DungeonFall – [A Dungeon Creation / Cultivation Story]

While he was working on his meditation art, Aura was going through the first dungeon and making changes to the second floor. She wanted to ensure that they could focus on the new dungeon as much as possible when it was created later that night. Though, it still remained to be seen how she would get to the new one.

George made sure to stop by the house that night a little earlier than he had the day before.

Knowing that he would be coming by with news of how his date had gone with his ex-wife, Nate had decided to put some extra effort into preparing dinner that night. He was grilling up some steaks that had been saved from a beast in the second or third realm. His parents made a point to always bring back some of the better cuts of meat every time they went out on their personal expeditions. The family had a second freezer full of the tender meat out in the garage with all their other supplies.

He was careful in how he seasoned them and even included a few pieces of herbs that he had gotten from the dungeon for extra flavoring. The people of this world truly did not realize what they were missing. There was a reason that wars had been fought over spices from the fifteen hundreds all the way to the seventeen hundreds. That was two hundred years of war over simple spices, and it wasn’t the only time it had happened.

People hated bland food. That’s not to say the food of this Earth was bland or anything, just that they didn’t have access to all of those delicious spices anymore.

They tried, and a few were even still available at incredibly high prices. However, it was a simple fact that not all of them could be grown on the North American continent, and certainly not within easy trade distance of where they lived. But Nate already had a plan to at least somewhat alleviate that. In the meantime, he would do what he could to mitigate the lack of flavor.

He most certainly hadn’t been a professional chef in his past life. Yet living on his own for so long, you picked up on certain things you could do to make the bland healthy food he was force-fed more palatable. The constant YouTube videos he had watched on the subject helped immensely on that particular subject.

The one thing he did do, which was probably sacrilege to most other people, was actually cook the steak until it was done. Nate had never been able to stand the sight of pink meat as he was eating, or dripping half-cooked eggs, for that matter. He had tried both, and just couldn’t keep either down. For the eggs, it was a matter of smell and texture. With the steak, it was something mental.

So, he cooked the steak until it was just barely past the point where the meat had begun to turn darker. The entire time, he was basting it in butter with the herbs and spices, ensuring it had a nice crust.

George had been sitting at the counter next to him making small talk as Nate cooked. He was deliberately avoiding the topic of how his date had gone with his ex-wife for the moment. Instead, he was focusing on answering any questions Nate had about cultivating, his meditation art, and really anything else he could think of.

It was obvious that before eating, there would be no discussing it.

Which Nate found rather interesting considering how heavy some of the other topics they delved into ended up being. The city they lived in was not a happy place. The healing guild that the grandfatherly man ran was constantly on the point of being overworked. There were always the cultivators who bit off more than they could chew on an expedition. Unfortunately, the real cause of all the overworked healers was the soldiers who protected their borders.

It was an interesting glimpse into a portion of life that was removed from his own. One that he had never even truly thought about before that moment.

The city wasn’t in danger of being overrun, but the soldiers tended to generally be among the weaker cultivators in the city. However, as a result, they were given better armor and weapons to make up the difference. The better equipment did help them, but they could only do so much for people with low realms and crappy cores.

George pushed his plate away with a smile. “That was delicious, thank you. I want to do a quick inspection of you and make sure everything is still good before we move on to other topics.”

Nate nodded and held out his hand to him.

“You’re looking good. It amazes me how much of a difference that backup core makes, for you to have already upgraded your core once is beyond impressive.” The older man took his hand back with a shake of his head.

“It surprised me as well, and it really drove home just how important it is to have a good core. When I realized that my qi had become more dense and the amount available had halved… Well, it took me a few minutes to understand what had happened, but once I did, it really drove the fact home.”

“I had wondered why you were so calm about what Jace had done to you,” George commented. “You really had no idea what the differences between each grade of core meant.”

“That is part of it,” Nate agreed readily. “I mean, I knew that a higher grade would obviously be better, but not the specifics. As for the whole Jace situation, there were extenuating circumstances there. Speaking of, have you gotten any word on him?”

“Nope, there hasn't been so much as a peep that I am aware of. His parents might have heard from him, but if they have, they are wisely keeping it quiet.”

Nate bobbed his head for a few seconds before sighing. “Whatever. It’s not like I expected any different. The girls came out alright from the experience, and I have the backup core. Given the time, I’ll be fine as well. Now, let’s move on to what I am hoping is a happier topic. How was the date last night?”

