《The Core》 Prologue James was tired. He had just finished two back-to-back twelve hour shifts, and his day still wasn¡¯t done. He still had to go buy a card for his niece¡¯s birthday. If any shops were open at this time of night. He bundled himself up tighter. His jacket did little to block the late February wind that came whistling down the streets. His vision was getting a little fuzzy, but he kept pushing forward. He could sleep when he got home. Not out in the freezing cold. He saw a convenience store open, and quickly rushed to get inside. Closing the door behind him, he let out a sigh as the warm air greeted him. He looked around to see if there were birthday cards for sale here, and, indeed there were. Browsing through them for a bit, he grabbed one with a cartoon dog on the front. He went up to the counter, paid, and left. The hints of a grin forming on his face were quickly dashed as soon as he was back out in the cold. He wasn¡¯t as tired anymore. Interaction and a faceful of cold could do that. Now slightly more awake, he started the slow trudge back to his apartment. A bit of his caution had vanished, what with how late at night it was. It was probably because of this that he didn¡¯t bother waiting for the crosswalk light to give him the green light. He stepped off the curb, and started across the street. His eyesight was going fuzzy again, his brain slowing down. It was only too late that he noticed the sports car barreling down at him. Just mere moments later, and his world was nothing but blinding pain. He was pretty sure his legs were broken, among other bones, and, if how he was having difficulty breathing was any indication, he¡¯d say his lungs might¡¯ve been punctured. Well, that or his windpipe was crushed. Probably the windpipe. He wasn¡¯t coughing up blood, after all. His sleep addled, slowly dying brain turned to the first thing he could think of: the card in his hands. He wouldn¡¯t be able to drop it off tomorrow after all. Well, it was close to midnight. It should be fine if he wished her a happy birthday now, right? Happy birthday, my little niece. His thoughts were growing quieter and quieter. He could no longer hear the car that had hit him. He wasn¡¯t sure if that was because it had driven off, or if the driver had stopped the car and got out. He drew in one last shuddering breath, before he stilled. Right as he stilled, the world stuttered. He bolted upright, all the pain he should have been experiencing gone. His tiredness was also gone, as well as the biting cold. He looked around, but everything looked exactly how it should. He glanced down at himself, and was greeted with one of the weirdest sights he had ever seen. It looked like his body had doubled. There was still overlap, but where one was completely destroyed, the other was completely fine. He tried moving his legs, and the set that was fine moved. The broken legs stayed in place. He stood up, and took in the whole of his double on the ground. It didn¡¯t take long for him to realize what he was looking at. Laying at his feet was his own corpse. ¡°Well, fuck. I think I died.¡± He chuckled a bit. Something about this scenario just seemed funny to him. His chuckle tapered off into a sigh, and he stared up at the night sky. He couldn¡¯t make out anything through the cloud cover, but he kept staring anyway. ¡°Well. I¡¯m dead,¡± he reiterated. ¡°What do I do now?¡± He glanced down at his body again, and noticed the birthday card was still in his corpse¡¯s hand. Gingerly, he reached down, and, to his surprise, picked it up. ¡°Huh. You¡¯d think that as a ghost, I wouldn¡¯t be able to pick it up. Well, anyway, I know what I¡¯m going to do today.¡± He knew he didn¡¯t have a pen on him, so he wandered off. He wound up back in the convenience store from earlier, grabbed a pen from the shelf, and quickly scribbled down a message. Happy birthday! Man, can¡¯t believe you¡¯re already turning nine. What an accomplishment. I planned on dropping this off in person, but things have come up. I probably won¡¯t be able to see you for a while. So, I guess I should go ahead and wish you happy birthday for all those birthdays I¡¯m gonna miss. I¡¯m going to miss you (more than your father, but don¡¯t tell him I said that). Love, Uncle James There was still the chance that this was all a cosmic prank, but should that be the case, he can just buy a new birthday card and write a different message. With the card written, he marched off to his brother¡¯s apartment. He had a card to drop off.
He walked for quite a while before he realized something. It was silent. At first, he hadn¡¯t noticed because he had been preoccupied, but now that he was wandering around, it became quite noticeable. Granted, it was the middle of the night, but he couldn¡¯t even hear the hum of machinery keeping people warm, or the occasional car horn off in the distance. The only noise he could hear was from the wind. He pushed it to the back of his mind though. He didn¡¯t know how the afterlife worked. This could¡¯ve been normal for all he knew. He just kept trudging onwards. He eventually reached the apartment complex his brother and his family lived in. He climbed the stairs, and tried to buzz his brother. Yes, it was the middle of the night, but the doorbell-chime thing was pretty loud and his brother was a light sleeper. After a solid minute without a response, James grew worried. He went around the side of the building and started climbing the emergency stairs. It took a bit of climbing and jumping just to reach the ladder, but he managed. He stopped on the third floor and slowly pried the window open. His brother never locked it, no matter how many times James reminded him to do so. He climbed in, and glanced around. The lights were all out, and there wasn¡¯t a noise. He listened for a moment, and grew worried when he didn¡¯t hear his brother snoring. Granted, he could have just been sleeping quietly, but after the silence outside, a lump of dread settled in his gut. He set the card down on the table and went to investigate. When he entered his brother¡¯s room, he didn¡¯t see anyone. There wasn¡¯t any sign of his brother or his wife, other than slightly disturbed sheets on the bed. He stumbled back, and ran to his niece¡¯s room. He was greeted with the same sight: slightly disturbed sheets, but no person. Panicking, he ran out the door and down the hallway. He started pounding on every door he passed, but there wasn¡¯t a response. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it He gave up once he had reached the ground floor; not because he wanted to, but because he ran out of doors to bang on. Strangely, after all that running, he wasn¡¯t even the slightest bit out of breath. His panic had subsided slightly, but he still ran out of the building. He looked around, and everything started to click into place. Why he had yet to run into another person. Why everything was so quiet. He was alone. He let that thought sink in, before he thought about it more. He had obviously died. And now he was somewhere without people. Was this the afterlife? No, it couldn¡¯t be the afterlife. There should have been other people here with him if that was the case. He let out a sigh. He wasn¡¯t getting anywhere with these thoughts. There wasn¡¯t even anything he could do about it, even if he did know what had happened. Embracing his circumstances, he glanced around. He now had too much freetime on his hands. You know, there were some book series he wanted to catch up on. With a goal now in mind, he made his way to a bookstore. He could read now.
