Shel looked around in the darkness, she was surprised to note that she could actually see fairly well even though she could not determine a light source. When focusing on the stuff around her she realized that she could see everything within a sphere around herself, even things hidden behind other items and behind her head. That was crazy weird. She must not be using her eyes to see? What kind of person is a Dungeon core? She was not sure from the stories she had read or heard before. Maybe a kind of rock person? Well whatever it is, she was one now, she would just need to accept it and figure it out, especially if it meant she could somehow reconnect with the girls and give them another chance at life.
Nothing around her looked all that useful, it was all broken stuff like mugs and plates, several pieces of metal of some kind. Was she laying in a garbage dump? Her fingers curled around a fist sized rock. She brought it up to her face and looked at the rock, it was a rock, nothing special. She absently went to put it in her pocket, ‘drat this dress has no pockets’ She thought, so she set it down. She picked up and looked at a cup, it was handmade clay with a rough pattern applied to the side. With a thought the mug disappeared into sparkles.
New Object Discovered – please select if this is a
Shel looked at the prompt, ‘this is an object’ she thought.
1 DP Awarded with quiet ding noise.
“Oh, here we go” Shel exclaimed, “so another?”
She looked at a scrap of metal and it glittered into nothingness.
New Object Discovered – please select if this is a
“Resource”
New Resource Discovered – Copper
“hmm, no Points, so resources are treated differently?” Shel wondered. She did not need a broken piece of metal, but copper sounded useful. She was surrounded by junk so she was sure she could find 10 ‘things.’ She looked around some more, she picked several items and popped them with her mind selecting object for each one.
1 DP awarded
1 DP awarded
1 DP awarded
1 DP awarded
1 DP awarded
1 DP awarded
Object Found 2/5 – Mug
‘No points for the second cup, but it looks like three more until some sort of milestone.’ Shel thought, she looked around for more mugs but did not see any more. ‘three more objects to go, to hit ten points.’ She found a few more junk items and soon hit 10 points.
With the sound of a stopped vinyl record spinning back up to speed the music started and a screen popped up.
Congratulations you have completed this stage of the tutorial.
Please return to the Tutorial screen to continue the Tutorial.
Shel opened the menu and selected the slowly blinking text that said Continue in the Tutorial tab.
There was a gentle whooshing sound and then she heard the same voice from before.
“Objects can be built from blueprints using Dungeon Points, you can either use the Dungeon Store, if available, to purchase blueprints for objects, or find enough similar objects and absorb them to create your own.” the voice over said.
“Once you have a blueprint or plan for an object you can create one using Mana and whatever resource types you have found. The rarity, durability, and density of the resource will increase the Mana cost.” the images changed to show piles of gold, silver, steel, and sandstone. It then changed to a line drawing of a simple knife.
“If you have a blueprint for a dagger, and multiple resource types such as copper and glass you can create both a glass dagger or a copper dagger.” the voice continued. The image showed a copper ingot and a sheet of rough glass, it then showed the knife from the line drawing coming off the page as a glass dagger and then a copper dagger.
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“The resource applied extends the object blueprint into an object made of the resource.”
The music faded and the screen cleared out from in front of her vision.
Please find 5 new resources to continue. Flashed up for a second and then faded.
The music ended and Shel was left in darkness again. Looking around she started selecting broken bits of trash and absorbing them, selecting resource for each.
New Resource Discovered – Sandstone
Resources Found 2/5
New Resource Discovered – Wool
Resources Found 3/5
New Resource Discovered – Parchment
Resources Found 4/5
New Resource Discovered – Granite
Resources Found 5/5
A rising tinkling tone sounded.
Congratulations you have completed this stage of the tutorial.
Please return to the Tutorial screen to continue the Tutorial.
Level Up – Level 1 Achieved
Congratulations system user, you have somehow survived to the first level, System awards available.
New Skill – [Absorb Area]
1 Additional Skill point earned new total -49
That was it, nothing else happened, Shel was staring into the darkness again, somehow she knew it was pitch dark.. yet she could see fine.
She accessed her status screen again, she could see it now listed her level as 1 she also had a line she had failed to notice before that said Available Skill points -49
“Great, I am in the hole for 49 more levels? This must be what Josephine meant by point deficit.”
Under her skill list she now saw [Absorb] and [Absorb Area] along with [Dungeons without Borders] and [Peek A Boo Core].
Closing her status she triggered Absorb Area, there was a cascade of alerts about new objects and resources found.
‘How does it decide between an object and resource, previously it was asking me for each item when I used only Absorb.’ She thought to herself.
Shel looked around and realized that a large circle of space had opened up around her. ‘So I cleared a volume around me, but it was not a sphere.’ It looked like a dome had opened up in the dump. Shel looked at the floor under her feet and noticed she was standing on rock. She triggered absorb while focusing on the floor, nothing happened. “OK, so I cannot absorb a piece of something I am standing on? Or maybe it is too big?” she mused. Shel opened the Help interface and looked up Absorb, there was an entry, it said that absorb will not take a piece of something out of something larger, she would need to be able to absorb the entire object.
Absorb - Attempt to transmute an object into DP, possibly learning about the object in the process. Repeated exposure to the same object will allow learning it a as an available blueprint. When a unique item is encountered absorb will prompt the user to select if they wish to absorb it as an object or resource. You cannot absorb a piece of a larger object, for example you cannot absorb the diamond from a ring as a resource separate from the ring itself, you will need to manually separate each sub object from the primary object before absorbing them.
Absorb Area - Trigger a simplified version of the Absorb skill, this will attempt to absorb all objects found in a sphere around the user. The system will automatically allocate whether the items are an object or resource based on the system’s previous experience. If you wish to make sure an item is treated as a resource or object, use the Absorb skill on the individual item instead of Absorb Area.
“I see, so if I want control of how something is treated as I absorb it I should use the singular skill otherwise the system uses it own judgment. So I guess that I need to determine how much I can trust the system, I wonder how old it is.” she mused out-loud.
A new message popped up
Current system age 3.7M years
Current User count 11
Most users connected at one time 7.12B
Objects in database 9,764,509,231,953
Admins active 1
“Well that seems fairly sufficient” Shel said.
She wondered about the user count, how could there be only 11 current users, when it had a previous high of billions? Josephine did say there was a planet wide extinction event from a war or something. However it was hundreds of years prior, right? Even if everyone died from the cataclysm, why would there only be a handful of people connected now? Surely people had recovered eventually from the disaster? However these questions did not matter at this time, Shel had other things to think about so she dismissed it, she would ruminate on this idea later when she had some more time to consider it properly. She had her own disaster to recover from, being dead and thrown into this new situation.
“OK, so I can level up from Absorbing, that is a dungeon thing to do so I guess that is what I need to do. I will also need to figure out where I am, and where I can get food and water, and where to sleep tonight.” Shel mused.
She walked over to the edge of the dome she had carved from the rubbish and triggered another area absorb, more alerts popped up as she walked down a growing tunnel through the trash. The rock beneath her feet was sloping strongly downhill.
“Can I suppress the alerts?” she wondered out loud, there was a muted ding and the alerts stopped.
After minute of walking the trash stopped absorbing. The tunnel stopped at a wall of debris. Shel reached out to touch the items in front of her and her hand stopped just before the wall, it felt like she was touching a perfectly smooth pane of glass.
“Hmm, something is blocking it off?”
Shel turned and triggered absorb and the skill worked, it was not a complete dome this time, it was cut off by the glass however it did work, Shel ran her hand along the glass and started following it in the new direction looking for a way around it while absorbing. If she could not find a way out of this pile of ancient trash she would be in trouble.