Water was a wondrous substance. Dripping and swirling, moistening and permeating the dirt, making the ground much softer to work on. However, the bedrock had to come and after some time it really appeared, a floor of solid rock that could not be dug though easily, its hardness comparable to rusty swords that were scratching on its surface.
"That will take forever to dig though. Well, I actually have forever, but I would rather not exploit my agelessness to that extent." Karl Gulden ordered his skeletons to dig to the side, where the solid rock seemed to be receding. Originally, he had intended to get out of the situation and arrive at the surface in the shortest time possible, but he had been watching his status screen during all the digging and was invigorated by a sudden entry.
"Environment has indeed a lot of influence on what I can summon." He hummed while looking at the promising information again.
Karl Gulden
Level 2 Dungeon Core
Mana Regeneration - 100/s
Spells- [Dig], [Build]
Summons- [Skeleton(Death) 5/s], [Skeleton(Earth) 5/s], [Well Ghost(Dread) 50/s], [Elemental(Earth) 50/s], [Worm(Flesh) 5/s],
[Experience 86/1000]
He immediately commanded the [Elemental(Earth) 50/s] into existence and the muddy water began to churn around him to give way to a lump of rock with only a vaguely humanoid shape. His new summon sunk like the rock it was to the bottom and hit the bedrock with almost an audible sound, despite them being still underwater.
"Help the skellies dig!" Karl commanded gleefully and watched the elemental use its fists to hit the spot his skeletons had been just working on. The fist hit the ground and a yellow swirling glow appeared around it, the material moving aside on its own. The effect was not extreme, but it was certainly apparent when only after a few minutes, the elemental had cleared what would have taken the skeletons hours of work.
"Elemental, go down!" Karl would have jumped with joy if he could, as he finally, finally felt as a true dungeon core that he was supposed to be and followed the Elemental's movement with expectation.
"It is still slow, but it is not unrealistic anymore." Karl watched as every punch of the elemental removed a fist sized piece of rock. The tunnel was enlarging with the speed of a crawl, but progress could be finally seen.
"Should I continue down?" Karl though, a normal person would certainly not consider something so extreme. It was one thing to explore, but to dig miles and miles underground for ages was something only a nutcase would do.
A nutcase of Karl Gulden's caliber.
"I love exploits and grinding." The black gem representing Karl Gulden almost vibrated with ecstasy. There was finally some area where he was overpowered. Logically, to create an extremely deep, underwater maze was the most safe option he could think of.
Karl promptly summoned a second elemental and watched them work. For a human, it would be unbearable, but he felt no hunger, no fatigue, no sleepiness, no discomfort. Honestly, it was better than his old work when he had to do overtime. He kept watching the tunnel extend deeper and deeper, as much as the muddy water allowed him.
Given enough time and planning, he possessed the potential to destroy the whole city by undermining its foundations, he felt really powerful.
"Huh, we will see how it goes. I intended to explore the city first, but it might be better to thoroughly explore the underground before that." He was really curious what he would be able to summon in different parts of the underground. He had to admit that the key to his power were his summons, he needed to map the underground area. Not for minerals, but for places that enabled him to summon entities like the [Elemental(Earth)],
* * * *
A consistent sound of boots threading on the wet ground woke Karl from his exploration frenzy. He had been moving back and forth, up an down and was not even sure where he was, while trying to find all the useful summons he could get.
"Someone is here! What sort of a lunatic would come here?" Karl had built quite a maze while exploring and was relying on his Elementals to travel around. They clearly did not need any light, as they were surrounded by their element and Karl was just comfortably stabbed into one of their chests. The idea that someone had actually gone through all the hassle to track him down in the dark made him feel uneasy.
"Try to dodge him boys." Karl ordered his servants to go in an opposite direction, but the steps followed wherever they went. He was beginning to suspect that the person was using some device similar to a radar to track him down, because it was impossible to shake him off.
"Alright, do you wanna play hide and seek with me?! Fine with me!" Karl ordered the Elementals to embed him two inches deep in the tunnel's wall and dismissed them. For any ordinary intruder, the tunnel would look completely plain and simple. Unless they were indeed tracking him with some unusual method.
Karl waited for some time, in dark and silence, because he no longer could hear sounds from the outside of his rocky prison very well. After a while, he could feel intense vibrations of something hammering against the rock's surface.
