《Just Another Dungeon Story》
Chapter 1: Beginning Anew
Deep within the mists of an as of yet un-named realm sat a pile of gems of all different sizes, colors, and shapes. Ranging from a small green heart to a large almost impossibly intricate koi fish taking on the classic orange and red of said koi fish.
All but one of these gems, a small orange gem similar in qualities to a polished Citrine gemstone, were rather rudely pushed aside by a large snout. The owner of said snout was a large multicolored godly being which resembled the dragons depicted in ancient Chinese folk lore. This divine beast, commonly known by mortal folk as The Rift Maker, had special interest in this small orange gemstone. Whilst one may call it to be one of the more bland gems within the pile it regardless held the attention of the godly being, for said devine being had a plan for this little gem.
Reaching over with an almost comically small arm the grand entity grabbed the tiny little stone and with little but a thought created a gateway, a tear in the fabric of the world with undulating sides of all the colors in the world which almost appeared unstable as well as being something one may call a rift, into the world of Inta. In specific a small patch of dry desert foothills settled up close to the tallest mountain in the realm, one which sadly had yet to be named.
The mythical monster flew through the hole in space, its body longer than the unnamed mountain was tall, and down to a small little divot in the dry foothills. Pretending to search about for the perfect spot almost ignorant of the fact it already know instinctively where to place the little orange crystal the divine creature finally settled on a small little dip in the land, a place which also happened to be occupied by a rather sad looking bush stubbornly holding on to life for as long as it could. Gently pushing the few branches of the bush out of the way the godly beast softly placed it in the dry soil.
Not yet finished the beast would forcefully shed a tear which appeared impossibly tiny compared to the beast which had just created it. Carefully collecting the tear with a claw which despite its comically short nature managed to reach the eye through yet another smaller hole in space time, the mythical creature reached down and let the tear roll off the claw and onto the bright orange stone shaded by the sad little bush.
Content and seemingly finished with its business here the devine dragon floated up and away from the place it had just set the small orange gem and simply turned around and disappeared back into the rift in reality it had originally formed to come to these dry hills. Said rift promptly closing up and reality returning to how it was content to believe it had never been disturbed in the first place.
I awoke with a start and trying not let the light of day ruin my one day of rest out of the entire year I quickly shut my eyes again . . .
WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY EYELIDS
I quickly threw . . .
WHY IN THE NAME OF THE WORLD KEEPER CAN I NOT FEEL ANY OF MY BODY PARTS . . .
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AND WHERE THE FUCK AM I FOR THAT MATTER TOO.
Then it dawned on me, this was simply another silly little dream and all I had to do was wake up then I could go about enjoying my day of rest and relaxation. So not knowing what else to do I simply decided to wait out whatever silly shit this dream was going to throw my way, I''d spent all my life dealing with my godforsaken dungeon delving family members and could certainly wait out a little dream.
Well, I guess sense I''m hear and I at least look around a little right? Trying to look around at my surroundings I quickly noticed that I could see in quite literally see in every direction and for some reason my little rabbit-folk brain wasn''t getting fried by all the information it had to process. Well I suppose it is a dream after all it wouldn''t do if my brain exploded from trying to process too much information in something it had concocted up all by itself right?
Peering around my surroundings I quickly noticed that half of myself was buried in the dirt, I then not so quickly noticed that I was in a small divot in the land with a small and quite sad little shrub looming over me. With nothing else to do I decided I might as well count how many leaves are on the small bush.
There was fifty four leaves on the whole thing, well at least on the part I could see, and not a single one of them appeared to be as green as all my years of farming told me they should be. In fact most of them were brown and looked ready to blow off at the slightest disturbance.
Sighing internally now that I realized my little distraction was gone I decided I had nothing better than the sit here and contemplate until I woke up.
It was nightfall in the dream and I was starting to feel like this was taking longer than it should have and I had also run out of thoughts to think about.
