formed pill. It was just waiting for him to select it and inspect what properties it had.

The teacher chose that moment to look at him and make sure he was actually doing his homework. The normal schoolwork was a breeze for Nate. The more cultivation-aligned classes and work were esoteric enough that he had to actually study what was being taught. The homework he had pulled out to fake doing was the kind he could have done with his eyes closed.

The teacher nodded when he saw the answers on Nate’s sheet and went back to the girls. He needed to be there to answer any questions they might have.

Nate quickly clicked on the pill that had appeared and brought up its information. ‘Basic Healing Pill – A basic healing pill that absorbs the user’s internal qi and directs it to where it can do the most good. More advanced pills come with their own supplies of qi and advanced healing abilities.’

He bit the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. That was interesting, not so much what it could do, but the information it had given him. All his deaths inside the dungeon had been fairly quick and violent. Well, outside of a certain extended torture session and a healing pill wouldn’t have done anything to change that.

Still, knowing what he could expect to get from another of the colors was interesting. If he had gotten lucky before, then he might not have even needed to wait for Angie’s family to come through with their miracle pill. That wasn’t the way things had worked out, which was fine, considering he hadn’t even known that orb color existed until that day.

It did make him curious as to what other ones there might be that he simply hadn’t come across yet.

Now that he knew, he didn’t need to worry about anything strange popping out of his storage because he had clicked on it. He was feeling a lot more confident in exploring what all he had gotten and was finally ready to start opening the orbs.

Nate took a quick glance at the teacher and the girls to make sure they were still occupied, and then went to work.

Within moments, each of the orbs had been opened, and he was simply waiting for the strobing effect from the screen to vanish. He spun his pencil around his thumb a couple of times and then quickly answered a few questions that didn’t require any extra thought on his part.

After a few more seconds, the screen returned to normal, and he was finally able to see what he had gotten.

He had two different shirts to choose from, along with a pair of pants. It was nice to know he wouldn’t be running around the dungeon getting cold. There were also a few different pieces of what looked like armor. He would have to look closer at them later to confirm that though, he didn’t want to waste time reading an item description at the moment.

Another pill had appeared, along with a bundle of what looked like herbs. At least that let him know that the green orbs did indeed have two items associated with it. The same way that the white orbs gave out clothes, as well as armor. They were similar, but not the same.

That only left the items he had gotten from the blue orb, his new weapon. Along with the mysterious purple orb.

As for the purple orb, a strange-looking spinning contraption had taken its place and was gradually slowing down. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but he was able to see that there were multiple sections inside the spinning circle. Each section represented a different color of the rainbow, with a few exceptions.

The pointer at the top finally dropped down, halting the circle on a slice of blue. A weapon appeared in the slot as the contraption vanished. If he had to guess, then the purple-colored orbs were some sort of random chance ones.

He had always felt like his luck wasn’t the greatest, but he hoped he’d be seeing more of those in the future. There had been plenty of colors that he hadn’t even seen yet. The purple orbs might just be the best chance he had of getting them until he could create more dungeons.

Which reminded him, he still needed to make plans on effectively building out the second floor of the dungeon. The Dungeon Core could handle things after that, but he needed to get more traps in place first.

His life was busy, but he was enjoying it. The knowledge that the dungeons would eventually be helping people live safer lives was nice. As for the cultivators who went after the treasures inside… well, they were trespassers. What did they expect to happen when they trespassed on someone else’s property?

He was not entirely sure of what to make of the two weapons that had appeared this go-round. The first one had been fairly normal, if slightly exotic, in appearance. It was a sword that he believed was called a Kriegsmesser. The long single-edged blade was slightly curved and had the traditional Nagel nails at the hilt to protect the hands.

It could be wielded either one-handed or with two.

That was all he could remember about the curious sword; its odd design had drawn his eye in his past life. The Kriegsmesser looked somewhat similar to a Katana sword. However, to his knowledge, they had been created independently of each other.

If he hadn’t already been practicing with the kukris, the sword, or as it was more properly known, war knife, would have been a decent alternative for him. It wasn’t quite what he had in mind for his second weapon and was a little too close-range oriented to replace the long blade he was already using.

He would keep it and possibly add it to his regular adventuring gear.

The real issue was the second weapon that had appeared. It was a gun. It wasn’t a modern one, nor was it a model he recognized from history. The shape and structure that he was seeing were the familiar shape, but that was all. It resembled something more along the lines of what an old matchlock pistol would look like if it had sex with a paintball gun and had a baby.

There was a hopper to the side of the barrel that was meant to hold some sort of orb. At the back was a hammer for cocking it to fire. Without a slide mechanism, it didn’t appear as though this gun would be a semi-automatic.

The larger problem was he had never heard of anyone using anything like this. He might be able to use it inside the dungeon, but outside, if anyone ever saw him with it… There wasn’t a chance he was strong enough to hold on to something so strange.