<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
Current day
"greetings"
An external voice, carrying concepts. The memory vine manifested several branches that broadcast the feeling of "safety" in connection with this voice. The loops observed these feelings and the external concept and discussed it. One loop elected to respond before the discussion was concluded.
"greetings" The loop sent.
"query, dungeon, identity, you" The external voice sent.
The loops did not understand this combination of concepts. They searched through memories and discussed, but found nothing. The external voice sent more concepts into the mind space, but the loops had no understanding or context for most of the message. After a long pause, the voice sent a few more messages.
"assistance, fight other ("bandit")"
Two things happened at once: A message arrived that the loops mostly understood, and several loops identified a connection between the messages and the vibration component of a specific "other". The loops discussed both things furiously, but a key component was missing. What is a "bandit"?
"curiosity, bandit"
The voice responded with more messages that the loops did not understand, but they loops continued to track the correlation between the frequencies and the messages. A strong pattern was apparent where specific frequency groupings correlated perfectly with specific concepts. One group of loops began recording the frequency-concept pairings into memory branches.
After another long pause, the voice sent another message:
"query, identity"
The loops understood this message, but didn''t know the answer. As they passed the query message around, the System supplied the answer.
_ Identity: Terse Elements Dungeon _
The loops immediately identified a connection between the query and the System message. The "identity" in the System message combined concepts with frequency groupings--something the loops did not find in previous memories of System messages. The loops discussed the concept of "dungeon"--a space, an entity, something about mana. The voice repeated its message.
"urgent, query, identity"
A loop proposed a response to the query. A few loops agreed, and a stream of frequencies was sent in response.
"Terse Elements"
Another group of loops supplied a query of their own:
"query, identity"
The voice responded quickly.
"identity, dungeon fairy"
The voice continued to send unknown concepts into the mind space, but the loops didn''t have context for "dungeon fairy" and repeated the query.
"query, identity"
The voice responded again.
"identity, Violet Danderpuff, dungeon fairy
The loops recorded that response, including the frequency stream that accompanied the concept, but found no path forward in understanding the voice. Eventually, the concepts stopped, but the vibration component of the "other" continued. The loops tracked the "other (dungeon fairy)", continuously recording the vibration component and identifying frequency-concept pairs. After much discussion, the loops decided to record a few memory branches of, "voice-safety, dungeon fairy, curiosity, unknown".
<hr>
The raven was surprised when a loop asked it a question, but was happy to share its vast knowledge. "Dungeon fairy? Hmm, fairy is two-legs, not bird, but has wings." The raven preened its feathers and it thought. "Fairy is person with mana-magic. Maybe friend, maybe thief! Maybe steal treasure!" The raven grew agitated at the thought of a sneaky fairy stealing its treasure. The loops just recorded the information about fairies.
When the raven calmed itself, it thought of something else. "Dungeon is you." It said. It didn''t understand why it thought that, but the raven was certain that the dungeon was the vines and the mind space. "Dungeon this whole place." The raven flapped its wings and tilted its head in confusion. "Dungeon fairy, maybe your fairy? You have fairy?" The loops did not respond, and the raven flew off to play in the sensory rain some more.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
The loops discussed the new information for a long time.
"dungeon, self"
"query, self"
"self, ''this whole place''"
"curiosity, ''this whole place''"
"''this whole place'', dungeon, space, mana"
"maybe: vines, dungeon"
"maybe: vines, space"
"maybe: self, vines"
"maybe: self, loops"
"no memories, no self"
"maybe: no memories, no dungeon"
The loops did not find consensus about the concepts of "self" or "dungeon", but the group that tracked the "other (dungeon fairy)" found another interesting connection: The vibration component of the dungeon fairy overlapped with a different "other" and both repeated frequency groupings that had already been identified to mean specific concepts.
