Pandora returned to her matte golden sphere form and floated next to me. the Void was terrifying. I imagined what powers a magician that wielded such forces could summon. Maybe someone already wrote such a daunting tale. Maybe it could be easy to reach, for a chosen few [1]. But not to me.
Because I was stuck in a fantasy world with a crappy System and even worse administrators.
I dimmed my light, then decided to just throw the spear up so it stuck to the cavern ceiling and shed light from there.
"Are you alright?" I asked the trio.
"Physically? Yes," Sariandi replied with an obvious "but".
"The liches, did they damage Fulgen too much?"
"We lost good people," The High Queen lamented. "They perished doing their duties. No, no lasting damage, mother. You saved this unworthy elf, again."
"That's what mothers do. They rescue you from a pinch, they scold you when you misbehave. Remember that. How's Autumn and Winter?"
"They're working. Helping with the governance," she replied. "Thank you."
We shifted our gaze to Spring. "We were taken in the middle of the night. There wasn't a fight."
"Our home isn't well protected," Enantinos replied. "And they once again knocked me cold with their mind magic."
A fifth voice came from behind me. "There are no more clones of the lich. All the treatises on their necromantic magic are with Queen Snowdrop now."
I felt the divinity coming from him and looked behind myself to see Sir Ian McKellen... Gandalf? No. Just a striking resemblance.
"Vukdon?" I asked.
The two elves knelt. Enantinos was gawking. Spring punched him in the front leg shoulder and he figured out he should kneel too. I didn't move.
The God of Magic found a rock and sat on it. "Yes, I'm the one. I thank you for finally cornering that lich and making him release my cohort."
I was waiting for him to light up a pipe, but that didn't happen. He waited for me to come back to the conversation, "You're welcome. I believe he forced you to keep your silence."
"Yes. He killed my priests and destroyed my churches. A happy accident allowed him to forge an artifact to capture souls and divinity. Forgotten, only a few mages kept the faith in me alive. I lost my other domains and kept only magic."
"Marlowe," I said under my breath.
"He's one of them," Vukdon chuckled.
I couldn't help my suspicion. "What can I do for you, Vukdon?"
He smiled, "I issued a quest without a reward. It was your [Wisp of Creation] that destroyed it, but I don't think you should go without one. The Perk is yours as you've beaten the former owner fair and square. But I believe this will help you a lot with the others."
He produced from nowhere an ornate gemmed vase. The porcelain was glazed white and had golden runes etched all around it. It was a true work of art.
> Kel'Caldor's True Phylactery
>
> Price: Inestimable.
>
> The phylactery of Kel'Caldor, a lich that once sat at the true pinnacle of magic, the first bearer of the [Master of Magic] title. His soul was devoured by the Void without destroying the vessel. It was blessed by Vukdon and endowed with great powers.
>
> * Indestructible.
> * Immovable unless picked up by the soul-bound person.
> * Soul-binds on pickup to a mortal soul.
> * Generates 25,000 MP per hour.
> * Stores up to 50,000,000 MP. Can only be recharged by MP regeneration.
> * The soul-bound person can only share the MP pool of this item with their contracted minions, regardless of range.
"I also want to be a part of what you'll construct with the dungeon core. I believe that this item can convince one of the other liches to serve in that capacity. But I must go now. Here, take it."
I picked up the vase and felt it bind to me. I was more attracted to the indestructibility and cool Mjollnir effect than the massive MP pool, actually. I could tell how much it had in the tank and it was empty.
"It is an even better reward, Vukdon. Thank you. I'll have Marlowe build a church for you in Cymeria."
The god nodded, "I appreciate. There's a centaur shaman I want to become my high priest. I'll go talk to him now." He closed his eyes and vanished.
The urn entered my item box. I clapped my hands and resummoned my spear. "Time to go home, children."
The whale express was now smaller but just as magical. I dropped Sariandi in Fulgen first. Together, the rulers of the three allied nations paid their respects to the dead elven guardians. Then I took the married couple home. Since they had no defenses to speak of, the liches didn't kill anyone.
I was finally home. Too bad I had to use my [Hero] Perks but it was worth it. I had a divine guarantee that Kel'Caldor was no longer a threat. One less lich leeching off the people leaching them from their talents. How many mages did we lose because Kel'Caldor stole the children?
Terrible.
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A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
I ordered a temple to Vukdon to be erected along with the three other great temples. After talking to the half-goblin-half-harpy priest of BIt, I traveled all over the three continents, making visits and spreading the word of the marvelous plains kingdom. I also funded churches of Bit in major cities, spreading the dogma of the Guardian Urchin as one that reigns in the monsters and keeps the worst of them away from us civilized (snicker) people. That Bit wished the people to strive and level up, to grow stronger and stem the tides of monsters. On how monster outbreaks were caused not out of divine malice but as proof that the people were slacking in maintaining their Dungeons. Back to his full power, Vukdon had his own resurgence. "Magic is returning to the world", said the rumors.
In Windemere I learned that Kel'Caldor leveled Castle Windemere, killing everyone inside. But that is a tale for later.
Back in Cymeria, I kept interrogating the lich ghosts. Showing them the true phylactery caused some to go berserk and some to become so sad they shut down entirely. Those two kinds were irrecoverable and I fed them to Pandora. The others had reactions along that sliding scale, with the not-that-angry and not-that-sad on the ends also not fit for service. Negotiations with the liches went in rounds, the culling happening without their knowledge, my [Diplomat] proficiency rising enough for me to pick two new abilities.
> Diplomat [ 347 ]. Select two abilities.
>
> * Befriend: You can make offers that are clearly detrimental to you to shift reactions by extra (Proficiency/30) steps and allowing further tests. Has no chance of enraging the other party.
