《Upon the Aether Sea (A Dungeon Core LitRPG)》 1. The Fall The cosmology of Esilur is best described as a series of great concentric spheres, each rotating at different speeds around the world at their center. Some, like the Sphere of Stars, rotate so slowly as to be nearly imperceptible. Between the spheres lays vast spaces, filled with aether, and suspended in aether are the celestial bodies. The spheres are, in ascending order, the Sphere of Stars, Sphere of the Moon, Sphere of the Planets and Sphere of the Sun. - The Physical and Meta-Physical by Garmon of Torley
I was an unremarkable star. I wasn¡¯t the greatest of the stars in the sky, and I wasn¡¯t the oldest. To the great bright Voxia, who guided the sailors on the ancient seas, I was just a twinkle. When I was being born from nebula dust and magic, Baexin had already shone for hundreds of thousands of years. I wasn¡¯t even the youngest star in the sky, though perhaps I was close to it. I was, however, unusually interested in humans for a star. I had watched humans since the gods first placed them on Esiliur. As they learned how to hunt and then how to farm. To build cities, kingdoms and then empires. I watched them love and fight. Create and destroy. They lived so bright and quick, and never failed to surprise me. For thousands of years, I watched humans with rapt attention. I was there still, shining in the night sky, as the world grew old and humans faded away again, as great empires splintered, and their ancient cities began to empty, the people struck down by calamities - fire, flood, plague, war. I was a lonely witness to the sundering of the world and the flight of the gods. I watched, until the day that I fell. *** Something pushed me. Stars are not lively creatures. We exist in a semi-permanent state of hibernation where time passes faster, only half aware of the universe beyond ourselves. So I barely noticed the feeling at first. It came again. This time, I was roused. Something had definitely given me a shove, or perhaps a pull. Given my physical body weighed millions of tons, and was suspended in an empty void tens of thousands of kilometers wide, it shouldn¡¯t have been possible. It happened a third time. Definitely a pull, not a push. It felt as if gravity suddenly became stronger for a brief moment, but that wasn¡¯t possible, and besides which, I could still feel its slow, constant pressure at the back of my senses. Nevertheless, something had begun to pull on me. It might¡¯ve been pulling for some time, because I distinctly remembered Esiliur being smaller before. In fact, the world below me was getting larger even as I watched. It got closer to totally eclipsing the void of space with each passing moment. Since it was impossible for a planet to grow, I rationalised that instead I had to be getting closer to Esiliur. I didn¡¯t like the thought, but I was powerless to slow down. Stars weren¡¯t meant to move. I¡¯d never moved in my entire existence and I didn¡¯t even know how I was doing it now. Was I falling? Falling was bad. I¡¯d seen what people did to fallen stars that had the bad luck of landing near a mortal settlement. They broke them apart just to get to the power in their souls. Yet despite any protest on my behalf, I seemed to be gaining speed. There was no resistance to give the motion a sensation and my only point of reference was the size of the land below, but it had been getting closer more quickly, so I had to be getting faster too. Actually, that was wrong. I had one way to check. I pulled up the System menu.
Name: Mizar Species: Star Class: StarThis book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Level: N/A Core Stability: 100% Mana: N/A Mana Growth: N/A Abilities: Starsight: (once a day) Focus on a location known to you and which is within 100,000 kilometers, enabling you to view the location from above as if a flying bird. You cannot receive sound with Starsight.
My stats didn¡¯t concern me right now. It was the information at the bottom that I needed.
Gravity: 10%
Wait ¡­
Gravity: 11%
It was ticking up rapidly. That wasn¡¯t good. None of this was good, but I watched for a moment. The tick was getting faster. Gravity reached 20% in less time than it had taken it to reach 15%, and it reached 30% even quicker. The world below was so close, I didn¡¯t even need Starsight to pick out the individual shapes of lakes and rivers and islands. Esiliur was beautiful like this, green and gold with a great slash of vivid blue aether that split the continents in half. I didn¡¯t have time to appreciate it though. Sphere crystal is perfectly transparent, invisible unless damaged. So I didn¡¯t have any warning before I hit the outer sphere of crystal that separated the world below from the heavens. It shattered with a thunderous boom. A great shard of the sphere, hundreds of times larger than me, nearly the size of a castle, collapsed inwards, breaking apart as it fell. The force of the impact rolled through my core. Cracks spread across the surface of my core in a fractal outwards from the point of impact. There was a brief delay before I processed the pain. The first crack was a splinter of pain. Each new one hurt more than the last.
Warning: Core stability below 50%
I couldn¡¯t do anything with the information, so I dismissed the message, and focussed on using every bit of willpower I had to hold the fragments of my core together. It wasn¡¯t enough, and stability kept falling. I¡¯d never imagined dying, but now it seemed possible. All around me, aether rushed past, meeting with mana rising up to escape through the hole in the crystal. They met in an eruption of light, heat and sound. There was no smoke to the explosion, no flame, but the mana and aether annihilated each other completely. The explosions lit up the sky in a rainbow of colours. System messages started to appear in my vision.
System Wide Warning: Atmospheric barrier breached. Local Godcores alerted.
A rolling list of damage information followed, but I had no way of comprehending it right now. A mass of vivid blue aether shot past me, and my core spiraled sideways in its wake. The aether met a cloud of mana jetting upwards. Their equal opposing force tried to repel each other, and they tangled together in ribbons of vivid blue and colourless mana, before momentum overcame their inherent incompatibility. The cloud exploded with the force of a tiny sun. The force wave hit my core first, throwing me clear of the intense ball of light and heat that followed. I lost my grasp on my integrity. It only took the moment between one thought and another, but the moment of vulnerability was enough. The wind tore a core fragment out of my grasp, and it disappeared into the wind. I screamed.
Warning: Core stability below 10%
I thought I¡¯d begun to understand pain. This was a new sort of pain, like claws had dug into my very soul and torn away a piece of what made me. It was so much worse.
System Wide Warning: [Error]. No Godcores found to assist. Repairs urgent. Warning: If repair is not made, [world: Esiliur] will become unstable. Estimated time to world destruction: 9 months.
I fought to think past the pain, like dragging myself through thick tar. There were no Godcores left. No one to repair the hole I¡¯d just punched through the crystal sphere. By falling, I¡¯d probably doomed the world. The world was so close now, the vivid blue aether sea filled my entire field of view. I could see the red-orange glow it gave off as air met aether and burned. At least, I thought, I won¡¯t have to worry about it for much longer. I was moments from hitting the sea and being vaporised by the resulting explosion. I couldn¡¯t watch it hurtle closer. I stopped looking and braced for impact. I just hoped it wouldn¡¯t hurt for long. In the absence of sight, I had no heartbeat to listen to. Just the roar of wind. It lasted both forever and only seconds. I hit something solid, and punched through, and then hit something bigger and harder. It finally stopped my descent, but the impact tore another shard out of my core. Pain whited out my vision and I stopped thinking. 2. Goddess of the Hearth I regained consciousness slowly. I had no way of checking how long I¡¯d been unconscious, but it was long enough for the pain to be blunted. It still burned, deep and sharp, but where before it had been so vivid my mind had shut down under the load, now I pushed past it. I stretched out my vision, extending my consciousness out of the warm cocoon of my core to hover several feet above the ground. I had 360¡ã vision of my surroundings, which let me see that I now lay at the bottom of a crater twenty feet deep. Stone, earth, and tiny core fragments were scattered across the ground where they¡¯d splintered off during the impact. My core had been a perfect octahedron, beautiful and symmetrical. Now it was noticeably smaller, missing a large segment of the upper pyramid that had broken off and left jagged edges, and covered in a spider web of cracks. I just hoped the lost fragments hadn¡¯t contained too many important parts of my soul. Memories or pieces of my personality could have been damaged. For now, I didn¡¯t even know what I didn¡¯t know. I checked my stability with dread.
Core stability: 4%
Priority one had to be healing my core. How did you heal a core? I didn¡¯t have any idea, but logically, the first step was to make sure my core was safe. I could move my vision around within the edges of my influence, which was naturally a cube roughly twenty feet around my core. For now, I slowly raised my vision up to the rim of the crater. I had landed close to the center of a circular room, perhaps a hundred and fifty feet across, and capped with an enormous dome. The dome was seemingly stable under its own weight, with no columns to support it, which allowed room for the huge open chamber. Glazed tiles made a mosaic of two serpents that began at opposite sides of the dome and undulated their bodies to meet in the middle, where their jaws were locked in a titanic battle. Once they had probably been vividly green and blue, but it had faded to muted tones. Around the serpents, other creatures - both real animals I had seen before and strange ones that might¡¯ve been mythical - formed two opposing armies. My fall had obliterated a large section of the tiled floor and a hole had been punched through one corner of the dome, presumably my point of entry, but the temple - if that was its purpose - had been ruined long before I arrived. The rotten remains of furniture and fine fabrics were all that remained of the interior decorations. Even the huge double doors had been lost to time, with just rusting hinges left behind. The space was so vast, at first I didn¡¯t realise I wasn¡¯t alone. Not until what I¡¯d mistaken for a bundle of rotting fabric rose from the floor with slow, jerky movements. When it turned around, I realised it was actually a woman in a tattered hooded robe. She shuffled closer with the slow, weary movements born of great age. I¡¯d mistaken the fabric for grey, but now I saw it wasn¡¯t naturally that colour. It was stained with soot, layers and layers of it. ¡°Mizar, it is good to see you.¡± Her voice was soft but firm, yet almost weary. How do you know my name? I said reflexively. No sound came out. I paused and tried again. In the Sphere of Stars, communication with my kin had been instant telepathy, but I wasn¡¯t sure how to communicate here. I didn¡¯t have a mouth to make sounds like mortals did.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. While I puzzled over trying to answer the woman, she had gotten closer. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about talking. I suppose you¡¯re asking how I know your name. I know it because I called you here.¡± You made me fall?! My core flared with red light, an outward expression of anger that rose up hot and quick. It took me by surprise, and I realised it was more than just anger. It was pure rage. Rage that she had ripped me from my home, nearly killed me, and damaged the sphere in the process. Slowly, I released it, like letting the steam out of a kettle that was ready to boil over. I didn¡¯t like the way rage felt. It was a new emotion to me, it wasn¡¯t in my nature. Anger I¡¯d felt before, when I¡¯d watched mortals do awful things to each other, or even in juvenile arguments with my kin, but rage overwhelmed my logic. If I¡¯d had any means to do it, I would¡¯ve tried to strike the woman in that brief second and I had an awful feeling I knew who this woman was. Gods rarely took well to being struck. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Mizar. It was necessary. I needed help.¡± She stopped at the edge of the crater and looked down at my core. ¡°My name is Tamyris.¡± She had no way of knowing where my consciousness hovered, but she¡¯d stepped into the middle of my vision. It wasn¡¯t a pleasant sensation to see four sides of a person at the same time. It made me dizzy. I pulled my consciousness back a few feet. Still, at least that confirmed my theory. Tamyris, the last god of Esiliur, and the keeper of the hearths. I flashed a white light in my core, hoping she¡¯d understand it meant keep talking. ¡°Esiliur is dying.¡± No shit. I¡¯d inadvertedly punched a huge hole through the crystal sphere that separated the heavens from the mortal world. Right now, air and mana were both escaping faster than they could regenerate. Tamyris sat down on a fragment of stone I¡¯d torn from the ceiling during my fall. She sighed softly and massaged her back. ¡°Not because of the hole you made. Esiliur was already dying before that. I took the risk of further damage because I couldn¡¯t see another way. ¡°Without high cores, the world has no one to maintain it. Some of the mortals are trying, but they don¡¯t have the power. The damage has been accumulating over time. Soon, the System won¡¯t be able to operate safely and ¡­¡± Tamyris mimed an explosion with her hands. ¡°Well, you get the picture.¡± I huffed, but there was no way to make her hear my frustration. The world was going to blow up, so she¡¯d stranded me on it? How magnanimous. ¡°I have a plan,¡± Tamyris said. ¡°I need you to save Esiliur. I have a little power left, it should be just enough to allow you to become a dungeon core.¡± I tried to think of a word to describe my opinion of that idea. I¡¯d learned many swear words, curses and obscene references to biological anatomy from watching humans. None of them seemed quite strong enough. I couldn¡¯t make Tamyris hear any of them anyway, so I settled for flashing my core red again. If I became a dungeon core, I would be trapped on the mortal plane forever. I¡¯d never be able to return to my home. Not that I¡¯d ever heard of a fallen star successfully returning, but at least it was an option. A dungeon core was locked to a single place. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Mizar, I don¡¯t have a choice.¡± Tamyris slowly stood up and brought her hands together. Don¡¯t you dare! I shouted uselessly. I cast around for something, anything to stop her. I didn¡¯t know how to affect the physical world yet. If I had time, maybe I could¡¯ve figured out how to shift one of the boulders, to throw pebbles at her, or move my core. Something. The tattered robe began to move in a wind blowing from all directions. It shook loose eons of soot and ash, creating a soft cloud that billowed out around the goddess¡¯ body. The wind rose higher, picking up debris and dirt, fragments of wood and even the tiny shards of my core. All I could do was pull my consciousness back to my core and huddle there. A bolt of energy struck my crystal, and I saw no more. 3. Seedlings
Core evolution complete. Welcome back.
Slowly, sensation returned. Sound came first. The wind whistling through cracks in the stone, the chatter of a pair of bird¡¯s nesting high above in the dome. Then touch. I could touch the stone, feel where my influence passed over it, study the tiny imperfections in its structure. Vision was last. I dismissed the System message and checked my surroundings. I was still at the bottom of the crater, that hadn¡¯t changed. However, my core was no longer cracked. The ugly jagged edge remained where part of my core had been splintered off, but the cracks - they had healed. It didn''t hurt anymore. It was a sweet relief to simply exist free of pain. I took a moment to bask in the feeling. Both to appreciate it for a moment and because I didn¡¯t want to check my System menu. I dreaded what I¡¯d see when I opened it. A message appeared to interrupt my peace.
Welcome to being a Dungeon Core. It has been [data not found] years since the last awakening on [world: Esiliur]. As a result System may be unstable while recalibration takes place. Please begin class selection urgently. Continue? Y/N
I stared it with a low simmer of anger. It wasn¡¯t the message I was angry at. It was Tamyris. However, she seemed to have disappeared for now, so I couldn¡¯t glare at her. The System message was all I had to take my anger out on, except for inanimate stone. I ignored the request to continue for now and pulled my vision up and away from my core. Maybe it was immature, but I was tens of thousands of years old, and I¡¯d earned the right to be immature sometimes. Mortals sulked all the time. If I¡¯d had a physical body, I could¡¯ve punched something to let out the pent up aggression. I¡¯d seen mortals do that. It didn¡¯t seem very productive, mostly it looked like it hurt, but they kept doing it, so maybe it worked. I turned my eye to the temple. It seemed just the same as before. Actually, perhaps I was too hasty to say the temple was exactly the same. The air was now filled with motes of mana. Or perhaps they¡¯d always been there and I¡¯d not been able to see them before. They drifted lightly, buffeted by invisible breezes, sometimes colliding, afterwards two motes spinning away from each other in opposite directions. Sometimes, they met with enough momentum that instead of repelling each other, they merged into one larger mote. As I watched the mana play out its dance, I allowed myself a moment to imagine that, right now, I was back in the heavens safe from the calamity coming for Esiliur. Talking to my kin, meditating on fond memories. At peace. Tamyris had taken that from me. Then I released it. I couldn¡¯t get back to the heavens, not yet at least, and I was going to die if I didn¡¯t do something about it. I could only make myself do nothing for a short while before common sense overrode denial. I had no doubt that people would¡¯ve noticed my fall. Some time had passed since I¡¯d passed out, because the sun was now high in the sky, but whether that meant it had been hours or days, I didn¡¯t know. They could be on their way already. There were very few living dungeons left on Esiliur, but when I¡¯d been young, I¡¯d watched mortals flock to each newborn dungeon. Many only wished to test their mettle against the dungeon, to receive loot and soul power, but there were also mortals who would be happy to tear my core apart to steal the magic that animated me. With that unhappy thought in the front of my mind, I opened the System prompt again and selected Y. A new menu flooded my vision.
Available Classes:
Class Name Affinity Class Description
Catacombs Affinity: Undead / Skeleton Raise resilient undead minions that respawn quickly and overwhelm your enemy with numbers.
Ancient Ruins Affinity: Undead / Lich Specialise into powerful undead champions and stack unholy buffs to empower them to destroy heavy targets.
Hellscape Affinity: Fire / Demon Make use of hard hitting but fragile demonic minions and sygnerise with deadly environmental effects.
Cursed Temple Affinity: Abyss / Hive Summon abyssal minions that are devastating in hordes and complemented by powerful debuffs.
Miasmic Pit Affinity: Poison / Slime Toxic, poisonous and venomous minions are able to inflict debilitating status effects, and inflict fear with special miasmic environmental effects.
