Ch.55 Foundation
Malpetios wiggled into a comfortable position in Q'ills embrace while she returned her attention to the screen. He could just feel everything happening in the Dungeon if he focused on it, the screen was just a tool for the two of them.
He was now in the process of feeding holy elements to the crystal angel's soul container. After roughly thirty minutes the crystal angel would fully regenerate, acting similar to a respawn in games. As for how he could do this, it was thanks to making Brian into a supporting core, unlocking the Dark Element.
[Dark]: The element of creation. All existence was born in the endless Void, and they returned to its depths upon death. Can be found inside spiritual creatures or in the rift between realities. Easily corrupted by emotions.
(Necronomicon): Store's soul shard(s) of the strongest memories and experience of those who died in the Dungeons halls. Can forcefully capture and preserve intact souls up to your rank. Current (0/1)
(Puppeteer of Souls): Use souls created by the Dungeon or those in the Necronomicon to create artificial life. The soul's quality will determine the stability of the final product. Complete souls will reincarnate in the body of your choosing while incomplete ones will only follow your will, with no too little independence.
You can imagine my shock after reading that description! At first, I thought that I'd already possessed half these abilities, but after thinking back I realized that I didn't. The wills were left behind by the casualties of the war, the imprints were donated by The Jewels, and the green skin goblin-like wills came from the black water. Making sure, I searched for the memories of the soldiers and mages that died before, but found nothing.
I continue to create the Field Dungeon while experimenting with the new element, new ideas coming to my head. The [Angels Heart] was one of my creations, it's a holy mana stone with a soul shard attached to it. The outer shell of the heart was made to resemble the Holy Element Sigil, that being a four-sided star.
It was made similarly to my core room doors, with layers of different elements on top of each other. The goal was to allow me to retrieve the soul if someone tried to destroy the container. These souls couldn't grow and were not much different then Golems with different levels of intelligence.
While experimenting, I found that I could create a passage to a dark space with my mental force, I concluded it was the 'Void'. In this place, everything I thought of became reality, even things that completely went against my knowledge. Making water compressible or burning anything it touches, even fire, was not a problem.
However, the place was extremely unstable. I had created a copy of Q'ill and Brian's mom, trying to comfort my worries and loneliness. Although I did feel happy, and it seemed like the Void around me brighten up, the knowledge that they weren't real made me feel like I was using them. My feelings of self-loathing seemed to have affected them as they started to fuse into a deformed demonic creature, smiling creepily at me.
Before I could process what was happening it dashed next to me with its clawed hands aiming at my head. Panicking, I released holy mana all around me making the creature scream. With hissing sounds, it started to melt and disintegrate. I simply stood in place half confused and half disgusted, did I just kill my moms!?
The black Void started to ripple with his emotions as strange voices started to echo around him, noticing this, he remembered the description of the dark element. Breathing deeply, he tossed his emotions aside, the Void becoming calm once again. Now with the correct mentality to mess around in this place, he tried a few different things.
The Void was identical in function to his Dungeon management and creation tools but with no limitations. Even if he didn't have a material unlocked, like gold, this space ignored it. That would have been useful when he was making the temple, though he can just fill a metal with holy elements and make it fake gold.
It was all fun and games until he tried to remove his creations from the Void. The moment I tried the item in question would burst into pure white flames as it tried to cross thru the passage. The energy in the flames made Malpetios flinch, his mental energy tentacles suffering huge damage.
Although he was hurt pretty bad from this, he found that he could absorb these flames, even if the experience was akin to swallowing lava! With a combination of stubbornness and absorbing enough white flames to balance out the damage, he got some results. He was finally able to pull the item out of the Void, however, what reached him can only be considered ashes.
The whole process was as if you tried to take a chip out of a chip bag, only for something to eat most of it, leaving you with crumbs in your hand. These crumbs are composed of mixed element clusters, not resembling their intended form, gold in this case. This ended up being a waste of time and mana, as the crumbs only paid for ten percent of the mana used on the whole process and didn't unlock gold as a material.
Thankfully, he was able to determine what the white flames were. In his skill tree icon, the Light Element was showing progress for its unlock requirements.
[Element Production: [Light]. Current progress: 000,026/100,000.]
Well... that's going to be a huge mana sink, I'll just work on it whenever I'm about to hit element mana cap. After getting accustomed to the dark element, I was finally able to see what was happening to Q'ill. Parts of her body and the entirety of her wings were in a state similar to my [Riptide Sticks]. They were near the element composition limit, to the point that any more holy element would make those body parts explode into the dominant element.
With that in mind, I tried to absorb the over-saturated element, however, to my surprise it was under someone else's control. The feeling was the same as when I let Sidekick act on his own, but neither of us was in control this time. The holy element would only disappear after taking chunks out of Q'ills mana. As for where that mana was going, he was only able to find out due to his interactions with the Void. It was gathering somewhere deep inside the Void, in a place he couldn't reach yet could see for some weird reason.
The place looked like an endless sea of gold and white, numerous palaces in the distance and golden flowers of all kinds everywhere you looked. He eventually ran into numerous strings of mana other than Q'ill's, getting small glimpses into the sources of the other strings. Some were creatures of different ages and species praying about something or other, while the rest of them were badly hurt individuals getting treated by holy element.