"You nosy bastard, why is he after me? And what is with this kind of precision?" Karl was angry, it was beyond doubt that the chasing entity that had been following him had him proverbially marked on a map.
"I do not know what is going on, but you are not free to go yet." Karl heard a familiar voice while a hand gripped his hilt and pulled him out of the wall that had been shattered to pieces by some means that the man possessed. Recognizing the voice, it was obviously the same person he had just recently run away from and Karl had a hunch why he was able to find him.
"Pesky Heavens, this is certainly because of that oath of his." He was sure that was the case and thought how to get away from his kidnapper without using lethal means.
His anger lessened when he saw the pitiful state of his pursuer, In the light of a shining blue stone that the man held in his left hand, Karl saw that all his clothes was completely wet, as he had to swim and dive to get to the current tunnel. Occasionally, the hand that held him shivered with cold, as the underground was far from warm, especially given his holder's drenched state.
Zhan Gon von Kotzchen had transformed into a drowned cat, his image of a vengeful harbinger of death completely reversed.
"Am I really this unlucky? Is some higher level being playing with me just to pass time and have fun?" Zhan could not explain how the sword had escaped him and appeared embedded in a wall of this inhospitable maze.
"Fine, I get it, I should not have sworn the oath. I was reckless! Is it really necessary to keep torturing me until I die?!" Karl listened to the desperate plea of his bearer, knowing that he though all his actions were in fact caused by some higher being originating from the Heavens.
"To tell you the truth, Heavens do not give a shit about you man. It was all me, but you cannot hear me anyways." Karl though while being grateful that he was unable to speak to anyone, yes, grateful. As long as he was not considered sentient, no blame could be pinned on his head, he would not be a target of any manipulation or blackmail. He was just a thing, a sword with no blame.
Was it not better that way?
While he though, he was being carried through his tunnels, water, above and under and had to admire the cultivator's persistence. The maze he had created was much bigger than he had thought and when they appeared at the spot that was being illuminated by a thin ray of light coming from above, his bearer was nearly dead with exhaustion.
Despite all that, Zhan grabbed the rope that was hanging along the wall of the very deep well and began to climb up towards the sun, the warm of which was hardly reaching to the wet depths that became Karl's home.
Karl observed that slowly, there seemed to be a wide smile appearing on Zhan's face as he neared the sun that was the greatest prize that he could wish for after all the cold he had to suffer thought.
However, they both turned they sights above them when they noticed that the sun had been covered and a loud noise was nearing them with terrifying speed.
* * * *
"This is the third well, we will have no water if this continues." An old man gazed down a well that was no longer able to produce any water. His beard was turning gray due to his age and his back was no longer straight, but there was still a spark in his blue eyes, his body gnarled and tough, hardened by years of labor on a farm.
"Do you think the city cares?" A couple of years younger man with a hoe propped against his shoulder spat into the dirt.
"It should care! It is too unnatural. It might be some plot of a demonic cult! What do I pay the taxes for?" The man bent over the edge of the well to better see its bottom, but was disturbed by a panicked shout and quickly stood back straight as much as his joints allowed him to.
"Lein! We have to call the city guards immediately! There is a bottomless well!" A panicked man reached the pair of peasants with his face red from exertion and his long, brown hair getting in his face.
"What?!" Both the men who appeared to be neighbors tensed, but the one with the hoe relaxed shortly.
"Take it easy Lein, it seems that Yorm has been drinking again. At least you should be a little sensible, your old man talks nonsense all the time." Lein's companion shook his head while looking at the youngest of the three with disappointment.
"It is true! I swear! Rheina saw it too. She said it had to be because of a strange sword she threw inside some time ago, a short fancy thing with a big gem." The man was getting his hair out of his face, while catching his breath. "Spread the word! I am going for the guards, the well creeps me out!"
He wanted to run off, but a few gnarled fingers caught him tightly, stopping his departure while almost making him fall to the ground.
"Not so fast boy!" Lein's hand held fast, not letting the scared peasant go.
"What are you doing? We must report it, it is dangerous!" The man immediately tried to free himself with little success.
"Even more dangerous than you think! Just imagine when certain people get wind of your bottomless well. If such a deep hole really exists on your old man's farm, be sure that just like that, your farm and my farm and his farm will have new owners overnight." Lein snapped his fingers and pointed in turn at each of the three with his finger.