Faerie Garden Affinity: Nature / Plant Grow magical plants with a range of utilities and unparalleled adaptability.
I read over the options with growing dread. I still didn¡¯t want to be a Dungeon Core, and the class list was fast reminding me why. Working with the abyss, or demons, or the undead¡­ nothing could be further from a star¡¯s nature. We were creatures of light, beauty, and life. The undead were bad enough, but demons? The abyss? They were by their very nature destructive. I¡¯d seen what abyss hives did. They consumed everything and left a blight on the world, slowly corrupting the landscape to be more like their own dimension. Demons, at least, only destroyed out of greed and the desire to conquer. The abyss destroyed things simply because it could. I dismissed the first four options off hand. That only left Miasmic Pit and Faerie Garden. I didn¡¯t know much about slimes - they lived beneath the surface of the world, and so were rarely visible from my normal point of view high in the heavens. That just helped reinforce my choice. I couldn¡¯t imagine wanting to hide from the heavens. The only option that didn¡¯t seem totally repulsive was Faerie Garden. Gardens¡­ I didn¡¯t hate the idea. I didn¡¯t know very much about how plants worked, but they couldn¡¯t be too hard. Could they? Plus, adaptable sounded useful. Reluctantly, I selected Faerie Garden.
New skill gained Uncreate: Absorbing plant matter grants you knowledge of the species of plant it came from and the ability to spawn the plant, provided you meet its prerequisites. New skill gained Overgrowth (2 mana): Encourages plant life in an area to grow [2 * core level] times faster for twenty four hours. New skill gained Shape Matter: Destroy, create and reshape solid matter within your sphere of influence. Stat bonus: ARC 2+, FTR +1, LCK +1 New boon gained Green Thumbs: Nature naturally prospers in your area of influence. Plants grow 100% faster. 1% increased mutation chance for natural flora. New minions available: View now Y/N?This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
I ignored the minions for now and opened my System menu.
Name: Mizar
Species: Dungeon Core
Subspecies: Starseed
Class: Faerie Garden
Level: 1
Core Integrity: 100%
Mana: 40/40
Mana Growth (daily): 13
Soul Power: 0
Next Level Cost: 250 SP
Stats:
Arcana 3
Fortitude 2
Luck 2
Skills: Uncreate, Overgrowth, Shape Matter
Spells:
Boons: Green Thumbs
Artifacts:
The low rate of mana growth concerned me, but perhaps there was a way to improve it in the long term. Or perhaps 40 mana was a lot and I wouldn¡¯t need to worry about it. That seemed unlikely, but I didn¡¯t have a frame of reference for costs. I turned my attention to my abilities. Uncreate sounded fascinating. I cast around for a nearby plant, hoping to test it, but my crater had obliterated everything living nearby. My area of influence seemed unchanged, a cube twenty feet across, which meant I couldn¡¯t actually reach any of the weeds that grew up through cracks in the stones or the vines that climbed the edges of the chamber. I almost despaired, and then I re-read the ability. Plant matter didn¡¯t have to mean living plants. Inspired, I found a large splinter of wood from a broken chair, or perhaps it had been a pew, which had been crushed when I landed. How did I absorb it, exactly? I stared hard at the splinter. Nothing happened. Uncreate, I tried saying. The wood remained resolutely solid. Absorb. Consume. Nothing. I stared at the wood with mounting frustration for a long time. No matter what word I tried, or how hard I tried to push my will down upon the wood, it remained solid and inert. The sun rose to its zenith and started to fall again while I tried my best to absorb the wood. I returned to the System menu and glared at it. There didn¡¯t appear to be any sort of way to ask for more clarification or help. It wouldn¡¯t have hurt Tamyris to leave instructions, would it? Very well, I was on my own. If willing the wood to absorb didn¡¯t work, perhaps I had to do something else. I returned to studying the wood, pushing my vision as close as I could. Mortals often pulled things apart to understand them. I imagined gripping the wood and slowly unraveling it like a mortal unraveling a ball of yarn. Slowly, the wood grew fuzzy, and at last, fell apart, dissolving into pale, almost transparent mana.
New plant available: Ancient Ebony Tree (Hebenus senex)
Success! It was probably the easiest thing a dungeon could do, but it felt good. I¡¯d figured it out with no no instructions. I let myself have that small victory. I just wished I had someone to tell about my success. Experimentally, I summoned the tree at the edge of my crater. It appeared slowly, condensing out of mana, growing more real as the mana grew closer and closer together to form solid matter. The Ancient Ebony Tree was about twenty feet tall. The trunk was a brilliant, shiny grey-black colour, with smooth bark, and branches that grew almost parallel to the trunk, making the tree slender for its height. The leaves were a pale green, large and triangular. I could picture the effect that an avenue of these trees would have. It was beautiful, but it didn¡¯t help me right now. I tried the same thing as I¡¯d done to the splinter of wood, and the tree unraveled and disappeared again, returning to floating mana. I checked my mana. It still sat at 40, so either the tree had been free, or it had cost a small increment that hadn¡¯t been reflected in the menu. I tested it, summoning more of the same tree. When I summoned the fourth, my mana ticked down to 39. Accounting for the first one I¡¯d already dismissed, that meant each tree cost me about 0.2 mana, but the system rounded up. Interesting. I dismissed the trees again, but it didn¡¯t change, so it didn¡¯t look like I could regain mana that way. My little experiment concluded, I turned my attention to my cube of influence. When I got close to the edge, I could see it was very slowly growing. At the present rate, it would take a full day, or maybe longer, for it to reach the edges of the room. I tested by pressing my influence outwards. At first, the whole cube expanded, which caused my mana to rapidly drop, but gained me about ten feet on every side. I stopped. I didn¡¯t need to expand up or down right now. I just wanted to reach the doors and see what was outside, and mana seemed precious. At least I had one answer, 40 mana wasn¡¯t a lot. I experimented by expanding my influence in just one direction. It took a moment to get a hang of it, but it worked. Slowly, only one side of the cube began to move outwards. I let it expand about five feet, and then stopped again. What if I could be even more precise about it? I carefully pictured just a shaft, three feet by three feet, and pressed mana into it. It worked. My influence began to creep along just the shaft. Now I could make much more rapid progress towards the door. It took an hour or so, and half my mana, but I reached the door. Or more correctly, the empty door frame where it had once stood. I was now able to move my consciousness right up to the edge and peak out of the door of the temple. The sun was just starting to set on the horizon, turning the sky vivid colours. The temple stood on the top of a sharply rising hill, the land sloping away until it reached a much flatter plain below. Stairs, built of huge flat flagstones worn smooth with age and the passage of many feet, wound up the side of the hill in a zigzag. At the bottom of the stairs, there was a cleared area with a circular shrine in the center. The structure was little more than a roof supported by a colonnade and to the elements. It was illuminated by a soft orange from a fire burning in a large bronze bowl in the center. I¡¯d seen similar structures from my vantage point in the skies. There was no mistaking it for anything but one of Tamyris¡¯ sacred hearths. For one tempestuous movement, I was tempted to push my influence all the way to the hearth, just so I could tear it down in the hopes of gaining Tamyris¡¯ attention. However, I needed to conserve my mana and I was supposed to be working on defense of my core. I returned to my core, happy I¡¯d been able to see the sky, but frustrated by my slow progress and how quickly my mana was disappearing. I decided to finally check the list of minions the System message had mentioned. I could sort using various filters, but right now my opinions were limited enough I didn¡¯t need to.
Plant Name Climate Properties Growing Time Mana Cost Damage Type
Bleeding Bloom Temperate Wields long, thorny vines which can strike to inflict bleed status. 1 hr 1 Mundane
Ancient Ebony Tree (Hebenus senex) Temperate Not discovered. Instant 0.2 N/A
Mana Bloom All Once fully grown, produces 1 mana every 24 hours. 24 hrs 5 N/A
This was more interesting. I immediately summoned one of the Bleeding Blooms in front of the temple door. It appeared as a seed, about the size of an apple, covered in blunted thorns. I focused on a patch of stone and reshaped it into dirt, and then pressed the seed gently into the dirt. Satisfied with that, and excited to see it grow, I returned to my core and cleared debris away from a flat area on the edge of my impact crater, absorbing the fallen stone and dirt, rotting fabric and shards of wood.
New plant available: Queen¡¯s Robes (Molluscus regina) New plant available: Goldfruit (Aureus edulis)
I hadn¡¯t expected that, but absorbing the plant fragments mixed into the fabric had gained me two more plants. I put those aside to look at later. For now, I set to work transforming a square twenty feet by twenty feet into soil, and summoned up three Mana Blooms with my remaining mana. I planted them carefully in three five foot quadrants of the square, setting aside one for later planting. Now I just had to wait for things to grow. Which was easier said than done. Waiting was hard. 4. First Growth The history of our world is generally categorized into five (or six) ages. While history is not so simple as this would imply, they are a useful frame of reference. In order, the ages are the Primordial Age, when only the raw elements existed; the Divine Age, when the gods were born; the Mortal Age, when the sapient species first arose on Esiliur; the Dungeon Age, when the dungeon cores first appeared, bringing prosperity to the world. Brakshur argues to insert another age next, the Fading Age, when the dungeons began to dwindle, but the distinction is considered trivial by many other scholars. Finally, the Deathless Age is our present era, which as the name implies is the age where death ceased. - Epochs by Hadrien the Taller.
While I waited for the first of my plants to grow, I delved into my menus more. My main currency, or method of improvement, seemed to be Soul Power, or SP. I could spend it both on levels and to buy stat increases. Reaching level two right now would cost me 250 SP, while increasing one of my stats would cost 43 SP. I had no real reference for how quickly I could gain SP, but a vague tooltip informed me I would gain it from adventurers. However, it did mean I would have to juggle saving up for levels with prioritizing stat increases. The three stats available to me were Arcana, Fortitude and Luck. Arcana seemed to be the most widely used, contributing to both my mana pool and mana growth, while Fortitude seemed to determine resistances, and so far I hadn¡¯t found out what Luck did. I guessed it probably effected chance based abilities. I once again wished I had someone to teach me about these things. Examining my minion¡¯s descriptions taught me something else. Each minion could have tiers. Right now, I didn¡¯t have access to any improved tiers of my existing plants, but I could purchase them with Soul Power. The plants I had right now were tierless, and the tiers started at Tin, followed by Copper, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Orichalcum. I had the feeling Soul Power was going to be precious. At least an hour had passed while I explored my menus, and when I checked on my Bleeding Bloom, it had finally grown. I pushed my vision over towards it with a thrum of excitement. The core of the plant was a teardrop shaped flower on the end of a long stalk, with gossamer violet petals that glowed very slightly. Just enough that it would be unmissable up close, but not enough to illuminate the surrounding ground. That, I supposed, was the point. Low, flat vines grew out of the base of the stalk, spreading out from the center of the plant to a radius of four feet. If someone was focussed on the beautiful bloom, they might never see them. Experimentally, I formed a small rock in mid air above the vines and let it drop. When it bumped one of the vines, it rapidly tangled around the rock while bright red thorns extended from hidden pockets and tried their best to stab its prey. Each thorn had a small notch on the end. If it had been a flesh and blood target, the thorns would sink deep into flesh, and when the prey tried to pull itself free, the notch would act like a hook and tear as it pulled out, inflicting even more damage. I was even happier with it than I thought possible. I¡¯d grown this. Sure, I¡¯d only made some soil and planted it, but it was mine. I¡¯d made it. The mana cost was low, so I suspected that it wasn¡¯t particularly strong, but it would provide a good nuisance to anyone who tried to reach my core. I needed more of these. I was hampered by my shortage of mana for now, but since converting stone to earth seemed to be free, I set to work laying out more growing spots for future Bleeding Blooms. *** By the time my Mana Blooms grew the next day, I¡¯d cleared all the debris from my area of influence and laid out two more garden beds. Unfortunately, I hadn¡¯t gained any new plants from it, but I was ready for future growth when I had the mana for it. Then I¡¯d spent a few hours just watching the stars from the door of the temple. It was foolish and self-torturing but also somehow reassuring to see my kin still twinkling in the heavens. When the sun had risen again, and I could no longer watch them, I¡¯d rested back in my core. I couldn¡¯t sleep, not like mortals did, but I could hibernate like I had when I was a star. Only half-aware of the passing of time, which made it disappear in a blink.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! Finally, though, the Mana Blooms grew. My original guess for the space they needed was roughly right. Each plant was a compact bush, roughly dome shaped, with foliage that started dark green and faded to pale, almost translucent green on the tips of the youngest leaves. It was covered in small, star shaped flowers with dark blue petals and pale white centers. Tiny motes of mana were slowly drawn towards the flowers, and occasionally, one would attach itself to the center of a bloom and start to be absorbed. I checked my System menu. Mana Growth was now at 16 a day. It was only a tiny improvement, but it would add up over time. The twenty four hours of rest had also given me thirteen more mana to work with. The mana seemed to appear each hour, rather than at the end of the day, which was useful. With my new mana, I planted a second Bleeding Bloom by the temple doors, opposite the first one. Then, I turned my attention to the two new plants I¡¯d gained yesterday.
Plant Name Climate Properties Growing Time Mana Cost Damage Type
Queen¡¯s Robes (Molluscus regina) Subtropical Not discovered 48 hrs 2 N/A
Goldfruit (Aureus edulis) Temperate Not discovered 24 hrs 1 N/A
The natural plants I¡¯d gained from Uncreate didn¡¯t seem to innately tell me what they did. I¡¯d have to grow them and figure it out. They also seemed to come with alternate names in a language I didn¡¯t speak. However, these two had a much greater mana cost than the Ancient Ebony Tree, which I hoped meant they were useful. The tree had mostly seemed ornamental so far. The climate difference on the Queen¡¯s Robes concerned me a little. I didn¡¯t have any way to replicate a climate right now, so hopefully it would still grow. I moved over to one of the new garden beds I¡¯d laid out during the night on the opposite side of my crater from the Mana Bloom. I kept up the squares, divided into a grid, like I¡¯d used for the Mana Blooms. My area of influence had grown noticeably, and it seemed that the free, slow growth wasn¡¯t as slow as I¡¯d feared. It had nearly reached the edges of the temple chamber, which meant that I didn¡¯t need to spend any more mana on expanding it to make room for plantings. I started with the Goldfruit. The seed was a tiny pointed oval, by far the smallest seed I¡¯d made so far. It made me question whether I¡¯d set aside too much space. Such a tiny seed might only make a tiny plant. Still, it seemed better to overestimate than underestimate. I gently pressed it into the freshly turned soil. I hope you grow up to be a big and strong little fellow. After the Goldfruit, I summoned a seed for the Queen¡¯s Robes. This was a large, perfectly spherical seed, with a shiny outer surface. I planted it in its own five foot square, next to the Goldfruit. Finally, I spent the two mana to apply Overgrowth. With a bit of testing, I figured it seemed to cover a cube one hundred feet by one hundred feet, which was almost my entire area of influence right now. That seemed more powerful than I first thought. I¡¯d still need to wait twelve hours for the Goldfruit, and twenty four for the Queen¡¯s Robes, though. Gardening seemed to involve a lot of waiting. Satisfied with my plantings, I turned my attention to my core and the crater. It was quick work to smooth out the bottom of the crater, and then erect a hollow stone cube ten feet by ten feet around my core. When I tried to seal the top, however, I found I was unable to. The stone simply refused to meld together. I tried to trick it by very slowly growing stone across the gap, but it wouldn¡¯t budge. No sealing my core away entirely then. That was frustrating. I relented by leaving a hole at the top, so that anyone wanting to reach my core would have to make a ten foot drop. Maybe later, I¡¯d make that bigger, and fill the path with traps and poisonous plants. As long as that was allowed. Then I finished by filling in the rest of the crater and converting it to more growing space. I had six mana left by the time I finished my earthen works, so I spent it on one more Mana Bloom and planted it alongside the original three. With Overgrowth, it¡¯d hopefully be fully grown in just twelve hours. 5. Fruitful Endeavours Three are one and one is three, Maiden dances, full of youth, Mother tends, warm and gentle, Crone speaks, age and truth, Twining fate by decree. - Children¡¯s rhyme from the kingdom of Asmia.
By the next day, my area of influence had reached Tamyris¡¯ hearth. From there, I could finally take in the whole extent of my new home. The temple was just as grand from the outside. The main building was built of a blue-grey stone. The dome was capped in colossal bronze tiles, and they caught the light and made the whole building shine as if being set on fire by the sun. A portico, with four huge columns, guarded the entrance, with a carved frieze which depicted the two serpents in battle once more. The walls, in contrast, were simple and unadorned, broken only by the small windows that allowed light into the temple. The landscape around the temple was mostly low shrubs, but in the distance a dense jungle seemed to be slowly encroaching, reclaiming the land that had been cleared when the temple had been a site of pilgrimage. I turned my attention to the hearth. My influence seemed to have naturally parted around it, and when I pressed my influence up against the edge of the structure, I received a notification.
