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Dungeon Revolution
1. Reincarnated As A Dungeon Core

1. Reincarnated As A Dungeon Core

The crisis consists precisely of the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

– Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks

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Everything moved in everything, at first. In the secret places of the heavens and the depths of the earth, great mechanisms turned according to profound laws, and their mysteries were no mystery. I would say they were no mystery to me, but there was no me for them not to be a mystery to. I was not separate from the world: I was those laws, those movements. All things were one thing, and that thing was a grand and inevitable order, a great chain of Being that bound the highest and the lowest together in perfected and taxonomic hierarchy. It was a beauty that surpassed all beauty, and I would have wept if I had existed to weep.

Then I woke up, choking and screaming.

Well, okay, no I didn’t. I should have. I wanted to have, especially in light of what I’d later come to know. But it initially wasn’t all that bad. I have no idea how much time I passed in that state of cosmic oneness. Minutes? Millennia? Gradually, however, it faded, and consciousness came to fill the void it left. It was a lazy waking, like on a weekend when you can take a half-hour to notice that you’re drooling into your pillow, but wake I eventually did. I was a gear in the celestial clockwork no longer, but a person.

This quickly became very disorienting. You have, I’m sure, woken up before, done that almost-instant mental inventory of yourself. Eyes, check. Body, check. Cheeks, check, you can tell because you’re laying in the aforementioned pillow drool puddle. Morning breath, check. Well, I did that inventory too, and it did not turn up the expected results.

Drool? Nope. Pillow? Also nope. No sheet texture on my skin. No skin. Morning breath? No mouth. Vision? Yes, but eyes no, which was very confusing. Status menu? Check.

Wait, hang on. Status menu?

[????]

Lv. 0 Dungeon Core [Boss]

[Fragile] [Immobile]

Health:

█████

?/?

Azoth:

████████████████████

?/? XP:

░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░

0/? The living heart of a dungeon. Powerful but sessile monsters with an innate ability to magically twist and corrupt their surroundings, dungeon cores lurk at the heart of dungeons – perilous labyrinths, at once spider’s web and snail’s shell, from which monsters emerge to prey upon the innocent. Slay it, and destroy the dungeon. [Skills] [Inventory] [Quests]

Come on. Come on!!! I got fucking isekai’d?! This had to be karmic retribution for reading and enjoying so many schlocky webnovels. I was being punished for my sins. They couldn’t have at least stuck me in a fucking villainess otome game so I could give some underappreciated fictional women their lesbian awakenings? I screamed loudly with frustration, thrashing my limbs in a tantrum. As my status window so helpfully indicated, though, I was [Immobile], so this produced no sound and merely rocked me back and forth ever-so-slightly.

Speaking of rocking me back and forth, though, it’s at that point I noticed that I did, in fact, have some kind of physical body. As I may have mentioned earlier, I could see, despite somehow instinctively knowing I don’t have any eyes. In fact, I could see all around myself simultaneously, 360° on every axis. It was profoundly weird, and a little overwhelming. What my omnidirectional vision told me was that I was sitting on a layer of leaf rubbish and dirt at the back of a small, empty cave. It had a very slight downward slope, was a little too short for a full-grown human to stand upright, and was maybe four or five yards deep. I felt like it might have been an animal’s den at some point. I certainly didn’t see anything that indicated any human presence – no petroglyphs, no soot-stains from campfires, etc.

I couldn’t see myself, though, even with the whole surface of my body apparently a sight organ. There were smudges, here and there, like how you can see the tip of your own nose if you cross your eyes, but that was all.

Through the mouth of the cave, I could see a clear blue sky and some mostly-bare trees. The few leaves remaining suggested, with their reds and yellows, that it was probably late fall. I couldn’t feel the temperature of the air, but the light had that unmistakable cold-day quality to it. How much time had passed since I left my world?

I paused, as I realized I couldn’t remember what time of year it was back in the old world. I couldn’t remember what I’d been doing when I got isekai’d, either. No blaring truck horn, no random mugger, no mysterious portal opening. I couldn’t remember anything about the whole day, actually.

Or the day before.

…Or the day before that.

The heart I didn’t have began to pound in the chest I didn’t have as, with increasing panic, I dug further and further back to see if I even had any clear memories of my previous life. I breathed a sigh of relief when I found some. They just felt a little old, like it had been a few months at least since they happened. It was all there, though – a life, a name, a childhood. Movie quotes and song lyrics, the smell of my mom’s cooking, the stinging humiliation of playground mockery. I was still me. I was still–

I was–

My name is Persephone Miles. I’m a 28-year-old woman. I’ve got a novel published and another on the way, but it doesn’t pay enough to live on so I work the overnight shift as a hotel receptionist. I broke up with my girlfriend earlier this year. Some of my friends and I were talking about starting a podcast.

