Uno (avatar)

I didn’t work well under pressure. Becoming a Dungeon Core made me ill-suited to such tasks, but I was like this even in my old world. An easy life in Before created a lazy, hesitant, weak blob of a man. At least now I could force myself to act, ignoring countless whys and hows swirling in my head. Surviving life-and-death situations did that to a person.

That was of course if screaming orders at dungeon rats was classified as acting.

I should probably feel bad about it, yet this type of delegation worked wonders, as Ratlings delivered the item I was clamoring for just in time.

My fleshy avatar ran through the Dungeon, desperately trying to reach the surface fast enough to help Charles’ allies survive. And his girlfriend too. Well… mainly his girlfriend. My ascent was delayed by the need to have some deniability. A mask, to be precise. A voice changer would be nice too, but it hadn’t been developed yet.

Ah, but the rats already managed to weaponize the megaphone. Neat.

Anyway, the equipment I wanted was done, stuck to my face with some organic glue the Ratlings used. There was no time to worry about straps, not to mention they could get burned off in the heat of battle. I wasn’t completely satisfied with the way the mask looked, but I could only blame myself for the finished product’s tone. I only asked long-tailed crafters to make a “white mask with a painted-on smile and black eyes”. My rats took that instruction personally, creating something straight out of a horror show.

I would normally refuse to wear it, Gods knew I already had a reputation, but beggars can’t be choosers. There was no time. Blood was already being spilled, and while I didn’t care for the fodder, the Charles’ friends were my friends! My priceless bargaining chips! Or something like that. Emotions were complicated.

While running I was grumbling about the time being wasted… and then I stopped. I hit the nearby wall, causing my hand to bleed. Then I repeated the hit again, and again, as the blessed pain brought clarity.

Why was I such a dumbass?! Turning into a crystalline sphere must’ve really damaged my brain! I was forgetting that the body I inhabited belonged to a fucking earth mage! An earth mage who was currently underground!

Stupid.

So stupid.

Swallowing the rest of the curses I focused on my surroundings. The mage mantra was easy to repeat. Focus, gather mana, confirm the surroundings, and only then cast. It was easy to find a suitable spell from Peter’s lacking repertoire.

“Earth to Mud!” I exclaimed, the chant shortened to three words and packed with more power than human archmages thought possible (thanks for the tip, Master Vincent!). Despite the minimal effort on my side, mana obediently followed the mental mold as it pierced through the surrounding soil like sharpened roots, changing the consistency of everything it touched.

As the mud sludge flowed out of the newly made hole I hummed in thought. Walking was so mundane, not to mention slow. What other options did I have?

As before my spellbook wasn’t exactly sprawling… Hide in Shadows, I choose you!

Despite the spell’s name sounding like something for exclusive rogue use, it was instead a type of shadow-affinity transportation magic. The idea behind it was simple - jumping from one shadow to another to both traverse and avoid attention on the battlefield. I was unhappy with the sloppy name but decided to withhold judgment - at least until I made some magical do-hickeys myself. Besides, maybe its uninspired name was connected to some words of power or System’s bullshit? I could only grumble quietly about where stuff like Melf’s Acid Arrow or Tasha’s Hideous Laughter disappeared.

I blasted my mana again, lengthening the tunnel, and teleported inside. The fresh mud clung unpleasantly to my shoes - a sensation I promptly ignored. A small light crystal affixed to my belt cast shaky shadows all around me. I came prepared - after all, darkness couldn’t exist without a light.

Then I repeated the cast.

And once again.

And again.

It was faster than walking but still annoying, not to mention inefficient!

Then again, I was using trump-card-level battlefield spells for simple movement, so there was no use being angry about them not being optimized… but it still pissed me off. So, before I grew totally bored, I decided to do something unorthodox.

Earth to Mud was a single-use cast that changed the consistency of the nearby earth or even rocks in a large, hard-to-aim burst of mana. What would happen if I simply… forced the effect to continue?

With a normal mage’s mana pool, it would be an impossible feat… but I was anything but normal.

So I decided to try it.

And… Oh, boy.

Instantly my avatar’s body turned into a firefighter desperately clutching a high-pressure water hose. This rodeo-like wrangling made keeping direction a bit challenging. There was also a weird feeling of earthen energy slipping through my insides.

Still, it was doable.

So of course I tried to make Hide in Shadows a similarly enhanced, continuous spell.

Yeah.

I know.

I’m dumb.

But it worked!

Now the only problem was the effort needed to balance two spells at the same time. And… there was another thing that came out of the left field. It seemed like constantly teleporting through the shadows raised one’s speed. I don’t know how, or why, since theoretically I was just jumping from one static point to another, but clearly, there was a hidden variable in that equation.

