Thomas had walked to work tonight, as he did every night. Virtually it was his only form of exercise outside of the stairs he had to take up and down from his shitty apartment. It wasn't a bad night, kind of busy but not insanely so, and only a few customers every 20 minutes was the Tuesday he found himself in. Listening to music on his headphones, while reading some fiction books was how he filled in the gaps between people. Covered in scars and rather tall most people would just get their stuff and get out from under his one eyed gaze. Thomas found it was nice, since people were horrible. People stole, lied, and hurt everyone else. He'd given up on finding anything akin to true friendship, and was content to just work, pay the bills and sleep.
It was a nice night, and only a few minutes before closing as he was getting things out away for the night, that the duo entered, a scraggly thin woman with needle marks on her arm and her face picked at, most likely one of the drug addicts that frequented this store for early morning snacks or cigarettes. Accompanying the young girl was a slightly thicker but likewise needle marked man, left hand swollen from poor circulation and in his right Thomas saw the handgun. As he raised his gun Thomas pulled his own firing four shots as the would-be robber fired five. Both sets found their mark.
While bleeding out Thomas looked at the girl, shocked and worrying for her very dead ex lover, he thought about just letting go himself but just for the sake of spite pushed the emergency button under the shelf, locking the doors and calling emergency services. She'd get an accomplice charge, he smiled while spitting up some blood, justice for once would be nice, he doubted he'd survive to see it.
He pushed his one earbud back in and pushed the play button. Listening to music his thoughts turned to all the people who had ever done wrong to him, so many, too many to count. "I'd like to get back at them, make them pay the price for their actions." He thought to himself, Feeling weaker by the second. Breathing was hard, Thomas figured he had a punctured lung, the pain wasn't too bad, he'd been through worse, far far worse. When he was jumped by his neighbors who were after money, or when he was ran over by his brother, or when his dad threw that pipe at him that took his right eye. Everyone got away with it.
"If I survive, I'm going to make them all pay" he said it aloud this time but with the amount of blood coming up and his labored breathing it wasn't very audible. "and you, if I die I'm going to be your tormentor in the afterlife." Thomas spoke as he pointed his finger at his deceased killer. Things started to get dark, cold enveloping his limbs and working it's way in. The comforting sensation of death and the nothingness that follows embraced Thomas, and he embraced it back. "Everyone dies eventually some die more than once. I've been there before, I doubt I'll be back again." His last thought to himself before the light faded from his eye.
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Thomas didn't know how long he was there, or where "there" was. Thomas knew that the pain of being alive was gone, his body no longer ached as it had in his life. All that was left was time to think, and nothingness in darkness. Time held no meaning to the dead, but Thomas began to wander of why he could still think. A light tug on his chest got his attention. A voice from nowhere, from the void all around, with no intonation of gender, no accent.
"Establishing Soul Bond"
Every bit of Thomas was in agony, he flailed and screamed voiceless as liquid fire burned through every nerve, every cell of his being.
"Failure Failure Failure Failure FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE"
The pain began to dim around his eye, but everything else still hurt. Nothing could compare and words could not describe it. But consciousness held out. Pain tolerance keeping him aware, even in the embrace of death, suffering through his agony with no voice or body.
"99.3% failure, host soul acquisition attempt terminated. Transferring consciousness."
Thomas opened his eyes, both of them. The image he saw was painful, until he tried them one at a time, in one eye he saw a dark room with a small black bug sitting on a throne. The other eye, the one he had lost in his last life, was a purple tinted screen of sorts. Everything he focused on with it would be revealed in detail, the name of the item the atomic composition of what he was looking at and some arbitrary number listed as MC: X. He focused his attention on the black bug with the throne.
Fragmented Dungeon Core Shard (Active) (Obscured 23:58:55:20 CREATE PATHWAY TO CORE OR BE ELIMINATED) (Thomas) (55¹⁰ 399-Divinium)
Currently housing soul #3896732524320721881, the only dungeon core that didn't overwrite it's host soul entirely in the batch seeded the tenth month eleventh day forty-fifth year of the Grand Hegemony by the Gods of Illikita. Being watched closely by the gods as Core (Thomas) is different than any other Dungeon Core to date.
The walls in the room shake as Thomas makes acknowledgement of the fact he's being watched, he's reincarnated as a dungeon, and that he will be eliminated if he doesn't find a way to make a tunnel to the outside somehow. Fortunately, this kind of fiction was something Thomas loved to read in his past life. So he started with the basics.
Nothing happened when he thought menu, status or anything of that style, getting frustrated he raised his non existent hand to the sky and flipped the gods the bird of freedom. Punching a hole in the shape of his imaginary hand, middle finger extended of course, through the ceiling, floor and roof of the apparent building above him. Light shone in on the Crystal filling Thomas with warmth and energy, however, with a middle finger shaped skylight not much energy. Looking at himself he noticed his death timer was gone, replaced with a slowly filling energy meter, though it lacked any kind of numbers and the rate was probably only .01% a minute. Thomas decided it would take a while, and wanted to go to sleep until it filled up, wondering if he could even sleep. Then everything went black again.
~A.N.- From chapter two on we will be going first person on an adventure. I decided to write this since I had an idea and no others I read followed the idea. We'll learn about formatting and stuff as we go and see if I can't have a full book by the time I end up going on forever hiatus.