Shadowcroft's Academy for Dungeons Chapter 20

The Forevergreen Festival was Saturday, but that Friday, Logan was trying not to lose his mind. He sat in the worst class possible for someone in agony.

At the front of the classroom, the vulture-headed Professor Bartholomew Nekhbet rested on his big feathery butt, droning on about the Tree of Souls. Logan was having a hard time following. It felt like spiders had spun a cottony web of confusion at the very center of his mind. A four-alarm fire burned in his sunken chest. His gemstone felt like an arctic blizzard in his belly. He went from suffocating heat to coffin-cold ice in seconds. And this was actually a significant improvement.

He’d spent a sleepless night, shivering on his bed, trying to process the cultivation bloom, which Inkboon referred to as the Verdant Ascension. That energy floated outside his core, a bright shining star of white energy, connected only by a hair-thin tether of Apothos. The new energy seemed to be Vita-based, which was diametrically opposed to Morta—one of his two main elemental Affinities. So, he not only had to convert the energy but, according to Inkboon, he had to then form that energy into a pattern. A knot. Trying to tie his first knot as a Deep Root cultivator wasn’t going to be easy, though, since the first knot typically didn’t come until C-Class.

But that would come later, Inga assured him. First, Logan had to peel it apart like an onion, stripping it down a molecule-thin layer at a time, then folding that raw power into his churning green-gold core. Once the energy was stripped of its Vita affinity, it would be cycled back out and transformed into a thin cable of energy that could be knotted in accordance with the instructions secreted away within the cultivation bloom itself. The process was exhausting, both mentally and physically, and felt a little bit like trying to eat an entire elephant in a single sitting. 

Thankfully, Inga hadn’t left his side. 

She’d talked him through every step of the process, whispering encouraging words whenever he felt like curling up into a ball and dying. It took most of the night to process the first half of the cultivation bloom, and as he incorporated the influx of energy, his own core compressed. Shrinking down, down, down. Inga said it was all part of the refinement process. Ultimately, a cultivator’s main goal was to shrink their center into a small, dense object and then tie the energy circling it into an ever more complex series of “knots.” According to Inga, those energy knots allowed the cultivator to drastically alter the way they consumed Apothos. By using a certain configuration, a cultivator could become exponentially stronger or faster. They could unlock unheard of abilities or reduce the amount of time it took to process Apothos with elemental affinities.

Knot theory was complex—even Inga seemed daunted by the notion—and it left his thoughts in a knot of their own.

Logan slipped in and out of consciousness during the ordeal. For a time, he hallucinated an old cartoon of an atom he’d once seen. The nucleus was a happy yellow smiley face and the electrons were giggling silverfish swimming around and around. In this case, the nucleus was his core and the electrons were Apothos.

He’d not really slept, but he’d still gotten up early for their normal cultivation work at the Akros Coliseum. That actually felt good—all that raw energy had given him something to focus on other than the pain.

Logan had limped through their morning discipline, sitting cross-legged in the Iceblade grass, reinforcing his vulnerable skin with the onslaught of excess power. By then, he’d managed to peel back and flatten out the cultivation bloom until it looked like a thick halo of white light burning around his core in a ring. Particles of energy fizzled off from that halo at random intervals, transforming into thin wisps, which he constantly had to capture and cycle back into his center. It was daunting and miserable in equal measure, but also strangely hopeful. The bloom wasn’t only power—it was that, of course, and a lot of it—it was wisdom. 

The flower was the remnants of a dungeon core, distilled and passed down for future generations. The wisdom of the ancients. With each molecule he digested and incorporated, new knowledge bloomed inside his head like the bud of a delicate flower unfurling its petals. He saw glimpses of another world, one with towering mushroom spires covered in glimmering silver bark. A world of wide-open skies the color of a ripe peach. Of swaying grass as blue as the ocean, and enormous purple-petaled flowers big enough to swallow a man whole. It was a feral world of wild wilderness and gargantuan plants—a world where the foliage ruled with an iron-leafed fist.

Logan walked those forest paths in his mind and as he did, he gained snatches of insight unique to the Verdant Ascension cultivation bloom: The life cycle of Weeping Milfoil, a carnivorous plant that could last decades without water or blood. The defensive mechanism of the Spikejack Palm. He learned about Crassulacean acid metabolism and new ways to adapt to arid climates. 

