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Unknown Place, Unknown Time
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As I drifted awake, it seemed fitting that the first thing I felt was a drifting sensation. It was like I was floating on a pool of water, being gently rocked back and forth. It was soothing. Relaxing. I decided to enjoy the sensation and stay in this half-awake state of being for as long as possible. Inevitably though, I became more and more aware of myself and my surroundings. At some point, something twitched in my mind. I should be in my bed; why was I feeling like this?
When I went to take a deep breath, I felt nothing. I didn't take a breath; I didn't feel my chest expand. In a sudden panic, I was thrust into full awareness. Well, I certainly wasn't in my bed. I was surrounded by water, with an island directly to my west. There were hundreds of fish swimming in the coral reef below me, along with their supporting ecosystems. Wait, What?!
Dumbfounded, I tried to blink. Nothing happened. I tried to raise an arm, and nothing happened. Why couldn't I move? Oh. I was a gem. A Gem? Yes; a Teal Sapphire. Three inches long, tear-drop cut. Why is my body a Sapphire? And where the fuck am I? Unlike my other questions, nothing jumped out to me.
Unable to do anything, I continued to float on the ocean. The rising tide pushed me towards the island, which looked like a volcanic one, given the tall volcano. Specifically, the tide was drifting me into a cave entrance, a vast triangular crack in the side of a cliff at the side of a long, black sand beach. I was soon pushed onto the sandy beach, which ran along one side of the cave.
It was quite a deep cave, and the water reflected beautiful shifting designs on the cave ceiling.
And so, there I lay as the tide rolled out.
My glittering facets darkened as the sunset, the dazzling orange and pink tapestry of the horizon visible from within the cave.
With nothing to distract me, I was confronted with my new existence. I was a Sapphire, a Teal Sapphire. Gems don't have brains, hearts, nerves, or anything most could consider necessary to be alive. They are composed of carbon and other minerals and elements, giving them each a unique structure and coloration.
So, if I was a gemstone, how was I alive?
A glimmer of a memory caught my attention. This situation was achingly familiar... I could have sworn I'd read something like this before... Was I a Dungeon?
Dungeon: A crystal or gem with consciousness and agency, which formed constructs of mana to defend themselves within twisting and dangerous caverns.
So, If I was a dungeon...
Status?
...
Bugger.
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Nothing worked. Wherever I was, I didn't have a system. That's fine. I'd read stories where the core did without. I could too. How about Mana?
I had to be using it in some capacity since I can see, and I didn't exactly have eyes to see with. I had 360-degree vision, though about half of it was obscured by sand, and the other half was staring into the moonlit cave.
I attempted to 'blink' or turn off my vision and failed. Eh, worth a shot.
Maybe it's like an exhale kind of feeling? I imagined taking a deep breath, then a long exhale, ad infinitum. After a few dozen repetitions, I felt something. Motes of glowing energy, without color, yet sparkling like distant stars. With every inhale, the motes drew closer, and some were absorbed into my facets. With each exhale, those motes I'd absorbed left my gem. Now, however, I could direct them.
Not accurately or with any finesse, but with grand sweeping motions. With a mental wave, I set them to orbit me.
I also changed my breathing rhythm; sharp, strong inhales drew motes closer and spun my orbitals faster. Long, slow exhales prevented the unaffiliated specks from drifting too far away.
It was... meditative. What once took all my focus slowly became second nature. I was dimly aware of the sun rising and setting, over and over. After what must have been almost two weeks, my rings were like Saturn's, beautiful and glittering in that not-light they exuded.
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It also showed me this wasn't working.
Yes, I could draw mana closer and control it afterward, but I couldn't do anything with it. In frustration, I pulled my mana rings within my facets simultaneously. Then with an explosive 'shout,' I shot the mana away. My motes collided with the sand beneath me, the cave walls around me, and the ocean water beside me.
The mana stuck to the walls, becoming lodged. The mana in the water continued unimpeded until it hit the sea bed. The mana in the sand lodged easily, much like the walls. The mana which shot out the cave's mouth hit a passing seabird.
And did something unexpected.
The bird cried in surprise and lost altitude in its panic. It crash-landed on the sand as my speeding motes of mana disrupted its delicate nervous-system-like mana circuits. Within seconds, I felt my mana converting the bird's natural mana to more of mine.
Within a minute, the seagull was an extension of my will. I could feel its existence in the back of my mind even when I wasn't paying attention. Focusing on it, however, gave me a wealth of information. I could feel every detail of its biology, see through its eyes, and feel the wind rushing over its feathers. I could feel my mana within it and order it what to do by imposing my will upon that mana. Absently, I directed it to fly up and around the island.
Flying is incredible, by the way, even if only by proxy.
It turned out I was right; the island was indeed volcanic. In fact, The volcano was active, even if it wasn't erupting at the moment. Its crater lake boiled with nebulous and toxic gasses. The island was covered in tropical flora, with palm trees by the beach and a dense rainforest filling the rest. The seagull could hear the droning hum of birdsong, insects, and other typical noises and calls of the animals within it. I released the bird from my direct control, letting it fly about on its own. Alright. I could control animals I infused with my mana. Cool.
What about the mana that stuck to the rock?
As soon as I directed my attention to it, I felt the mana in the walls and ground shift slightly, and suddenly I wasn't just the Gem lying in the quartz and obsidian sand. I was also the sand and the walls formed from various strata of volcanic rock. I could feel that my mind still resided within the gem, the Core, but the rest was like my body.
In a very real sense, I was the cave, from the mouth to the termination.
Time for some testing.
I willed the sand below my gem to move, and it moved. Like water, the black sand rushed towards my gem. It swirled beneath me, then lifted me into the air with a push and pull, then when I made the decision, It fused into a five-foot-tall pedestal, sparking with white glimmers of quartz amongst the black rock.
My tear-drop form was gently held in place by delicately sculpted fingers of rock, the tip of my pedestal designed to look like a hand reaching up to caress my core. Quickly, before my pedestal could tip sideways, I extended long rock roots down from the base to anchor my beautiful pedestal in the sand.
I also felt slightly 'out of breath.' It felt odd, given I didn't need to breathe, but it also made sense. I did manipulate and fuse sand into... Obsidian? Or a black rock. No, it's made mostly of silicon, which makes it obsidian. It certainly matches my memories of the material. But anyway, fusing sand into obsidian should take a fair amount of both mana and mental energy.
The next 'breath' of mana I took, I breathed with the whole cave as my 'mouth.' I watched, astonished, as hundreds of free-floating specks of mana rushed into my cave, merging into a stream of glittering not-light that wove through the air towards my gem.
After a few minutes of this, I realized I hadn't exhaled. I was still 'breathing in.' Wait. Oh, Duh. I was a gemstone, not a human. I didn't need to breathe anymore. It was just a mental construct I'd fashioned to help conceptualize this weird sense and manipulation of mana.
As the stream grew from hundreds of motes to thousands, I drank down the river of mana. I guzzled it down like the world's biggest glutton. But soon I began to feel... full. I was glowing fairly brightly, something inside me radiating beams of light through my facets onto the cave walls. As the feeling of fullness gained strength, I took the mental cue and stopped inhaling.
But the mana didn't stop coming.
It was now a roaring river, moving under its own unstoppable momentum. The unaligned atmospheric mana moving towards me had created a kind of suction, or vacuum, and nature abhorred a vacuum. More mana moved in to fill the spaces mana had just left, propagating outwards with alarming speed. Panicked, and with the feeling of fullness growing painful, I pushed my mana out, making space for new mana to rush in.
