Worthy Core

Up in Worthy Dungeon, events had reached a new peak level of boredom. No one had visited since the 'nudists', which wasn't particularly surprising given that another missing party would always be likely to scare off the rest of the Initiates for a little while longer. Xenia wasn't interested in working on a new fourth floor yet either, both because she wanted to know more first about what was going on down in her basement, plus the fact that no one had even attempted her third floor yet other than Beatrice. While she could have gone back and made her existing floors more deadly, she was a little worried about over-tuning things, and besides, if anything her fatality rate was probably already on the high side as it was. Therefore, she'd simply been spending her mana allowance for the past few days building up her stockpile of enchanted loot items.

As for Lollyp, her planned side-hobby of working on alchemy had ultimately turned into something of a bust. There simply weren't enough materials to work with, the handful of reagents she could make from bone, fur, or chemicals didn't even really match up to the default options already available in the dungeon's potion and poison schemas. It wasn't something to write off forever, but it would probably require higher-level adventurers to bring in odder materials to amount to anything. So in the absence of other activities to engage in, the pair had been doing their favorite pastime instead - which is to say, each other.

After one particularly 'juicy' round, Lollyp rolls her way off of Xenia's back and collapses onto the bed beside her, body jiggling with the motion as she settles. "Woof. I gotta say, you're way more fun than the master of the last dungeon I lived in. Granted, I might just be saying that because you let me be on top more often, but still." Groaning, Xenia gives Lollyp an odd look as she tenderly rolls herself over.

"Wait, hold up. You slept with the master of your old dungeon too? I don't remember you ever mentioning that before!"

Lollyp raises a finger to her lips. "Didn't I? ...Huh, I guess not. It wasn't anything as personal as like we are, though, I'm pretty sure ol' Ullussus didn't even know my name. Just, y'know, the occasional slime orgy to blow off steam."

Xenia's face goes through waves of emotions as she begins to imagine the scene, stops herself, then does it again. "But wait, you weren't a dungeon monster back then!"

Lollyp nods. "Yeah, Ullussus unlocked the proper avatar spell, not just the rune orb version. It had its limitations, I'm not sure what, but he usually spent time 'getting to know the troops' at least once or twice a week with it, hehe. Think I managed to get some, um...three times? Which isn't really a lot considering how long I lived there, there was a lot of competition."

Xenia snorts. "That popular a guy, huh? What's - what was the name? Ullussus? What was he like?"

Rolling back and staring at the ceiling, Lollyp recollects. "Well, physically, he was a draconic, not a human. Big too, and I'm not just talking about the height. Like, I think he maybe got a little too used to being with slimes, cause I'm pretty sure he'd seriously hurt anyone else with that thing. Well, maybe not some of the succubi. Or a dwarf, if we ever got any down there."

Laughing, the dungeon master at Lollyp's side attempts to shush her with one hand. "Haha, I don't need to know that much! I mean like, y'know, professionally! As a dungeon master!"

"Oh, that. Well, his themes were chemicals, poisons, and heat, which all worked pretty well with being host to a legion of slimes and all that. He was pretty traditional though, I'd say. Like, aside from the space set aside for the Dragonlord's forces, it was mostly just a lot of acid traps, the occasional monster, mostly reptilians I think, then a big boss arena with something giant-sized. His floors almost all had the same layout, just with the specific traps and monsters tiered up a bit as you went down."

"Huh. Guess I could see that happening eventually, but I'd like to do something unique with each floor. Still no idea what to put on the list next, though. Even with crossbreeding I'm not sure I can get enough mileage out of rabbits for an entire floor, y'know?"

"Mmm." Lollyp lies back, thinking for a few minutes before she breaks the silence again. "Hey Xe...tell me a story."

"Pfft. What is this, naptime?"

Lollyp rolls back onto her side to look Xenia in the eyes. "I mean like, of one of your past lives. I still don't know hardly anything about any of them!"

Xenia looks away, needing a moment to think about it. "Well...alright. How about my run as the Guardian of the Eternal Forest? It was my longest run of them all, yet ironically enough the shortest story to tell, cause almost nothing happened in it."

"Oh? How did that happen?"

"Well, easy - I was a tree. Or a...tree lady, or something. I don't know if I'd classify as a dryad, or a nymph, or an ent or whatever else, cause really I was pretty unique. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure I was the only sapient person on the whole dang continent. Maybe the planet, for all I knew."

Lollyp's brow furrows. "How did you end up with a whole planet to yourself?"

