When my consciousness returned, the first thing I did was immediately confirm that I was, in fact, still alive.
Yup–I think, blah blah–I’m alive.
As well, I didn’t feel wrong–no screaming headache, unimaginable pain, ennui, or other ailment. I felt the same as before whatever happened that knocked me. Of course, feeling fine didn’t mean I was fine. I knew from playing many roleplaying games that status ailments were a thing, so I brought up my status.
Necromancer’s Gorge Dungeon
Level 1
Mana 71/100
Demesne Traits: Outworlder
Demesne Skills: Demesne 2; Absorption 3; Landscape 1; Demesne Interface 3; Tenebrous Portal 1
Creature Data: Cave Flora 1; Cave Fauna 1; Undead 1
Demesne Points: 2
Nothing debilitating or outright negative appeared in my status, which was definitely a good first look. My status did have two changes from before I blacked out: the first was the addition of the skill Tenebrous Portal and the second was my mana.
Tenebrous Portal 1 - Tenebrous Portal allows the creation of special gates. These gates allow for transit between two gates when they are connected.
Tenebrous Portal–what a cool yet ominous sounding skill name. As for what I experienced while absorbing the thing, it was definitely, clearly, no-good, very bad. Also, the name appeared to me in my status differently than my other skills, as if the name itself was darker, tenebrous.
On the other hand, I had portals! I couldn’t help but squeal in giddy excitement.
Later–I would play with portals later.
The second change was the amount of mana I had. It had increased! I had spend a couple points of mana expanding down to the hidden portal room, which meant I had gained mana somehow. I was confident I did not gain any mana from absorbing the scary eldritch portal. That meant I had gained the mana while I was unconscious. However, I did not know how long I was unconscious for, meaning I still was in the dark on my true rate of mana regeneration. Overall, considering the amount of time I felt I was spending, I was certain that it was really slow. I wanted to scream in total frustration!
I could probably work out a solution given enough time and stubbornness, but I also had nothing but a door to defend myself with right now. I didn’t even know what was on the other side of that door either. Plus, I was clearly inside some sort of underground structure, so exploring the rest of the place might yield something useful.
I went back to expanding my demesne through the next room and beyond, slowly mapping out the place. I took this time to continue to practice using my Demesne skill in more precise ways, expanding in increasingly narrow spikes of my demesne, trying other shapes, trying to push it out faster or slower, and any other manner I could think of.
This was kind of fun.
In a bit of inspiration, I wondered if I could delete and shrink my demesne. I tried pulling a small section, somewhat like I was trying to suck air through a straw. At first nothing happened, but I kept pulling harder and eventually a part of my demesne retracted inwards. I continued to practice expanding and retracting my demesne in different ways and then I used the two methods to get really crazy. Increasingly complex shapes, animal shapes, trees, whatever I could think of I tried to recreate it using my demesne. I even went so far as to create the Statue of Liberty out of my demesne (granted, my first few attempts were a little lumpy and simplistic, but I kept at it and my final version was pretty good!).
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The system naturally rewarded me accordingly.
Demesne 3 obtained.
Demesne 4 obtained.
Demesne 5 obtained.
All throughout my playing with the skill, the total area under my control continued to expand. I finally stopped when I had covered the entirety of the underground network of rooms and passages that made-up whatever this place used to be.
Immediately outside my room was a narrow hallway that went for about twenty feet before opening onto a central spiral staircase. Whereas the spiral staircase below my room had been built as tightly and as small as possible, this staircase was much wider. It had both an external and internal wall, with an inner empty space about ten feet across that went from the top all the way to the bottom of the staircase where it emptied into another chamber. That chamber was spread out from the hole in the central staircase with a ceiling that sloped downwards towards the walls. The chamber was circular, and the floor was actually convex, the middle dipped down compared to the edges. The whole arrangement gave the impression of a building that looked like a chemist’s flask.
Back to the central staircase. The inner wall sported numerous large arched openings into the empty interior shaft, only slightly slightly smaller than the door to my room. These openings very often coincided with landings that had hallways that led to other rooms (the hallway from my room too had an arched opening into the shaft opposite it). In total, there were six other hallway/room combinations. The rooms were all of different sizes but they were all very much empty.
The top of the staircase opened to a large antechamber room with another passageway with stairs going up. However, this passageway had completely collapsed from above, sealing in the entire complex.
The last feature was the very top of the central shaft, which extended a little ways above the staircase to a ceiling with a smaller hexagonal shaped cupola. Weirdly, the top of the cupola appeared to be plugged with stone or cement.
The topmost room exhibited blackened stone and had a covering of black ash, suggesting a severe fire had occurred. So too did the center of the bottom of the pit. I absorbed the ash and got, predictably, {ash} with no other information as to what made it. There was nothing else of note for me to absorb in the entirety of the complex. That seemed okay though?–I wasn’t sure I wanted whatever this necromancer was getting up to.
Overall, I felt a bit more secure. The underground complex was not accessible to the outside world, meaning it was unlikely anyone was going to find me. The complex gave me a functional base that I could work with, although it would need a lot of work. The complex’s design with a central staircase meant that the side rooms would be useless absent a way to force people to investigate as they descended.
Since I had time, I could go back to doing some experiments. I really wanted to play with portals, but I suspected the mana costs would be too high for me right now.
I had an idea on how I could solve some of my problems and get some more information. One of the things I noticed was that as I spread my demesne upwards, I sometimes would feel an unusual but soft resistance to my demesne continuing through. This resistance happened at certain points at the very top of the complex, particularly when I worked through the cement plug and stone walls of the hexagonal cupola. I hadn’t pushed through the resistance (although I believed I could) because I suspected the system was telling me that I was close to the surface and the outside world. There were a number of reasons that doing so could cause detrimental effects.
The first step in my admittedly convoluted plan was to see if I could move my core. It was now time to turn to a skill I had not even sniffed yet: Landscape. First, I tested whether the skill could create new material. In this instance, I willed stone to be created to replace the trap door, sealing the lower staircase and hidden portal room yet again.
Next, I tried to create stone out from the floor below where my core was resting. I failed to create stone exactly underneath the point where my core sat, but around that I could. However, when the stone got so close that it was almost touching my core, I was stopped again and again, resulting in my core effectively sitting in a stone bowl. That was stupid! My core was already touching the stone floor!
I absorbed the stone bowl. Then I started carefully cutting away at the stone ceiling, leaving a round piece of stone attached by a thin extension directly above. I absorbed that and the stone ball fell, hitting my core off-center just like a cue ball hitting a billiard ball. My core rolled away from the force of the impact. The stone hitting my core reverberated within my being but I didn’t feel any pain from it. The act of rolling, however, caused my demesne senses to go blurry and dizzy.
When I stopped moving and my vision cleared, I noticed I had a notification waiting for me.
Trap Creation 1 obtained.
WHAT.