Aeres Academy - Chapter 4 preview

Every major academy – and quite a few smaller ones – have access to a fault, a crack in the earth that leads into the dungeon. These faults formed for a variety of reasons, everything from a titan monster choosing to dig its way to the surface in a direct manner to breaks caused by Mana overpressure. Rarest – and most illegal of all – were faults created by humans directly in an attempt to profit.

After the initial monster surge when a fault breached the earth’s crust; a lease on the fault is auctioned off to the highest bidder. These newly created faults are the basis of the academies and some corporate or individual wealth. Being offshoots of the major dungeon entrance, the faults themselves are not only easier to control and manage, but they also rarely changed layouts unlike the main dungeon levels.

That made them safer – for a definition of safe.

Adventuring guilds, of course, don’t bother with faults for the most part. Oh, the occasional particularly large guild might purchase one – the Platinum Knights came to mind, as well as the Dire Flame Emperors – but for the most part, their job was the delving of the dungeon itself.

Funds were better focused on purchasing equipment, training academy graduates in the real world and solidifying positions deeper within the dungeon rather than competing with the various academies. Of course, a few guilds never bothered with academy graduates, preferring to hire their adventurers fresh and train them up themselves, but for the most part, those were small scale operations or specialists. 

The real guilds, the big ones that the majority dreamed about, the famous guilds which were the dream of many, they generally took only graduates. At least till they had proven themselves to be true delvers and crossed the first major hurdle on the twenty first floor. In some cases, they only took graduates from the most prestigious of dungeoning academies no matter an individual’s successes. Kind of like certain consulting companies who only hired Harvard graduates. 

To be clear, Aeres academy was not and has never been counted amongst those numbers. 

It was, while not the bottom of the barrel, still one of the largest unaffiliated academy that accepted non-lineage adventurers. After all, it’s entire origin was via the endowment by the(in)famous Adventurer Aeres, whose one man stand in front of the newly opened (soon to be named Aeres) fault had garnered him the sole right to use it till his death two hundred and sixteen years ago. 

Unfortunately, the town mayor had worded the grant wrong and upon his death, Aeres had ceded the delving rights to the academy he had built on top of the vault, allowing them to continue to function without paying an exorbitant lease like every other academy in the city of Haeros.

Which meant that it could, and did, continue the legacy of offering anyone willing to risk their lives a chance to join them. A chance via the strangest recruitment test of them all. Every applicant delved the fault this day, but in turn, we had to bring back five grade one cores.

Simple, right? Five monsters, five kills.

Not so fast.

First, not all monsters have a core. Shards were more common, especially on the first few levels of a dungeon or fault. In general, monsters on a fault were weaker than dungeon monsters, leading them to a higher shard to core ratio. Now, it fluctuated depending on the type of shard, its size, clarity and dimensions, but the exchange rate was about twelve shards to one core of the same kind. 

In addition, monsters that had a core generally were much tougher. Shards and cores were the basis of strength for monsters, and so, the more powerful the core or shard, the more powerful the monster. 

As such, acquiring five cores was both a matter of luck and hard work. There was, without doubt, a lot of monsters with cores in the fault – so long as you were willing to delve deep enough. That was the thing about Aeres academy – its fault only went down to the ninth level. 

Not that any aspirant was going to head that deep, not on their first day. Not unless they had a death wish.

I turned those words over as I approached the fault. The fault – or the opening to the fault now – was located inside a massive stone building that was smack dab in the middle of the Aeres academy complex. The entrance itself was via a second, smaller capped exit and staircase entrance down whose external looked much like a mausoleum, hardened stone with barred, steel wooden doors. 

In fact, as I stepped through, I noted that even the main building’s doors were steel. 

“Problem, boy?” One of the guards standing at the doors asked, clad in a steel breastplate and leather greaves and arms with a halberd by his side. Practical and defensive, though none of the material looked to be enchanted.

“Why wood? Why so big?” Because the building entrance was at least twelve feet tall and the fault entrance ten. Big enough that a larger monster could push through. “Isn’t that more dangerous?”

“Gods, you children. More danger?” the guard scoffed. “You want the monsters to go find another entrance? Or dig their way out. We make it big enough to let them through, tough enough to give us time – but not so tough they give up. Better to channel them where we want, rather than let them go where they do.”

“Oh…” Made sense, in a rather fatalistic way.

“Well, go on then. Don’t hold up the line.”

Thanking him, I hurried in. The hall itself to the entrance was pretty empty save for a table on the left, lying empty and another beside it full of weaponry. A bored looking attendant and a half-dozen aspirants were clustered around it, chatting away.