WHY IN THE NAME OF THE WORLD KEEPER IS THIS DAMNED DREAM NOT OVER.
IT IS THE NEXT FUCKING DAY AND THIS PEICE OF SHIT MIND OF ITS OWN BRAIN INDUCED HALLUCINATION HAS NOT FINISHED, I WANT TO GO OUT AND SPEND TIME AT THE LOCAL SPA NOT STUCK IN A HELLSCAPE OF MY OWN MAKING.
Knowing I needed to calm down or I wouldn''t get out of this predicament, I took in a deep long breath and let out the same breath I had let in. Not stopping to contemplate how I was breathing in the first place.
After that nice breath the first thing I noticed was that I could now see from the single branch my breath had landed on, the second thing I noticed was that I appeared to be a small little orange gem. Strikingly similar to a Citrine gem the gem my parents had named me after due to my similarly colored fur.
Wait . . . aren''t dungeon crystals similar to gems? Bah its probably just some influence from my freakishly strong dungeon delving family.
That''s when the memory hit me like a rouge and extremely angry ox. Well it did quite literally hit me too, turns out I was dead at the hands of my neighbors new ox which was quite upset with me for some reason or another. Right before the single day off in the entire year I had spent working those damned fields.
Actually there''s no way this could be real right? Dead at the hands of that ugly beast? Turned into a dungeon crystal? I knew of cases of it happening but it truly couldn''t happen to me? Could it?
That''s when I started screeching like that Wump Rat I had caught in the act of stealing from my precious supply of Pine-Cherry fruit. Part of it was because I could never taste that heavenly beverage the Pine-Cherry fruit would be brewed into. Part of it was because I was dead and would never see any of my friends and family ever again. Being turned into a dungeon crystal stuck in a literal shit hole probably had something to do with it too.
Chapter 2: Accepting the Situation
Shaded by an ever more sad looking bush stubbornly hanging on to the last few strings of life lies a small orange gem strikingly similar to a Citrine gemstone, what few rays of life managing to pierce the sad canopy formed by the poor little bush striking the orange crystal making its orange glow even more intense. The light flowing through the gemstone illuminating a sparkling and ever changing white fog held within the little gem. Said fog ever changing and in a state of turmoil. Should any being with the ability to read thoughts pass by they would be quite surprised to find that the little gem produced an almost constant screeching nose strikingly similar to that of a Wump Rat, with the terrible noise only periodically being interrupted by random and broken thoughts of an entity attempting to make sense of its situation and seemingly trying its hardest to calm down.
I don''t know how many days its been I lost count after the first five cycles. All I knew is that it had been way too long and I had gotten way to lucky to not be spotted by an opportunist beast either attempting to form a Soul Crystal or improve their own with the vast amounts of Mana Essence I held within me. Truthfully I only knew that Dungeon Crystals held almost insane amounts of Mana Essence thanks to my grandfather who had been able to witness the shattering of one, he constantly liked to inform all of his children and grandchildren about the experience even if they had heard the ever changing tale a million times before.
Thinking about it, perhaps my overly annoying dungeon delving family who constantly pelted me with their experiences and knowledge earned through their many years of delving would actually be helpful in my new predicament. If I remember correctly I believe my grandfather had said that dungeons would naturally absorb mana from the surrounding area as they produced none of their own. Well it currently wasn''t happening for me but I felt the inkling of a feeling of there being some sort of unused muscle that I would use to control this action.
Trying to figure out how to use the muscle I found I had accidentally triggered this action by trying to take a deep breath in am attempt at calming myself before promptly screaming my head off for multiple days, screaming aside the expulsion of the breath what had granted me my new viewpoint on a low hanging branch of this pathetic little plant that seemed to be a bush.
