Worthy Core

When Xenia finished setting things up for a large dinner that evening, she was feeling much more confident about things than she had been for breakfast. For starters, thanks to the rations left behind on the Mason's body her food and drink quality had finally upgraded to the C tiers, qualifying it as 'average'. Which didn't sound like much, but in comparison to D tier's 'mostly edible' rating, it was a significant improvement. Her fruits and veggies were fresher, her bread wasn't partially stale, and her meats were choicer cuts. Not to mention her booze was much less likely to share traits in common with her poison schemas now.

Secondly, her core chamber was now far more accessible to her guests and residents. The shortcut portals she'd unlocked had a number of functionality options to them, and she'd hooked up a pair between her core chamber and the Floor Two apartments with a usage requirement of 'has visited both chambers'. The one in her room was currently covered by a rug, which didn't appear to interfere with how it worked, but even if a Challenger did come across it they wouldn't be able to use the thing unless they'd already found the dungeon's apartment block. If anyone ever actually did that and lived to tell the tale afterwards, Xenia could always swap it out with a puzzle lock or something of the like later, but for now it would serve to make dungeon meetings much less troublesome.

To cap it off Beatrice had finally returned from her recent trip down to the Challenger's camp. That meant the group would have something to talk about other than how Xenia had gone nearly catatonic in their first inter-dungeon expedition, which was still a topic she wasn't too eager to get into. So it was that when Beatrice arrived through the new shortcut, waving to the already-present Lollyp and Sincere, Xenia's mood was genuinely much improved compared to how things had been that morning. "Hey, Trish! How was the road?"

"Partially existing, surprisingly." The woman pauses to sniff at the warm meal through her helmet before continuing. "Ah, that's a lot better than field rations, alright. Doorman told me you got a few upgrades! ...Also I heard that the Valleylanders lost their officer, which has them in a bit of a rough situation. Probably unrelated facts, I'm sure."

"Probably." Xenia kicks back in a seat of her own, trying out one of her new slightly-less-cheap wines for flavor. "What was that about a surprising road?"

"Well, the camp's construction efforts are coming along pretty well now, it looks like. Maybe two more weeks and their offices will be in an actual building rather than a tent, and a basic barracks for Challengers is probably gonna be done any day now. They're still working on a proper inn, I guess the barracks will become a warehouse or something once that's ready. Oh, but for the road, yeah, they're building one of those too. They finished making a spur off the main road to the camp, and they started on one heading towards the mountain. Nothing too big, but good enough to get a wagon down. My guess is you're about a week away from getting a party visiting almost every day, though most of that'll still be one-floor newbies."

Lollyp slurps the meat off of a rib, before tossing the bone itself down her mouth after it and turning towards Beatrice. "Feeling a bit conflicted about that. It's good to have stuff to do, but I always hate having to sit around in case they decide to try the second floor, just for them to end up deciding not to after all and turning around. How about the business you went down there for? You got your Challenger paperwork started?"

Beatrice nods, though she seems a bit distracted as she does so. "Yeah...I'm in their system as an applicant, I'll have to head to one of their established offices though and get tested to find out what level I should qualify for. Apparently it's not gonna be as easy as I was thinking, though. Like, Alizz was saying that based on my experience and gear, I should easily qualify as a Master, maybe even a Supreme in some sort of melee fighter class...except there's this one thing. It hadn't really struck me before, but apparently practically everyone past Advanced here, and even a lot of people at that level, knows some magic. Healing, elemental, boosts, and so on. And I, well...I don't know jack shit. That was specialized knowledge back home, you know? But when they test me they're not gonna let me use my own gear."

Sincere frowns as he considers the implications. "That policy does make sense in regards to the Initiates it usually applies to. After all, no one wants to grant some whelp the title of Expert just because he carries his father's magic sword, yes? But in your case that seems like it could cause quite a bit of confusion - if you officially rank as, say, Expert, but you fight like a Supreme, it could make joining parties rather awkward."

Beatrice leans forward, resting her chin on her hand with a sigh. "Yeah, but honestly, I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep that up, either. My enchanted items are barely recharging, and some of the fancier stuff I've got is outright decaying over here. My Forceblast Bracers have like, a half dozen charges left in em, which makes me wish maybe I hadn't spent so many playing around with those spiders when I first got here, heh. At least the Item Boxes are stable, those things are designed to last a good ten thousand years under ideal conditions. But in maybe a year from now most of my fancy tricks are gonna be gone, and I won't be any better than a local Expert."

Xenia gives her friend a smile, attempting to cheer her up. "Well, you don't gotta worry too much. In a year I'll probably be able to make some pretty good shit, and you're welcome to free samples. Hell, don't forget to grab some luck charms before you go, I've got like fifty of the things stockpiled now. Just uh...don't put em on til you're outside, yeah?"