Eventually he found himself in a clearing, the lush canopy overhead giving way enough for a shaft of sunlight to land on three overgrown mushrooms nestled inside of a fairy ring. The first was a squat mushroom with a bulbous brown top speckled with flecks of gold. The second was a willowy violet mushroom, its cap slender and silver. The third was a stately golden fungus, regal and nearly as tall as a man. Logan immediately felt drawn to the golden fungus, carefully tracing through the clearing then gently trailing his fingers along its frilled cap.

There was power in the knowledge the bloom brought, even if Logan wasn’t entirely sure how to apply it. 

Once they finished with training, Logan silently suffered through breakfast, digesting the Apothos roiling within him—not wasting even a single thought on food or notions of eating. After the strenuous morning, he crashed in Nekhbet’s class. Crashed hard with a capital H. And Inga wasn’t going to be able to help him. She sat in the front row, eyes on her favorite professor, sighing and swooning in turns. Marko was in the back, head reclined, snoozing. Treacle’s job was to make sure the satyr didn’t snore.

Logan, in the middle, was curled up in his desk, holding his stomach to keep the remainder of the swirling, circling energy from slicing up his core like a set of Ginsu knives. Inga suspected it would take him days more to incorporate the remainder of the bloom, which normally would’ve been fine, if not for the fact that their afternoon class was Rockheart’s Core Calisthenics. Which meant doomhounds and dismemberment. He had to get the Verdant Ascension bloom figured out before then. Had to. 

Trying to cultivate so much energy in a single go came with the risk of irreparably damaging his core. Logan needed complete focus, and he’d found dismemberment was terrible for focus. If he strolled into Rockheart’s class with a belly full of unprocessed Apothos it could be the end of him. Logan continued to grind away, trying desperately not to fall asleep.

Nekhbet wasn’t helping on that front. Thanks to his dry and monotonous delivery, the vulture man could seriously make any subject about as interesting as tax disclosures.

“And class, speaking of branches,” Nekhbet droned, “it’s important to note that our Dungeon Interchange of Entrances is a poor imitation of the BYE system, which is a vital part of the Tree of Souls.” He paused to stroke the red waddle on his chin. “The origins of BYE are shrouded in mystery. The Branches that Yield Everywhere. That is the acronym. B.Y.E. If a world is connected to the Tree of Souls, you can go to that world. For example, you could travel to the cafes of Haven’s Home in Eritreus. You could walk the sacred limbs to see the crypts of Bharoosh. Even the beaches of Sangretta are not out of reach,” he said wistfully.

Nekhbet continued to list worlds and far-off places Logan had never heard of. Somehow, he made even foreign worlds sound boring.

Logan knew about the BYE portal in Arborea, which was on a narrow spit of land separating the waters of Loch Endless from the abyss on the other side. In February, Professor Arketa would be taking them on a field trip to see an actual frontline dungeon. Then Logan would get to experience the BYE system for himself and not just hear about it in theory.

Mercifully, the class ended.

Logan limped to the door and slumped into his wheelchair.

Marko came strutting out with the minotaur behind him. “Treacle, your steampunk chair is amazing.”

“It’s not steam,” the minotaur grumbled. “And it’s not punk. My engine is based on a fulgur construction. The lightning Apothos is exceedingly powerful.”

The satyr obviously wasn’t listening. “You can do so much with steam nowadays. But hey, did you hear Neckbutt talk about the beaches of Sangretta? That’s my homeworld, and yes, the beaches are delicious.”

That surprised Logan. The satyr had been paying attention, however slightly. Just when you thought Marko couldn’t care less about school, he’d do something that completely surprised you.

Marko bent and touched Logan’s head. “Hey, guy. You don’t look so good. You know, we can go to Ned and Zed. They might be able to help you.”

The hall filled with students, and Inga finally came out, looking worried. “Is he any better?”

“No,” Logan said, shaking his head slowly. “You guys head to lunch. I felt the best at Akros Coliseum. I got a new chicken a few days ago, so I’m good.”