It had happened almost a day after he had died. He had been reading almost non-stop, as he didn¡¯t need to eat, sleep, or relieve himself anymore. He had a stack of books surrounding him on the ground. He had finished the last book in the stack, and leaned back, massaging his head. While he might not have to sleep, he still had the beginnings of a headache. Strange how that worked. Was it all psychological, and he only had a headache because his body thought he needed one? He went to grab another book, and accidentally knocked the stack over. In a moment of panic, he reached out with his mind. Not his arm, no, that was still reaching for a book. It felt like he grew another arm from his chest, and it grabbed the stack of books. Suddenly, the stack of books was gone. He knew instinctively that he could bring them back out, but he was frozen in place, still trying to understand what he had just done. He pulled out one of the books he had just ¡°stored.¡± It reappeared in his hands. He reached out with his mind again and drew it within himself again, and it vanished. He chuckled. He was going insane. Now he could store things inside himself. What was going wrong with him? His appetite for reading had vanished, and now he wanted to test out his new ability. He stood up, and started trailing his mental hand down the shelves of books, watching as they all disappeared inside of him. He brushed up against a shelf by accident, and it vanished as well as all the books on it. James stopped at this revelation. A grin forming on his face, he started charging right at the shelves, mental arm out in front of him. Shelf after shelf vanished as he charged through them. And then there were no more shelves. Just a window out to the street. He didn¡¯t stop in time, and his mind hit the window. The next thing he knew, he was falling. He didn¡¯t fall all that far, seeing as how he had only been on the second floor. He face planted directly into the ground, and started laughing. He rolled over, and started laughing even harder. The building was gone. It hadn¡¯t been destroyed, it hadn¡¯t turned invisible, no. It looked like someone carved it out of the ground and picked it up. There was just no more building there. This just seemed hysterical to James. The mere thought that he could store entire buildings seemed ludicrous. He just laughed. That was fun. He stood, and started running down the street. He stretched his mental arm out as far as he could, before he grew another one. He stretched those two arms out to his side, and ran down the middle of the street. Everytime one of his mental arms came in contact with a building, it vanished inside him, and he laughed even harder. Any car that his arms passed through received the same treatment, vanishing within him. Even as he was doing this, he didn¡¯t feel any strain whatsoever, despite the fact that entire buildings were apparently being stored inside of himself. And that was how he passed the second day.
He had absorbed quite a large chunk of the city before he grew tired of it. He had nothing better to do though, so he kept at it. Night had fallen once again, and he couldn¡¯t see clearly enough to read. It was around midnight when the world stuttered again. This time, however, there was a giant screeching sound that accompanied it. He crouched down and clutched at his ears. Vaguely, he noticed that the buildings he had just stored were back, though they were flickering quite violently. Suddenly, everything got quiet. He glanced up and saw someone staring at him. He looked to be in his early twenties, and he was wearing clothing that was a better fit for warmer climates. ¡°Dude. I don¡¯t know what you did, but you broke something. You haven¡¯t even been dead all that long, maybe a few minutes, but now we¡¯ve had to quarantine an entire section of the timeline.¡± He sounded exasperated. James¡¯ brain took a few moments for what he had said to register. And when it finally did, it didn¡¯t understand much of anything. ¡°There are many things weird with what you just said. Like, how do you quarantine a section of the timeline? And what do you mean minutes? It¡¯s been almost two days.¡± The guy stared at him. ¡°Let¡¯s put the matter of quarantining to the side for the moment. Did you just say days?¡± ¡°Yeah? Was I not supposed to?¡± The guy stared at him for a moment, expression unreadable, before letting out a sigh. ¡°Goddammit. I could have stopped this. I¡¯m gonna be in huge trouble. Yeah, okay, come with me. This is too far outta my wheelhouse.¡± With a wave of his hand, a portal opened up behind him and he stepped through. James followed, not knowing what else to do. They appeared in what looked to be a mansion, though it looked like there had been a party recently. The guy he was following walked right up to another person, and started talking in a foreign language. James took that moment to look around more. There were a few people passed out, a few making out, and a few who were slowly cleaning everything up. He was pulled back to himself when the second person walked up to him and held out a hand. ¡°Howdy. Name¡¯s Alrek. Now, Grim here tells me you were left alone for a few days? Mind telling me the story?¡± James grabbed his hand and shook. ¡°James. And, sure, I don¡¯t see why not.¡± He then proceeded to tell everything that had happened since he died, starting with his death. When he finished, the guy who brought him here, Grim, had a pained expression on his face, while Alrek was trying not to laugh. ¡°Alright. That is just horrible luck you got there. So, I¡¯m going to tell you what happened. You died, and by a series of coincidences and a little bit of luck, you went into what we call the Irro days. February 29th and 30th are Irro days. The Irro days are days that we¡¯ve removed from the timeline, so as to give ourselves a break from our godly duties. After all, while we could work nonstop, for all of eternity, that¡¯s not good for our mental health. ¡°Now, you altered the space inside the Irro days, but not the space outside of them. This led to reality trying to merge the two together when it¡¯s not supposed to. We now have to amputate those Irro days, and recreate them, otherwise everything will break. ¡°The downside to this is that your body is now trapped in the Irro days. What that means is that we can¡¯t repurpose it like we do with everyone else''s. And without the energy we get from that, we can¡¯t exactly give you a new body in your next life. You¡¯re going to be stuck as a spiritual life form for quite a while, possibly forever. Questions?