"What the fuck! I mean, what the actual, fuck!"
I had expected a lot of things since the blue text had started appearing in my vision, but what I saw as I exited the tunnel was nowhere on the list. I would have been happy with a cave. Hell, I would have even been content with a hollow space in the dirt as a starter dungeon. What I got was the end of the world.
I had thought I was floating out of a tunnel and into the light as some part of the reincarnation process, turns out I was floating out of a tunnel into the light because there was no friggen gravity. When I adjusted to the sharp edge light and shadow, the first thing I had seen had been rocks. From huge jagged mountains to small pebbles and drifting dust, my surroundings was a sea of rocks floating through the air, well floating through the lack of air. The sharp edge light and shadow began to make sense when I realized I was in space. I was floating through space in what looked like an asteroid field straight out of the worst sci-fi movies. Against a backdrop of stars, a sea of spinning boulders floated through the sharp sunlight. I could just make out a sun through the debris. Shafts of bright sunlight, cut by deep shifting shadows made the whole place look surreal.
"Get a grip," I muttered to myself, "asteroid field don't actually look like this." Real asteroid fields are sparse, each asteroid hundreds or thousands of kilometers apart. These space rocks were clustered right on top of each other. In fact they were so close they were actually hitting each other. Off to one side I could see what looked like a slow motion collision as one spinning mountain began to crumple into another. Jagged cracks spread out from the point of impact and great chunks of stone began to calve off and spin away. It looked like slow motion, but that had to be trick of perpspective. I had no way to judge how far away or how large the asteroids were, but they had to be pretty huge. This was being confirmed as I watched because one long flat flake of stone had been spinning end over end as it flew towards me and my perspective was adjusting as each second the "flake" of stone appeared larger and larger. In fact..
"Ah hell," I said with resignation as the massive slab of stone spun closer. "I guess I'm going to find out what a baseball feels like too," and with a soundless smack I was sent flying.
200 impact damage!
"Ow, ow, ow, ouch," I shrieked as I went spinning through the void. "That friggen hurt!"
182 impact damage!
"Ow, ow, ow.."
161 impact damage!
...
Location Undetermined - some time later
189 impact damage! Your health is below 50%!
"Shit, shit, shit, shit," I wailed to myself as I continued to fly through the void. I don't know how long the nightmare of being pinballed through space had been going on, but I was at least pretty damned durable if I had only now reached half health.
"Think man! Think! You need to stop this before you break completely." In my head I began to review every dungeon core story I had read. Well first thing.
"Status," I thought, somewhat embarrassed that it had taken me so long to do so.
Name: James Benedin
Race: Dungeon Core
Core Level: 0
Core Integrity: 4987/10,000
Mana: 0/10
Skills:
Absorb [Novice 0]
Create [Novice 0]
Aura [Novice 0]
"Well that's... compact," I thought with a sigh. "Not a bunch of help there. Let's try this."
[Create]
You have no patterns. Please visit the F.A.E. Shop to purchase patterns.
"Damned in-app purchases," I muttered. I could not believe I still had to put up with that crap.
"Shop," I thought with a hefty does of irritation.
Welcome to the F.A.E. Shop! For all your dungeon needs.
[Monsters] (Unlock for 5 Mana)
[Materials] (Unlock for 100 Mana)
[Weapons] (Unlock for 500 Mana)
[Armour] (Unlock for 500 Mana)
[Enchantments] (Unlock for 1000 Mana)
"You've got to be fucking kidding me!"
147 impact damage!
"Ow!"
"Status Mana," I thought to myself.
Mana: 0/10
"Glad that worked, let's see if we can..." I focused on the word mana and felt a wave of relief when the system gave some assistance.
To raise mana regeneration rate, expand your aura.
I immediately focused on my [Aura] skill and felt it activate. I could feel the space around me and with a flex of will began to expand the space that I could feel. Then I gave out a pained groan as the aura I had extended was ripped away. It felt like being punched in the gut, but all over my new spherical body.
