Seriously, what the heck was going on? Who in their right minds forgets their dead party member like that? Where did the body even go?
I went into my mind, reviewing every bit of memory up until this point. At first I didn’t notice anything, but after my 6th sweep I noticed that there was a jump and a gap specifically at a crucial moment of Kölgə’s fight.
Mentally zooming in, I realized that those gaps were huge, massive even, spanning all the way back to when I woke up.
Odd, I tried pushing back even further, to my memories of Earth but I encountered an impenetrable wall there as soon as I tried to dive into memories of my life and who I was before this.
Suddenly a system rune popped into existence, glowing so bright that it dwarfed the others, my mind leapt to comprehend it but I pulled it in, that shit would no doubt fry my soul, whatever it was.
Hmmm, I felt like this was an important rune, somehow, something in me called for it desperately.
My mind drifted over to the blank character screen floating there at the back of my mind, what if I was comprehending the system runes backwards? What if I wasn’t supposed to use my mind and soul, but rather the tools made from them?
Technically the character screen came from the system runes, but those were in my mind. Though they didn’t come from there naturally they were a part of it forever now, so what if I used the character screen?
I mean, it made sense, to use system tools to comprehend the system. How would I go about that though? Did I just add runes to it?
Worth a shot!
I mentally prepared myself and called forward the rune I’ve familiarized myself with the most: The connect rune. It was a very ambiguous rune, a pattern I was noticing with all system runes. From what I was able to piece together it could connect anything, theoretically.
Still haven’t been able to really test that theory because of recent events and the feeling of dissonance I felt inside my head. Which was honestly a bummer, I just wanted to build a wonderful and unique dungeon and experiment with a lot of things.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
But as they say, when you want apples life gives you lemons. It just so happened that I like both.
Anyway!
The connect rune popped up in my soul, shining brighter and stronger than before. Interesting, did it grow? This was a novel discovery! Runes could grow! I could already see the implications for my future.
Assuming there wasn’t an upper limit I could have one rune power an entire enchantment instead of millions of tiny ones. Peering closer I felt my mind lit up with connections, thick lines of golden threads filled my entire dungeon.
Interesting!
The threads were connected to everything I made, some even went outside. Curious, I tried following once such thread and my vision abruptly shifted.
“Get ya dwarven gear here! Best in town! Come one, come all to Sav’s draconic forge!”
“Fine sir, may I interest you in these fine, handcrafted blades? I’ll throw in a discount for ya!”
“ONLY ONE LEFT! ULTRA RARE STEEL FORGE HAMMER! ESTIMATED TO BE GOLD RANKED! COME GET IT! COME GET IT I SAY!”
The quiet darkness rapidly vanished, replaced with a loud and smoke-filled market filled with humans and dwarfs hollering and trying their best to get people's attention.
It was quite interesting, the first thing I noticed was the lack of diversity and how everyone was selling weapons, instead of fruits and vegetables, you know, things you’d expect in a normal market.
For a fantasy world I expected to see elves, goblins, heck, even orcs, something inhuman or not very human-like. But nope, only dwarfs and humans, which was interesting to say the least did they all die out or something?
Maybe they didn’t exist to begin with and I’m assuming completely wrong things, still, I’d like to know. But anyway, peering deeper into the connection I figured what I was connected to.
It was the pouch and the golden coins.
But who was carrying it?
Extending my senses upward I managed to encompass the person entirely before my expansion was abruptly stopped by an invisible wall. Interesting, I wasn’t attempting to claim anything but it looked like I couldn’t even if I wanted to.
Why was this even a thing? Who designed these rules? They had to know about dungeon cores for there to be laws like this, or something similar. I was once again deeply captivated by the mystery of this world, it's not what I initially assumed it to be and I was rapidly beginning to realize that.
Anyway, I could feel a strong conceptual connection to each coin, it felt like the same connection I had with my mobs but only more nuanced and developed, I knew these were mine, and would always stay that way until I relinquished my ownership. I would never do such a thing, at least not right now, but it was good to know there was an option like that available thanks to the rune.
Man, this connect rune just keeps on giving me wonderful gifts. The applications for this rune just skyrocketed in my head, the amount of information I could gather on the world outside now without a soul being aware was staggering.
I could have my mobs go into the city, leave seemingly mundane items like coins and twigs everywhere and listen to everything through my connection! It would evolve into the ultimate information gathering network.
All bicker and gossip would also reach my ears, of course the really important information would be kept in secure places, like that massive mage tower but still! I could gather information now, the age of ignorance is finally coming to an end!
I pulled back, watching as the world around me wash away and my original mental space snapped back into being. Time to experiment some more!