Before the dungeons appeared, magic was thought to be nothing but myth. It belonged in the tales of the fantastic, of fairies and dragons, stories told to children. However, the truth was much darker than the stories. Terrifying monsters dwelled within the dungeons, thirsty for blood and hungry for flesh. Deadly puzzles, traps, mazes and other dangers were found within, always primed and ready to reap the lives of adventurers too weak to overcome them. To those who proved themselves worthy? Magic, power, riches, wonders beyond reckoning, anything and everything could be claimed by those powerful, or lucky, enough to find them and survive.
The first dungeon was found nearly 200 years ago by a severely overweight Italian woman called Maria. She had recently retired and wanted to live the rest of her life on a calm island off the coast. So, she sold her house, car, and pretty much everything of value and bought a small estate in the Tuscan Archipelago. There, she hoped to live a peaceful life and maybe even lose some weight. She had always liked to bake and go on walks in the morning, and finally had the time to do both to her heart’s content.
One day, when Maria was taking one of her morning walks, she noticed something strange. The small Sicilian lemon sapling that she had planted in her backyard only a few weeks ago had grown tremendously overnight. While it barely reached her hip before, it now stood at twice her height, its branches heavy with a fruit.
Captivated by their sweet aroma, Maria decided to pick some and use them to bake a lemon cake, a recipe she learned from her mother. By the time the cake was almost done, she was already salivating at the smell coming from the oven. When she finally took a bite, she was delighted by how tasty it turned out, unnaturally so. Maria ate the whole thing. She then baked another and ate it too, in an uncontrollable frenzy. She ate and ate until she passed out.
Maria woke up the next day lightheaded and ashamed due to what had transpired the day before. Never had she lost control of herself so completely. She started to get up and noticed that she felt lighter. Looking down at herself, she noticed that she looked thinner too. She went as far as to weigh herself and confirmed that she had lost a miraculous amount of weight.
Maria had struggled with her weight since she was a teen, and like so many others, had often dreamed of a drug, or something, that would allow her to lose a lot of weight quickly. In the end, she planned to keep the tree a secret and use it to build a fortune. However, when she went to check in on the lemon tree again, she quickly realized it would be impossible to hide it.
The lemon tree had grown to over 10 meters tall and several smaller trees now stood beside it. Maria was shorter than even the smallest one. She walked in the direction of the largest tree in awe, until she saw a white marble statue of a dancing woman, silks flowing around her. The statue was incredibly beautiful and intricate.
Amazed, Maria approached the statue and brushed it lightly with her hands, like she was caressing a baby. She was suddenly startled as translucent screens filled with text suddenly appeared in her vision.
Congratulations! You have gained access to your Status.
Name: Maria Giulia Martinelli
Exp: 0
Spirit: 8
Skill: None
(17.000 exp to level)
Wisdom: 9
Skill: None
(19.000 exp to level)
Intelligence: 8
Skill: None
(17.000 exp to level)
Charisma: 8
Skill: None
(17.000 exp to level)
Agility: 4
Skill: None
(9.000 exp to level)
Strength: 6
Skill: None
(13.000 exp to level)
Vitality: 6
Skill: None
(13.000 exp to level)
Gathering herself and waving the pesky windows away, she went back into her house to call her son. She had recognized those text filled windows as prompts from those video games her son used to play when he was younger. Now, he no longer wasted his time with those useless games, as a Primo Capitano of the Italian army.
Nearly an hour later, she finally managed to convince her son of what happened. Well, she had explained what happened, it hadn’t seemed like he believed her. Regardless, she had secured a promise that he would come investigate sometime this week.
Finally done handling this whole game-window business, Maria immediately headed back to the kitchen, steps filled with purpose and humming all the while. She had more cakes to bake after all.
*******
When Giovanni arrived at his mother’s new house, he couldn’t believe what he saw. It wasn’t often that he had time off from the army, so he thought it no small wonder that his mother asked him to come visit her new home when he finally did. He was planning on visiting anyways, especially since his mother was growing old and her health was never the best to begin with.
The story she told him to get him to come worried him. Not because he thought it was true, but because of how insane it sounded. He thought that maybe his mother was spending too much time by herself and wanted some attention. That she was exaggerating some things and making up others. Now, however, he realized that there was at least some degree of truth to it.
A lemon tree should not be able to grow to over twenty meters tall, not to mention the unbelievably realistic sculptures all around him. Dryads, children, bears, beautiful women and hulking men. White marble statues of incredible beauty could be seen everywhere interspersed among lemon trees, statues that his mother most certainly could not afford. Then, in the middle of it all, was his mother’s house.
It did not take long to verify that everything that his mother told him had been true. Moreover, he was amazed at how young and beautiful his mother looked. She looked to be nearly twenty years younger and fit in a way that she never was before. Giovanni was now taking this whole situation very seriously.