¡± James took a moment to digest everything that had been thrown at him. There was one sticking point for him. ¡°So, everything that I did is going to be undone?¡± Alrek nodded. ¡°After all, if it wasn¡¯t, some buildings would just vanish.¡± ¡°Is there any way for you to make an exception for an item? It¡¯s my niece¡¯s birthday, and I dropped a birthday card off for her.¡± That was really all that James was worried about. Alrek grinned. ¡°As long as it¡¯s just a birthday card, then sure, I don¡¯t see a problem.¡± James felt like a weight was lifted off his shoulder. Family was really all he cared about. ¡°Now, as with all souls, you¡¯re gonna head off to your next life. Before you say anything, you won¡¯t really have a ¡®body,¡¯ per s¨¦. That¡¯s the downside of not being able to use your corpse. You might get lucky, and still be able to interact with the world, or you might get stuck as a ghost, and be cursed to forever wander the world. All luck of the draw, really. ¡°And with that, I¡¯m gonna send you off. I need to have some words with Grim here. Prepare for a lot of stinging.¡± ¡°Wait, what?¡± Those were the last words James uttered before he was surrounded with a blinding light. And a lot of pain. Chapter 1 James woke to almost complete darkness. The only thing he could see was a bright blue box, floating in front of him.
Welcome to the Dungeon Interface. This system will help guide you through how to survive as a Dungeon Core. Please pull up your menu to look at your options.
Converting materials into DP. You have gained 21,572,839,017 blueprints and you now have 2,410,776,175,041,385,527 DP to use. Blueprints can be found in the Dungeon Catalog.
You have graduated from Dungeon training. You now have access to all options for a Dungeon Core.
Due to immense data on electronic technology, new attribute ¡®Cybernetics¡¯ has been unlocked.
Incorporating attributes of ¡®Cybernetics¡¯ into Dungeon Catalog...
You now have access to the global Dungeon Catalog.
Due to your experience in the Irro days, you now have access to a countdown until the next Irro day.
Congratulations! You have set a new record of accomplishments while remaining level 1. You have been granted access to premium Dungeon Core benefits.
Well, that¡­was a lot to take in. What materials--oh. Those materials. Wait, did those come with him? How did that even work? Also, from what he could understand, he was a dungeon now? A glorified rock? Whelp, not much he can do about that now. Now came the question of his menu. How was he supposed to pull up his menu?
Name: Level: 1 (+) DP: 2,410,776,175,041,385,527 Affinity: Fire - Water - Earth - Air - Light - Dark - Cybernetic (artificial)
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Irro Days (16 days until next Irro Day)
Okay, that all looked dandy and all, but where was his name? Shouldn¡¯t it have kept his old one? That, and it didn¡¯t tell him how he was supposed to actually expand things. That is what a dungeon is supposed to do, right?
Download Dungeon Basics? Y/N
Huh. Does the menu just respond to his thoughts? That¡¯s pretty nifty. With a mental shrug, he selected yes. A sudden influx of knowledge poured into his head, and if he still had a body, he would have doubled over in pain. Once the pain passed, he spent a few more moments doing nothing. With the mental equivalent of a shrug, he started pushing his aura out. Aura was an interesting thing. It was entirely dependent on how much dp a dungeon had ever gathered, multiplied by its level. Due to James¡¯ extremely high dp, he was pretty sure he could rival the best of the best. He just had to make it there. He started out slow, trying to get the hang of it. Knowledge isn¡¯t experience, after all. As he pushed out, he started receiving the information of what was in his aura. It was as if everything was completely bypassing his normal five senses, and was being uploaded directly into his brain. It would have felt much weirder if he actually had any of his senses still. There was some grass. There was a rock. Ooh, some more grass. What about underground? Dirt. Dirt. Stone. Dirt. Worm. Dirt. There was so little here. Oh well. That can be dealt with later. For now, he wanted to get at least his first floor done. Safety over protection. Wait, that doesn¡¯t make much sense. Hm. Oh well. It makes sense to him. Anyone else can get fucked. He started to carve out the ground beneath him, as he couldn¡¯t move by himself. He had to use the terrain to manipulate himself. It was at this moment he was reminded of something he had said earlier. Knowledge does not equal experience. Instead of calmly lowering the ground beneath him, he instead accidentally deleted a solid ten feet of dirt. Falling without being able to feel almost anything was certainly one of the weirdest experiences he had ever felt. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Instead of his viewpoint being the one that changed, it was more like the entire world moved. Add to the fact that he started spinning in midair, and it looked like the world was doing cartwheels around him. Everything was brought to a jarring stop when he hit the ground. There was something between him and a rock, but he didn¡¯t notice. Because, apparently, dungeon cores are very fragile. He didn¡¯t feel anything. Not because his mind had been overloaded, but because his new body just couldn¡¯t feel. But his thoughts went all wobbly. Words had their meanings mixed lift. He stared surrounding, attempting to appear out what happened. He had down, and then snrkk. Now he¡¯s now. Was he now earlier? No, he was then. How can he then? He scrolled through what he know-gained, and gained a new know. Wandering to his menu, he chose the (+) next to his height.
