“Is it supposed to take this long?” Naea complained from the top of my head. She was on her back, the hard point of her skull resting on my forehead. I shrugged, wobbling my head so she slipped.

“You’re the dungeon fairy, shouldn’t you know?” Whatever was happening with Merownis, Naea wasn’t telling me. She just said it was a secret and that it shouldn’t be long. It hadn’t been, only about fifteen minutes passing since the café lit up and was locked from within. As she began a tirade about some System-specific form of racism, I tuned her out and looked through my new building options.

Building Options

Workshed

Upgrade

10g, 10 units of lumber, 10 units of stone

Demolish

20 units of lumber returned

Uninspiring, but very interesting. Before I got carried away, I thought it was also worth checking my inventory for the first time in a while.

Inventory Page (Xaverweave Pouch)

Item

Amount

Gold Coins (Standard Mint)

8713

Gold Coins (Xaverion Minted)

2758

Guidance Stone of Mastery

1

Sorehammer

1

Fan of Knives

1

Severance

1

Crafting Materials

Crafting Materials (Xaverweave Pouch)

Item

Amount

Lumber

7

Sundercat Fang

6

Sundercat Claw

10

Sundercat Pelt (Leopard)

1

Treent Twine Spool

15

I hadn’t collected stone, so I couldn’t upgrade the space, but maybe the scorpions would give me some if I ever managed to face them. The level up helped my confidence, though I wasn’t willing to stay here and build shacks until I was stronger. I wouldn’t receive the same experience for repeating the task in any case, I had learned that with my shoddy boots. If I made a better building, I might, but this slow process had taken me days. Well, less than a full day inside the dungeon. Between my raised attributes and the slow moving skies, it was nearly impossible to know how long anything was taking.

I sighed, continuing to go through my status screens. As a slight rarity, I placed all seven of my attribute points from levelling into the same place - Power. The levels of the enemies I faced would only rise. The force behind my magic was lacking, with Master Thorn able to easily bat my Mana Bolts away. I wanted to change that, and the scorpions of the desert zone would be perfect targets. It would also mean I could keep my distance in a fight, which was very important to me against the arachnids. Despite wanting more Strength to yank the Jingu Bang from the ground, with the gains from the Pioneer achievement, my Strength attribute would grow on its own.

Character Window

Name

Grant Kaeron

Race

Earth Human

Title

Dragon Slayer

Level

17

Health

85/85

Mana

130/130

Attribute Window

FP:0

Strength

13

Recovery

15

Resilience

13

Dexterity

12

Agility

19

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Perception

14

Power

25

Regeneration

21

Command

26

Health

85/85

1.5 per minute

Mana

130/130

21 per minute

My skill list jumped in size once more, and I wondered when it would get compressed like the inventory screen had.

Skills

Spirit Well (Max)

Unique

Mana Savant (Max)

Legendary

Party Leader (Max)

Epic

Mana Bolt (Level 3)

Common

Manasight (Level 3)

Common

Heavy Blow (Level 3)

Common

Haste (Level 1)

Common

Meditate (Level 5)

Common

Stealth (Level 3)

Common

Tracking (Level 3)

Common

Mental Fortress (Level 1)

Uncommon

Dragonburn (Level 1)

Rare

Construction (Level 6)

Common

Tailoring (Level 3)

Common

Architecture (Level 1)

Common

Most of the gains in my fighting skills were during the battle with Master Thorn, and I hadn’t felt like hunting the denizens of “my forest.” No, I was building myself up to assault the desert, it just made me shiver to think about. Aside from Construction which got a boost every time I made something, Meditate had managed to level up again, as it was taking the place of sleep for the most part. It was definitely my most used skill by a wide margin.

Sensing that Merownis was going to take a while, no matter how much Naea complained, I sank into the inner world. I spent a lot of time here, pruning and refining the imagery of the place. My core burned brightly, a colourless star of perpetual energy, generating and propagating mana to the rest of me. The Aspect of the Dragon, ensconced in the crust of a barren world, rumbled quietly every once in a while. With a thought, I landed on the surface of the planet.

I hadn’t moved physically, of course, but my mental visualisation was increasing day after day. At this point, I could feel the rock beneath my feet as I traversed the empty world. From the northmost point of the planet, I looked to the stars. Fifteen pinpricks of light which gave form to the darkness around them. Activating those I could in turn, I tried to imagine them fitting into arrays.

Haste, Heavy Blow, Mana Bolt and Manasight were together, while Meditate, Mental Fortress, Stealth and Tracking gathered to a different section. Mana skills and auxiliaries. A final collection of the crafting skills, Construction, Tailoring and Architecture also made sense. There wasn’t enough shape yet there to give these groupings true constellation names but I could see the forming patterns clearly.

My stranger skills were the brightest, and the most distant from each other. If there could be an “above” in space then Dragonburn was above the Aspect world. Mana Savant was almost a second sun, blazing brightly above my core alongside Spirit Well. The latter skill gave off strange colours as some of its energy leaked into my soul space. Finally, and perhaps most importantly right now, was Party Leader. It was unsurprisingly active.

