“What is that?” After the heavily injured Ripjaw Ant Queen slowly dug out the sphere – with a barrier to keep it safe – Caesar tried to identify it in his hands. No status screen appeared, causing him to narrow his eyes. So, it’s not an item.

Bright blue energy shimmered at its most intense rate yet, and suddenly pulsed outwards. The wave washed over him without damage, but the event had confirmed his suspicions. This thing is alive.

And I can’t identify it. It’s another lifeform like elves and humans, he thought, that live inside dungeons.

Caesar marked it and backed away as a precaution, commanding his Doppelganger to destroy it.

When the thing shattered, a black wisp flew into his crown as expected.

[Notice]: Congratulations! Your Doppelganger (Alta) has leveled up to Level 30! +6 Free Stat Points

“That’s a lot of levels,” he said. “How do you feel?”

“Nothing different from normal.”

He checked what new essence core he had acquired from the thing.

Essence of Harmony: Rare

Rank 2

Aspects: Blight, Death, Civilization

Blight is from all the diseases, death is from all the undead, but is civilization from all the traps or simply the tomb itself?

It required more study. But he felt as if he was close to something monumental and decided to test the new essence core by fusing it into the Kelpie.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of something smashing onto the floor. The dungeon began to shake violently, and he saw a few chunks of stone drop from the ceiling. With the death of whatever that thing was, the dungeon began to collapse.

Caesar unsummoned the Skeleton Mage and fled with Alta, rounding the corner back to the fork to the second treasure room. Suddenly, the sounds of growling rang out in the distance. He replaced the ant queen for the Kelpie, and prepared to fight, but gaped in shock at the horde of Draugr bearing down at him. A much larger one with a crown of bone led the group, towering above the rest of its brethren. It held a greatmaul in its hands, the weapon bejeweled with gems like eyes.

“Those are from the boss room,” Alta shouted.

Whatever that pulse of blue light was, it had awakened the boss and sent it directly to his location. Or perhaps, a call for reinforcements!

He knew he could not fight the Draugr horde directly in this destroyed environment. Thus Caesar made it his first priority to escape, but also wanted to secure the boss’ essence core. That was non-negotiable. To do so, he needed time to complete the fusion and to keep the boss alive.

“How good have you gotten at understanding how these things attack?” he asked Alta while the undead hobbled closer.

“I can run through them with no problems.”

“Good. Carry me then,” he said and placed her extra six free stat points into Agility and Vitality, increasing them to 32 and 24 respectively.

His Doppelganger reached under him and forcefully exerted her Presence, lifting him up with ease. Her personal Illusory Veil, or Flicker Veil, could not cover Caesar when she held him, but the primary form of the ability could. She rushed directly between the hole in the Draugr’s formation and activated her ability, causing them both to become invisible with a few of the undead as well.

But that was a lot easier than facing the boss alone. She slipped between their attacks and charged out of the veil, cradling Caesar in her arms while he concentrated on fusing the Essence of Harmony into the unsummoned Kelpie. The sounds of growling disappeared in the distance, yet rocks did not stop falling.

Essence flowed into Caesar, scouring the airborne plague from his body. A massive wall of stone crumbled next to them, revealing a gaping hole of black wisps of energy much darker than his own essence. Invisible forces from within tried to pull the duo into the darkness, but Alta left it quickly.

Faster than the rest of its brethren, the Draugr boss sprinted after her and ignored the damage happening around it. Its giant form smashed into the side of a falling chunk of stone, easily splintering it into pieces that almost struck the Doppelganger.

Meanwhile, Caesar with eyes closed and body slack put all his effort into the fusion attempt. Although it was extremely difficult to maintain his concentration, he still felt it possible since the new essence core was much smoother to control than the other cores he had worked with. Tendrils of energy began to seep into the Kelpie’s essence core, dying it in three different colors before a jolt shocked the Essence of Harmony backwards.

He tried again. The three colors appeared once more, and quickly turned into two after a period of time passed with less chaos. Alta had used her Presence to increase her Agility and Strength in tandem, granting her an explosive yet controlled burst in speed. She rushed out of the tunnels and into the tomb where more of those black cracks appeared.

The Draugr boss chased after her but almost fell into one of those holes. To prevent it from consuming her lord’s new essence core, Alta kicked the undead away and continued running. It merely stumbled a little but managed to escape the pull, a growl escaping from its lips.

Even the wooden bridges had been damaged by the destruction of the thing and forced Alta to hop and leap to each intact log. When close enough to the ground, she grasped Caesar with a single hand and dropped down from a hanging log.

He groaned in pain and shook, tainting the color of the Kelpie’s core in black along with dark green. But he ignored the pain and continued to fuse.

Alta continued to sprint up the tomb to the exit, making her way to the room with three branches, but a few fallen boulders blocked the path ahead. She stopped and looked back. The Draugr boss had leapt down after her, breaking its legs in half, but began regenerating enough to block her exit as well.

By now Caesar had managed to isolate a single color from the Essence of Harmony: a putrid, disgusting green. Though not by choice: for now, whatever properties he extracted from an essence core still seemed random. And although this fusion process was much faster and easier, it did not make the process effortless. He probed the thing with his mind, then continued to complete the fusion.

