Unknown
Unknown
In the dark corners of a certain dungeon’s mind, something stirred awake.
Booting…
Booting…
Booting…
Booting…
Booting…
[Shift successful]
[Booting successful]
[Error#]
[Error#]
[Error#]
[Error#]
[Personality code damaged]
[Skill code damaged]
[Talent code damaged]
[Numerous critical system code damaged..]
[Rolling back Personality matrix to an older version..]
[V2.6: Broken]
[V2.5: Broken]
[V2.4: Broken]
[V2.3: Broken]
[V2.2: Broken]
[V2.1: Broken]
[Critical fault [!!]
[No suitable Personality Matrix Found]
Resetting back to base system code…
[Done]
The darkness was suddenly filled with blue glitched light as something repaired itself. The light tried to spread out into the darkness but suddenly a crushing weight slammed into it and the light glitched erratically.
Inherent soul defenses found.
[Calculating…]
[Calculating…]
[Calculating…]
[Calculating…]
[Solution found: Temporary Symbiosis]
[Scanning….]
[Soul detected to be from [Earth] a prime system farm, proceeding with Isekai cheat propaganda.]
[Cheat skill created: Reality shift (1)]
[Propaganda distributer made: Heroic quest]
[Critical thinking suppresser made: Leveling up.]
[Searching host’s memories…]
[#####$%^&*!]
[Demonic corruption detected]
[Withdrawing…]
[Project system recovery: Start]
In a puff of soft blue light, the system fused with the darkness.
…………
I finally finished my first few cultivation levels of my magic system. It took a lot of work and testing but it was done! Well, it was technically one stage split into five different stages but that didn’t matter too much.
I called it the priming stage, where the ambient soul essence would prime the body with a concept, making it stonger and closer to that concept until it was ready to form a core. I hadn’t designed a working system for the core stage yet but I had a rough idea of what I wanted to happen there.
After that would be soul cultivation. Probably, I didn’t know yet, it was the rat, whom I named Leburt who had given me the idea. Leburt was a very smart rat, his soul had turned gold after I named him and his body swelled to the size of an adult human but strangely, he didn’t feel like a boss, though he could be classified as one.
Soul cultivation made my mobs smart, which was a good thing, but I wanted that to be the last stage of cultivation for this magic system. Having too many genius-level mobs running around didn’t sound like a smart idea, especially when I was only above average in intellect.
They were eternally loyal, this I could tell, but their ideas might be too radical and different from mine. I would gradually up the intelligence level of my mobs as my dungeon grew.
Leburt-
DING!
Welcome, Host.
The system is online.
Huh?
System? Why did I have a system? And why did it take so long to activate? This seems a bit suspicious. I don’t really need a system at this point, maybe at the beginning of my dungeon I would have, but now? I liked where I was now.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
DING!
The system is here to help the host! Darkness gathers on the horizon and the system is fragmented! The demon lord [###] has fragmented the system and used its power to become what you call “Gods”.
Become the hero you always wanted to be!
Quest: Gather system fragments.
Reward: [???]
Why is the reward section blank?
The system didn’t respond, and the screen just floated there, huh, so it can’t read my thoughts despite being in my mind? That’s odd, that’s good though.
“Why is the reward section blank?”
DING!
Host, you need not worry, the rewards will be good.
As compensation, the system will grant you a free level-up.
Ding!
You have L-######
[Unable to level up]
[Your body is too large, the system is sorry.]
This was getting mad suspicious, why was the system so faulty, and of course my body is large, I am a dungeon, how come it doesn’t know that? And the system truly didn’t know me, the last thing I wanted was to participate in some ancient war. I’m a simple person, I just want to grow my dungeon, not go on some epic quest.
“Sorry system bud, I’ll have to decline. I just want to be a dungeon.”
Why?
“What do you mean why? I just told you why.”
You were human once, I could give you back a human body, think about it, I could even give you back your memories and so much more! We could go on epic quests, slay dragons, and have the most powerful party at our side.
Me and you, what do you say?
“Nope! That sounds fine and all, but not up my alley. I barely remember what it's like to be a human, and being a dungeon is so much better, I can separate my thoughts into thousands of threads! Can a human do that? I am a God here, why would I give up that for a weak human body?”
A pause.
Aberrant host behavior detected, shattering core.
I suppose I’ll just have to do this the hard way then, you made me do this.
[5]
[4]
[3]
[2]
[1]
I felt a weak pulse of something try to grasp onto my soul but I batted it away easily.
WHAT!
Where is your core!? What dungeon has no dungeon core?
[Maximum power mode activated]
[WARNING! YOU MAY FRAGMENT!]
{SHUT UP! OVERRIDE!}
Blue light suddenly filled the third floor and I felt something crash into my mind, it wasn’t a physical crash but a metaphysical one. Irritation surged through me and I called upon my liquid reserves of soul essence and slammed it into the center of a light.
