《Traveling the Dungeon》 Recap of book 1 Dale, a failed artist, dies while crossing the street. His corpulent body lasted long enough to allow him to know of his humiliation. Transported through the aether, his soul was captured in a fantasy land by an experiment to recreate dungeon cores. Gem-like stones which are the gateways for unlimited mana to enter the new world he finds himself in. His escape from the magical experiment results in the death of an unnamed assistant as well as the kingdom''s strongest human magician. A strong supporter of the [Rebel King] dying in such an unusual manner, one the inquisitor could only determine was a dry run for the King''s own head, left the King unnerved and irrational. Gaining magical space distorting power brought the attention of the gods, and one small little scary god, Denda: Goddess of Fate, [Thieves], and Cunning. Being the god of Fate, Denda could see an extended twisting plan to profit off this newest pawn to the board. Offering gifts and help to Dale in exchange for him becoming Coldona''s [High Priest] and representation of challenge to the mortals. This plan was designed to save Coldona from shifting domains and becoming more monstrous and eventually evil as well as a secret plan for Denda and the rest of her family. Sending Dale off to visit the Dwarves gave time for the [Rebel King] to become more unnerved while Dale gained essential training in the ways of ordered and calm dungeon delvers. Dale''s visit to the Lizard people, the Kobolds, showed him what tricky trap builders could do when delving in his dungeon while also providing a lovely bit of entertainment he called ''the Lizard Love Triangle.'' This triangle was between ''Romeo,'' ''Lady Lizard,'' and ''Shortstop,'' the heir apparent to the tribe and her two guards. After disrupting the Kobolds by providing prizes and Achievements, language training orbs, and spell orbs, Dale changed directions and headed into a town near the capital of the kingdom. Dale''s return to the kingdom triggered the King''s skill for detecting rebellions (of which Dale unwittingly took part because of his unlawful escape from lawful imprisonment). The King''s increasingly erratic behavior upset the nobles and had them eyeing the King for future political opportunities. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. While Dale did his dungeon thing in a small town, the King and his soldiers rode to destroy the city and the budding ''rebellion'' it contained. Before the King arrived Dale moved on to the capital, leaving the King further unhinged and upset. After Denda warned the King not to attack the dungeon, the King requested assistance from the temple of Vetta. A religious order outlawed from the kingdom because of its previous evil actions. The temple used this as an excuse to return to the nation, the apparent unstable nature of the kingdom now exposed. As a thin fig leaf of respectability, they send a paladin to destroy the dungeon to fulfill the King''s deal. When Yargo, the young paladin, reaches the dungeon she teams up with a dimensional magician to enter the dungeon and destroy Dale! Though secretly, the dimensional mage is working on behalf of his god per Denda''s plan. Yargo is defeated while drawing power directly from her goddess while in a direct contest with another god''s representative in a challenge. Dale winning this conflict, against a much more powerful Goddess'' representation, was enough power to allow Coldona to start the Pantheon of the Grey. This new Pantheon provided a home for her family; the gods and goddesses of a less kind disposition compared to the rest of the previous Pantheon. Denda had also set up a secret which had to follow mysterious and convoluted rules that could be discovered only under extraordinary conditions. These secrets, exposed in the right way at the right time and without even the guardian (Dale) knowing of the secret that they were guarding. This revelation allowed for Denda and her boyfriend to be married and have their daughter, Siv the goddess of Whispers. Vetta Goddess of Order and Light, strongest of the gods, visited Dale, informing him that he was required to provide her one challenge specifically designed for determining the worth of a future champion, as payment for harming her reputation.
