Joulo shuddered as her skin itched. Fire wormed its way through her body until it hit her spine and the pain exploded through her entire nervous system. Her hands trembled and sweat covered her body as she tried to search for answers.
Her cards revealed nothing. She racked her brain in some feeble attempt to think of the cause. She had felt this type of pain two other times in her life. The first was when she got her domain, when her entire body ascended. The second was when the ants invaded her domain years ago and got her heart to beat once more. Now was the third time, and it did not fill her with confidence.
There was a faint whisper as a spell was cast.
The pain only got worse. Her bones ached, her skin felt dirty and covered in mud, her joints stiff from disuse. It felt as if she hadn’t moved in a hundred years.
“As ichor flows, I will follow it to the source.”
Joulo was light-headed as the blood drained from her face. She could feel how pale she was, as she fought to not get sick. A deep smell of rot clung to her nose. A quick glance at the others told her she was alone in experiencing this. They were too busy watching Myriad chug a pint of something….
“Necromancy is not the act of giving life, but stitching it to the living”
“These will be the strings you dance upon.”
Myriad finished their pint and lowered it to see Joulo doubled over in pain. Before they could call out, the sensation vanished as Joulo sat up straight. Myriad was about to ask, but stopped when Joulo raised a hand and gestured she was alright.
Confused, but alright.
A heart that wasn't hers beat. Her skin felt tight, as earth became a shackle to hold her in place.
A heart too weak to pulse in a hundred years was alive.
The power to live was borrowed from the living.
Joulo jumped in surprise when a status window appeared before her.
> Congratulations: Your domain has expanded to include the following…
> You have inherited these cards. As such, domain transfer penalties do not apply.
A card appeared, followed by a second and third. They piled on top of each other in some rush to be seen. It was a lot to take in, but her curiosity overpowered any dread. With a gentle hand, she looked through the cards laid out before her. They were numerous, chaotic, and with no connecting thread or theme.
[Disturbed Graveyard] was a landscape that buffed undead, especially the vengeful ones. [Consecration] was odd, as it had so many requirements she could only use it to restore ancient holy sites. [Cannibalism] was linked to [Sacred Sacrifice], and so many more that all seemed to have no baring in her domain. She had inherited…. Something?
It was the last card she saw, at the very end of the stack, that made everything click into place. It was supposed to be the first one she received, but each new card had buried it. She read and reread the description to find it woefully lacking.
[Avice - The one who has consumed a god’s flesh to steal “Joulo’s” power.]
> Would you like to designate this mortal as a champion? Y/N
Joulo blinked. A mortal had inherited her inheritance? Or was it that by interacting with a god directly, she had unwittingly entwined herself with something Joulo owned? Wait…
The thought made her brain stop….
‘How did a mortal interact with a god directly?’ She thought to herself. ‘No, how did she eat a god with the name Joulo?’
There were only two to have that name. One was her, alive, uneaten, and on the far side of the divine veil, the other…. The dead god she inherited the name from….
Did that mean…
She never got to finish the thought or process the emotions, as Tylianna’s voice shattered her solitude. Her eagle eyes had spotted Mask, and she called out to direct everyone to watch as he wormed his way through the crowd. With the target in sight, Trench and Myriad prepared the lasso in case he didn’t come to them.
Their sigh of disappointment was immeasurable when Mask took a seat without acknowledging them and launched into a hasty sales pitch.
“My client has requested I inform you of a recent update on our end that will greatly affect you and your domain.” He addressed Joulo, as he got out his briefcase and pulled out cards. “Not a direct trade, nor a game since you aren’t playing against me directly, but the rules of this are as simple as having your chosen monster survive the rebirth of the graveyard that…”
He was so focused on his paperwork he had yet to look up, but once he did, his voice died in his throat. He saw Joulo’s eyes and realized she didn’t have a hint of fear like he expected, but the stone cold eyes of apathy. She had a dozen emotions, but she took a deep breath and bottled them up.
“Mask,” Joulo began slowly, as she took a moment to find her exact words. “No.”
