Despite what some fools believe, the System does not grant power. It is merely a guide and assistant that informs one of the power they have already amassed. It also helps one process and utilize their gains more effectively. The System cannot make you stronger if you don’t work for it.

For those old enough to remember, namely those of my kin, we can tell you that the System has not always existed. Before the System we had to cultivate mana all on our own to grow in strength and we had to be very cautious when doing so, lest we end up accidentally harming ourselves in the process.

Nowadays the System streamlines the process for each individual, allowing everyone to seamlessly cultivate their mana and combine it with their bodies. You mortals don’t even need a cultivation manual or a specialized high mana zone anymore, no instead you can just go kill things and take the mana they’ve already cultivated.

As far as I’m concerned there are far too many bloodthirsty brutes and not enough scholars who appreciate what it's like to sit on a mountain and slowly raise one’s cultivation.

* From a surprisingly insightful rant by the Ancient Scourge Wyrm `Mortanaroth the Undying`

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Eternal Dungeon POV

As the Guildmaster and his companion make their way down towards the second I start reaching out to my Chosen. I’ll want both of them present along with Wyla. I’ll also need proper humanoid forms for both myself and Wyla so that we can hold a proper conversation with our guests.

Much to do and I have about 10 minutes to do it. It’s times like these where I’m happy that I can accelerate my perception and processing power. I personally reach out through my connection with my Chosen and ask them both to head towards Wyla so that they’ll be present in our meeting. My chosen are the only creatures I have that might stand a chance against the two star Guildmaster and his three star companion. Although I’d have to do something drastic to make up the extreme level cap between them.

“Wyla, can you start working on contingencies for if things turn violent? I’d prefer to save encasing them in dungeon stone as a last resort.” I say to my partner

She responds in the affirmative and I move on to my next task. I need to whip together some proper forms for myself and Wyla to inhabit. I know that Dungeon Avatar is a Legendary perk in the system menu, but it was grayed out as an option that I could bypass thanks to being a True core. Now I just need to figure out how to actually make myself an avatar with minimal system help.

First I should start with a body, which means deciding on what form my first avatar will take. While I don’t plan on limiting myself to a single avatar, my first avatar should still hold meaning. I want to pick forms that represent different aspects of Eternity, since the new name I’ve chosen for this world is the Eternal Dungeon.

I need to decide on what my first aspect of eternity will be. There are lots of options to choose from. An undead form is the first thing that comes to mind as a representation of endless life after death, but my avoidance of Scourge magic removes that option. My next thought is to pick a form that represents a single endless moment of time, perhaps a living statue or golem of some sort would fit for that.

While I like both the ideas neither one truly calls out to me as being the first thing I should do. Once I have scourge magic I will definitely be making an undead avatar and I want to hold off on the statue/golem idea until I can get a better idea of the form I want for it. Perhaps I’ll even make creating the body a competition for the crafting aligned dungeon creatures I have.

My next idea for an avatar is something that represents eternity through memory. The idea that each person has two deaths, the first when they die and the second when the last person stops remembering them. With that as the core of the aspect I could create an avatar that resembles almost anything. I wanted to choose a form that was well represented in my dungeon and with that thought only one species came to mind.

My first avatar form would be a Spiritkin. I made the race from scratch with minimal help from the system, it was only right that my first avatar would be one of them. With that decided I now needed to get the blueprint for my avatar ready. The blueprint would also need to have lots of room for adjustment in case the avatar magic had some kind of special requirements.

Step one is to decide on what type of Spiritkin I should be. Standard conventions would be to pick an animal to derive traits from as I did when originally making the species, however my form will not be standard. Besides if I take traits from only one animal than my other Spiritkin may perceive it as favoritism and their fanatic enough that I don’t want to risk that.

I need to make a more chimeric approach and take parts from each of the various lines of Spiritkin I made. Fox, Wolf, and Cat are the three current species. I have plans to add more in the future once I have larger floors in place that will let each group get proper space from each other. For now I only need my Spiritkin form to represent the three lineages already in place, I can then adjust it later when I add more.

I start with the form of a youthful male human in the prime of their life. Next I begin the Spiritkin adjustments: The fluffy magically attuned tails of the foxes, the keen and adorable ears of the wolves, the retractable dagger-like claws of the cats, and a pair of sharp feline eyes. I gave the cats two features since the ones I picked from them were less prominent than the ears and tails.

I ensure that my avatar has one tail for each of my affinities plus an additional one to represent the unaligned or `Arcane` mana that I’m able to easily wield. I give the avatar a once over in my mind's eye and deliberate on its current form.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

As my thoughts begin to focus I decide on giving my avatar vibrant golden fur on its animal parts contrasted by jet black human hair. This makes my ears and tails stick out even more and my natural claws look like a treasure from some eccentric hoarder. The normally yellow eyes of a cat are also changed into pools of liquid gold that draw the gaze with their hypnotic swirling pattern.

Now satisfied with my outward appearance I begin to slowly work my way inwards, filling out all the necessary biological functions the body needs. I finish placing and adjusting every organ except the brain and heart. I know for a fact that if I don’t figure out the avatar trick first then the moment I finish this body it will be recognized as a Spiritkin and given a soul by the system.

