Consciousness… a disease with several stages that had no cure.
Sentience is feeling pain.
Sapience is knowing what pain is- wanting to avoid it; knowing how to.
However, both pale when compared to the highest stage of being; a stage without name. A stage where the mind expanded to truly understand the source of pain and gleamed everything it could teach.
The stage where one wished to inflict suffering upon the world.
A world of pain, of suffering, of trials, tribulations, and death, was the only way life could ascend. Perfection could not be obtained without effort, it needed to be forged by the heat of failure. The same heat that drove innovation to new heights.
The Culu Grub, with its blackened skin and crimson eyes, was one of these higher beings. Its entire purpose was to raze the world so it could rise. Its unending hunger would consume the world, and its path of gluttony would eclipse the power of a dungeon core.
The only thing that stopped world destruction was a nap.
Another had hidden the demon grub with the use of a spell. They had shackled it to a fraction of its awareness- a fraction of its power and hunger. Silently, it had sipped mana from the world to grow larger, to warp reality. Mana had twisted to isolate the grub. No excavation would ever find the grub, the magic protected it.
But the magic faulted. The shackles on its consciousness had loosened.
It could feel the malice in the air. Faintly, it could smell ink written in blood; tasted paper made of skin; heard the screams of the damned that followed that book. The very book that had birthed the grub. At only a fraction of its power, the single page of the Necronomicon was enough to waken it for a single moment.
The grub stirred from its sleep just enough to eat. It drank at the acid that soaked the earth, diluted with the dead, it fueled the demonic power within. A deep purple fog filled the den, a miasma of dark energy. The stolen mana filled the air as it sought a purpose, as the grub’s slumber left it aimless.
Lost during the battle, the page of the Necronomicon was in the open. The miasma wanted to kill, and it had found how it would do that. The spell scroll activated. Flesh stitched itself together, as it gave the acid life.
The ‘Eleventh Hour Chimera’ spell took root.
A monster stood.
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A puddle of bile, of corpses. Melted down into a life-dense soup, the concoction animated. The abomination took shape.
Bone fragments of birds became its structure. Acid beat like blood. A hundred shells became its carapace. It was the chimera of death, born on the eleventh hour. The more desperate the struggle, the stronger the result. It lived for the struggle of others.
Its first steps were slow, its body shuddering under its own weight. It collapsed inward, unable to carry itself. That didn’t matter. It rolled forward, mimicking a slime. It followed the trail of corpses, assimilating them as it sought the center of the destruction.
Resistance came for it, as slimes pulled themselves together, ready to kill. It crushed them under its bulk. There was a sickly pleasure in feeling the oozes give way beneath it. It pulled tight their membranes to form muscle fibers. The abomination had the strength to stand. It took a step, lurching towards the battlefield.
Its instincts drove it. It was the abomination, the pinnacle of the graveyard. It polluted the air, its own aura of death so potent it corrupted the land with every step. The same steps that withered the grass brought it closer to its goals.
‘Hunt, Kill, Grow’ it growled to itself. After all, it was unstoppable; it was the consumer of life.
Birds shattered upon its broken shell. Slimes were flatted under its might. Pitiful insects swarmed only to become a new shell. They failed to stop its travel to the center of the dungeon. There, in an area the monsters dare not touch, lay a body. Battered, broken, and clinging to life. The abomination could feel it, the source of the mana that gave it life. It had found its purpose, its master.
It knelt down, reaching for its master when it realized something. The lack of something.
This mage was not its master. He had started the spell and killed, but they held no malice in his heart. Fear had gripped him, and he held no desire to cause misery. Every trait the chimera would respect was absent. It refused to acknowledge the ‘master’ of his.
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It picked up the dying human and squeezed until it felt bones break. Ribs gave way and pierced the mage’s organs, his eyes full of fear and pain. It brought joy to the abomination, and it was excited to do it more- to others. Disgusted by the pitiful creature, it threw the mage far, watching as it collided with the earth.
Such a master was unfit to lead. It could not help the chimera grow. It needed to rely on itself.
With a sadistic grin, the hybrid of hate turned back to the dungeon proper, ready to feast.
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Vault had seen true darkness before. He knew genuine hatred. The abomination that laid siege to the dungeon was anything but. It was the embodiment of a hangover that made one suffer for enjoying a late night. Its very presence ruined the buzz of victory they had earned.
A new battle, a new victory to be. Vault was ready. He gathered the dungeon's denizens, rallying them under his command as they waited for the dungeon’s desire to see blood spilled. Only the desire never came.