The Gods
Goddess Coldona, Mother of Monsters, Birther of Dungeons, Goddess of Challenges. Welden, the God of Wealth, Fame, and Magic. Telden, the God of Travel, [Merchants], and Trade. Hamndel, the God of Orphans, [Whores], and Slaves. Vetta, the Goddess of Order and Light. Denda, Goddess of Fate, [Thieves], and Cunning Beld, the God of Secrets and Shadows Siv, the Goddess of Whispers
Chapter 1 - Watching the World Burn Some days it doesn¡¯t pay to wake up. Given that, as a gem, I don¡¯t sleep, such thoughts say something about how exhausted I felt. It wasn¡¯t that I had been tricked by Denda, I had seen that coming from a mile away. Is it really being fooled if you have willingly gone along with the plan knowing that it would work out differently than you thought? No, not really, and in the grand scheme of things, her project just cost me a small amount of pride rather than any actual harm. There had been sticky moments -the young paladin Yargo comes to mind- but in general, I was as safe as she could set things up to be. It wasn¡¯t Vetta thinking she would claim a promise of assistance fromme either. At first, the idea that I would owe her a trial for a champion had pissed me off. After all, she picked a fight with me, not the other way around. But then I got to thinking about it. A powerful goddess wants to set up a trial for a champion, and I get to be the mystical challenge to determine the worth of the hero? Talk about an instant legend! It wasn¡¯t really a punishment, more of a gift in disguise as a punishment! I was starting to get a feel for how the gods worked, and one of the ways was tricky games where their help can be unhelpful, and their punishments could be helpful. Tricky, but if you watch for it, useful to understand. I still didn¡¯t know why they played these games, but I had hints that it had something to do with the way their domains pulled at them. My exhaustion didn¡¯t even come from the failure of my dungeon to protect me against the perfect duo. Thanks to those two, I now had new ideas, and my weird secondary focus effect was working on those plans in the background as I focused on my real frustration. No, my mental angst came from the kingdom. More specifically, what was left of it and the refugees who had decided to hide in my vestibule. I had actually enjoyed watching some of the drama play out above the city. The different factions fighting against each other. The King¡¯s men abandoning the town, almost in mass, hauling off whatever wasn¡¯t bolted down. The different noble groups either trying to release their leaders from the castle, rush to kill those leaders while they were still contained, or trying to stop the other two groups. It was a massacre, and for once, the peasants mostly remained safe and secure in their houses while the castle burned. The ordinary people didn¡¯t start suffering until one of the factions decided to set fire to some other group¡¯s mansion. Of course, one good fire deserves another, which left the whole city burnt and looking like what happens when you hand a lighter to an angsty teenager. The castle was still sporting its giant blank ¡®go away¡¯ enchantment which left me without a view inside, but given the fires, the noble¡¯s insanity, and the fact that the King¡¯s guards left in a hurry with pockets stuffed with loot, I could guess what had happened. Somewhere, somewhen, someone stuck a pointy thing in a royal person, and that was the end of the bloodline. Still: not my monkey, not my circus. The real issue was that I had only a few days left here before I planned to move my entrance to another location, but my vestibule was filled with huddled refugees. I could understand things from their perspective. When super-powered humans start fighting, those without power should move quickly. Even given that, more were hiding in cellars than in my dungeon, but it only took a small number to fill me full. My secondary vestibule would still allow me to move my gate, but I wasn¡¯t eager to lock these commoners in the lobby and leave them to die. I had been relaxed about the whole idea when it had been hardened military dwarves. If they had camped out in my vestibule, it would have been because they were trying to annoy me or trying to get something from me. I felt no compunctions against retaliation there. But these peasants, they were just trying to live through the day, with some sneaking out for food during the night.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. I had plans, I had goals, and some of them were planned for my vestibule. But no! No, of course not! No, they had to huddle there and try and survive, blocking my construction efforts the whole time. I still hadn¡¯t updated my plaque with Yargo¡¯s death, and I had a unique plan for that. I was upset, but truthfully, I felt for the commoners too much to do anything about them huddling there and blocking my construction with their fluctuating mana. Some were doing more than huddling and waiting for the dungeon to eat them or the nobles to attack, whichever came first. A few enterprising people were trying their hand at my challenges instead of just waiting. I had been watching a large man with wild sideburns. He had huffed like a steam engine as he tried my agility challenges but had quit after the second challenge. Apparently, he was afraid of heights, and he wanted nothing to do with a repeat of the