With what I now knew I came to the conclusion that in order to absorb more mana it simply had to be the action of constantly breathing in. That was, in practice much harder than it sounded. But after several hundred tries it was as if a puzzle piece finally fit and the process actually started up and I found I didn''t actually have pay much attention to it. Like how someone doesn''t have to constantly tell their heart to beat in order to stay alive. Flexing the ability I found I could actually stop the flow of mana into myself but doing so just sounded silly and there surely would never be a situation where I would have to do that.
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Now I had mana but I didn''t actually know how I could use it beyond expanding how far I could see. Spending some very frustrating hours I ended up remembering the words of a distant cousin, somehow, I found that Dungeon Crystals could use their mana for two things shaping the world around them, and casting spells. If I remembered correctly that same cousin said that dungeon spells were incredibly powerful but incredibly inefficient, like attempting to start a bonfire with nothing but a few twigs. So that was out of the question, for now, on to manipulating the world around me I suppose.
To manipulate my environment I would need to imbue it with mana, but I luckily already knew how to do that I simply had to force my the mana I was now constantly earning into the area around me.
I found that I was currently collecting more mana than I could actively imbue into the land around me and over the course of many painstaking hours I had managed to fully imbue this sad little shrub and parts of this hole I was stuck in. While doing so I found that I could actually push mana out of any surface already imbued with my mana in order to expand my reach, almost similar to some form of cancerous growth. But even with its similarities to cancer it would certainly help me expand much faster.
While the expansion has allowed me to see much more of my surroundings and I found I wasn''t really stuck in a hole, more a valley between multiple tall and rocky hills. But sadly I could only see the bottom of the hills I was stuck between, luckily I had a solution. Said solution didn''t even involve me remembering words from my annoying family, gods how I missed them, Dungeon Crystals could imbue their mana within living creatures and through imbuing them they could impress their will on them. Though I must admit remembering this bit of information was probably due to a dungeon in the near area I resided had released a small swarm of rats only four years before my death at the hands of that damned ox. The detestable little Dungeon Crystal had done it because it thought it was funny, it was not.
Looking around this shithole, or more aptly named shitvalley, for any creatures I might have some how missed I managed to find exactly none, apparently not even the bugs of wherever the fuck I was wanted to hang out with the sad excuse of a bush that resided next to me. I was actually surprised that there weren''t even any bugs trying to escape the sun beneath a small outcropping of rocks that provided shade in the distant reaches of my holdings. Not knowing what else to do I turned to a stupid idea I had been pondering while I was expanding my holdings, the task was quite like absorbing mana into myself and I didn''t have to put much thought behind it. The idea stupid in that relied way to much on coincidence. Basically I would have to expel bursts of my mana in a large cone above my only companion in the hopes of hitting a passing bird that I could latch onto and fill with my own mana, taking it as my own.
Sighing internally causing me to accidentally releasing some of my mana in a small cloud around the surprisingly not dead bush I decided to get to work. Signing myself away to slowly expanding my territory towards the tops of the hills around me and my little bush whilst expelling a cone of mana above myself in hopes of catching a stray bird, or any creature for that matter.
Chapter 3: First Steps
A small green little tree sat in a small valley between a sea of red hills. The tree just barely managing to poke the tops of its branches above the tops of the surrounding hills, giving it access to a wonderful view of the wasteland surrounding it. The green little tree was alone in its vibrance as any other plant life it could make out was just as sad and brown as it had once been. In truth this proud little tree had once been a small pitiful shrub desperately holding on to the last few tendrils of life, but now it sat proudly in its valley.
In a little hole beneath the now proud tree hidden by its roots sat an equally brilliant orange gem surrounded by a small pool of water, what little light managing to find its way into the hole illuminating a white fog held within its body. The fog slowly drifted about within and gave off a calming aura, if one were to hand this little gem to a person having a mental breakdown they would surely come back to their senses.