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He¡­could understand zero. But not no. He wants to then, which meant he must this. And to this, he must not no. With an almost blinding pain, he felt himself start to know back together. His thoughts started to make sense, and he could actually understand what he was trying to think. About halfway through his healing, he felt a lump. It wasn¡¯t painful, but it was immensely uncomfortable. Like sitting on a three inch butt plug. Very obviously there, very obviously uncomfortable, but you can get used to it after a while. He tried to figure out what it was, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn¡¯t find the source of his discomfort. He tried to ignore it, but he just couldn¡¯t. Realizing he could only distract himself, that¡¯s exactly what he did. He looked around the little pit he had dug himself into. There were rocks covering the bottom, the walls were made of dirt, and laying beneath him was the squished body of a worm. Acting on instincts he didn¡¯t know he had, he quickly absorbed the worm. There was a slight pulse of energy, and knowledge poured itself into his head. The strange lump he felt pulsed slightly with the energy, before settling down. If that was going to happen all the time, it would get annoying real quickly. He pulled up his menu to see if anything had changed, and, lo and behold, he was now level two. He also had three more DP, though that was barely worth mentioning. There was nothing else different, so he decided to get back to expanding. If he was a dungeon now, he wanted to be the best dungeon ever.
After he had expanded out to encapsulate around a mile around him in his aura, he started to work on trying to puzzle out a design for his first floor. He naturally wanted the first floor to look completely natural, which required careful planning. Dirt caves aren¡¯t really all that feasible, so he¡¯d need a way for people to get straight to stone. Now, what natural way is there for that to happen? Sinkholes seemed the best. Sinkholes happened when stone eroded away, and the dirt collapsed in, right? It was most common with limestone, right? Could he make any limestone? Yes, okay, good. He filled a space near the outer edges of his perception with limestone, before he hollowed it out. Nothing happened at first, so he slowly kept hollowing things out until the ground above sagged a bit. He then started pushing some of the dirt down into the limestone hole he had made. He kept at it until there was barely any dirt remaining between his man-made natural pre-sinkhole and the surface. With a mental smirk, he moved on to creating the tunnels. Underground tunnels were usually formed through small underground streams, so he would need to have a small trickle of water run through the hole he made for a sinkhole. A bit of experimentation later, and he had water enter the cavity through one side, and exit through the other side, slightly lower than where it entered. He started making little tunnels that wound through his entire influence. Sometimes, he¡¯d have small little caverns open up, each one consisting of very uneven terrain, but he mainly focused on the tunnels. He took a strange amount of pleasure in making the tunnels awkward to navigate, sometimes flattening out, forcing whoever would travel down here to almost crawl, while other areas were tall, but narrow enough to force people to walk sideways. It was moments like that where he was glad he had toured caves before. Occasionally, some of the tunnels would intersect, and sometimes they would just dead end. All-in-all, he was pretty proud of his cave. Naturally, the next step was to populate it with traps and mobs. Traps would be rather difficult to incorporate, as he still wanted the first layer to seem like a natural cave. He could set up a few extra slippery sections, and maybe add a few tripping hazards for people to snap their necks on, but not much else. His mind flashed back to one of the caves he had toured once; at one point, there had been a small shaft that led from the upper section of the caves to the lower, formed completely by water. It was extremely steep, and had no traction, so they had to block it off to prevent accidents. He ¡®grinned¡¯ and made a few of those shafts. He didn¡¯t want people to climb back up them, however, so he made them open up as you went down, like an inverted cone. An idea hit him, and he quickly connected all of the shafts into a massive room underneath the entire cave system. This would be the boss room. You¡¯d have to purposefully jump down, with no way back up, in order to move on. Though, then he¡¯d need to make a way back up and out. Hm. He made a small tunnel that circled back to the sinkhole entrance, though he didn¡¯t connect them fully quite yet. The next step was to choose the mobs. He pulled up the list of available mobs to look over what he could choose.
Dungeon Mobs
  • Burrow Worm (G) --- 5 DP (Customize)
That was¡­severely underwhelming. He pulled up more information, but learned next to nothing. The only thing of note was that Burrow Worms formed little cavities in the earth where they would return to. He mentally clicked the customize option, and was inundated with options. Staring at the options he could play with, an idea started to form in his head. If he still had a face, people would be backing away from him.