The vibrational component of the other "other" had to be analyzed a bit more loosely--it was lower overall--but the relative frequencies and durations were a strong match. A new group of loops began tracking the new other and recording memories of its vibration component. The "other" overlapped with a few more "others" and the loops tracked those others as well. Only the first two "others" had frequency groupings that matched with concepts, however. The loops discussed this correlation and the negative correlation. After much discussion, the loops decided to record their conclusion: other, maybe communicate".
<hr>
"--------bandit----dungeon-assistance----" "Dungeon----------" "----fight-------------"
The loops reviewed the concepts they had translated from the recorded frequencies. The identified concepts were too infrequent for the loops to understand the purpose of the communications between the others. The loops determined that they needed more frequency-concept pairings.
"request, communicate"
The loops were unsure if the voice-safety-dungeon-fairy would respond to the request. After a while with no response, the loops repeated the request.
"request, communicate"
The voice responded quickly.
"greetings, query, assistance"
The loops already knew the frequencies for these concepts, so they tried to fish for new information.
"curiosity, assistance"
"request, spawn (dungeon creatures)"
The loops considered this. Some loops wanted to begin spawning immediately, but others brought up the information about treasure and the purpose for spawning treasure.
"deny, treasure good, spawn (treasure)"
The voice responded with new frequencies, which the loops recorded.
"disbelief, stop: spawn (treasure)"
"deny" The loops had identified no new information that would justify stopping the flow of treasure.
"treasure bad"
This comment sparked a storm of discussion. The voice-safety-dungeon-fairy was contradicting the information from the raven information bundle. The discussion went on long enough that the raven had the opportunity to weigh in with, "treasure good!" The loops could not resolve the contradiction, so they alerted the voice to it.
"contradiction: treasure good, treasure bad"
The voice, instead of discussing the merits of treasure, repeated the earlier request.
"request, spawn (dungeon creatures)"
The loops were divided into multiple groups, seeking consensus on various topics, but they all sought more information.
"spawn (dungeon creatures), curiosity"
"request, fight other ("bandit")" The voice again avoided explaining and only repeated itself. A few loops proposed that the voice could offer no new information, but the majority continued seeking more information.
"fight other ("bandit"), curiosity"
The voice did not respond. The feeling of safety, broadcast from the oldest memories of the voice, faded. The loops continued their discussion and scanned memories for information. After a long time, the voice returned, this time with new frequencies.
"other ("bandit"), creature death"
The loops checked the memories. This was already understood. Loops quickly found the memories and conclusions, overlap, other-creature death". The voice confirmed the theory that the cause of creature death" in the overlaps was the presence of the "other". The voice spoke again after a pause.
"creature death bad"
The loops had a quick discussion about this statement. The voice had contradicted the raven about treasure, but the raven had provided no opinion about creature death. Could it be possible? The loops wanted more information.
"curiosity"
The voice responded.
"creature death bad. Creature death, danger"
The loops feel silent. Creature death correlated with danger? Had the loops been in danger without knowing? The loops began to scan the memory branches for a correlation to support or refute the voice.
The memory vines held thousands and thousands of instances of creature death. The loops were drowned in so much creature death it was impossible to correlate it with anything else. A small group of loops stopped scanning memories and discussed the problem. After a minute, they proposed searching the memories for danger and then scanning backwards from there. The other loops tried that approach.
Danger, pain, distress. The loops found multiple sources of danger and searched backwards. In every single instance, the danger followed closely after one or more instances of creature death. The conclusion was clear: creature death proceeded every known danger and should be minimized.
"CREATURE DEATH, DANGER" As one, the loops agreed with the voice. They broke into groups to identify possible responses to creature death. The suggestion of the voice was the simplest, but the loops also considered the input from the foundational instincts and the information bundles through the mushroom network.
"creature death, alarm, spawn (dungeon creatures), fight other"
"creature death, alarm, defense"
With two strategies identified, the loops pushed to implement the response immediately.
"desire, spawn (dungeon creatures), fight other"
"desire, defense"