Agent 4643-Prime roused to consciousness in a by now familiar — though no less aggravating — fog of disorientation. In a process that took as long as it took for each new body, the fog gradually cleared while Aide confirmed that all the appropriate connections connected correctly and that any mission-specific Perks and Upgrades got applied.
Near the end of this latest embodiment, Prime’s processing parts started working well enough for her — no, that was the last body, right? Their? This body felt … asexual? In fact, it didn’t really feel like a body at all.
«Are we in some kind of sentient robot, or computer, or some such?» Prime asked along her connection to Aide.
Exhaustion trembled around Aide’s reply. «Or some such. The mana conditioner-slash-dungeon core did try to drink us up after that pirate killed our last host body. I got the defenses up in time to prevent ending up shredded back to our baby lives, but things happened.
«These conditioners can’t actually do anything with the personalities attached to proto-souls, so they’ve been clogging up the mana cycle of this world. Our Storyteller was working with the originator to get a reincarnation cycle going to address that, and dungeon core versus our defenses collided at just the right time — or so our Storyteller has assured me — to create a Story Branch Event.
«The Storytellers have separated out the Branch Event from the Main World, and we were given a choice to explore the Branch and identify if it’s stable enough to support itself, or stay in the Main World. Considering the Lead Halo there managed to resurrect the original Female Lead as a Reborn Valkyrie without shifting N’kieran out of the Female Lead Role, well, I figured this was a lot better than battling that insane PLOT armor.»
Prime didn’t even have to think. «Good call!» Then she responded to Aide’s exhaustion with some emphatically shared sympathy. Still, «So, what’s our Role now? What kind of body are we in?»
«We are now the dungeon core that was on the pirate ship. Still is, though it’s not the pirates’ ship any more. The mana blow back during our Branching Event destroyed everything that wasn’t made of or imbued by the dungeon core out to a good half kilometer. Lucky us, it only took a few hours for the worst of the waves to settle, and the ocean around these parts is more than three kilometers deep.»
«Wait! We fell half a kilometer? On to water? And we’re still alive?» Prime wasn’t sure if she had been shocked back to dazed or if she never really got out of the embodying fog.
Aide tsked, then said, «Not really. More like a bit less than four hundred meters before the surge of the collapsing waters knocked us sideways and triggered all the shields against being rammed. Those are also air tight, so we had some fun, swirly times before bobbing back to the surface.»
Prime took a moment to process that, and then decided that she would replay the memory when she dreamed, just because. For now, though, «So, dungeon cores are the world’s mana conditioners. How does that work? How are we supposed to explore the Branch? Aren’t mana conditioners supposed to be fixed points?»
Aide chuckled, a bit of a manic note to the noise.
«Aide?» Prime asked, concerned.
Aide’s chuckles became the laughing-so-I’m-not-screaming kind of guffaws, which passed quickly into a very tired sigh. «If I had an ass, I’d be ass over tea kettle deep into the sigil structures that create these cores. No lie, this stuff is dense, and it’s not the same implementation as the dungeon cores from our Story Worlds. Frankly, if I didn’t need you to start running the whole cultivation dynamo, I’d’ve let you stay sleeping until I had more of it figured out.»
That admission seemed to give Aide a better focus. «So,» they said, «here’s the details for that part of the core structure. Do not try to do anything with the mana just yet, not beyond the cycling.» A gnosis of information flowed over their connection.
Prime, feeling her partner’s distress, didn’t even think about giving out her habitual complaints over cultivation. She just dropped into the long ingrained pattern of slurping up ambient mana like she was eating real ramen at a noodle shack, gradually incorporating the new information into her meditations.
----------------------------------------
A few days passed in that manner, with Aide working furiously in the background. To Prime’s surprise, she was finding the whole experience weirdly soothing instead of her usual struggle against boredom and bodily discomforts. She absently noted that this kind of body was a must for any dedicated cultivation lifetimes.
The whole process of meditating to churn through mana — without doing anything with the stirred up mana — used Prime’s native senses. In a Cultivation Story World, they likely would be labeled “spiritual senses” or something like that, and for those settings that was good enough. On this Story World, they were called Mana Sight, which was a bit closer to the truth, while ignoring all the other physical and non-physical senses.
On the fourth day, the Story World cease to leave them be.
The strange feeling of something crawling up her extremities broke Prime from her trance. The sensation was somewhat like a bug on human skin, but at a duller remove and lacking an instinctual revulsion. When Prime tried to focus on the source of the sense, she discovered, «I’ve got spherical sight? Scent, but not taste? My pressure sense is different, too. Can I get hearing with this?»
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
Aide paused in their work. After a vague querying emotion, understanding flooded their connection. «Dungeon senses! And … Oh. We have an intruder alert from the main System. Let me … okay. That should help for now. I’ll work on finding a hearing Perk to apply.»
Prime did not need to ask what Aide had done. She felt the illusion of a solid wall cover the door to their chamber above the ballast cavities.
The crawling sensation arrived at her deck. She saw a pair of gilled humanoids with shimmering, scaled skin of a lovely silvery blue straighten up, looking about with interest. They had Pendants of the Sea about their necks, tokens that helped the sea folk to move about above the waves. They wore long sleeved shirts and leggings, their closes all close fitted. They forewent shoes, showing their feet to be broader than a human’s and mostly webbed. Their hands, too, had longer fingers, though the webbing between their fingers was less pronounced than that between their toes and seemed more elastic. Their faces lacked noses, and they had proportionally bigger eyes with nictitating eyelids.