He had just finished populating his dungeon with his customized Burrow Worms when he felt something enter his sphere of influence. All of his upgrades had moved the cost of the Burrow Worm up to 20 DP per worm. He only had around 100 of them in his dungeon in total, but that was fine. If everything worked out, that would be enough. His attention turned to whatever was walking around above him, and he grinned in excitement. There were people. Chapter 2 Brady was leading his team back to town. They had gone out to take care of a Nine Tail that had been driving the wildlife away. It hadn¡¯t been that hard of a fight, especially since Jen managed to trap it in an illusionary maze. Graham was in front of the party, taking Brady¡¯s usual spot in clearing the way back. Brady had been the only one who could carry the Nine Tail, so his hands weren¡¯t able to do much else. It made him grumble some curses at the asshole who wanted it as untouched as possible. Usually, they would have cut it up on site to make carrying it easier. Hannah was in the middle of the group, chatting with Jen about whatever the two girls usually spoke of. Brady often tuned them out. However, as he didn¡¯t have much else to do, he had been listening to them talk about how they could use illusionary duplicates to confuse their enemies. It was probably why he didn¡¯t feel the ground give way at first. He did, however, notice what was happening after a brief heartbeat. The rest of the group managed to jump out of the way, but with the Nine Tail weighing him down, Brady couldn¡¯t get far enough away. He let out a brief shout as he fell. He let go of the Nine Tail so he could try and catch himself, but there was nothing for him to grab onto to stop his fall. He fell a good 30 meters before he hit the ground. He felt something in his leg snap as the dirt rained around him, and stars filled his vision. He cried out, writhing in agony for a moment, before he managed to collect himself. His group mates called down for him, asking if he was okay. ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m fine. Think I broke something when I landed. You guys might have to run back to town to get help. I had the only rope, and it¡¯s now buried under a few feet of dirt. I¡¯m in no condition to be moving.¡± He tried to reassure them that he¡¯d be fine. After a bit more back and forth, they decided he¡¯d be okay for the few hours it would take to finish the trek back to town and get back. With a sigh, Brady leaned back against the mound of dirt behind him. He was good with waiting. It had only been an hour when he saw it. It looked like a common Burrow Worm, if not for the slight reddish tint to it. He watched as it slowly made its way over to him. He reached out a hand and let it crawl up his arm. Things went south when it reached his elbow. Faster than he could react, it dove at the inside of the joint. Searing pain rocked up and down his body as it slowly burrowed its way into his limb. He tried to yank it out, but only succeeded in tearing it in half. The half that remained in his arm burrowed deeper, leaving a burning pain as it traveled deeper. The half in his hand wriggled a bit, before it turned and started to burrow directly into his hand. He held back a scream as the burning pain rocked up his other arm. A quick glance at the original half, which he could see moving through his skin, revealed that it was growing longer the more of him it ate. He fumbled for the knife at his waist, letting out a whimper as the pain multiplied with each movement. Knife out, he tried digging the worms out. Unfortunately, every time he yanked at the worm, it would tear in half, effectively multiplying. At this point, a few had reached his chest, and each breath he took burned. He felt one wind its way up around his neck, burning as it did. Each breath he took stung as the late autumn air hit the burned flesh at the back of his throat. Something in the back of his throat burst, and he watched, cross-eyed, as the worm crawled out of his mouth. He tried not to bite down, as that would inevitably lead to it multiplying again. He was forced to watch as the worm found its way up his face, settling right under his eye for the briefest of moments, before it dove in. The last thing Brady felt was the searing pain of his eyes being melted before he blacked out, never to wake again.
Graham, Jen, and Hannah returned a few hours later with Corbe, one of the strongest adventurers in town, and a coil of rope long enough to reach the bottom of the sinkhole. However, when Graham reached the bottom, he didn¡¯t find any trace of Brady. He couldn¡¯t find the Nine Tail¡¯s body, or Brady¡¯s backpack either. It was as if they had all just vanished, as there weren¡¯t even any drag marks for if they had been dragged away. Something had happened here, something that nobody would be able to predict. After a few minutes of searching, Graham found the entrance to a cave system. He stopped outside it, before heading back to the rope, climbing back up, and reporting what he had and had not found. Everyone agreed to head back to town and make a report before attempting to find whatever had caused everything to vanish. With one last look back into the hole, the group headed back.
He would be laughing his ass off if he was physically capable of laughing, or even having an ass to laugh off. He had taken almost too much joy in watching his custom Burrow Worms devour the hunter who had fallen. At least, he was assuming the man was a hunter. After all, most of his gear, and the corpse he was carrying around, suggested as such. That did make him wonder why the hunter hadn¡¯t just skinned the animal earlier, but he got a new creature out of the whole deal, so he wasn¡¯t complaining. He hadn¡¯t ordered his worms to devour the Nine Tail, as he had come to find out it was called. One of the options he had invested in was for the Burrow Worms to multiply once they reached twice their original length. They gained barely a hundredth of what they ate as extra body mass, making the whole thing inefficient, but a hundredth of a human can still make a lot of worms. He gained almost another hundred worms for absolutely nothing. He wanted to see if there was a counter for how many Burrow Worms he currently had, so he opened his menu up to take a look.