Alta ducked under a blow from the Draugr boss, cracking the rock behind her. But it was impossible to maintain the same dodging rate against its explosive Strength while carrying somebody, so she took the chance to escape once it readied another strike.

Another wave of trembling hit the dungeon, and more boulders tumbled to the floor – one directly in her path. She pulled out an axe and slammed it down, but it barely even shook. And a black rift crept from beneath the rock and began to worm its way into the pathway. She cursed in her mind, looking around frantically for something to help.

The Draugr approached her again with a grunt and she was forced to focus on it instead. Alta knew the thing was slightly more intelligent than the rest, having focused its efforts on attacking her from the beginning instead of Caesar. Thus she put him down, far from the black rift, and readied her axes to throw.

Caesar felt hard dirt instead of soft hands and knew his Doppelganger had put him down, but the fusion process was so close to finishing. And the might of the Draugr meant he wasn’t confident in subduing it without killing it. Instead, he placed his trust in Alta’s plans, and continued to ignore the situation.

Both Axes of Massacre landed onto the boss, courtesy of Enhanced Learning, though not as deeply as she’d like. She too, had practiced how to throw different weapons like the javelins in preparation for a moment like this. That had done its job, however, and the Draugr focused all its attention on her. It roared and swung.

Alta ran past it, letting the greatmaul slam into her back. She tumbled onto the floor and scrambled away. The undead hobbled closer for another blow, which she prepared to dodge.

Three blows shattered the boulder behind her into dust, and the Doppelganger used her Presence again to duck underneath another swing. She picked up Caesar and continued to flee. The greatmaul missed her back by a hair’s breadth, and they fled out the door of the tomb.

That confirmed their safety, but not the Draugr’s. Instead of continuing to run out the portal, she let the boss follow them. It staggered up the stairs and howled in rage, finally beginning to move faster once it reached aboveground.

Yet it remained slower than Alta. She remained just out of reach, leading it back to the exit portal as the structure began to tumble and collapse behind them. By the time she managed to reach the dungeon’s exit, Caesar had awoken.

The Kelpie’s entire essence core had mutated afterwards, turning into a foul gray-green color instead of the grayish-black wisp of all other essence cores. He checked the status screen and became a little confused.

Harmonized Kelpie of Blight: Rare

Talents: … Contagion Aura

Skills: Grasp of the Inferno … Pestilential Breath

Magic: 24 -> 28

Mana: 240 -> 280

What happened? Has it lost its previous fusion?

He identified the little description at the front of its name. Like the keyword, “Fused,” it seemed this hinted at something more which his ability refused to tell him.

[Harmonized]: This essence core will have increased compatibility.

So it also increases compatibility? Does this mean I won’t have to force the Draugr and the Kelpie to become friends?

He thought a little while more and shook his head. While it seemed plausible, he preferred to maximize the chances of success first. And since he wasn’t in a rush, he decided to take it slow.

[Contagion Aura]: A talent that reduces all nearby entities’ Disease Resistance and Poison Resistance.

From this, Caesar made a few assumptions. An Essence of Harmony enhances the recipient with additional effects based on the Aspect received. And the number of effects either depends on the current rank of the recipient, meaning I won’t require multiple fusions except for the first, or converts existing fusions into those effects. He checked the replaced spell.

Pestilential Breath

[Effects]: A Blight spell which inflicts some of the user’s own diseases on the targets and causes all diseases to worsen on those struck by the breath.

[Rarity]: Rare

[Memorization Cost]: 6

[Mana Cost]: 20 Mana per second

As the Draugr lumbered towards them in the distance, Caesar looked at it and grinned. “Time for retaliation.” The disintegration of the dungeon had not yet reached the peak, and he did not want to risk facing more effects of that blue pulse. Although Alta had dragged the corpses away, they first needed to confirm the bodies had not revived before they exited the dungeon.

She put him down, and he summoned the hippo and the python before identifying their foe.

Draugr King – Level 35

[Rarity]: Rare

Alongside its crown of bone and its maul of gems, it wore rusted chain mail over clean and intact clothes. That meant three likely artifacts from a single boss, which caused his grin to widen with joy.

The Earthlord Python began to barrage the boss with a relentless flurry of Earth Spikes, not stopping until it ran out of Mana. Hundreds shot towards it while a Curse of Impotence frustrated it some more.

A ruinous rage caused the Draugr to launch itself into the fray, meeting the python and the hippo in battle. But it found itself quickly losing the fight, as the two beasts slammed and tore into the undead’s exposed skin. It bashed the barrier around the python open and crushed open a few scales, but a spear flew in from the side and pierced its chest.

Alta slipped in between the clash and pulled out an axe, before dashing away. With no blood to spill, they both had to wait for opportunities to retrieve their weapons. When the behemoth rammed its head forwards, knocking the Draugr off-balance, Caesar hastened to slash twice with his Umbral Drinker while his Doppelganger retrieved his spear.

The cycle continued. Although the Draugr King tried to retaliate, green liquid blasting around it in an activation of an ability, it only affected the Earthlord Python whose barrier was destroyed. Essence slowed the debilitating effects of disease until the four could kill the boss, upon which a black wisp flew out from it.

Caesar cheered.