I Hate Dungeon School

Mrs. Jarlsen thanked us profusely, shaking our hands and hugging us as we made our way out. Several of her neighbors had emerged from their homes and businesses to find out what all the fuss was about, which was making things increasingly awkward.

We left as quickly as we could after that, not even stopping to check in with Manya like I had hoped. All the fear and weirdness of what happened down there had made me hungry, despite the residual feelings of fullness due to my connection with the core.

I couldn't believe what had happened, and I was still in a state of shock over it. We quickly returned to the school campus, shed our equipment, and sat there in silence for a time.

"So what do we do about all this?" Myth broke the silence first. She was never one to let a group get too quiet, I supposed.

"We have to tell someone what happened, but who? We need someone who won't sell us out. We can't have that happen. With Alta here, we're starting to get a reputation amongst us for being troublemakers. That gets a big target put on us, and I just couldn't deal with that." Cori sighed, putting her face in her hands.

"Yes yes. Friend Alta is good person, but trouble is too comfy with her." Smitty's ears drooped somewhat as she said this.

They had a point. Trouble kept finding me somehow, and I wasn't liking it. I also didn't like to be told that I was a trouble magnet, but not liking it didn't make it any less true.

"I know who to talk to, gals. You don't need to get involved. I said I would take responsibility for all this, didn't I? I'm an elf of my word, even though I'm increasingly wishing I wasn't." I stood up and dusted myself off.

I wasn't sure if they would even be in their office today, but they were my best bet.

"Where are you going?" Myth asked, a concerned look on her face.

"Like I said. I know someone. I'll probably be back in a few hours. Take it easy for the rest of the day. Or do homework. Or something. Act normal? I don't know." I said before leaving without another word.

I was very confused about everything, and it was deeply affecting my mood in general. I knew the girls wouldn't take it personally. At least I hoped they wouldn't.

I walked across the brightly lit and cold campus to the plain and rather uninteresting building that held Calderon's office and research lab. It was there that the school did most of its research into the nature of not only dungeons but the strange mana they put off.

The whole event had left me suffused in the stuff, and if the strange mana of two young dungeon cores fighting to the death could be useful, I didn't want to wash it away. Though a bath sounded heavenly.

I walked down several flights of stairs till I reached his office. The research building was at least twice as deep as it was tall. No doubt to contain any damage from runaway experiments. For all I knew, this was a dungeon itself.

I looked down the stairwell, and my brain felt a bit dizzy at how much further down it went. A dungeon was an apt description, I suppose.

I knocked on the door and was greeted by a heavy silence. I waited a moment and tried again. This time, I was greeted by the sounds of movement behind the door. It cracked open just enough to see an eye peeking out, shining in the dim lighting of the basement level.

"Ms. Marchesi? It isn't time for your check-in, is it? Has something happened?" The voice most definitely belonged to Calderon.

"Yes. Something very, very strange. I need, well, I need advice. Can I come in?" I tried to keep my concern from suffusing my voice too much, but I could tell I wasn't doing a good job of it.

He ushered me in and had me sit in a chair, which was far more comfortable than the one he usually had me sit in for examinations.

"So tell me what's going on. And please be as detailed as you can." He said, pulling out a pen and notebook, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose.

"First, I need to ask a favor. I made some discoveries today doing something technically less than legal, and I need some assurances before I can continue, if you get my drift." I said evenly. I wanted to make absolutely sure I was understood.

He grinned slightly. "Alta, if you don't mind me calling you that, I swear to you I will be entirely discreet. The amount of legally questionable stuff I get up to in this office would see me in prison until my grandchildren were ancient. So please, I want to know what happened."

I took a deep breath to still any concerns I still had. Calderon had always struck me as a man of his word, and I would just have to trust him on this.

"So, I, plus a few others, had stumbled across a newly formed and settled dungeon core in a basement in town. It was unusual as it formed in a well-used and cleaned area, so it shouldn't have formed in the first place." I explained.

"Well, that is unusual but not unheard of. Something to look into later. I assume the core exhibited some strange properties? Or was it your core? I see it's still around your neck there." He pointed at my pouch.

"The basement core was fine. Nothing we hadn't seen in textbooks. Its growth seemed a bit accelerated from what I had read, but we adapted. However, it started producing a lot of monsters. Rats specifically. We were about to be overrun when my core... Well, not to put too fine a point on it, it escaped the pouch and ate the other core." I blurted out.

