To the Council of the White Lotus,
Attached are my initial observations of the anomalous dungeon, code-named: Soulwrest, recently spawned east of Krimta. My previous missive disclosed the basic information currently known on Soulwrest Dungeon and emphasized its vast potential in bypassing the Tyranny of Rank. I believe the contents of the enclosed events will further hasten adjudication.
Miranda Mier, tier three
23rd of Artum
Neither Skill usage nor supplication garners the Attention of Soulwrest. How Gellamine managed to acquire a Soul Enhancing Elixir from it is unclear, but may be associated with proximity or danger to the Core. In addition, some of the Dungeons’ Minions possess a strange variant of a Mercy enchantment, giving credence to the Theory that Soulwrest is capable of creating Artifacts at will. Further research must be effectuated to determine its full extent.
24th of Artum
A great many Events occurred today. The training detail led by Captain Theodore Arcturus derailed due to a Lieutenant by the name of Christina of the house Liashen, bringing a Holy Artifact into the Dungeon’s domain. The Dungeon’s response was Cataclysmic in proportion with a Grade Four structural collapse observed and witnessed by two tier threes. I will write more as the situation resolves.
27th of Artum
The situation has been resolved in a manner I believe to be satisfactory. No lives were lost, and the dungeon does not appear to have acquired negative propensities towards humankind in general. Miss Liashen, however, withstood the brunt of the Dungeon’s Rage. She can no longer leave the Dungeon’s Domain and is Punished with discomfort and Physical Damage originating from her throat. This has granted her a destructive despondency that I have observed to be entirely Unhelpful in understanding the Scope of her Curse. I am currently attempting to cajole the stubborn child from her suicidal tendencies as I believe she may have inadvertently acquired a Direct line of communication with the Core—
----------------------------------------
My view of the letter in Miranda’s pocket disappeared as the elderly matron stepped out of my domain.
Several days had passed since the Incident. In that time I had enacted another wide-scale expansion using thirteen more stone pillars, bringing my total up to twenty-five. With nearly thirty acres of forest under my domain, I had a great view of my burgeoning forest. [Eternal Spring] redlined as it worked tirelessly to turn the young forest into a veritable jungle of life.
The additional area also netted me a small boon in the form of a river. The thing meandered lazily through the north side of my domain and if I was a betting girl, I would bet it originated from a mountain along the same range as my cliff face. I had no specific need for water as I had access to the much more plentiful water table, but there was one thing that the river granted that I couldn’t replicate.
The plant life along the river bank was more verdant in a way that more plentiful water just couldn’t explain. A closer examination of the thriving life revealed that there was a sharp drop off in their health when their roots were not within a meter of the river bed. I puzzled over that for an embarrassing amount of time, but eventually, a documentary about Egypt came back to me.
The Nile, a huge river dispensing into the Mediterranean, seasonally flooded. While such an event could be catastrophic, the Egyptians — both ancient and modern — used the natural event to enhance their harvest. The extra water was nice, but apparently, the greatest benefit came from the silt that nourished the plants all over the floodplain.
I didn’t want to flood my forest as I didn’t know how my trees would react and the act would probably kill all the young plant life. Plus, I doubted the adventurers would like training in what would likely become a swamp over time. That didn’t mean that I couldn’t collect the silt and distribute it over my domain.
Manually hauling the silt was boring and a waste of effort so instead I bifurcated the river into hundreds of tiny channels that I directed through my forest. It turned into a surprisingly hard challenge as I couldn’t directly dig where plants existed, but I persevered by rediscovering tool use. I had nothing but time, and I found the thought of an adventurer stumbling across a floating stone shovel with a really long handle digging a channel in the dirt amusing. Like my as-yet unnamed and unfinished Ceiling Horror, this would be a long-term project that I would chip away at as my domain expanded.
In other news, I thought the humans were taking the aftermath of the Incident quite well all things considered. The Captain was taking his men on daily runs through my forest and teaching lessons with a live Treant as an example. He wasn’t nearly as lackadaisical as he had been, and the direct lessons he was giving his men were already showing results. It was certainly slower than having his men split and farm the Treants, but the man seemed satisfied with the slow but safe progress.
In addition, I caught wind of a running bet among the Guards on who could find the twelfth loot chest. The prize pool grew every day with some of the more competitive members sneaking into my domain at night to search. Naturally, that got them latrine duty when the Captain discovered their antics, which tickled me silly just thinking about it.