Do you wish to claim structure: Hearth of Tamyris? Y/N If you claim this building, you will be designated as Hearthkeeper. Hearthkeepers receive some of the Soul Power used by mortals to reincarnate at hearths under their care.
I selected Yes and my influence flooded inwards, covering the entire building. The flames at the center of the hearth briefly flared higher.
New boon gained Hearthkeeper: You receive 50% of the Soul Power spent to reincarnate at hearths under your care. You may restrict who can reincarnate at your hearths.
The new message answered part of my question about acquiring Soul Power. I would have to investigate that further, but I could see the logical path. Adventurers could presumably acquire Soul Power by killing my minions, and then when I killed them in turn, I received part of that Soul Power back. The ability to restrict who could reincarnate also made sense. No point killing someone who actively meant me harm if they¡¯d just respawn right at my front door. With what I¡¯d learned, it became even more imperative to build a functioning dungeon. I needed Soul Power to grow, so I could protect myself. However, as much as I loved my Bleeding Blooms, they seemed rather limited. I couldn¡¯t imagine a party of adventurers being bested by one, or even a whole room full of them. The jungle offered a potential solution though. I spent my precious mana to extend my influence in a shaft towards the edge of the jungle, and then set to exploring in search of something¡­ anything that looked dangerous. The undergrowth was thick and anyone with a physical body would¡¯ve found it hard to pass through. Which was nice, because it meant no one could sneak up on my temple without a lot of effort. However, as a disembodied consciousness projecting itself from inside a rock, it didn¡¯t impede me. I simply phased through the tangles of vines, ferns and probably scratchy bushes. As I searched, I absorbed a range of smaller, harmless plants that looked like they¡¯d make suitable set dressing. A plan for my dungeon had started to grow. Maybe it was vain to care about aesthetics in a dungeon meant to kill, but I had spent so long admiring the things mortals built, and now I had the chance to build things myself. I just needed the tools. I found a few plants that looked potentially dangerous. A vine that was a vivid electric blue and when broken oozed a sticky sap, and a plant that grew long feathery leaves out from a hard shelled core. I had watched as a small mammal brushed against one of the leaves, and the plant had immediately tangled around the unfortunate creature, before dragging it inside the hard shell. Carnivorous plants - now that I appreciated. I checked my plants list to see what it had to say about them.
Plant Name Climate Properties Growing Time Mana Cost Damage Type
Strangling Fern (Plumigera testudinaria) Subtropical Tangles prey within its strong, filament-like leaves and attempts to drag them within its armoured shell to digest. 5 hrs 2 Mundane
Magebane Vine (Reptans caerulescens) Subtropical Secrets a thick, sticky sap that utilises metabolised mana to burn painfully. 5 hrs 2 Magic
It seemed since I¡¯d observed them in the wild, I had skipped over needing to discover their properties manually. Most interestingly, the Magebane Vine had a new damage type. I hadn¡¯t encountered that yet. They were both more expensive than the Bleeding Bloom, which I hoped meant they could pose more of a challenge to adventurers. I returned to my temple, my plan finally solidifying. It was time to start work on a dungeon. *** I continued to plant more Mana Blooms as I had spare mana. By day three, I had 7 of the blooms and had reached 20 daily mana growth. The next several days were occupied with the work of actually building a dungeon. The first thing I did was repair the hole I¡¯d made in the dome, and then reinforce the entire structure. With Shape Matter, I could inspect the stone for imperfections and invisible cracks, and I closed them up until it was as perfect as the day it had been built. I also found I could recreate any basic matter I¡¯d absorbed, which allowed me to restore the broken sections of the mosaic. I had to make some best guesses as to what animal I¡¯d obliterated in my fall, and I ended up adding a dragon.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Once I was happy with the dome, I started building. My area of influence was expanding at about a hundred feet a day, without any mana expenditure, which meant I had plenty of space to work with. I disassembled part of the back wall and inserted a second door to make the temple symmetrical, made of the shimmering bronze used on the temple roof. Just for extra security, I replaced the rotten door at the temple¡¯s front with the same type of door. First, I would have adventurers step down from the back door, out onto a path flanked by an avenue of columns. On each side of the path, I cleared a ten foot square and paved it with smaller fragstones than the ones in the temple. In the middle of each, I shaped stone into a statue of a knight lifting a sword high, and then slowly chipped away at the statues, giving them the look of something that had been weathered for centuries. Around the statues, I laid out flower beds filled with a pale pink bush I¡¯d found in the jungle, ornamented with masses of tiny white flowers. Around them, I placed stone benches so that adventurers could sit while they waited for the dungeon to open. The true entrance of the dungeon was at the end of the avenue. I started with another colossal bronze door, and erected a grand portico held up by two stone columns. A vine with crescent shaped fruit wound its way up the columns. The frieze on the portico portrayed the two great serpents in battle again, but this time I inserted crystals in their eyes. It was an object called An Indicator Crystal I¡¯d found while exploring my menus. When the dungeon was empty, it glowed green, and when it was busy, it glowed red, making the serpents look as if they had demonic fire in their eyes. When the door opened, adventurers would be ushered into a rectangular room fifty feet wide. It was supposed to copy the foyer in a manor, to impress upon them the wealth of their hosts. If they looked up, they would see a colourful mosaic depicting a dragon strangled by a great vine. It was both impressive, and a hint towards the danger the room contained. Two statues of roaring dragons were perched on pedestals at opposite ends of the room. At their feet, I planted Bleeding Blooms, and shaped the wooden floor as if the plants had burst out, invading the room. I surrounded the Bleeding Blooms with low ferns that would hide the bloom¡¯s vines until they were ready to attack. The dragons I tangled in some of the harmless vines, but from the ceiling I hung three Magebane Vines, spaced out so that adventurers would have to navigate the safe path between the vines and the Bleeding Blooms to avoid being tangled hopelessly. Finally, I added two Strangling Ferns as the main room minions, each similarly bursting from the floor. Finally, a grand staircase swept upwards, but for now it led only to a blank wall. It gave me potential for future expansion though. At the eastern side of the room, I added a door leading to a corridor with large, arched windows that let in the daylight. From the corridor, adventurers would be able to access the second room. Long term, I hoped to be able to add a second door here so higher tier adventurers could bypass the lower levels and go straight to fighting the higher levels. I took a moment to appreciate my creation. The effect was a mansion being overrun by invading plants. It had a spooky atmosphere I quite enjoyed. I hoped it would be a good challenge for adventurers. If someone was intent on barreling through to my core room, it would slow them down, while a party that took time and care could navigate the room without taking damage. Of course, if they did that they wouldn¡¯t get SP from killing the minions, so it also encouraged strategically engaging the minions one by one. It was good, yet it still felt like something was missing. After a few minutes, I couldn¡¯t figure out what, so I moved on, hoping I¡¯d think of it later. I was about to start on my next room when a System message interrupted me.
Secret quest completed Yes We Can! Complete your first room. Reward: Unlock (2) new minions, unlock boss creation. Quests available You Died! Kill your first adventurer. Reward: 50 SP You Won! Have a party clear your dungeon with no deaths. Reward: 50 SP Chest ahead! Create your first loot table. Reward: 5 SP
And there was my missing element. Loot. I should¡¯ve known that. The fact that dungeons gave loot had been somewhere in the back of my memories, but I couldn¡¯t access it until I¡¯d been reminded. It itched when I pressed against the absence. The harder I tried to recall when I¡¯d first learned about dungeon loot, the sharper it became until my whole core ached. I relented reluctantly. I¡¯d suspected I¡¯d encounter missing memories as time went by, thanks to the shards missing from my core, but it was frustrating whether I was expecting it or not. I returned to the room to fix my error. I could create basic pre-set items, or customise it with any material I could naturally produce. For now, bronze was the only precious material I had access to, and the pre-set loot tables already offered bronze coins, so I just used the pre-set for now. I¡¯d customise it later. I was hoping that my plants could produce some interesting loot items in the long term. *** By the time I¡¯d finished the rough shape of three chambers for my first zone, my Goldfruit was ready. I quickly shifted my point of view to the garden, excited to view the new fruits of my labor. The Goldfruit was a spindly tree, roughly eight feet tall. It had only a few branches, each long and thin, with pale bone coloured bark. The deep green leaves had a shine to them, like they were waxed or oiled, and they grew in irregular bunches. In clusters at the end of the branches, it had large oval fruit. It seemed to start green, darkening to yellow, and when ripe, turned an orange-yellow colour, which I guessed gave the tree its name. All my plants seemed to grow unnaturally fast, so it took only hours for a fruit to ripen, allowing me to watch the colour change in real time. When I absorbed one, it would regrow it a few hours later. The inside of the fruit had a soft flesh, and the center was full of the small, pointed oval seeds that I had planted. I guessed it was edible, though I couldn¡¯t test that myself. When I checked the menu again, the properties entry had been updated.
Plant Name Climate Properties Growing Time Mana Cost Damage Type
Goldfruit (Aureus edulis) Temperate Grows a delicious fruit, which satisfies mortal hunger and nutritional needs. 24 hrs 1 N/A
Skythorn All Flight capable. Charges enemies with its massive forward facing thorn. 5hrs 2 Mundane
Bulwark Blossom All Ambulant. Blocks attacks with a large shield-like flower. 5 hrs 3 Mundane
It was a useful ability, if I intended to play host to any mortals. More interestingly, the two new minions I¡¯d unlocked from the quest were there. Finally, I had plants that could move around the rooms. Now my encounters could be more dynamic. I still liked the first room forcing adventurers to edge around static enemies, but I was excited to try out these options. My second room was a similar size to the first. Here, I carved vaulted ceilings out of the stone, and in regular intervals along the walls I recessed alcoves and filled them with empty pedestals as if statues or vases had once stood there. I covered the floor in coloured tiles like those from the dome, to create an interlocking pattern of yellow and white pyramids. Then I shaped furniture. I only had wood and stone to work with right now, so there wasn¡¯t much variety, but it worked for my needs. I placed ornate wooden chairs along the walls, between each alcove. The sort of chair that rich mortals have in their homes. Not to sit on, because they look horribly uncomfortable and are carved so delicately they¡¯d break under the average mortal¡¯s weight. The sort of chair that existed to be looked at, with swooping curved legs and arms carved in the shapes of dragons. In the middle of the room, I arranged two large ornate couches facing each other, with a table between them. The final result was something resembling a grand parlour. Then I proceeded to mess it up. I planted Bleeding Blooms at irregular spots in the floor, and again shaped the floor around their bases as if it had ruptured. I knocked over some of the chairs, and around the bases of some of the pedestals I scattered shards of tile like the vases they¡¯d once held had shattered. Right now I only had mana for two Bulwark Blossoms or three Skythorns. I was eager to see both, so I settled for planting one of each instead. I¡¯d add more later to complete the room. The Bulwarks seed was the largest I¡¯d seen yet, nearly the size of a human fist, and oblong. I gently nestled it into the soil. A few feet away, I planted the seed of the Skythorn. This one was tiny, with a long filament that ended in a puff of feathery material. I supposed it was meant to act as a sort of kite, to catch the air and let the seeds be carried on the breeze. Once they were planted, I had time to kill, so I turned my attention to decorating the boss arena. I¡¯d have to wait until I had more mana to summon a boss or the rest of the plants I needed for the second chamber. 6. Scholar of the Dungeon Cixilo I checked my list for the fourth time. I knew everything was correct, but I still did it to reassure myself. In the last week, I had spent most of my not inconsiderable wealth on preparing for this expedition. If I was right, and I dearly hoped I was right, it would be the most important endeavor I¡¯d ever undertaken. I just hoped I wasn¡¯t too late. It had been seven days and four hours since I¡¯d stood on my balcony and watched the meteor streak across the sky. It had been daylight, but it had still been a blinding ribbon of light in the sky. Until that day, I¡¯d resigned myself to a reluctant truth - stars didn¡¯t fall anymore. Then, there it had been, in front of my eyes. A star falling. A dungeon being born. It was the sort of opportunity dungeon scholars dreamed of. I¡¯d been tempted to catch the first griffin heading south right that moment. It had been a difficult decision but in the end being prepared was more important. Still, every moment I¡¯d spent in preparation had felt glacial. Now, at last, I had sorted out my affairs, packed for any calamity that might strike on the trip there and beyond, and it was time to depart. ¡°Uncle!¡± My nephew called from the door of my house. Boreas had grown into a strong lad. A man, really. He was nineteen now. Where had the time gone? ¡°Did you remember your cane?¡± I surreptitiously checked my dimensional bag¡¯s inventory, just to be sure. ¡°Of course, of course. Now, come here. I have a gift for you.¡± Boreas¡¯ eyes lit up. He hurried down the path. ¡°What is it?¡± I pulled a scroll cylinder from my robes and offered it to him. Boreas looked at it with puzzlement clear on his face, but he was polite enough not to show he was disappointed.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. ¡°This is the deed to my house. It is yours now, all the paperwork has been completed.¡± ¡°But¡­¡± ¡°You take care of your sister, okay? I¡¯ve left enough gold to last you the year.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not going to return, are you?¡± Boreas clutched the scroll cylinder to his chest, as if it might disappear too. I placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. ¡°My lad, it has been my great honour to raise you and your sister after your parents died. I consider you my own children, I hope you don¡¯t mind me saying -¡± ¡°Of course I don¡¯t mind!¡± Boreas blurted out. I gave a gentle smile. ¡°And I will return, if I can, I promise. If this succeeds, then I will send for you when it is safe. If I don¡¯t succeed, then, I shall be content knowing you and your sister are cared for.¡± I kept my smile strong, but there was unspoken knowledge hanging between us. Boreas knew enough of my work to know that if I didn¡¯t succeed, then none of this would matter anymore. Esiliur would die. I was doing this not just out of scholarly interest. I had been blessed with a family, something I¡¯d never expected. I had been too buried in my books, dedicated to my studies, to ever think of finding a husband or wife with whom to start a family. By the time I¡¯d raised my head from dusty old tomes, I¡¯d been too old to even consider it. Then, Boreas and Chione had come into my life. It had been born of tragedy, but they had become a true family. If the first new dungeon in eons could offer me a chance to protect them, then I¡¯d do anything to make it happen. I pulled Boreas into a firm hug, and he returned it. For a moment, I just let myself appreciate the moment and commit it to memory. ¡°Now, you hear me. Take care of Chione, and I¡¯ll send for you when I can. I need to hurry, or I¡¯ll miss my griffin.¡± I released him reluctantly, and with the help of the driver, clambered into my carriage. Boreas waved as it began to trundle down the street. He waved like the whole world depended on it. My heart gave a pang as I waved back. 7. Boss Creation My two new minions had hatched. They were now wandering around the chamber I¡¯d made for them, exploring the decorations. The Bulwark Blossom was an interesting creature. Did walking plants count as creatures? Either way, it was unlike any plant I¡¯d ever seen in nature. The body was egg shaped and supported by four sturdy leg-roots. From the front of the ¡®egg¡¯, a huge dark grey flower bloomed. It had three enormous petals, arranged in a semi-circle shape, creating a barrier nearly eight feet across. The petals were thick and rubbery, and I imagined they could absorb a physical attack quite effectively. The plant didn¡¯t have eyes but seemed to navigate by detecting vibrations with delicate filaments on the edges of the shield. I decided to nickname it a Bully. The Skythorn, meanwhile, was even stranger. It had an oblate body, about the size of a sheep, the majority of which seemed to be taken up by an air bladder which gave it enough buoyancy to float. The body was covered in soft downy leaves, which seemed to detect vibrations just like the Bully¡¯s filaments. When idle, the Skythorn let itself passively follow the air currents, but if alarmed it could quickly release the contained air in a powerful jet and shoot forward, aiming the large single thorn on its head at the provoker. I could already see how they¡¯d work together. The Bully would soak up damage and hassle adventurers, while the Skythorn could swoop in for high damage aerial strafing. I couldn¡¯t wait to see how adventurers responded. It took me a while to replenish the necessary mana, but by the end of the day I had planted another Bully and two more Skythorns in the second room. Finally, I could get to making a boss, an idea that had been exciting me since I¡¯d unlocked the feature. *** Twelve hours later, I discarded my third attempt at a boss design. This was harder than it looked. None of them were perfect. This was the first boss adventurers would encounter in my dungeon, and it absolutely had to be perfect. The boss arena was a perfectly square room, thirty feet across. I had modeled it on a luxurious study. Heavy wooden paneling, a bronze chandelier that hung from the roof, and a huge wooden desk meant to intimidate anyone who received an audience with its lord. Except for the desk, the room was sparsely furnished, providing plenty of room for the fight to play out. I was happy with the room. I just wasn¡¯t happy with the bosses. I pulled up a different plant this time. I¡¯d tried all my combat oriented plants but none of them felt right. They were each just a variant on something adventurers had already encountered, which felt stale and predictable. So this time I tried the Ancient Ebony Tree instead.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. The tree appeared as a hazy silhouette within the boss arena. For now, it was an inanimate object with no combat abilities. I didn¡¯t even know if I could turn it into a boss, but there was no harm in trying. To create a boss, I had to infuse it with a Title. The exact logic of Titles slightly escaped me, but the basic method I¡¯d used so far involved creating a sentence and then infusing it with mana. With a lot of testing, I¡¯d figured out that it required a noun and a modifying adjective. Inserting different words would modify the output, but I hadn¡¯t figured out how to tell ahead of time what changes a word would make. I really wished I had someone to explain it to me. I could¡¯ve saved hours of trial and error. Either way, I could then determine the level challenge of the boss, which couldn¡¯t be more than my own level, and at last, I had a boss. Well, I would have one if I could make up my mind. With no better ideas, I tried yet another title. Undatus, the Rotten Lord. I pressed the title into the Ancient Ebony Tree. The changes were immediate. Leaves withered and crumbled to ash. The tree¡¯s bark began to flake away, exposing crumbling, rotten wood on the inside that pulsed like a heartbeat. The branches twisted and grew pointed ends, and finally, with a heave, the tree tore itself free from the ground on two thick roots and began to amble slowly forward. It was impressive, and actually quite creepy, but it didn¡¯t fit the theme. Disappointed, I dismissed it. When I picked Faerie Garden, I was trying to avoid the undead, not just take the long way around to being an undead dungeon. I tried again. Azerachus, The Ancient Sentinel In front of me, Azerachus¡¯ trunk thickened and bark hardened into stony plates, making it appear almost petrified. Each plate was divided by fissure like cracks. The whole tree grew taller, until its crown brushed the vaulted ceiling. The branches warped into long, whip-like appendages, and the masses of leaves faded to a dark grey close to the tree¡¯s bark, and finally, gained razor sharp edges. Yes! This was perfect! Without hesitation, I pushed the mana into the boss and let Azerachus spawn. It appeared in the middle of the room, firmly rooted in the ground, but I had no doubt that the whip-branches could reach any corner of the room. It would be a great test of how adventurers had learned to cope with stationary enemies in the first room. Now, I just needed some adventurers to test my boss on. Well, first I needed to do one last thing. I needed to relocate my core. I didn¡¯t have the mana to do any more major work today, but I could do that. Beyond the boss room, I shaped the next chamber. It would only be a temporary home for my core, as I planned to move it backwards with each new room I created, but for now it was the most defensible spot I had available. I reinforced the walls so they were twice as thick, and then I gently willed my core to float and navigated it into the new core room, where I set it on a pedestal in the middle of the room. Hopefully that would keep it safe for now. 8. Tower of Hubris Kyther¡¯s Theory of Mana states that Aether (Anti-Mana) and Quintessence (Mana) apply an equal opposing force upon each other, and that Quintessence-Aether pairings will annihilate each other. - The Physical and Meta-Physical by Garmon of Torley
No one had come. My dungeon sat waiting, and no adventurers had appeared. Not that I was eager to see them, since for every adventurer simply seeking wealth and levels, I was sure there would be someone hungry and greedy enough to eye my core as a potential prize. I did seemingly need them to grow my core, and then perhaps have a chance of getting off this mudball before it came to a messy end. And I expected them sooner. Surely my fall had been seen across half the world. It seemed unlikely anyone had missed a fireball streaking across the sky. Had it been so long since a star fell that they¡¯d forgotten what it meant? At last after the first day of waiting, my Queen¡¯s Robes was finally ready. It didn¡¯t look like much. The plant was about four feet tall, with scraggly branches growing off a woody central trunk. The leaves, if that was even the right word for them, were more interesting. Fluffy, fur-like fibres grew all along the branches. I imagined they would do a good job deterring your average predator - a mouthful of fluff didn¡¯t sound appetising. However, I couldn¡¯t figure out a use for it just by looking for it. I checked the System menu to see if it had given me any clues.