Here I was, thinking that Non had already beta-tested the spell for me, yet instead, I discovered that while the effect was the same, the process seemed wholly different.

Too bad… Anyway - it was a surprisingly zen experience to become a human-shaped meatball flying with an increasingly heightened speed through a waterfall made of mud.

Was this feeling present, because I couldn’t die, even if my temporary body was destroyed?

Or was I just an adrenaline junkie?

Curious.

Anyway, the journey at point-reaction speed continued, the time between casts running shorter with each meter traveled, until I managed to pierce the surface while splashing the mud all around my flying body. The seconds passed as I shot through the air like a bullet shot from a gun.

The heightened focus was gone, and I was once again philosophizing.

My ascent turned into a gentle fall and as I surveyed the battlefield. Both Charles and Agnes were easily recognizable, the angry mage turning angrier with each passing moment, throwing lumps of fire at his opponent. Slowly they were turning green. At the same time, Blueflame’s girlfriend was busy jumping into the fray like some kind of a bloodthirsty berserker. So different and yet so similar.

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With a grunt, I had chosen my target.

I tilted my falling body, focusing on the spell once again. Hide in Shadows activated at the limit of its range, flinging me down to the earth. A painful jolt went through my limbs just as the dust cloud had risen after my landing.

Now I knew why superheroes had a certain pose to help with this stuff.

Ugh.

Dusting myself off, I grinned at the flabbergasted snake girl.

“Hoooh. Just in time!” I raised my arms in a triumphant gesture. “Don’t worry, fair lady, the reinforcements have arrived! Let me use my totally-not-overpowered magic to deal with the baddies!”

What followed was a bit underwhelming.

Agnes took command, ordering me to deal with some undead caster. Well, not “some”. He was once Charles’s brother - thankfully the one that our resident flame user didn’t like much. What remained after older Blueflame’s resurrection was however only a cunning husk - still capable of casting magic, but devoid of personality.

Or so it should’ve been.

Instead, I was forced to deal with irritating little shit who hid amongst both his and our allied troops, sending mass destruction magic onto my head every fifteen or so seconds!

It was a rage-inducing game of whack-a-mole!

I teleported into a nearby shadow only to face a fiery rain. Dodging that calamity I jumped into another piece of darkness, seconds later eating up an explosion. There was a lake of lava too, shotgun-like pellets being sent at my face or thin whips aiming for my knees. How many spells did that guy know?

In retaliation I sent flying boulders toward his last position, only to have him pop up somewhere else.

Was this dude really a fire mage or maybe he used wind as his main attribute?! Or more like scuttle-affinitied! A fucking cockroach!

It took me minutes to notice how he was moving so fast.

Charles’ brother was jumping around with the power of explosions! Or, specifically by using microexplosions to move quickly - which would normally be a painful mode of locomotion, but it was a disadvantage he ignored due to being undead. This made him very fast, but just as noticeable while moving. It was hard to notice him in the din of the battlefield but after focusing (and guessing a few times) I was rewarded with the sight of a skeletal figure “farting” its way through the soldiers.

Because of course, the explosions originated from his ass and back… our gazes met, and I swear the little shit looked embarrassed.

It didn’t stop him from letting a long one rip and then disappearing behind a nearby hill. Of course, it didn’t end there, as a wall of fire greeted me when I moved to pursue, blocking me from advancing and allowing the little scuttler to disappear again.

My anger was growing.

“Show yourself!” I hollered, my avatar clenching his fists. “Or I’ll show you a real magic!”

The silence that came back made me feel like a fool, so I decided to take a Charles-like approach to the problem. If a hammer doesn’t work, use a bigger hammer.

I started with Shadow Puppet spell as it was a nice base, the created summon was a semi-autonomic golem that could be given simple commands by the caster. But darkness, while cool and all, was a poor material to use during the day. Not to mention its consistency was a bit… esoteric.

I wanted something more powerful. Something with more oompf.

Rock and Stone, would be the best choice, then? I was inhabiting a body proficient in Earth Magic… so I decided to use Earth Mana to cast the Shadow Puppet framework. Surely, they would be compatible, since the only thing that changed was the material used.

To be sure I decided to hide in the nearby shadows. I was learning!

The result?

After a few seconds of instability, the human-like golem started vibrating at high speeds before an earthen explosion sent shrapnel flying everywhere. It had succeeded in wiping out the surrounding troops, but these few seconds it existed were eye-opening.

I was sure that it could work! And then… I would have my own Kaiju!