It took some convincing, but he finally forced his friends to go eat while he chugged out to the coliseum. Another few inches of snow had fallen, and the air was cold, made even colder by the frigid wind sweeping in from the south. The heat from the wheelchair’s fulgur engine helped him not freeze to death, but it was still a deeply unpleasant ride.

Logan closed his eyes, taking in the raw Apothos and forcing it into his messy insides.

This wasn’t the first time he’d been in pain, and it wouldn’t be the last. He recalled the hospital room, Sergeant Major Baker, and everything the man had told him. Don’t second-guess yourself. Life was precious. The injury didn’t need to ruin his life.

Logan would live in gratitude. And he would make his own luck.

He went deep inside the Coliseum, breathing in the Apothos-rich air and centering himself. He cleared his mind of every concern and found the iron will that had kept him going through the darkest hours of his life. In less than an hour, Rockheart and his pets, the First Cohort, would come out. That was the reality. Cold hard facts. If he managed to bend the Verdant Ascension to his will, he had a plan to defeat Magmarty. If he failed, not only would he get more pain, he’d also get a beating. Rockheart would never go easy on him.

More and more Apothos flowed into him. Flexing his internal might, Logan condensed his core from the size of a softball to the size of a tennis ball while simultaneously flattening out the brilliant white halo circling his center into a thin line, just as Inga had instructed him to do. But before he could fully incorporate the bloom and unlock its full store of knowledge, he needed to tie the damned knot. He’d learned to walk with a prosthetic. He’d started his own landscaping business. He’d made it profitable with endless hours of work, employee drama, sweaty days, and sleepless nights.

He could do this. Eyes closed, he pushed away his fear and worry. Rockheart was a distant thought and so was the pain and exhaustion rampaging through him. In his mind a picture formed, and he found himself once more among the towering Silverbark spires. Beneath his feet was a narrow path, hidden in the foliage, barely visible if you didn’t know to look for it. Some part of him instinctively knew this was the way forward—the only way forward. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a white edge of light waiting for him. 

He licked his nearly nonexistent lips, reached back, and sunk pudgy fingers into the light. It felt like grabbing ahold of a downed power cable. It squirmed in his hand and sent jags of bright pain zigzagging up his arm and through his body. He ignored the discomfort, refusing to drop the line. He turned back toward the path and began to trudge, pulling the line after him, stretching it like a rubber band as he followed the rough trail through the undergrowth. The first few steps were easy enough but as he rounded the trunk of a particularly tall Silverbark tree the progress slowed, each step more difficult than the last. 

First, it felt like walking through waist-deep water. Hard, but not impossibly so. 

After a handful of feet, the water seemed to transform into a quagmire of sticky molasses, resisting him every inch of the way. 

He rounded another trunk, this one gnarled and strung with wispy cobwebs, and found himself staring at the beginning of the path once more. He’d transcribed a circle of sorts—more of a figure eight in retrospect—and now he was almost back to where he’d started. Less than three feet away, though the molasses had shifted once more, this time turning into a chest-deep pool of liquid concrete. Every step was agony. Inches crept by at a snail’s pace, but still he pushed. 

From far away a sound tickled at his ears—a gruff voice, barking at him. Logan knew that voice somehow, knew that it mattered and that it meant trouble, but he ignored it, straining the final inch, towing the line of power behind him. 

“Mr. Murray!” the voice rumbled again, much louder now. “Don’t you dare ignore me!” 

Rockheart. That was Rockheart’s voice. 

Logan didn’t care. He stayed focused like a laser, pushing, straining, fighting against the resistance. Then, in an eyeblink, the pressure vanished, and he connected one end of white light to the other, completing the circuit. Everything snapped into place around him and the forest vanished, replaced instead by his burning green-and-gold core. Much smaller now than it had been before, about the size of golf ball. Energy circled his core in a looping arc that looked like an infinity symbol made of blinding light. He had no idea if he’d tied his first knot correctly. But he did know three things without a doubt: 

One, he’d shot up not just one rank, but two—Deep Root, Level 2. 

Two, he felt like he could take on the world and win. 

Three, he was finally going to put that jerk Magmarty into his place.

  Keep Reading Here: Chapter Twenty-One