Plant Name Climate Properties Growing Time Mana Cost Damage Type
Queen¡¯s Robes (Mollusca regina) Subtropical The soft, downy leaves of Queen''s Robe may be spun into a fine silk. 48 hrs 2 N/A
I looked at the leaves again. I couldn¡¯t see it myself, but I knew mortals liked soft things, so perhaps it would make for an interesting loot item. I¡¯d have to see if I could craft the fabric myself. Or perhaps if I just put the plant inside the dungeon, as a gathering objective¡­ Maybe a safezone they could access in between minion rooms. I¡¯d have to think on it. Still, I didn¡¯t bother planting more of them for now. Two more days passed without any sign of adventurers, so I spent the time relocating my gardens to large walled outdoor areas, freeing up the temple as a receiving area, and planting Mana Blooms when I had spare mana. I had boosted my daily mana growth up to 23 by day three. When I finished laying out my gardens, with plenty of room for expansion, I had nothing immediately pressing to do , so I decided I needed to be able to see more of the world beyond my dungeon. My area of influence had expanded quite a bit, but I was still strained to an extra barely a few hundred feet beyond the temple. So far the upper limit to my influence had remained the same. But I had an idea to test that.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it *** Long ago, a great mortal king had built a grand tower to reach towards the heavens. I thought I should know his name, but when I tried to reach for the memory, it was shrouded in mist. I tried to push the mist aside, but pain shot through my core, and I relented with frustration. I wondered where my core fragments had landed. Perhaps they were lost forever. What was the use of ten thousands of years of memory if I couldn¡¯t remember what mattered? Still, I remembered the tower well enough. It had been futile - no object of stone could reach all the way to the sky. But it had been grand and beautiful, a testament to the ingenuity and hubris of mortals. I¡¯d always wished I could¡¯ve stood upon its pinnacle. I set to work on it through the night. I was able to see just as well in darkness or light, and didn¡¯t need sleep, and I had nothing else to do while I waited, so it only made sense. I located a spot on the open plain in front of the temple, where the bedrock was solid, and first laid a foundation of solid stone, one hundred feet square. Then I raised massive stone walls on each of the four sides, to a height of two hundred feet. The walls tapered, getting thinner towards the top, and I carefully smoothed any imperfection in the stone as I worked. I didn¡¯t know how much weight the walls could take, so I supported the whole structure with another central column of stone, around which I wrapped a spiral staircase. The next floor was in the shape of an octangle, fifty feet across, and with stone walls a hundred feet tall. This allowed room for a large ledge around the base of the octangle, which I decorated with statues of some of the beasts from the temple¡¯s ceiling mosaics. The original tower had featured four huge statues of an ancient god, but instead I placed dragons, griffons, serpents and humanoid creatures with horned heads and large leathery wings. Sculpting was getting easier each time, and once I¡¯d made one statue, it was easy enough to copy it to another location. My core seemed to store a copy of things I¡¯d built, and I just had to will that copy into existence instead of focussing on the details one by one. Even if no one else ever saw my menagerie of statues, they pleased me. Half way through building the octangle itself I reached the limit of my influence. Previously, even with mana, I hadn¡¯t been able to force my influence to go higher. Now, when the stone reached the limit and stopped growing, I pushed some mana into expanding my area in a square the width and breadth of the tower. At first, it seemed like nothing would happen. Then the System seemed to catch up to what I¡¯d done and it started growing again. As I¡¯d thought, the upper limit had been a product of distance from the ground, or perhaps my structures. By building the tower, I had convinced the System to raise its limit. It felt good to have figured out a rule like that with no one to explain it to me. Now with more room to build, on top of the octangle I placed a final cylindrical segment, twenty five feet across and fifty feet tall. I used bronze to create tiles for a dome, and at the very pinnacle of the dome, I built a viewing platform, surrounded with a low fence of bronze filigree. If I ever figured out a way to have a physical body, I¡¯d enjoy standing here and watching the sky like mortals did. It was something to look forward to. I recalled my memories of the original tower and realised I¡¯d forgotten something. There had been a statue on the pinnacle of the original. It had been a statue of a mythical figure, but I had a better idea. I formed a small pedestal in the middle of the viewing platform, and started to work. The memories were fuzzy, but unlike his name, I could still mostly see what the tower¡¯s builder had looked like. Strong and tall, glad in gleaming bronze armour. Everything the heroes in stories always were. It had seemed almost a given that he would ascend as a god core upon death. Yet he hadn¡¯t. I¡¯d waited, and he hadn¡¯t come. Why had I waited? What had I been expecting? I stared at my finished statue. The face was blank, empty, just a smooth half-sphere of stone. I couldn¡¯t remember his face. I turned away, unable to look at it any longer. I hovered there and gazed out, over the jungles that surrounded my temple. There were more ruined buildings out there, almost swallowed by the tangle slowly growing over it all. In another decade, there would¡¯ve been no sign this place had ever existed. Did anyone else remember the hero and his tower? Had it too been overtaken by nature, or buried deep in the ground? As the sun rose over the landscape, it turned the horizon golden and red and blue. It was beautiful, I reluctantly admitted to myself. I narrowed my vision. There was something odd about the horizon. 9. Bad Luck Ario I hated guard duty. There were many odious jobs I could¡¯ve been stuck doing instead. Latrine duty would be better than guarding Dread Lord Naya¡¯s office today. The idea that I would be able to stop anyone who''d made it past the level 10 hero cores on the castle walls, and had come in here with the intent (and presumably the capability) to kill Dread Lord Naya, the most powerful hero core in the kingdom, was almost funny. Almost because it would probably be very painful for me if that happened. But the boss wanted guards so she got them. It wasn¡¯t my place to question, but like a great number of things Naya did, I suspected it was about appearances more than practicality. Not that anyone asked the opinion of a level three Jinx. Commander Iroxi had arrived half an hour ago, and Naya¡¯s voice had been growing in volume ever since. Whatever news he had delivered, it had made her furious. At least the crashing sounds had stopped after the first ten minutes. I figured, from the direction and pattern of the sounds, Naya had been throwing things. Sometimes, I caught a few words. ¡°Dungeon¡±, ¡°star¡±, ¡°a thousand years¡±, ¡°useless shitbag¡±, and ¡°I¡¯ll kill that swine Siculus¡±. Siculus was easy enough - he was Hyracid¡¯s Dread Lord, and Naya¡¯s foremost rival, and Iroxi was presumably the useless shitbag. Or maybe that was personal bias speaking. As for the rest, I was stumped. But I wasn¡¯t paid for my smarts. Heck, I was barely paid at all. The soul contract meant I didn¡¯t even have a choice in the matter either way. I didn¡¯t have any warning before the doors flew open with enough force to hit the wall, making a loud bang echo through the hall. I narrowly avoided being squashed like a bug by jumping aside. Naya exited first, snarling insults at Iroxi, Siculus¡¯ name, and the world in general. Naya could be best described as¡­ severe. She was as pale as bone, her face all sharp angles like it had been hewn from marble, but by a sculptor who hadn''t quite grasped how to do facial features yet. She was tall and slender, and her almost skeletal frame made her look taller. Today, a body hugging dress made of a black material that looked like thousands of tiny scales had been sewn together added to the illusion. Her midnight black hair writhed like a halo of shadows, and she floated several inches above the floor, gliding instead of walking. Iroxi followed after her, puffing and panting, but quietly accepting her abuse. He had a yellow-green bruise forming over one eye. I guessed one of Naya¡¯s impromptu missiles had found its aim. I stayed quiet, and hoped that neither of them would notice me. For a moment, it seemed like they would walk right past. Naya was absorbed in her tirade. She threw in a few insults that made me blush, and my mother had been a sailor. One involved an implausible sexual position and a dragon. But I knew better than to expect good things to happen to me. Good things did not happen to Ario Shadowscale. Perhaps it was a family curse, or a quirk of my class, but I always seemed to have the worst luck imaginable. Naya noticed me in the corner of her eye, and stopped mid way through describing exactly how she wished Siculus would die - a manner that seemed to involve a lot more dragons. ¡°Iroxi, who is that?¡± I tried my best to look smaller as Iroxi¡¯s turned to look at me. ¡°One of the guards, my liege.¡± She narrowed her eyes and tapped two black fingernails together. ¡°A Jinx? I thought the last Jinx in my army died.¡± The room grew colder. My arms freckled with goosebumps.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°This is his son,¡± Iroxi said. Naya smiled. Her teeth were sharpened to points, giving the impression of the mouth of a shark. ¡°Perfect. Jinx, you are reassigned. Iroxi, get it a wyvern and tell it what to do.¡± Iroxi stammered an answer, but Naya had already turned and swept down the hall. He and I both stared after her with dual dismay. Iroxi turned to me slowly with a heavy sigh. ¡°Very well. Follow me, jinx.¡± ¡°My name is Ario.¡± Iroxi made a pig-like snort. ¡°Did I ask? The Dread Lord wants you to be our scout. So you shall be. Try not to die, as it will be me who was to inform her of your failure. Now, follow me, and I will get you a wyvern.¡± I¡¯d thought my gut couldn¡¯t sink any lower when Naya had looked at me. Now, I processed Iroxi¡¯s words and wished the floor would swallow me up. My tongue seemed to have become an impossible knot, and the words wouldn¡¯t come. Finally, I managed to croak out something colossally useless. ¡°I¡¯m not a rogue.¡± Great, that would convince him. Iroxi rolled his eyes and turned on his heel. He marched down the hall, in the opposite direction to the way Naya had gone. I stumbled as I tried to find my feet, and then jogged after him. Iroxi was quick for a short man and he¡¯d nearly reached the end of the corridor while I had been frozen. I already knew what happened to those who disobeyed Naya. My father had been a clear lesson. I had no choice but to follow him and find out what exactly I was scouting. *** ¡°A dungeon. I¡¯m supposed to find a dungeon that no one even knows the location of. Who¡¯s ever heard of new dungeons?¡± I muttered to myself as I worked to strap the saddle onto the back of a purple wyvern. She shot me hostile glares from under its armoured brows. There had only been a single wyvern in the stables when Iroxi had dumped me with the stablemaster and instructed her to find me a mount. A grumpy purple that seemed to be considering eating me instead of letting me ride it. She had tried to bite my fingers off when I put the bit in its mouth. Still, I couldn¡¯t blame her too much. I wouldn¡¯t enjoy having a piece of metal in my mouth either. "We''re stuck together, so suck it up, Purple" I said. I patted the wyvern''s scaly flank and vaulted into the saddle. ¡°Do you want to be the one to tell Dread Lord Naya no?¡± Purple gave a withering glare, which might¡¯ve just been because she was affronted I¡¯d climbed in the saddle, but I choose to take as my answer. ¡°Thought not.¡± I checked my dimensional bag¡¯s inventory one last time, and not finding an excuse to delay any longer, I clucked my tongue and gave the wyvern¡¯s side a nudge with my boots. ¡°Giddy up.¡± Purple jerked forward, jostling me roughly. I held on with everything I had as she sped up, her uneven gait giving a good impression of how it might feel to ride an angry bull - no one had ever accused wyverns of being graceful on the ground. Purple picked up speed on a beeline towards the edge of the aerie, and then, at the last second, launched herself off the ledge and into the open air. For one terrifying moment, I thought she would miss her cue and plummet us both to our deaths, but then her wings snapped open and caught the wind. I dragged in a heavening breath and squeezed my eyes shut, and tried not to look at the fast shrinking landscape below. I had remembered just how much I hated heights. What god had I pissed off to make this my life? At least, for how ungainly she was on the ground, Purple was a graceful flier. I could barely feel that we were moving. Slowly, I pried my eyes open. It was easier to maintain a prone position, instead of trying to resist the wind, so I let myself lay along her neck. Wyvern saddles were designed with this in mind, and a leather guard protected me from being cut to bits by her scales, and my riding hood kept the worst of the wind off my face, leaving just a slit for my eyes. Carefully, I pulled out my map. The land below me was starting to sketch itself out as the magic in the parchment did its job. Theoretically, my target was somewhere west of Marin, but not so far west as to be in Baras. If my luck was its usual self, the star had fallen into the Aether Sea and no one would ever find it. Maybe that would be for the best. Naya already had one dungeon under her sway. Two would tip the balance of power in Naya¡¯s direction, which would be good for no one. I carefully tucked the map away in my inner pocket and sighed. ¡°Just half a world to search. Should be easy, right, Purple?