Once again following the formula I started to push mana into various parts of the spell framework, trying to brute-force the solution. Some kept up, others deformed under the strain, much like physical frames do. That kept the area around the experiment clear, because the failed creations spewed various debris, both material and immaterial, thus skewering anyone stupid enough to interrupt me.

A few allies had been caught up in the process too, but progress often demanded sacrifices. You will be remembered as the ones who gave their lives for the cause, Random Beastkin number 67 and Random Dwarven Puppet number 136.

It took a few minutes of crazy mana expenditure, but in the end, I was left with a somewhat working solution.

The autonomous part was gone, as the ability to fulfill simple orders was connected to the material the golem was made from. Instead, I manually lifted its limbs, manipulated the graspers, and overall made it work. The shadow parts were mostly gone, with only eyes heavily relying on their properties. The rest of the golem was made from rock, soil, and metal, with skin, muscle, and bones replicated on a bigger scale and with different materials.

The resulting golem was a stocky, thick-limbed monster, with a face reminiscent of a hairless dwarf. It was more of a colossal puppet, moving quickly because of the amount of mana pumped into its innards.

Some would say it was a waste of time.

To that, I had a simple answer.

Fuck you!

Piloting a Kaiju was a man’s dream!

It was a small one, true, with about five meters in height… And I wasn’t as much piloting a monster, as puppeting it… And maybe it was closer to humanoid robots than to proper Kaiju… but everybody had to start somewhere!

I teleported to my creation’s shoulder, pointing toward the only surviving undead in my vicinity. Charles’ brother stood at his full height, clearly dismayed by what I made.

“Fear me!” I shouted, my voice echoing with a strange, inhuman tone. That was weird…

Welp. I should worry about it after squishing the irritating fucker.

With a simple command, the beast of a golem started to run, startling the fire mage. He blasted the puppet’s grabby hands with a fiery flamethrower, the soil skin hissing, as it evaporated, only to reveal stone muscles underneath. Yet the Kaiju was not a living thing - it promptly ignored the attack, reaching for the undead.

The undead mage farted away as a last resort, the explosion propelling him back, cracking countless ribs in the process. And yet the golem was simply too fast, too single-minded, as it ignored everything else and focused on grabbing the floating speck of bone.

Dude looked like a girl caught by King Kong.

Only, unlike in that story, he was immediately squished into pieces. I clenched my claws as the soothing sound of cracking bones entered my ears - a sweet melody. Soon, only his spine, head, and shoulders remained, the rest turning into powder.

Enemy eliminated. Well, he was still “alive” (as much as an undead can), but unable to do much.

That gave me a moment to think, and, more importantly, to see how the rest of the battle was progressing.

Both Boulder’s ghost and knightly Guardian were quietly dealing with their foes. Agnes just finished her opponent, souring any chance of a father-son reunion… not that there was anything out of Henrik Waltzer left in that husk.

Charles was… busy turning his surroundings into hell. I wasn’t one to throw shade on anyone since my battlefield ended up similarly devoid of life, but with the green flames circling his body he looked completely monstrous. The other side wasn’t much better as the Lich surrounded itself with ice, the army of floating weapons accompanying the undead.

The temperature difference meant their corresponding domains hissed and violently exploded every time they touched, adding to the surreal feeling.

I was still gazing at the aftermath of their furious battle when Charles’ girlfriend waved at me, craning her head up.

“So you decided to shed the human disguise, Dos?” Agnes asked, her lips parting in a sardonic smile.

“Whut?” I answered eloquently before shaking my head in denial. “I am a perfect exemplar of humanity, though?”

“Are you? Since when? Did you even look in the mirror recently?” She fired back.

I started to get worried. Was she gaslighting me? A moment later my body teleported to the ground, the adrenaline fading from its veins.

I looked down at my obsidian legs and arms. Hands with claws and stone armor were covering the fragile flesh underneath… except there was no skin or muscle there.

Effortlessly, I summoned a polished silver mirror from underneath our feet. Collecting silver gold or other rare particles used to be a chore, but now the metal and stone fulfilled my every whim. I gazed at the form before me, speechless.

Gone was a young, brown-haired boy. What remained instead looked like Slenderman made from obsidian shards, with the white-colored mask becoming a part of my face. The claws on arms and feet finished the monstrous transformation.

Terrified, I summoned my System window. It was nearly useless before… but now there was only one way to confirm my suspicions.

Name

P%t!r

Level

??

Race

Obsidian Fiend

Discounting the garbled name I focused on the changed race of my avatar. Whatever Obsidian Fiend was it certainly didn’t sound human. Not even an Impure Human designation was displayed…

I chucked, the helplessness turning into a burst of full-blown maniacal laughter.

“Children, don’t do Mana!” I uttered, choking on tears.

Everything was just fine…

Just fine…