Warning! Exiting your claimed space will result in loss of connection with extended aura. Re-enter claimed space to prevent aura dissipation.
"Oh thanks for that system. That's real helpful to know," I panted. I didn't need to breathe but the pain still left me feeling breathless. I was moving too fast. I exited the claimed space almost as soon as I claimed it.
132 impact damage!
"Ow," I said absently. The lingering pain from the aura loss made the latest richocet a minor nuisance.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
"Let's see if I can...," I tried extending my aura as fast as I could, my goal being to leave a snail trail of claimed space behind me as I flew though the void. For a moment or two I was able to keep up, but then my will gave out with a lurch. Inside my mind I groaned again as I flew out the front of my small tube of claimed space. A short sharp pain followed by a full body ache washing over me.
[Aura] Novice 0 => [Aura] Novice 1]
"I don't know if I can take the pain of levelling that skill up enough to matter," I thought to myself. I could feel myself flinching back from doing that again.
121 impact damage!
"Ow! Scratch that, I don't have time," I thought with some relief. I couldn't level that skill, I'd be dead before I could maintain an aura to match my speed. "Gotta slow down." I focused in the direction I was going, trying to estimate exactly where I was going to impact next. My perception only stretched a few meters around me, but luckily I could still see visible light from beyond my perceptions range. If the decreasing damage numbers were any indication I was gradually shedding some speed with each impact but, unless I somehow wedged into a crack somewhere, I was not going to stop for a long time. Even then it would only be relative to whatever rocks I happened to be near and all too temporary. The stone around me was still in chaotic motion.
Up until now my ricochets had been fairly oblique, but ahead of me I could see an opportunity. The chunk of stone in front of me was enourmous, and I seemed bound for a head on collision with it. I wasn't going to leave this to chance though. Instead of hoping to wedge into a crack somewhere, I intended to make my own.
I activated [Absorb] and felt something like my aura. I could designate an area for absorption with this new sense, but I could also tell that whatever I wanted to absorb had to already by within my aura. That made my plan harder. Focusing back on the approaching stone I desperately looked for some frame of reference as to how far I was away. A small pebble flashing though my perception reminded me that I was not limited to just sight. I had [Aura] and [Absorb] both focused on the front half of my spherical self. The moment the approaching rock face entered my perception, I would trigger aura growth and [Absorb] in front of me. The hope was I could dig myself a hole deep enough to get wedged in before my will gave out. With a mentally held breath I waited...and waited, the stone face in front of me gradually filling more and more of my view until it seemed like half the sky.
"It's a good thing I don't actually.." the idle thought began and was interrupted as many things happened at once. The stone face entered my perception and I started blasting out [Aura] and [Absorb] in front of me. Quick as a wink my aura started claiming the stone in front of me and it began to melt away.
[New pattern: Basalt]
The edges of my new hole flashed past and my view of the sky was cut off as I sank deep into the stone face. As I burrowed in I could feel the stone I absorbed converting into mana, my mana pool filling up in an instant.
You ha...
You have levelled...
As I levelled I could feel my mana pool expand and then immediately fill from the stone I was still absorbing. Then with a lurch my will gave out and everything crashed to a halt.
544 impact damage!
"Ow," I whispered in my head. Just sitting for a moment and enjoying the stillness.
[Absorb] Novice 0 => [Absorb] Novice 1
I flinched as the notification broke the moment, and eventually I felt recovered enough to take stock.
"Status"
Name: James Benedin
Race: Dungeon Core
Core Level: 2
Core Integrity: 4043/10,000
Mana: 6/30
Skills:
Absorb [Novice 1]
Create [Novice 0]
Aura [Novice 1]
I had come to rest at the end of a long skinny tube the same size as me. I had focused my [Absorb] pretty carefully on my front face and left no gap. I could feel the stone around the edge of the tube, claimed by my [Aura] in passing. As I paid attention to my aura I realized that I could feel the part that filled the tube itself leaking out the open end. I reached out with [Create} and could feel the one pattern I had in a kind of mental catalogue. With a flex of will a plug of basalt came into being and I could feel my mana drop ever so slightly. Not enough to reflect on my status I felt, but I was definitely at five point something now.