He walked to one of the statues and touched it, obtaining a Status just like his mother. However, he also noticed something that she didn’t. At the base of the gigantic lemon tree, between its large roots, were stairways made of white marble leading deep underground like the entrance to a subway station.
He immediately called his superiors and explained the situation, requesting for his squad to be dispatched to his location immediately in order to investigate. His mom didn’t know this, but he never actually stopped playing role-playing video games, even if he didn’t have much free time anymore. While he couldn’t be sure yet, he suspected that the mysterious hole leading deep into the ground was a dungeon. He felt it deep in his bones, making him equal parts excited and terrified for what this could mean.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
*******
The Italian government and military tried to suppress any intelligence leaks regarding the dungeon while they investigated but it was only a matter of time before rumors spread, in no small part due to the sudden appearance of building sized lemon trees. The news of the dungeon took the world by storm, creating waves among the people and straining political relations between all countries. The System, as it was called, allowed people to gain incredible Skills and superhuman power by killing monsters inside the dungeon. While not an easy feat by any means, it signaled the start of a new kind of arms race between all the countries in the world. All the superpowers wanted to be the first to study the System in order to understand how it worked, to use that knowledge to develop new technologies. This presented a problem, as there was only one dungeon. War threatened to break out, as many countries vied for access to the dungeon. Simmering tensions threatened to boil over, until, at last, more dungeon entrances started popping up all around the world.
Within a month of the first dungeon having been discovered, thousands of dungeon entrances were found worldwide. At sea, in forests, in the desert, and even within cities on rare occasions. Every country had at least one dungeon within their borders, and many had several. However, every single one of them failed to glean anything of the System's inner workings. Many assumed that it was a technology so advanced that they couldn't hope to comprehend with their current technology and knowledge. Others thought it might be some manner of miracle or work of magic. The rest simply accepted that it didn’t matter how it worked, whether by magic, miracle or technology, power was there for the taking.
The Italian army squad to first investigate the dungeon proved that even military weapons were ineffective inside if you went deep enough. The monsters would grow so strong that even high caliber bullets would fail to penetrate their natural armor or so fast that guns couldn't even hit them. Needless to say, those first delves had a high casualty rate. The soldiers had simply pushed too deep, too quickly, in their hurry to gain more information. Still, they learned that by killing the monsters in the dungeon, they gained experience points, which could be used to level their attributes. Leveling their Strength, for example, would increase their physical strength, while Agility increased movement speed and dexterity.
The soldiers that survived managed to quickly level their attributes to level 10, but were unable to increase them further. They received a prompt from the System stating that they were required to have the Skill corresponding to that attribute at the Beginner rank. They did not meet that requirement. They left the dungeon and, touching the marble statues again, were presented with a prompt asking them to choose a Skill from a provided list to link to each of their attributes. After choosing their Skills, they would be allowed to level their attributes to the new cap of level 20. New requirements would need to be met to level further then.
The Skills presented by the System were the same for everyone and were related to the corresponding attribute in some way. For example, the Skills available to choose from for Vitality included Poison Resistance, Fire Resistance, and Toughened Skin. All the Skills provided by the System were of the Common rarity, but people learned how to upgrade the rarity of Skills with time. The higher the rarity of the Skill, the more powerful and complex it became. For example, while the Common rarity Toughened Skin Skill increases the toughness of the skin, the Rare rank Bark Skin Skill made the skin much tougher and stronger, able to stop low caliber bullets.
In the following months, the dungeons claimed large swathes of space around their entrances, erecting enormous structures called Temples. Forests grew in weeks, stone structures appeared over desert dunes, and islands rose from the sea. Anything that stood in the way of the dungeon’s aggressive remodeling was destroyed and absorbed. Each Temple was found to be unique in design and composition, mostly determined by the climate, geography, and resources available around the dungeon.
Within the Temples were the Monuments, the items or structures that provided direct access to the System. In the Lemon Glade Temple, for example, the Monuments are the hundreds of white marble statues that are found within. These can also vary wildly, some being enormous structures like towers or even small floating balls of light.
When the dungeons finally finished erecting their Temples, everyone who hadn't had access to the system before gained it at the same time and another facet of the system was revealed. The System Interface allowed people to interact mentally with magic items, all without the need of a brain implant. This development forced the global industry to quickly switch the development of technology into magitech. Of course, this conversion was the work of decades, as people had to discover how magic even worked to begin with, but it provided a leap in technological development. Some of the things that were very hard or expensive to accomplish with science alone could be done easily or cheaply with magic.
The System Interface also provided the Analyze function, which allowed people to gain an understanding of what an object is and did by simply looking at it and activating the function. Then, a prompt would appear providing a description of the object analyzed.