> * Convert: You can make personal offers that entice an individual to come into your service. If openly offered, there's no chance to enrage. Add (Proficiency/5) to your tests.
These two abilities allowed me to make concessions in successive rounds of negotiation and win over the ghosts. Their loyalties were still divided but I finally found a group that sat in the middle of the sliding scale and were pragmatic enough to understand that the days of Kel'Caldor were over. It was up to them to decide if they wanted their own days to be over as well or not.
I'd finally decided on a candidate for the Dungeon Core. That meant all the other six hundred plus liches became Wisp food. And without any time restraint, he would be a Dungeon core forever. I removed all the memories of being Kel'Caldor's clone, leaving only the intellect and base Attributes mostly intact. They were damaged as a few details like Perks and Classes were removed but he would meet the criteria to be a Dungeon Core. The lich build guide recommended too few points in physical Attributes and an abundance on the other seven.
I also kept my baking experiments and trained extensively with my bladed wings.
> Baker [ 155 ]. Select two abilities.
>
> * Masterful Kneading: Your dough yields and is (Proficiency/5)% more homogeneous.
> * Filling Buyoancy: Fillings are (Proficiency/3)% more buoyant in the dough.
>
>
>
> Blades [ 267 ]. Select four abilities.
>
> * Reach II: Increase your weapon's reach by (Proficiency/21) centimeters.
> * Reach III: Increase your weapon's reach by (Proficiency/17) centimeters.
> * Reach IV: Increase your weapon's reach by (Proficiency/13) centimeters.
> * Riposte II: If you parry a blow, you can attack immediately with a damage penalty equal to (100 - Proficiency/4)%
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I took the priests on a trip through the catacombs. We chose the innermost room, where the sanctum was to be the core room. After clearing it, Bit's priest took a chest out of his storage ring and took a crystal sphere covered in geometric magical diagrams. Differently from the wizardly circles, these glyphs formed stars, hexagons, depending on which lines you followed. He gave me the core and I put the soul inside, activating it.
The sphere soul-bound to me, then each priest etched their deity's holy symbol on empty spots across the core. Bit, Galbarar, Quelthpion, and Vukdon would be able to directly modify the Dungeon within some parameters, as well as gather faith from the people that died in here. Killing people wasn't the main purpose but it would happen by design. This Dungeon was intended to be a trial to select those worthy of becoming King or Queen of Aquilonia.
That was my master plan. I would avoid nepotism by making sure only those that passed the trials here would be nominated heirs to Aquilonia's dynasty. I also set the rules to only allow changes to those that could move Kel'Caldor phylactery inside the core room.
I would be forevermore the Dungeon Master of this core even in my future lives. It had an interface where I could set things like monster spawn rate, regions, and so on. It had the power to store and replicate items stored using materials harvested. The core could be used to dig the dungeon, maintain it, collect corpses automatically, and even store and grant Exp.
Once we made sure everything was working as intended, the priests went back to the surface. I spent a lot of time fiddling with the Dungeon settings. I designed the obstacles, riddles, reverse riddles where the trial taker would propose a riddle to the core to answer, then give the answer to improve the collection, tests of history, geography, mathematics, economy. I gave the core books on these subjects to replicate and hand out as rewards.
Each challenger would need to make an offering to the four deities and enter the upper level, the easiest of the trials. Finishing that would grant them a boon from the Gods. Those that passed the first trial could enter the second one, where they would gain a good Perk for their Path. Then they could challenge the fourth trial, where they would receive an enchanted item. The fifth trial would grant a title, bestowed by either Bit or Vukdon, depending on the build. Bit would favor the martial, physical ones while Vukdon would reward the spiritual and magical builds.
We had an obvious problem right out of the bat. Aquilonia had goblins, gnomes on the short end, and giants on the tall one. The Dungeon needed to be one-size-fits-all. The Gods offered help with an enchantment that would subtly change the challenger's height, making all of them the same height but with the illusion that the Dungeon was custom-fit for them.
Those that conquered all five trials could try the sixth. By no coincidence, I named it the Trial of Yznarian Ascendancy. While in the former five one could quit the trial and exit the Dungeon, the sixth trial was "do or die", literally. It would contain the most devious traps and powerful monsters, scaled to the challenger's level. The hardest challenges like solving quadratic expressions, answering questions that prayed on the historical misconceptions, enduring heat, cold, and other magic types, and solving moral riddles like the trolley problem and other epistemic dilemmas.
One of them was based on a true fact.
> You are the King/Queen and discover that your heir has been possessed by an evil spirit, one that can bring great calamity to your kingdom and the world. You can kill the evil spirit by slaying your heir. Do you?
The sixth trial challengers couldn't lie in these riddles. They would be under the scrutiny of the Gods themselves. Each deity could make their own challenge after those and then grant their blessing to the aspiring ruler. Only by gaining all four blessings would one be added to the dynasty as an heir.
This would avoid nepotism in the succession. Someone would need to bribe the four deities and fool the Core to put someone unworthy on the throne. That was the point. The trials were not a death trap. They were designed to test the challenger's personality and ethics. The monsters and traps would scale with one's level.
I left the Core room and sealed it behind me, activating the many wards. There was no such rule that the core needed to be exposed with a path to open air or even accessible from inside the Dungeon through a secret passage or something. That was beyond stupid. It was resilient but not indestructible. Setting such artificial rules would only weaken the purpose of the Dungeon.
Finally, Snowdrop's legacy was complete. The spherical crystal core, the War Globe, floated above the phylactery, gathering soul energy and preparing monsters and traps.
Preparing the Dungeon burned through another ten years of my twenty-two. I now had a bit more than a decade to find someone who could go through these trials and emerge as a worthy heir to the throne of Aquilonia.
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[1]: For you, it is.