I skipped all that, headed for the entrance having everything I needed on me.

“Where’s your weapon, boy?” The old guard standing before the entrance to the Aeres academy fault was looking me over and frowning. The closest thing to a bladed weapon that I had in sight was the knife on my left hip.

“Right here.” I raised my hands, fully gloved now and waggled them back and forth. The gloves were fully riveted, a metal plate across the back to protect and on the palm, enchantments layered on the gloves that drew upon my own magic pool to self-repair and enhance their durability. Quite the expensive parting gift from my non-adventuring friends at the Upturned Stove, one that I would have to find a way to repay even if I had wished they’d managed to get them to me earlier.

Heavy Leather Gloves of Brawling

Benefits: Self Repair, Minor increase in Durability in protected area

Synchronization Level: 37%

Synchronization indicated how much of the gloves were pulling from my own resources, the ambient energy I gave out. The better the synchronization levels, the more efficient and effective the various enchantments were. It was why those who had enchanted items kept them on them at all times if possible, since synchronization levels dropped the longer they were away from an individual’s aura.

“We have loaner items you can rent.” The guard’s head jerked to the side where a small table filled with battered and chipped swords, axes, maces and other melee equipment lay. A quick glance showed nothing particularly interesting like a punch dagger which would have suited my style so I shook my head. 

“Your funeral, boy.” The grizzled guard then raised the palm-sized dark brown pouch, an Aeres academy sigil and glyphs of enchantment burnt into the leather. The academy’s sigil was a tower, crossed with fire and water; the twin elements utilized by Aeres with a cat-like creature across the bottom of the tower, six tails lashing. “Bond this, store all shards within. It’ll transport what you capture up here.”

I followed his instructions, poured energy into the bond and attached the pouch to my side. A rather ingenious way of stopping fights, as it was linked to teleportation runes set throughout the fault. Any shard or core placed within would be marked as mine and transported, immediately, up here.

Nothing to steal, no reason to fight.

Mostly.

I slipped past the guard once I was ready, ignored the mutter of the local equivalent of ‘my funeral’ and kept my head on a pivot as I entered the fault. We had to cross through the barred and protected door, descend a series of carved stone steps embedded in the earth before I reached the fault itself.

Memory of Aeres’ legend flashed through my mind, the first burrower that was tough but easily slain after it had found a Mana-created passage upwards, widening the breach and opening it to the earth. Right in the middle of a busy neighborhood, taking down a number of buildings in the doing.

Not an issue, if not for the swarm that came after. The swarm was what built Aeres’ legend and resulted in this overly generous gift.

Swarm monsters are a pain and a half, mostly because they were of their numbers and the lack of specialization in dealing with them. Few Adventurers had the skills or ability to deal with them – mass damaging skills generally only appearing  in deeper levels. 

Worse, most swarm monsters have smaller than normal shards – sometimes, none at all – which meant that Adventurers in particular avoided dealing with them. Which, of course, meant that they often built up a massive population which easily shifted their threat level to fatal.

In this case, the reason for my thoughts of Aeres’ and his stand was simple. The fault attracts and hosts a larger than normal number of swarm monsters. Nothing easy like jellies, but at least not as bad as a goblin fault. The major monsters within the first few levels that I have to worry about are the tenebrous worms, the xael wasp and, later on, knockers.

Not that I expected to encounter too many monsters in the first few caves. One of the reasons for the morning rush lay before me, the other aspirants kills lying on the floor, swarms of Tionerth bugs and maggots already on the discarded flesh, skin and muscle decomposing as increased magical pressure destroyed the corpses.

The early bird got the worm, or on Tionerth, the early Adventurer killed the first jelly. 

As I kept moving along a memorized route of the first floor, I turned over the guard’s words. Truthfully, I understood his point.

There’s a reason why humanity utilized spears, bows, swords and all the different tools to keep the threat at a distance. Once you were close, you risked getting hurt. In fact, nine times out of ten, you were going to walk away with some kind of injury – from fractured bones to scraped knuckles, it mattered not. Weapons were a force multiplier, one that kept the danger from you.

Kept you healthy and uninjured, allowing you to delve further and longer.

Of course, that kind of logic changed a little when one added magical skills to the consideration. Not as much as you would think, but it did a little. In my case, I had a single skill. One that I felt let me upend that simple chain of logic. 

That being said, it was not like I had a chance to test it much. It wouldn’t make sense with a skill called Conserve.