Chapter 33: A Noisy Next Door Neighbor Interlude

Deep within the mountain, Damian Jager awoke as his Core drummed to life.

“Soundcheck, one two.” His voice came out through his Core distorted, like an old timey radio broadcast. Excellent. “Ooh. Love that reverb. This Soul Call Skill was already a good choice. Alright, we cool? No more info dumps or lore? Great. Glad that’s over. That tutorial was biiig yikes.”

A notification filled his screen and he groaned. “I get it! Just let me play, already!”

* USE MANA TO SHAPE YOUR SURROUNDINGS TO YOUR IDEAL ENVIRONMENT

* CURATE AND PROTECT YOUR ENVIRONMENT

* USE WHICHEVER BIOLOGICAL, MECHANICAL, MAGICAL, OR HAZARDOUS MEANS DEEMED NECESSARY>

The notification conveniently stored itself within his Quest tab when he closed it. Alongside several other easy to accomplish Quests that would reward EXP when completed.

But first things first, Damian opened up his stat screen:

[THE STUNLOCKE DUNGEON

GEOBOOM CORE (LEVEL 1)

MANA CAPACITY: 20/20

MANA RENEWAL RATE: 1

STARTING MINIONS:

BOLT IMP (LVL 1)

LESSER THUNDER ONI (LVL 1)

STARTING TRAPS:

BOOM BOOM ROOM (LVL 1)

STUNLOCK DEADLOCK (LVL 1)

TRAP INTEGRITY: N/A

LOOT VALUE: 100

AVAILABLE SKILLS:

MANA BLAST (LVL 1)

SPACE BOOST (LVL 1)

SOUL CALL (LVL 1)

TECHNOCRAFT (LVL 1)

UNLOCKED POWERS:

ELEMENTAL AFFINITY (DEMON)

ELEMENTAL AFFINITY (THUNDER)

SPARKSPAWNER]

UNSPENT SKILL POINTS: 5]

He smiled at his Dungeon name. That was his DJ name before he unalived drinking seventeen Rockstars during his seventeenth birthday Twitch stream celebration.

“Good times. Gooood times.”

He surveyed his new surroundings. His Core was situated upon a small pile of precious coins and gems, presumably worth one hundred currency in this world.

Stalagmites and Stalactites dripped water. At least, one of those two did. He could never remember the difference. Nor did he care too. They wouldn’t be around for long. He would soon clear out every boulder and rock formation like it was a fresh save on Stardew Valley. Except without all the annoying social interactions to deal with.

Damian was alone in a deep, dark cave.

The way he liked it.

Dank.

But there was a major problem. There was a missing setting.

"Hey, what gives? My FPS is locked? How many frames am I getting? This can’t be sixty."

A colony of tiny bats fluttered in the darkness in response to this built in sound system. He passively Scanned them as they flew screeching by.

Damian was already glad that he had decided to not turn on challenge mode. Especially since challenge mode turned off Tool-tips. And he'd much rather leave those enabled. None of his skills were inherently intuitive. Not only had the Tool-tips helped explain clearly what all of his abilities did, they also doubled as a Scanning ability when he hovered his focus over objects or creatures in the environment around his Core. Unfortunately he didn't see any options to disable them in the menu.

Lame. He could have taken some badass screenshots if he could disable his HUD. He hoped the Tool-tips wouldn't get annoying in the late game.

Damian absolutely did not want to have his hand held. He had refused the Dungeon tutorial companion that was offered and had skipped past the opening dialogue as fast as he could. It all seemed easy enough and self explanatory. He wasn't some old boomer.

From what he gathered during the Dungeon Core tutorial, this world had been hit with some sort of rip off Miyazaki soulsborne apocalypse. Undead were the ruling sapient race and could keep coming back, especially inside Dungeons. Any human could become undead. It would make for great gameplay.

And a depressing life.

“Run head first into a wall repeatedly? Ha! Pass. Been there, done that.”

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Damian had experienced his fair share of hardship. The idea of reincarnating in another world was an absolutely delightful one, except for that whole starting over as an infant part. Experiencing junior high again sounded like his personal version of hell. Puberty and rejection were not challenges he yearned to experience again.

He did not want to struggle again. No, he deserved to coast along this time. He deserved to manage an empire as a godlike being. He had chosen to be reborn as a super intelligent and conniving Dungeon Core.

“Who doesn’t love a little power fantasy?”

Humanity still existed and thrived in most parts of the world. For his starting location he had intentionally chosen a nice and simple area next to a sleepy town with plenty of resources. Which would give him plenty of time to accumulate levels and floors, automate production, and build up an unstoppable army.

“What poor saps. Tsk tsk.” How could a couple farmers handle these carefully chosen cheat Skills and Powers? They wouldn’t know what was gonna hit them!

Welcome to the Stunlocke meat grinder special, ladies.

Damian knew he still had to play it safe though, at least at first. The core tenet of being a Core was that he was inherently fragile. And he had also played enough 4X video games and engine deck builders to know the first few moves were some of the most important for developing your ‘economy.’

Mo' money mo' power. The sooner he got his systems up and running the sooner he could kick back and relax. Automation was king. His first action was to use almost all of his available starting Mana to create his first Minions.

Energy whirled throughout his Core.

