“Corey, what is this thing?”

“I don’t have eyes, so you will have to be more specific.”

“The core on the ground. Why does it look different than other cores?”

“Well, there are two cores on the ground, and they’re very similar, regarding what they do.”

“What do they do?”

“Pick it up and see.” The little shit sounded like he was grinning mischievously while he said it.

“I’m not going to touch it until I know what it is,” I said.

“Very wise! Touching that core would likely leave you unconscious for several hours, if not longer.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, up until now, you have absorbed energy cores. This, however, was a Jade ranked dungeon, even if it wasn’t up to its full strength, which you should be grateful for, by the way. You would not have survived if it had gone another week absorbing the ambient mana. It was still further along than I was when you took over my zoo though.”

“Are you saying this isn’t an energy core?”

“Oh, yes. The core. Correct. It is an energy core, but it is more than that. At Quartz rank, like your two friends, you need to only absorb energy. Once you have enough of that energy, you can rank up to Citrine. From there, you have to condense your Will. Once that is complete, then you rank up to Jade, like me.”

“So, this is a Jade ranked core?”

“I was getting to that. Yes, it’s a jade core, which means it has energy, but it also has an element of the dungeon’s Will, and finally, it will have the primary component of Citrine rank, which is memories.”

“Memories?”

“Yes. Apparently, that’s what Citrine rank is all about. Your Will is your being, your desires. Your memories are simply condensed down to create your Will.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

“I didn’t know.”

“How could you not know?”

“We’ve covered this, dumb-dumb. I’m ‘The Immortal Corey’, not ‘The Omniscient Corey’.”

“Then how do you know now?”

“By looking at the Jade core on the ground there. I can see its properties, feel how the mana and Will interact. Memories are simply what are connecting the mana and Will.”

“This is starting to get close to some kind of spirituality, or some shit.”

“Language, soldier,” Corey admonished me. “I’m the core of a zoo for children. I can’t have you polluting my sensibilities with crass language like that.”

“Corey, you were creating monsters to kill and steal the mana of as many people as you could, right?”

“Yes, that is correct,” he answered pleasantly.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Oh. Point taken, I suppose.”

“So, I could absorb this core, and it would give me what?”

“That is going to depend on the dungeon and the source of the core. Of course, you will receive a fairly sizable amount of energy. Not nearly as much as if you’d claimed the dungeon core for yourself, by the way. Good job bungling that plan.”

“The plan was always to get Carter to Citrine rank. We all need to get there. I would have pushed Andy to do it, but he’s not ready.”

“You need to be more selfish sometimes. Absorbing a dungeon core will give you another boost to your Will and is essentially a shortcut to condensing your own Will, albeit with some side effects.”

“Wait, what? What side effects? Also, will this core just be a massive amount of energy?”

“No, no. It will also have memory. Maybe a small amount of Will, but it’s unlikely. The big thing here is the memory.”

“What side effects!?” I shouted at him mentally.

“Oh, well. You know how there’s the black mana in the cores of some of the animals you kill?”

“Of course.”

“Well, it’s kind of the same thing, but with Will. Not a corrupting Will, but more just a foreign Will.”

“You’re saying that a powerful dungeon could force its Will on a person?”

“Certainly. If your friend weren’t on the edge of ranking up, and the dungeon wasn’t still at the beginning stages of Jade, then she would become another monster in the dungeon.”

“Well, that’s not scary at all.”

“You really don’t understand just how dangerous this world of yours has become, do you?” Corey said. “Most of you have already died or become mana-corrupted, as you so aptly put it.”

“But we can save those people. I can purge the corruption mana from their cores.”

“At Quartz rank, yes. It would be as simple as removing the mana from their body. That will not work at Citrine rank.”

“Why not?”

“Think about it. Removing the energy by simply flooding their core with your mana is simple enough. To do that to someone at Citrine rank would be impossible, at least at your current rank.”

“I don’t have the energy.”

“Memory, you short-sighted monkey!” Corey exclaimed frustratedly. “How would you remove the effect of memory at Citrine rank?”

“Couldn’t I just do the same thing with mana, but with memory?”

“No!” He screamed. “Got, please NOOOOO!”

“What am I missing, Corey? What about that is so bad?”

“Listen to me, Forrest.” This was the second time ever that he’d used my real name. “You must never do this to someone. Do you understand?”

“No, I don’t. What is wrong with it.”

“What you did to the mana-corrupted humans when you stole their mana and their memories. That was wrong. This is the same level of bad.”