"Divine conscription. As far as I can tell, it was the personal garden of some goddess - I don't know the name, she never told me, or even really talked to me directly. I was assigned to be uh, basically top gardener of the place. There were plenty of other servants of various types, none of em really people-level, but I could order them around. The only really exciting bits were when the Pestilence came around." Seeing Lollyp's interest, the storyteller continues without waiting for a question. "They were these weird corrupted bug things, a lot of slugs, some other giant insects and stuff, would drip this gooey black stuff everywhere they went. I think they hibernated in swamps or something, but every twenty years or so a wave would pop up and I'd need to rally the troops to smash em all. My theory was that it was some sort of prank from an opposing god, they usually like doing petty shit like that, but not like anyone ever bothered to tell me. ...Pretty boring the rest of the time, though."

"Huh, weird. So how'd you go, then? Pests get you?"

Xenia shakes her head. "Astronomical bad luck. A meteor shower came down almost right on top of my home grove, a big one. Ended up getting caught in the forest fire it caused. Almost certain I was over a hundred at the time, but I didn't exactly have a calendar."

Lollyp sits and imagines being a tree for a minute or two. "...It must have been a pretty lonely life."

"...I've had better, but I've had a lot worse, too. Job came with some neat perks, though. Not dungeon mastering, but I could do stuff like make trees grow from nothing just by singing."

The slime's eyes go wide. "Really!? You sing? I wanna hear it!"

Xenia laughs. "Never had to do it for an audience, thankfully. ...I did pick up that 'amateur'-level singing skill here from someone the other day, though honestly I'd hope I'd be at least that good without it anyhow. Kinda funny now that I think about it, though. I didn't have to learn the spellsongs exactly, they just sort of got burned into my brain as I grew up, and...wow, they're all really still there. I probably haven't sung any of em for a century, but it's like I just used em yesterday."

Lollyp sits up in the bed and claps her hands a few times. "Well then!? Sing! Sing! Show off those pipes!"

"Haha, alright, alright...don't get too excited though, I'm pretty sure it's in some sort of weird divine language or something. Alright...here we go." Sitting up herself, Xenia takes a deep breath and begins to sing in a language Lollyp's never heard before.

"Hail, er lon dwin stah
Emmit er bloom atime lon eivn riveksz
Si delt ven ban nevt vensh hanch hase af aifern
Oen hase lon dawnri vi lon bryp vi vensh lyiksz..."

Xenia pauses there, not because the song was over, but because something strange was clearly beginning to happen around her by the third line. Her voice had taken on a noticeably deeper timbre, and as Lollyp looks on with a slightly concerned look, Xenia realizes something else. "...Oh, man. That song was actually doing something to the dungeon mana. Like...I can normally feel it move through me when I cast a construction spell, or empower a loot item, but that wasn't moving through me. It was moving around me, somehow..."

An excited look grows on Lollyp's face. "Well, don't stop now! Do the whole thing! See what happens!"

"Heh...I don't see how that attitude ever led to anything bad. Alright, from the top." Taking another deep breath, she starts again.

"Hail, er lon dwin stah
Emmit er bloom atime lon eivn riveksz
Si delt ven ban nevt vensh hanch hase af aifern
Oen hase lon dawnri vi lon bryp vi vensh lyiksz.

Freysk fayp, er lon domie
Zayfv, er lon resh
Karg, er lon eveyr
Ta ferm, ailn yover vensh adar bresh."

By time she got into the second verse, something magical was clearly happening. A green glow began to emit from the dungeon master's eyes, and a soft, warm wind somehow managed to pick up within the dungeon chamber. When she finished, the room was still again for a moment - a very brief moment. Then suddenly, with a crack of stone, the floor in the center of the room broke near Xenia's core pedestal, allowing room for a birch tree to emerge. It was a good nine feet tall when it finished growing, its branches not quite reaching to the ceiling, but every branch was covered in leaves as if spring had just arrived. From the bed, Xenia and Lollyp gawp.

"You...you just grew a tree in your bedroom, Xe."

As she recovers, Xenia starts to swear. "Are you fucking kidding me? I could have still been doing that all this time!? Why didn't I ever try singing - wait, now what!?" As the pair watch, the tree suddenly dissolves away, followed shortly after by the floor repairing itself, as if the leafy arrival had never been. "...Well, that was maybe a little anticlimactic, then."

Before Lollyp can respond, Guy makes their way in from the front door. "Ma'am, ma'am - oh, apologies! I'll ah, give you two a moment to get decent, shall I?"

Xenia shakes her head and waves them in. "Get over it, odds are you're gonna be seeing plenty more where this came from eventually. Something happen on your end, Guy?"

"Well, I'm not entirely sure. It would seem we were just intruded by a...tree?"

"Yeah, sort of - wait, how'd you know about it?"

Guy pops up a new screen. "Well, take a look!"

The women stare at it for a bit, with Lollyp speaking up first. "Xenia...did you just spend dungeon mana to unlock a brand new resource, and then get some of that mana back, even?"

Xenia slowly nods. "That...would be what it looks like, Lolly Pop."

"...How many more of those spellsongs do you know, Xe?"

Xenia turns to her companion with a grin. "Hundreds."