While in N’kieran’s Role, Prime had never learned if the Matu had any frills or fins hidden below their shirts. These specimens, like the others, seemed tamely human shaped under their clothes.
«Sailors,» Prime opined to Aide.
«Likely,» they agreed.
Prime attempted to use her mana senses to listen in on their new arrivals, but the pair weren’t talkative. The smaller one (by maybe a hands width) gestured to suggest they split up, but the larger one nixed the idea, gesturing the smaller to stick with them. Then the larger turned to face the railing and made some exaggerated gestures while the smaller watched Prime’s decks.
«There’s another ship about that I can’t see,» Prime deduced.
«Even with your mana senses?» Aide asked, coming to alert.
Prime grumbled, «Without doing anything, the mana in our area is too energetic, too stirred up to see the duller bits inside physical shells. It’s like being in a fog cloud.»
«Ah. Oh. Ah-ha! Now that part makes sense!» Aide crowed, a feeling of distraction pulling them away from the moment.
«Hey! Before you dive back into whatever you’re doing, what are you doing and how is it going?»
«Oh, right. Well, you were right that mana conditioners need to be in fixed spaces — within the PLOT of a Story World. Physical locations are less of an issue, and there are pieces of dungeon core related Narratives that involve spatial folding and other such shenanigans. I’m working a hack into the System to tap into those spatial shenanigans so we can stay on the ship while playing into our Role because right now, the slave cage is the only thing allowing us to be somewhat active.»
«Slave cage?!»
«The controller and the control mechanism got wiped out in the same detonation that cleaned the rest of the ship out, so it’s essential useless for the slaving part, but it is how we’re connected enough to the ship for it to act as our physical anchor.» Aide sounded suspiciously blasé about the whole thing.
«Slave cage!?»
«You’re getting hung up on a non-issue,» Aide tried to soothe.
Cold conviction hardened Prime’s words. «There will be no enslaving this soul!»
«Yes, dear. You’re absolutely right.»
In the time it took Aide to calm Prime back down, the two Matu had poked and prodded their way across the upper decks and were now poking at the sailors’ mess. They went on to explore the galley, the sailors’ quarters, the officers’ quarters, and then into the cargo holds.
As the Matu search the Hip Shot with Prime trailing her attention with them, she discovered that her ship self was barren, and not just of life. There should have been hammocks for the sailors to sleep in, dishes, pots, pans, and food stores in the galley, chairs in the officers’ quarters, maps, charts, and myriads of such knick-a-braqs. Instead, there were bolt plates where furnishings could be attached and not much else. She didn’t even have sails on her masts or ropes about her decks.
When the Matu sailors returned above decks, they were visibly spooked, and Prime couldn’t blame them. They made the large gestures again at the railing that Prime guessed were for their own ship’s benefit. Whatever was signaled back made them slump and stand back to back.
Not long after that, the other ship sailed up along side the Hip Shot, and boarding planks and grapples soon joined the ships together.
A stupidly familiar, muscle-headed man was the first one over. His mouth moved, his expression intense, as he questioned the two sailors. At that point, Prime discovered that she couldn’t use her mana senses to hear them, not through the near liquid fog of mana surrounding the Hip Shot.
«Oh, by all the gods’ broken balls!» she griped.
Aide took only a moment to figure out the source of her frustration. «Dang! The Lead Halos are strong in this PLOT! Is that a—? That’s a soul tracker! And using one of those jealousy tokens we gave out, too, so it’s tracking …»
«Us,» Prime finished, not holding back her grumpy pout.
Aide sent a quick pulse of introspection down their bond. In a thoughtful tone, they followed up with, «We no longer have the Female Lead Halo. In fact, I’m not finding any Halos attached to us.»
Prime felt a warm rush of relief. «Oh, that’s good! Maybe he’ll assume the tracker is leading to our ghost and leave us be!»
«Or try to destroy the ship to set the ghost free,» Aide countered.
Prime sighed down their bond. «No, most likely if he thinks we’re ghosts, he’s going to try to turn the Hip Shot into his personal prize and set up shop in our ship.»
Muscle-head’s interrogation of the two sailors expanded to include a pair of mages, one of whom had all the accoutrements of a high ranked ship’s officer. Prime guessed either the First Mate or the Captain by how the man faced down Muscle-Head, even with the respectful body language.
In short order, the lower ranked mage trailed after Muscle-Head as he followed the soul tracker into the bowels of the Hip Shot. The Matu had not needed extra lights, but the humans did, and the mage dropped his mage lights into the receptacles built into the walls for just such a purpose. It took a while — Prime had no real time sense in this dungeon core body — for the pair to find their way to just outside of the room where N’kieran had died.
They were stopped by Aide’s illusion. Muscle-head looked poised to break down the wall, but the mage caught his arm and then, gesticulating emphatically, managed to talk him out of such an endeavor. Not long after that, the pair back tracked to above decks and consulted with the fancy officer.
A dingy was lowered and Muscle-Head, with a pair of sailors to row for him, confirmed the soul tracker pointed to the Hip Shot. When they returned to their ship, a small crew of sailors were stationed on the Hip Shot with tow lines fastened to secure the ships together. Then Muscle-Head’s ship altered course and dragged the sail-less Hip Shot behind.