My name is Persephone Miles.

My name is Persephone.

It sounded…wrong, when I said my own name. Some pressure bore down on me from nowhere, from above, from within. The world itself wanted me to know that name was wrong. I had a lot of experience being called by the wrong name. Familiarity made it feel worse, not better. That name couldn’t be wrong. That was my name. I liked that name. I picked that name myself! On the status window, still floating in the corner of my “vision,” I noticed once again the [????] at the very top, above the label of “Lv. 0 Dungeon Core.” Was that…

That was where a name would go.

My name is Persephone Miles [????]. I’m a 28-year-old woman Lv. 0 Dungeon Core.

I tried to “tap” the name field with an imaginary finger. Maybe it was interactive? Maybe this was just a little glitch, a bureaucratic snafu, and I just needed to enter my name, I thought, panic welling up inside me. The [????] didn’t so much as wiggle. I looked for an edit button, a gear icon that might indicate a settings menu, anything. There was nothing. I tried to tap the name again. And again. Then I was hammering at it, clawing at it. There was a ringing in the ears I didn’t have. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to throw up or scream. My hands would have been shaking, I’m sure, if I had them.

Whoever sent me to this place, whoever gave me this system, they took my fucking name.

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You have become [Enraged]!

You have become [Enraged (x2)]!

You have become [Enraged (x3)]!

You have become [Enraged (x4)]!

A chain of notifications pinged across my awareness – text scrolling beneath my status window, but also a soundless not-speech directly announcing them into my mind. Thanks, I’m fucking aware, system. I laid there, in the dirt, seething with humiliation and anger and fear with no way to express it, no way to vent it. It was suffocating.

Okay. Get it together, girl. I had to do something. The name field wasn’t interactable, but I hadn’t explored the rest of the menu yet. The word dungeon in my flavor text looked like it might be hyperlinked, and sure enough, when I focused my attention on the word it opened another window.

Dungeon

A dungeon is the lair of a dungeon core. The true nature, origin, and foul purpose of dungeon cores are all still poorly-understood. However, what is known is that the dungeon acts as both hunting-grounds for the core, and as the sessile, physically powerless monster’s primary form of defense. Dungeons are-

Alright, sure, whatever. I could be a nerd about the lore later. Right now I had practical problems to solve. I pulled up the [Skills] window next. It was a short list – at least, the traits I could read were. There were a lot of entries that were either listed as strings of question marks, greyed-out against the background and couldn’t be interacted with, or both. I guess I didn’t qualify for information on those yet? Whatever, take it one step at a time.

[Dungeon Core]

[Lily’s Charm]

[Monster]

[Scholar]

At the top of the list, [Dungeon Core] glowed an ominous dark red, almost throbbing with significance. A tap of my imaginary finger, and its description unfolded.

[Dungeon Core]

Class skill (Dungeon Core)

You are a dungeon core, able to create a dungeon around yourself.

Grants linked skills: [Boss], [Eternal], [Grain Avoidance], [Unsleeping], [Valuable]

Grants skills: [Domain Awareness], [Dungeon Domain], [Greater Azoth Pool+], [Greater Azoth Respiration+]

[Boss]

Prerequisites: [Monster]

You are a dark champion of monsterkind. Moderate +% increase to all stats. [Monsters] are slightly friendlier and more obedient. Becomes a valid target for certain effects. Significant increase to rare+ material drop rate on death and XP bounty.

[Eternal]

You are ageless, and will live forever unless slain.

[Grain Avoidance]

You do not require mortal sustenance, and are able to subsist purely on ambient magic. Immune to [Hunger]. Immune to [Thirst].

[Unsleeping]

You do not sleep. Immune to [Insomnia]. Immune to [Nightmare]. Immune to [Sleep]. Immune to [Exhausted]. Resistant to [Stressed].

[Valuable]

This monster’s body contains or is composed of extremely valuable materials. Material drops are guaranteed to be rare or better. Small increase to epic material drop rate. Tiny increase to legendary material drop rate.

Alright, no huge surprises there. I’m a dungeon, I’m a boss monster, adventurers will want to kill me for my juicy loot drops. Still no information on how I’m supposed to do anything. I kept reading.

[Domain Awareness]

You may perceive areas effected by your [Domain] skills with all senses.