I threw my mana into an orbital ring and watched as it collided with the river of pure power coursing towards me. Slowly, ever so slowly, the river was diverted. It joined the orbiting mana ring, and as it ran into mine, it mingled and shifted. Gradually the incoming mana became mine all on its own.
After what felt like an eternity but must have been less than an hour given the shifting shadows, the stream slowed to a trickle. Though, it hadn't stopped. Now I had a new problem. There was so much mana orbiting me, and I had no idea what to do with it.
After a second of thinking, the answer came to me. I was a Dungeon core. I could manipulate and absorb mana. Cores got larger as they grew in strength. At least they had in the stories I'd read.
Tentatively, I pushed a few motes inside me to the surface of my facets. I gently prodded them out and held them to the surface of my core. Slowly the motes crystallized, and I felt my gem grow. I gently brought more to the surface in even layers, growing larger one grain of width at a time. Days more passed, and the orbital ring of mana dwindled. Soon my rings more resembled Jupiter's rather than Saturn's. There and visible but nowhere near as awe-inspiring.
And so, that is how I became an almost foot-long glowing Dungeon Core, on a five-foot-long obsidian arm and hand sticking out of the sand.
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© Max Porteous, 2021
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Uncharted Island, Unknown Ocean
Night of Day 3, Week 1
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Leaving my core just inside the mouth of the cave was a terrible idea; I knew that. After some time observing the mana streams in the sky around the island, I could see the natural rivers it formed and the various tributaries that fed into the stream that led to my core. More concerningly, the stream was growing.
Some of the dungeon fiction I'd read had dungeons as nature's terraformers, passively healing the land. Sometimes they would refine or vomit mana into the land around them.
What I seemed to be doing was the exact opposite. I was a mana drain, taking mana from the air. I was coating the inside of the cave, growing my core with it, and adding it to my ever-growing rings.
Now that the process had started, I wasn't sure it could be stopped. The unaligned mana in the sky was naturally drawn to me. And I knew this drain would continue to grow, even if I kept it to the minimum level I possibly could. There was an unstoppable momentum to it.
If there are sapient beings on this planet, and if they can sense mana, they would eventually notice the streams moving towards me.
Thus, I needed to build defenses. I pondered spreading across the island's surface or spreading through the ocean but eventually dismissed the ideas. I had a chance here that I'd never even thought possible. I'm going to build a Dungeon.
Shifting the sand beneath my pedestal, I caused it to glide deeper into the cave. I stopped a distance away from the back wall, a point that the sand in this cave still reached. Feeling the back of the cave, I pushed at the mana that had absorbed into the walls, willing the rock to part.
With a crack, a black line formed by the ground, water rushing in as it slowly grew wider. Hmm. Not quite what I wanted. I stopped pushing, but the crack remained.
I willed a tendril of mana to leave my rings and directed it to crash into the crack. As the stone became saturated by my mana, I willed the rock to crumble. I kept an image in my head of an irregular triangular tunnel, sand enough to stand on without getting wet on the left, with a channel of water to the right.
And, just as I pictured it, the cave wall crumbled into sand, which rushed past my pedestal and out into the ocean. Foot by foot, my mental image became a reality. After having carved the tunnel for a good 10 yards, I had used all the mana I'd thrown at the wall. I directed the leftover sand into the water, letting it settle under the waves.
This wasn't as long as I wanted it to be, but I stopped before I could continue. I had an idea.
With renewed purpose, I directed a stream of mana into the tunnel. Some small parts carved the walls to look more natural, while the majority slammed into the back wall and drilled in, constant waves of black sand flowing back out.
Within another hour, I'd formed a cavern about half the size of a football stadium. One half was sandy, while the other was a deep-ish pool. The roof was littered with stalactites, pointing down like knives in the dark and making ripples in the almost-still water.
And whoo-boy. It was dark in here.
I need some thematic lighting.
So I had a cave. A nice big cave. What did I want to do with it? Well, I had a plan. Unfortunately, I didn't have any glowworms, so I needed an alternative lighting source. Strictly I didn't need light since the cave was my body, and I knew every square inch of stone like it was the back of my hand. Not that I had one. It's a metaphor, anyway.
I want my new home to look nice. Was that so bad?
That leads me to my next experiment with mana. To my 'vision,' individual motes of mana are specks that glow, but not in the 'light' sense. It had some strange Fluorescence that I could see easily, but normal creatures like the seagull couldn't. Thus, I want to find a way to make visible light with my mana.
Experiment one: Clumps.
I formed a sconce to cradle my potential light, which looked like a hand grasping out of the wall next to my entrance.
What? My pedestal was a hand, and I knew how to make hands. They were easy. Familiar.
Next, I took about a golf-ball-sized clump of mana and moved it to sit within the fingers of the sconce. It did nothing but continue to be a ball of mana. Alright then. I guess I have to catalyze it somehow. Perhaps by spinning it around incredibly quickly? No. Radiance? No, that only makes it shed mana. At a decent rate, too, so that's something to remember.
Okay, back to square one. Light is caused by electrons jumping from higher to lower energy levels, which generates a photon. It's usually caused by resistance to the flow of electricity, fusion, or a sufficiently exothermic reaction, like combustion. There might also exist a 'light mana,' but I haven't encountered 'conceptual' mana yet, only my own 'claimed' mana, 'unclaimed' mana in the air, and the Gull's mana.
Speaking of which, he's fine. He's eating a fish right now.
Mana-fire sounds highly hazardous, and I don't think attempting to form electricity is a good idea right now. Though fusion seems like the most dangerous option... fusing motes of mana together sounds like the easiest thing to accomplish.
Let's try it, then.
Experiment Two: Mana Suns.
With a flex of will, I caused the mana in the ball to crush inwards, effectively creating an artificial gravity. Hmm. Not enough. I directed more mana into the ball, feeling more and more like I was making a bomb. The 'gravity' grew and grew until suddenly I felt like the mana was going to explode outwards, an internal pressure suddenly existing. I forced the mana to stay within the ball and watched as the roiling, compressed mana twisted and turned on itself.
Then something clicked, and it happened.
From within the ball came a radiating pressure and an equal pull that kept the pressure in balance. In the star's center, I could see a crystal come into being, the mana-star's core analogue. Could this eventually become a mana crystal? Right now, it was a tiny ball, but I'd keep an eye on it over the next few hours /weeks to track its growth.
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From within the fingers of my Hand-Sconce, a small sun of ghostly teal light shone. The light filled the mouth of my cave, throwing shadows and creating water mosaics on the ceiling to join the moonlight. The color was strange, the same shade as my core. Was this the color of my mana? Would everything I make with mana be this color? Either way, It's bright. Incredibly bright. It might even be too bright.
Like real stars, this mana star had a minimum mana/mass requirement, meaning it had a minimum possible size. Unfortunately, I couldn't use this everywhere in my dungeon because even its smallest size was far too large to fit in the small hallways I envisioned. Thankfully it also seemed relatively stable. Its outsides rotated slowly, and that speed ramped up quickly the closer you got to the crystal at its core.
It was also a fucking beacon. Sitting as it was, oversized compared to the sconce I had made for it, the light it radiated could probably be seen all the way to the horizon! This could not stay on the outside of my dungeon. I am nowhere near ready for anyone to know I'm here. I have no traps! No Monsters! No defenses whatsoever!
