After another trip through sky fortress involving several secured doors, security teams, and all manner of busy crewmembers, Vane led Null up to a secure vault door with several armed guards.
"Alright. Inside this airlock is your fellow dungeon core. Fair warning to you, he''s a fairly high tier"
Is that a bad thing for me?
Vane chuckled.
"Not for you. The demons on the other hand..."
Vane walked up to the doors, and after a brief conversation with the guards, had them open the doors to allow Null to enter the room. With that, he turned to Null one last time.
"Well, good getting to meet you. We should have a few hours until we reach our destination. I have to get back with Willis and the team. There''s a lot of stuff going on, so I''m going to figure out what they want me working on."
Sounds good. Stay safe out there.
"Will do. Oh. One thing before I go. He''s a bit eccentric. Great guy though. Just note that he pursues some... Odd projects in his quest to destroy all demons."
With that cryptic warning, Vane went to meet up with the Special Production team, while Null was left to enter the airlock to meet his fellow core. The security motioned for him to go in.
"We notified the Colonel about your arrival. He is expecting you. Feel free to go in when you''re ready."
Wait, they promoted a dungeon core to Colonel? Vane could have decided to mention that fact to me before he left. Null thought to themself. Well. Here I go then.
Null entered the first set of doors. With a hiss, the first set of doors closed shut. After a small delay, the second set of doors opened up, leaving Null shocked to see an absolutely massive Dungeon core on an absolutely massive Hover Pedestal chasing around a bunch of... ducks?
"Come back! I need you for my quest to destroy all of demonkind!" The core shouted as it chased the ducks around.
Umm... Hello? Null asked hesitantly.
"Oh! You''re here! Sorry about that. I got distracted. Those are a side project of mine."
The core floated closer to him, leaving Null to realize just how large this core was. By himself, the core was a few times larger than Nulls whole Magimech suit. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
"Wow. That is a really cool suit. The special production team whip that up for you?"
Yes sir. I think they did a really good job with it.
The core sighed.
"Cut it with the sir stuff. I''m going to be perfectly honest with you, I just joined the military to kill demons and with any luck, take out the bastard that keeps sending them here. The only reason I''m even a Colonel at the moment is because I''m good at killing demons and I''ve been in long enough to be promoted."
The core seems kind of upset about being called sir, so Null decided to leave it at that.
Got it. I will avoid doing that in the future.
Null had decided that he didn''t want to go down that rabbit hole and desperately wracked his mind for new conversation topics. Fortunately, he didn''t have to.
"Alright. Let''s just get introductions out of the way. I''m Super Death Chasm of Ultimate Death. Nice to meet you. Like I said, feel free to totally ignore the idea of rank structures, calling me sir, or anything like that. Got it?"
Got it. Well. I''m Null. I''m relatively new to the whole dungeon core thing, and I''m apparently really bad at it as well.
"That''s fair. As far as I''m aware, you''re the only Dungeon Core on the entire world that''s come into existence like that."
Null nodded.
Yeah. I heard the same thing.
Null found himself suddenly distracted by a Duck angrily quacking at a slime that was twice the size of null. But before he could say anything, the duck unleashed a massive burst of fire breath, incinerating the slime on the spot, before happily quacking and consuming the slime core that dropped.
What was that?!?! That duck just incinerated the slime like it was nothing!
"I know right? I got the idea from Ember!"
Ember wanted you to make Ducks of mass destruction?
"No. I just observed her roasting some Demons in the last Demon King subjugation and thought it was highly effective. Unfortunately, I''m not exactly the best at the whole monster making thing, but it turns out that ducks were easily modifiable to allow for fire breathing. These ones are still growing up though. I thought I''d have five years or so, but it turns out I only had two. Funny how things work out."
Null just nodded in shock.
Yeah. Funny how things work out.
"At any rate, I have a few dozen of them running around here. I''m spawning in King Slimes from time to time to keep them fed. At any rate, as much as I would love to talk your ear off about my pet projects, I feel like we have other things to be discussing."
"Well, for starters, the reason I wanted to see you was to ask how you were acclimating to becoming a dungeon core."
Hmm... Well, to be honest, I''m not really sure. From what I can tell, I''m able to use magic, but I don''t really understand how to make it work.
"I see... Unfortunately, as you''ve probably already heard, I''m not going to really be able to help you out much with that. I can''t even imagine how to begin explaining everything"
Yeah. That''s what I heard from Lieutenant Delars as well.
"Oh, you met him? He''s good people. Highly dedicated to the whole Demon killing thing. I''ve worked with him for the past several years."
I can agree with the dedication bit.
"For sure. Also, just to let you know, I''m a bit scatterbrained at times and like to go off on side tangents. Sorry about that."
It''s fine.
"Thanks. Now, back to the topic at hand. Now, I don''t know about how to get you to be able to utilize magic as naturally as dungeon cores do, but if you''re up for it, I can set up a training room for you to kill some slimes in to gain cores. I''d like to test if you absorbing cores would help you out with the whole magic thing."
You''d be willing to do that?
"I got a few hours to kill before I can get to killing demons, so why not?"
Sounds good to me. Where do we get started?