Pressure…
Tightness…
Light…
Confusion…
I do not remember much of how I came to be. I slept for most of what I can only assume to be my formative years. I know that I remember feeling pressure all around me and what I now know to be pain. I was surrounded my light and noise, it was confusing to say the least.
This is not to say I do not know how I came to be. No, that can be inferred thanks to the convenience of status screens.
They are incredibly useful things. If I remember correctly, they were created by some god that had gotten very bored with the creativity of the various creatures it had observed. Then in a flash of shocking ingenuity and creativity. It stole the idea from some species on another plane of existence. Never did say what they were. I can only imagine them as being very strange to even think of something like that.
Got sidetracked there.
Status screens…
They do not show you everything, and honestly there is much confusion regarding them. Several races (and a few gods) think they contain many secrets and hidden information. While that is partly true, mostly they are just frequently being updated to suit the tastes of their creator.
Presently they are setup to display ones’ qualities and capabilities in a generalized format.
My own is a little unique.
“Display Status Screen” [Self]
Name: N/A[Librarian?] Species: Origin Dungeon Gender: N/A
Level: ∞ Age: ∞ Class: Dungeon[Unique?]
Health: ∞ Stamina: ∞ Mana: ∞
Str: ∞ Agi: ∞
End: ∞ Int: ∞
Vit: ∞ Wis: ∞
…
“Display Species Description” [Self]
Species Information “Origin Dungeon”
Dungeon that has formed its core under the immense pressures of energies at the creation of creation itself.
……..
……..
……..
Like I said, it gets updated frequently by the god that made it. Though it has been in effect so long that any changes that are made are so insignificant that they are hardly ever noticed.
I know my status is strange, mostly because that idiot can never seem to make up his mind about me. It would seem that I confuse him immensely, and he takes great pride in supplying the system with accurate information. He knows I am older than him, that I am a dungeon, aside from that he does not know much of anything. Which makes me question his integrity seeing as he has decided to not only name me… sort of... but also give me attributes. If you can call infinity an attribute, I know I don’t.
The only reason he even came up with that species name and description were because I had told him of my earliest memories. That and him being unable to identify me with his “Godly” powers.
Aside from that, I change my appearance often. Not for my own amusement, but more because I see no need for a defined appearance when I “appear” before others. I am literally sentient condensed mana. (and everything else, but whatever, right?)
I know a great deal about a great many things… probably more than anyone, or anything there is. I know most dungeons are slaves to their instincts. This is of course because their birth usually robs the direct vicinity of mana causing hunger to be the predominant urge that drives them. Even when full, they usually cannot forget that first hunger.
Luckily, this never happened to me. Due to how I was born, and all the abundant energies that were available to me at the time. I have never felt any such hunger. I’m not sure how long I existed in there at the beginning, an eternity? an instant? I know that when things started expanding I lost a lot of time, mostly spent sleeping/digesting. When I came to the pressure/pain was gone, the light, the sound. All of the bad things I had experienced were gone. I was adrift in the vast expanse of space. Viewing creation in all its majesty. The silence was almost as bad as the noise, but you get used to it. I actually kind of liked it.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Then, by pure happenstance I fell into the gravitational pull of a nearby star. Which also coincidentally put me on a perfect course to crash into a world.
Now something I think is important to note is that while I had been drifting through space I was not just twiddling my metaphorical thumbs. No, I was learning, studying, recording all I saw. Terrified by its impermanence, a fear that I have unfortunately never grown out of. Because of this I have always saved any knowledge I could. Storing it in every way possible to secure it in as pure a form as possible.
Something else to know about dungeons, they feel a primal drive to protect themselves from birth. This can again be easily understood as they are crystallized mana. Mana may not be sentient on its own, but it does have traits. After Eons of being absorbed/used/manipulated by just about everything there is it naturally has some inborn fears and paranoias. I am again happy to say that being as old as I am, I predate such tendencies. Thus, when I arrived a planet, my first thought was not to build, or dig, as the case may be. No, my first thought was to learn. Me ability to sense my surrounding being incomparable. I was able to sense far from my core. As in beyond my own galaxy. I put a lot of effort into that thank you very much. It also helped a lot with my studying.
Because of this I was not surprised that there were sentient species on this world. They are after all, rather common. Doing a quick sweep of the world I was on to refresh my memory about which one it was and its systems. I was both overjoyed and saddened to see it was a “popular” world. I say popular because of the activity that surrounds it. There are several sentient races on the world. To save time though I’ll only list the recognized sentient races. There are the Humans, Elves, Dark Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Halflings, Goblins, and of course Gods. You may say, but, those all sound very familiar!?
Well, you did spot that last race right? They tend to get around a lot and if my story has told you anything yet. It would be that gods can and will meddle.
Anyways, after my sweep, and identifying the world. I immediately know what to do. I have been planning for a long time what I would do once I encountered another sentient. I would transform into a repository of knowledge in such a way that others can also enjoy what I have learned. In this case, I became a library.
Although I say that, I later learned I went a bit overboard. I transformed myself into a cylindrical tower that kissed the clouds and dug deep into the earth. Not only that, but it was completely unnecessary! This is because I also warped the space within myself to be capable to storing my information in such a small (comparatively) space.