¡± 10. Island in the Sky I was on an island. It had taken me a moment to recall how to focus my vision on the horizon. Though it wasn¡¯t obviously listed in my abilities, and I could no longer look just anywhere, I still seemed to have something resembling my starsight. At least, I could focus on things a few miles outside my influence and enhance my view. It wasn¡¯t quite the same as actually moving my point of view there, and I couldn¡¯t hear anything, but I could see, which was all I needed right now. What I saw made my hopes drop. At the edge, where there should be sea lapping at the shore, there was only a sudden drop. The land was jagged and broken, like the island had been torn from its moorings in the earth. I couldn¡¯t fathom the massive force it must¡¯ve taken to tear a landmass this size free. I peaked over the edge, dreading what I¡¯d see. The cliff dropped away suddenly, and a vast blue ocean spread out far beneath. Well, it resembled an ocean, but the blue was too¡­ blue, and there were no waves. It glowed with its own faint light. It had to be the Aether Sea, but how exactly I was floating above it was beyond my understanding of magic. Logically, the island should be annihilated by the aether. It was disquieting to watch. So perfectly still and serene, yet so deadly. Potentially my core could survive being submerged in aether, but I didn¡¯t feel like testing that my immunity to aether had been retained when I¡¯d become a Dungeon Core. Nothing else on my island would survive, all physical matter was destroyed by aether. It was an immutable fact of existence. I retreated back to my area of influence and thought about it. The sea had been slowly creeping across the face of the world since its appearance, consuming the land bite by bite. Had this been what Tamyris meant when she said Esiliur was already doomed? The Aether Sea had appeared ¡­ I tried to recall. Sometimes time jumbled itself up when you¡¯d lived as long as me, and the holes in my memory weren¡¯t helping. A thousand years ago seemed about right, give or take a few centuries. If it was spreading as rapidly as that, maybe Tamyris was right. Esiliur had only had a few centuries left, even without my fall accelerating the flow of aether through the hole in the sphere. The island had clearly floated here for a long time, so it wasn¡¯t in immediate danger of collapsing into the aether. That was good. But how were adventurers supposed to reach me? On one hand, I was probably fairly safe. A floating island surrounded by a deadly ocean was great for defensive purposes. On the other hand, that wouldn¡¯t matter if the world died in nine months. I needed power if I wanted to survive. I didn¡¯t know how to solve the problem, and my mind burned from pushing at my faded memories. I withdrew to my core, and tried to rest. *** Stars shared an inability to sleep with Dungeon Cores. But I could hibernate, only half aware of the outside world, just as I had when I dwelt in the heavens. Time passed rapidly in that state, and if I wasn¡¯t careful, I could lose years. There had been a period in the early dark age where mortals had been proving unbearably dull - so much death, plague and senseless regression. I¡¯d decided to rest for a moment and next thing I knew, I¡¯d lost fifty years. This time, it was only a few days, but when I emerged, there was someone on my island. It had been his knocking that roused me. He was pacing back and forth in front of the great bronze doors of the temple, and occasionally, he¡¯d stop and knock his first on the metal for a few minutes. When he received no answer, he resumed trying to wear a rut into my lovely stonework. He was an old man of indeterminate old age. Human I thought, though there are species who look almost exactly human externally, so it wasn¡¯t a guarantee. He wore a dark robe made of a fine but plain fabric. He was a man of means then, but one with enough nous to choose something practical rather than showy. A huge tome floated lazily in his wake, held aloft by some sort of magic. It was a beautiful, ornate object, nearly the size of a man¡¯s torso, bound in leather. The cover was set with five large orange stones, each at the point of a golden pentagram. He had to be a mage of some sort to own such a thing. On principle, I disliked mages - magic often corrupted mortals, or at least, many of the worst mortals I¡¯d observed had used magic to their ends. But this one had knocked, instead of just blasting down my front door, so at least he didn¡¯t intend to kill me immediately. Or he was very polite about it. It didn¡¯t matter. I couldn¡¯t talk to him anyway, and he was clearly too high level to delve my dungeon. If he was a scholar, I had no interest in being peppered with questions. If he was a treasure seeker, I had no treasure. I¡¯d just wait until he got bored and left. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Actually, that raised the question. How had he reached my island? I left him pacing at the door and searched around the island. It didn¡¯t take very long to find the creature he¡¯d used. It was like someone had taken a lion and an eagle and squashed them together, and then inflated it to the size of a dragon. A griffin, but the biggest one I¡¯d ever seen. A gondola was lashed to its back for comfortable transport. Right now, it was picking through the low plants at the edge of the jungle, probably searching for the small animals hiding there, and apparently content to entertain itself while its owner was bothering me. This was good. If one person could find me, others could. I might have a chance to level up. On the other hand, if they brought more creatures the size of the griffin and next time they were hostile¡­ I didn¡¯t like the thought at all. I¡¯d have to rig up some sort of aerial defenses for the island. Perhaps there was a plant I could use for that, though I wasn¡¯t sure what it would be yet. I spent a moment contemplating my plant list, but no matter how I tried to puzzle it out, none of the plants I had access to right now seemed useful. Frustratingly, when I looked back at my front doors, the mage was still there. Didn¡¯t he know that closed doors meant no one was home? At least, I thought that was the reason mortals had doors in the first place. I glared at him fruitlessly. Go away! Nobody is home! As bold as every other time, he marched up to the door and knocked on it with his closed fist. Fine. I opened the doors with more flair than was strictly necessary. The man nearly tumbled over, not expecting the solid surface he was pounding on to suddenly retreat. He righted himself quickly and smiled broadly when he saw what lay beyond the door. I looked at my temple again, but it didn¡¯t seem all that exciting to me. It was still empty, because I hadn¡¯t decided what to put there. I¡¯d restored all the damage from my fall, so it just looked like a mustering old building, though a grand one. The mage¡¯s tome followed him as he strode into the temple, neck straining to take in the mosaic ceiling and eyes shining with delight. He talked to himself as he walked. ¡°A temple to Sunxa, I think. Beautifully preserved. Perhaps the one at Alypia?¡± He reached the center of the temple and made a complete turn. ¡°Now, where are you hiding?¡± I¡¯m not hiding, I said with anger. ¡°Yes, you are.¡± I could¡¯ve sworn he spoke as if he¡¯d heard me, but that was impossible. Even Tamyris hadn¡¯t been able to hear me, and she was a god. This random human mage definitely couldn¡¯t. Your mother was a hamster. He tutted. ¡°Now, that¡¯s not very nice. My mother was a lovely woman, and only resembled a hamster a little.¡± You can hear me?! ¡°Yes, I can. Would you mind making a chair? It has been a long journey and my legs aren¡¯t as young as they used to be.¡± I was reluctant to do anything this strange mage asked, but if he could really hear me¡­ maybe he could help? With a thought, I formed a chair next to the mage. He waited until the motes of mana had finished solidifying the structure, and then sat down with a sigh of relief. ¡°That¡¯s better.¡± Who are you? He started to massage the back of his neck, working out a knot. ¡°Youngsters have no patience these days.¡± I¡¯m not young. I resented the suggestion. ¡°Your dungeon seems plenty young.¡± I¡¯m older than your species, you little - ¡°Now, now, is that any way to speak to your guests? Why don¡¯t we start with introductions? I am Cixilo Brakshur, the world¡¯s foremost scholar on dungeons, and you are?¡± I toyed with not answering him, but what harm could a name do? Mizar. He waved his hand, and the magical tome floated closer and then flipped open. Cixilo flipped through the pages, his tongue poking out as he thought hard. I tried to peak over his shoulder to read, but the text just turned into a messy blur, like someone had smudged wet ink. It had to be some sort of anti-spying charm. After several moments, seemingly Cixilo finally found what he wanted. ¡°Ah, yes. Mizar, the southernmost star of the constellation Tonao. I thought I¡¯d noticed you missing.¡± At least someone did. What did humans call the expression when they sulked? Pouting. I was pouting. ¡°It is good to make your acquaintance, Mizar. Am I the first to arrive?¡± Yes. Cixilo crossed one leg over the other, careful and precise, and tipped his head back to look at the ceiling again. ¡°No doubt others will be close behind me. I had some advantages, but so will they. Then, as much as I¡¯d like to rest, we¡¯d better begin. Where to start?¡± I considered the strange mage. What was he talking about? So far he¡¯d explained very little. Yet he seemed to be waiting for an answer from me. How about the beginning? Cixilo smiled toothily. ¡°Marvelous suggestion.¡± 11. In the Beginning It has long been the theory that cores may, given the right conditions, form spontaneously, and by existing exert a force upon the universe that causes it to self-organise. This is the presiding theory explaining the origin of the System. I however propose an opposing model. Imagine, will you, an infinite number of letters, cast of metal. By the rule of chance, if you throw them upon the ground infinite times, then it is almost sure that eventually, one might recreate the words of the Mazaeid. In the same manner, I argue that given the infinite time of before - when the world was but a formless void (as posited by Cratis of Sumania) - and an infinite number of possible ways for the universe to organise itself, it was inevitable that the laws of reality should self-organise intelligently. This I propose to call the emergent System model. - Systemics by Eudacia the Witch
¡°Of course, the problem is in determining what even constitutes the beginning. The eternal, paradoxical question - which came first, the cores or the System? Personally, I favour Kyther¡¯s theory of spontaneous core generation, however Eudacia the Witch¡¯s emergent System model has its strong points -¡± Well, obviously it was the cores. Cixilo straightened up. ¡°What do you mean?¡± We - that is the stars - were already here when the System began. Everybody knows that. Therefore, cores came first. Cixilo pulled his tome towards him and flipped it open. ¡°I assure you, everybody does not know that. In fact, this could change everything else. You must tell me more.¡± He produced a large quill with a blue shimmering feather and posed it over the paper, prepped to write. ¡°Where did the stars come from? How long did they exist before the System existed? Who or what made the System?¡± I gave the mental equivalent of a human shrugging, and then remembered Cixilo couldn¡¯t see that. I appreciate the questions, and I can try to answer some of them later, but perhaps we could start with why you¡¯re here? Cixilo¡¯s shoulders briefly slumped. ¡°I apologise. When a mystery needs answering, I can get rather distracted. But you¡¯re right. Time is of the essence.¡± He put away the quill with reluctance. ¡°I will try to be brief, but as my nephew Boreas often says, I probably gave a lecture to the midwife who delivered me.¡± ¡°As I said earlier, I am the foremost scholar of dungeons, though I admit that there are very few dungeon scholars at all. There have been no new dungeons since the Fading Age. Which was, suffice to say, a long time ago. What few dungeons that are still alive are from that time, and they¡¯re jealously guarded. It rather makes learning about dungeons a difficult proposition.¡± Cixilo stood up and began to pace. ¡°Nonetheless, I have learned everything I could. I became a Scribe so I could peek behind the veil, so to speak. Are you familiar with Scribes?¡± My knowledge of hero classes is limited to knowing that some of them use swords, and some of them throw fireballs, and I¡¯m pretty sure I once saw a man who could detach his own head. I have watched from afar, but the specifics are hard to ascertain from a heavenly vantage point. ¡°Dullahans. A very strange class indeed,¡± Cixilo mused. ¡°Very well. You know of the penta theory of party composition?¡± Again, no. ¡°Classes are organised into one of four groups. Damage dealers, supporters, utilities and tanks. The penta theory is the presiding wisdom that every party should have two damages, and one each of the other roles, for a complete party of five. There is more to it than that, but it isn¡¯t necessary right now.¡± Cixilo glanced around the huge, empty temple. ¡°This would be easier with a chalkboard.¡± This was probably useful information, but I was impatient to know the strange mortal¡¯s point. Perhaps we can skip to the relevant part? Cixilo sighed. ¡°Yes, I suppose you¡¯re right. A Scribe is a utility caster - which is any ranged magic user. Utility classes are useful in dungeons, since many of them can disarm traps, buff their party members and so forth. Some of the most powerful classes are utility classes, but in return they have little in the way of damage.¡± I was growing increasingly frustrated and my next words came out in the telepathic equivalent of a growl. How does this relate to your point? Cixilo ignored my snappishness and continued to pace the floor, his book always bobbing along behind him. Each time he turned around suddenly, it narrowly avoided colliding with him, somersaulting out of the way before it righted itself and hurried to find its place again. ¡°Scribes are a utility class who can access the System more directly than other classes. A Scribe skill, System Speak, is why I can speak to you. Let me show you.¡±Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. There was a disconcerting sensation, like something was being squeezed into my mind, and then an image of a System message appeared. It was different to viewing my own messages, rather like I was viewing a facsimile of the real thing.
Skill Name Prerequisites Class Restrictions Mana Cost Description
System Speak Level 7 Scribe 0 You may eavesdrop on High Core telepathic communication nearby, and speak telepathically to High Cores. You may also access High Core patchnotes and System messages.