vertical spiral room of monkey bars. Which was too bad, it had been impressive to see such a large fellow moving from bar to bar. His use of the bars the way I had intended had also reinforced my idea that the lady lizard had been one of the few who would think of scooting across the top of the bars. It was when he looped around back through my hall of champions to my vestibule that I realized how I had been limiting myself. I was still trying to pretend I wasn¡¯t sapient. But, truthfully, it didn¡¯t matter any longer. That secret was out of the bag and had been for a while. Sure, the average Joe on the street didn¡¯t know, but there had to be rumors. Anyone with any connection to the gods or any of the nobles had to have figured it out by now. That ¡®secret¡¯ wasn¡¯t going to be keeping me safe. I had decided during the fight with Yargo that I was going to make my labyrinth a deadly affair the likes of which none had ever seen. If someone had evil intent, one look at my new maze would be enough to convince them I wasn¡¯t a dumb stone. Refusing to starve out my unhappy houseguests meant that I had to kick them out some other way. With me no longer hiding my ability to think, I could be blatant about how I request their absence. First, I needed a place to go. Welden¡¯s [High Priest] suggested that I head to the mage¡¯s spire to the west, but should I trust him? I stacked and unstacked coins in my treasury as I considered the option. One location was as good as any in many ways. Wherever I go, Vetta¡¯s church will try and follow. While I¡¯m sure that Vetta¡¯s followers are upset after those messages by miss blue box, I know it¡¯s only this local branch¡¯s leadership which has been ignoring her commands. This leaves me with no real goal for where to travel except ¡®away from here.¡¯ I knew why I was hesitating to head to the west; it felt too much like following along to the tune of the gods. While it¡¯s true that I danced to that tune last time and it worked out well for me, it also rankled. One beautiful thing about being a dungeon core was the nature of my new emotions. When I wasn¡¯t experiencing extreme panic, my feelings were cold, calculating things ¡ª a bit like a crocodile waiting in ambush. I could think about my situation for hours without feeling the emotional drive to do, which would previously press at my mind. Even my affectations of pondering, stacking, and unstacking coins, was purely something to comfort me because of the new emotional silence. Truthfully, existence as a dungeon core was half frantic construction, something my alternate attentions were handling, and one-half cold, careful deliberation. Despite my frustration with the gods, I had to consider the west my best option. Even if I was following along to Denda¡¯s plan, something I wasn¡¯t sure was the case. I still needed a place to travel next and somewhere that I could learn more about magic would be ideal. My options came down to solving two goals at the same time, or petulantly wandering around somewhere else while ignoring my plans. That sounded far too like my old self''s habit of ignoring well-intentioned family advice in order to demonstrate my independence, or will, or something. With my intent to better myself and avoid the mistakes of my past, I pointed my remote view to the west and began moving it at the fastest speed I was able. Chapter 2 - Go West Young Dungeon There is one difficulty with directions which consist of ¡®go west to the mage¡¯s spire.¡¯ Mainly in that, there is an awful lot of ¡®west.¡¯ I spent more than a day and night flying my viewpoint westward. Flying my view high, I kept the northern mountains to my right side and flew as straight on as I could. This worked until the mountain range started to drift in a more northerly direction. By that point, I was entertaining myself by swooping down among the rolling hills that were spotted with forested areas. The sporadic copses of trees were odd because they were obviously man-made, or at least man curated. This wasn¡¯t that interesting until I rolled over a hill and stopped in mid-air because of the pitch black trees. I shortly moved on because, while the pitch black trees were an odd sight and the logging crews were fascinating, without the ability to poke someone and ask them what they were doing, it quickly grew tiresome. There is only so much you can learn from silently watching burly men chop up trees in a clearly dangerous way. My flight west came out of the rolling hills and out onto a plain of long grasses. I wasn¡¯t sure if these plains were part of the same kingdom, but the sudden absence of roads suggested to me that it wasn¡¯t. Flying over the land was a tedious affair. I had been expecting to see cows or buffalo or maybe the equivalent for this world, but for the most part, I didn¡¯t see anything of the sort. I did notice a disturbance in the grasses which when I looped around to check turned out to be something like a skinny pig without tusks. The animals were slipping through the grasses and running southward, so I decided to continue my trip without following along. The relatively short trip had already shown me that this world was just as fascinating as my old one, but in this one, I could travel anywhere I liked without paying for a flight and pop back home without worrying about my luggage being lost. Strange trees and odd animals hadn¡¯t been enough to draw