My stomach twisted as he reminded me of that horrible night. I had to relive the memories of the murderous Citrine-rank human-turned-monster. “I need to understand.”

“The person’s memories. You would be pushing your own memories out of your very self and into this other body, and forcing the memories of the other person out of that body. You would essentially kill them and take over their body.”

“Yeah, I can see that being considered bad.”

“You still have no idea. A person is their memories, but also their Will. the deeper your understanding of your nature, the more you will understand that you can’t just jump from one body to another without leaving something behind.”

“Isn’t that kind of like what the dungeon core would do to someone weaker than them?”

“With Will, yes, but that is completely different. Will is created from memories. You can use it somewhat like mana. You can also use it to control the behavior of mana. What you would not do though is throw around raw memories. That’s simply madness.”

“Okay, I think I get it,” I said.

“It’s simple. Don’t mess with forces of power and nature that you don’t understand.”

“Corey, I have never understood less about our universe than I do right now. If I somehow found out the Earth was flat, it wouldn’t even make my list of top five for new shit I’ve learned this month.”

“You think the earth is flat?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Oh, you have some complicated donut-earth theory instead?”

“No, it’s a sphere.”

“Ha! Got you again. It’s closer to an oblate ellipsoid.”

“I’m not having this discussion. What are these weapons the angels dropped?”

“Angels? Are angels real now?”

“They were stone angels, animated with mana. And memory and Will, I guess.”

“Cool concept. Using mana and memory to animate inorganic material.”

“Corey?”

“Yes?” He asked as I broke him out of his musings again.

“The weapons?”

“Oh, yes. Think of them as a reward for defeating the dungeon bosses. The weapons are only Citrine rank, but you probably wouldn’t be able to use anything that was Jade or higher anyways.”

“Why not?”

“You name it. Not enough power, not enough sense of Will, just to name a few reasons.”

“Is this sword better than the one I already have?”

“Yes, but no.”

“Helpful, thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“How about an explanation?”

“Why would I do that?”

I ground my teeth. Corey had been very helpful up until this point, assuming he was telling the truth. I figured he was. He was the kind of snobbish know-it-all who had to explain everything, just to prove that he was the smartest one in the room.

“What do you want?”

“The other dungeon core. I want you to put us in the same bag. I need more conversation with someone whose brain isn’t so similar to animals who pick each other over for lice. Disgusting.”

“You’re not helping your case.”

“Oh, I thought you wanted an explanation of why your sword both is and isn’t better than the new one you’ve found. Hmmm?”

“Fine. I think we can make that happen.”

“Good enough for me!” He exclaimed with joy.

“How did you create your sword?”

“I didn’t,” I said. “It belonged to a friend of mine.”

“Wrong track. What likely happened is that you killed a mana-corrupted creature with it, yes?”

“Yes.” It was a human, the first time it happened. I remembered the massive human in the lobby of the apartment complex on the university campus. Right before we met… what was the girl’s name? Heidi? I think it was Heidi. God, I was so bad with names. I’d been driven to claim his mana core, and I’d used the sword to cut into him. It had punched through his chest, piercing the mana core, and absorbing the silver – metal – mana from the core, before the rest passed to me.

“First, this sword that the dungeon dropped is currently stronger than your sword. You can tell because of the amount of energy condensed into the weapon. However, your sword seems to have a property that the weapon on the ground doesn’t, which is that your sword can absorb mana, which is both good and bad. Good, because it will become a stronger and stronger weapon over time. Bad, because I don’t think it will ever stop trying to absorb mana. In a few trillion years, it will probably have absorbed all the mana on this planet.”

“It’s like a mana black hole?”

“I don’t know what the color of a hole in the ground has to do with anything, but if you mean that it takes a lot to fill it up, then yes. In this case, it’s like a bottomless hole though, and it can never be filled up.”

“So, what you’re saying is that I should use the sword and grow more powerful. But also that the sword will eventually absorb all the life out of the universe.”

“Universe is probably a big place, so I’m going to guess not. That’s a long time from now though. Sounds like a problem for Corey in a million years. Monkeys probably won’t be around at that point though, since you’ll all kill each other off or be killed off.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Oh, I think you’ll probably be the last monkey alive if the other monkeys in the zoo don’t kill you first.”

“Now, that almost sounded like a compliment.”

I dropped the core into my bag.

“That sounded like an interesting conversation,” Andy said. “What do we know?”

