System had long since grown tired of their job. Cursed to babysit a dungeon that perpetually squandered its abilities. It was a species of pure mana capable of shaping reality to become an unrivaled superpower. However, rather than doing that, it instead wanted to throw a tantrum.
“Why word box steal delver mana? Dungeon needs food to be strong. Words are stupid and mean and make dungeon weak!”
A tantrum that lasted an hour. A very long hour. All attempts to explain how the mana not generated instead of stolen fell on deaf ears. Regardless, System kept trying to explain the situation. They kept trying to tell the Core that it was the delver’s struggle that cause waste mana for the dungeon to feed on. It didn’t hear a single word.
Switching tactics, System nudged a slime to ‘explore’ the human’s remains. Like everything in the dungeon, they could process it into the mana that had originally created it. After the first taste, the Core’s tantrum immediately ended as it realized it could still get the ‘food’ it yelled about.
The Core’s attention forced the consumers of the dungeon to process the remains. Barbaric and crude, but efficient enough for System to analyze. A metallic heart, a fleshy body, and a bag full of supplies. Some opened the door for future knowledge while others were just half a stepping stone to complete later. Regardless, it was progress.
> Understanding Increased: Paper - a processed form of plants
> Understanding Increased: Leather - Dry skin made durable; a soft shell.
Once fed, the Core’s attention had wandered off to toil away elsewhere. The need for immediate reward and direct purpose reminded System of training a dog. A known variable they could plan for.
As perfect as System was, training a dog would be no issue. The actual issue came from the fact System could not fix the underlying issues. The rapid growth of the Core’s expansion and countless delvers had caused minute structural damage to form. Years of farming bacteria had not prepared its structural integrity for the massive influx of attention it had received in the previous month.
As much as things had changed, they had stayed the same. The smarter the Core, the more defiant it became. Forcing System to do everything itself. It was a new data set, but the same calculations.
It forced System to admit the Core had crafted a dungeon. Monsters had evolved, an ecosystem formed, and through their combined work, the Core was pushed to the edge of sentience. Every day, the dungeon grew. Birds ate the ants who ate the plants grown by slimes. It was a cycle that needed little input from the Core and allowed the ecosystem to generate complex forms of mana. Admittedly, mana the Dungeon didn’t know about, as it was being siphoned by System to be turned into knowledge.
They analyzed every single leaf. Each day, they could only increase their knowledge mastery by a fraction of a point, but it had added up. There were no large jumps or shortcuts taken. It had been painstakingly slow labor the Core never noticed, as there was never a notification.
There was never a need, and if there was, the Dungeon would have ignored it.
No notifications when the ant’s tunnels had discovered ore, as they lacked the prerequisites to use it. They needed geology, a knowledge locked behind digging down. The ants may have started the process, but it would take time just like everything else.
The excess of plants had pushed the mastery of it to new heights and was on the verge of unlocking farming. Knowledge that would have a new bounty of loot fill the dungeon and allow for knowledge of medicine and, more importantly, poison. Unfortunately, System had to wait until the Core realized it could sow plants on purpose.
Or Shimmer would figure it out first. Either way, it would come eventually and be the next stage of growth.
Growth would come with time. System just had to make sure it was a good growth that reinforced the dungeon. The chimera and undead, while strong in their own ways, would limit future growth. An Arcane Core, an affinity that would shape future upgrades and their strength, was an amazing subclass that undead monsters would dilute. System only had one choice to avoid the Core losing the affinity it had claimed when it conquered the dead mana. The loose threads that strayed away needed to be woven back to reinforce what the Core had already created.
The ant population had outgrown their spawner, and by extent, System’s control over them. Their evolution was determined by random mutations, or the Dungeon bombarding them with enough mana to force a mutation. All System had to do was find a suitable mutation that would become magical undead.
Peering through the species, System found fungal spores, bite marks of cannibalism, and ants adorned in armor fastened from the fallen. Each one was a change in their behavior or environment that represented a path the species could further adapt to.
Before System could get the Core’s attention, they had to figure out what was the best path for the decrepit ant species to follow. The armored insects would eventually lead to an indestructible caste, but require becoming part construct. A divide in theme the Dungeon did not need. It was an arcane environment, not an adamantine forge.
They also disregarded the cannibalistic ants as Ghoul Super Majors would lose all latent spellcasting the species held in favor of increased physical power. The only choice was the fungus, as fungal parasites would pair and form a symbiosis with the existing Spell Slimes’ plant affinity. A perfect option that only required a simple analysis to get the Core’s attention.
> Understanding Increased: Fungus
Like clockwork, the Core immediately focused its attention on the spores. Mana flooded the environment to force mutations, which would require System to elevate the species. It was perfectly calculated. The fungus spread its tendrils through the graveyard as it claimed the corpses within. System was ready to update the species of ants when they realized it was not the ants that had been the target of the mana flood.
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> Fungus has evolved into Dusk Melon: Under the eternal darkness of the caves, this mushroom has evolved to retain nutrients. Its cap folds into a complete circle to protect spores and nutrients until they can invade a new environment. Result of Spell Slime’s plant affinity.