When attempting to move the small star, I found it incredibly easy. Then again, this was composed entirely of my own mana; I shouldn't be surprised. I directed the giant ball of mana to float through my entrance, which I had to expand slightly to get the tiny star through. I brought the sand back and shrunk the entrance back down afterward.
I formed two large hands to cradle the star on the ceiling in the middle of the cavern. The fingers cradled it like a pair of hands warmed by a fire, directing the light down and allowing the water's mosaics to fill the shadowed cave roof.
So I have a cave leading into a cavern and light to fill the cavern. Now, it's time for part three!
Monsters and Critters to inhabit and defend me.
For this, I need my good friend Gull, the seagull.
...
He's sleeping...
...
Alright. I'll wait till morning for that. In the meantime, let's make more caverns!
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The Dungeon, Unknown Island, Unknown Ocean
Dawn of Day 4, Week 3
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I... may have gotten caught up in construction fever. I now possessed around a mile of twisting, growing, and shrinking passages, with four large, spacious caverns along its length. I had also been struck by inspiration about halfway through the week and carved a small and entirely underwater set of caves for my fish to live in. They connected to all the deepest points of the ponds in the cave system. I also had one tunnel which led to a point under the waterline, in the cliff wall next to my cave, to let fish in and out.
It's been... about a week? I think that's right. Either way, the sun dawned over the calm ocean like a shimmering jewel on a velvet cushion. I assume. I can't see it since my cave faces west, but I can see morning's arrival.
I was initially going to use Gull to collect some animals for me to use, but over my week of digging, a fair number of small creatures had wandered in. They'd made themselves at home in my caverns and the water that flowed through and between them. Each organism within me gets a blast of mana, and they became extensions of my will.
My new creatures include dozens of fish of various species, sand-dwelling insects, mites and flies, and a couple of tiny crabs the size of a rectangular eraser.
The fish, I don't recognize. Then again, I wasn't particularly obsessed with the ocean back on earth, so I didn't expect to recognize them. I had breeding pairs of all of them, so I moved them into small 'breeding chambers' connected to the underwater system and set them to making more of themselves. I did the same for the crabs but directed them to a half-n-half chamber, where half of the chamber's floor is above the waterline.
I singled out a particularly large specimen in my first cavern and told him to stay put. It was time for another experiment.
I had a tiny crab, but it needed to be bigger if I wanted it to be worth anything as a defender. As it was now, it couldn't even cut a pinky toe off.
So, I focused on my crab and got to work. First, I just pushed mana into him to see what would happen. Much like with my own core, I quickly reached a point where the crab's magical nervous system, its 'magic circuits,' felt 'full.' But nothing else happened. It was now a particularly mana-charged crab.
So, I pushed my intent into the mana. Grow. Get Bigger.
Immediately, the mana started being absorbed by the crab's flesh. The crab began to stagger, suddenly disoriented. Over the next hour, the crab grew. From the size of an eraser to a palm with fingers splayed. Alright, I now had a bigger crab. Nice to know that I could make animals bigger with mana. It still wasn't big enough yet, though.
What next... Hmm. Perhaps mana cores? They're generally a staple of fantasy literature and are often the determiner of monsterdom. Once again, I flooded his system with mana. The crab's male, by the way. I won't name it until I know it won't explode into gore.
Now it's time for some speculation. In theory, animals exist in the wild with some mutated and warped by natural mana, much like my crab; unnaturally large for its species. Animals accumulated this mana naturally by eating smaller organisms and their mana; I had observed this with Gull eating some fish. Once the mana in them reached some nebulous point, something had to happen. I didn't give the crab a chance to naturally do what it would have by forcing the mana in him to make him grow. So, this time, I poured in mana until I could add no more and left it like that. I withdrew from the crab's mind and mana and waited, watching.
After a couple of hours of saturation and some exploration of my dungeon, testing its new size, the crab fell unconscious on the beach of the second cavern. (Sized identically to the first, third, and fourth caverns.)
I watched, entirely focused and fascinated, as the mana condensed down into a solid crystal in the middle of the crab, next to his tiny heart. His new Monster Core. Soon after, the newly created monster woke and moved on with his life, with a few differences.
He now passively absorbed mana from the air, much as I did. I assume this was 'mana regeneration.' He now also moved with focused purpose, as opposed to before, where he seemed to have just been wandering. He made his way through the entire dungeon until he found himself in my core room, a small chamber behind the final cavern, an arena-like space I intended to be the boss room. After looking up at me for a minute, he bowed.
It was, undeniably, a bow. The crab spread his claws, leaned forward, and lifted his back half higher off the sand.
Well... I have to make you into a true monster with dedication like that.
I reached into his head and sent him a pleased feeling. I quickly diverted a stream of mana off my ever-thicker rings, which now looked more like a black hole's accretion disk than Saturn's rings.
The crab clacked his claws, and I got a vague sense of joy back through our connection when the mana reached him. The mana was quickly absorbed into his core, which began giving off its own internal glow. Along with the mana, I sent the mental image of a giant crab. One claw was enlarged into a shield, and the other elongated and sharpened, yet both still usable as claws. Its shell was littered with spikes and pits, thick and rugged.
The armor on its legs extended to cover the joints but still allowed quite a bit of movement and a high degree of agility. Thinner, but no less impressive, armor on its underside; to cover that potential weakness. The color of its shell was also altered, a splotchy dark grey to match the cavern walls.
I felt awe from the small crustacean, then an impressive resolve.
It took most of my stored mana, but the crab grew just as I had envisioned over the next two hours. His claws adjusted, and his armor thickened as planned. His shell, already a greyish brown, shifted to match the grey stone of the walls. The most significant change, of course, was his size. The whole time, he was growing. He grew from the size of a splayed palm to the size of a dog, then a small pony.
I cautioned him from growing larger at the moment, as he would be unable to leave my core room if he were any larger. He sent back a feeling of agreement, tinged with a small amount of disappointment, and his growth halted.
I hereby name you Sebastian, the Crab Knight. You are to be the boss of the first floor. I declared to the no-longer-small crab. He seemed pleased with his new name and left my core room, returning to the arena cavern. The sharpened tips of his legs made a satisfying thunk as he walked. Sebastian settled against one wall and took some time to half-bury himself in the sand. To my surprise, he made a rather convincing rock. I quickly modified his arena and the other three caverns to have similarly shaped rocks.
With the success of Sebastian, I decided to make the crabs the main monster of this floor. After all, the other two had bred already. It might take a week or two, but I'm sure mana can speed up the process.
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© Max Porteous, 2021
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The Dungeon, Uncharted Island, Unknown Ocean
Morning of Day 6, Week 6 PC
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The effect Mana has on living organisms is fascinating. From what I'd observed, once a monster gains a core, their bodily functions are almost entirely supported by the mana they passively absorb from the air around them. They don't even seem to need real food, though they continue to eat out of habit.
It's been more than three weeks since I had made Sebastian, and he had only deigned to eat from his feeding pool five times. Even then, he only swiped a single fish on each occasion. I suspect most of his biology is made of mana simulating real flesh since he was only about an inch long before I modified him. To me, it looks just like real flesh. I can't see the difference between Sebastian and Gull, who I haven't changed.
