Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Nine

The crypt should have been spooky—the flickering green light, the whisper of shrouds, the bodies and skulls—but Logan found the space rather comforting. Morta Apothos hung heavy in the air like a morning ground fog, and it set him at ease. Inga, on the other hand, looked like someone had just kicked over her sandcastle. Brows creased, arms folded, a frown marred her face. He had no idea what was going on with her, but he hoped Tet wasn’t the cause.

He and Tet weren’t close, but in another life and under very different circumstances, Logan could easily see the two of them as friends. Or even something more. But this wasn’t a different life, and their circumstances weren’t liable to change any time in the near future. Logan was pretty sure that wasn’t the issue. Inga could be vain and aloof, but she didn’t seem the jealous type. All of that was a thought for another time, though.

They had minions to manage, floor bosses to spawn, and no time to waste.

“I’m glad we’re in the same group, Inga,” Tet Akhat said, bowing at the waist, hands pressed together. “You’ve always impressed me with how smart and prepared you are. I’m sure we’ll be able to create our floor bosses without an issue.”

Inga noticeably relaxed and dropped her arms. “Yes. I certainly hope so. I must admit, I am a tad anxious because I am used to relying on my own prowess when it comes to battle. My minions have been fine, but I haven’t seen them as critical to my success. I’m not entirely sure I like the idea of entrusting so much power to a floor boss.”

“A reasonable concern,” Tet replied. Her cat ears twitched as she assumed a meditative pose on the floor. “Not to mention, you have been working so closely with Logan. He, in essence, has been your minion.”

Logan held up three thick fingers. “Wait just a minute. I’m not a minion. Inga and I are partners.”

Both the cat girl and the moth woman locked eyes, then both smirked, and they came dangerously close to laughing.

Logan could have let it rub him the wrong way, but instead he laughed it off. They could think what they wanted. He knew the score, and if anything, she was hisminion. Not that he would ever say that, but he would think the heck out of it.

Inga relaxed some, tension leaking from her shoulders. “Honestly, I’m also a bit on edge because of my elective. Bread knifes, butter knives, steak knives, Aldaleeran splat knives.”

Aldaleeran splat knives?Logon was about to ask about that last thing, when Arketa’s voice echoed through the dungeon—filling every room, every corridor. She’d taken over the dungeon core by transferring her gem to the pedestal. “Okay, students, please sit and get into position, as if you were going to be cultivating. You will summon one of your low-level minions before transforming them into a floor boss.”

The crypt room was large enough for them all to sit in a circle. Logan’s folded his legs, ankles crossed, back ramrod straight, his thick hands resting on his knees. Across from him was Tet, while Inga sat on his right. Logan closed his eyes and blocked the others out, letting his mind grow as still as a placid pond—not so much as a ripple disturbed its surface. The smell of dust and ancient rot wafted from crypt shelves around them. The scent of death. He loved it.

A morbid notion, but as a fungus, Logan had come to realize that death play an important role in the cycle of life. All beginnings had endings—it was the way of all things.

He breathed deeply, inhaling both through his mouth and through the frills running beneath his cap, filling air and Apothos fill him in equal measure. Once he was settled—nerves calm, mind clear, Apothos cycling along his limbs—he turned his thoughts to his minions. Many of the other Dungeons had a large variety of minion types to draw from, but unfortunately Logan wasn’t blessed with such abundance. At the moment, he only had two options, Skullcap Waddlers and his Spore Wargs.

With a thought, Logan pulled up information about both groups.

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Skullcap Waddlers (Type, Sentient/Minion): These are the first sentient, mobile mushrooms fungaloids have access to. At only three feet tall, these stubby, mushroom-shaped creatures move around on thick arms and short legs. They aren’t quick, but they do follow orders well and can wield primitive weapons. They are most effective in packs, where they can overwhelm their enemies. Beware the Waddlers! Rarity:C-Class; Elemental Affinity: Vita, Mallus

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Spore Wargs (Sentient/Fighter) – Though mushrooms and aren’t generally known for being fast or agile, the Spore Warg proves the exception to the rule. Pale, eyeless hound like creatures with large bat ears, they navigate almost entirely by echolocation. The size of a feral boar, they are mean, fast, and savage. Corrosive acid coats their teeth, allowing them to penetrate even plate armor and their bite is also highly toxic, capable of inducing seizes and even paralysis. When killed they release a toxic spore cloud that has a chance to induce Affliction. Rarity: C-Class; Elemental Affinity: Toxicus, Corrosivus