Malpetios could only guess this place was the Golden Garden mentioned in the description of the holy element. The flowers everywhere seem to fit the bill not to mention the people praying, who knows though he could be wrong. He stop following the mana and instead tried to snap the string of mana connected to Q'ill. However, this didn't do a thing, the string easily stretching to any length I pulled them to.
After giving up, Malpetios thought about what to do next, he ended up with the thought of trying to use the Void's uniqueness to his advantage. He imagined a blade that could cut anything, even the Void itself. With ripples all around him, the fabric of the Void was torn apart and reformed into a small blade.
Malpetios got the allusion of being cut into pieces, nearly crying out in agony. It took a lot of effort to suppress his emotions, as letting them slip would cause a lot of problems. Grabbing the handle, he quickly swings it at the string, destroying the connection to Q'ill.
"ROAR!!!" Malpetios felt like something had set its sights on him, crushing him with its mental force. The pressure was hundreds of times stronger than Muscles own, suffocating him. He quickly thinks to use the Void blade, swinging it with the mental image of cutting the pressure as if it was paper. The sound of something getting cut was heard, as the pressure disappeared momentarily.
Not wasting any time, he rushes towards the exit at full speed. Whatever made that sound wasn't giving up as it roar once more, twisting the Void around Malpetios, this made it so the more he tried to escape the closer he got. Seeing what was happening to the Void around Him, Malpetios swung the blade with the thought of cutting time and space since that's what the sound seemed to have taken control of.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"Roar...?" Sounding shocked and confused, the creature didn't seem to know what to do next, something Malpetios took full advantage of as he finally reached the mental passage and escaped.
"Fuck! What the hell attacked me!? I can't play around in that place or I'm dead meat. I'll just obediently cut the connection next time and not trace its source like an idiot." Although he was still shaking in fear, a smile was slowly growing on his face as he looked at Q'ills condition. The holy element in her body was being pushed out by the fire elements as if an angry lion just realized its territory had been invaded.
Now with peace of mind, Malpetios happily created his Dungeon with a big smile on his face. Not long after that Brian woke up from the forceful fusion of his soul and the System. Just like the System had said, unlike me who was essentially the fusion of a human brain and a computer; Brian could only be considered to be a brain in a jar attached to a computer.
While I had full control and awareness of everything, conscious and subconscious in my mind and body; Brian was still the same as any other human, were only around five percent of his thoughts ever crossed his mind, the System acting as a recording device. Everything that Brian thought would now be recorded and verified by the System for its use, working identically to a search engine for his brain.
Although the System encouraged Malpetios to communicate with Brian, so it could slowly retrieve the remaining ninety-five percent of memories, it soon regretted its words.
The two had a serious talk at the beginning, reassuring each other's guesses, that they were pieces of the human from Earth brought here by luck or mistake. However, they soon moved on and tried to bring their old pass time to this world. In this way, both Malpetios and Brian decided to turn the Dungeon into their playground, while promising to themselves to crush anyone that tried to take the little bit of joy they still had left.
As for why the System regretted its action, it was because of Brian's shameless ideas that made even Malpetios's core turn pink!!
"Are you sure we should be making all this stuff up? What if the real gods of this world get angry?!" Malpetios couldn't stop his light body's eyes from twitching, if he did what Brian said they would make someone their enemy. "Oh come on kid! Don't be a wimp! So what if some random people get upset, as long as we strictly follow the definition on the elements we'll have the World's approval."
Brian's idea was to make a script and force the actors, adventurers, to follow it until it becomes true by proxy. However, Malpetios was worried they'd make the church blow their top and attack them like rabbit dogs. Although Brian wanted to do it for the shits and giggles, he also knew Malpetios needed to change the mentality of the natives of this world. It didn't help that Malpetios was soft-hearted, one could even say naive.
Sadly for both of them, people saw Dungeons as mana machines or thorny resource caves. For them to grow properly the combination of the carrot and the stick was necessary. However, the System is both limiting and not fleshed out yet, it needed someone to push the limits without breaking the World's bottom line. That being said, according to what Malpetios told him those who broke the limits are not few, but that itself is a problem.
The Fallen Ones, as they're called, are used as examples of what not to do yet if you change the things they did slightly all of the sudden is no longer a problem. But the System's tunnel vision can't seem to notice that until it's pointed out by someone, something that doesn't happen often or at all. The kid himself seems to be the only exception but that was due to the different culture of our old world.
Malpetios and Brian continued making changes to the script while removing things that even Malpetios disagreed with. Around this time Q'ill finally woke up, and Malpetios gathered one hundred Pure Mana. It didn't take long for the System to do its thing, changing the forbidden spell into a proper [Boss Fusion].
Reunited at last, Malpetios couldn't stop crying prismatic tears as he hugged Q'ills tiny frame against his cheek. "I'm so glad you're ok, sob sob, I was so worried and scared you'd leave me, sob!!" Q'ill was still a bit groggy from sleeping for so long as well as the process of rectifying the link to Malpetios. Now inside Malpetios's Mindscape, she was shocked at the scenery while trying to return the hug.
