"The fires of creation were loosed from the heavens and man cried out in agony, for no mortal flesh could stand its glory. Then Yamash Spoke and darkness passed over his face. The heavens trembled and cried out and day was split from the night. And thus was the start of the first night.”

* The Hour of Creation, translated from Unresa

After getting lost in my new environment for a while I came back to myself.

Huh, what is that?

There was a little blinking light in my view. And it was there no matter where I was looking. Wait, I think I know what this is. It did say it was going to minimize notifications from now on.

Not sure I am ready for more of these, but there is no real use putting it off.

New Quest Obtained!

The Call to Ascension

No more are you a prisoner. You have founded a dungeon and now have the capacity to grow. For now, it is simply time to take the next step. Reach Level 10.

For the first time I could actually decide my own priorities. So, I was going to think about it. Did I want to grow as a dungeon?

Probably.

I was stuck in this place for a year or so. I would certainly end up doing something with my time. And growing was definitely part of that. And being a dungeon would get me in contact with other humans, or at least I assumed so.

But… what did I actually want?

I had a new life, and I could make my own decisions about what I wanted that to mean.

So… what did I want?

Well I had already thought of one desire. I wanted human contact. I might not necessarily need that, but I definitely wanted it. And I wasn’t sure that I wanted to live without it. Both for my sanity and my own enjoyment.

What else?

I had been captured. I escaped, but still… I had been captured in the first place. I hated it. I hated how helpless it had made me feel. Oh sure it had been fun to plan the escape and pull it off, but mostly I had been so driven because I hated that feeling.

The obvious answer to not needing to feel that again is power. Power without purpose was meaningless, though. I didn’t want to seek power just because I was afraid. That… that would end very badly.

So I needed other goals too.

Power… meant that I could determine what happened to me, but it also meant I could determine what happened to other people. And power came in many forms.

Obviously as a dungeon I had some power of force. The power to kill, to destroy. However, I knew that a dungeon’s real power came from the opposite side. If all dungeons did was kill, and there was nothing to be gained from them, then people would just ignore them or destroy them.

No, creation was the true power of a dungeon.

People wanted gold, and silver, and all the other resources that I knew nothing about. And in a world like this, I was sure levels and experience were part of what a dungeon offered as well.

And I could offer those. I could understand people. I could understand them better than any dungeon ever had. It might take me a while to learn the language, but I could. And when I did I would know exactly what they wanted.

Stolen novel; please report.

I could make myself invaluable. And then I could change the parts of the world that I didn’t like. Maybe I was mistaken, and where I was now was a paradise, but I had seen a man try to kill another man with little thought. Maybe that man was just evil, or desperate, but it was also possible that he was just trying to get by. I couldn’t know what had motivated him, but I didn’t think I would like the society that produced him.

This, this was a long term goal. I could certainly build up my dungeon, and I would, because it would give me the power to make changes. However, this would give me something that I could work towards for a very long time. I might be ageless. A normal dungeon might be content with merely growing and sinking deeper into the earth, but I knew that wouldn’t sustain me.

My goal might change in the long term, but having a long term goal was worth it. And in the meantime I would embrace this quest as a way to power. However, I wouldn’t forget that I wanted to make this world a place I was more comfortable existing in.

I sighed. I was probably being naive. Still, I had more potential to make a difference here than I ever had in my old world.

Well then, for now I need to start with the basics.

First came buying a skill… assuming that I could. I was still not sure what effect having Exsan in duel control mode with me actually meant. I had wanted the skill in the sewers, but I saved the AP so I could escape.

Here we go.

There was a slightly longer moment than I was used to and then the blinking light was back. Okay, open that up.

You have purchased a new skill

Vital Comprehension II (Life)

Purchasing and learning living patterns is mildly easier. Mildly lowers AP cost of learning summons and mildly reduces the amount of material required to learn a living pattern. (10%)

The skill was cheaper to learn too. Learning had applied to its cost, of course, but so had my new titles that made it cheaper to learn life magic. It hadn’t been a flat 20% off though. It had been 163, instead of 160. I did some math by scribbling stone on a wall.. Yep, it looked like the discounts were multiplicative, rather than additive. That made sense though. Otherwise the discounts had the potential to stack up to completely removing that cost, or even refunding AP. So 200 x 0.90 x 0.95 x 0.95 = 162.45. Looks like it rounded up. That meant that even if I eventually had some truly ridiculous modifiers, I could expect the cost to always be at least 1 AP.

I had to assume that similar math applied to learning skills. Otherwise I should just automatically learn all the soul related skills just by thinking about them, since they would count as new. Plus learning would apply, too. I should look at all those titles.

With a thought, just those pulled up. I looked over the titles I had gained.

Titles:

Reborn Soul

First of its Kind

Skill Evolution

Mana Specialist I

Escape Artist IV (Deception)

Dungeon Martyr III (First)

Touch of the Grave I

Dread Salvation I

Seen the Infinite Void

Investment Specialist

Back from the Brink I

Wonder if this is an abnormal amount? Probably.

Well a number of them had a “I” on them, which meant that it was possible to get better versions of them. Reborn Soul and First of its Kind were static, though they would make it much easier to learn any new skills, and specifically any soul related skills. Though sadly I had no idea where to even start with that. They didn’t say that they applied to the cost of buying skills though.

Skill evolution… well I supposed I could just keep trying to use skills in unconventional ways. Honestly I had gotten it by accident in the first place. I didn’t know how my skills were meant to act, so just keep experimenting. This title looked fixed as well. Hmm, I wonder if my learning boost from First of its Kind applied to this as well. Not sure if it would count as the first level of the skill or just morphing an existing one.

Mana specialist was useful, and should naturally improve as I focused on mana based skills. Since most of my dungeon related skills also had some crossover with mana, I was sure that would just happen naturally enough.

Escape Artist. Eh? I mean I could see it hiding my core really well, which is awesome. Helps with my whole goal of not having to worry about being enslaved again. Or dying, should probably include that in my list of things not to do.

Dungeon Martyr, nope, just nope.

I wouldn’t mind getting a better version of Touch of the Grave. Not really possible with just myself here though.

Dread Salvation. Well I could see it happening naturally. People getting fatally injured here in the dungeon and then I could heal them. Maybe, not sure. Again though, not something that I could do at the moment.

Seen the Infinite Void. Honestly, even though this one did not suggest that a progression was possible, I really wanted there to be one. I needed to see what kind of restriction existed on this before I made any judgments, but I was almost certainly going to try and get a better version of this or some skill that did the same thing.

Actually…

I looked through the various skills that I could buy. Nope, nothing. The title hadn’t opened up new skills that I could buy or anything. At least nothing that I could find.

Investment Specialist was another title that didn’t have any type of automatic progression. I was probably going to focus on the long term if I could anyway. It just paid off more in the long run anyway. So if I could get a better title it might happen naturally anyway. Best not to stress about it.

And Back from the Brink was like Martyr, definitely not going to be seeking that out. I was already stuck here for plenty of time and I couldn’t save myself by just founding a dungeon.

So what next?

Well there was a skill I wanted to get at some point, but I would wait until I was prepared to use it.

There was a lot of living things here that I could start to absorb. And with the new skill I had summoned life that I could purchase for cheaper than before.

Eh… it was a waste to buy them until I understood what I had here and what life I picked up before. Besides, judging from how much mana it took to help that guy, creating life was really expensive. I just had to hope that it would get cheaper. Honestly that was probably waiting for me after I leveled up a time or two.

Well then, cataloging the life here would come first.

After that I needed to learn much more.