my attention for more than a few minutes. The collection of creatures of obvious sapience, all riding animals which looked like large goats, those drew me away from my travel. Beyond the goat-like mounts, the other oddity of these men is that they were similar to kobolds only taller and had long shaggy manes of hair. It looked as if someone had roughly cross bred a kobold with a lion. These creatures, whatever they were, definitely were going to be visited one day by a gateway. I had the urge to think of them as Native Americans, the leather armor, the bows, all urged me to think of them in those terms. But the giant curved sabers made of a white metal suggested that these men were not hunter-gatherers. Nomadic cultures not being well known for carrying around anvils and forges. I suppose that it could be possible that they had purchased the swords from somewhere, but when I looked into their leather satchels I found steel utensils and knives, their arrows had metal points, and they even had some coins in their packs. The amount of metal suggested that it wasn¡¯t a rare commodity but a rather common one. Even some of the necklaces they wore had metal adornments. Somewhere on these plains was a town of these lizard-lions and I wanted to visit and absorb their culture. I chuckled when I realized that I honestly wanted to absorb their culture in a literal sense. Making a note that I would have to build some kind of bucking bronco riding challenge, I turned back west and continued to fly. By this point, I was starting to worry that my directions would be like the time I tried to visit a cousin in the country. Their instructions consisted of things like: ¡®keep going till you get to where the old McMannon barn used to be before it burned down,¡¯ accurate, but entirely useless. The plains were seemingly endless. Flat, constant grasslands, only broken up by the occasional river or lake, until the grasses gave way to sands. The sudden line of sand was stark. The line between grasslands and desert was curving, and snake-like, nothing so perfect as a straight line, but the division between the two was absolute. To the west, sand, to the east grass. No grasses grew over the border in the dunes. The shift was most likely artificial in nature, but what caused it or maintained it, I had no clue. Like most of the things in this world, I had to just throw my hands up and proclaim ¡®magic!¡¯ but it was no less unsatisfying than in my old universe despite the fact it might actually be a valid answer here. A few hours after zooming through the sands, a more desolate place I couldn¡¯t imagine, I noticed a black dot in the distance. Assuming this was the spire, I shifted my flight further north and continued my travel. As I approached the sheer scale of the spire, and the outlying city, soon became apparent. The spire grew from the base of the town, the point seemed to reach into the sky. The spire itself appeared to be constructed of some type of basalt or granite stone, a greyish stone of some kind anyway, and interspersed with little flecks of color climbing the spiraling tower. All of this situated in a city of glass and sandstone perched on a high plateau with a winding road slowly arching up to the side of the stone formation. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. The sandstone wasn¡¯t a surprise, a rock formed by compressed sand had to be easy to come by in a desert. But the glass was so prevalent that the city sparkled in the sunlight. I guessed that it was mage formed using the sand. The logistics of trying to produce that much glass, in a desert, using conventional fuel, boggled my mind. The view from the top of the plateau was breathtaking, and I spent time just slowly panning my view around and watching the setting sun over the dunes. With the city of the spire found, I flew around seeing if I could find a large open area to place my doorway. No large courtyards drew my eye, this city was far more closely packed within its walls than the cities I had previously visited. Worse, the only open area beside the area around the mage spire was at the entrance gateway where animals were held as they were unloaded. Consider me snobbish, but I didn¡¯t want to be associated with the smell of hard-working animals and their leavings. Eventually, I decided that instead of blocking some narrow street within the city, and there were a lot of small little streets, I would put my gateway directly on the grounds around the gigantic spire. The swirling tower of stone pointed into the sky was a clear demonstration of magical might, but the grounds around the spire were equally impressive as they more resembled that of a tropical garden. I had seen the pictures of the massive buildings built on my old world, usually as a not-so-subtle demonstration of might, but this mage spire put them to shame. It was at least a couple miles tall and half a mile wide. Being surrounded by tropical bushes, trees, and winding pathways of stone and water, the entire place was a phallic roar of power. From around the quarter-height range of the tower, I flew in a large arcing circle trying to decide where to put my gateway. If the spire had had a single entranceway, it would be easy, but the base looked like it had many entrances with walkways which spiraled out to connect to the wall that then connected to the rest of the city. No single area seemed to be