Name: You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Level: 2 (+) DP: 2,410,776,175,041,383,250 Affinity: Fire - Water - Earth - Air - Light - Dark - Cybernetic (artificial)
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Irro Days (15 days until next Irro Day)
He was quickly distracted, however. Firstly, he thought he deserved a level after that, so he mentally pressed the (+) to level up.
Would you like to level up? Y/N
Selecting Y, he experienced leveling up for the first time, as he had been a bit out of it the first time. A small pulse of energy coursed through him, leaving him refreshed. Up until it reached that weird lump he had felt earlier. The weird lump swelled, before he felt a familiar cracking feeling. Panicking, he went to level up again, hoping it would fix him this time as well. The same rush of energy coursed through him, almost healing him back up before the lump swelled again, widening the wide. He pressured agreement, plasma swimming, clot largening. And over. And repeat. And anew. Again and repeat and over and repeat and anew and againandoverandreapeatanewoveragainrepeatanewagainover- With a final mental snap, everything swirled back into focus. His mind was reeling over what had just happened. He doubted that was supposed to happen every time he leveled up. He might have to hold off on leveling up if things continued like this. Curious, he turned his mental gaze onto himself. Things made a tad more sense, unfortunately. Growing out of himself was a strange lump of flesh. It pulsated in sync with the colors that shone out of the crystalline part of him. It looked like what you might imagine a tumor to look like. There were faint lines of crystal winding their way into the flesh lump, proving that it was a part of him now. Judging by the fact that the crystalline part of him was the same size as it had been when he first was reborn, he could almost assuredly assume that the fleshy part would eventually overtake the crystal part. He¡­might want to stop leveling for a while. Level¡­24?! Holy shit, he hadn¡¯t realized he had leveled that many times. Either way, level 24 seemed good enough for now. That quick glance at his menu had also managed to distract him, reminding him that there were other things he had wanted to do before he had grown a flesh tumor. Trying to distract himself, he clicked on the Dungeon Catalog tab.
Dungeon Catalog
  • Mobs
  • Traps
  • Skills
  • Attributes
That was¡­underwhelming. Skills and attributes seemed the most interesting though, so he selected the Attributes tab. Bottoms up. A massive list appeared, offering things from damage bonuses for undead type dungeons, to allowing delvers immortality while in the dungeon. He didn¡¯t want either of those, as the damage bonuses also had a negative multiplier on the opposing dungeon type, and he wanted actual consequences for the delvers. No second chances for them. There were only two choices that really drew his attention.
Dungeon Catalog -- Attributes
    • The Tiniest Hero (10,000 DP)
All mobs spawned in the dungeon will be capable of growth. With their growth, they may also gain sentience and/or rank up.
    • Creative (50,000 DP)
Creativity is a dungeon¡¯s most powerful tool. Creative dungeons are able to create their own mobs, either from scratch or by combining other mobs¡¯ traits.
The Tiniest Hero just seemed like an obvious choice. He wouldn¡¯t have to manually upgrade his mobs if they did a good job, and sentient mobs are always better. There was another attribute that allowed him to grant sentience manually, but he didn¡¯t like that. He wanted the mobs to earn it. Creative just seemed awesome. Images of Griffons and Chimeras flashed through his head. He had always loved the idea that you can mash different creatures together to make something even better. Besides, he already had a few ideas, and he only had two mobs to create so far. With his choice made, he purchased both attributes. There wasn¡¯t any physical change that he noticed, so he decided to move onto the skills list. The same thing happened with the skills list as what happened with the attributes. There was a veritable wall of skills to pick. Eventually, however, he saw a skill he knew he just had to have.
Dungeon Catalog -- Skills
    • Avatar (100,000 DP)
This skill is a core-only skill. It will manifest a spiritual body to serve as a conduit of the core¡¯s soul, allowing for interaction with others.
Sure, he would have preferred a physical body, but he already considered himself lucky after all. The god had said he¡¯d be lucky if he could interact with the world at all, and he could interact a hell of a lot. He quickly purchased the skill, and put off browsing the remainder of the catalog in favor of testing the skill. He closed the menu, and activated the skill. He watched as a faint mist exited his core. It slowly started to expand outward, before it stopped. It looked as if it had hit a wall. He felt a slight tugging, coming from the strange flesh tumor growing out of him. It looked as if some of the mist had been trapped inside of that, instead of flowing outwards with the rest of the mist. He watched as all of the mist that had been expelled slowly moved back inwards, coalescing in the flesh lump. He watched as the flesh lump pulsed, slowly pulsing faster and faster. Then, something happened that he had forgotten he could experience. Pain. It was like every single part of him was on fire, despite the fact there was no part of him that could catch on fire. He watched as the flesh slowly grew. The lump grew slowly. Oh so slowly. But he watched as it grew. He watched as a face formed, with the crystalline core as one of his eyes. He watched as a torso grew from the neck that had formed just moments before. He watched as limbs grew, starting out as small little nubs, before becoming fully-fledged influence-noodles. And he watched as hair grew from his scalp, settling at around waist-length. He lay there, feeling the cold stone beneath his bare body. He simultaneously stared up at the ceiling and down at his naked body. Only one thing was going through his head at that point, something he felt the need to voice with his newly formed body. He opened his mouth. ¡°Why the fuck am I a girl?