“What do you mean ‘no?’ You can’t deny a request from someone else in this room. I may not have been born here, but that doesn’t mean I can just be-.”
“I said no. You don’t have the power to drop off some cards and walk away again. You are fired.”
“I work on behalf of my client, so you don’t have the power to affect my domain and tell-”
“Can you stop, please? You talk as much as Myriad.” The mention of their name caused Myriad’s face to light up as they felt it was an invitation to speak, but Joulo raised her hand to cut them off before they began. She continued, “You are the god of the godless, right? Well, that ‘client’ of yours no longer falls under that domain, as she recently found religion.”
He sputtered and spat. “What makes you think you can just steal my client, or better yet, that you are even right about the mortal in question?”
Her tone was flat. “I’m tired, and I’m done with all of this. She has entered my domain, which has given me the ability to take her on as my champion.”
Trench did a double take as he whipped his head towards Joulo so hard his chair toppled over. “Oh man, is this your first champion? That means you can use cards on her directly? Do you need any help to figure that out?”
Joulo raised another hand to silence him. “I’m not sure what I’m doing exactly. Never have.” Her tone was as tight as her lips as she refused to let the emotions out. “But I think it’s about time I try, right? Right here, in front of everyone.”
She looked over all the cards she held, carefully picking through them. The wait had Mask shift in his seat. Sweat dripped off his brow. He clearly didn’t like being the one on the back foot, nor being the center of attention.
Joulo could sympathize, so after another drawn out minute, she ‘found’ the card she had been looking for. She placed [Quarantine] on the table where all could read it. Mask looked confused for a moment, before his chair sprung to life beneath him and ran away as he clung on for dear life.
“Just had to remind the system we are supposed to be trapped, huh?” Tylianna asked in her usual bored tone.
“Well, at least he left behind his briefcase,” Myriad said as they pounced on it with child-like glee. “I wonder what could be inside, since it’s not like we got a chance to peek when he was using it.”
“We can see what I inherited from Mask in a minute,” Joulo’s choice of words took the other by surprise, but she pushed on without explanation. “I have another idea. Whatever is inside was made to hurt us…” her voice trailed off as she dug around to find another card. Once found, she held it aloft so everyone could see it clearly.
[Invasion]
“You said I could imbue my champion with any card I had? Well I say we use this on that briefcase, and only after, we pick through it for things to use.”
There wouldn’t be any casualties if she used the war card on herself, right?
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
It was a thought that crossed Joulo’s mind, but today she was too emotionally and physically drained to worry. It would be a contained war to take out the infection that had rooted so deep inside of her. There would probably be casualties, and she wasn’t sure she would make it out unscathed, but she didn’t care anymore.
It was time she actually played to her fullest. It was time to let the bear that had slept wake up.
It was time to end it.
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Echo’s leaves rustled as the behemoth’s hot breath flowed through his branches. His grove was quiet, and he was safe, but he knew others lacked that luxury. He had lived longer than a week, so his title to grow and gain strength pushed him to heights he never thought possible.
He had grown unfathomably tall, yet he still hid. Only a fraction of his height was above ground, as he grew deeper, he contorted himself to hide in the forest of trees much smaller than himself. His roots felt something new as they broke into ground so deep the dungeon had never tasted what was down here.
Yet it had a familiarity with it. One other had tasted this. Vault knew what it was. He found a pond down here and drank all he could. Power flowed through his roots, yet he hid the power from the system, as he was unsure who to trust. If the Core didn’t trust anyone, perhaps he was right to do the same.
So quietly, he rested as a new bulb grew along his highest branches.
He was safe to grow, but as the protector of the forest, he knew he would be called to fight.
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The slime paragon tried to climb out from the hole the skeletons had trapped it in. The walls burned to the point of glass at its volcanic touch. It had formed an inescapable crucible that had sealed its fate.
The mana that fed it stilled above, as the currents died out. For a moment it assumed the worse, that the Core had died out, but it knew the other parts of the dungeon thrived. It was just this section, neglected and forgotten about, until eventually, the food stopped coming, and the paragon would starve.