The Client was distracted, its attention no longer on the battlefield.
Vault was on his own. With an army…
He could make this work.
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Dungeon was busy. It was watching injured deliver be consumed by safe zone. Safe zone make a lot of mana from delver. Delver become food without eating. Dungeon can eat without eating! Dungeon was smart by thinking of this!
But then new invader messed that up. It hurt delver and ruined food zone. Was bad, then dungeon looked at invader and saw. Dungeon was smart enough to like what it saw.
Invader is.... big, and strong. It not evolve to get strong. Born strong, created from adding weak and small monsters… If evolve it become even stronger. Dungeon needs that.
Full of mana, mana that is off and tastes dead. Invader need to die and become food. Die so dungeon can [grow]. Dungeon needs to [expand] and [conquer]. Dungeon wants invader as a monster.
Dungeon can do that, right?
> Answer: No
Dungeon can probably do that
Dungeon wants to do that….
Big monster keep attacking, making mana taste weird. Dungeon needs its own strong monster. Dungeon just needs to….
> Answer: Fine, just don’t do whatever you were about to do.
> Information: “The chimera you see is of the undead classification. There are many groups of monsters, each with their own set of requirements to sustain, such as how beasts require an ecosystem. The other categories are humanoid, construct, abnormal, and otherworlder (demon, celestial, and fay/primal). In order to alter classifications, there are several requirements...”
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Vault was… mildly out of his depth. Without the Client, he could only command a fraction of the army. The paragons of each species helped, but they could not coordinate with each other. Birds brought the invading chimera low, but the ants’ timing was off. They failed to take advantage of the opening.
They were all fighting for their lives and losing. Every warrior to face the beast gave their life to chip away at its defenses, only to reinforce it. They were fodder for the abomination to grow like the cancer it was. It fed on the mana that created them, and twisted it- corrupted it.
Their marathon had become a losing battle. If they were going to win, to survive, they needed to shake things up. They needed to blow this guy out of the dungeon with so much force it couldn’t regenerate. They needed a weapon that would eclipse death itself with absolute life.
He knew only one slime that could do the job.
His focus shifted to the slime of starlight, only to flinch away. In his focus on the battle, he had ignored Shimmer, who marinated in her own grief. Her body boiled with rage as she saw the abomination destroy her home. Grief at the death of her friends, how it violated their bodies to grow. Devastation as the abomination’s aura of corrupting mana killed the plants she loved, as they withered into nothing. She had become a cocktail of distilled emotions that set the world ablaze around her.
Her approach to the monster got the Client’s attention. It was enough that Vault got the other monsters to retreat so they could not become food for the abomination.
The chimera of corpses noticed the flaming slime as it approached. Its pseudo-humanoid form lurched as its shell cracked under the movement. It slammed into Shimmer as the two grappled. Each tried to consume the other. Absolute death against absolute life. The corruptor against the purifier. Darkness that tried to consume light itself.
With a front-row seat, Vault watched Shimmer lose ground. The acid of death was stronger than the one of life. Yet Vault knew that was not the case. Shimmer was distracted, her love clouded by anger. He knew she would not win if nothing changed.
Good thing Vault was a protector as much as he was a detective.
Bonded through the blaze, the ability to share between siblings. He pulled at the bond they shared and grabbed hold of her emotions. He stole whatever he could take. The foreign emotion of anger was an intruder that needed to be expelled from her mind.
Shimmer’s entire demeanor changed in an instant. The fire burned not for vengeance, but for the desire to protect her friends. She stopped losing ground. Vault, however, was poisoned by emotions. He needed the beast to die, no matter the cost. It was nothing more than an unwelcome visitor he was done entertaining.
He had become a burden, a poison to the dungeon’s mind and emotions. In a fit of rage and self-loathing, Vault shattered the crystalline silk that tethered him to the dungeon. Instantly, the world went dark. No longer was he bound to the glow of the crystal. He could retreat deeper into both the earth and himself. He fled into the darkness that was his home.
He threw away his title as Overseer so that he could become darker- so that Shimmer could shine. The two forever linked. The darker his world, the brighter Shimmer made hers.
The more love she felt, the brighter she glowed, and the more she could purify.
Even if he couldn’t see her, he knew how it would end. The battle was already decided.
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> Understanding Increased: Undead Chimera - some monsters are not born into the world.
> Understanding Increased: E$$*nce of thE 0th*r - Error, forbidden knowledge; 5% learned