Speaking of tiny crabs, I'm inundated! I was right that mana could influence their breeding cycle. What would typically be a four-month brooding flashed by in about four days. The female buried herself on the shore in the secret cavern I'd made for this purpose. With an infusion of mana with the intent to breed, she soon laid them in a large breeding pond. Good thing too, since she laid thousands of the things! Each tiny little larvae was the size of a plankton. Thankfully I had a connection to each one and mana-infused about three-quarters of them to grow faster, half of those to go even more quickly, and about fifty to speed-run their life-cycle.
With those fifty, I could begin my experiments.
Of course, I gave all of them cores because it made everything so much easier. I'm not sure why, but having the core somehow made them more mutable or receptive to change. I made ten Crab Knights from the fifty, about half the size of Bastian. For context, that's about the size of a wolf. The next thirty, I made a similar size but gave boxing-glove-like claws and thicker forwards-facing armor. This made them slower but more able to take a hit and dish it back. These I named Crab Brawlers.
The final ten were smaller still, about the size of a Rottweiler. These I gave thinner armor and two long, sharp claws. I tried to up the twitch-nerve response time, and it seems to have worked. They undoubtedly move faster than their larger brethren. But whether that's their nerves or the lighter armor, I'm not sure. Both would contribute to their increased speed. These will be the Assassin Crabs.
Unlike my boss monster, the rock-colored sedentary creature that he is, the Brawlers and Knights all have brightly colored shells. Each has a unique pattern of swirls, ridges, and valleys, with colors ranging from yellow through orange to red. They were quick to pick up the use of their shells in some kind of mating display, which was quite amusing to watch.
Why would I make them so visible? Well, that's because they will be my front-line fighters. The bulwark all must pass through. Their coloration is to draw the attention of any potential invaders and keep it on them. The assassin crabs, however...
Much like Sebastian, I made them rock-colored to blend in better. Their shells are molded and shaped to allow them to fold their claws and legs in and seem merely a rock to all who would gaze upon them. While the Brawlers and Knights keep any aspiring adventurer's attention on them, these sneaky crabs would stay concealed. In that perfect moment, when all attention was on the fighters, the assassins would strike from behind. They'd cut tendons and slice soft tissue open! I made sure to give them the mental image of mages and healers clad in robes. They were priority targets if the crabs saw anything remotely resembling those mental images.
I spread my new monsters out through the dungeon. Each knight got a squad of three brawlers to command. They were to roam around the caverns and through my first-level tunnels. The assassins I mostly let choose their hiding spots. At least two were in each of my four caverns, with the final two in the second and fourth caverns.
The crabs would be an excellent first line of protection against potential intruders. Their high reproductive rate would also help replace any who died defending me. As my first line of defense, I anticipated needing to keep their numbers high. They would be the first monsters encountered in every run and would likely take the most casualties due to that role.
With the monsters mostly sorted, I ensured replacements were ready to infuse with mana, then worked on refining the ambiance and environment of my caverns.
The first cavern would remain open, a wide crescent of sand caressing a black pool of water. Every cavern after the first would have little sand covering the uneven and sharp rocky floor, filled with jagged stalactites and stalagmites. Walls of rock would lead potential invaders on a twisting path across the cavern, with plenty of points to set up ambushes and traps. The mana-star in each cavern threw light and shadow in equal measure, the contrast working in my favor to better hide the assassins among the rocks.
Between the caverns were long, dark, and narrow passages. These passages rose and fell. They twisted around, above and below each other, and would do wonderfully to disorient invaders. As it was pitch black within the tunnels, they'd either have to traverse them in complete darkness or use torches. It was a choice between ruining their night vision with torchlight or fighting in the dark. Both options provide me opportunities to attack. With the tunnel's width barely enough for invaders to pass through in single-file, it would also allow the crabs to ambush invaders in a pincer movement inside the tunnels if need be.
The cave mouth remained as it was; a large triangular gash in the side of the cliff. Sand and water shared the entrance, the dominance of each decided by the tide. At the back of the cave was a short tunnel, shaped like an isosceles triangle, leaking a ghostly teal light.
So, with my first level complete, It's time to contemplate my second. What creature could I mutate into a monster? How would I arrange the floor's defenses? My first level reminded me of the deep caverns in Until Dawn, with markedly more sand. Dark, dank, and mostly natural-looking. Perhaps my second floor could be more civilized?
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At the end of my dungeon, on the opposite side to the entrance of Sebastian's arena, there existed a rough doorway and tunnel leading to my core room. I molded the opening into a double-wide door frame, with intricate carvings decorating it. If the carvings had the rough and angular look of Norse runes, I would blame my obsession with Vikings before I ended up in this world. Finally, I created a pair of stone doors that rested on stone hinges. I used my mana to pull the door shut, and the stream of mana leading to my core objected. Violently.
The mana built up quickly. After a few seconds, the door exploded inwards and fell to the sand. The stream rushed through the now-open doorway and again began collecting in the disk around me.
Okay then. I must maintain a clear and unobstructed pathway to my core for the mana stream to use. Lesson learned. I think I have a solution, though.
Just above the doorframe, I carved a series of evenly spaced holes. Slowly, I guided the mana stream upwards and let the mana flow through it rather than the doorway. After putting the doors back on new hinges, I let them shut. The mana continued to pass through the vent over the door. Success! Now that I could close the doors, I added stylistic carvings of a crab knight on them; its sharp claws raised to a tear-drop-shaped star above.
The next part to work on was my core room, which would become the staircase to the next floor. Slowly a spiral staircase was carved from the rock around a central pillar that my pedestal remained on. The walls in the room and lining the stairs gained a brick-like façade, despite still being completely solid. I manipulated the legs of my pedestal to walk down the stairs, then hollowed out a large room with four large doorways at the bottom. My idea for this floor was that it would be a maze.
As I hollowed out the hallways of my future maze, I pondered on appropriate monsters to populate it with. The few lizards and bird species in the rainforest on the island would do better on my third floor, which I already have an idea for. What I need is something... Foul. Something that infests ruins and abandoned places the world over.
Rats.
Unfortunately, It seems this island lacks any rodents of usual or unusual size. Bah. I'll come back to the rats later.
So, I needed to double down on the maze, with no appropriate monsters available. I let the digging, carving, and decoration consume my attention for a time, and the maze soon became more of a labyrinth. Each of the four entrance points from the central staircase led down unique paths, and more than a few crossed through, over, and under others. While digging, I kept the right-hand rule in mind: if you follow the right-hand wall, you'll find the exit. There wasn't much I could do about it except make sure that if you only followed your right or left hand from any of the entrances, you'd end up back where you started.
With the confusing maze done, now was the time to set up some traps.
I'd neglected to add traps to the first floor, though maybe a few weakened stalactites I could break with a thought would work. A quick shift of attention made that vision reality, then back down again.
At select points in the maze, I created pitfalls filled with obsidian spikes. Also, something to remember is that I don't disintegrate rock or anything like that; I turn it into sand and manipulate it out of my entrance. Though with my most recent work on the second floor, I've created another tunnel that leads out under the water line, so I don't have to shove the sand through the first floor.
But I digress; back to the pit trap. A thin sheet of rock patterned identically to the 'floor panels' I carved into the ground of the entire floor was placed over a pit too deep to climb out of, or otherwise escape easily. I wasn't sure about the thickness of the panel, but hopefully, it will break with two or more people standing on it, which should be about 180 pounds. Again, I'm unsure how thick is correct, so I aimed for the thinner side. As I gain experience, I'll adjust it.
Some spike traps were in the middle of unassuming corridors, others in corners. One was an entire hallway!