"That means you are going nowhere, because I do like my farm quite a lot." The gray-bearded man said with confidence while firmly standing his ground, letting his hand go only when he saw that the panicked peasant was no longer trying to run away.
"He is right." The other man gripped his tool harder, realizing the danger as well.
"You are crazy!" After the apprehended farmer had been stopped, he began to tremble and his eyes darted left and right, switching between both fellow farmers in front of him.
"We should solve it ourselves. Lead the way! Let's see if we really need to call the officials here." Lein said, but it was clear from his expression that he would call them only if a whole army of demons was hidden inside the well.
* * * *
"What a-hole threw such a large boulder at us?!" Karl stared up and guessed they had only a few seconds before a boulder that was falling down the well obliterated them both. He wanted to think that his stony self would not be crushed after an intimate meeting with the flying huge boulder, but he was very unsure. Would he die today?
"Not today!" Karl resolved himself and lightning fast pulled out his status screen with not many options to choose from.
Karl Gulden
Level 2 Dungeon Core
Mana Regeneration - 100/s
Spells- [Dig], [Build]
Summons- [Skeleton(Death) 5/s], [Skeleton(Earth) 5/s], [Well Ghost(Dread) 50/s], [Worm(Flesh) 5/s],
[Experience 86/1000]
He was at the beginning of the well and the place offered him the same options as when he had started his digging.
Immediately, two skeletons took shape next to Zhan in the air and swung their swords simultaneously at the rope he was holding onto. It was strange that they did not need ground to emerge from, but Karl was not going to complain.
"Guess we have no time for explanations." Karl watched as his bearer kept holding the cut off rope and began falling down the well.
Zhan kept flailing his arms and screamed something, but Karl did not care for his attempts or the words he had left to the wind. Instead, he was fully focused on his status screen and kept refreshing it like crazy,. He waited for one particular entry to appear. After a while, he had finally gazed upon what he had in mind.
Karl Gulden
Level 2 Dungeon Core
Mana Regeneration - 100/s
Spells- [Dig], [Build]
Summons- [Skeleton(Death) 5/s], [Skeleton(Earth) 5/s], [Well Ghost(Dread) 50/s], [Elemental(Earth) 50/s], [Worm(Flesh) 5/s],
[Experience 86/1000]
"Yes! Elementals, let's rock!" A this point, he was not even looking around him, trying to suppress the obligatory nausea that came with the movement and focused only on his plan to survive.
The Elementals appeared and under the command of Karl, they stretched their rocky arms in the direction of the well's wall and their limbs began to glow with yellow light, as they were pushing their power to the maximum.
"Dead! I am dead!" Zhan shrieked when he looked at the boulder that was nearing them from above, because its initial speed was much higher than theirs. He did not even pay attention to Karl's summons, completely hypnotized by the immense boulder.
"DEAD!" He shrieked again when he finally saw the two Elementals that were falling next to him.
As they were falling down with their speed ever increasing, the Elementals' work began to show and the walls of the well narrowed as they went, the bottomless hole in the ground that Karl had created becoming more narrow than before, not wide enough for the boulder to fit in.
In a blink of an eye, the falling boulder reached the place where the summons had began tightening the well and a thunderous noise sounded down the tight well, the narrow space magnifying the noise. Although the boulder was now wider than the well, the difference was not big and it continued to fall with its surface areas falling off as they kept scraping against the narrow walls.
"Be hard boulder! Do not dare to fall apart!" Zhan's eyes widened when he saw what was happening. At this point he was quite sure that some higher being was toying with him and did not want him dead too soon, before the game was over.
The distance between them and the boulder began increasing until the boulder finally stopped, the well partially clogged by it and only the lucky duo of accidental comrades continued to descent down the deep well.
Karl mobilized all his will against his nausea that threatened to overwhelm him and sensed that they were already nearing the water surface at the well's bottom. Zhan who still held him in his hand did not appear he would attempt to solve their dire situation in any way, leaving Karl to save the day. Karl, the action hero with a stone face, immediately commanded his servants to keep creating a thin floor made of rock as they were falling alongside them. He hoped that the thin surfaces would be able to slow their fall as they would break though it.
With his eyesight not functioning, Karl knew based on Zhan's shouts that his plan was progressing, a stream of curse words flooding the well every time his companion's feet broke trough a thin layer of rock, creating a cloud of dirt and stones.
