Shadowcroft's Academy for Dungeons Chapter 16

The next two weeks went by in a flash. After that first Underground Feng Shui class, Logan had decided on two out of the three mushrooms he would cultivate. However, he was still on the fence about the second-level mushroom.

Like on Earth, the school gave the students weekends off. Logan wasn’t going to spend any time goofing off, however. Inga said he needed to master Boundless Wheel so that it was as natural as breathing. So, Logan cultivated. Constantly. Walking up the ten flights of stairs to his room. Sitting in the Golden Serpent Hall. Crossed legged in the swaying field of Iceblade grass. Sitting through Shadowcroft’s rambling musing about ethics and the universe. Going to sleep. Waking up at the crack of dawn. He worked on spinning his core into a perfect orb and taking care of all that seepage. All while constantly circulating a hair thin tendril of power through his body. Reinforcing his skin against damage and improving his eyes, so he could see the floating wisps of Apothos. 

Logan insisted they keep their early morning schedule six days a week, despite the extra time off. He would’ve done seven, but Marko threatened to violently revolt. However, it wasn’t like waking up early on Saturday would stop the satyr from partying with his other friends on Friday night. As for Treacle, the minotaur didn’t mind much. Whenever he got bored, he would simply chew his cud like a Wyoming guernsey cow.

Inga, though, matched Logan step-for-step.

On that second Sunday, she was there, in the common room, at six a.m., reading when Logan came down. He hadn’t really expected to see anyone else and had planned to go alone to the Akros Coliseum to cultivate. The Iceblade grass was miserable, but it really did help him sharpen his mind. In just two weeks, he’d already progressed to E-Class Rank 5, which was a major threshold. He didn’t feel it when he went up a rank—according to Inga and the others that wouldn’t happen until he ascended to Iron Trunk. For him, ranking up was more like a status bar in a video game—it showed the progress he was making toward his next evolutionary form.

He hauled himself onto the bench next to her. She steeped her tea with her left hand while turning pages with her right. A fresh log burned in the fireplace on the glowing red coals, casting a scarlet light on her blue-black wings. She was in her Azure Dragon robe with the matching scarf, blue and gold.

Logan wasn’t about to interrupt her, so he pulled up his Guardian Matrix Form.

                                                                                  <<< ۝ >>> 

Logan Murray

Guardian Core Matrix

Base Race: Fungaloid

Current Evolution: Toadstool 

Cultivator Class: Deep Root Cultivators; E Class, Rank 5

Primary Elemental Affinities: Morta/Toxicus

Racial Abilities: 

- Digestion

Racial Skill: 

Domestic Fungi

- Level-One Proto-Spore Cultures

- Opal Truffles, Mucal Film, Ghoul’s Snare

- Level-Two Proto-Spore Cultures

- Outstanding Allotment!

Fungal Form (Active): 

- Harden

Fungal Form (Passive):

- Fungal Vision

- Disease Immunity

Spore Halo: 

- Pollen

- Symbiosis

- Athlete’s Foot

                                                                                 <<< ۝ >>>

He glanced through the new abilities he’d been given with his E-Class Rank 5 upgrade. He now had access to another first-level Proto-Spore Culture. He’d chosen Ghoul’s Snare.

                                                                                      <<<>>>  

Ghoul’s Snare (Type, Trap): This is a type of curling purple black fungus that grows on the ground. When touched, it activates, curling around feet and entangling enemies while dealing acid damage over time. Rarity: C-Class; Elemental Affinity: Corrosivus, Umbra

                                                                                      <<<>>>  

Along with the new fungal culture, he’d also gained total Disease Immunity as part of his Passive Fungal Form and, even better, he’d managed to unlock a new Spore Halo ability, Athlete’s Foot. 

                                                                                      <<<>>>  

Athlete’s Foot: Release a burst of spores that causes irritating itching between the toes. Although not lethal at this level, Athletes Foot can be quite painful if left untreated and takes ages to clear up. So inconvenient!  

Available at: E Class, Rank 5+

                                                                                     <<<>>> 

Going up three ranks in two weeks was no easy task. From here on out, his improvement would slow, though he was determined not to let it stop. He was still contemplating his level-two spore culture, but he had some time, since he didn’t have to decide on anything.