With my maze complete, I created an empty boss room. Perhaps some giant, minotaur-style rat would inhabit it one day?
Now I want rats more than ever! Le Sigh. It would happen if it happened.
I took a quick break from construction to shift my attention to the surface and watch the brilliant sunset. It was beautiful, but it also highlighted the black clouds sweeping southwards. As the clouds reached my island and the sheet of rain began pounding the land, I pitied anyone caught in this storm.
Oh, that looks like one heck of a storm.
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The Merchantman Ship Good Tidings, The Kalenic Sea
Navigator Kailen Gresh
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The day began like any other day at sea. The wind was measured, both its strength and direction. The ship's speed was identified, and their rough location was extrapolated. The storm had likely blown them far off course last night, and they'd need to find a landmark to be sure of any heading. In the meantime, they couldn't go wrong with a westward heading. Not like you'd end up anywhere other than Theona.
"Captain Hart!" Kailen called as he emerged from below deck. "How fares the crew?"
The man laughed heartily. "Navigator Gresh! The crew fares well; a little rain and swell aren't enough to dampen their spirits!" Hart replied, getting a few chuckles from passing sailors. "How fares the cargo?"
"Dry and in good condition." Kailen confirmed, "Should make for a tidy profit when we make port. We do have bad news, however. I'm afraid that 'little rain and swell' last night has blown us well off course; we'll have to wait for nightfall to make any corrections. In the meantime, westward ho." The captain nodded.
"Aye. Westward ho." Hart agreed. He had opened his mouth to continue when the man in the crow's nest shouted a phrase all aboard longed to hear; his arm stretched towards the horizon off to port.
"Land Ho!" Immediately, a half-dozen seamen crowded the ship's port side, straining for a glimpse of land.
"Land?" Kailen asked, frowning, looking in the same direction. "We're still at least three days off the coast of Theona, and there aren't any islands on this course."
Hart slapped him on the back, pointing one hand to the spot of green that was indeed on the horizon. "Well, there's one now. Add this to your charts, my friend." He stepped away from his navigator and began shouting orders to the crew.
"Make for the Island!"
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The Dungeon, Unknown Island, Kalenic Sea
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Oh. That's a ship. Big, wooden, and with three masts draped in square sails. It wouldn't look out of place in the renaissance back on earth.
The only reason I'd even seen it coming was thanks to Gull, Who had been flying and spotted the white sails against the blue sea. You're an excellent Birb, Gull.
Well, it seems I have less time than I thought to prepare. Hopefully, they aren't here because of me. That wouldn't be good at all. I'm not ready to face seasoned adventurers! Please, please, please be unprepared sailors.
Le Sigh. My location was going to get out, eventually. I'm pretty confident I could hold them off, though. And hey, maybe they won't even notice I'm here!
Look for the silver lining! They might have ship's rats.
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© Max Porteous, 2021
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The Dungeon, Uncharted Island, Kalenic Sea
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The ship took another hour to go from a sail on the horizon to a full, three-masted galleon rapidly approaching my little volcanic paradise.
I directed Gull to spy on them. Unfortunately, the sailors didn't speak a lick of English, nor was it any language I recognized. It was more melodic and flowing than most languages from earth.
The captain, now referred to as Captain, was evident, a man with a large-brimmed and feathered hat. He had a rapier at his hip, with a pair of pistols holstered at his chest. He looked athletic and acted somewhat boisterous, ordering his men to furl the sails and slow their approach. A reedy man with a quill and paper looked like he was taking notes over a map.
A map would be nice.
I might try to steal that at some point.
The ship wasn't very well armed, seemingly with only a light complement of cannons. Despite that and the lack of ammunition it implied, the galleon sat heavily in the water. So... Cargo?
A passing trader, thrown off course by the storm? Probably.
The ship circled the island once, with the captain pointing out my cave and the blue glow sneaking out from the passage within. While it wasn't as bright as it could have been, a definite ghostly blue-green glow lit the darkened opening. They anchored off a bay on the other side of the island before two longboats filled with sailors came ashore. They spent the next day exploring the island, documenting the wildlife and mapping the place.
On the second day, a shore party of six armed sailors and the captain approached me. They entered the arching cave cautiously, keeping an eye on the water and walls. When they reached the passage, Captain turned to face his crew. He looked to be gearing up for a speech.
"My loyal crew, I would like to make something clear before entering. You are volunteers, and this is potentially a Dungeon. We all know how dangerous Dungeons can be, and we have no idea how long this one has been here. I cannot guarantee your survival past this point. If you wish to return to the ship, I will not hold it against you."
Whatever the man said, the rest of the sailors shifted in place for a second, but none spoke. Captain continued.
"Thank you, friends. I remind you to be cautious and take no unnecessary risks. It will likely have monsters guarding it, and we are not Guilders. If the monsters prove too dangerous, we will retreat with what knowledge we have gained. Ready? Let's go."
Captain ducked through the short passage first, immediately followed by a man with a pair of hammers, a man with a mace, two men with scimitars, a man with a crossbow, and a man with twin daggers.
The man with twin hammers was well-built, nearly a head taller than the rest and half again as wide. When I say hammers, I mean brick-sized hunks of forged steel attached to foot-long handles. Those things would likely crack my Crab's shells, but I couldn't be sure if it would shatter them. You are hereby dubbed; Eddy.
The man with the mace was only slightly smaller than Eddy and shared his, uh, dashing features; a squashed nose and permeant frown. You are now named Ed.
The swordsmen looked almost identical, but for which hand they held their scimitars. Unlike Captain and Eddy's vaguely European appearance, the Twins were Middle-Eastern, dark-skinned and clad in what you would expect a Middle-Eastern pirate to wear. Lefty and Righty, welcome to my dungeon!
The Bowman was lithe and carried his crossbow with sharp-eyed vigilance. This man also had a heck of a schnoz on him. Prominent, regal, almost Roman. Thus, you are Roman, the Bowman.
The rogue was the final member of their apparently mageless party (A mistake, to be sure). He looked shifty. What? He was skulking, eyes darting here and there, and he made barely any noise on the sand. Shifty it is, for him.
After entering, the first thing most did was gaze in awe at the mana-star. Ed and Eddy immediately started... arguing?
"What the heck is that?" "It's a mana-light, dumbass" "I know that! But aren't mana-lights... smaller? And not as blindingly bright?" "Yeah, they are."
"Cut the chatter, you two." The captain cut in. "Keep your eyes peeled for anything that could be a monster. Lane, Keep an eye on the water."
Rowan turned to face the water at his last word, obviously watching for sneak attacks.
I attempted to get a tendril of mana near Captain to test what would happen, but I found it tricky. My control of the mana within the room was a little tenuous, even more so the closer to the men it was. I lost even that at some point, and the mana just diffused into a cloud. The mana near the men slowly drifted towards them, being passively absorbed. Once it passed their skin, my aspected mana suddenly wasn't mine. Urgh. Damn. Something about humans disrupted my control. No wonder Cores needed monsters to protect them if they couldn't use mana to defend themselves. I called my Crabs to action.
And thus, the game was afoot.
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The Dungeon, Uncharted Island, Kalenic Sea
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Captain Eli Hart was worried.
The huge mana-light in the cavern confirmed they were in a dungeon; it was in no way natural, especially with the hand-like carvings 'holding' the light between them. The dungeon knew what hands were like, which meant someone had been here before them. There was only one problem with that theory.