"Heh, thanks. I'm thinking some actual Challenger training could come in useful though, maybe I should learn some of those fancy tricks everyone else here's got. Just a little weird, I guess...there's so many more adventurer-types here than there were back home, it seems like I've gone from the biggest fish in the pond to just another guppy. Enough about me, though - I asked Doorman and apparently you haven't unlocked a new floor yet, so, y'know...how'd the dungeon raid thing go?"

The table goes silent at that, until eventually Xenia answers. "Well...long story short, the dungeon fucked me up, and then I fucked the whole thing up. I uh...saw some stuff before I actually got into the dungeon, and then I was so out of it I took an arrow to the dome before I got a few feet in. We'll need to do another try later, but before we get to that, Sincere here was checking me out before you got here. So speaking of, Sin-man, what's your diagnosis?"

The demon clears his throat briefly before answering. "Well, to clarify for Beatrice's sake, the 'stuff' Xenia saw was apparently an emotionally-charged moment from one of her past lives. In respect for her privacy I haven't inquired as to the details, but they aren't particularly important in regards to the overall situation. First off, allow me to say this for certain: Xenia did not time travel to the past, despite the fact that her vision appeared to take no time at all to the rest of the party. While actually traveling to the past is possible, the further back you go the more difficult it is and the more dangerous. Even if the fact that it was a life in another realm had no impact on things, which I'm sure it would have to, traveling to a time that was at a minimum several centuries ago would have required an entire coven of experts and caused the entire mountain to glow. With, I would wager, an eighty percent chance of making the mountain explode in the process. Suffice it to say, it's not something Xenia could have done on accident or without leaving obvious traces of."

Xenia closes her eyes, breathing a short sigh of relief. "Honestly, that does actually make me feel better. I think. Probably. ...Yeah, definitely for sure probably. So what was it then? I feel like we've ruled out it being some sort of illusion trap the dungeon had."

Sincere nods in agreement. "Yes, there were no signs of that, and I have doubts the ritual would have placed us directly into such a trap even if the dungeon had such things. After a close examination of your soul, I would say that I would have to blame it on your 'baggage', to put it simply."

The dungeon master gives the man a bit of a side-eye. "My what, now?"

"Well, let me put it like this. Long-lived individuals are not particularly rare, I myself am, if not as old as you, certainly a sizable percentage of your own lived experience. But within a single lifetime, the experiences and marks that a soul acquires are, hrmm, integrated into the soul in a more or less uniform way. Your past lives, however, are often quite disjointed from each other and don't fully integrate with each other, probably because most of those experiences would normally be removed on a return to the Well of Souls and yours are not. Instead they gather up in something similar to growths, and I imagine if I were to study them closely enough I could perhaps even identify some with specific past lives of yours."

Xenia grimaces. "Wait, hold on now. Are you saying I've got, like, soul cancer? That sounds bad."

Sincere waves his hands. "Not at all. It's entirely a superficial thing, like say, growing a benign mole. Perhaps a little unsightly, but how often does one look at a soul, yes? I do believe it had some impact in what happened the other day, however."

"How so?"

"While the interface you used to access the Great Dungeon was one of your dungeon tools, the curse which drives the entire thing is part of your soul. So, your soul is a key part of the entire process, which is why we were all removed from the pocket dimension when you were 'killed'. You could say that your soul is sort of the bridge that linked our dungeon with the pocket, and which we all traveled across. Except you were traveling on your own soul, which sort of...to describe it inaccurately, let us say it turned your soul inside out for a brief moment. Which meant that you had to travel through part of your soul to complete the connection, which I believe ended up creating an entirely different pocket dimension in the process. As time often passes differently in different dimensions, the rest of us didn't register your disappearance before you rejoined us."

"One moment." After taking several large gulps and finishing off her goblet of wine, Xenia turns back to Sincere. "So are you saying I'm gonna have to go back through that every time we try this shit?"

The man shakes his head. "Not every time - or at least, not the exact experience you had before. I do suspect you may encounter more of your highly emotionally-charged experiences on each attempt, but it may be somewhat random as to which ones they are."

"Great. Wonderful. So, when can we try again?"

Sincere considers for a moment before responding. "To be safe, perhaps tomorrow night. Since our 'visit' was so short last time, we could probably have gone back tonight without risking the core's stability, but another day should be sufficient for the old floor core to have re-stabilized."

The dungeon master nods. "Tomorrow night, then. Lollyp, make sure to train the armors on how to react to monsters before someone has to order them to, yeah? How about you, Beatrice? Got any plans before you go out to see the world?"

The warrior finishes off a rib she stole from Lollyp's plate before wiping her mouth and answering. "I think I'm gonna wanna do an inventory of all the magical crap I brought with me. Anything that won't last me more than a month or two I suppose I may as well leave with you, in trade for whatever you can make me. It's a lot so it might take me like, two days maybe? So might be three days from now I'll be heading out."

"I'll be sure to print up some maps and travel guides for you, at the least." Xenia claps her hands. "Alright! Tomorrow night, folks, we do this dungeon raid shit for real!"