"Praise whoever made the well this deep!" Karl though when he felt their speed decreasing before a hard impact came. It was the water surface that the poor villagers could only dream about given its depth. However with their speed, it felt more like a concrete to Zhan's feet. His hand that up to this point held a gem adorned sword like a steel trap opened under the sudden impact of the water and the weapon that he held slipped out of his hand and slowly drifted down to the bottom.
"it is so damn muddy!" Karl had to keep cursing the muddy water, as he could not see anything. Not that it mattered as he battled against his receding nausea. He had not been shattered by the boulder and there was no reason why he should care about that cultivator that had stolen him anyway.
If he was dead, so what?
Suddenly, a chill ran through his blade when he realized how cold and unfeeling he really became. How had he turned into an unfeeling thing? Was it because he was unable to relate to the inhabitants of this world? Or was it because he was a stone and could not feel pain?
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With those thoughts he kept sinking to the bottom of the well, back into the maze he had created for himself to hide from the world and to discover what others could not see and what had no value and meaning to them.
"Back home." Karl thought when he hit the bottom and his Elementals that had sunk long before him welcomed him wordlessly, already seated in his dark and cold kingdom.
"Let's continue the great work!" Karl wanted to move back into the tunnels when he sensed the water swirling high above him. It was clear who it was and there was a dilemma in his mind.
"It will be better if he drowns here, he will bring me only trouble." He though, it was clear that the man was done for, there was no rope any longer and he was unable to leave the extremely deep well.
He was fated to die at the damp, dark place, unless someone helped him to get out.
"Only trouble." Karl repeated in his mind and commanded one of the Elementals to grab him and carry him deeper into his tunnels.
As they moved away through the flooded tunnels, Karl watched the muddy water around him calm down. It gradually turned still as a pond with no disturbance.
"Where was I? Ah! The direction under the city! I hope that we will not dig through some sewer." Karl moved forth, embedded in the rock of one of his servants.
* * * *
Water was a wondrous substance. Dripping and swirling, moistening and permeating the dirt, making the ground much softer to work on, much easier to sink into, its biting coldness preserving the bodies of those who ran out of luck.
"Damn it all! Why am I this unlucky?" Zhan could not feel his legs and continued to swim with only his hands inside the well. He was very deep, deep enough that he was no longer able to see if the water was crystal clear or more like the contents of a sewer pipe. He felt his hands growing numb due to cold and his every movement turned slower.
"I would never guess that drowning is my fate. Such a shitty death." As he complained, an occasional mouthful of water was accidentally swallowed by him and he could certainly exclude the crystal clear option after having a taste.
"Tastes like dirt. My watery grave." He laughed shortly as his faculties were slowly abandoning him.
"Hey fucking Heaven! Are you finally satisfied? You should have killed me right away instead of this farce!" He was angry at the forces that were toying with him. Even though it was partially his fault, he refused to admit that the Heavens were right by treating him so harshly, only because of a single stupid oath. Angry at the whole world, Zhan's hands felt more and more numb and weary until he was unable to move them anymore.
During his last moments, he floated on the surface using just the buoyancy of his body. Interestingly enough, he found out that with his lungs filled with air until they nearly burst, he did not even need to move to float.
"I can float forever without moving, I have reached immortality. My journey was not in vein." He mumbled, his voice but a whisper.
A while later an ice cold body was sinking to the bottom of the well. It kept descending until it rested in the cold mud at the well's bottom.
When Karl moved to realize his idea of a sloped tunnel that would lead to a pond in a forest, he stumbled upon the well again. It was natural as it was in the center of his maze and it was the quickest route from the part under the city to his newly picked location under the forest. He could not but notice the corpse that was dipped in the mud at the bottom of the well and a strange feeling enveloped him followed by a memory.
"Loneliness leads to hoarding. Lonely people often become collectors of something." He remembered a piece of knowledge taken from some psychiatrist and subconsciously turned to look back at his ever growing maze of tunnels.
"Ugh, do not tell me I will become sentimental, although there is some truth to it." He continued in his journey, leaving the corpse behind, but he felt like its image was still in front of his eyes, haunting him.
"How would that old dude put it? Those paths are all immortality, you have to choose which one suits you the best." Karl had an urge to snicker when he was about to use an advice of a random cultivator to move forward.