I can see why that is useful. Cixilo nodded firmly. ¡°Very. Though I¡¯ve never had cause to use the first part. You are the first High Core I¡¯ve encountered directly. Being able to access patchnotes and System messages, however, is immensely useful to my studies.¡± I suppose, a little over a week ago, you saw the same message as me then. ¡°End of the world in nine months? I did.¡± Cixilo sat down heavily and ran his fingers through his thin, silvery hair. ¡°I also witnessed the blazing light as you fell from the heavens, and I knew that I had to come at once. I had to tell you something very important.¡± Which is? ¡°You are in great danger. The truth is, dungeons are essential. They transform raw mana into usable soul power, which allows heroes to level up, and into loot, which drives the economy. Most importantly, they were a neutral power that no single mage or hero could control. I won¡¯t pretend the age of dungeons was an egalitarian utopia, but they offered a way for the lowly to rise to power which no tyrant could prevent.¡± Cixilo ran his fingers through his hair again in some effort to focus himself. ¡°However, with a shortage of dungeons, there were fewer and fewer ways to gain soul power. At first, kingdoms went to war over control of existing dungeons, fighting over the shrinking pool of scraps.¡± Like fish in a shrinking pond, eating each other until the last one suffocates. It was a sad tale I¡¯d watched happen from the heavens, but without context. I had seen the battle lines being drawn, but knew nothing of what they had fought for. ¡°Yes, I suppose that is an apt metaphor. But imagine, will you, the fish knows its fate and seeks to avert it. It might do anything to survive. What if it did something truly evil in the name of survival?¡± I¡¯m afraid I¡¯ve rather lost the metaphor now. The fish are mortals, right? ¡°I suppose so have I.¡± Cixilo gave a weary chuckle. ¡°A group of powerful mages came together in that dark age. They called themselves the Dread Ones, hardly a subtle name. Whether their motivations were mere selfishness or well intentioned stupidity, they trapped a god¡­ and then they killed her.¡± I knew some of this next part. Otina. A kind, gentle creature who had only sought to give mortals a safe journey to the next life. A pang of anger mixed with grief, creating a cocktail of painful feelings, rose up inside me. ¡°Indeed. The Dread Ones killed the goddess of death, and they gained her power over souls. Even if they had been well intentioned, that sort of sin and that sort of power changed them. They used it to destroy the other gods, enslave the dungeons of the world, and become tyrants. Without doubt, they know you have fallen and they will come for you. To control you, or destroy you if they cannot control you.¡± Do you always bring such happy news when you meet a new person? I was frustrated, and it came out in my tone. Sorry. ¡°Anger is an understandable response. You didn¡¯t ask for this,¡± Cixilo said softly. If Cixilo was right, then I ¡­ I didn¡¯t know. My own memories, however broken, served me well enough to confirm parts of his story, so it seemed likely the rest was the truth. How could I fight beings like that? I was a level one dungeon. No adventurers had even arrived yet. What should I do? Cixilo smiled. A big, broad grin that made him seem slightly unhinged. ¡°You¡¯re in luck, as it happens.¡± With a flourish, he produced a rock from his inventory. A small rock that sat in the middle of his palm. It was pretty, but unassuming. A half sphere, polished until the black surface reflected Cixilo¡¯s face. It might¡¯ve been obsidian. But somehow I knew it wasn¡¯t. I moved closer to the object, until my vision pressed right up against it. When I reached out to touch it with my dungeon senses, it was simply absent. There was nothing to analyse or absorb. The longer I looked at it, the more I got the impression it wasn¡¯t quite here. Like it was the echo, or reflection, of something somewhere else. Okay, I give up. What is it? ¡°This cost me a small fortune to acquire. It is a piece of a godcore.¡± What?! I recoiled from the stone. I only remembered it couldn¡¯t touch my disembodied presence a moment later. I was glad Cixilo couldn¡¯t see me, it was an embarrassing reflex. ¡°I am, frankly, not sure which god it came from, but in any case it should be very useful. All you have to do is absorb it into your dungeon core, and it will greatly empower you.¡± There is no way I¡¯m absorbing a ¡­ a god core. An unknown core that could do anything. Besides, that¡¯d be like a mortal eating the bodies of the dead! Cixilo frowned. He held up the god core to his eyes and watched his own reflection. ¡°I see your point, but would you rather be the dead in that metaphor?" 12. Piece of a Dead God Hearths are mystical places, sacred to the goddess Tamyris, where in the absence of a psychopomp to guide them to the afterlife, souls come to resurrect and return to this world. Hearths are tended by hearthkeepers, and by the Order of Holy Sisters. - Sacred and Divine by Melodia the Priestess
I was being irrational. I knew it. It still didn¡¯t make me any happier at the prospect of absorbing a piece of a dead god. A very small piece, but still. I¡¯d made Cixilo a trough of water for his griffin, and retreated. I needed something to occupy my mind, so I turned my attention to improving my defenses. It was easy enough to carve a gargoyle for the roof of my dungeon, and position it on eaves, with a small wedge of stone holding it up. With a thought, I could dissolve the stone and they would slide off the roof and plummet onto the heads of anyone walking below. Once I¡¯d made one, I started copying it with barely a thought. What had my life become? I was constructing weapons of death, with the very real chance I¡¯d have to fight for my right to live. I¡¯d never thought very hard about whether I had a moral code. Stars didn¡¯t have property to steal, there was no death or murder, and we didn¡¯t succumb to temptations of lust like mortals did. The worst crime I could¡¯ve committed in the heavens was being very rude to another star. But intrinsically, wasn¡¯t consuming the core of another being pretty high up on the list of things you just didn¡¯t do? On the other hand, I was probably going to die if I didn¡¯t, and then other beings - beings who were probably as close to truly evil as it was possible to be - would consume my core to grow stronger. And then the world would probably die. Maybe the Dread Lords and the other powerful hero cores would find a way to escape that end, but for the majority of people on Esiliur, it would be curtains. There would be no hearths left to resurrect at, and their souls would drift in the ruins of their homes. I¡¯d watched mortals for most of their history, and I knew they could be cruel beings, but I¡¯d seen too many moments of joy, happiness, creation and love to be willing to sacrifice them all. Even if my own survival wasn¡¯t at stake, I¡¯d have wanted to do something to save them. It seemed obvious overcoming my personal misgivings about the whole thing was the right thing to do. But why did it have to be me? The gods and other dungeons had their chances and they¡¯d wasted them. That wasn¡¯t my fault. I allowed myself a moment of selfish frustration at their failures. It didn¡¯t help, but it made me feel better. I finished placing gargoyles, and turned my attention to aerial defense. I took the tower I¡¯d built once before, and copied it, building a second one on the opposite side of the island. It felt fitting to fill my island with copies of the tower that the gods had hated so much, and it would be a good vantage point to watch the skies. My influence had been expanding even while I hibernated, and it covered about half of my island. When it reached the edge of the land, I¡¯d have to add more watch towers further out. Maybe I could rig up some sort of alarm system to alert me if enemies were approaching without having to always be watching the skies? I¡¯d have to investigate that.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. With no further jobs to waste my time on, I turned my attention back to Cixilo. He was unloading his griffin, clearly intent on staying. What a frustrating, strange mortal. I couldn¡¯t puzzle him out. He claimed to merely be a scholar, and said he wanted to help me, but could I trust him? I shoved away that little voice whispering not to trust anybody. Cixilo had done nothing to show he was anything but what he said. He¡¯d been honest with me. When had I become so paranoid? Did dungeons always live in fear of being betrayed? It sounded exhausting. It felt exhausting. I¡¯ll do it. Cixilo let out a surprised yelp and dropped the pack he was holding. He whirled around, a hand clasped over his heart. I could hear it beating faster. Then his shoulders relaxed. ¡°Warn me next time, wouldn¡¯t you? It is going to take me a while to get used to disembodied voices sneaking up on me.¡± Sorry. He picked up the pack and shook off the dust, then slung it over a nearby rock. ¡°Very well. Since we don¡¯t have time to waste, would you mind directing me to your core?¡± I hadn¡¯t even considered I would need to give Cixilo access to my core. An innate instinct told me not to let anybody near my core. I pushed through the spike of anxiety. Follow me. I hadn¡¯t thought those words through. Uh, I mean¡­ walk around the back of the temple and I¡¯ll make you a path. *** Cixilo stood in my core room. I hadn¡¯t decorated the chamber - I¡¯d hardly been expecting guests - so it was simply an empty stone cube with my core sitting on a pedestal in the center. Every instinct told me to make him leave immediately. They told me that having people near my core was innately wrong. My core glowed a dull red colour, despite my best attempts to keep a handle on my spiking panic. It made the walls look as if they were carved from dried blood. Cixilo, seemingly unperturbed by the light show, produced the god core shard from his inventory and stepped towards my core. ¡°With your permission?¡± Go on. What I wanted to say was hurry up, but that was my anxiety speaking. Cixilo cradled the shard like a baby. He took one step, then another, and he was in reach. He carefully placed the piece of not-obsidian on the apex of my core. I didn¡¯t have to consciously absorb it. The moment crystal touched crystal, it sank into my core, like not-diamond and not-obsidian had both become liquid. It was an unnerving thing to see, something that seemed to break every rule of how solids and liquids worked. Once it was consumed, the god core shard dissolved into inky liquid that spread through my crystal, leaving a discoloured streak in its wake. It felt cold, followed by hot, and then a deep sense of wrong. My core wasn¡¯t meant to look like that, feel like that. The red light grew brighter and brighter. Get it out. Get it out! I begged Cixilo. Cixilo¡¯s eyes widened in horror. Mortals vomit when they feel sick, but there were no muscles for me to contract, and no stomach to empty. I couldn¡¯t do anything to relieve the nausea except pray to long dead gods that it would pass. My vision had started to turn white at the edges. The red light grew brighter and brighter. The red light was me, wasn¡¯t it? I had the presence of mind to throw open the door and transform the stone beneath Cixilo¡¯s feet into a ramp that pushed him out onto the grass outside. I slammed the door behind him. It was barely in time. The red light became all consuming, chasing away the shadows and filling the room with searing heat. I was sure, deep down, I was about to die. 13. System Schism
Incongruity detected. Please do not attemp - [Error]. 28041948. Incompatible core fusion attempted. [Error]. 28041948. System Wide Warning: Localised System break in progress. Local Godcores alerted. ¡­. System Wide Warning: [Error]. No Godcores found to assist. Warning: [world: Esiliur] undergoing emergency schism from the System. ¡­ [Error]. 28041948.
Pain. So much pain.
[Error]. 28041948.
The errors flashed, again and again. As fast as they went, more came. Always the same. Yelling at me. Punishing me for what I had done. I¡¯d thought falling had hurt. This was worse. Surely, this time I had died. Everything was red. So much red.
[Error]. 28041948.
Go away, I begged it, but the System didn¡¯t answer to feeble pleas from foolish stars. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. If I had died, where was I? Did stars have an afterlife? How would I even get to the hypothetical afterlife when Otina was dead? I shoved away the error message, and this time, mercifully, no more came. What had I done to end up like this? Cixilo, the god core shard, attempting to fuse with it. It came back to me in pieces. How arrogant had I been to think it was a good idea? I checked over my core. It was intact. I thanked my luck for small mercies. I wasn¡¯t dead then. The red light was me. I was still in my core chamber. Another message popped up, and I almost dismissed it on reflex before I saw it wasn¡¯t another error.
Patch Notes (Esiliur System 0.1):
  • New Localised system established. Designated Esiliur System (version 0.1). We are sorry for any inconvenience caused by this alpha build.
  • [Entity: Mother, Maiden, Crone] designated as local System admin.
  • [Class: Dread Lord] daily mana growth reduced by 50%.
  • [Class: Jinx] gained a new specialization option: Agamede.
  • SP costs are reduced for all classes.
  • New Damage Type: Deep
  • Crows have gained +1 ARC.
  • [Class: Hearth Sister] gained resistance to Deep damage.
  • New class introduced. [Class: Chloromancer].
  • It is temporarily free for all hero cores to respec.
  • [Entity: Mazaios] released from soul contract. Have fun with that Siculus.
  • What did you do Mizar? w??????????h??????????????????????a??????????????t???????????????? ??????????????d??????????i?????????????d?????????????? ????????????y?????????????????o???????????????u????????????????? ???????????????????d????????????????????????o???????????????????????????????
  • [Class: Mundane] has gained +1 FTR.
  • Behemoth Core spawn rate increased by 10%.
  • Euclid Core spawn rate increased by 100%.
  • Dragons have gained +10 FTR.
  • [Entity: The Mountain Who Eats] has been granted [Boon: Tyrannicide].
Well shit. 14. Level Up! There were more system messages, and I was afraid to even read them after seeing the patch notes. I took a moment to wallow in self pity - I felt like I deserved it by now. A lot of the notes didn¡¯t make much sense to me - I had no clue what a Euclid core was, and why did crows have better arcana now? but the important parts were clear. The System, or whatever wrote the patch notes, was pissed at me and by consuming the core I¡¯d seemingly shunted Esiliur off on its own, isolated from the rest of the System. Clearly, godcores and dungeon cores weren¡¯t meant to mix. I was going to have strong words for Cixilo when I recovered enough to consider extending myself out of my core. Had he known this would happen? It seemed unlikely. In fact, it seemed like I was the first one to ever attempt that stupid stunt. But he was the expert, so he could take some of the blame too! I didn¡¯t even want to think about what the Mountain Who Eats was or why it had just got a boon called tyrannicide. The murder of tyrants. Tyrants were bad, so it must be a good thing it was killing them ¡­ right? I dismissed the patch notes with a curse. Not dealing with that. That was someone else¡¯s problem. Swallowing my dread, I read the next System message.
Congratulations! You have reached level 2! New boon gained Dungeon Architecture: Structures created by you are unusually resilient and far stronger than a mundane structure made of the same material would be. New boon gained Liminal Core: Your core chamber exists in a pocket dimension. Entities with hostile intentions cannot access this dimension without first defeating your dungeon. New skills available! Pick now? Y/N One (1) new minion unlocked Congratulations! You have reached level 3! New features available: Skill leveling, boon leveling New boon gained Photosynthesis: Daily mana growth is increased by [10 * core level]% while the majority of your dungeon area is above ground. New boon gained Mark of the Dungeon: By placing a magical mark upon a being, you may claim them as a living extension of your dungeon. Marked creatures can communicate with High Cores telepathically, and can teleport and resurrect for free within your area of influence. You may mark [(core level/4)+1] creatures at a time. Aberrant boon gained Absorbing a shard of the core of Endoria, Goddess of Magic, has granted you an aberrant boon. Thaumaturgy: Your minions may be spellcasters, even if normally not capable of using magic. You share a mana pool with your minions. New skills available! Pick now? Y/N One (1) new minion unlocked.
This¡­ was good. I didn¡¯t know if it was good enough to make up for the shit show I¡¯d seemingly unleashed by consuming the godcore shard, but this was very good. Level three already. This would¡¯ve taken me weeks of grinding level one adventurers to achieve. Even the aberrant boon seemed useful, if perhaps a bit underpowered for all the strife it had taken to gain it. Boon leveling and skill leveling were interesting. My boons and skills now had the option to spend SP to improve them. Some of them didn¡¯t seem to be upgradable, but a lot were. Including my new Thaumaturgy boon, so maybe it got better at higher levels. However, it meant I¡¯d need even more SP and given that my total SP gain so far had been five, from a quest, I wasn¡¯t hopeful. I decided to talk to Cixilo before deciding on skills. Which meant it was time to extend my consciousness beyond my core. *** I want to be sick, I whined to myself for the thirtieth or so time. Every time I tried to push my consciousness out of my core, I was overwhelmed with an intense feeling of nausea, like a human with a disease. Except I was a crystal, which meant I couldn¡¯t even get the satisfaction of relieving the nausea by expelling the odious substance like a human would be. And my nausea wasn¡¯t caused by food poisoning¡­ more like core poisoning. I settled back in my core and consulted the menus for any ideas.
Name: Mizar
Species: Dungeon Core
Subspecies: Starseed
Class: Faerie Garden
Level: 3
Core Integrity: ???
Mana: 130
Mana Growth (daily):This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. 41.6
Soul Power: 5
Next Level Cost: 385
Stats:
Arcana 4
Fortitude 3
Luck 3
Skills: Uncreate, Overgrowth, Shape Matter
Spells:
Boons: Green Thumbs, Hearthkeeper, Dungeon Architecture, Liminal Core, Photosynthesis, Mark of the Dungeon, Thaumaturgy
Artifacts:
The ??? that had replaced my core integrity was alarming. What did mortals do when frustrated? Rub their temples? Punch something? I wished I could do either right now. Cixilo? You¡¯re awake! Finally! I thought you might¡¯ve died, but there was no horrible explosion, so I figured you¡¯d survived. He sounded more excited than concerned. I survived, but did you see the patch notes? Yes. They¡¯re fascinating. Why give crows more arcana? That isn¡¯t the important thing right now. I can¡¯t push my consciousness out of my core. I¡¯m stuck, and my core stability is a question mark. Oh. Cixilo went quiet for a moment. I almost thought he¡¯d left. It was very frustrating that I couldn¡¯t peek beyond my core chamber to see what he was doing. Finally, his voice came back. Sorry, I was checking my tome. Did you level up? Yes. And have you resolved all the level up prompts? I checked the System messages again. I still need to pick skills. Do I need to do that first? No, that shouldn¡¯t be a problem, Cixilo said absently, like he was reading as he talked. Hmm¡­ I recall reading about question mark core integrities before. They sometimes occur in cases of possession gone awry. The Mesmer specialisation Skinthief, in particular, is prone to these sorts of accidents because they can rapidly swap between host bodies and if integration isn¡¯t completed successfully, the core becomes unstable. Obviously, I don¡¯t know if dungeon cores work the same way but your core is probably in flux, unable to settle on a final state. I had always liked learning, and yet Cixilo tried to teach me at the worst possible times. Would it kill him to give a concise answer? How do I fix it? A simple explanation, please. Imagine your core is a house. Normally, only one person - you - lives in it, but when you absorbed the shard, you invited in a new roommate, but there is only one bedroom, so you¡¯re having to share and it''s not ideal. So I need to give the roommate their own room? I could do that! Kind of but it isn¡¯t - Cixilo¡¯s words receded into the background as I focussed on my core and imagined collecting all the darkness that had gathered inside me and forcing it into one corner. Slowly, it began to follow my command, gathering into a dense little ball in the corner. The sensation made my core shudder, but it was also kind of cathartic. Like I was emptying out the feeling of wrongness. Finally, when I¡¯d collected every bit of darkness I could find, I considered the corner of my core and - Mizar? Are you listening? Cixilo shouted into my mind. Not really. I¡¯m solving this problem before my core explodes again. What? How? One new room coming right up, I said. I bent all my will onto that one tiny sphere of darkness inside my core and shoved. There was a spark of blinding pain and my vision whited out for a second. But when it returned, it was bliss. The nausea had vanished, and so had the darkness. I checked my menu just to be sure. Core integrity: 100%. Yes! I fixed it, I told Cixilo happily.