As the plug sealed my entrance I became aware of some new sensations. I could feel my mana generation drop. It had only been a trickle, but now even that had slowed to a bare few drips. All along the tube there was a stagnant feeling, alleviated only by the aura that had claimed the surface of the stone around my entrance and the entrance plug itself. I could feel mana being absorbed by the aura claimed stone at the surface and then seeping ever so slowly through to the interior of my new tiny dungeon.
"Right," I thought. Some of the dungeon core novels I had read had described a similar phenomenon. A dungeon had to have an entrance for mana to get in, or to "circulate mana" or whatever explanation the author used to explain why every dungeon didn't just seal themselves in a sphere of impenetrable material and call it a day. Turns out there was some truth to the idea. While I could seal my entrance hole, it did interfere with mana regeneration. Basalt apparently sucked at mana transmission. Well for now the sensation was unpleasant but tolerable. I would have to put up with it until I figured out how to leave the door open without me aura leaking out.
I turned my attention to the aura at the surface. I could feel right up to the edge of the stone where it touched the void, and my perception extended a few meters beyond the edge of the stone claimed by my aura. I could tell that my perception extended further than it had previously, probably part of levelling up. I could not see visible light from my surface stone, I guess it had to hit my core directly for me to perceive it. Gingerly, I extended a tiny whisker of aura out of the stone and into the void, bracing myself for the pain if it snapped off. I could feel the tug on my aura as the whisker extended but did not break. A little bolder, I stretched an aura tentacle into the void. As the tentacle moved away from the stone anchor I could feel it begin to stretch and the the tip snapped off when it got about a meter long. I winced expecting it to hurt but there was no pain, just a strain on my will.
Somehow there was a drag or something on my aura as I hurtled through space. The aura in my stone was anchored to the stone and moved though orbit with it. The aura in my tube was isolated by the basalt plug and stayed put. There had to be some way of preventing the aura from leaving my entrance, or every normal dungeon on a planet would be constantly leaking into the open. I turned my attention back to the plug in my entrance.
Half on instinct and half by intent I began to tinker with my aura. Taking the tentacle and shrinking it into a thinner thread and then sending it in an arc from one edge of the entrance to the other. Humming to myself I began to weave more and more threads together across the entrance, spinning myself a web of aura for my entrance like a trapdoor spider. When the web was complete I absorbed the basalt plug and waited. The aura in my tube shifted against the mesh and then held.
[Aura] Novice 1 => [Aura] Novice 2]
You have learned subskill [Aura Weaving]
"Nice," I smiled as my mana regen once again rose to a small trickle. My door was open and my aura wasn't leaking out across the cosmos. With the immediate needs of survival taken care of I turned to the rest of my tiny dungeon. While I wasn't expecting adventurers any time soon, living like a gumball in a test tube didn't appeal. I began by pushing my aura out into the stone around me until I had claimed a volume many times my size, then I began to absorb the stone in a sphere around me. I left a column of stone around me from the floor to the ceiling and anchored myself firmly in the middle with a mesh cage of basalt. It wouldn't do to accidently fall out of my new home.
Once I had a space that felt less claustrophobic, I bored the entryway wider, starting at my new core room and working my way to the surface. I had bored quite deep in the short time my will held out and had a nice long passage to the surface. I spun a larger aura web over the surface and then absorbed the last bit of stone, making my entryway match the passage in size. The rushing increase in mana regeneration was a welcome sensation.
[Absorb] Novice 1 => [Absorb] Novice 2
"There," I thought to myself. "I have a real dungeon, if only one room." The system seemed to agree as I received a prompt.
You have met the base conditions for a dungeon companion. Beginning summoning.
"Oh neat," I smiled to myself. "I'm getting a dungeon fairy."