"No, it is just logic. I have exploited what I could. There is no exotic summon I have missed around here and the maze is already too huge. It is time to enter the city and live some more. As for the drowned fellow, my conscience is crystal clear, he was dead the moment he worded that stupid oath of his. He had no chance to win." He guessed that the fellow had been stage one or two cultivator and Mezzaiel had to be at lest as powerful as the leader of the Thunder God Sect, because the cult would have had no chance destroying it otherwise.
His mind was flooded with chaotic ideas while he was digging upwards in a gentle slope. It went quickly with the help of his summons, but even then he found himself staring mindlessly at the rocky figure of his minion while he waited for the tunnel to be completed. Unfortunately, his planning skills proved to be lacking when he and his minions emerged right next to the pond that he had marked to be his target. Strangely, following the most wet soil had not led him to dig through its bottom as he had anticipated.
"Whatever, let's go to have a look around." Karl dismissed his Elementals and continued forth gripped in the maw of a wolf, as it was the most ordinary looking creature he could pull out of his sleeve in the area. As the paws of his servant moved forward, he noticed the forest around him thin out as they neared the farmland next to the city.
"An attempt two point zero commence!" Karl immediately stopped the wolf when he saw the first signs of farmers, because he remembered all too well how his first attempt went.
His stray dog from before had proven to be quite ineffective in infiltrating the city, he needed to think of something better. After a while of intensive thinking, Karl finally began to feel the urge to whistle in surprise, his knew idea being that of a genius. Soon, there was a skeleton with a broken sword stuck in its rib cage climbing up a tree in the forest.
A really unusual sight to behold.
It took two attempts, but after the effort put in, the skeleton had reached the top of a tree, Karl felt a sense of victory when he opened his status and saw the class of creatures he was interested in really appeared there.
Summons- [Crow(Night) 50/s], [Hawk(Clarity) 5/s],
Birds.
"What infiltration? I will simply fly over and that's it!" He felt an urge to chuckle when choosing the best suited feathered creature for the job. At first, he intended to be inconspicuous, but then he realized that a bird with a broken sword held in its beak was as inconspicuous as a fish playing a mobile game.
"I need the hawk, it will be easier for it to carry me and I will stick out like a sore thumb anyway." Karl planned to solve his lack of deception by hovering high in the sky where no one would see him.
And as he willed, soon a feathered companion appeared on a branch next to him, reaching for his hilt with its beak. Fortunately, he was not a heavy sword and the bird managed to lift it with ease.
"This will be a walk in the park, fly to the city!" Karl commanded with enthusiasm, still thrilled about his solution that enabled him to avoid finding clothes for his skeletons and other measures that he might have been forced to do if not for his awesome bird forces.
Being the summon that he was, the hawk immediately listened to his command and nearly jumped off of the high tree heading in the direction of the city.
"That is fabulous! Fly higher, I want to see everything from high above! I feel like a bird!" Karl laughed, marveling about all the possibilities his summons were giving him.
However, he began to notice a few issues that were spoiling the perfection of his marvels soon.
Among other issues, he felt his motion sickness, but he was determined that this time, it would not spoil his fun.
The first real problem was that the bird was holding him by his hilt and the rest of the blade was hanging to the side, meaning its whole posture began to tilt unnaturally and it was clearly starting to struggle to keep itself in the air, its flight giving an impression that the animal had a few beers before the take off.
The second problem was that Karl was obviously not as insignificant weight for the bird as he had though, their altitude began to drop bit by bit and his summon began to descent instead of flying higher up. Soon, they were midway through the farms on their way to the city, but their altitude was dangerously low, low enough for many farmers to look up and see a bird carrying a broken sword in its beak.
"Stupid bird! Flap your useless wings more! Come on!" Karl shouted uselessly in horror because of all the attention. At this point, he was supposed to be high in the sky like a spy plane!
"Fly over the city wall! Quickly!" He commanded, but had to watch the individual stones in the city wall turning more and more pronounced as they grew larger and larger in his vision. The poor bird was flapping its wing as much as it could under the desperate commands of its master, but very soon the inevitable had happened and it slammed head on into the wall, unable to fly over it in time as ordered.
"No way!" Karl was dropped by the bird that let out a really un-hawkish noise and they both began to fall down along the wall, amusing all the guards and other people that were currently on the wall.