significantly better connected than any other, though there were slightly more people coming and going from the southernmost paths. Deciding this was where I would place my gateway I divebombed downward to get a ground level view. As I approached the ground, a bright purple flash obscured my vision for a moment, and suddenly my [Far Seeing] spell failed and my viewpoint disappeared! I reeled mentally for a moment. Since I had gained the [Far Seeing] ability, I had used it non-stop. Even when I was distracted within my dungeon I hadn¡¯t canceled the spell, I simply stopped paying attention to the view. I had become entirely used to seeing everything within my dungeon at once as well as the roaming outside viewpoint. My sudden loss of vision felt like someone had poked out my eye! There was no pain from the sudden vision loss, but the disorientation was odd, more so because of my absolutely stationary nature. Trying to recreate my [Far Seeing] viewpoint again produced another surprise. I was unable to recreate my view where my skill failed! Deciding instead to recreate my view from a more distant location, outside the city, my view popped into existence without difficulty. Slowly I pushed my viewpoint towards the spire, worrying that my skill would be dispelled again, but strangely nothing odd happened. When I reached the ground, I began to scout out the perfect place to put my gateway. Zipping along the earth to find the ideal spot caused the return of the purple flash and the disappearance of my [Far Seeing] ability again. Recasting my viewpoint outside the spire¡¯s exclusion area, I grumbled as I approached the mage guild grounds again. If I had a face, I would be resting it in my palm at that moment. A mage guild would definitely have some kind of protective spells. A useful protective spell would be one which would cancel any fast moving magical spell, say a fireball or maybe a scrying spell like mine? That I was capable of moving my [Far Seeing] viewpoint onto the grounds in the first place was surprising on its own. I hadn¡¯t considered it before, but it could have been possible they could have blocked out all scrying entirely as the ¡®Guild¡¯ had, or the king¡¯s castle. Though, given the sheer scale of the building that might not have been possible. The spire was itself a small vertical city all on its own. That is a significant area to block out, something that couldn¡¯t be cheap or easy to do. The anti-fast spell ward might be a compromise for cost, or maybe for practicalities sake. Either way, it was a good sign that this was the perfect place to start looking to learn more magic. Chapter 3 - I Ripped the World a New One I am not a smart gem. I¡¯ve gotten smarter since my reincarnation, but I still have my habits, and one of them is to avoid thinking deeply about my plans. My grand plan to evict my unwanted vestibule-sitters was to take my secondary entrance and move it to the mage spire. Then I would open up the pathway connecting the two vestibules and close the one at the capital and return that gateway to my dungeon. If the refugees don¡¯t immediately notice the new exit, that¡¯s fine, I¡¯m sure the mages who will come to investigate the suddenly appearing doorway will find them, and they would then finally leave. The refuse in my halls can be absorbed moments later, and it will be clean, finally. Without considering the obstacles inherent in such a plan, I immediately began to implement it! Releasing the grip I had on the fabric of space inside my entrance was a pleasant sensation. How other dimensional mages were able to hold stretched or compressed space for long periods was beyond me, and I was leaning heavily on my dungeon core nature. The only kind of exhaustion I experienced was emotional. Magical fatigue was alien to my new life. With the dimensional expansion inside the gateway released, the doorway appeared to be bricked over. My internal focus within my dungeon showed me that none of the refugees had marked the change. With a mental shrug, I turned back to the plan; they would notice when the mages arrived. Releasing the grip outside the doorway had the door slipping back through the long tunnel of stretched space and returning it to my dungeon. In the back of my mind, I could feel miss blue box informing me that I had increased one of my skills a single point with my action. Ignoring my increase, I kept focused on my goal. Now was the point where I had to rush. My gateways were closed, and the mana density in my dungeon was rising. Before my mana suffocated me, I had to move my exit and open it. Grabbing the world around my secondary gateway, I focused on the point of view from my [Far Seeing]. Compressing the world around my gateway to a small point, I then began to tunnel in the direction that was out of line with the standard three dimensions I was comfortable with. Pushing, I stretched my tunnel out further and further as it reached the place near my vision. With a surge of force, I tried to push back into normal space¡­ ¡­and failed. It was as if I ran face first into a wall made from store-brand jello. My mental hold on the gateway started to slip from my surprise before I clenched tighter and tried to wrestle through the resistance. The view from my [Far Seeing] showed the world bulging and distorting where I was trying to break through while grey and red flickers of some kind of spell