I also made sure to restock the chests regularly with loot created from my crafting experiments. The first guard who received an enchanted item was ecstatic and the talk of company for the day. It made me sad when I learned the guy wouldn’t wear my item, but I wasn’t too miffed since selling it equated to around three weeks of the guy’s wages.
From the continuous crafting, I learned that enchantments came with a range. Resistance enchantments on level thirteen items scaled from twenty-three to thirty-three percent, while damage scaled from twelve to twenty-five. That seemed slightly unbalanced to me, but it sort of made sense since resistance was capped while damage was not. Or was it?
Anyway, I made sure to only give the soldiers enchantments that increased resistance in damage types not found in my dungeon. After some consideration, I sprinkled in some physical damage resistance since it wouldn't make sense for a training zone not to offer some gear upgrades. Plus, it appealed to me that they would wear my gear.
For myself, I kept the best enchantments. Ever since [Unstable Fusion] had stabilized, I made sure to always keep a perfect item at my level equipped and enchanted at all times. The result was a solid boost to the toughness of my monsters that was quickly overshadowing the stats granted by the Dagger.
Armor
Level 13
+71 life
+33% Fire resistance
The additional fire resistance made my Treants much more resilient to fire damage though I made sure to have a stock of different resistances available just in case.
Miranda for her part worked mostly with Christina but made a few more overtures at me. I ignored them all for a variety of reasons. She always asked for things I was uncomfortable with sharing or things I was already doing, like don’t kill people. Like...no shit. Plus, I didn’t like her, and that was reason enough for me. Overall, Christina was the only one worse off but she was alive and kicking which I took as an absolute win.
Ironically, now that I had a method to communicate I avoided it like the plague. Primarily, it was because the method had a godlike intensity to it that irked me. For example, I could tell Miranda to chill, but not only would it cost mana, but I had a feeling she would interpret it in all the wrong ways simply because of the method of delivery. I mean, Christina was convinced she was contacted by her Goddess for crying out loud. I had no idea how she had experienced my original message, but the way she had collapsed at the time made me think she hadn’t just heard words.
Speaking of, I peeked at Christina with a hint of guilt but made sure not to stare too long.
She sat at the farthest edge of my domain, with the star forged torc locked around her throat. She sipped a bowl of soup with dead eyes focused on the middle distance as Gella rubbed comforting circles on her back while several Guards joked with forced cheer around her. Removing the collar at this point would kill her so until I found an alternative, the girl was stuck with me.
While the two girls didn’t notice my attention, my little Nothic embedded in Christina’s throat certainly did. It gurgled at my brief attention which caused Christina to clutch spasmodically at her throat for what felt like the thousandth time. I reprimanded the little guy with several points of mana and it stilled, though I could still sense its excitement.
The reason it could sense me was due to my most recent upgrade:
Eldritch Intelligence:
1 Minion per floor increases in intelligence and gains access to higher physical dimensions
I had selected the little Nothic in Christina’s throat as the boss of my second floor because I felt that the increase in intelligence would make coexistence with Christina easier. That had backfired slightly as I hadn’t predicted the increase in intelligence granting the minion awareness of my perception. The first time that had happened was a disaster that nearly beheaded the poor girl but I had quickly declawed and deyed the Nothic. It still had enough tissue mass to twitch, but I couldn’t remove more without killing it.
That led me to my conclusive realization that the weakening aura humans emanated originated from their soul. Christina lacked a soul, or in better terms, her soul was trapped within an artifact. That meant that while she didn’t grant me mana, her presence didn’t fiddle with my control powers whatsoever. It also meant that I could...change her like I changed my Nothic. As disturbing as that thought was, Christina’s depression was approaching dangerous levels, and I needed to convey to her that this wasn’t the end of the world.
Plus I needed a new boss monster for the floor and my new upgrade would allow me to do just that.
Luckily, I had Betsy to test out the new upgrade to its limits so rather than traumatize the girl more, I played with Betsy some. Betsy had taken to Eldritch Intelligence with a passion. Where before she had behaved like a cute but dumb dog, she now had the dark cunning of a proper supervillain. The upgrade also allowed her to not only passively sense where my attention was focused, but also my moods and intentions. She still couldn’t speak but was at the point where she was emotive enough with her little eye stalks that we could hold a solid conversation. Of course, Betsy didn’t have much experience, so when she told me about her day I uh...kinda tuned out. There was only so much talk about rocks and caves I could handle before I lost focus.