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The Waddlers were the far simpler of the two groups. They were plentiful and much easier to create than the Spore Wargs. Since this was his first attempt at creating a Floor Boss, the Skullcaps were a natural choice. The safest option, most likely to succeed. And yet, he hesitated. Professor Hellgazer had said that this might be the only Floor Boss he would have until he ascended again—did he really want to play it safe?

The immediate answer was no.

He hadn’t survived a hundred murder attempts by sticking to the well-trodden path. The Spore Wargs were faster, stronger, and far deadlier, individually, than the Waddlers. And even if he failed to produce a Floor Boss right away, it was still better to take his time and create the most potent Floor Boss possible, than to rush the process because it was the most convenient option. In his experience, the best things in life were rarely the easiest things in life.

Resolved in his decision, Logan dismissed both descriptions and began cycling power using the Boundless Wheel technique. The goal of the technique was to refine his core into a perfectly dense marble of Apothos. He envisioned his core as a lump of clay on a potter’s wheel, spinning round and round, faster and faster. Digging in with mental fingers, he pressed down, shaping that power through sheer willpower. He pulled in the Morta permeating the crypt and fed the swirling influx of energy into the mass. When Inga had first taught him this technique, it had felt like trying to carry a pickup truck on his back up the side of Mount Everest.

Now, however, it was second nature.

He folded in wisps of loose Apothos, compressing his core while he carefully breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. After a few seconds of settling into the routine, he split off a thin strand of energy and sent it coursing through his meridians, hardening his skin and sharpening his senses. The next part was trickier. Circling around his core was a delicate knot—the Apothos pathways that allowed him to manifest his power in tangible ways. As he leveled up and grew more powerful, he would tie more intricate knots around his core, allowing him to split his energy more efficiently.

Mind centered, power thrumming through his body, Logan exhaled and released a violet spore the size of a peach pit, which pulsed with a gentle light. As it drifted toward the ground, Logan rained down Rapid Growth spores; the peach pit burbled and morphed, expanding rapidly as it neared the floor. In seconds rudimentary limbs sprouted from the pod, followed by a snout and muzzle. In a blink of an eye, Noodle Doodle took form. The creature was as large as a bulldog with a beefy chest and powerful limbs, its skin pale, hairless, and rubbery. It had no eyes, but its enormous bat-like ears allowed the Spore Warg to navigate through super echolocation.

The creature padded up to logan, a slick black tongue lolling from its mouth as it nuzzled Logan’s shoulder. Horrifying looking, but oddly affectionate were the Spore Wargs—and Noddle Doodle, most of all.

Next to Logan’s minion, one of Inga’s familiar Gold Centipedes emerged, a creature much larger than Logan’s beast. And with lot more legs.

Logan wasn’t sure what Tet was going to conjure, but black energy swirled, taking shape, until a strange creature stood on the other side of Logan’s pup. Tet’s creature was part cat, part snake, as if you put a saber-tooth tiger on a cobra and then added a couple of legs. The tail ended in a wickedly sharp black blade. The cat had bright green eyes that glowed like emerald fire, casting its long fangs in a creepy light. The feline creature arched its serpentine neck, peering over Logan’s pup and eyeballing Inga’s centipede with a curious expression. The chitinous centipede wasn’t amused and hissed at the gawking cat creature, its legs rustling in agitation.

The tiger-headed serpent then hissed at Logan’s warg, who let out a warning woof.

“Your minion is very daunting,” Inga said, blinking. “I’ve read a great deal on the Coptic Champions. It’s no wonder you’re in the First Cohort.”

“Thank you,” Tet said softly, seemingly embarrassed. “The mew serpent is not a common creature for a Coptic Champion to utilize. The flesh scarab would be more typical. However, I know you prefer your Golden Centipedes, and so I decide to go with the unconventional.”

