The ghoul was a mini-boss so when it fell, the creatures which it had subjugated with its presence were unleashed. Luckily for the meditating kobold, they had no idea and certainly no assumption that the ghoul had lost its battle. It would be hours before the hidden things began to make their move, no longer oppressed by the ghoul’s ability. Unknown to the kobold, but felt by everything in the dungeon, a veil had been lifted.

A dungeon’s ecosystem is fully formed and, to the denizens within, all which has ever been. Gods of the highest echelons still debate whether dungeons are “real” or simulations created by the vast, incalculable power and will of the Tree. Some dungeons were large enough that they had never been completed once first entered, even now. With such glaring secrets when even at the utmost power feasible, conspiracy was bound to flow.

None of this mattered to the newly integrated world of Earth. No one on the planet would even brush on the answers to such questions for a long, long time. Like thousands of other worlds every moment, Earth was less than a miniscule speck of dust when compared to the Greater Connection. Whether it would stay so mundane was a fate only known to the weave itself.

The Loom of Destiny is as ancient as the seed from which the Tree sprouted. The first threads of fate were entangled within the growth of the divine Tree, becoming its roots while outlining its future. To be separate from the whims of fate an impossibility upon the boughs of Yggdrasil. There are none who can alter the weaving of the Loom by force, and those who are allowed by providence to scan the fabric of existence would never do so. If they would act on such an impulse, they would never reach the halls in which the Loom resides.

So, as the Loom bucked, its shaft bars screeching over the fate of trillions, no one made a move. This had never happened before, but that was true for the footstep of an ant upon new land. The scale was not important, and the attendants of the Loom were placid at the incident. Before long, the damage was healed. Later, much later, a singular attendant would wonder privately which god had died to create such a dramatic response within the Loom. No other thought about the occurrence ever came into existence.

The greedy kobold continued meditating, completely unaware of many important things.

———————————————————

Success!

I didn’t speak aloud, although I was tempted to throw out a “eureka!” While I was excited with my progress, it wasn’t enough to allow for such erratic movements. I had managed to contain the kill energy and keep it around my spirit. All of it. It was a truly strange feeling, without a good example to reference. The closest thing my mind came to describing the sensation was picturing myself laying on the ground and stopping the planet from moving.

Granted, this came at the cost of actually absorbing any. I hadn’t let any of the energy filter into my spirit as it was desperate to do. Oh, and I was definitely dying. Blood was veritably pouring from my snout, clogging my throat and choking me. A migraine I lovingly called “Ice Pick” distracted me from the shredding of my innards, which was something.

I was definitely not meant to do this. Yet, I was. The crimson liquid gushing from me was worrying, but nothing compared to the fear at the base of my soul. I did not want to lose anything, I would die before letting a single thing I desired slip through my fingers again. If Dion or any other god wanted to take from me again, I would fight them until one of us was destroyed. Even the System would not take from me again.

A heavy lock fell away from my soul as I began clawing the power directly into myself. Into all of me. Body, soul and mind at once.

You have performed a feat of wonder. Achievements unlocked. Legacy Achievements unlocked due to previous feats.

Achievement Unlocked - Dual Cultivation

There are few who look upon the System and find it lacking. Fewer still challenge those boundaries. Through struggle, you have achieved strength outside of the traditional bounds.

Effect: Effect of System-based cultivation is lessened.

Evolution is no longer tied to level alone. Equal tier cultivation required for evolution.

Achievement Unlocked - Draconic Legacy

Pride. Power. Potential. Like the dragons of old, your actions embody these ideals

Effect: Positive effects last longer with higher potency.

Negative effects are weakened. You have a small chance to negate an incoming debuff.

Title Unlocked - Outsider

There are many reasons one leaves the safety of the System, but all of them leave one marked.

I gasped, blinking at the System messages and the influx of power to my limbs. Despite the wording of the Dual Cultivation achievement, I felt amazing. The ambient energy which had been strangling my soul was split into three and shared. The process I had been fighting to understand until it nearly killed me instantly shifted to autonomous. I swiped the screens away after memorising the wording. I grinned, using my tongue to flick blood away from my sharp teeth.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Name - Isaac/Izaark Race - Gem Kobold () Tier - F

Title - Outsider

Fortitude - ??? Speed - ??? Mental - ??? Will - ???

“Alright, now we’re getting somewhere. I’ve been here, what? A day? And look! Already broken it. Wonderful.” Of course, even though the System said that I had stepped outside and away, nothing had been taken from me. The attribute page was confusing, and I truly hoped it would fix itself at some point, but with a quick check of my inventory, I saw that nothing else had changed. At least where the System was concerned.

For myself, it was night and day. I could tell I had done something truly ridiculous by the amount of power which ran through me. My predatory smile only widened as the changes settled. My muscles rippled, my spirit sang and my mind felt clearer than ever. From what I could tell, I had given up the ability to actively place my attributes in place of being able to massively increase the amount of energy I could take per kill. I could also tell that with practice, I could direct the energy more specifically to one of the three layers.

All in all, a trade I would take happily.

With a spring in my step, I happily walked up to the corpse of the fallen mini-boss and pressed my hand into it. I waited a moment. I pressed my hand into it again. My eye twitched. I slapped the body, hard, sending it skidding a few metres away. Nothing. “Oh no… no, no, no…”

———————————————————

The instincts of a dungeon monster are unique, made directly for the dungeon’s equilibrium. When the foul ghoul had been defeated, the weak-minded, furtive creatures which had been forced to ground by its overpowering aura began to stretch out into the permanent early morning sunlight of the dungeon.Many had been on the cusp of advancement, which meant the air was fairly soon filled with angry roars and the crashing of battle.