Inga read on, and so he blinked away his character sheet and decided to sit quietly and cultivate. Reinforcing his eyes, he watched a thin golden red miasma of Ignis Apothos drift across the floor from the fireplace. As a fungaloid, he had a naturally affinity with Morta and Toxicus—cultivating those elements was like drinking pure water on a hot summer day. Ignis Apothos, however, was the hardest elemental affinity for him to cultivate by a country mile. That also made it the best to practice with. He breathed in a thin line of the churning power and drew it into his swirling core. The pain hit like a taser to the sternum and immediately his skin started to smoke and smolder in places, as that fiery energy burned down his meridians like a wildfire. 

Logan was ready for it, though. He staunched the incoming flow and sent a pulse of his own power surging out along his internal pathways, putting out those fires and instantly reinforcing the skin and healing the burns. He was getting pretty good at directing the Apothos through the meridians in his body. He could heal the minor injuries, yet still needed Zed and Ned, the rosebush doctors, for when he lost limbs, which happened all too frequently.

From there, he contained the rest of the unincorporated Ignis Affinity through sheer force of will, directing it to circle his core in elaborate loops and swirls. His core looked almost like Saturn, with its many rings. If you cultivated Pure Apothos or Apothos that was already elementally aligned with your nature, it could be incorporated and used immediately. This Ignis Affinity, though, he needed to strip down and purify. Ever so slow, Logan peeled away fine strands of the golden energy, manhandling it into his center where the Ignis would be chipped away by bits and pieces, then expelled as he breathed out the corruption.

“You really are getting much better at this.” Inga closed her book. 

Logan opened his eyes, keeping the purification process running quietly in the back of his head.

“Sorry about being absent,” Inga said after a beat. “I got lost in that last chapter. Professor Nekhbet can spin such a wondrous tale.”

Logan adjusted the book so he could see the spine. “The Bread Knives of Eritreus? Am I reading that right?”

The moth woman got defensive and clutched the book close to her chest like a treasured prize. “It’s more than about spreading butter, Logan. It’s a memoir about his travels to Eritreus. Bart captures what it feels like to dine in the cafes and bistros of Haven’s Door, on a spring morning, or a winter night, having quiet conversations on any number of interesting topics.”

“Bart?” Logan wondered.

Inga’s antennae pulled in close. “Professor Nekhbet. I should’ve have referred to him as Bart.”

Logan had no idea what she saw in Professor Bartholomew Nekhbet. He taught their The History of the Soul Tree class, which was supremely boring. Grass growing, paint drying, solitary confinement levels of boring. Marko had completely given up on trying to stay awake through Nekhbet’s droning lectures. Logan had thought the subject matter would be interesting—talking about the fundamental reality of all creation—and yet, Professor Nekhbet talked in a monotone voice and had spent the first two weeks going over the anatomy of the Tallwood Pines, the most common trees of the Xiru Forest. 

The idea that he’d written a book about bread knives wasn’t a stretch.

Nekhbet had nattered on endlessly about roots, sap, heartwood, and branches, giving them every mind-numbing detail—details that didn’t seem relevant or useful in anyway that Logan could understand. However, Inga sat enraptured, hanging on every word as though he were some sage prophet of old, dispensing ancient wisdom from on high. He was no Charlton Heston, though. No, Nekhbet was a paunchy birdman monster with a big vulture head. A bright red waddle hung from his yellow beak. Maybe it was a bird woman thing since Inga’s original race, the Okitori, were big owlish creatures?

No idea, no impact. Logan seriously didn’t even know where to start with that whole situation. 

“Sounds interesting,” he said, shooting for genuine and missing. “I imagine we’ll get to Eritreus at some point. Rockheart has talked about a field trip to see a real dungeon core in action.” Eritreus was the most Apothos-rich world in the multiverse, and the birthplace of Chadrigoth, who wouldn’t let them forget it.

“I enjoy Rockheart’s trap class far more than that terrible Calisthenics torture.” Inga winced. “Sorry to bring it up. I would stay off the grass as much as you can.”

Logan shrugged. “The murder grass is terrible, but things are fine. And on the bright side, I think the doomhounds are finally starting to lose their taste for me. Last time, they tore me apart, sure, but then they kept running. A part of me was offended. We’ll change subjects. Which do you like better? Traps, Pits, and Pendulums or our crafting class?”

Inga cupped her tea in both hands. “I don’t care much for either, really. I’m far more interested in the more theoretical aspects of dungeons. And Professor Crucible can be distant. He’s doesn’t have Professor Nekhbet’s warmth and charm.”