The skill danced across the sky, shooting like a comet from one place to the next. There was a… discomfort there. I frowned, directing some of my control over this place to figuring out the problem. If there was an issue, I’d prefer to fix it then just watch what happened. However, I couldn’t get a grasp of the skill, slipping through my imaginary fingers like it was oiled. Half-expecting it not to work, I created a net out of Spirit to contain the agitated skill.

Of course, the moment my small bundle of Spirit touched the connection, all hell broke loose.

———————————————————————

Merownis was floating. He tried to remember what he had been doing before the weightlessness, but it was futile. In this place, he didn’t even have a body, which meant he had no brain, and therefore no memories. Even his name was simply a sound which felt familiar, and little more.

It was peaceful, his silent floating. Maybe. Merownis didn’t know anything else. There was nothing before the silence, after all. Perhaps he was experiencing the worst pain imaginable, and just didn’t have a reference point for it. He decided to wait and see if there was a change to his condition, one way or the other.

For an indeterminate time, somewhere between five minutes and the destruction and subsequent reconstitution of the Grand Universai, Merownis waited. While he waited, he tried to remember what had come before all of this nothingness. What had he been doing? There was a glimmer of a memory, but it slipped through his mind’s numb fingers before he could grasp it.

After struggling with that for a few formless aeons, he decided this clearly wasn’t going to work.

“Help!” Merownis shouted, and in doing so, remembered his voice. It was a voice to be proud of, Merownis was sure. It wasn’t as deep as Talassus- oh! That was another memory! Once they started, they came faster and faster. He roared, listening happily to the sound as it echoed back. He growled, enjoying the feeling of vibration in his chest and throat. Over the course of the next period of infinitely stretching time, Merownis reacquainted himself with his body. Now he remembered it was there, he was very glad to see it was intact.

Except it seemed… less. It was all the right shape and the right size but he had the overwhelming sense that this shape he had found himself within was not his “true” form. The thought sent him on a decade-long spiral of self-doubt which he eventually crawled his way out of with a shout. As his voice returned, the act of echoing became important. “Why though?” He asked.

Why? The echo repeated. The answer didn’t appear quickly, but Merownis wasn’t rushed. As he pondered, the reason became clear. If there was an echo, it meant there was something for the sound to bounce off, returning it to his ears. Not willing to get stuck on why he remembered what an echo was, but not the functions of his own body, he finally opened his eyes.

The empty darkness disappeared. Mostly.

Instead, Merownis realised he was floating in a long hallway. As with most things in this strange place, observation meant change, so the bubble which he had been hovering within popped. The return of gravity was unwelcome, though the catlike reflexes of his race kicked in. Sundercat. They had been something else before, but once the world was broken and bereft of energy, Sundered by the Tree…

Even as he tried to delve deeper into those memories, they faded and became locked away. This wasn’t like forgetting. It was being told “no” by a power much greater than himself. Merownis didn’t fight against it, fearing the unknown strength which stole the knowledge of his homeworld might take something else. In fact, he welcomed it. “There is no joy in those memories,” Merownis whispered, “you may have them all.”

Then, he began to walk, a being with just a name and no history. As he passed doors in the corridor, he heard sounds behind them. He smelled interesting and wonderful scents. The identity of each room he passed brushed against him. A sea breeze. A well-spiced meal. The warm tang of blood. He brushed the handles of some doors, drawn to them, but never entered. Though the hallway was impossibly long, he eventually reached an end, and found he didn’t like the door there.

The wood of the final door held a strange aura, dangerous and foreboding. The pale wood was almost white and it seemed to drain the colour of the area around it. Without getting too close, Merownis turned around and walked the hallway once more. A few of the doors spoke to him, and he rested his hand on them to see if it felt right to open the door.

The first one he found which seemed right was a larger door than most. As he held the handle, images of a jungle appeared in his mind. The smells of dirt after rain and of trees drying in the sun. The sounds of birds and other creatures to hunt. He salivated at the thought, but the primal reaction was exactly why he left that door. He was no brute, after all. Glad he had remembered, Merownis began bouncing a Mana Bolt in his hand as he walked.

Merownis was more discerning the next time he stopped, and as his hand found the crystal knob of this door, he smiled. The savoury perfume of old paper and leather ignited his senses with nostalgia. He had spent years learning in a place like that, hadn’t he? Or perhaps, some other Merownis had…

It wasn’t right. Each time he found a place which felt familiar or interesting, he stopped and waited. Though he didn’t know why, the rooms beyond were offering him a change. If he went through the first door, he would be remade with strength. The door to the library would have given him knowledge. Another one he checked came with the heady scent of a sea breeze, something completely new to the humanoid tigerman. Yet, entering these doors would take something, too. A binding which had been sliced would be rebound tighter.

Grant Kaeron.

By the time he found his door, there was no other choice. Merownis heard laughter behind it, a man and a woman. As he gripped the handle, he forced himself to wait. As he approached, the energy from within the door had doubled with each step until I had almost been hard to push through. Except, it drew him in at the same time, pushing and pulling, asking if this was truly his final choice.

He knew it was, of course. Unlike the other exits from this strange place, this door asked nothing of Merownis but trust. It did not offer incredible, immediate power or vast changes to his physiology like some of the others. The boon here would be allies and the ability to better help them than himself. Merownis smiled and walked through the door.

Congratulations. Evolution selected.

Due to the nature of the Evolution, additional Spirit is required. Requesting additional Spirit.