Desperate for mana, it consumed parts of itself. The gelatinous form shrunk as it continued to prolong its own life, desperate to cling to anything. It shriveled, and formed a tight ball as it lay in the corner of its obsidian prison, unsure of what to expect next.
‘What is death like?’
‘Am I just a forgotten paragon made by mistake?’
‘What is my purpose? Why was I never given a name…’
It had no way of knowing names were not freely given in this dungeon, but chosen. It had no way of knowing what would come next, or that it was responsible for its own happiness. How could it, as it never had a forceful personality like the other slime siblings. They weren’t even paragons, yet they received all the love and attention from the masters above.
So it waited to die, alone. Too weak to move, to take charge of its own life, it wallowed in the misery of its own mind.
> A kindred spirit.
> I may hate your master, but that is because I experienced his neglect first hand. We bear the same scars, inflected by the same hand.
> This is not the end, and you don’t have to die alone.
The words brought comfort in the end, but it was a minor relief as its fire died out. The magma paragon passed into the void.
> Title and Mutation gained in the paragon: The Abandoned Know True Kindness - too hot to touch, your evolution has brought an isolation your species was never meant to endure. With your origins as a single cell organism, you may now share genetic material with slimes you touch, so that you may have others at a fraction of your strength, but they will be there with you.
> We won’t be abandoned again. We were never meant to be alone.
The paragon didn’t understand the kindness of these words until it respawned. Like a dam that sprung a leak, the moment it passed through the slime spawner, it broke open. A crystal shattered, its shards consumed as mana flowed into the cauldron and slimes poured out in mass.
It looked around at the forsaken mycelium fields. The slimes had gone extinct here, and now the spawner was making up for lost time. Within seconds, a slime had spawned, and another behind it. More pushed into each other until they overflowed the cauldron and bumped into the paragon.
Worry filled it, as its surroundings were set ablaze, but the small slime it touched only glowed as a flame sprang to life inside the monster. It did not burn like the paragon expected, but held the small flame suspended in its body. The flame flicked and split, as it jumped to another slime that was behind the first. Then again and again, the fire spread through the population.
Some took to it more readily, as they were encased in fire, while others only held a candle flame at their heart, but together they glowed bright enough to hide the stars above.
> Let me make up for lost time. As paragon’s evolutions are supposed to spread through the population they are a part of, but your isolation has made that difficult.
> Mutation in Mana Slime species
* Greater Temperature Resistance had turned into Fire Immunity.
* Species has gained an internal flame that feeds off of personal mana supply.
* 30% chance that internal mana supply will spill out and become external heat generation. Designated as Flame Slime subspecies.
> Mycelium fields have turned into Scorched Desert - As long as its surface has more soot than fungal growth, all fire based creatures that live here will receive a bonus ten to all stats.
The paragon watched the world around it change. The species' magic to grow plants had twisted to burn away the fungus and leave soot in their wake. They left zigzag patterns as the species spread out across the field, fertilizing and reclaiming with every step. The paragon watched as the slimes stumbled and adjusted to their new bodies. It- no, she- knew the field would spring back bigger than ever before, but that would not be today.
Today, she had a family to drive away her loneliness. She wasn’t a mother by any means, but she realized her life was her own. Not just that, but if she wanted a personality and a name, she would have to give herself one.
“Perhaps I will go by Kindle,” she thought to herself.
“Kindle, the kindergarten’s pilot light.” She happily mused, as she showed the others what it meant to be magma slimes.
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With the Chimera that held him hostage dead, and the spawner in working order, Vault was free.
He had to run quick after spawning to avoid the touch of all the new slimes and the mutations they were eager to share. The glow and internal flame motif wasn’t his style. Quick to get out of town, he ran towards his one goal. The job didn’t matter anymore. The fact he almost died to the Client that hired him made him realize it wasn’t the job that mattered, but the other things in life.