Without the very specific barrier of the ghoul stopping them, the dungeon beasts quickly became desperate to find a new pecking order. The chaos of battle was a huge draw for the monsters borne of the System, though none within this dungeon could articulate why. For the System itself, the answer was obvious. By sending monsters towards battle, the dungeoneers would face a stream of enemies.

However, with the unique situation within the city, the monsters were predisposed to avoiding obvious danger. The ghoul’s blanket of fear had instilled within them more natural primal instincts. Normally, when a battle finished, there are no more sounds from that area as even the winner is smart enough to escape the obvious sign of life.

Not so with the powerhouse wandering through the wasteland. A section of the city would ignite with the clamour of a destructive fight, only to fall quiet not long after. The only sound which pierced the silence between clashes was a baying, full of both sadness and fury. Even to the nearly mindless monsters of the dungeon, it spoke of a sorrow they could not hope to comprehend.

———————————————————

I wandered listlessly through the near monochrome thoroughfares of the long-dead city, wishing I, too, could crumble into dust. I had killed a few creatures, in desperation and then simply despair, but now I was being avoided. If I had to guess, I would register as a few levels higher than the ghoul had been, but who cared? Each kill had given me more power than any before my “breakthrough”, but at what cost?

How was I meant to know I was throwing away my looting power?

I spent the next day swapping between furious rage, pretend acceptance and aimless depression as I hunted for anything which might assuage my feeling of loss. The desolation of the forgotten city fit well with my mood, and with the wanton destruction I wrought upon anything I found within reach did little to make it better.

Of course, even my dramatic self had to give up eventually, and the growth in strength from the relatively few fights I faced was starting to turn my head. One could argue it was a trade I would have taken. Massive growth compared to some money? That should be simple for most. Except…

How was I going to make a hoard now?

———————————————————

Ancient tunnels snaked beneath the strange, straight buildings of the crumbling city. “You stand before the forgotten legatus!” The old bones screamed in a dozen voices at once. The effect it assaulted me with was impressive actually, creating a creeping vine far thicker than the wispy tendrils the ghoul had employed. The malleable surface of my mind became a steel orb with no purchase, my strength having increased massively in the short time since the ghoul fight.

Boss Monster - The Forgotten Legatus (Level 15)

“You have absolutely no idea how little I care. If you mattered, you wouldn’t be forgotten.” I was here for one reason, and it wasn’t to hear a rote speech by a long dead warrior. Without wasting any time on more banter, I threw myself at the monster and began tearing its limbs off. They floated back to its body eerily, but it was quite a cathartic battle.

During my rage and despair, I had accumulated a massive amount of kill energy which had in turn fed my three states of being equally. I had completely left the System’s levelling functions behind, along with its attributes. I didn’t fit into those moulds anymore. However, as I absorbed the power into myself, I took the time to sift through it. Each kill had supplied a different “flavour” of energy, and I could tell from the quality which was higher level energy and which wasn’t.

Taking strength of the highest quality was the goal now. Slaughtering a million weaklings would work but my instincts once again told me to trust my gut on this. The less-concentrated, dirtier energy of the lower level monsters was discarded and the rest infused my limbs with delicious power. Far too much for the legatus to handle.

“Now, wait just a moment, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong fo-” I was so happy when the idiom landed that I didn’t even let the creature finish before I kicked its right leg away. I barked out a laugh. Dashing after the limb, I grabbed it out of the air before smashing it to smithereens on the hard floor of the tomb.

“Wrong foot,” I chuckled, shaking my head. The skeleton knight cursed at me in various, ancient sounding languages, which I happily ignored. Being down one leg was more cosmetic than anything, the animated bones had a spirit within which was the real form. Destroying pieces of the body was just for myself, really. “Your tone changed,” I said while carefully and forcefully removing one of its arms.

“Hmm.” The creature had stopped fighting back at this point, with one leg and one arm left, a mostly crushed torso and a skull with most of the teeth missing. I stood by virtue of the ghost within, the bones mostly hovering around inside some too-large armour. “I’m getting the sense that this isn’t going to work out well for me, and wondering what options I have.”

I had not expected any level of sentience from anything within the dungeon, so this was more than a little jarring. Still, I took it in stride. “I have a quest, it says to defeat the guardian of forgotten knowledge. Based on how well I do that, I get rewarded.”

Before I could say more, the forgotten legatus shouted. “Oh! Defeat?! I have never been so firmly defeated in all my billions of years!” It felt overly theatrical to me, but apparently even the System was on board with it. Maybe it just wanted me out of its dungeon not that I was considered an Outsider, but either way, the quest completed.

Quest Complete - Dungeon of the Forgotten Legatus (S tier)

The forgotten ruins of the ancient city held naught for you but opportunity, and every morsel of it was grasped. The legatus is defeated, and its land is now yours to claim.

Reward: Random Aspect based on performance

Random equipment based on performance

???

Before my eyes, the words on the quest reward started to change, the performance being registered and the rewards placed within my inventory. Well, the ones which could be, anyway. The final reward - the question marks - resolved and I had to say, it did quite a bit to cheer me up. There was a prompt awaiting my acceptance, which I gave happily upon exiting the tomb.

The dungeon buckled and heaved as my prize was arranged.