All signs pointed to an uninhabited island, utterly untouched by human hands. So how did it know what hands were? Eli soon found he didn't have time to ponder that particular mystery. From the passage on the other side of the cavern, he could hear a lot of rhythmic thunk sounds. The sound of something heavy slamming into the sand.
"Be ready! Monsters from the passage ahead!" he called out. "Kurt, Kale, to the front." The mace and hammer-using brothers passed him, raising their heavy weapons.
"Rahim, Jahim; take the flanks," He ordered. The Hilian scimitar-wielders nodded and moved into position.
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"Garth, watch our backs. Lane, keep watching that water. We don't want to get surrounded." The two nodded, keeping an eye on the cavern behind them.
It was then that the monsters emerged.
The first bright orange and segmented leg struck the sand, sparking in the teal light. Then the rest of the monster followed. It was a crab. An enormous crab. Walking sideways, as their kind were want to do, a Crab the size of a fully-grown Deepwood Wolf entered the cavern from the small passage and turned to face them. Like most mana-mutants, it was horrifying.
The shell on its top was rough and spiked in waves, from the front to back. Its pincers were enormous and bulbous, spiked in places much like Kale's maces. Two more almost exactly like it followed, spreading out to surround the passageway. That's what threw the captain a bit. Dungeons created mana-mutants to defend themselves, but the monsters they produced were never so... uniform. Just another thing that made Hart worried.
Then a fourth emerged. Though it was just as big as the others, this one had no spikes on its shell. No, this one's shell was shaped more like plate armor. Its claws were also modified. The right claw was large and circular but seemed flatter than its brethren, almost like a shield. Its left claw was thin, the actual pincer visible. Each side of the pincer was sharpened down to a blade, with the tips pointed and looking wickedly sharp.
There was a few seconds of silence as the groups eyed each other, looking for weaknesses. It was the Crabs who moved first.
With a screeching war cry, the middle crab rushed Kurt. It raised one claw for an apparent sideways swipe, prompting Kurt to swing his hammers in the other direction. In a mighty crash, the mace-claw met hammers in mid-air and was pushed back by the metal weapons. The monster's left claw came off worse: a star-burst of cracks radiating from the impact point.
But that was only one of its claws.
In an unexpected move, the crab's second claw used the momentum of the clash to swing out with surprising speed against the side of Kurt's knee. He roared in pain as the knee bent sideways in a way the knee was not designed to. Kale cried out in rage at his brother's injury and brought his mace down on the crab, only to be blocked by a claw.
"Garth! Let's get Kurt out of there!" Eli called, prompting the shifty man to rush in with him to pull the giant of a man back. Thankfully, Kale was a little smarter than his brother and kept the crab's attention without injury, even as Jahim and Rahim engaged their own crabs.
Unable to counter the pure strength of the crab's mace-like pincers, the men nimbly dodged the wild swings. Almost as one, the twins swung their scimitars down on the joint of a segmented leg. Both swords passed through cleanly, and the two crabs were suddenly down a leg each. They screeched in pain and pulled back, keeping their claws close. A second attempt at a leg skittered off armored claws, abruptly in the way.
Now meters back from the fighting, Kurt was passed a glass flask filled with a red liquid. Good. Healing potions were expensive, but lives were more so. Garth, who had pulled the potion from his pouch, took back the empty flask. Within seconds and with a painful sounding snap, the knee was put to rights. Re-energized by the potion, Kurt pushed himself off the sand, wincing as he put weight on the leg.
"Good enough to fight?" Hart asked the man. Kurt nodded and, with a growl, rushed in to take his revenge.
Suddenly, the stalemate was broken.
Having kept the crab's attention, Kale smirked with a vicious glee as twin hammers came down on the monster's shell. The first hammer to hit cracked the shell, and the second shattered it, plowing right through to the soft flesh beneath. The crab faltered, then crashed into the sand, dead.
Kurt let out a victorious laugh, raising his hammers to the roof. "Take that, you bastard!"
Kale joined his brother's cry of victory.
With a war cry of its own, the fourth crab leaped forwards over its fellow monster's corpse, Its sword claw already swinging. Before he could react, Kale's head was cut clean off, landing heavily on the sand in the suddenly silent cavern.
"Pull back!" Hart shouted. The twins disengaged and retreated, moving backward to keep the monsters in view.
Kurt did not. The man went into a berserk rage, yelling and lashing out at his brother's killer. The shield-claw of the crab deflected his hammers, and with almost contemptuous ease, the sword-claw stabbed him through the chest.
As the man was thrown to the side by the smarter-than-normal monster, and the sound of more monsters emerged from the passage beyond, Hart made his decision. "To the Exit! Quickly!" The five remaining men turned and ran from the monsters who had slain their crewmates. With a rush of water, four more monsters emerged from the water to their left. Lane aimed his crossbow and fired. The bolt flew truly and struck the knight-like crab at the base of its left eye. That crab fell down dead, though the shallowness of the pond meant it was still half out of the water.
Garth was the first human to reach the exit.
The first human.
What he had previously thought to be a rock reached out from next to the door and, with a surprisingly sharp pincer, cut straight through the strap of his satchel. As he jerked away from the revealed monster, it grabbed the bag and pulled it from the man's shoulder. "Hey! Give that back!" He shouted angrily. His expression didn't last long, the flush of his cheeks paling as blood fled his face. The man abandoned his satchel to the monster and escaped through the open gap without hesitation.
A glance behind explained that well enough. What had to be more than thirty of the monsters, all of them one of two fighter-types seen, had either emerged from the water or from deeper into the dungeon.
When Leon reached the exit, the rock-like crab had skittered away, its stolen goods in claw. Another rock had also stood up, waving its pincers menacingly for such a (relatively) small crab monster.
Hart reached the exit next, though he waved through the swordsmen before rushing through himself.
Even once out in the sunlight, they didn't stop running. It wasn't till they made it back to their ship that they finally relaxed, warily eyeing the ocean waves like a crab's pincer would suddenly reach out and pull them out of their dingy.
"That could have gone better." Garth, the coward, commented sardonically to glares from the rest of the men. That man was going to get himself killed one day.
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The Dungeon, Uncharted Island, Kalenic Sea
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And thus, my Crabs showed remarkable... comradery. Honestly, I had thought them replaceable minions to break the tide on, but they performed incredibly well. The Brawler's armor held up as well as could be expected. Blunt impacts would always be a weakness, much like the vulnerable joints.
The knight who had claimed two lives stood over its kills and gestured grandly, snapping its claws. The others joined in, making a sound, not unlike humans clapping in sync. Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack!
The Crab Knight had reacted quite strongly to its subordinate's death, showing a level of connection I didn't expect from the monsters. Then again, they have been training and patrolling together for more than a week now. I need more data. Either way, something exciting had happened during the fight.
The 'claim' the men had to their mana when they died was removed. Seemingly because he was their killer, about half had been absorbed by the Knight. The other half drifted up into the air above their bodies, where it joined the river of mana that was constantly rushing towards me. Within a few minutes, the mana reached my gem. Where mana typically joined the accretion disk orbiting me, I ensured that Ed and Eddy's mana came right to my gem.
And then I knew.
Fragments of memories, half-remembered sayings, and lessons. It helped to have the mana from both of them since their memories corroborated or filled in gaps left by the other. Eddy, who I now knew was named Kurt, was indeed brothers with Ed- named Kale. Kurt and Kale led a tough life in a city I couldn't find the name of. Their father died at sea, and their mother died of sickness in their teens. They spent a few years on the streets until Captain Hart found them in a fighting ring and offered them employment on his merchant ship as guards. They'd been doing it for a year or two now but didn't remember much about the places they'd been. These two were a bit thick, weren't they?