A bird called overhead, as its song echoed over the trees. It blinked out of existence and back, but Vault didn’t have time to figure out why the Lord was teleporting. He had something to do first.
He had to find his sister.
The journey wasn’t difficult, as the dungeon itself was barren. No adventurers, no skeletons, few monsters… it was a ghost town. He walked the empty streets once so full of life, and he couldn’t help but take it all in. The dead trees, the fragments of bone and death, the blood that soaked the ground like oil.
This place was dying, and if he wanted to survive, he had to take what he had left and run. Luckily he was never one for worldly possessions, as they were too easy to steal. All he needed was himself, and his sister… but did he even have those?
He tried to think, to double check himself. He was… him, right?
It was a thought no sane detective would have. Of course, he was himself, who would he be otherwise?. Black slime body, tendency to dramatically over describe the woes of the world, and a love for his sister…. Check, check, and check.
But there was something else. A hunger, a need to get even… a sense of emptiness deep in his heart that made him subconsciously slow his pace. He wanted to be a part of the horde. The chimera had taken something from him, and in its absence was a sense of inadequacy.
At the walls of the fortress, he stopped. The breath of whatever laid below was thick with bloodlust, as it moaned in agony. The detective looked back down the path he had just traversed… he could return and be a part of the collective. He could end it all by taking up arms and marching to war. After all, he knew just how bad the enemy was that prepared to attack them. No stranger to darkness, he knew exactly what it was that lied in wait.
And he knew if he did leave, he would leave behind a part of himself. He didn’t know how big it was, or how empty he would feel… but he knew one thing. The hole in his heart- in himself- could be filled if he just found her.
The fog that choked the fortress tried to hide his treasure, but behind some boxes was one that glowed. Light poured through the slits in its shabby construction to illuminate the fog like a beacon. He smashed the box, and inside was a teapot that he tipped over.
Out snaked the beautiful girl he had staked everything on. She was confused and took a moment to look around. When she saw him, she froze. It was only a second, but it was the worse reaction she could have had, as that single moment was drawn out into an eternity.
“You’re…” Her voice held the sadness of someone grieving.
“You’re… hurt,” she finally said.
“No?” Vault was confused, as he looked himself over. Dark purple slime, two hues away from pitch black, as he ate the sins of the dungeon to make sure no one else would suffer-
Dark purple, a color only seen under the light… As Shimmer’s warm rays of love touched his skin for the first time in years. He had no mouth to grin, but that didn’t stop him from letting that stupid facial expression find itself at home on him.
“It would seem you’re right.” He tried to bite back the laughing tone in his voice, but the relief was just too much. He dove at her and clutched her in the embrace he had wanted to give her since the two were born half a decade ago.
For the first time in their lives, the siblings hugged. No longer opposites that repulsed and hurt each other with a touch, they could connect. She was warm, and it made him feel like he was home and safe for the first time in far too long.
“But- but but,” she stammered. “If you’re not covered in shadow, then what happened?”
Her words were so full of concern that Vault couldn’t help but cry at the thought of someone caring for him so much. “It’s a long story, but safe to say the dungeon has another monster who will eat the light.”
It wasn’t a difficult deduction to make. Shimmer still glowed with all the love of a sun giving life to the world. She was the yang to his yin, so his hate and darkness only magnified her light and love. For her to glow, it meant the chimera had taken his title and powers of darkness to keep the cycle alive.
As much as he wanted to stay there, he knew they had to do something. “Its time we move, and get you to the top of one of these mountains.”
“But wait, if we run away, won’t bad things happen to the others?”
“We aren’t running away, just getting you close to the sun. After that….” he hesitated. “After that, we can be free for good. We aren’t paragons, and our powers were just to prototypes for the next generation.”
“So… the Empress was right?” She asked in that soft tone that took away Vault worries. “Every generation is stronger than the one before it?”
“Yes, so it is time we retire.”
“But only after helping them one last time, right?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
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> Corrupted Air Detected, destabilized monster DNA is highly susceptible to this environmental change.
> Dungeon wide corruption has reached 58%