Champion created: Endizar, the Forest Sorcerer
What? I pushed my point of view out of my core, just as easily as it had once been, and quickly did a full turn in the middle of my core chamber. There was a creature sitting at the foot of my core. It was humanoid¡­ ish. Shaped like a humanoid, but not resembling any of the mortal races. It had green barkish skin, a deep verdant forest green. Two huge antlers, shaped from tree branches, curved up above the head, and when it stood up, I imagined it would be much taller than any human. The lower half was vaguely bipedal, but the legs were closer to two thick roots with patches of moss clinging to it. Hello? I¡¯m still here, Cixilo said. Not you. There¡¯s nobody else here. I accidentally made a champion. Oh. Somehow, Cixilo managed to give the impression of a weary sigh through a telepathic link. Alright, I¡¯m coming in. I vaguely willed the door to open and continued to inspect my creation. Cixilo, followed by his trusty tome, stepped into my core chamber, and then stopped. He looked from Endizar to my core, and back again, and then ran his hand down his face with a sigh. ¡°When I said to make room for the other piece of you, I didn¡¯t mean this.¡± It wasn¡¯t intentional. But I kind of like it. ¡°I suppose you needed a champion eventually.¡± Sssh, it¡¯s waking up! I did a loop around my champion again. Endizar¡¯s eyes had fluttered. It took a moment, but finally they opened. Two brilliant purple eyes, with dark slits like a deer, looked at the world for the first time. I wished my new creation could have a more auspicious first sight in the world. A blank stone chamber, an old man and a magical book, and a red crystal weren¡¯t beautiful, or exciting. But they were what I had to work with for now, alas. Hello! Endizar looked around with visible confusion. Bark wasn¡¯t as expressive as a human face, but the expressions weren¡¯t too dissimilar. ¡°Hello?¡± I¡¯m Mizar, and this is Cixilo. I¡¯m your creator! Endizar tested out each of its new limbs with slow, uncertain movements. Shaking out arms and roots, bending fingers and stretching its neck. When he was seemingly happy with his tests, he slowly pushed himself upright. He stumbled, and caught himself against the wall with one hand. ¡°Where are you?¡± I¡¯m that glowing rock behind you. I¡¯m Mizar, and I¡¯m a star. Well, I was a star. Now I¡¯m a dungeon, reluctantly. ¡°I knew that.¡± Endizar cocked his head and frowned. ¡°I seem to know a lot of things I don¡¯t remember learning.¡± Cixilo nodded eagerly. He glanced sideways at his tome, his fingers curling like he wanted to grab a quill and take notes right away. ¡°Fascinating! You may have retained a few of Mizar¡¯s memories, since you are technically a piece of him given physical form.¡± I wished I could grin, because I wanted to show how happy I was with my accident. I¡¯d created life. Not just minions, but life-life. A thinking being! We¡¯ll catch you up on everything you need to know. Don¡¯t worry. 15. Skill Selection ¡°I get the feeling you don¡¯t do anything by half,¡± Cixilo said. My invisible consciousness floated next to him on the viewing platform of my tower, looking over my dungeon with pride. It had been a few days since the incident. I¡¯d started working on the new expansion to my dungeon, laying out a gigantic floorplan before I built the actual structure. The dungeon would dwarf the temple when completed, and the area I¡¯d laid out so far only covered up to level eight. The exterior was designed to resemble a fortified mansion, though perhaps if it had been designed by a child - with far more angles, turrets and extravagant (and deadly) gargoyles than strictly necessary. But I kind of liked the ostentatiousness of the facade. It certainly made an impression. Cixilo¡¯s information on adventurers had been invaluable. He reckoned a lot of parties would have a mix of levels, and it was fine to have zones, instead of twenty areas for all twenty levels. With that in mind, my level one zone remained the same, but it now led into an area for level two to three, with the boss arena for level three taking the shape of an enormous greenhouse jutting out of the side of the mansion. In theory, a party of level twos could handle the dungeon rooms but it would require a party of mostly level threes to tackle the boss without deaths. The godcore was your idea, I said, realising I hadn¡¯t replied to Cixilo. ¡°Fair.¡± He laughed deeply. ¡°It was. What do you have planned for level four to five?¡± A maze. I had some great ideas for that, but I couldn¡¯t lay it out yet. Not until I leveled up. I¡¯d laid out the foundations for future expansion though. A long rectangle that ran parallel to the two to three zone, and would end at a semi-circular boss arena. It would complete the final central ¡®square¡¯ of the mansion, before I¡¯d have to start sticking on wings. Cixilo nodded with a smile. ¡°Every dungeon needs a labyrinth.¡± I¡¯m probably getting ahead of myself. I¡¯d even planned a tentative floorplan for levels six to eight, and then placed my new core chamber at the end of the future construction. I¡¯d been extremely sick of my boring stone square, so I¡¯d gone all out on the new chamber. There was a grand antechamber, theoretically to receive visitors without needing to bring them into my actual core chamber. The actual core chamber was even bigger, with vaulted ceilings and a mosaic of the dueling serpents on the floor. Mostly just to entertain myself. Do you like your new room? Off the side of the core chamber, I¡¯d laid out three rooms - a private quarters for Endizar, and two for potential future champions. The antechamber meanwhile had a room for Cixilo, since he seemed intent on staying, and space for another guest chamber in future. The whole construction was contained within the dimensional space provided by my new Liminal Core boon, which made it impenetrable unless adventurers defeated my dungeon first. It definitely made me happier to have that protection. ¡°I appreciate it. Shey likes her new stables too.¡± Shey? Then I remembered that was what Cixilo called his griffin. I¡¯m glad. At least it kept the giant creature from wandering around unsupervised. I reckon we¡¯ll have adventurers soon. ¡°I think you might be right about that.¡± I suppose I should pick my skills. I¡¯d been putting off making a selection, but before I filled out the minions in my newly constructed zone, I needed to make up my mind. ¡°Show me what you¡¯ve got.¡± I brought up the System menu and pushed the image of it to Cixilo through the telepathic connection.
Level 2 Pick two (skills not picked now will be available later). Insight: Gain knowledge of a creature or hero by looking at it, including information such as class, skills and boons. Cultivation: Gain access to the Nursery, a room used to create variants of existing minion types through hybridisation, grafting, and selective breeding. Fertilize: Fertilize seeds to increase their growth speed by [4 * core level]. Arcadian Aura: You may designate safe zones within your area of influence. Violence is forbidden and hero cores will regenerate HP passively while resting here. Greencoaties: You may summon magical Fae assistants to help you maintain your dungeon. Peaceful but very industrious creatures. Mycology: You may utilise fungal organisms. Skill and boons that apply to plants will also apply to fungi. Level 3 Pick two (skills not picked now will be available later)The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Botanic Arts: Designate garden zones which will automatically adjust to a chosen climate type and maintain the perfect conditions for growing plants native to that climate. Zones must be protected from the natural elements. Faerie Ring: You may create permanent portals to allow adventurers to traverse disconnected parts of your dungeon, or allow them to skip low level zones if they have a token. It¡¯s Bigger on the Inside: Your dungeon¡¯s internal space may occupy a much larger area than appearances or physics would suggest possible. Luna Affinity: Daily mana growth is increased by 100% during the night. Gain access to powerful Luna versions of minions. May not be chosen alongside Solar Affinity. Solar Affinity: Daily mana growth is increased by 100% during the day. Gain access to powerful Solar versions of minions. May not be chosen alongside Luna Affinity. Waters of Avalon: You may create healing waters, which restore 10hp per minute and cure all curses of a level equal or lesser than your core level. Novice Enchanter: Craft magical items, equal in power to [core level - 1] (capped at level 10). Dynamic Architecture: Whole zones, or specific rooms, may be designated to change their layout automatically after each successive adventuring party.
Cixilo leaned on the bronze railing and stroked his beard. ¡°Interesting choices.¡± I¡¯d been thinking about my options, obsessing about what would and wouldn¡¯t work. I¡¯d struggled to prioritize between making my dungeon better and defending myself from the Dread Lords. Cultivation seems like an automatic pick. It could allow me to make better and stronger minions instead of relying on discovering them. I already have an ability similar to Fertilize. It isn¡¯t as powerful, but I don¡¯t see much need for two. ¡°Yes, Cultivation does seem sensible to me. Of course, no telling how quickly you can evolve things, but if it works as described, it could be useful.¡± Cixilo nodded. ¡°Arcadian Aura is just a nature themed variant on a common dungeon ability. A safezone can be useful sometimes, as it might encourage adventurers to be more foolish and take bigger risks if they know a safezone is ahead, but I don¡¯t know that it is worth it when you only have four picks.¡± Mycology might give me more options but I haven¡¯t seen many mushrooms and the ones on the island seem harmless. I¡¯d have to evolve something stronger. ¡°Daeha has some dangerous wild fungi that might be useful, but you have no way of acquiring samples yet. If you need it, you can pick it up later. I¡¯d take Greencoaties instead. Most dungeons take the skill that gives them assistants. Each type is different, but generally they¡¯re useful. There is only one of you, and dungeons take a lot of work to maintain.¡± Couldn¡¯t I just make more Champions? Cixilo wrinkled his brow, an expression I¡¯d come to realise meant he thought I was being absurd. ¡°You can only make a limited number of champions, and you shouldn¡¯t waste them. Anyway, dungeon assistants aren¡¯t sophontic, they¡¯re more like more advanced minions. Your champions are independent people and if you annoy them, they¡¯re completely free to leave you. Do you want to ask Endizar to spend his immortal life crafting loot? Okay, okay. I get the point. I felt a pang at the idea of Endizar leaving me. I didn¡¯t want to be alone again. So I take Greencoaties and Cultivation for level two? ¡°I¡¯d also recommend Botanic Arts for level three. You¡¯ll eventually unlock minions that won¡¯t grow in the natural climate here, and without Botanic Arts, you¡¯ll be unable to use them.¡± I already have one. I unlocked a minion that needs the polar climate when I leveled up. ¡°Perfect. I¡¯m less sure about the next choice however.¡± Dynamic Architecture would make my labyrinth much more interesting but I won¡¯t need it for another level, so it seems kind of wasteful to pick it up now. The Luna and Solar affinities are out on principle. Cixilo raised an eyebrow but remained silent. Stars don¡¯t get on with the so-called Greater Celestials. ¡°I see.¡± He said it in a voice that suggested he didn¡¯t see at all. I was more interested in my skills than the finer points of celestial grudges, so I moved on. Waters of Avalon is just a fancy version of Arcadian Aura, and the size one¡­ I¡¯m not going to run out of room any time soon. Novice Enchanter seems useful, but I have a question. Can champions and minions use magical items? Cixilo tapped his chin. ¡°That is a good point. Champions can, but normally minions can¡¯t. However, combined with your thaumaturgy boon, I suspect they will be able to. You can also distribute the items in loot tables, which will be good for incentivising adventurers to keep delving.¡± Perfect. If I could equip minions with some sort of ranged magical staff, then I could create an anti-air defense system. Plus, I could use spellcasting minions in the dungeon, and equip Endizar. I couldn¡¯t see a downside. So to recap, I¡¯ll take Greencoaties, Cultivation, Botanic Arts and Novice Enchanter. ¡°I look forward to seeing what you do with them.¡± I locked in the four choices. It was kind of anticlimactic after thinking about it for so long. There was no string of messages like when I¡¯d leveled up. The skills just appeared on my System menu and it was done. I was debating which thing I needed to do first when there was a pop sound as Endizar appeared on the viewing platform. He¡¯d started making prodigious use of his ability to teleport around my dungeon, with a tendency to turn up unexpectedly. I¡¯d tried to keep track of him at first, and then decided he deserved his privacy. Cixilo didn¡¯t notice Endizar at first, and I waited quietly to see when he¡¯d notice him. He wasn''t subtle - he towered over Cixilo - but the old man was distracted, squinting at the horizon. ¡°Mizar, I think we have company,¡± Endizar said. Cixilo jumped, but stifled his yelp at the last moment. When he¡¯d recovered his composure, he shot a glare at Endizar. ¡°Can you give me some warning? You inherited your sire¡¯s talent for scaring me.¡± ¡°My apologies,¡± Endizar said, his voice completely placid. ¡°However, we have company. There is a flying creature incoming.¡± Cixilo squinted harder ¡°I wondered if I was imagining something moving on the horizon. My eyes aren¡¯t as good as they used to be.¡± Adventurers are here? Finally! I could finally show off my dungeon I¡¯d worked so hard on. ¡°Careful, it might not be adventurers,¡± Cixilo warned. I didn¡¯t let it get my spirits down. People had found us. Surely adventurers would follow. 16. Jinxed The mystery visitor rode a purple wyvern - an old, wiry creature with curling horns like a ram. They circled the island twice at a cautious distance before they finally came into the land. They picked a spot in front of the temple and came in without much grace. The wyvern¡¯s wings beat the air frantically as it tried to keep itself steady, whipping dust into a miniature storm. As it got near the ground, the wyvern tilted unsteadily to one side. When it finally made contact, its legs slid out from under its body, and came to rest on its side with a heavy thump and an angry squawk. It seemed as if the rider might¡¯ve been squashed beneath the wyvern¡¯s bulk. I moved closer, grimly prepared to find a smashed lump of meat. My very first visitor (Cixilo didn¡¯t really count) and they¡¯d gone and died upon arrival. What¡¯s happening? Endizar demanded telepathically. This is rather frustrating. I¡¯d like to know too, Cixilo said. I¡¯d sent the two of them to hide in the core antechamber. If the visitor turned out to be hostile, it seemed a good idea to keep the fact I had two helpers hidden for now. The mortal seems to have been crushed by its own mount ¡­ wait¡­ I trailed off. The mortal wasn¡¯t dead! He emerged from the lingering dust cloud a few feet from the wyvern, coughing into his fist. ¡°You almost killed me,¡± he said. The wyvern only gave a grumble. It seemed unharmed and content to stay where it was for now. I inspected the visitor. He straightened his simple tunic, and scrubbed absently at a streak of dirt, while he continued to glare at the wyvern. He was thin and tall, with dark hair that was tied back in a ponytail. Almost human, but the point of his ears and violet eyes suggested something else in his ancestry. Combined with the sharp angles of his face and complete lack of a beard or stubble, I thought he might be part Eld. Dwarrow wasn¡¯t out of the question either though. The visitor lives. Who is he? What class? Cixilo asked. Is he an enemy? Endizar said, his voice tinged with a surprising amount of aggression. So far he¡¯d hardly shown any emotions. I don¡¯t know yet. Either of those things. He couldn¡¯t be a tank, he simply didn¡¯t wear enough armour and there was nowhere to stash that sort of stuff in the wyvern¡¯s saddlebags. However, I was clueless beyond that. Insight would¡¯ve been useful here, but I simply didn¡¯t have the spare skill picks right now. The visitor pulled a small, round stone out of his pocket and looked at it carefully. I peaked at it over his shoulder, but nothing about it seemed remarkable. Then he stashed it away again, gave the wyvern a final glare that turned into a disappointed sigh, and started to walk towards the temple. Show me, Cixilo said How? The same way you send System messages. Just push what you¡¯re seeing down the connection. It was disconcerting at first. For a moment, I could see two copies of everything. The second false version faded away, and it must have worked because Cixilo sent back the impression of a thumbs up. Definitely some sort of mage. He doesn¡¯t have any weapons on him, Cixilo said. An Eld? No, a half-Eld I suspect. Too much muscle mass, must be some human or Dwarrow in there too. He could be hiding weapons, I said. But Cixilo was right. I couldn¡¯t see where he could hide anything, maybe a dagger in his boot at best.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The man climbed up the stairs to the temple. He stopped at the summit, and silently mouthed words that seemed well rehearsed, the shape of them so familiar that reciting them had become more habit than choice. Finished with his prayer, he pushed ajar one of the huge double doors and slipped through the gap. I followed closely behind as he stopped and craned his neck to take in the expanse of the dome far above. To tiny mortals, it had to be an impressive sight. I¡¯d restored the temple to the glory of its youth - mosaics shining with bright colours and the stonework like it had been carved yesterday. I hadn¡¯t done anything about the missing furniture yet, leaving the room vast and empty. He checked the small, smooth stone again and moved on. I wonder what that is, Cixilo said. Some sort of good luck charm? No matter how closely I tried to observe the stone, it just looked like a mundane rock. It could be a fairy egg. In which case, he¡¯ll be able to report back to whoever sent him. Fairies lay eggs? I couldn¡¯t picture the creatures I¡¯d seen in the past laying anything that big. They were so small. How did they¡­ I didn¡¯t want to think about it. Fleshy creatures were disgusting. Cixilo laughed. They¡¯re not literally eggs laid by fairies. It''s just a name for an enchanted stone that fairies make. They often contain spells to talk across long distances. That''s a relief. The not laying part, that is. Hey, where¡¯s he going? I directed my attention back to the man. He¡¯d crossed the temple and was slipping out the second set of doors. I shot across the temple in pursuit, but by the time I¡¯d made it out of the doors, he¡¯d disappeared. The slippery little thing. I checked inside the first room of my dungeon, but my minions were undisturbed. Which meant he was running around somewhere outside. I take it back, I already hate adventurers. Why can¡¯t they do the dungeon in the proper way? I raised my vision up above the building and gazed down in search of the man. Where could he have gone? There weren¡¯t many places for a mortal to hide. There. By the greenhouse, Cixilo said. I narrowed my vision on the greenhouse. He was right, the mortal was standing in the corner where the greenhouse met the stonewall of the manor, with the fairy egg in his hand. I moved down and got in close. The man talking to the egg. ¡°Who is this?¡± A disembodied voice snapped from within the stone. ¡°Ario -¡± ¡°Ario who? What do you want?¡± Ario¡¯s brows furrowed. ¡°I need to speak to Commander Iroxi.¡± ¡°Iroxi is in a meeting right now.¡± Ario rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. ¡°What about Dread Lord Naya?