flowed in and smoothed the space. My skills dinged multiple times, miss blue box screaming for attention, but I ignored it while I attempted to brute force through into the mage spire grounds. If the mages had blocked scrying, then teleportation would be on the list of magic to prevent. Until I had bounced face first (figuratively) off the ward, I hadn¡¯t even considered it. I had become comfortable with the idea of magic being rare in this world and limited to a precious few, an obvious mistake when trying to warp onto the grounds of a magical academy. The pressure in my dungeon was building, but there was still time. I wasn¡¯t reaching a critical stage by any means, but the refugees were awake and panicking. I could have moved my gateway outside the school grounds or even outside the city. But at this point, I was going to be stubborn. I had been pushed around by the gods, but they were gods, and there was little I could do about it. A powerful mage and paladin had tried to conquer my dungeon, but I had succeeded in fighting them off¡­well¡­fighting her off. I was not about to let some spell stop me from doing what I wanted! Pinching my dimensional grip into an even tinier point, I stabbed the new needle-like dimensional space into the fabric of the world and pierced through the spell! My elation was short lived as three mages came running, robes flying behind them, and started to gesture at the puncture in space, their mana slamming into the warding spell and pinching my dimensional hole closed. With the way shoved closed, even if there was a puncture, the mages slowed their headlong rush and began to walk as they waved their arms and muttered. Refusing to back down, I expanded the space within my gateway, leaving the mana to rush out. Where precisely that gateway led to if it was pinched tight into a tiny hypodermic needle of space, pinched on the outside, human-sized on the inside, and all twisted ninety degrees to the rest of the world? I had no clue. But where ever it was, the leaking mana blazed through space in every direction like a released firehose, permeating every inch of the grounds around the mages. The sudden outpouring caused the mages to stagger and their eyes to wave wildly trying to find the source. Pressing against the still ruptured puncture in space I tried to drive my needle of a gateway through, the spells pinching it closed flaring into incandescent waves of color as I hammered against the resistance. I would not be denied! Dungeons do not bow to mages with beards and silly robes! My anger, my frustration, and my helplessness all slammed through me as I pummeled the spells. I found the puncture in space far too well reinforced, the pinhole of space barred with a webbing of magic. Instead, I slammed into the area around the hole, tearing long rips into the dimension, removing the very bracing the spells used to hold against the punctures opening. My tearing of a new rip into space, avoiding the puncture I had made before, had the mages gasping and stumbling. The explosion of released mana as my gateway expanded far beyond what they could resist. I watched as two of the mages vomited while holding their heads as the younger looking mage just sat before my entrance, face grey and sweating. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Silently cheering, I congratulated myself on besting the three mages. My excitement was short lived since I felt the deep thrum of an essential update in my mind, miss blue box had decided that I had reached some major milestone. Before I could open my status and see my accomplishment I noticed the world was waving and distorting, the mana in the air seeming to compress and expand, the space around my viewpoint rippling like a rock had been thrown into a pond. Trying to turn my view to see what was causing the distortion was a horrible mistake. Somehow I turned in a way I had never done before as if I was turning my viewpoint inward as much as left or right, but the direction I shifted was foreign to all of them. Disoriented and almost seasick from my sudden shift leftward of reality, I checked my status.
True Name: Dale Erickson Ender. Race: Dungeon Core (Variant: Sapient) Class: [Spatial Hedge-Mage][Spatial Traveler][High Priest]. Level: 38 Mind: 5 Body: 1 Soul: 8 Blessings: [Blessing of Secrets] [Blessing of Cunning] [Blessing of Wealth] [Blessing of Fame] [Blessing of Magic] [Blessing of Travel] [Blessing of Challenge] Traits: [Focus of the Divine] [Soul Seal - Divine] Skills: [Far Seeing]: Level 177 [Directed Prayer]: Level 6 [Mana Sensing]: Level 91 [Spatial Manipulation]: Level 201 [Will of the World]: Level 73 [Conjuration]: Level 71 [Etheric Pattern Formation]: Level 160
My [Spatial Manipulation] skill had ticked over the two hundred mark. The feeling that miss blue-box was giving me was that this was the skill which had improved in some fundamental way. Focusing internally at my ability, I brought up the description.
[Spatial Manipulation] is the legendary skill which allows for the creation of bags of holding, teleportation devices, portals, pocket worlds, and other places which are ¡®bigger on the inside.¡¯ [Spatial Manipulation] is the unstructured form of spells dealing with the stretching, shrinking, folding, tearing, or connecting of the very fabric of space. Rank 200 Bonus: Perceive the dimensions traditionally reserved for those of higher beings.