Logan held his tongue. She was wrong about Nekhbet. She wasn’t about Ronnalg Crucible. He was a big mustached ogre, eight feet tall, with a lustrous moustache and a permanent frown. He mostly grunted, sighed, and grumbled at the students as they used their Apothos to create simple items. They’d been working on a single wooden chair for a few days now. Crafting was based on the blueprints of objects, which had to be created carefully, and then brought into reality through a complex process called Exogenous Apothos Manifestation. It was far more complicated than Endogenous Apothos Manifestation, which was the process they used to manipulate dungeon spaces—creating rooms, spawning monsters, engineering traps that would never leave the dungeon core’s sphere of influence. 

Exogenous Apothos Manifestations were crafted enchanted items that could be removed from a dungeon space by potential dungeoneers. Creating such items was no easy task, and Crucible threw annoyed sighs at them when they couldn’t understand the basics. 

The mustached ogre was the embodiment of taciturn. He offered no personal details, didn’t ask any of his students a single question, and was generally anti-social. Rumor had it, Crucible didn’t even live at the academy proper, but instead had a cabin deep in the heart of the Xiru Forest. No one had ever visited the cabin and survived.

Even worse, getting to their Fiendish Fabrication class took forever, since they had to walk to Crucible’s workshop from the closest dungeon, Bloodrock, up in the Heckish Hills of the World Forge Wastes. Probably hellish would’ve been better than heckish—it was like a pile of miniature Mount Dooms all clustered together. 

Planning that extra time was easy for Logan, Inga, and Treacle. In fact, the minotaur always showed up early for that class. Marko? He was forever late, which hurt them in the rankings. Tardiness was a surefire way to lose points for both their cohort and their clan.

Sitting there with Inga, a realization hit Logan like a hammer blow. Inga had said it herself: she liked the theory of dungeons. That made sense. She had the study skills and discipline to really explore the many different aspects of cultivation and how that could help them work on their dungeons. But, at the same time, she lacked focus. In a way, she was like a swiss army knife with a thousand attachments that can do everything, but none of them particularly well. Logan, on the other hand, was a meat cleaver—he could only do one thing at a time, but he excelled at that one thing. 

However, out of the entire Terrible Twelfth, she was farther along than any of them. If he needed a committed partner without a partying problem, Marko, or bovine depression ,Treacle, then Inga would be the perfect match for him. 

She was the answer he’d been looking for, but he suddenly grew nervous.

Inga saw it. “What’s wrong? Your energy just changed completely.”

He gulped and tried to hide it. “Nothing. I’m just… not used to sleeping in that extra hour. I’m fine.” He nodded his toadstool head.

“Would you like some of my honey apple tea?” she asked.

He would, but he’d like it a few weeks old, with a layer of bacteria slowly creeping across the top. He couldn’t say that, of course. Now that the idea had laid root, he had to ask her to join him. Instead he veered off on another subject. “I guess in our next Ethics of Murder class, Shadowcroft is going to talk about the morality of murdering evil before that evil bears fruit. It’s an old argument on my world about a certain fascist in central Europe.”

“And you say I have a non-sequitur problem,” the moth woman tsked. “So, no tea then?”

“No tea for me.” Logan kicked himself. He couldn’t waste time. If Inga didn’t want to join up with him, he’d have to move on to Treacle. However much he liked Marko personally, the satyr had trouble taking anything seriously and nothing was more serious than survival.

“Inga,” he started. When words failed him, he took in a deep breath. “Listen, you like theory, I like the application of theory. I’m a fungaloid, and I have this power, that would allow us—”

She cut him off and let out a breath of relief. “Night Mother above, finally,” she sighed with an eyeroll. “If I had lost out to the sad minotaur, I would’ve been very distraught indeed. Yes, Logan, of course we’re going to use Symbiosis to join our cores together. I’ve been pondering on it since we found ourselves in the same cohort, but I didn’t want to pressure you in case you were going to go in a different direction with your dungeon build. On the off chance that you would ask, though, I’ve been trying to sign us up to get into the Tartarucha Cells, but I’m fearing it will be impossible. We simply don’t have the seniority. You know, if you haven’t picked fungi to domesticate, I have some very specific ideas on which mushrooms you should grow. Or must you have a dungeon to start growing them? The literature was unclear.”

The tornado of words left Logan’s head spinning. “What now? Literature who?”