Halfway through expanding my domain to the tops of the hills I had realized something, that something made me feel stupid for not taking the time to consider all my options. Dungeon Crystals could change the world around them and I had somehow failed to grasp that, I was trying so hard to imbue more material with my mana so that I could over the hills surrounding me when all I had to do was will the bush above me to grow into a small tree. I had somehow managed to overlook that I could in fact see from the bush and could also manipulate it and force it to grow bigger.
In my attempt to make the shrub larger, and thusly taller, I found that I was manipulating something much much smaller and complex than I could have ever understood or even knew existed however as I was poking around I had an idea of what all these small little things did for the tree and knew what would happen if I changed them. Getting to work I quickly turned my small bush into a small tree just tall enough to peek over the tops of the hills. Pushing some mana into the plant in order to get it to grow quicker, within a day or two I had just what I wanted.
Something was bothering me though, I found the tree still looked as sad as it had before despite the changes. Then it struck me, given my previous career as a farmer I had no idea how I overlooked the fact that all plants need water. Having learned from my earlier mistake of overlooking my abilities and not taking time to think out a proper plan. With nothing else to do I decided to continue expanding towards the tops of the hills while I thought of how I would get water to the tree.
Finally I decided I would get two birds with one stone as the humans would say, though it was more like three birds than too but that''s detail isn''t too important. Wanting to test just how powerful I was I did a fair bit of experimenting, I found that I could impart my will just as I had to the bush onto the dirt and rock around me. Doing so I found that if I willed a small stone to move five centimeters to the left then the stone would move itself to exactly where I wanted. But that wasn''t all, I found I could do so much more, if I wanted some dirt to levitate into the air it would, if I wanted the dirt to turn itself into a hard black stone it would, but most importantly I found that I could compel the land around me to disappear. Now I had no clue where the land had gone to nor did I care, for all I knew it had actually disappeared turning itself into nothing.
Having figured out how to use this new incredibly powerful ability I quickly set about to carving a small little hole beneath the main body of my now not so small companion. Creating a large pancake shaped hole around two meters below the newly created tree, one meter from top to bottom and two meters in diameter. Willing the dirt to disappear I quickly saw much of the sand and dirt from above actually fell down into the hole. Having realized I overlooked actually reinforcing the edge of the hole to keep the ceiling from collapsing I made a mental note to keep that in mind should I create another hole either of this size or larger.
Know what I needed too I went around willing the dirt around the outside of my hole to be tougher and less resistant to caving in, I then told the dirt that had fallen in to put itself back where it was previously. Towards what felt like the North I created a small tunnel just wide enough to fit my Dungeon Crystal, while inside the hole I dug a trough shape throughout the majority of the pancake like chamber while leaving room in the middle to store myself on a bit of dry land.
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My next two steps were to get my Dungeon Crystal in the hole and fill the trough I had created within it with plenty of water to sustain the tree above. Trying to move my Dungeon Crystal I found I could not just will it to get up and float down towards its spot in the middle, which made sense if you thought about it, the brain didn''t move itself it told muscles to move it to where it wanted to be. So using the dirt around me I willed it to push my Dungeon Crystal onto the little island in the middle of the trough.
Next I just had to fill up the trough with water but that was relatively easy now that I knew what I was doing. The dry soil quickly sucked up the water and little bubbles formed from the water displacing any air trapped in the soil.
With how quickly the soil sucked up my water I knew it would be troublesome, I most definitely did not want to be refilling the hole with water every day, it would be too much of a hassle. Trying to think of a solution that''s when I had a brain wave, there were mages out there who could turn their mana into spells that conjured water one of my cousins being one such mage. This quickly turned into a little bit of brainstorming on how I could create a perpetual flow of water that never exceeded the top of the trough.
After about a day or so of trial and error I managed to create my solution, at one end of the pool sat a small blue ball of water which would produce a constant flow of water so long as I had enough mana. But I didn''t want a constant flow of water, that would quickly fill up the entire chamber. However as part of the spell I had made it so that it would stop producing water when it reached the top of the pool.