Our time spent together allowed us to explore the true meaning of the Eldritch aspect of my new upgrade. Access to higher physical dimensions meant literally that. Betsy was now more. Instead of existing as a floating flesh sphere with eyes, Betsy now extended outward. She was still round, but there was more of her, and if she so chose she could rotate along an extraphysical axis and present other parts of her body to the standard three physical dimensions.
Man, was she beautiful.
I had no trouble viewing Betsy in her full glory. From a human’s perspective, the sight of my little beholder was unsettling at best. Without being able to see higher dimensions, her flesh twisted in physically impossible contortions before vanishing and being replaced by more impossible flesh. I had to focus to not see Betsy properly, but when I tried it reminded me of animations of three-dimensional fractals. I didn’t do that often though, because Betsy’s new coruscating complexity was a sight to behold. It opened to me a whole new world of crafting possibilities and I immediately dove into upgrading her.
Betsy hadn’t lost any mass, but to a human, she would appear small. That wouldn’t do, so the first order of business was to bulk her up. Next, I added further optimizations to her flying system to allow her to rotate and slide along non-euclidean axes. Her eyes were fine as they were, but in the higher dimensions, I shaped her body to contain a large hole, thereby granting Betsy the ability to dodge attacks aimed directly at her eye.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
When Betsy flexed her new muscles, her body rotated in hyperspace. In the three base physical dimensions, however, it appeared as if Betsy’s main eye folded in on itself to form a donut-like shape. Betsy adored the new upgrade and spent nearly an entire day morphing from spherical to donut mode. It made me happy that she loved the upgrade so much, so I worked a little longer to give her the ability to ‘retract’ her eye stems and one final upgrade to her environment to give my little girl a challenge.
See, once I became aware of the higher dimensions, I easily noticed them everywhere. The rock making up my dungeon was littered with holes and divots that perfectly explained why some areas felt weaker or less stable than others. Almost exclusively, stress cracks occurred in both physical and extraphysical dimensions and the mere discovery of this allowed me to reinforce my walls by an order of magnitude.
In Betsy’s chamber, however, I did the opposite. Instead of reinforcing the rock, I dug tunnels through the stone. I fiddled with Betsy’s extraplanar form until she could contort herself out of the physical and fly into the tunnels for moments of safety or to cause confusion.
That — perhaps more than the donut modification — delighted Betsy the most. Her chamber was now nearly four times larger than it had been, and she relished finding the nooks and crannies I hid within the tunnels. It became a sort of game between us. I would extend her chamber and hide an item and she would spend hours or days searching through the maze which was frankly more convoluted than my physical maze.
It was as the saying went: a drunk man will find his way home, but a drunk bird may get lost forever. In higher dimensions, even sober navigation was hard.
When all was said and done, my newly empowered Beholder’s status sheet looked like so:
Multi Crafted Nothic (Beholder)
+55 life
+21 Radiant damage
Level: 13
Level Acquired: 1
Life: 651/651 (1273/1273)
Resistances: 63% fire resistance, 35% physical/mental, 30% all
Rend: 83-168 Physical Damage
Rotting Gaze: 62-126 Chaos Damage
Molten Gaze: 33-67 Fire Damage
Frost Gaze: 33-67 Ice Damage
Darkness Gaze: 33-67 Shadow Damage
Slashing Gaze: 33-67 Physical Damage
Radiant Gaze: 33-67 Radiant Damage
Petrifying Gaze: slows targets
[Spin Dash]: Dash forward bouncing and damaging anything you hit
41-84 Physical damage
Cooldown: 25 minutes
[Ethereal Shell]: Gain a shield that increases resistances by 30% and maximum resistances by 5%
Shield breaks after taking 174 damage
Cooldown: 3 minutes
Shield duration: 40 seconds
Onto more serious matters, I used my new knowledge to shift my cilia out of the physical realm entirely. My three redundant strategies to prevent people from reading my dungeon flows worked great so far, but completely removing my cilia from the physical realm added a fourth nigh-unbreakable layer of defense. I still remembered the disappointment I felt when Martin cheesed my maze and was determined that such an event would never occur again.
All this was to say, I had grown proficient at fiddling with the higher dimensions over the couple of days since the Incident. I felt confident that I could do something great to not only give my second floor a formidable boss but to help Christina acclimate all in one fell swoop.