Inga’s antennae were stretched out to their full length. Her wings shivered. “Immelda Menagerie Inkboon’s definitive work on Guardian Forms—The Eternal Monsters of Our Infinite Selves: Dungeon Cores, Magical Creatures, and the Many Protectors of the Tree of Souls.”

“That’s the title?” Logan asked uncertainly.

“Of volume one, yes.” Inga nodded enthusiastically. “There are eighteen volumes. Each has a unique title. It took a bit for me to find fungaloid, since it’s so seldom selected. You do realize there have only ever been thirteen fungaloids in recorded history across all the dungeon core academies, correct?”

He winced. “Yeah. Only six here. It’s at the bottom of the barrel.”

“Almost half come from Shadowcroft,” Inga said. “It’s because Shadowcroft, himself, has a more liberal view of what lesser creatures can do. Like everyone in the Terrible Twelfth. No other school would’ve ever taken us in at all, you know.” Her eyes, solid orbs of black, looked far away. She was having a moment.

Logan wanted to ask more about her history, but then those black eyes darted to his face. “Yes, and so, for you to use your Symbiosis ability, we’ll need a dungeon. I’ve been coming up with some options, though none are very good. We need to get into the Tartarucha Cells. But the question is how?” She tapped on her chin with a pale finger.

Logan slid off the bench. “Come with me. I want to show you something. I’ve chosen two of my level-one fungi, and I’m pretty sure I made the right choice.”

They left the common room and hiked up the steps. She flitted along with ease, while he felt like he was trying to summit Everest thanks to his stumpy legs. Finally, they slipped through the door into the shared room. Logan and Inga found Marko asleep, snoring like a woodchipper with his feet on the stone wall and the rest of him sprawled perpendicular on his bed. The place smelled like a middle school boy’s socks dipped in beer.

Inga’s hands went to her tiny nose. “Bless my beak, that is a terrible stench.”

“You get used to it,” Logan said with a halfhearted shrug. He didn’t mention that the bacteria in the room had a certain charm. She’d be shocked enough by the state of his own place.

He climbed the ladder and motioned her to join him. They stood in his attic room, which now had pearl-colored mushrooms growing in most of the nooks and crannies of the ceiling in a bed of green moss. The place was chilly and dark, though a finger fire burned in the stove. Logan’s human side still liked a little light and heat, though not too much. It would dry out his damp attic home.

“Do you need more light to see?” Logan asked.

“No, as an astral moth, I can see just fine.” She glanced around. “You went with the Opal Truffles. It’s a lure mushroom. An odd choice, especially since for the Winnowing, you don’t need a lure. You’d have been better to grow something far more aggressive.” She toed some slime leaking out under his bed. “Oh, yes, Mucal Film, a very good choice.”

“Thanks.” Logan went and touched the biggest mushroom growing near his bed. He’d watched it form over the past few days. “You’re right about the Truffles, but I think there’s another way they can help us. During our first lesson with Professor Hellgazer, she mentioned that she has a soft spot for some sort of truffle cream you can only get in Eritreus.” 

“Of course,” Inga said, eyes lighting up. “Opal Sunset Sauce.” She patted her leather bound book. “Professor Nekhbet described it as one of the wonders of the culinary world.”

Logan couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Of course, Nekhbet’s stupid book would actually have something useful in it. “Yeah, well its made from Opal Truffles. And I managed to talk Chef Treegee”—he ran the Academy’s kitchen staff with a steady hand— “into whipping up a special batch just for Professor Hellgazer. I wrote her a little note, letting her know how much I would appreciate her help getting us into the simulation dungeon. I told her I would appreciate it so much, in fact, that I’d keep her flush with Opal Truffles for the rest of the school year.”

Inga fluttered her wings. “Logan, you’re simply brilliant!”

He nodded. He appreciated the kind words. And best of all? Inga didn’t think his fungal attic home was gross. No, in fact, she seemed at home there.

And Logan’s plan worked perfectly.

The next day, their DCG’s vibrated with an incoming message, marked urgent. There, in a letter written by Shadowcroft, was an announcement. The Tartarucha Cells would be open for extended hours from 8 a.m. to midnight.

And who was signed up in the eleven pm slot on every Monday night? Logan/Inga.

On Tuesday’s, they’d feel the lack of sleep but that didn’t seem to matter. Logan and Inga were going to build their very first dungeon together. He couldn’t wait.

 Keep Reading Here: Chapter Seventeen