"So, you're Malpetios's mom?" Q'ill turns her attention to the masculine voice behind her before her face turned pale. "You! A shadow demon?" She quickly flys out of Malpetios's embrace, as a fiery aura surrounds her and Malpetios. "Malpetios get behind me," is what she yelled out as fire elements gathered on top of her head. However, before she could finish casting the spell, Malpetios ran in front of her.
"Wait!! He's my uhm.... friend..? No, he's my family member, please don't fight!" Seeing that Malpetios got between her spell and the demon, Q'ill was forced to cancel her attack. "Holy crap, talk about a small fuse, you're like a tiny dragon!" Hearing 'tiny' from the mouth of the demon made Q'ill want to barbecue it, but Malpetios was still protecting it. Not letting her guard down, she convinces Malpetios to stand next to her as she took a better look at the demon.
Standing two meters tall and covered in compact muscles, the demon's blood-red eyes and numerous scars reflected its thirst for blood and past battles. The demon in question, however, had a 'is this bitch crazy' expression, as he put his arms up in surrender. After almost a whole day of coaxing and turning into my child form to act cute, at the behest of Brian, Q'ill finally accepted his existence.
The momentary peace didn't last long, as Brian's sense of humor got under Q'ills skin, turning them into bickering siblings or frenemies. Malpetios himself had some good laughs while Q'ill wasn't looking until he eventually got caught. Thankfully, I was able to redeem myself by showing her how to change her body to whatever she wanted.
It didn't take long before a two-point-five meters tall beauty started to call Brian tiny this or tiny that, before accumulating into a who's the taller competition that Brian failed horrendously at. As for what Malpetios said to pamper the sore loser, he simply said that inside his Mindscape a soul's size was proportional to there strength. Brian eventually gave up as his soul was only stable due to a bit of luck, the System, and Malpetios's attachment to his past self.
Now we return to the present, where Q'ill, as a native of this world, was not happy with the play these rascals cooked up. Worst still, her innocent baby was swayed by that demon's words, agreeing to most of it. However, even she knew that most of the stuff it said would keep Malpetios safe... even if it's completely shameless. Also... she looks at her soul body, now that the link is complete, I have noticed that I can't hear them talk at times.
She thought it was all in her head, or that the demon was doing something behind her back. However, that soul is nothing more than an up nauseous brat that only means well. Both boys would laugh and strategize about things around the Dungeon that she couldn't understand with big smiles. It was from this that she started to notice some of the things they said only registered as noise, even when Malpetios tried to draw or write it down she only saw an empty space.
She doesn't know what was happening to her, but after thinking deeply about it this past few days she noticed this wasn't the first time. Back when Malpetios was making his Dungeon, he would explain his ideas to her, some of which she now noticed were replaced with noise or emptiness. Everything seemed to be connected to the rules set by the Jewels, as she would lose her hearing the moment they started to talk about something that would bend or break them.
Her train of thought was broken when a furious roar came out of the screen, the church's people looking like beggars, two of their priests were dead while four paladins were missing an arm or leg. "Hey, kid, should we move to scenario seven or nine? Now that they killed one of the angels we will need to lower their reputation in town. We can also skip all that and just go directly to scenario forty, hehe, let the tree whip them into shape! Haha!!"
Malpetios ignored Brian's nonsense and said, "let's stick with scenario one, nothing outrageous has happened yet." Malpetios turned to Brian while raising an eyebrow, "or did the boss ever come out after you killed some random person on the streets? If so, I didn't know I was a masochist in my last life!" Hearing this, Brian wanted to puke, the little bastard's devilish smile only made him look more punchable.
"Since when did your tongue get so sharp!?" Malpetios tilted his head up high and said, "I've learned from the best!" The two of them goofed off a bit more before the female dragon stared at Brian as if he'd just defiled her daughter. "Cough... cough..., well ok we will stick with the current one, at least they can't do too much trouble in town with the sanctuary effect and all."
"How about the Dark Temple? Is it almost finished or do you want to drag it out a bit?" Malpetios thought about Brian's words and said, "my second floor ain't finished yet but it shouldn't be a problem to do the final act, at least the Temples done so you can go play your big bad wolf role haha!!"
"Oh, also, I almost forgot that I'm about to unlock the Light Element! I'll be right back, just poke my body if you need something." With that Malpetios focused on the second floor he got for accumulating one hundred Pure Mana. Although he wanted to make it a field floor, he would have to wait since farming light elements and building a whole new floor wasn't kind on his resources.
In only four hours the light elements finally reached the cap. Q'ill and Brian noticed a blinding light coming out of the distant giant multicolored tree, as a brand new limb grew out of that light. While they both admire the light that seemed to want to engulf everything, Malpetios was reading the description of the light element in shock!
[Light]: The element of destruction. When thought gave birth to matter, Light was born in retaliation. Its goal is to consume everything and return to eternal stasis. Produced by the transition of the stages of matter, especially plasma.
The first thing that passed by Malpetios's brain was not how to use this new element, but that the show he and Brian had fabricated was going to need an emergency rendition.