Immediately after the crash into the city's fortification, Karl could hear a few words of the soldiers that stared at him from the top before he descended to his, or rather to his summons death, as the poor bird was unable to fly anymore after the heavy slam against the wall.
"That is too unnatural, a spy?" One of the voices said and Karl suppressed his urge to panic.
"Not a chance, this is way too stupid for a spy." The second voice cracked his confidence before he was too far below them, out of an earshot.
Not long after the incident, steel rang against the stone base of the wall along with a soft plop nearby.
"I am finished." Karl though about summoning another minion to get away, but too many people had seen the scene and he had no confidence that he was able to escape. Adding to his trouble, the dead bird naturally vanished after its demise, causing many onlookers to wince, staring in shock at the bloodied part of the wall that was the only proof that they had not imagined the bird. He had decided to use his usual tactic of playing dead and hope for the best, but he was unsure if this time, his favorite technique would prove effective.
For a time there was an eerie silence around him and he was left admiring the perfect structure of the wall that did not look dilapidated at all and there were even some strange glowing symbols on its surface. And a few ants.
The scene was like frozen in time, until the symbols began to lose their luster.
That was strange.
All his hopes for a peaceful time spend on the ground were shattered by a thundering fiery explosion that threw into the air a ton of dirt or more, something that shocked him greatly as the explosion was clearly disproportionate to his actions.
"What the hell people? I attack by a hawk and you throw an atomic bomb at me?!" The terrified broken sword immediately threw all caution out of the window and a second later, a single skeleton was rushing with his broken self in its hand in the direction of the forest. Again, the world became a blur and the explosions colored Karl's vision red, their loud sounds joining into a single thunderstorm of death.
Despite his confusion, he could not but notice that the aim of his pursuers was terrible, because they had not managed to hit him a single time, as if they were not even aiming.
"Or not aiming at me." Karl's brain froze for a second when he compared the explosions to what he remembered from not too long ago and found it peculiar. Inevitably, he had reached the conclusion that the attacker was the same and he was not the target at all. He had found himself in a wide area bombarded by the demonic cult that had most likely decided to destroy another city after its success in the Thunder God Sect.
"What is going on? Is this normal? Are the demonic cultivators more powerful? Then why do I have the impression that this city is quite old and established? What is going on here?" Followed by the sound of explosions and the reddish light of the ever present fire, Karl had finally reached the forest and was nearing the pond. Behind a foliage of threes, he commanded his skeleton to stop briefly and took a look at the walled city in the distance.
The look was numbing, what had just a while ago been a bustling prosperous city was quickly turning into a burning ruin that was framed by the high walls. He followed one of the fireballs that were falling down from the sky with his eyes and watched as it crashed behind the wall with an explosion that could be heard clearly even in the forest. The barrier he had expected to see never came, a similar sight that he had experienced back in the burned down sect. The inhabitants of the city seemed to be as surprised as him, as they were flooding in and out the city gates in chaos and swarming in the fields.
Even the guards of the city that were supposed to keep order and security were behaving in a similar manner.
The attention of everyone was then captured by a malevolent voice from above their heads, making many people look up into the sky.
"The Heavens has fallen. Tremble in terror, celestial sheep!" The thundering voice suddenly overpowered the explosions with its sound and Karl focused on a man that was hovering high above the city. The man was too far away to see any details of his figure, but he could tell that he had long hair that were fluttering in the upwards draft of hot air and his body was radiating heat to the point he seemed like a miniature sun hanging directly above the city.
Without any warning, the man spread his arms and dozens of meters around him, a river of hot magma began to flow out of thin air, the resulting magma waterfall heading straight for the city.
"I am so out of here!" Karl did not wait for the resulting apocalypse and hurriedly ordered his skeleton to head down to his tunnels, hoping that his underground maze was deep and wide enough to hide him from the disaster. With his sight but a blur again, he listened to the panicked screams of thousands of people while nearing safety.
"This is certainly not normal, but it is too dangerous to investigate." His city mission had ended even before its start when his skeleton reentered the pleasantly cold tunnels, of course only pleasant for others as he could not care less about the temperature as long as he was not melting.
* * * *
With a tremendous sound, much louder than one million billion thunders combined together and then magnified trillion times, a golden door of immense proportions were unhinged and flew towards an opulent throne. In front of the throne that was lined with bottles sat a man that was the embodiment of light, his brightness was intense enough to counter the noise and stop it even before it reached his celestial ears.