Building an entire body from scratch was easy, now to figure out the hard part.

I knew that consciousness was linked to the soul, which likely meant that I had to do some soul magic nonsense to get this to work. I also knew that soul magic was banned by the system since its authority can be undermined by soul magic. The final thing I knew was that I should stop calling it soul magic since mana wasn’t able to actually interfere with anything but the outermost layers of the soul.

I remember looking into soul stuff once I learned that soul magic was banned so that I could learn why it's so dangerous and possibly find ways to protect myself. I search through my memories to find a refresher on what I learned.

There are three layers to the soul: Core, Inner, and Outer. The Core of a soul is indestructible and functions as the base from which all souls are made. The Inner layer is effectively a record of all things the soul has ever experienced and it's made up of all the compressed Outer layers of the soul's previous lives. The Outer Layer is the current mind and memory of the soul; it's where everything you’ve experienced in your current life is stored, as well as the place where the anchors that keep your soul in your body are attached.

Mana can mess with anything in the outer layer of the soul and can read and make willing changes to the first few inner layers of the soul. Mana is incapable of forcefully changing anything in the inner layers and nothing can harm the core. This is why soul stuff is generally banned by the System, since it won’t be able to monitor and regulate it properly. That being said I’m 100% sure that the administrators have soul powers of some kind since the system has so much information on it.

Ok, with all that in mind I now need to focus on learning how to possess this avatar that I made. I could try and pull the soul anchors from my core to the avatar, but that seems more like a permanent change of bodies as opposed to a temporary one. Whatever it is I need to do likely takes place in the outer layer of the soul since that’s what the System has full control over.

Speaking of the system, the Avatar perk in the system describes it as 'Projecting your mind into a physical form of your own creation'. Perhaps I just need to find a way to be able to project myself into the body? While the words all make sense when put together I still don’t know how to go about doing that.

Hmmm. Project, project, project. I rack my mind for abilities I already possess that let me do some form of mental projection so that I can possibly get a hint of what to do. After several moments of thought it finally comes to me. I can project my thoughts and emotions to all of my creations through the link we share! Not only that, but I’ve also temporarily usurped control over their bodies from them before. Of course it was starting me right in the face like that.

Now all I need to do is form a connection just like the ones I have with my dungeon creatures while also making sure that I don’t bring the avatar to life.

First I attempt to connect with the avatar as it currently is, but without a brain I don’t get very far. The link I create needs something central to latch onto, but if I give the avatar a brain I’m worried that it’ll awaken as a proper spiritkin instead of being an empty shell for me. I need to try and implant something other than a biological brain for my link to snap to, but whatever I implant also needs to be able to biologically connect with the nervous system.

This is a real conundrum.

I shift my focus to one of my dungeon stone experimentation chambers and quickly fabricate an assortment of materials to begin my testing. Since I only have about 5 minutes of real time to finish I need to time accelerate the room so that it can keep up with my hyper accelerated perception.

A quick round of trying to form the link with various materials shows that no one material will work on its own. I was able to form the link with several highly mana conductive materials such as mithril, platinum, and gold as well as several gemstones, however none of them are conducive to being able to communicate with a biological nervous system.

My next experiment involved creating a full nervous system, brain included, inside of a vat and keeping it alive with Wyld magic. I then began to test out different systems to see how much of it I could replace with enchanted materials. I also learned that I cannot create a link with a nervous system on its own. This caused me to also test making a full spiritkin body, sans the heart, and trying to link up with it, which also failed.

I have a sneaking suspicion that in order to create a link with a creature they have to be capable of independence. In other words, a body that could fully function without my magic keeping it alive. This was something I found strange considering that only Wyld dungeons ever made proper ecosystems, which meant that most dungeons kept their creatures alive with a constant stream of mana. Perhaps the capacity for self sufficiency is all that mattered to the system?

It took me several subjective hours of experimentation to finally get on the right track. In this iteration I had replaced about 70% of the brain with a mixture of mithril and different gemstones and I was finally able to form a weak connection. After that success I was able to slowly hone in on the correct mixture of magical materials. In the end I had to replace around 74% of the brain with different magical materials as well as place various enchantments on them to ensure maximum efficiency and create a solid connection. The only thing that needed changing in the rest of the nervous system was several wires to further connect everything together.

With the nervous system completed I made yet another spiritkin body and swapped out the nervous system for the one I had created in my tests. I then put the heart in and waited to see if any changes occurred.

It took about 2 minutes for the body to start dying. But it was successful in the sense that no other soul attempted to animate it.

It took me another dozen subjective hours and several rounds of testing before I ironed out the rest of the details. My nervous system replacement wasn’t properly accounted for and I had to make many adjustments to other systems of the body to make everything work. I was fortunate that both my dungeon senses and my Wyld magic gave me comprehensive knowledge of how living things function and what they need to continue functioning.

Once everything was put together and placed into avatar I had made all that was left was a test drive.