[Domain] skills, though, huh? Conveniently, [Dungeon Domain] was next. Instinct told me it was what I’d been looking for – a way for me to take real action. Most of the skill’s description was greyed out, redacted, or had more color-coded adjectives wobbling in place of numbers, but the readable portion looked something like this:

[Dungeon Domain]

Prerequisites: Dungeon Core Lv. 0+

Cost: High

Duration: Indefinite

Keywords: Class-locked, Domain, Modal

Gradually reshape your surroundings in a large area around yourself.

– ACTIVE: Reshape your surroundings as you please (with certain restrictions).

– PASSIVE: Azoth cost significantly decreases, xp gain decreases, rate of effect decreases. Surroundings are automatically reshaped.

Oh yeah. Now we were cooking. I’ll admit, “certain restrictions” was ominous, but first things first and one step at a time. I was a squishy, extremely valuable something-or-other lying naked in the woods where anyone could stumble across me and shatter my delicate, valuable bod. Top priority: prevent that from happening.

With an instinctive exertion of will, I activated [Dungeon Domain], and had the bizarre and briefly nauseating sensation of having my awareness rapidly zoom out in real life. Suddenly I could see, hear, sense everything for a tremendous distance. I didn’t have a great sense for distances (still don’t), but by my estimation the new domain had to extend for several hundred yards in every direction. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re as aware of every square inch of it as you are of your own body? It’s a lot. It’s a lot, but it was also kind of amazing.

I resisted the urge to lay there and let the sheer wonder of my new experiences wash over me. Daylight was burning, and I knew if I stopped moving for a second then feelings would catch up to me, and that was dangerous enough under ordinary circumstances. Having a breakdown could wait until I wasn’t defenseless and exposed.

I reached out and grabbed the forest floor like I was taking a fistful of clay, and I pulled. The burn of exertion as I did so was sort of like the burn of a working muscle, but it was also a burn like diamond, like lightning, like wisdom - will as action as awareness, all in one, an electric shock to the psyche. This must be what using magic felt like – or azoth, as this world called it, if I’d drawn the correct inferences from my status window. It felt good. It felt powerful.

Trees shook and groaned, and birds took to the sky crying out in alarm, as the cave grew deeper, and steeper. The light retreated into the distance as I wrenched stone aside behind me, backing away from the surface and from danger of discovery. When the cave, formerly only a few yards deep, now stretched for a solid dozen, I stopped. My azoth meter had been dropping precipitously: there was only about a third of it left. As I watched, it slowly began to refill. It felt like taking a breather after lifting something heavy up the stairs.

…A pretty long breather. Getting my meter refilled was taking a while, or at least it felt like it was. While I waited, I continued investigating my status menu.

[????]

Lv. 0 Dungeon Core [Boss]

[Enraged (x4)] [Fragile] [Immobile]

Health:

█████

?/?

Azoth:

███░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░

?/? XP:

█░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░

1/? The living heart of a dungeon. Powerful but sessile monsters with an innate ability to magically twist and corrupt their surroundings, dungeon cores lurk at the heart of dungeons – perilous labyrinths, at once spider’s web and snail’s shell, from which monsters emerge to prey upon the innocent. Slay it, and destroy the dungeon. [Skills] [Inventory] [Quests]

Hey, that was an experience point, and just for moving some dirt around! I supposed it made sense that a dungeon core would earn experience by building its dungeon. I guess that meant the passive-mode xp gain decrease of Dungeon Domain didn’t mean a global debuff, but a slowed rate of xp gain specifically from using the spell. Still, it was practically free xp. I decided to leave the spell on passive mode rather than fully deactivating it after my next round of excavation, to get an idea of its effects. From the look of that XP bar, if a single experience point filled it up that much then I wasn’t far away from hitting level 1. In the meantime, I went back to browsing my skills.

[Monster]

An emission of primordial chaos. Existing in defiance of the Heavens’ sublime order, they are weak to Holy damage.

That was cryptic, but it did establish the existence of some sort of divine force or regime, as well as elementally-typed damage being a thing. Primordial chaos, huh… Something to come back to later, maybe. I had plenty of experience existing in a way that made the church mad, so maybe this would turn out to be a smooth transition in that way? (Ha! Transition. I crack myself up.)

I was startled from my reading by a herd of deer bolting across the border of my domain. There were at least two dozen of them, led by a buck with a truly magnificent rack of antlers. I wasn’t exactly a country girl, admittedly, but it was more deer than I’d ever seen in one place. What they were running from, I didn’t know: nothing came bursting in after them. Still, as their dainty hooves punched holes in the leaf litter, the deer shook me from my reverie and reminded me that I was vulnerable, exposed, and alone.

The herd had just settled down and begun to nibble on the underbrush when I startled them right back, the earth shaking under their feet as I reactivated [Dungeon Domain]. My azoth was nowhere near refilled, but I’d just had a potentially brilliant idea.

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