Sitting back to marvel at my creation I realized something, my distant cousin was extremely wrong about dungeon spells being inefficient because this was by far the most efficient thing I had created. Deciding to do some more testing I turned to the sky above my tree and went about casting a spell to shoot lighting, in truth I only knew how to cast this spell because I wanted one my aunts to stop asking me when I would learn some magic.
Around halfway through casting I quickly noticed that a large majority of my mana was disappearing, so I quickly stopped creating it. Taking a moment to calmly figure out what had happened, and after some experimenting I came to a conclusion I didn''t like. It seemed that spells were incredibly easy to cast also incredibly inefficient for Dungeon Crystals, but that was seemingly limited to spells that didn''t rely on my ability to change the world around me. So this meant that I could cast a spell that created water and it would hardly drain my mana reserves, but if I wanted to cast a fireball practically all of my mana would disappear. There was however one small flaw with this, I found that one of my old spells to cast little orbs of flickering light didn''t cause half my mana to disappear and actually used an even smaller amount of mana than my water spell. Whatever the reason for this I could not for the life of the Rift Maker figure out so I simply left it alone and moved on.
With everything was working perfectly and my tree looking much greener I decided to take a moment to look out through the top of my tree. Looking out I found that I was in quite the wasteland, there was almost no plant life to break up the rolling red hills I could see in every direction though of note I could see that to what felt like the West and South was a huge mountain range. The mountains were honestly extremely impressive and I wished I could have seen them before I became a Dungeon Crystal.
Grand mountains aside it was honestly quite surprising just how little life was here, having been dragged along by some family members to the supposedly grand desert of Death''s Reach even I knew there should be more out here, and it would probably be apt to name this place Death''s Reach if you compared the two. For some unknown reason there was barely any plants or animals, while I could see over a dozen plants from my view only five were actually close enough. There were three different clumps of grasses situated on top of the the hills closest to me, in between one of the clumps was a sad skinny little tree which seemed to only grow leaves at the ends of its thick branches, tucked between another clump of grass was a little bush incredibly similar to the one my new tree had once been, it was equally sad if not more so the now proud tree once was.
Looking around from my new vantage point I spotted something moving in the sky, the dot coming ever closer as if wanting to investigate this small green pond in a sea of red and brown. Realizing what it was I jumped for joy, well I didn''t actually jump due to the fact I was an orange gem. However I had to act, I could not afford to miss this opportunity, quickly sending a cone of mana out towards the bird in order to bring it under my control.
Chapter 4: The Deadlands
A glittering golden speck soared high above a sea of rocky red hills dotted with long dead trees and scraggly plants somehow holding onto the last few threads of life. A once sickly buzzard transformed into a great big avian covered with brilliant golden feathers soared high above, scanning the land below for any signs of life.
The golden vulture soared with barely a flap of her wings, following a dried up river valley below. As she followed the river the rocky hills slowly transform into a vast open expanse, off in the distance she spotted a copse of scraggily trees, seemingly healthier than those scattered across the hills. Flying closer to investigate the glittering buzzard found a small divot in the river bed where some water formed a small pond, seemingly left there from the last time it rained. On either side of the river bed once proud trees survived off of the small amount of water, within the river bed several enterprising grasses had begun growing sure to find they had made a mistake the next time this river ran full with water.
Beneath one of the trees on the western side of the river bed sat a surprisingly long rodent, having long passed away from some unknown sickness. The thing did not look particularly appetizing with its sickly body however starved of her normal carrion diet the vulture swooped down and began to feast, while not the best meal she had ever had it was far from the worst.
My new golden friend swooped down into my ever expanding hole and onto a branch of our protective tree and began to peck at a long purple fruit, approximately the size of a finger, still hungry despite her earlier meal. I had modified the once bush turned fruit tree to grow the fruits once I realized that my feathery friend would need some form of sustenance, this wasn''t ideal for her since as a scavenger she would eat carrion but there weren''t exactly many animals out there. In fact that dead rodent had been the only other one I had seen besides her.