As a bonus, I could now understand some of their language. Some. I could understand some words, but much remained a mystery to me.
There was no period of disorientation. There was no consciousness in the mana. I had the memories, but it was like watching a film. I knew the knowledge, but I hadn't experienced it. Before I directed my attention to Gull, I released a wave of mana with healing intent at the two injured Brawlers. Over the next few minutes, new legs grew from the stumps.
I left the crabs to their victory celebration.
I had a post-Dungeon meeting to spy on.
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The Merchantman Ship Good Tidings, Uncharted Island, Kalenic Sea
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Captain Eli Hart took a deep breath.
The remaining members of the shore party had gathered in the ship's hold, surrounding a circular table. Kailen had also been called to the meeting to take down notes and offer his observations.
"Alright, let's begin." He started, getting the other men's attention. "I want to start with what we saw of the dungeon itself."
"Fuck all." Garth spat. "We got one bloody room in, then those fucking crabs killed my friends!" Eil sighed. The man wasn't wrong.
"That's true, but we gleaned quite a bit of information from that single room," Eil stated, weathering Garth's glare. He powered on before the man could interject. "First, that strange mana light. It was too bright to make out the details, but where most will only brighten a small room, this one lit the entire cavern." He looked around at the others, who nodded.
"You might not have noticed the bars of stone that cupped the light. They were shaped like hands." Kailen stopped writing and looked up, startled.
"That is... worrying." The navigator stated, getting a contemplative look.
"Why so?" Leon asked with a concerned look.
"It means the dungeon knows what hands are." Rahim began.
"Which implies it's encountered humans before." Jahim finished. Hart nodded gravely.
"Yes, that's it exactly." The captain stated. "It's seen humans before and knows exactly what our hands are shaped like. Intimately. It also knows we hold things in them. And yet.... this island is still unknown and uncharted. There is a possibility we've stumbled onto a Lost Dungeon." He finished gravely. Leon and Garth looked confused, so he elaborated.
"Every dungeon is the same; a large gem that hides within the earth and creates monsters to defend itself. But there are categories we put dungeons into to make it easier to identify them. A Baby dungeon is newly-formed, with likely only a floor or two. It might only have basic monsters, which might not even have cores yet. Mana-mutants, essentially. This ranking system goes from Baby through Young, Mature, Elder, to Ancient. Then there are the special categories like Conquered, which should be obvious. A Lost Dungeon is a dungeon which, at some point, was likely Conquered but managed to free itself, wiping out its old masters in the process." Eli took a deep breath.
"How come you know so much about dungeons?" Leon prompted, more curious than before. Eli blushed slightly as the others also showed interest, embarrassed.
"I grew up in the city of Cott, on the western coast. Cott was built around the entrance to a dungeon and, as such, had a relatively high population of Guilders. Our entire economy was based on the resources the Guilders brought back from the dungeon's depths. They brought up meat to supplement our farming, metals, and other materials in abundance. With such an important role, they were greatly respected by the city's common folk. I once had the dream of becoming one myself." Eli trailed off. He continued after a few seconds.
"So I studied everything I could get my hands on. I pestered the friendlier Guilders for insightful tips and tricks." He sighed, sadness shining through his eyes. "Then, when I was old enough, I went to get evaluated. You might not know, but Guilders... aren't like normal folk. Something different about them lets them use the mana in their bodies to strengthen themselves, make themselves faster, or even perform magic. I didn't have that." He shook his head, mourning the lost opportunity.
"But we're getting off-topic," Eli said, changing the subject. "Losing Kurt and Kale was a tragedy, but it's more understandable if the Dungeon is Lost." He held a hand to forestall Garth's objection. The man had already opened his mouth and was visibly bristling. "The dungeon is likely an Elder Dungeon, or perhaps Ancient, in the worst case. It will remember being conquered and forced to use its mana in any way its master desires. Lost Dungeons are far more lethal in their defense if they feel threatened. But... in time, if shown that the guilders won't push too deep, they relax. At least, a bit."
There was a momentary silence, which Kailen broke.
"What were its monsters?" the navigator asked, obviously trying to move on.
"Giant Crabs," Hart explained, his tone becoming clinical. "There were three kinds. Two were the size of a Deepwood Wolf, the third the size of a juvenile."
"The big ones were mostly bright orange," Leon added, "Though the shade dipped into yellow and red at points. They had iridescent designs in the ridges of their shells that caught the light. They might be valuable. The smaller ones were grey, completely identical in color and texture to the cave walls. It could be a camouflage ability, an enchantment of some kind, or natural coloration."
"One of the nasty little assholes took my fucking bag!" Garth complained in a whining tone. He slammed a fist on the table. "Forty silver worth of potions and poisons, gone!" He sat back in his chair, palmed his face, and let his fingers drag downward.
"Aye. As we were leaving, one of the grey ones showed itself." Hart confirmed, "Right nasty shock, that. It looked just like a rock; we discounted it entirely. They had sharp pincers, sharp enough to cut through the leather strap in one snip." They gave Kailen a minute to catch up, and when he was finished, he rolled his hands to prompt them onwards.
"The first kind of the bigger ones had bulbous, spiked pincers. I'd call them mace-like. The other kind had two differently-shaped pincers, one resembling a shield, the other a sword. When you think about it, this is more evidence of it being a Lost Dungeon. Normal monsters don't mutate weapons new weapons from their bodies. They enhance their natural ones."
He looked around the table. "When we reach Port Laviet, I will visit the Guild Hall there. There is a substantial reward for information on dungeons, especially newly discovered ones. I'll ensure you all get a cut of the reward for your part in this little fiasco." The promise of silver caused Garth's eyes to gleam in the candlelight.
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The Dungeon, Uncharted Island, the Kalenic Sea
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I wished they had this conversation on the deck rather than in the hold. Gull could barely hear them through the noise of the other sailors and kept getting shooed away. Even his enhanced hearing struggled to pick up what little he did hear, but I caught a few words I understood. Not enough to understand what they were saying, though.
Giving it up as a bad job, I turned my attention from the busy but subdued atmosphere of the ship and back to my dungeon. The crabs had dispersed after their little battle and returned to their patrol paths.
All in all, I learned plenty from this experience. First, humans will attack me, if for currently unknown reasons. Second, I didn't feel much about having killed two of the humans. There was some guilt there, but it was overridden by the deep confidence I felt. I was only protecting myself. They were intruders; I couldn't talk to them, and who knew what they wanted from me? I didn't. Third, and most important. They could make healing potions. That meant there were definitely alchemists or potion makers, if not outright mages, wherever these sailors came from.
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And wasn't that a shock?
Shifty had pulled a round-bottomed flask from his satchel, one filled with a stereotypical red liquid. I couldn't sense the mana in the liquid while it was so close to the party, but now that I had free reign, I could feel the potent intent suffusing the mana in the bottle.
I likened it to when I'd healed my crabs by filling them with mana suffused with intent to heal. The humans had somehow figured out how to impart mana with incredibly strong intents and store them in liquid.
From all this, I drew a few conclusions. My moral code had been changed by being turned into a dungeon. Mana was known to the local humans. Mana has been harnessed in some way by said humans, and large amounts of mana can be somehow infused into a liquid.
Hmm.