"Another one slipped though the tribulations? Not again!" The man akin to a star sighed deeply.
"The Heavenly Emperor of Laziness and Sloppiness, I have come to take your head! I have broken all the rules there is and you will be my final badge of honor when your blood flows on my hands down the . . ."
"You talk too much." His Excellency, The Godly Emperor of The Nine Point Three Heavens snapped his fingers and the figure clad in dark flames and a heavy aura of death flew out of his hall with a bang even louder than the shattering of the magnificent door, that by the way, were still flying towards the throne.
So big was the room was too big was big to the point it disrupted the senses and sentences of all those that dared to even think it about . .
"Someone repair the door!" The Godly Emperor dismissively shouted and turned his attention back to the bottles on the throne. He had long grown used to the annoying noisy mob of cultivators defying the heavenly him to be surprised by yet another one appearing at his doorstep. Although most of them failed at the step of banging at his door.
"Not so fast!" The figure from before stood in the door frame again and a wave of intense killing intent burst out from it in the direction of The Godly Emperor. The killing intent was so thick and dangerous, that even deep down in The First Heaven, all the mice had died in the direction the terrifying man was not even facing and in the direction he was facing, even many foxes died.
Such was his terrible power, as everyone knows foxes are very resistant to killing intent.
"Hmph." The angered emperor countered the all encompassing killing intent with his coldest harrumph and a swift flicker of his long sleeve. The air in the throne room shattered from the pressure only to be reformed again a second later by the Goldy Emperor's calm breath, but the killing intent was no more, erased out of existence.
"Not good enough! You bore me." He flickered his sleeve again, this time with greater force and the devil-like figure that had even a pair of wing like a demon growing out of his back was blown away with a horrified scream. However, the scream quickly turned into a gurgle, due to the invader vomiting blood all the way during the uncountable millions of miles he flew as the consequence of the mighty emperor's flicker.
"Finally some peace." The Godly Emperor turned to his bottles again, but suddenly felt heavy and there was a stabbing pain around his heart.
"Bleeeeh." The celestial ruler of all vomited blood, overturning half of his bottles with its stream! He felt a little dizzy and from behind him, he heard a laughter of the man he had just sent flying.
"Yes, that bottles will be your doom, you stupid monarch. I have watched your habits for numerous millennia and have finally found out the perfect method how to poison you." The demonic figure cackled, trying to hide that the aura of death from before was not as strong as it had been and the flames of shadow around his wings were just barely visible.
"Be gone!" The Godly Emperor flickered his sleeve again amidst of coughing, but this time, the demonic figure stood firm, withstanding his opponents move without fail.
"As I have expected. Today ends the reign of the celestial path and the age of the demonic path begins!" The shadowy assassin flickered out of existence and swiftly reappeared behind the weakened emperor, his clawed hand ready to strike his opponent down.
"Despicable! I have been betrayed!" The Goldy Emperor shouted in fury while remembering who were the people that had access to his bottles of alcohol, one particular person coming into his mind. However, it was too late to punish the traitor.
"Stupid fool, deception and trickery is the demonic path." The energies of death surged and a punch landed on the chest of the betrayed celestial emperor.
* * * *
Karl Gulden was paralyzed with fear, held in the hand of his trusted skeleton in the deepest and darkest corner of his vast maze of underground tunnels. Sometimes, he could even feel a distant tremor that was the echo of the grand battle that was ongoing on the surface where a city was under siege. Actually, his fear had a second factor contributing to it, Karl was very well aware that multitude of people had attempted to hide in his tunnels in search of a shelter. That was rude! He was not intruding into anyone's home and had no idea why should he tolerate an invasion of his own.
He desperately summoned his status screen, hoping that he had omitted his current area while searching and something like The Lord of Hell would be waiting for him to call upon in his time of need.
Karl Gulden
Level 2 Dungeon Core
Mana Regeneration - 100/s
Spells- [Dig], [Build]
Summons- [Skeleton(Rot) 5/s], [Skeleton(Shame) 5/s], [Slime(Entropy) 50/s]
[Experience 86/1000]
In turn, he focused his attention on every item of his status, but was left hopeless. The area was nothing much and offered him just his old trusty skeletons and a pathetic slime that he had already tried out prior to this crisis. Despite all that, Karl could not rid himself of the feeling of strangeness as he browsed his status screen.