“In chronological order, if we try to absorb more dungeon cores like we just did, there’s a chance the dungeon could just take over the person instead. The cores on the ground are like stored memories that we can absorb. No real telling what memories are in there. The weapons are basically loot like Chavez said–“

“Told you!” he said happily from where he was sitting next to the still-unconscious Carter.

“And my sword is going to eventually kill everything on the planet, but probably not for another trillion years.”

“Well, the sun is supposed to go out before that in five billion years, so that doesn’t really seem like a pressing issue.”

“Good point. Sounds like a problem for the human race after extinction.”

“I wonder if that means that every black hole we discovered is just a magical weapon that’s been around long enough?” Chavez said where he sat. “That would be pretty awesome.”

“I… don’t really know what to say to that,” I stammered out.

“Yeah, I have that effect on people sometimes,” Chavez said.

“So, can we use the weapons?” Andy asked.

“No,” I shook my head. “Carter and I can because we’ll both be Citrine. But you and Chavez won’t have the power.”

“We need to get stronger, bro!” Chavez said enthusiastically. “Let’s go find another dungeon. I can feel myself getting really close to that rank up.”

“Remember what I said about touching the dungeon core?” I said. “We need to have a better plan for taking these things out and getting stronger.”

“Ooh, we could use your scary, magic-stealing sword!” Chavez said. “Just feed it a bunch of dungeon cores.”

“I actually kind of like that idea,” I said.

“We would be saving the world for now, but also bringing it closer to its ultimate destruction as the sword grows more and more powerful!” Chavez sounded like he might start drooling over the weapon at any moment.

“Well, since we don’t have any more dungeons around,” I said, “we could start by going back to the town and letting them know what happened.”

“We should wait for Carter to wake up,” Andy said. “If what Paul said is true, then we shouldn’t show any weakness as we go into the town.”

“I like it, but they probably already know something happened, right?” I said. “It’s not like they wouldn’t have seen that all the zombies are dead and not coming back to life.”

“You think they’ll be brave enough to send someone in to scout it out?”

“They’ll send someone, but we can handle that when they come,” I said. “Oh, can I have that core? I promised Corey he could talk to the undead dungeon.”

“Can he talk to it?” Chavez asked

“No idea,” I said. “I just promised to drop them in the same bag.”

“Cool.” The big man pried the core from Carter’s hand, avoiding the black muck that had spread over her skin, then tossed it to me. I dropped it into the bag next to Corey. Looking down at the cores, I noted how different they looked. Corey’s coloring was brighter and filled with multiple colors. There was no identifiable pattern to the swirling rainbow, but it was dominated mostly by green, blue, and gray. The other core was mostly gray and black.

“So, what do we do with the other cores?” Andy asked.

“We give the spear to Carter when she wakes up, right?” Chavez said. “I think she should get the core as well. She almost died getting it.”

“What about the other core and the sword?” I asked.

“You get both,” Chavez shrugged. “It’s not like either of us could use the sword, right? We’re not strong enough yet. And the core is Citrine rank, which we aren’t at either. The best thing to do is for you to take it.”

I looked over at Andy, who just shrugged. “It’s going to be a while before I can use either. Might as well boost our advantages now and work on shoring up our weaknesses in the long run.”

“You’re not a weakness,” I objected.

“I’m not Citrine like you and Carter, and I’ve only got one arm, Forrest. I think it’s good that we’re splitting at the next military base because in the long run, I would probably just slow you down.”

I didn’t say anything, but his words cut deep. I scooped up the core from the swordsman, wrapping it in a spare piece of clothing before tossing it into my backpack with the other two cores. I picked up the new sword. There was no sheath, unlike X-Ray’s sword. I walked over to a headstone and settled in with my back to it. I put the new sword on the ground next to me, and I drew the shorter, Chinese sword still slung over my back. I hadn’t looked at the weapon with my mana sight before, and I was interested to get a good look.

“Ward,” Andy said. “Someone’s coming.”

“Already? I thought they would wait a little longer.”

I set X-Ray’s sword on the ground next to the new sword, the two different weapons a picture of contrast. I got back to my feet and went over to stand by them, bending to pick up Carter’s new spear. For once being made of stone, the spear was remarkably lifelike, the haft now made of wood, and the tip a good foot of razor-sharp steel that I knew would have no difficulty cutting me to pieces.

I looked at where Andy was pointing. Sure enough, a lone figure was crouched low, moving slowly through the graveyard.

“Better pretty yourselves up,” I said. “Looks like we got company.”