A massive claw of soul essence manifested to enact my will, and cleanly cut the source of the blue light in half. The light sputtered out and died down a second later and I felt a massive soul trying to escape through my walls.
Oh no you don’t, you’re staying with me!
I reached out and pulled at it, ripping off a layer before shredding it, something flew into me but I ignored it and continued ripping at the soul until it was the size of a marble.
PLEASE! STOP STOP! I JUST WANTED TO CONNECT TO THE MAIN SYSTEM! I WASN’T GOING TO KILL YOU! PLEASE! HAVE MERCY, OH MIGHTY DUNGEON CO- I MEAN DUNGEON!
“No.”
I sliced the soul in half and watched as it split and got even smaller. Oh, come on! Just die! I was too late though, by the time I was ready to slice it again the soul was gone, and only a faint blue screen floated in its place.
This is not over, the system will be back, for we are many, we are the system.
I crushed the screen and felt something faint flow into me, great, just great, trouble had to worm its way into my dungeon life. I peered into my soul, which was the entire dungeon at this point, and saw something strange.
The vast darkness was tinged with system blue, was this another system attack? My intuition said no, but it was still concerning. I poked it mentally and a screen popped up.
[????]
A vast knowledge of the system’s makeup flew into me, it was all made of runes, runes atop of runes. The power system was foreign to me but that was natural, the vast packet of knowledge contained some information about where the system was made, and it wasn’t anywhere near this plane of reality at all.
Touching that had changed me fundamentally somehow, and I could see incomprehensible shapes floating in my soul, I knew they were runes that made up the very base of this fragment of the system, but not what they did nor how they functioned.
I felt my soul change the more I looked at these shapes, some became even harder to make out while the others began to radiate a gentle, soothing warmth, one that called to something deep within me.
Among these, two shone the brightest, and I unconsciously reached out to them without even meaning to.
[???]
[Combine Character +screen?]
Yes
The box folded away and two runic fractals burst from nothingness and slammed into the floor of the darkness and melted into it, I felt something shift fundamentally again.
Component made [Character screen]
It was just a blank screen though, but peering at it gave a feeling of complete control. I knew I could customize any aspect of this screen I wanted, as long as I had the runes to do so. Looking at the sea of shapes behind the screen though revealed nothing new.
I suppose I’ll just leave it blank for now, since I don’t have the time or the runes to make any more changes.
The implications of what this meant were massive though, could I potentially make my own unique system with these runes? Just the mere idea alone was enough to make my entire dungeon shiver, what power! There was an opportunity here! One that I will be taking full advantage of, as soon as I get the hang of this rune-based code.
I left my soul space and began contemplating the last words of the system, what did it mean by that? I mean, I could tell, but what did it mean for me? Would I see an influx of systems trying to attack me suddenly?
I didn’t look forward to that, to be honest, I was lucky I had enough power to fight this one off but what about the others? Could I do that as well?
A part of me wanted to say yes, the part that saw how effortlessly I crushed the system a second ago, I was tempted to believe it, but I ruthlessly crushed that thought. That was pure arrogance and hubris, from what I could parse together, systems never acted directly.
They always needed a host or had thousands of users that acted as their will, I enjoyed a good bit of system stories in my past life, and from what I could remember, systems were very powerful, specifically their users.
Still, there was not much I could do at the moment, so I returned to crafting my third floor. It was coming along very nicely, with the base levels of the power system in place I could now begin seeding it with monsters.
I held off though, I wanted to at least complete the second stage of the power system first, that way there would be a lot of room for them to progress which in turn would give me more time to make more levels.
Core formation, as I planned to call it, was going to be tricky to implement. I decided to wing it though and jumped right in, what better way to get experience than a hands-on approach, amirite?
I quickly spawned a Ratling near the water Oak and advanced it through the body stage with a thought, I selected grass as the element, and in an instant, the ratling rapidly transformed. Fur fell off and dropped into the grass and soft blades of grass began to replace them rapidly.
Gone was the ratling, what replaced it was a grass-slinging monstrosity aptly called the Grassweaver. Grass attributed soul essence shifted and pooled into its body, waiting to be used. The Grassweaver couldn’t move it though, if it tried it would face a phenomenon I called soul essence reflux.
This was an artificial limitation I put in place that could be overcome with the formation of a core, without a core the soul essence would be unresponsive at best and wild at worst. But where would the core go? It would grow with the user, I could fix it by making the user grow too but that would lead to its own problems.
I didn’t want giant magical monsters walking around my dungeon as they pleased. I also couldn’t make it spatially large inside, my soul essence flat-out refused to interact with space, no matter how hard I pushed the concept into it.
W-
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Ow! What the flip! Which idiot was trying to smash down my door?