"What is so strange about it? Every entry is normal, just like before." He thought for a while until he stopped at a single word.
"No, that is impossible. I am hallucinating." He refused to believe his feelings, but he tried to push a little more attention onto a particular word only to see an entirely different screen to pop out.
[Basic Tunnel Element 1 000Ma 0/s], [Basic Trap Element 10 000Ma 0/s], [Advanced Tunnel Element 10 000Ma 0/s], [Advanced Trap Element 100 000Ma 1/s]
[Basic Tunnel Element(2) 10 000Ma 0/s], [Basic Trap Element(2) 100 000Ma 1/s], [Advanced Tunnel Element(2) 100 000Ma 1/s], [Advanced Trap Element(2) 1 000 000Ma 10/s],
[Gunk Pile 500 000Ma 5/s], [Abandoned Graveyard 2 000 000Ma 8/s]
[Void Well(2) 10 000 000Ma 25/s], [Temple of Earth(2) 5 000 000Ma 15/s]
[Dungeon Portal(2) 100 000 000Ma 10/s]
"What is this? No tribulations? What? Buildings are fine, or it is alright as long as I am only at the level of my screens?" He fought to reign in his surprise. For some reason the ominous feeling that signified the nearing Heavenly Tribulation was completely gone.
With fervor, Karl immediately tried out the Basic Tunnel Element and this time, he could visually see holographic projections of individual elements that were honestly nothing fancy, but it was like the Holy Grail to Karl when he summoned his first rock floor tile into existence.
"It appears that building is fine, only digging was dangerous!" He wanted to jump up with joy, but was unable to because of his form. However, his joy was so tremendous that he ordered his skeleton to jump with joy for him.
"Ugh, the motion sickness." His glee was cooled down a bit a second later, but only a bit, because the implications of him being able to build dungeon structures were beyond imagination.
Naturally, a rocky tile on the ground was nothing compared to a river of lava summoned on demand, but he was getting there!
His good mood was quickly soured by a loud panting coming from a tunnel on his right. He focused his attention at it and thought if the time was right to try out some of his traps in reality. He felt an itch like a bird that wants to spread out its wing and fly for the first time.
"Quickly, let's do something classic." Karl chose one of the trap options, feeling like browsing short clips on a mobile phone, only the images were in the form of a hologram in front of him. There were spikes extending from the side of a tunnel, from above, from below, traps shooting arrows or spikes, traps crushing enemies with stones of severe weight or using springs, acid traps, all sorts of trap doors. Soon, he realized that he had no time for being choosy and quickly picked a simple trap and placed it in the tunnel that was the source of the panting sounds.
It took him under two minutes to channel the required two thousand points of juice before small holes that were almost invisible in the darkness of the tunnel appeared on the floor, he imagined with glee how the sharp spikes would extend from them and penetrate his first victim.
And then he saw a little scared boy emerge from the tunnel.
"No, wait!" Karl had second thoughts about his action, but the merciless trap still worked as intended. The spikes extended with lightning speed and penetrated the boy's body in multiple places. There was not even a single sound from him, as one of the spikes went directly through his heart. His eyes quickly turned dull, his dead body pinned in place, still staring in Karl's direction.
"That's . .. that was not supposed to happen." Karl was shocked by the brutal efficiency of his trap and the unexpected identity of his target.
"So, now I am basically a child killer." He thought heavily, all his enthusiasm completely gone.
"It was an accident, yes. An unfortunate accident." He repeated like a broken recording, as the finality of his deed hit him in full. He was too unlucky, this kind of accident never happened to good or ordinary people! The child was supposed to stop and turn around before stepping onto the trap, or the trap should have failed to trigger due to his low weight!
He did not know what he had been thinking, trying out dangerous contraptions on people fleeing the disaster above. The answer was simple, he had not been thinking at all, trying out what he could do, overwhelmed by his joy of being able to finally do something, to make a difference.
Karl stared mindlessly in front of himself for a long while before his mind regained focus.
"Fine, in the real world, shit happens. I should at least make sure that this will not happen again. That is all I can do now." In a grim mood, he dismantled the trap and the small body fell onto his rock tile with a squelch.
He had no idea why the strange world had to be so funny an brutal at the same time, it was surreal.