You know what? That gave me an idea—a reward for passing the first floor.
If they wanted to kill me, there'd be no need for rewards, but maybe... They might be more likely not to murder me if I was beneficial. Or, at the very least, benevolent?
I formed another pedestal out of the stone sand, located in the empty circular space at the top of the spiral stairs. This one was a pair of twinned pillars curling around one another. I thought of making them snakes, but continuing with the theme, I kept them smooth and had the point where they split off to support a bowl shaped into hands, which cupped and were fused to the bowl. I extended a long thin stalactite from the ceiling, having it stop barely a foot above the bowl. Next, I pushed mana into a ring at the top of the spike of stone and infused the concept of condensation into the mana. Yes, this ring of mana would pull water from the air and form droplets on the stone's surface. It would. After a few minutes, I saw water droplets form and dribble down in long trails. They collected at the bottom until enough was gathered. Then...
Drip... Drip... Drip...
Now, I have a bowl of water.
For the second part, I carved intricate Celtic-inspired designs into the stalactite, layering it in bands. For each band, I pushed in mana with the concept of infusion.
As the water droplets passed over the carvings, the mana would be infused into them. With each band passed, the droplets would gather more and more mana. By the time they reached the bottom, they'd completely saturated.
And so it was. I watched my creation for a time, making sure it worked.
When water dripped down from the top of the stone, the drops shifted from unaltered water to something like liquid starlight. It shined and glimmered in the light passing through the doorway.
I had created my first... would this be an enchantment? Did this count as enchanting? You know, I think this counted as enchanting. Mana, given purpose and intent to do something more than float around in the air. Yeah.
I'm going to call it enchanting, fuck whatever the humans call it.
Whatever. Since this had once been my core room, a fair amount of mana still existed here. It'd been pooling near the ceiling. Now it'd been pulled into an orbit around the stalactite. After a few revolutions, a stream split off to flow down the staircase. The enchantment pulled mana from the stream as it passed and used it to power itself and infuse the water, though the amount used was negligible. It was surprisingly efficient after the bands of faintly glowing carvings had been filled.
Slowly, drop by drop, the level of the mana-infused water rose.
Now for some... regulation. I didn't want the bowl overflowing and spilling all over the ground. That'd be a waste. To that end, I layered a single ring of mana along the inner edge of the bowl. This was going to be my most complicated command yet, but I needed to see if it would work. I pushed a specific concept into the ring: a light switch—a conditional statement. If the water in this bowl reached this level, it would stop the mana in the stalactite from condensing water. If the water falls below this level, mana start condensing again.
I pushed it hard. I willed it to work just as I wanted. All that was left to do was wait.
It took an hour to fill the bowl completely, and when it reached the ring, I felt the enchantment at the top of the stalactite stop absorbing mana. Though it had stopped, it didn't dissipate. It'd deactivated successfully!
Success!
Now I felt like a proper dungeon. I had lesser monsters, a boss monster, and a reward for beating the boss. Now I just needed some properly equipped humans to test it.
Speaking of humans. After their last attempt failed, the humans from the ship weren't likely to try again any time soon. They'd ship off soon and inform whatever authority was responsible for monitoring dungeons. That authority would likely send a dedicated force to check me out properly—an experienced team.
This was where things got sketchy. They could just want to exploit my resources, which were my giant crabs and the bowl of mana-infused water.
They could want to seal or control me somehow. They might want to force me to make something specific.
They could also take my core from my dungeon and use it... ME... as reagents or in an item. Like... a magical staff!
If they viewed me as something to be destroyed, and if they were sufficiently powerful... I'd be unable to stop them.
I didn't know. I couldn't know. The soonest I would find out would be when they got here.
So, we fall back on the golden rule when facing the unknown.
Pray for the best, but prepare for the worst.
I'd need more than Crabs. Even if I upped their numbers significantly, they needed to be more experienced to be more than trash mobs. If I made them bigger, they couldn't navigate my dungeon. I couldn't make their shells stronger or their weapons more effective without making them larger. Or if I could, I still needed to figure out how. I didn't know how to make the assassin crabs actually invisible.
So, I would have to make do with something else for my second-floor monster. It was a little sad, to be honest. I was hoping for rat monsters. I looked over the labyrinth I'd carved, concepts and themes running through my mind. Maybe...
Could I?
If I raised this part here, lowered that... yes.
Yes.
This would work.
Without hesitation, I opened a passage in the lower half of a wall on my second floor. It wasn't big. A triangular prism, each side a foot long. Carefully, I connected it to the flooded tunnels my small crabs and fish use to get between the different caverns. It took hours, but soon my labyrinth had become the 'Flooded Labyrinth.' The higher portions were dry, but about half the maze was filled with water up to waist height. I ensured the tunnel you needed to take to reach the exit was flooded completely, along with five other sufficiently long dead ends.
If they had people who could see mana and follow it to find the exit, I decided to make my mana stream take a long, meandering route. It crossed over itself multiple times and passed through most of the flooded tunnels.
Now for the floor's defenders. Since the only animals I had access to were aquatic, I'd have to make do with fish.
I took a small break to watch the human ship sail off towards the setting sun, two men less.
I hoped they wouldn't hold a grudge.
Now for the monsters which would inhabit my second floor.
It'd be very dark since there were no light sources down there. Invaders would have to hold their torches or whatever up above their heads, out of the water. They wouldn't be able to see what's in the water.
Hmm. What kind of fish live out in the reef...
From what one of my claimed fish can see, they don't look like much. Regular, tropical fish. No sea snakes or sharks. I'd have to make something new. I had no specific ideas for what I wanted, but I realized I didn't need any. I shoved a whole load of different fish into the maze, saturated them with enough mana to form a core, and watched what happened afterward.
I may get inspired. I could be surprised.
Finding out would be entertaining, at least.
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Port Laviet, The Phenoc Kingdom, Theona
Five Days Later
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After getting to the bustling port city, Captain Eli Hart first met with his merchant contact to sell his cargo. That was just good business sense. Who knew what would happen later.
The second thing he did was grab the map with the rough coordinates Kailen had worked out for the island and find the local chapter of the Guild. The Guild was a massive organization, with branches in almost every city worth the title. This chapter had an imposing hall built of wood and stone in the previous century's fashion. It proudly displayed its age and history to all who knew what to look for.
When Eli entered, he froze. The eyes of dozens of Guilders loitering in the hall focused on him, sizing him up, then almost immediately dismissed him. He was just an ordinary man, not one of them. Not a threat. Eli took a minute to collect himself before walking slowly and deliberately to the reception. The woman behind the counter was stamping and signing forms with remarkable speed. When she didn't look up, he cleared his throat. She stopped and sighed.
"What's your business with the guild?" She drawled, looking up with a bored expression. Eli was a little taken aback. The Guilders at Cott had been a lot friendlier than the ones here. Or perhaps it was because he was an adult, not an overactive child. He spoke quickly but quietly.
"I'm the captain of the ship Good Tidings. On our latest voyage, we were blown off course by a storm. We found an uncharted island, and on this island, we encountered what I believe to be a Lost Dungeon." Though he had been trying to be discreet, from the suddenly sharp glances some of the more powerful guilders in the hall were sending him, they had heard his whispered words. The receptionist was a lot more interested now. She nodded, pushed her forms to the side, and spoke as she stood from the chair.
"Please follow me. I'll arrange for you to meet the Guildmaster."
© Max PPorteo© Max PPorteou