After the initial frenzy of activity and excitement that the dungeon’s appearance brought, things calmed down for a bit. Most countries cordoned off their dungeons at first, only allowing the military access, as well as those with considerable political power. However, not all dungeons were within governmental control, and adventurers worldwide flocked to them. City-estates were built around those dungeons, and the adventurers used their newfound power to maintain their independence. These independent dungeons forced most countries to open their own dungeons to the populace, as it became impossible to keep people away from them permanently.
The various governments were in a state of constant political tension for many years after the dungeons first appeared. The weapons that their police and military relied on were quickly losing effectiveness against higher level adventurers and controlling them became impossible. While soldiers gained the first few levels quickly thanks to their advanced weaponry and training, they soon found themselves bottlenecked by their Skill masteries. On the other hand, the adventurers did not have easy access to firearms, which forced them to focus on Skills rather than weapons in the first place. The result was that there were few high level military personnel, compared to the adventurer faction. To make matters worse, the soldiers that did attain a high level in their attributes often left the military, in order to escape the many restrictions that their superiors imposed on them.
The power imbalance between civilians and high level people grew even more pronounced as the years passed. Soon, high level criminals formed crime syndicates, smaller governments suffered coups from high level individuals, and many countries were threatening to wage war. These changes brought with them chaos and instability to the lives of people all around the world. Ironically, the newly established independent city-estates were the most equipped to handle these situations. Their governments were too new to have any deep seated corruption and they had more high level adventurers on their side for their smaller populations.
One day, a powerful adventurer called Sebastien proposed founding a new world government, using an incredibly powerful magic artifact he attained within the dungeon. Most of the world was already ruled by dictators by then, most democracies having crumbled due to the power imbalance and political instabilities caused by the dungeon. Some of these dictators even had the best interest of the people in mind, but now lived in a world where only the strongest ruled. Even then, they had difficulty keeping order when a high level individual wanted to cause trouble, especially since they couldn’t be everywhere at once.
The artifact that Sebastian wished to use was a Mythical rarity Management System Core. It allowed for the founding of an organization through the System. Particularly, the core allowed for the formation of a guild, sect, or government. There were many benefits from having a system-recognized organization. It lowered the need for bureaucracy, facilitated organization, kept track of tax collection and spending, among many other benefits. The most important aspect of the Management System however, and the reason why Sebastian made his proposal at all, were the system enforced oaths and contracts. It allowed for members to enter contracts with the government, which brought severe consequences when they were broken. For example, a mayor would have clauses in his contract that prohibited the abuse of power and illicit enrichment, among other things. The laws were written into the System itself, and those in power would be forced to follow them, under penalty of losing access to the System and the power they had, not to mention any additional punishments stipulated by law.
The reception to Sebastian’s proposal was mixed overall. Some of the new world leaders didn’t actually wish to rule but were forced to in order to keep their governments from crumbling. They weren’t even the ones managing their respective countries and had competent people they trusted do that. These people were very much on board with the founding of the world government, as long as the laws and contracts put into the Management System were fair. The other leaders, however, were staunchly against Sebastian’s proposal, as they did not wish to give up their power and control.
The Terran Government was founded by less than twenty countries a few months later. The System assisted greatly in the creation of the laws and constitution, making them exceptionally well written and fair. Furthermore, since the Management System Core used was of the Mythical rarity, the system would automatically update and reform the laws as needed, always keeping to the spirit of the constitution. This prevented politicians from adulterating the laws for their own benefit down the line.
The changes brought by the Terran Government brought with them great economic growth over the following years. The people living in these countries experienced the joy of living under a truly stable government for the first time in a very long time. Crime decreased, making the people feel safer. Good laws and fair taxation incentivised new entrepreneurs to open businesses. Millions migrated to these countries from around the world.
In time, some of the world leaders that were reluctant to join the Terran Government changed their minds after seeing the prosperity it created. Several decades after the founding of the Terran Government, it ruled more than half the world. However, Sebastian was not satisfied with this result, as the countries that remained independent were the most problematic ones. Their leaders were extremely selfish and greedy, and only cared about keeping their power with no regard to the people’s well being. So, Sebastian, along with several of the strongest adventurers in the world, declared war on these independent countries. They assassinated the leaders of these countries and pressured their successors into joining the Terran Government. They repeated this until the whole world was ruled by a single government.
After the unification of the world government, a period of peace and prosperity followed. Many magitech innovations were discovered throughout the decades, improving people’s quality of life significantly. Everything that could be accomplished with technology before could now be accomplished with magitech, and many things besides. With the System increasing people’s attributes, particularly Vitality, their life expectancy also increased drastically. Sebastian was named the Grand Protector of the People, in recognition of his efforts to improve the lives of everyone and bring so much positive change to the world.
He just couldn’t wait to finally return to the dungeon.