Luckily seeing that dead creature I figured out what could cause this vast land of death, Mana Corruption. Something which occurs when mana is left stagnant, it also causes a slow and painful death for creatures and plants left within the area. As well as being even more harmful for anyone who tries to make use of stuff.
Normally Mana Corrupted land was just a small pocket out of reach from the natural Mana currents of the world but this one had spread uninterrupted for likely thousands of years. From what I knew it should be impossible for Mana Corruption to grow as large as this one seemingly had, as any disruption of the stagnant mana would begin returning it to its usable state. The only reasoning I could come up with for how this had gotten so large was there had not been creatures who could use mana in the area for thousands of years, allowing it to grow to the point where not even natural mana currents could prevent its growth.
However as my Father said, every gray cloud has its silver lining. It was difficult to look on the bright side but this dead land would be the perfect place for me as a Dungeon Crystal, a place to do with as I pleased.
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Something I had noticed that interacting with my much more active Mana was seemingly cleansing the land within and around my claims. The most noticeable evidence of this cleansing was was seen in the several plants I had come to encompass turning ever more green and healthy, some outside my territory were even showing signs of improving.
Considering my possibilities I knew I could just hole up in the middle of these lands and no one would ever find me, but something from my past as a farmer screamed that I needed to heal the land. So that was what I would set out to do, and I think that some part of me also hoped to be noticed and that my grandfather would, in his lust for exploring, come to check out an interesting new dungeon in the middle of a long dead desert.
The general idea of what I would do was to send out my new, as of now unnamed, flying companion to explore the surrounding area and help me map it out. While she was doing that I began carving out a valley between the hills, with unnaturally steep cliffs on either side, at the end of the valley would be my little oasis and I would let a trickle of water flow out and hopefully to that dry river bed I had spotted near my location. Then while also healing the surrounding land, hopefully some creatures would find their way upstream where I could infuse them with my mana and make them mine.
The idea was beginning to take shape but it was taking longer than I thought it would, so far all I had was a small round hole in the land surrounded by steep cliffs. Within the little hole sat my first companion turned fruit tree and a small little pond of water fed by the same magic I had created earlier, the pond was for my feathered friend as she still needed the stuff.
Once my hole got a bit larger I would begin to create an actual oasis and incorporate many of the plants I had under my control but hadn''t done anything with. Hopefully I would not encounter any issues along the way.
Deciding I needed a little break I decided to go over the changes I had made to my new vulture friend, and I was quite pleased with how I had changed her. She had encountered to me looking sorry and with one foot in the door to the afterlife. After fixing her up I had decided that she needed to be distinct and eye catching, I didn''t know if I wanted the changes to be a sign of having been touched by a Dungeon Crystal or just to please myself.
The changes I made to her is a striking red head, still bald, and wonderful golden plumage with stripes of silver along the bottom of her wings and belly. While pleasing myself I knew that there was one thing for certain with her new appearance, some rich bastard would likely spend quite a bit just to get one of her feathers.
With her appearance up to my standards I began doing some internal changes to her body, as I got started doing so I noticed a small Soul Crystal had formed. Those were as I under stood only formed from killing dungeon touched creatures or others with a Soul Crystal and taking their Mana Essence, however I suppose it did make sense that a dungeon touched creature would naturally form one.
With her new ability to use mana thanks to her Soul Crystal I changed her bones to no longer be hollow and made her larger, normally birds shouldn''t be able to fly with these changes but I ingrained the ability to use mana to help her fly into her mind. She would be much more durable and stronger than your average vulture.
Overall I was quite pleased and was glad I doubled checked her because I did notice some minor changes to make her better. Now I Try not to toot my own horn but I felt the changes I had made to her body were pretty damn good. Finishing up I decided to meditate and give her some rest before the next journey I sent her out on, she had earned it.