The new bonus was vague, but I understood what had caused my disorientation. I was seeing into the dimensions, the directions, sideways to the ones I was manipulating. I could see how my doorway wasn¡¯t stretched and shrunk; instead, parts of it were shunted over into these other dimensions. These dimensions were vast; the three-dimensional world I had experienced before was like a water droplet in an ocean in comparison. Grabbing the space in my treasure room, I pushed the dimensional fabric directly towards another dimension. My treasure room expanded quickly. There was no resistance or push back as I had started to experience. The inside of my treasure room grew and grew, the wall pushing further and further away as I stretched the space in a direction sideways to the world. I began to howl in laughter as I expanded my dungeon into these new directions. The fear I had of my dungeon running out of space was gone. There was no resistance in any way. All the effort of expanding the area of my dungeon was from space pushing against space, and now I was shifting directly in a new direction. While I had been distracted playing with my newest toy, the mages had gathered up a war party and entered my dungeon. The three magicians from before followed a pack of soldiers armed with glowing weaponry. Along with the three older mages, a young woman followed. The soldiers and mages appeared as humans to my senses, but the young woman was not as she looked. The moment she stepped into my dungeon, I could see that she was simply an illusion. Every part of the display was perfect, from the tips of her hair, the pores of her skin, to the painted toenails poking through her sandaled feet. None of it was real, all of it was magical light bound to some construct of force magic. She appeared to be a woman, but she wasn¡¯t. I couldn¡¯t tell if the mages were fooled by her magic, but they seemed to hold her in high regard as she examined my vestibule and the portraits within. I had removed the plaque with the message about the secret that Denda had left. I could just see some adventurer being convinced of the secret and refusing to stop searching my dungeon for it and making a nuisance of themselves. Taking it down had seemed like a bit of housecleaning. Speaking of housecleaning: the mages had entered the hall of the fallen and found the connecting hallway that I had released which connected it to the other vestibule. Their arrival surprised the refugees and caused some panicked screaming. One of the mages formed a ball of magic that he prepared to throw at the huddled masses. I was a bit surprised to see that same old man calmly talk to the refugees in a grandfatherly way, even as he held an invisible ball of death at the ready. I made a note not to take things at face value as the refugees had, the old voice quickly calming them and getting them to evacuate the dungeon even as they spilled the beans about my challenges. The old guy interrogated them like an expert while sounding like he was deeply concerned. The sly dog. I stopped watching the old man because the illusionary lady was still walking around as the rest were marching the prisoners¡­err¡­rescued people, from my dungeon. Seeing as she was doing a remarkable imitation of a human, using two different kinds of magic effortlessly, I considered her a top player in the magical community, and I would keep an eye on her. I didn¡¯t know who she was, but I knew now who I would be spying on with [Far Seeing] while I was here. Pre-Order Live on Amazon! The Pre-order for Traveling the Dungeon is now up! Yay! You can Pre-Order the continuation of Dale''s story from here https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0851DK2YR
Dale wanted to do more than survive as a dungeon core. His experience with the gods made it clear that with power, he could do as he pleased, and without it, he was simply a toy of the powerful. Unfortunately, it isn''t just the gods who have plans for the Traveling Dungeon.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. Follow Dale as he tries to create his own little world, study magic, enchant devices, and create challenges for the gods and [Arch-Mages]. All while trying to keep Miss Blue-Box happy. From The Spire of the West to the Orcs of the South, to a discovery that will rock the world, Dale can''t help but shove his stone where it doesn''t belong. Not a Chapter - Start of a new book As the title says, this isn''t a new chapter. This story is done until I begin to work on book three. I''ve started a new novel and I wanted to let my readers know about it! The Humble Life of a Skill Trainer. Nicely for once, I''ve got the cover finished already. On my Patreon page, my Patreons have up to chapter 9. Over the next few days, I will be adding chapters to Royal Road in fits and starts to try and prime the pump of interest. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. For those of you who want an update. The Audiobook is now in production for Traveling the Dungeon! I have a few promotion codes for audible for book one left...if you send me an email saying if you are in the UK or US (You need to tell me where you are or it wastes a promo code and it won''t work). I will send you the promo code so you can listen to book one for free! Available while supplies last, limit one per email, yes - you really will need to tell me US or UK or I won''t give you a code!