My library was formed to the current planets standards. That is to say, books.
Not a minute too soon either, because immediately after I was finished with that I had my first visitor.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [POV Hermes] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I was visiting one of my favored worlds when I saw something unexpected. There was a comet blasting towards the planet. This in and of itself is not all that unusual. However, moments after it had breached the atmosphere and crashed, something happened. A massive scan swept the entire world. Not believing in coincidences, I moved towards the direction of the meteor. Expecting to find a crater I was shocked of course, because I found a gigantic tower. Moving around the structure I was further surprised to discover it appeared to be made of a single solid piece of white marble, but if that was the case it could not be this tall.
I spotted a pair of large (too large) double doors near the base of the tower, a series of circular stairs leading up to them. Arriving at the doors and preparing to use a good amount of strength to open them. I was instead surprised to find them sweeping smoothly open at the lightest touch. Beyond the doors were stacks of books, taller than the doors, stretching farther than I could see.
As I stepped inside while looking around, the doors shut behind me with not even a sound. I only noticed because the cessation of the wind.
…
Approaching the nearest stack and grabbing a book at random I flip it open to find I can read it. Not in some language I have learned from the many worlds I have visited, but in the language of the gods.
…” That’s not possible” ….
The reason it is not possible is because the gods only even have a written language because some of them wanted their own private collections of things, and they wanted to prove they could do whatever a mortal could do.
“Hello!?”
…
“Hello” [Unknown]
Who was that? It sounded like it came from all around me.
“Where are you? Who are you? What is this place?”
Great job not sounded surprised or scared there hermes....
“Hmm…. in order, I suppose” [Unknown]
“I am everywhere, I have not yet decided on a name, this place is me, and it is a library” [Unknown]
Oh great...
“What do you mean you’re everywhere. Also, then what do people call you?”
“I mean this is me, I wanted to be a library and so I am. This is also the first time I have spoken to anyone.” [Unknown]
A new god perhaps? But who would choose to be a library?
“Well, then why don’t you start wanting to be a person. I do not exactly enjoy having conversations with the air.”
“Alright” [Unknown]
Suddenly a bright light flashed before me. After my eyes clear, I was able to make out the form of a young man who looked to be in his late teens, early twenties.
“You look much younger than your voice sounds”
“would you prefer I look older? I understand I am old, but age doesn’t really show when you do not have a body” [Unknown]
“Oh? How old? Also, what do you mean you do not have a body. You said you were the library.”
~Got you~
“My form is a crystallization of energy that does not age, and can shape the world around it. Creating anything I wish, with sufficient knowledge of course.” [Unknown]
Well crap.
“So… then you are a Dungeon.”
“Yes and no” [Unknown]
“Dungeons are crystallized mana, I am more than that” [Unknown]
Ah yes, you are an insane 'Library Dungeon'...
“Okay, well this is a strange dungeon… how do you plan to kill anything with a library?”
“Why would I want to kill anything?” [Unknown]
...
“You’re a dungeon?”
“Yes, but that and my own personality/behavior are two different things.” [Unknown]
hmmm...
“Okay…”
“Anyways, where did you learn the language of the gods? Why did you use it to write this book?”
“I learned it when the gods came up with it, and I did no use it to write that book. All my books are read in the best known, written language, of whoever is holding them.” [Unknown]
….
….
….
Okay.
“Why is the library so big, how many books do you have?”
“All of them.” [Unknown]
“Why?”
“To preserve them, remember them, and share them.” [Unknown]
Dungeon falls from the sky... Dungeon becomes a library... Dungeon has more books than the rest of the planet...
“Share them… Then do you have books here from other worlds? This one seems to describe a species I have never even heard of.”
“Yes, I have all knowledge I have encountered in my travels stored here.” [Unknown]
So not just books then? Wonderful...
“And you mean to share this knowledge?”
“Yes?” [Unknown]
haa....
“I am sorry to ask this of you, but please restrict the knowledge available to those who enter. I cannot have someone gaining knowledge too far advanced and accidentally destroying this world.”
“Sounds reasonable, I suppose… Granted you gods play here a lot.” [Unknown]
Oi...
“Well, I will just limit the knowledge per person, only access to the limit of what their world has so far discovered, or if from multiple worlds, the limit of their peoples’ discoveries.” [Unknown]
Sounds fine...
“Well, that sounds fine. But if you cause any trouble on this world I will remove you.”
Need to show it who is in charge.
“Do not threaten me. You are incapable of forcing me to do anything other than what I want. I am willing to capitulate and be helpful only because it coincides with my own goals and is reasonable.” [Unknown]
Dang...
“What goals are those then?”
“To preserve knowledge, to gain knowledge, and to share knowledge” [Unknown]
“Right…”
“Well, I feel like I need a name to call you by…. But I will have to get to that later. I may have been the first one to arrive here, but I doubt I am the only one to notice this place. I’d rather not be thought of as the reason for your arrival.”
“Well then, goodbye for now Hermes…” [Unknown]
Wait what?
“I never told you my name…”
“I know.” [Unknown]