The Coptic Champions were a desert people who dwelled on Eritreus—one of the most Apothos rich worlds in all the universe. Eritreus was the big league, home to the most powerful dungeons, the wealthiest hero guilds, and the most powerful dungeoneers. The Coptics were an odd bunch, though. Unlike the Hero Guilds who so cavalierly raided dungeons to power their own ascension, the Coptics trained one day to become a dungeon core. Logan had looked into it after chatting with Tet the year before. Honestly, it seemed a little death cult-y to Logan, but when the future of reality hung in the balance, sometimes hardcore solutions were required.

Arketa’s voice reverberated up and down the chasm. “The process of creating a normal minion is inherently an Endogenous Apothos Manifestation—something that is linked to your core and derives its essence and form from the dungeon itself. A minion cannot truly exist without a dungeon that provides both its life and its purpose. But the process of creating a floor boss requires you to cycle a great deal of Apothos through the creature, essentially kick-starting an Exogenous Apothos Manifestation. This will mean your creation can exist outside your dungeon—the floor boss is both one with your core and is its own entity. It’s a long process, made longer if you choose to channel different Apothine energies into your boss monster. The different elemental forces can drastically alter the final form and the abilities of the enhanced creature”

Arketa listed off the thirteen meta-energies. Ignis. Magma. Corrosivus. Toxicus. Fulgur. Glacies. Terra. Aqua. Mallus. Luminosus. Umbra. Vita. Morta.  As she did, Loganremembered the mnemonic: I make coffee and tea for Grandfather Tiberius and make lemonade under the Velveeta moon.

“Each dungeon and dungeoneer has a predilection for specific energies,” Arketa continued. “And so can floor bosses depending on the energy you use to upgrade them with. Take our dearly beloved Marko for example. As a Dark Muse, one of his primary minions is the mimic. Because Dark Muses have an Aqua and Umbra affinity, his mimic is likely to share similar traits. But if he were to pump one of his mimics full of Ignis Apothos, when it becomes a Floor Boss it might well create a Magmorphic Mimic—a more powerful fire-based version. Creating floor bosses with type coverage that is different than your own, can be one way to prevent a dungeoneer from running roughshod over your minions.”

Inga, sitting cross legged, raised her hand.

“Yes, Inga.” You could hear the smile in the professor’s voice.

“But how exactly does that work, Professor?” Inga asked. “How can we cycle Apothos other than our own type through the creature?”

“Thank you for your civility, Inga,” the professor said. “There are a variety of ways to do this. The first is to go to a dungeon location that has the correct type of Apothos and cultivate there, funneling the latent energy through your own core and into the boss monster. That can be risky, though, especially if you encroach on another dungeon’s territory without asking. You can also force unprocessed Apothos in your own core into the floor boss. So, for example, if you were to kill and process an Ignis dungeoneer, you must refine that energy, stripping it of its elemental affinity before you can incorporate it into your own core. But you could just as easily cycle that elementally-aligned Apothos into a boss, giving your creature properties of that Apothine energy.”

Logan was loving this idea. It was like in video games where you could customize weapons. Only in this sense, it was taking your minions and upgrading them. Logan figured it would be better, though, to stick with the Apothos that aligned to his core. Having a fire-breathing Spore Wargs might be cool, but an acid attack would probably be easier for him to pull off, at least initially. Even having a minion with an ice attack would be cool, a big frozen mushroom beast, imbued with Glacies Apothos.

A shrouded body shifted on a crypt shelf behind him. Dust and dirt drifted down from the ceiling above. Normally, Logan might’ve been a tad freaked out, but it was just another day in the life of a dungeon core.

Arketa continued. “You can also combine elemental properties, though doing so can have both interesting and devastating side effects. I would avoid doing that at this stage, since it is possible to damage your core if you aren’t careful.” A long pause followed. “And yes, Marko Laskarelis, this is just one more reason why we don’t recommend crafting floor bosses on your own—at least not until you are properly trained. This is truly more art than science. Now, everyone, I’ll be watching. Try adding a bit of an Apothine energy to your current minion, but first, you’ll want the purest form of your affinity, so it should go from your core to your creation, imbuing it with a piece of your own sentience.”

Inga’s antennae drew inward, her brow still furrowed. She was still nervous.

Well, they were about to create new life. Maybe being a little fearful was a good thing.