¡± Chapter 3 There was a lot going through his head. For starters, he was still coming down from the intense pain he had just experienced. Looking back on it with a clear mind, he could safely say it felt like every atom of his being was split at the exact same moment. The second thing he was struggling to deal with were the new appendages, of which he had¡­a lot. Sprouting out from his backside were multiple tails, along with a few different pairs of wings. That wasn¡¯t even counting the three different pairs of animal ears sprouting from his scalp, or the pair of horns that had formed as well. He raised his newly-formed hands to his face, covered his eyes - not that it did anything - and groaned. That reminded him of the last thing. For some reason, he was no longer a he, and was instead a she. He¡­didn¡¯t actually feel that torn up about it. Was that normal? He felt like that wasn¡¯t normal. Shit, now he wasn¡¯t sure if he was upset about the fact that he was now a girl, or if he was upset that he didn¡¯t feel upset at that fact. Besides, it wasn¡¯t like he could forgo 27 years of habit, and immediately start referring to herself as a she. Nevermind, that happened much quicker than she would have thought. Man, that¡¯s gonna take some getting used to. Wait, what does that mean for when she lived back on Earth? Would she have been fine like this, even then? That couldn¡¯t be. She was perfectly fine being a guy. Sure, she hated the entirety of the masculine culture, and sure, of course she wondered about what it¡¯d be like to be the opposite gender, but that didn¡¯t mean anything, right? She let out another, slightly louder groan. She should stop thinking about this. She was supposed to save these thoughts for when she was about to fall asleep. Did she even sleep anymore? Who knows. She focused on her new limbs. Starting with the tails, she counted five. She didn¡¯t know her tails all too well, but she could make a good guess on what each one was. The first three were simple enough to determine. There was a fox tail, a wolf tail, and a cat tail. They weren¡¯t even the same color. The fox tail was a gorgeous coppery red color, the wolf was a soothing grey color, and the cat tail was a midnight black. It was the other two that threw her for a loop. One of them looked like what you¡¯d find on a succubus. It was extremely thin, and ended in a black spade shape. The other was almost the exact opposite, being scaled and rather thick, tapering down into a point at the end. She¡¯d say it was a dragon tail, except she didn¡¯t know what dragons looked like. She could control each of the tails individually, though if she left them alone, they swayed on their own. Now, the wings just seemed redundant. She had four pairs of wings. There were two layers, with two pairs on each layer. Closer to her back were a pair of what looked to be dragon wings - on the top - and a pair of demonic bat wings directly underneath them. The pair directly behind the dragon wings appeared to be angel wings, while the ones behind the demon wings seemed to be simple bird wings. She gave them an experimental flap, and they beat in perfect sync. That was good at least. Learning to control them all to not hit each other would be so hard. Next up on the list of strange bodily features were her ears. This time, she only had three different pairs of ears. Her ears went from the largest, in the back, to the smallest in the front. At the back were a pair of fox ears, almost comically large. Directly in front of them was the pair of wolf ears, the same soothing grey as her wolf tail. And, predictably enough, midnight black cat ears sat in the very front. The very last modification had been the two horns that sprouted from her temple. They weren¡¯t a pair, oh no. The horn on her left side curled and curved, looping around the three ears on her left side before tapering off to a point. The horn on her right side looked more like an antler, branching out and forming what looked like a net in front of the ears on her right side. The rest of the strange parts of her body could mostly be ignored. If things like how her hair was like water - each strand was clear, but it all formed a shimmering blue color - or how the crystal that had been her replaced one of her eyes were ignored, she would look like a normalish 13-year-old girl. She did look really pretty though, and she was still naked, so she willed some clothes into existence, with slits and holes for her wings and tails. She examined herself using her usual ¡°dungeon sight¡± and decided to top the look off with a beanie. Making sure there were holes for both her ears and her horns made it look ruined if she wasn¡¯t wearing it, but she didn¡¯t care. Stolen story; please report. She grinned at herself, and muttered, ¡°Lookin¡¯ good.¡± A glance at her tails reminded her of the new creature she could make, and made her remember she still hadn¡¯t designed the boss for the first floor. Deciding she should take her newly formed body for a spin, she took a step and almost vomited. She had forgotten what had happened the last time she had moved her core. This time, however, it was worse. As the entire world shifted around her, her vision simultaneously took a step forward. Taking a moment to gather herself, she cursed whatever had just happened to her. She was - strangely - fine with how much her body had changed against her will, but giving her a severe case of vertigo with every step? She hated it. However, she should be able to get used to it if she kept at it, so she took another step. And almost vomited again. But hey, since when have things gotten better with only one step? Before you answer, the correct answer is never. So with sheer force of will, she marched on, only dry heaving twice. By the time she made it to one of the shafts that led down, taking a step only made her nauseous. She gazed down at the dark void that was the only way down. ¡°I didn¡¯t think this through. Jumping down will definitely fuck me up.¡± She didn¡¯t know why, but she enjoyed talking to herself now. Something about speaking her thoughts out loud just seemed soothing. She was staring up from down below, and down from up above, when, almost unconsciously, she tried to mentally consolidate those two viewpoints. All of the sudden, she was no longer looking down, but only up. She looked around, and found her body had somehow made its way down. She clenched her hands. ¡°You mean I coulda just fuckin teleported!?¡± She shouted at the air. She sighed. ¡°Well, putting that aside, now that I¡¯m down here, I can start making my boss.¡± She sat down and got to work.