He stopped writing and looked me dead in the eyes.

"Excuse me? It did what?" He stammered.

"It ate it! It floated up, it turned to a liquid form, enveloped the basement core, and then, after a moment, it solidified and dropped back to the ground. All the spatial distortions, monster, everything just disappeared!" I continued.

"It ate it? That's amazing! And bizarre. Oh, it's a lot of things. And you said it only did that when you were in danger? Fascinating! Extraordinary!"

He began pacing around the small office, talking wildly to himself, gesticulating to the air. I was starting to feel incredibly nervous as time passed. He stopped suddenly and turned towards me.

"I need to know, did you feel anything? With your connection to the core, I mean?" He pulled the notebook up again.

"I could feel something like a sense of pride and satisfaction from it. Somehow like a mix of winning a fight and having a good dinner. When it finished eating, there was a wave of dungeon mana that washed over us- I mean me. Over me. It was, I guess, thicker for lack of a better term."

"Ok, good to know, we'll check that out in a bit. Anything else?" He scribbled furiously as he talked.

"Oh! Yes!" I pulled the orb out of the pouch. "It's bigger now. And the glow is just a bit brighter, I just noticed."

The light it emitted wasn't intense, but definitely more pronounced than it had been the day before.

"Well, this is just all kinds of interesting." He reached out to touch it, and I tensed, waiting for the pain that usually hit when he did so. But I didn't feel anything.

"You didn't wince." He stated. "Either you've gotten used to it, or something else has changed. For one thing, it feels much more solid than it has."

"It's always felt solid to me," I interjected.

"It is solid, but it's more solid now. I'm not entirely sure how to explain it." He walked away from me and sat at his desk, leaning back precariously in his chair and staring at the ceiling.

It was uncomfortably quiet. After this morning, there seemed to be far too many of these silences. It was starting to get on my nerves a bit. I used to love silence, but now the lack of sounds felt dangerous to me. I'm not sure what could have caused that. Could the dungeon core be changing my brain? Or am I just being paranoid? It wasn't as though I lacked cause for it.

Calderon sat up suddenly and looked at me intensely.

"You're going to be free tomorrow." He said firmly. More so than I had heard from him before.

"I have classes, so no, I'm not free at all," I said, feeling taken aback and confused at his words.

"That wasn't a question. This could be very serious. I'll let all your teachers know. Be here, first thing in the morning. You might want to go easy on breakfast, but definitely eat something. Can't have you passing out on me." He started writing in his notebook again.

"Passing out?" I was feeling scared now. I didn't like passing out in general, but passing out in a deep basement lab was even more disconcerting to me.

"We have a battery of tests we're going to need to do, and to be honest, some of them might be intense. I can't say for entirely sure. Sorry." He said brusquely.

"How scared should I be? I know I agreed to help you with your research, but-" He held up a hand to cut me off.

"We're in uncharted territory here. We've seen bits of what is going on, but never all the pieces in one place. I can't say exactly what will happen, because we just don't know. This could mean nothing, or it could revolutionize dungeon research for generations. I just don't know. It scares me, too, but more than that, it excites me!" His grin widened, and I could see the manic joy of a researcher on the cusp of something amazing.

I could only sigh and nod.

"Can I take a bath at least? I really want to wash the dungeon mana out of my system. It feels intensely weird, and it's making me feel gross." I groaned and shuddered.

"Oh, absolutely. You likely got absolutely loaded with it. I'm actually surprised you're in as good shape as you are."

"I'll see you tomorrow then." I stood and tucked the core back in my pouch. I felt a bit of resentment towards the little thing, but I had to admit, I was beginning to become more curious than frightened of what was happening. Plus, it meant I got to skip classes for a bit. And it was warmer in the research basements as well, so that was an added bonus.

I ascended the winding stairs to emerge into the cold sunlight once again and took a deep breath. The air down there was stuffier than I realized, and it felt good to feel the breeze on my face.

My stomach growled at me angrily. It was right. I deserved a good lunch. I wondered if that café was open.

I felt the dungeon core pulse softly in its pouch. I guess the little round fellow agreed with me. Tasty lunch here we come!