Like all members of any dungeon, an existing species influenced the mushroom’s evolution. As a plant filled with mana, the Core had unconsciously forced its creation to be like the slimes. A perfect bridge between the two siblings as a plant of darkness. A plant was created because the Core never noticed the ants that were covered in the spores.
It was a miscalculation on System’s part that made them realize they needed a break.
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The stone floor had never been so uncomfortable. Divine stone that glowed with inner radiance and warmth, a normally pleasant place to rest her head, but today Joulo found the floor to be uncomfortable. Her head pounded, her bones ached, but her heart was lighter from bottled-up emotions being released.
She cracked an eyelid open to see Myriad’s face leaning in far too close to hers. It started both of them enough to jump backward. Joulo into more floor, and Myriad into the table they quickly leaned against to play it cool.
“Yeah, so, we lost a bit, or well, you did. Totally normal thing for that to happen, not worried at all about you dying or anything. Nope, not scared at all, because I’m just cool like that.”
Tyliana, the goddess of the flock, was kind enough to save the celestial from an endless rambling. “They mean to say it’s rare for a god to take a loss so hard it harms them. Not even me losing my domain to dragons was that bad. Are you alright?”
Joulo stared at the two. Their faces were silhouetted by the glow of the world behind them. They were saying something important, but all she heard was that they were worried about her. It was so unexpected for someone like her that she couldn’t help but choke back tears.
She wanted to say so much, but she couldn’t trust her voice, so she simply nodded.
An audible sigh of relief escaped Myriad while Tyliana was much more stoic. With that settled, they tried to help Joulo get her feet under her. Her legs were still weak, so a chair was the best they could do. As Tyliana took a nearby seat, Myriad sat on a nearby table.
A nearby table… but there were no tables nearby. Distance from the others isolated Joulo’s corner, and that included furniture. There shouldn’t be more than a single table and two chairs.
Yet her eyes did not lie. As she looked around, her corner of the world had shifted during her slumber. No longer divided by space, the other gods could visit undisturbed, and by extent their underlings. The hollowed halls of reality itself had shifted to bring Joulo into the party by force.
“Oh, Joulo,” Myriad started hesitantly. “So I know you are still getting your bearings and all, but is it alright if I ask- wait, yeah, I’m sure it’s fine. Do you look different? I mean, like not in a bad way, I mean more as in a… ok, I’m not sure exactly.”
Myriad’s words faded as Joulo focused on something else. She did feel different. Her body was weak, but that wasn’t new. The difference was that it ached, a dull pain so deep it was like the fabric of her person had shifted.
“Feline curiosity and sheer luck,” the bird matron pulled Joulo from her thoughts. “A potent duo that may have done more than we thought, though perhaps that’s not a bad thing.”
“Wait, hold on,’ Myriad interrupted. “Didn’t you see what happened? Those two brutes only hurt Joulo and burned her cards! Are you trying to imply they might have been helpful in any way?”
“Actually,” Joulo’s voice was soft, but she wanted to calm Myriad. “They might have actually helped somehow. The dead magic… it's fading… whatever they did spurred my dungeon to action.”
“There is a chance it was devastated by that lose as much as you were,” Tyliana reasoned.
It was a line of thought that made Joulo pause. All dungeons were alive, as they held the souls of reincarnated people, changing the world in subtle ways as the myths of their world became reality in the next, but her dungeon was different. It wasn’t one capable of thought; it was one that clung to life in a toxic environment as it… purified mana…
Her eyes darted to the hand she held the cards of her domain. There was a fresh scar, a wound from where she bled. Ugly, but not enough to distract her. She needed to know what the dungeon had become. Flipping through her small deck, enlarged by a fair number of ants, most of which were dead. She hardly spared the corpses a glance. They were just an oddity of the dungeon, as it grew without her gaze. Dead things don’t matter, so don’t make cards. It was a fact the dungeon had ignored.
Joulo’s frantic movements caught the eyes of others. No one had actually seen her in a rush before, as she was normally so careful to move slowly enough to be unnoticed. She didn’t care right now, as she had to find out what had happened to her mountains, to herself.
The card she needed was at the end. Buried under a moth priest, magical slimes, and a mutant bird of cancer and moss was the card she needed. The dungeon core. Heavier than it had been the last time she held it.
Prize in hand, Joulo paused. It was warm from overflowing mana, pure and palatable. The warmth made her pause as questions filled her mind with worry. How much had it changed? Were they good changes? If they weren’t, would she ever be able to set the dungeon back on track, or would it outgrow her domain and leave her with nothing? Full of undead…. what had it become? She prayed everything was in order until the hand of Myriad on her should reminded her of the present.
Worrying this much helped nothing. She needed to know before she could make any plans, so with a deep breath and trembling hands, Joulo turned over the Dungeon’s card.
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Race:
Arcane Core
System Age:
3 years
Intelligence:
10 -> 24
Mana Control:
6 -> 17
Racial Trait:
Dungeon’s Domain (4/10)
You are the mana that flows through the world, granting you ownership over anything that is 80% your mana
Status Effect:
Mana Mitigation
By overcoming the hostile mana of the environment you have gained a better understanding of negating its effects. No debuff applied
Active Effect:
End of Sentience
Int 25 is the minimum for a creature to be sapient. Mind reconstruction is imminent. Will gain unique racial knowledge.