I recalled all the stories I loved with characters who could hear a voice in their head. An ancillary intelligence. An Ancilla so to speak. In less fantastical stories, this concept often took the form of ‘the guy in the chair’. A nerd back in HQ who hacked into the main frame and guided the main character to overcome the bad guys. In sci-fi books, AIs generally stole the cake, but in many fantasy stories, the Ancilla was often biological.
Which gave me such a great idea.
During the night, I reached out to Christina and gently nudged the Collar to guide the girl out and away from other people. She objected, but tough. I had things to do and I couldn’t do them when she was surrounded by people.
The first thing I did was reach out to the Nothic in her throat and bring it mostly out of the physical, leaving only the barest sliver embedded in the collar to maintain the soul link. Christina relaxed at this, which was nice. She then started crying which was less nice, so I enacted the second part of the plan.
< Warning core instability detected: -1,289 mana >
< Mana: 1,311/2,816 >
The Nothic hissed in glee as my titanic message slammed into it with the force of an airliner. I could almost see its neurons fry as my intent seared groves into its psyche. It wasn’t just a message. It was a Command. My will made corporeal. To a normal Nothic, it may have destroyed it, but my new boss’ mind was made of sterner stuff.
The minion wouldn’t just serve as my second boss. It would guide and protect Christina in her time as my guest. It would be pleasant, friendly, and helpful. Provide for her in a way that only a true Ancilla could. Giving knowledge and advice freely with no ulterior motives. Such a being deserved a name, and only one would do.
My boss recovered from the onslaught and with a shudder — and my permission — triggered [Induce Vision]. I saw nothing as the magic of the Collar was personal, but Christina perked up at a vision or voice only she could hear. Her tears dried and I rippled in satisfaction as I recalled the greatest character in all of gaming.
Don't make a girl a promise... if you know you can't keep it.
Little Cortana continued to speak with Christina through the Collar as she jiggled her tiny mass at me as if giving me a nod that she had this handled. Of course she did. She was Cortana.
A wind blew through my domain as I stretched before settling in to build my second boss. Cortana wouldn’t just be a voice in Christina’s head. She would be an eldritch horror of her own. I had access to Treants and Nothic and a head full of Cthulhu mythos on what those two concepts created when mixed.
I focused on Cortana and triggered [Summon Treant] and [Summon Totem of the Roller Turtle]. Roots and branches burst into existence around a green gemstone in the extradimensional space as I doubled down with my will. Nothic flesh wove together with hard Treant bark as the hybrid creature took shape.
Within a ring surrounding the oblivious girl, I focused on the air. My will coalesced onto the very atoms and their deadly payload within. Electrons were too small to control, but I knew what force they responded to. I flexed, dragging the air passed itself and building a static charge with each application.
The air hummed with potential, and the hairs on Christina’s head rose in response. I pushed harder, dragging the electrons from the ground and into the air around my newest creation. Cortana’s body was physical, but she was fundamentally a creature of the mind. Of thoughts and impulses. Circuit boards and logic.
What better element to attune her to than lightning itself?
I channeled my will into Cortana and lightning shattered the night. The white-hot energy surged towards Christina, but at the last possible moment, it veered, twisting into the fourth dimension and redirecting on Cortana.
< You have merged two minions into < Eyelit Effigy >! >
< You have crafted < Weapon > >
Before the scorched bark and warped flesh could cool, I channeled [Unstable Fusion] and Cortana was complete.
Lightning Crafted Eyelit Effigy (Cortana)
+55 life
+23 Lightning damage
Level: 13
Level Acquired: 13
Life: 706/706
Resistances: 55% physical/mental; 50% to all resistances; 43% fire resistance
Static Strike: 75-152 Lightning Damage
Minor Restore: 45-91 life restored
Rotting Gaze: 33-68 Chaos Damage
Mind Flay: 33-68 Mental Damage
5m cooldown
[Spin Dash]: Dash forward bouncing and damaging anything you hit
41-84 Physical damage
Cooldown: 25 minutes
[Ethereal Shell]: Gain a shield that increases resistances by 30% and maximum resistances by 5%
Shield breaks after taking 174 damage
Cooldown: 3 minutes
Shield duration: 40 seconds
A great invisible sycamore overshadowed the girl from behind. A single flexible branch extended like a leash towards and into the girl’s throat while avoiding her flesh in a similar sort of fashion to a Klein bottle. The main trunk was covered in a hide-like black and gray bark that sprouted spines at random intervals. Out of several of the spines, but mostly from the branches, small eyes sprouted. Their half-lidded electric blue irises studied the world with the half-lidded inquisitiveness of the newly born.
