Evening came and went for Jordie and his traveling companions, and by dawn's light they were back on the road to Jade Spire City. However, one noticable thing had changed between evening and morning, and that was the addition of an unexpected companion to their caravan.
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Name: Silva
Classification: Abomination
Species: Mimic
Subspecies: Precious Metal Mimic-Silver
Level: 7
Grade: C
Status: Healthy (Mildly distressed)
Gender: ???
Attribute: Earth
Skills: Shapeshift (inanimate), Metal Spikes, Crazy Toxin, Hyper Digestion
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Jordie had decided to make a contract with the Precious Metal Mimic after seeing Minos was surprisingly forgiving towards it despite being almost eaten by it. Perhaps it was a bit impulsive on his part, but he had a feeling this would pay off in the future and that the mimic would serve as a valuable ally to Minos.
Jordie watched with a smile as Minos and his newly contracted mimic, Silva, played together on Bessie's back. Well...not so much play together as Minos was making use of Silva's rattle form and teething ring form at the same time. Apparently the mimic could elongate itself in such a manner to facilitate both toys at once, with it's head acting as the rattle and it's tail acting as the teething ring.
Jordie wasn't sure if that was healthy for the Precious Metal Mimic, but it looks like it wasn't going to puke at least. Although, Jordie did make a note to reprimand Minos if he treated the mimic too roughly. Having one's tail gummed on cannot be comfortable over long periods of time.
"I still can't believe you contracted that thing. You could have sold it for a pretty penny," George said while munching on an apple, "Mimics are rare, but ones made of precious metals are even rarer."
Jordie was set to retort his spear totting companion, but was interrupted by Marianne, who was riding ahead of them.
"Hey guys! We're almost there!"
"Oh yeah? It's about time," George commented as he tossed his apple for Duros the Tusked Panda to eat. The large bear monster caught it in one bite and began crunching away.
Jordie on the other hand was curious how Jade Spire looked, so he urged Bessie to ride on ahead and catch up with Marianne and her partner, Molly.
This was first time seeing a city in another world, and he wasn't disappointed.
'Huh...That explains the name of the city...very on the nose.'
Further down the road, pass a few fields and couple random huts, was a sprawling cityscape that surrounded a massive green jade tower that stood out like a glow stick in the dark.
That tower was none other than the Jade Spire, one of the first dungeons in the world.
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Mana. The energy of the universe.
From the lowliest slimes to the mightiest dragons, mana is the energy that all monsters and races need to perform magic. While normally intangible, solid and liquid mana are incredibly valuable components in the production of magic tools. The only problem is that acquiring either form is incredibly hard.
It is an accepted fact on Echidnara that mana flows through the ground via countless "veins" in the earth refered to as ley lines. While this sounds like it'd be easy for anyone to just dig up a shovelful of dirt, filter it and get a cup of mana ready to go, the reality is very different.
Exposing the dirt to the air causes the mana to rapidly dissipate due to the deterioration and breaking of the ley lines. When you dig up dirt, you get dirt and the mana disappears.
There were only two ways to get access to mana in it's more condensed forms.
The first option was to find mana crystals out in the wild. Occasionally, mana will naturally condense in the ground and form crystals that can quite literally be dug up by anyone using anything. The issue however was that mana crystal formation was completely random and fights tend to break out when they are found in large enough quantities or high enough purity.
The second option: dungeons.
Scholars debate to this day about the reason for this phenomenon, but when a lot of mana condenses in a single location, they form deposits as opposed to crystals. When these deposits reach critical mass, huge naturally unnatural buildings will suddenly manifest out of the ground and position themselves on top of the mana deposits. These weird buildings would have liquid mana flowing out of them like ground springs and gather in pools at their bases, surrounding them in veritable moats and lakes of the stuff. It was these weird buildings that were what the people of Echidnara called "dungeons".
Aside from providing liquid mana, which was valuable just by itself a fuel source, the insides of these dungeons contained all manner of weird ecosystems, monsters not seen in the wilds of Echidnara and valuable treasures that could turn paupers into kings in a single night.
It was for these aforementioned reasons that people not only flocked to explore these dungeons, but build entire cities around them.
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[And that is the end of our feature presentation. Do not applaud because I'm inside your head and clapping in public would be weird, but I will answer any questions you may have about dungeons or the Jade Spire,] the System stated after the animated history of dungeons stopped playing in Jordie's head.
Jordie himself just sorta stared into blank space after what had just happened to him. He wasn't expecting a full on historical cartoon to answer his very simple question of: "Hey System, what's a dungeon exactly?"
He was honestly expecting the System to just info dump him again or give him a quick text summary. Now he was just curious when did the System have time to draw all of that. Did he outsource to a studio back home?
It took Marianne poking at him to finally snap out of his haze.
"Hey Jordie, are you alright?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, we make it to the front of the line yet?"
"Not yet, but we're coming up now."