Four [Bolt Imps (LVL 1)] appeared. They were horned gremlin sized demons with spiky tails, fur pelt loincloths, and carried hammers that sparked with electricity.

The System immediately rewarded him for this act:

Just one of the bolt imps could have destroyed his Core with their feeble electric prowess, yet they groveled and bowed before his might. He found their behavior amusing. They were weak stepping stones on his path to becoming an overpowered god.

Of course they should worship him.

The possibilities of his future were tantalizing. He could only imagine.

Thunderbirds? Flesh golems? Raiju?

Storm dragons would be lit!

He could always pick up more Affinities if he wanted to get real creative with monster mashing.

For now, these resource gathering worker units would do.

“Sup, boys! How you all doing tonight?” Of course he could have mentally commanded his Minions to start digging away at the nearest patch of minerals, but where was the fun in that? “Great to hear it. Let’s dig in!”

The imps started to approach the walls with their hammers.

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Aren’t we missing something?”

They paused and scratched their heads.

“Aha! Of course!”

For that, he needed Mana. And Damian Stunlocke was not above putting in the grind.

Which was why he put all five unspent Skill points into his Mana Blast ability.

He activated Mana Blast on the Stalag… Stalact…

Whatever was dripping water.

Boom!

Competition. Gone.

Rock. Hard.

There was an explosion of sound, the rock formation shattered, and half his Mana capacity refilled. A small cool-down timer appeared on that Skill.

“Is this real, chat? I have to wait before I can get more Mana?”

His imps looked back at the Core in confusion.

“Alright, chill. Where’s that AUX cord at? I can’t think in all this silence.”

Damian’s Soul Call buzzed, his Core Drummed, and he activated his Space Boost Skill.

The Mana Swirling about him condensed, the Leylines pulled taut into place. He strummed on their strings and they sang the sweetest sounds as he expanded his Dungeon to the edges of the cavern.

The Leylines locked into place. Solid white, red, and blue lines that ran through the strata of the rock formations. At points they connected to his Core, like 2D horizontal lines of ink being pulled off the page to become living spider webs.

“Testing. Testing. Is this thing on?”

With Soul Call, his Core was a speaker. And his voice was the acoustics. Each time he spoke, the sound waves carried through the Leylines connected to him wiggled and waved up and down. Like an electronic audio visualizer.

Between his Soul Call and Technocraft Skills, plus a little Thunder Affinity for good measure, the beats came naturally to him.

“Mmm… Now that’s more like it! What are you waiting for, boys? Make some noise!”

They hammered into the walls, joining his improvised rhythm. They struck like clockwork, carried rocks to his core, and kept a nice tempo going.

As soon as Mana Blast’s cooldown ended, he sounded off. The spectrogram danced through the rocks. Explosions echoed about the cavern.

Sweet, sweet music.

This was how he got into the zone. This was his groove.

As soon as he had the Mana, he summoned another starting Minion, a couple of [Lesser Thunder Oni (LVL 2)]. They were to be the tanky demonic elite units, until he unlocked better ones. Red skinned, horned, muscular, and faces twisted in perpetual wrath. They were adorned with a ring of Taiko drums and also carried hammers.

They weren’t as proficient at breaking rocks as the imps were, but they could still keep a good beat going. He continued to Blast through layers of subterranean minerals, accumulating experience, and summoning imp Minions. He quickly shot up in levels.

At level 3 he opted to increase his Mana Capacity, since that was clearly the obvious choice. Why increase your Renewal Rate when you can just blow up the environment for easy money? A bigger bank was smart: that's how you got all the lit stuff done the line.

By the time he had broken into another underground area with monstrous inhabitants he was level 4, with a sizable brute squad and zerg rush cannon fodder.

The other denizens here, a tribe of goblins, did not take too kindly to his explosive expansion.

Damian Jager went on the hunt. He sent his Minions into the fray accompanied by the percussive drums of war. Waves of strata bounced in time to the slaughter.

The Quest completion experience kept rolling in with their death screams.

“Ah, sweet music. It’s nothing personal, kids. You’re just in my way.”

His first upgrade he unlocked for his nameless imp mooks was the Blast Mining ability, which equally ramped up both his expansion and warfare efforts. It turned the imps into self-destructive kamikaze balls of sonic dismemberment. Baneling style.

They didn’t seem to mind.

They didn’t have a choice, even if they did.

He waged war on the subterranean creatures until their little lives offered diminishing value to his fun.

He filled his Core room with all sorts of deadly traps. Some were from his starting list. Some were his own devious machinations. Then he moved on, digging deeper, building new floors.

Eventually he came across another Core.

One that had no defenses. No minions. No… nothing.

It just… waited.

Damian’s mind connected to it.

And he immediately recoiled in horror.

“What the fuck?”

This other Core did not possess a human soul like him, as far as Damian could tell. It was of an alien intelligence. Or more specifically, a lack of intelligence?

… Like a virus.

Just waiting forever, appearing to not be alive, until some sort of stimuli caused a reaction.

He sent his Minions into this derelict Dungeon to put the poor mind out of its misery.

He absorbed the Core, gaining even further in power.

Damian continued on with all the normal Dungeon Core behaviors any reasonable Core should do: Build floors, fill them with traps, and display loot for luring in easily tempted idiots.

And, naturally, ceaseless growth without end.

Damian Jager, the Stunlocke Dungeon, became the drums and bass deep within the mountain.