She didn¡¯t know how long it had been, but she had finished her boss. About halfway through, she had gotten distracted and added a few more variants of her Burrow Worms around her caves. That, in turn, gave her an idea to add to her boss, and she refocused on it. Another interesting thing she had learned was that she could float, and phase through anything solid. She was growing more and more confused by what had happened, so she finally pulled up the skill description to see if anything had changed.
Skill List _???????e?????????$????????*????????r????)??????????This skill is a u??????n???????i????????q??????????u????????e?????? skill. It will manifest a ?????????{?????????$???????%?????%???????)???????%????}??????? to serve as a ???????m????????a????????n????????i?????????f???e???s??????t?????????a?????????t??????????i????????o?????????n????? of ???????(????j????????j?????????$?????????%?????? ????r????????$???????k????????)???????j????e????????, allowing for ??????[??????D??????a??????t???????a?????? ???????????C?????o???????r??????r???????u????p???????t??????e???????d???????]???????.
Well, that certainly didn¡¯t seem like it was supposed to happen. She could barely understand what it said. She kinda mentally poked at it for a bit, but nothing happened. Eventually, her mind drifted back to the people who had been here a while ago. She wondered when they¡¯d be back. She wanted to have a test run of her dungeon.
She had discovered she could turn invisible, and had planted a few tufts of grass in the sinkhole. After a bit of boredom, she decided to redirect the water to create a miniature lake. She wasn¡¯t going to make it appear automatically, but she made a small basin that the water wouldn¡¯t seep through as easily for the water to gather in. So far, it was doing well. She needed more things to do. She was hesitant to purchase monsters from the catalog, as she didn¡¯t want to accidentally pick a non-native species, and give away her dungeon this early. It was the same deal with traps. You stick traps in a small, underground area, and it becomes pretty obvious there¡¯s a dungeon there. On the second level, she would probably begin to incorporate traps, but she wanted a full test of the first level before she even began the second level. It was as she was floating around, planting moss along the tunnels, that she remembered her aura was still only a mile across. A quick glance at the calculations that had been downloaded into her head showed that, at least for a while, for every DP she had ever gathered, she would be able to expand her aura another 10 feet. Cubed. There weren¡¯t any changes to that equation the further she expanded, and that horrified her. Off the top of her head, Earth had been around 25 thousand miles across. No, that was the circumference. Uh. Right, the diameter was about eight thousand miles. And the equation was, what? Right, pi times the radius squared. And four thousand squared was-shit, no, that¡¯s area. Right, it was a weird-ass fucking equation. Four-thirds times pi times the radius cubed. Fuck. This was getting to be too much to do all in her head, so she made use of her handy status as a dungeon that can literally change how it looks to write in solid stone. After a few minutes, she finally had the answer she wanted. ¡°Eighty five and a third million, times pi. And I can control ten times my max DP in volume. Rounding down, even now, had her with 2.4 quintillion DP, which meant 24 quintillion feet cubed that she could theoretically control. She¡­really hoped there were diminishing returns. She was beginning to scare herself. But now she was curious. How did other dungeons get DP? How did they not take over the world? Even if the world was ten times as large as Earth was, other dungeons would only need to gather around 85pi million DP. And as dungeons are practically immortal, they¡¯d be able to reach that amount eventually, right? Besides. How far could 24 quintillion feet actually encapsulate? More math! It took an hour. It took an hour for her to realize she had fucked up. Somehow, she had gotten a different number when she redid the equation for Earth¡¯s volume. Panicking, she redid the equation to find the volume of how much area she could cover. She then converted the volume of the Earth to miles, and did the same with but the numbers still seemed wrong. She kept going at it, slamming her head into it over and over again, trying to find out what she was doing wrong. It took her going back and starting from scratch to realize what she was doing wrong. She had been using the volume of Earth in miles, and everything else in feet without converting properly. With that correction made, everything made a lot more sense. She couldn¡¯t actually take over the world. At most, she could over just under one four hundredth of the world. That was assuming the world was still the same size as Earth. It could be bigger, or it could be smaller. A tiny part of her felt sad at the news she couldn¡¯t take over the planet, but she ignored it. With a quick mental snap, all of the work she had just done smoothed out, making the wall look like it had never looked any different. She refocused on the rest of her dungeon, and found herself surprised. Somehow, without her realizing it, people had entered her dungeon. Authors note Alrighty y''all. I''m not dead, and I haven''t dropped the story. I don''t want to drop the story. I''m just really fuckin indescisive. I''ve reached the point where things start picking up, and I''m torn on what direction I should take it. Do I go the usual route, and have her interact with other people? People who aren''t dungeons? Or do I keep on the path I''ve been going, and focus more on dungeon building? Both bring there challenges and difficulties. Interacting with people means I''d have to write dialogue, which I absolutely hate doing, because I always feel like I''m messing something up. On the other hand, writing the dungeon building aspect would mean I''d have to go in-depth on the descriptions of the environment, which, while I feel like I can do that better, I always feel like I''m not doing enough and need to make the descriptions longer. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. So, yeah, I''mma make a poll. I like like polls. I should also prolly put it below the chapter, so y''all can read this first before deciding randomly without the facts. Anyway, if you guys want to read a longer version of this, I''ll put a link to it in the author''s note, because for some dumb-fuck reason, I can''t put links in the chapter content, but I''m not mad about that, no, not at all.