¡± Crap, Cixilo muttered quietly in the back of my mind. ¡°You want me to disturb Dread Lord Naya?¡± The voice scoffed with a tone that implied the idea was as absurd as fairies laying eggs. ¡°Not a chance. I will tell Commander Iroxi you called.¡± Mizar, this is bad. He works for Dread Lord Naya. If he tells her where you are¡­ Cixilo¡¯s tone rapidly rose towards panic. I get the idea. Ario fidgetted, his lips pursed and his spare hand curling. He seemed reluctant, like the next words out of his mouth were painful. ¡°Look, I found the dungeon. It is urgent. He¡¯ll have my hide if he finds out I didn¡¯t tell him at once.¡± I zoomed up to the roof of the manor, where I¡¯d placed the gargoyles the other day. As luck would have it, Ario had stopped to make his call right below one of the looming statues. I looked down at the man. It wasn¡¯t his fault but I couldn¡¯t let the Dread Lords find out. If Cixilo was right and they were as bad as they sounded, they¡¯d shatter me or worse. I dissolved the wedge holding up the gargoyle. The statue slid forward, right to the edge of the roof, and when it ran out of roof and gravity took hold, it tumbled over the edge. After a moment that stretched on for too long, there was a scream and a heavy thunk. Problem solved. It didn¡¯t make me feel very happy though. I peaked over the edge. Nope. I don¡¯t need to see that. The telepathic connection with Cixilo closed abruptly. A moment later, Endizar appeared with a pop next to the gargoyle - or what remained of him, anyway. The gargoyle had broken in half when it hit the ground. He looked down at the man with a furrowed brow. ¡°I didn¡¯t know mortals looked like that inside.¡± Gross is what that is. Gross, I said. Find the fairy egg, would you? I¡¯ll go check the hearth to see if he¡¯s been resurrected yet. 17. Mortals get on my nerves The wispy, ethereal shape of Ario paced the length of the hearth¡¯s perimeter, and then turned and marched back the other way, muttering to himself the entire time. He seemed unable to leave the invisible boundary of the colonnade that held up the shrine¡¯s roof. I¡¯d been watching him for several minutes, expecting him to resurrect himself at any time. Was the hearth broken somehow? Cixilo, he¡¯s not resurrecting. Why do you want to resurrect him? So you can drop another statue on his head? I had to interrupt that call. I only defended myself feebly. It was admittedly a little mean to kill Ario without a chance to fight back. I didn¡¯t regret it too much. I¡¯m not going to do it again. I need to question him though. I¡¯ll come take a look. Cixilo took his time. I waited impatiently until he finally shuffled down the zigzag staircase, his tome in tow. It was glacial. Like he was deliberately walking slow just to annoy me. I resisted the urge to whine, because it wouldn¡¯t have been dignified for a star to whine, and waited. Cixilo stopped in front of the shrine and opened his tome. Maybe I whined a little. Finally! I thought you¡¯d never get here. Cixilo glared at the empty air, opposite where I actually was. ¡°Patience is a virtue.¡± And sloth is a sin, I retorted. Cixilo rolled his eyes. ¡°Let¡¯s see what the problem is.¡± He turned his back on me - the jerk - and addressed Ario¡¯s wraith. ¡°Can you hear me?¡± Ario spun around, his eyes widened. He blurred slightly as he hurried to the edge of the shrine, the smokey edges of his body losing clarity until he stopped moving. ¡°Oh thank the gods. I thought I was going to be stuck here alone.¡± Cixilo narrowed his eyes. ¡°I¡¯m Cixilo, a dungeon scholar. And you are?¡± Ario rubbed the back of his neck. ¡°I¡¯m Ario, I¡¯m ah - a ¡­.¡± He trailed off and slowly wilted, shoulders slumped and eyes pointed down. ¡°There isn¡¯t an explanation that makes me sound good. You¡¯re working with the dungeon, then? Is that who killed me? One minute I was alive and then, blam, no more me.¡± ¡°He overheard your conversation and wasn¡¯t happy at the prospect of being revealed to someone like Naya.¡± Ario winced. ¡°I didn¡¯t want to, but soul contracts, you know -¡± ¡°I know.¡± I don¡¯t, I said. ¡°Right. The dungeon doesn¡¯t know how soul contracts work.¡± Cixilo rubbed his beard. ¡°Simply put, a person bound by one must obey the mage¡¯s orders, even after death. There is more to it but that is the gist.¡± ¡°You can talk to him?¡± Ario said. ¡°Is he listening right now?¡± ¡°Yes. His name is Mizar.¡±This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Ario glanced around and gave a small wave, his fingers all blurring together into smoke. ¡°Hi Mizar.¡± I would¡¯ve glared, if I had the means to do so. Being invisible was frustrating when you were angry at someone. Ask him what Naya wants with a dungeon? Cixilo repeated my words faithfully, and I thought Ario frowned. His face was half-solid, so it was difficult to get a read on his expressions. ¡°I can¡¯t tell you. Can¡¯t, not won¡¯t. I¡¯m sorry.¡± ¡°Very well. I can guess well enough,¡± Cixilo said. ¡°However, I have to ask, why haven¡¯t you resurrected yourself yet?¡± Ario kicked at a pebble, and his foot went right through it. ¡°I don¡¯t have enough soul power.¡± At least he won¡¯t be a problem then. Cixilo furrowed his brow. ¡°Don¡¯t be cruel Mizar. We can¡¯t leave him stuck in there.¡± Yes, we can and will. He could find another way to get a message back to Naya. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I have an idea.¡± Cixilo grinned at Ario. ¡°What would you say if I could free you from the soul contract?¡± Ario¡¯s head snapped up. ¡°You can do that? Yes, please. I¡¯ll do anything, even sign another stupid contract. Naya - you don¡¯t know how awful it has been working for her.¡± Cixilo flipped over the page in his tome. I could tell what was coming. He was going to explain something. ¡°Mizar has a boon called Mark of the Dungeon. I didn¡¯t think much of it at first. It allows him to mark beings so that they¡¯re dungeon servants, essentially. You will still have free will, but you shouldn¡¯t be able to harm the dungeon, and you will count as part of the dungeon, so the soul contract should no longer be valid. I can¡¯t promise you it will work, but it should.¡± Did you think of asking me if I was interested in doing this first? I griped. Ario nodded enthusiastically, which made his face blur into smoke. ¡°I¡¯ll help you. If you can free me, I¡¯ll tell you what I know, help you however I can. Please.¡± I felt a twinge of sympathy for him. Being trapped like that, even in death, would¡¯ve been awful. I¡¯d been furious when Tamyris made me into a dungeon against my will. At least she¡¯d left me with my free will afterwards. Plus the information he could offer could be useful. Cixilo glared at the air - the correct side this time. Fine, I¡¯ll help him. If he tells me what he knows. ¡°Mizar said he¡¯ll do it.¡± Cixilo rubbed his hands together and smiled. *** The actual process was easy. I just willed my mark onto Ario. A System message popped up to inform me 1/1 Dungeon Servants were in use, and it was done. Ario was able to resurrect for free the moment it took. Ario stepped out of the ring of columns, turning from smoke to flesh in an instant. He had a huge grin as he jumped on the spot, spun around and then hugged Cixilo. Cixilo stiffened in surprise. ¡°Um¡­ I¡¯m glad you¡¯re happy?¡± Sheepishly, Ario let the old man go and stepped back, dusting off the fronts of his trousers. ¡°Thank you. And thank you, Mizar.¡± Now you need to hold up your side of the bargain, I said. Ario jerked his head back. ¡°Woah, I can hear him in my head. That is weird.¡± He looked around, like I might appear from the bushes. ¡°What do you want to know?¡± I reeled off the questions I¡¯d been building up quickly. ¡°What does Naya want with me? When will she arrive? When you fail to report in, who will she send next? And how do we make contact with adventurers that aren¡¯t loyal to Naya?¡± ¡°One at a time, please, please,¡± Ario said. ¡°Let the boy have a moment to enjoy being alive again,¡± Cixilo said. ¡°I¡¯m not a boy -¡± ¡°Everyone is a boy compared to me,¡± Cixilo said in an imperious tone. ¡°Even Mizar.¡± I¡¯m older than your gods, you little - It was pointless. Cixilo had already started walking away. I switched to addressing Ario. Very well, I will give you time. But I want answers in the morning. ¡°Yes, sir. In the morning.¡± Ario gave a grin to the empty air. He hesitated for a moment, and then dashed after Cixilo. I watched them both go, feeling ¡­ flummoxed. Mortals. Couldn¡¯t live with them, couldn¡¯t live without them. 18. Give me answers One will not find the kingdom of Alypia on a map today. The last vestiges of the ancient land of the hobbledehoy was claimed by the Aether Sea over a century ago, and even before that, the kingdom had been reduced to little more than a few villages. Alypia was once considered blessed by the goddess Sunxa. Ancient writers speak of rolling hills and meadows of flowers, rivers as clear as crystal and filled with every manner of fish, a land where every crop could grow and grow bountifully. Its people were small, barely larger than human children, but sturdier than an orke, and they dwelt in cities shaped from the earth. The jewel of their land was the great temple to Sunxa, whose dome has never yet been eclipsed by another construction of mortal hands. - Histories of These Lands by Philomon the Sage.
Ario woke early, and I followed him, suspicious of his destination. I didn¡¯t trust the mortal, even if Cixilo claimed he couldn¡¯t betray me while marked. I expected he would seek out the fairy egg again to try and contact his employers. Instead, he climbed down the zigzag staircase and wandered past the hearth of Tamyris, and simply found a boulder at the edge of the jungle and sat cross legged on top of it. Sat alone and silent in the rising dawn. The ground was still wet with dew and the air had the remnants of a night chill. It didn¡¯t seem to bother him. I waited and watched him until the sun rose above the horizon and long rays of light started to reach my island. He didn¡¯t move for over an hour. What are you waiting for? I said. Ario gave a yelp. He looked around wildly until he seemed to remember me, and slowly, he relaxed again. ¡°Gods above, Mizar, you¡¯re scary.¡± He rubbed his face. ¡°I was meditating. What are you doing?¡± Talking to you, I suppose. I haven¡¯t forgotten that you owe me answers. ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll give you answers if it means you won¡¯t try to give me a heart attack. What do you want to know?¡± What does Naya want with me? Ario frowned. ¡°I suppose what anyone wants a dungeon for. Power, riches. You¡¯re a mechanism of creation. Control a dungeon and you control what it creates. Soul power, gold, magic items. She already has one, but so does Siculus, and being equal isn¡¯t enough for Naya. She has to be the best.¡±Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Which dungeons do Naya and Siculus control? ¡°I¡¯ve never been to Hyracid.¡± Ario shrugged. ¡°They say the capital is built on the dungeon¡¯s back, but you¡¯d have to be mighty arrogant to live on a dungeon. Naya controls the Golden Dungeon Ereleuva.¡± I know her. She fell just before the gods left. She had been a young star, younger than me. Poor creature. ¡°It¡¯s true then? That you¡¯re a star?¡± Ario said. Dungeons all were once, I think. ¡°Amazing, when I think of the things you¡¯ve seen.¡± Ario shook his head, a hint of a smile on his lips. ¡°To answer the other questions you haven¡¯t yet asked, once I fail to report in, they¡¯ll scry for my location and send a party to investigate. Naya herself is impulsive, but I doubt she¡¯ll even hear about it until there is information to share. No one wants to be the person who delivers nothing when she¡¯s in a bad mood.¡± I need to level up before then. Where can we find adventurers to run my zones? Ario tapped his finger against his jaw. ¡°You need the Dungeoneer¡¯s Guild. They run the free dungeons. They don¡¯t operate in Marin, Naya wouldn¡¯t allow it, but if we could somehow get word to them before Naya gets here¡­.¡± He trailed off in thought. Think of a way, I said. I withdrew without waiting for his answer. Cixilo might have better ideas. It was time to rouse the old man from bed. *** ¡°I¡¯ve heard of the Dungeoneer¡¯s Guild, of course,¡± Cixilo said. He rubbed his sleepy eyes and glared in the wrong direction. ¡°Couldn¡¯t this have waited until breakfast? It¡¯s barely dawn.¡± It is an hour past dawn. Ario has been awake for hours. Cixilo rolled his eyes and shuffled off his bed. So how do we contact them? ¡°I don¡¯t know. They didn¡¯t operate in my kingdom. They¡¯re protected by the queen of Kethenia. The Dread Lords have never been able to conquer Kethenia, and so the Dungeoneer¡¯s operate outside their rules.¡± Cixilo spoke to his mirror while he was poking and prodding at his face like it would rearrange the wrinkles. ¡°I suppose you need to get word to Kethenia somehow.¡± I¡¯m a dungeon, Cixilo. I can¡¯t exactly just fly there. ¡°Well it would take weeks for either me or Ario to make a round trip. Wyverns and griffins aren¡¯t built for speed. If we had a portal stone¡­ maybe.¡± How do we get one? ¡°You have to make them but I¡¯m a mage, not an enchanter.¡± You¡¯re forgetting something, I said, already zooming out of his bedroom. ¡°Forgetting what?¡± Cixilo called after me. 19. Item crafting
Skill Name Prerequisites Class Restrictions Mana Cost Description
Novice Enchanter Dungeon Variable Craft magical items, equal in power to [core level - 1] (capped at level 10).
How hard could it be to make an enchanted item with no prior experience? The System menu mocked me. I¡¯d been trying for hours but every item I¡¯d made either exploded or fizzled. There was something missing. The smoldering remains of the latest attempt laid in front of me. I absorbed the debris and smoothed away the burn marks absently while I tried to figure out the puzzle. The enchanting system seemed to be similar, but not identical, to the titles I used to make bosses. It mostly differed by making that system significantly more complex. Endizar frowned. ¡°Have you considered adding a level to the name? You can create level two items, according to the System menu, so there must be a way to determine what level an item is.¡± I didn¡¯t think of that. Here goes nothing I tried again. I formed a smooth rock, shiny like it had been weathered by a river, and put it on the bench in front of me. Then I funneled some of my mana into the stone until it began to hover very slightly above the table. When it was fully charged, I impressed a name into the stone. Previously, Stone of Portals hadn¡¯t worked. It had exploded and left behind a spinning portal that rapidly snapped shut. Calling it a Stone of Longlasting Portal had extended the portal¡¯s lifespan somewhat, but it was still one use and explosive - dangerous for any mortal who tried to use it. After that I¡¯d discovered that I could apply a description to the stone as well as a name. The name seemed to determine the stone¡¯s primary function, but the description modified it into a stable item. There seemed to be specific modifiers I had to use. Some were obvious ones I¡¯d already encountered such as damage types. If I made a Stone of Portal with the description does magic damage, when it inevitably exploded it would inflict magic damage on anyone unlucky enough to be holding it. If I used a damage modifier that didn¡¯t exist, such as does tentacle damage, the item just failed.
Stone of Portals II Description: The portal lasts for two minutes.
The stone ¡­ didn¡¯t explode. It floated there, serenely. I nudged Endizar mentally. Try it? He gave me a placid stare, and then shrugged and picked it up. It was tiny in his hands. Endizar furrowed his brow and focussed his eyes intently on the stone. The stone glowed vivid blue for a moment, and then, without warning, the air in front of the workbench split open into an endless, depthless void the height and width of the stone itself.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Is that supposed to happen? Endizar raised one wooden eyebrow. ¡°You made it, not me.¡± Whatever was on the other side of the portal, it didn¡¯t look like somewhere I wanted to travel. There was a foreboding feeling to it, one that seeped into me even though my core was far from here and it shouldn¡¯t have been able to affect me. Close it. ¡°I cannot. You gave it a set duration.¡± I¡¯d also failed to give the portal a destination. No wonder it had opened to ¡­ where-ever that was. The space between spaces. I watched the dark hole until, finally, the time ran out and it snapped shut without anything coming through. ¡°I think you need to be more specific,¡± Endizar said. You think? The strange abyssal portal had shaken me. I didn¡¯t like this tinkering as much now. Endizar shrugged and put the stone back on the bench. ¡°I also think we should lock that one away.¡± Agreed. I put the stone away in a chest I hastily created in my core chamber, before I returned to item crafting. Attempt number¡­ damnit, I wasn¡¯t counting until now. ¡°Let me try?¡± Endizar said. ¡°Make a couple of stones, if you would.¡± I formed a row of four identical stones for him, filled each of them with mana, and watched. ¡°We need to consider the ways the system can exploit what we¡¯re asking of it.¡± Endizar picked up the first stone. ¡°See?¡± I peaked at the item description.
Stone of Portals II Description: Opens a 2m x 2m portal to a location pictured by the user.
¡°Now, if I activate it -¡± Endizar wrinkled his brow as he focussed. A portal snapped open in front of him. The slightly distorted image of the temple¡¯s front doors appeared on the other side. But the portal barely lasted a few seconds before it snapped shut again. ¡°I figure the item tries to take the course of action that consumes the least mana. If I don¡¯t define a duration, it closes very quickly. But if I define a duration and no size, it opens a very small portal, like so -¡± Endizar picked up the next stone. This time, when he activated it, the portal appeared but it was barely the size of a human head. How did you figure that out? He shrugged his broad shoulders. ¡°It feels like instinct. Something left over from Endoria¡¯s core, perhaps.¡± He picked up the third stone. ¡°This one should work. Take a look.¡±
Stone of Portals II Description: Opens a 2m x 2m portal to a location pictured by the user. The portal lasts for two minutes.
I read the description with excitement. So if I just define a duration and a size, it should work, right? I focussed on the fourth, unused stone. I was getting a hang of this and I liked the feeling. Endizar nodded, which was kind of comical as his antlers bobbed up and down. ¡°Yes, but there seems to be a limit to how many modifiers you can apply. I tried to add a fourth modifier to this one, but it just doesn¡¯t work.¡± I pressed the same title and description Endizar had used into the fourth stone. The zone didn¡¯t explode or fizzle and most importantly, it would work. I felt accomplished in a way. The modifier limit is probably one plus item level then. That¡¯d make sense. Either way, this will do what we need it to - get a message to the Dungeoneer¡¯s Guild. ¡°Who will we send?¡± Cixilo makes the most sense, but he is also important to have here if any more of Naya¡¯s people arrive. ¡°I could go. It would certainly prove to them that you¡¯re a real dungeon.¡± They might freak out. You¡¯re not¡­ very human looking, I said with the best tact I could muster. Not that it bothered me, but mortals could be judgemental of appearances. They could mistake Endizar for a monster and kill him. Endizar shrugged. ¡°Let them. If they want the riches your dungeon offers, they¡¯ll overcome their fear.¡± I¡¯m not saying no, but first I want to ask Cixilo what happens to a dungeon champion if they die outside the dungeon. Then we¡¯ll consider it. I don¡¯t want to lose you. ¡°Very well.¡± Endizar seemed satisfied with the answer.