The stats were similar to Betsy’s with the primary attack dealing upwards of a hundred damage with the secondaries dealing around half that. The difference was that lightning was bound to be rough to tank. I had touched an outlet once and my arm had felt jittery for half an hour afterward. A continuous electric shock might be able to chain stun an adventurer if Cortana could wrap her branches around them. Especially if she managed to grab the head. Whether that was better or worse than having your flesh rot, burn, freeze and whatever darkness felt like, I didn’t know, but it was still a formidable creature.
There was one small problem. The huge weight of Cortana’s new form pressed down on the soil and disturbed the ground in the real world. Having her presence noticeable and the fact that Christina couldn’t move now was a deal breaker.
I could fashion a winch system as I had with Betsy, but that seemed limiting since I wanted Christina to go where she pleased within my dungeon. In essence, it would be optimal if Cortana was weightless and the girl could drag around the eldritch tree behind her like a bizarre party balloon.
Despite the silly imagery, I set about working to achieve this. In the upper branches, I selected several eyes and expanded them. The lens and all the vitreous fluid were discarded as I thickened the cornea to form a thick shell. I severed the tiny optic nerve — which made me think Cortana would see well from only one of her eyes — and replaced it with a modified kidney. The thick sap-like blood would flow into the organ and water would be extracted at a slow but steady rate.
Then as gently as I could, I stole Christina’s dagger and a few copper coins from her purse. I brought up the metal into the deflated eye sacks and inserted the two separate metals into the small pool of water around the kidney. I then spent several more minutes molding the flesh such that the water contained enough electrolytes to carry a charge, and the two electrodes were separated physically.
I nudged Cortana and with only a few points of mana, I got her to use her [Static Strike] on the electrodes. It took several tries, but Cortana eventually managed to electrocute the water and initiate electrolysis. Bubbles gushed from the two electrodes and floated up and out of the water. The first column diverted into a tube that led out into the open air, while the second filled the eye sack.
To test, I had Cortana spark the gas coming out of the outflow, but when a small explosion echoed through my forest, I hastily switched the electrodes. The hydrogen explosion had singed the bark and when the outflow of oxygen poured over the live ember, it ignited into a ghostly blue flame. I was about to extinguish the flame but realized that the damage over time was less than the regeneration provided by [Eternal Spring], and it looked damn cool.
Even if I would be the only one to appreciate it.
The eye sack slowly filled with hydrogen gas and ballooned up. Just one eye sack was never going to lift the several-tonne boss monster, but now that I had a blueprint for the organ, I could replicate it a hundredfold all over the top of my eldritch tree.
By the end of the night, my second boss took flight.
----------------------------------------
The following day the Captain organized his men in a training session that had them run throughout the entire forest in what I could only interpret as open sadism. I was happy though since by the time the light had dimmed they had granted me nearly enough mana to level up. During the night, my forest swayed and pushed me over the edge.
< Mana 2,816/2,816 >
< You have leveled up! >
< You are now level 15! >
< Mana 0/3,327 >
< You are now tier 3! Congratulations! >
< +1 to maximum floor count! >
< Consuming your core now elevates sentients to the 4th tier! >
< Floor 1 creature count: 14/14 >
< Floor 2 creature count: 14/14 >
< Floor 3 creature count: 0/14 >
A grand shift rippled through my domain as my second floor split. On the boundary separating the two parts of my domain, a shimmering barrier formed as my cilia rippled into an intricate fractal matrix I couldn’t hope to control or understand the purpose of.
[Eternal Spring] began to retreat into my domain, but I clamped down on it. My forest was my second floor, and any future floors I obtained would exist elsewhere. Plus, it wouldn’t do for Christina to be awakened in the night because Cortana had to relocate. There would be time later to decide where to place my third floor, and what minions it would contain, but for now:
< Upgrades pending: 1 >
Refine Carbonite Ampoule:
45 minute cooldown
Refine Quicksilver Ampoule:
45 minute cooldown
Refine Transparent Alumina Ampoule:
45 minute cooldown
End of Arc 2