“Claire, that’s my ex-wife, and I spent a lot of time simply catching up, talking, finally working through everything that happened back then. Conversations that all should have happened twenty years ago. It was therapeutic, and cleansing.” George was staring into the glass of juice as though he wished it were something harder. “We got so drunk and just… talked… for hours. It was nice. It was like when we were young again and simply enjoyed being around each other.”

A lone tear made its way down his cheek, the liquid dipping in and out of the wrinkles that had been brought on by age and grief.

“It sounds like it went about as well, or even better than you could have expected then, right?” He said carefully.

A genteel, wet snort and nod were his only answer for several long seconds. “I’ll see her again tonight and see what she specifically wants to do. However, last night really could not have gone any better in my mind. In a lot of ways, it brought closure to our past mistakes and finally allowed us to move past what happened back then.

“I also got to see a glimpse of the girl I fell in love with so many years ago. I don’t know if we’ll get back together again though. I’m not sure if I can trust her with my heart in that same way a second time. It wasn’t me who gave up on our marriage and walked away. It was her. Losing her once, along with our son, was hard enough, losing her a second time,” He threw his palms face up onto the table. “I don’t think I could handle that a second time.”

Nate wasn’t sure what to say to the man, or if there was something he should even say. Sometimes, the best thing a person could do was simply listen, and he had a feeling that was especially the case at the moment. George needed someone to listen to him talk, not try and offer a half-baked solution.

It turned out to be the right choice, as when he left a little while later, he looked as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

Closing the door behind him, Nate pulled up the screens for the first dungeon. He let them hover in the air in front of him while he continued to work on his meditation art. The second Dungeon Core was going to finish its creation that night and right afterward the second dungeon would come into being. It was an event that he wanted to watch in real time. He didn’t want to risk getting caught up in a fight or some other activity inside the first dungeon with his avatar.

Even Aura was waiting impatiently for the new dungeon to appear. Though the method in which she controlled and made changes was vastly different from his own, she was still able to monitor things in a more limited fashion. She could tell that there was a second Dungeon Core being created and could see the remaining time on it, but that was it. Her actual control and other related abilities were limited to the current dungeon that she was in at the moment.

Which reminded him that they would need to figure out how to transfer her to the new dungeon. He hoped it wasn’t a hard or laborious process, like it was if he wanted to bring her home. To do that, she had to physically leave the dungeon and then meet up with him somewhere. After that first time, however, she would still be able to continue entering the dungeon through him as a medium.

It was a nice little tidbit of information that she had revealed to him the night before.

They simply needed to meet up first before any of that could happen. It was on the list of items to try and set up for this coming weekend during his next expedition with his parents.

Having her try and sneak into the city would be a little much. Meeting up with her while they were out on an expedition was a good compromise. Explaining her presence to his parents from there would be a little more difficult, but also not too hard. There was a history of people having beast companions.

Nate didn’t know the normal process to train or get a proper companion beast, but that is what Aura had been registered by the wrist computer as. So that is what he would tell everyone she was. Hopefully, that would be enough to stop the bulk of the questions.

It wasn’t like too many people would see her this way either. After they met up, and she met his parents, she would go back to the dungeon for a while. There was no point in risking a scene when they went through the checkpoint at the wall on the way back into the city.

Once they were back at home, she could come back if she wanted.

It would be nice having her right there to talk to instead of opening a few different windows. All the different hoops he had to go through currently felt restraining. In a weird way, Aura had taken on the position of dungeon manual. After she connected to the dungeon and the Dungeon Core, she had gained a level of understanding to its systems that he had been deprived of previously.

Up to the point of her appearance, he had been depending on his instincts and feelings that the wrist computer had been influencing. However, there had been no hard information there, just something nudging his gut feeling.

Now he had a walking, somewhat talking manual, but the process of speaking with her was a little awkward. Still, he had been learning more about the dungeons from her.

Unfortunately, she only contained information about the dungeons and not the rest of the wrist computer functions. Regardless, it was more information than he had possessed before.

None of that helped him with his meditation arts, which he had to work through and understand himself. A person couldn’t have everything, and if they did, then life would simply become boring. He enjoyed working on the meditation art and sorting through it and comparing it to the other ones he had gathered from the internet.

Only after he had sorted the next section, would he begin working on modifying it to fit his meditation model and him as a person. Each section needed to be tweaked and changed to accommodate the changes for his body, and both cores. He was literally laying down a map of his meridians as he changed it.

If he screwed up here, then some of his meridians wouldn’t be used to their full potential or could even be ignored entirely and die out from atrophy.