Some more maggots crawled out of their hole, but the trees couldn’t fight them. The Core thought about sending them back in, but remembered he had different monsters to send in.
He commanded the slimes to engage in the battlefield. The paragon was made of fire, which was the strongest power, so that made her strong. The magma slime rolled through the battlefield and the maggots just died at her touch. Each one exploded into the usual flames, but they did nothing against the fire immune slimes.
The one-sided beat down made the Core really wonder why having trees was good in the first place if they were so weak to fire. He remembered someone that once nagged him about ‘ecosystems and stuff.’
He let the thought drift out unanswered as whatever that nagging voice was; it wasn’t here. He kinda enjoyed the silence. Though it was short-lived as something else crawled its way out of the quarry. The sound wasn’t the rustling of more maggots, but something bigger that scratched stone with every step.
Its head came into view first. It was stubby and covered in feelers, with no neck that attached to its bulbus body that rose to ten feet tall on spindly legs. They were just pulsing balls of flesh that stood on fragments of bones they pretended were legs.
It was…. Beautiful.
Full of mana, simple body designs that never worried about needing to connect feet to the body with muscles. There were no feet to connect, no joints that needed to bend, just straight segments of bone. The sight of them made the Core feel a deep greed, as it knew that once it ate them, it would be so much better at everything it could ever be.
The wall of magma rushed towards the new enemies, as their tall frames kept their body away from the heat, but their legs were exposed. They had no choice but to be burned by the lava, as the several stilt monsters that left the hole were surrounded.
But they didn’t fall.
Their bones charred and blackened, but with no muscles to burn, they kept standing. It was annoying… but they were perfect for fighting so many monsters. The Core needed them. He needed their strength, their abilities, and their balance. As he watched them spear the slimes with those graceful legs, he knew he was in love.
The way they dispatched the slimes with only a single strike made the Core’s mind go wild in all the other applications they could have. He wanted to stare at them all day long, but as more of the stilt things came out of the hole, he knew he had to at least give some sort of order to protect the slimes.
The answer was obviously more monsters. The ants and spiders were good at tearing up tall things.
At his command, the ground swelled as the bugs burrowed out from their home. They were a collective swarm of destruction and stone. Shells carved from stone, with bodies animated by mana they would be the perfect weapon.
Then several just died. Just like that, dead.
The Core didn’t see what happened, so gave the order again. This time he saw several burn up as they passed the magma slimes. Turns out the half biological insects also didn’t like fire. Why did everything in this universe not like fire?
With a long and exaggerated ‘fineeee’ the Core found a workaround. He ordered the slimes to just go jump in the quarry. They couldn’t fight the tall things, but they could at least take out anything that tried to come out of the hole. So they jumped and ended any problems the Core could have with them.
The battlefield was clear of any obstacles that could interrupt his amazing plan. It was flawless and well thought through, as he ordered the insects to all attack at once, with no cohesion. Chaos, the perfect way to keep the enemy on their toes.
Which is why the Core had an advantage. The stilt monsters didn’t have toes!
Masterful plan.
Then it didn’t work. The ants climb over each other to scale the jointless legs of the monsters, only to have the leg pulled out from under them as it stepped right over the swarm. Their mandibles clung to any purchase, but only a few could hold on.
The stilted stride only stopped when a bird dove and clawed at its eyes. The lord blinked from reality and appeared a second later to take out its other eye. Its golden blood pooled across its face as it slowed down, and the ants climbed.
The swarm’s weight caused the thing to fall, where it was torn limb from limb. The others of its kind didn’t care for it and tried to move past the fallen, but the Lord continued to dive. Each time he phased into death, he took an eye with him, and soon all the stilt monsters stumbled through the dark. At first they only felt alone, but isolation soon became reality as they were taken down and torn apart to become knowledge for the Core.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
He learned everything he could, obsessed as he found every aspect of their biology he could replicate. The ways their bone legs weren’t connected to a spine, but held together with a ball of nerves like a slime with limbs.
With the battlefield cleared of monsters, and the swarm having minimal casualties, the Core felt alive as it had conquered the battle. Now it was time to eat and grow with every breath.
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At the edge of a golden lake, a girl stood. Its surface steamed as the water receded. Far off there was a splash as the slime paragon fell into its depths, but that only increased the rate that the water evaporated.
‘No, not evaporated,” Avice mused aloud. “Consumed by a gluttonous dungeon core.”
A smile found its home on her face as the slime sunk to the bottom of the water and was force fed the mana inside. It would soon explode from sheer mana density, but until that moment came, the paragon would feed the dungeon the mana it ate down here.
Just like how it ate the flesh-mites that crawled their way out of this pit. Each one a splinter off the corpse that lined these walls, animated by a powerful magic that she had mastered.
With a knife, she carved deep runes into the soft ground. Each stroke of the knife left scar tissue in its wake, and with it, she cast her spell. It was almost complete when she paused and looked up from her work.
The crimson walls pulsed as a light flowed through them. It wasn’t the golden light of godhood, but the dull gray of a rock without personality. The dungeon had taken its last step, as the Core learned the only bit of forbidden knowledge she needed.
Everything else was a stepping stone. Hidden prerequisites that not even the system knew it needed.
First came knowledge of corpses, followed by their uses.
“Desecration,” she hummed to herself as she carved another rune.
“Desecration that leads to the defilement that is necromancy.” She watched the ground bleed as a slash connected two circles.
“The highest tier of necromancy can only be done when you catch a soul.” The knife turned to carve her own hand.
“And the dungeon has caught a soul, but it’s too strong to use right now.” She pulled a strand of blood from her own veins, as it spilled, but not a drop hit the floor. A gift she had stolen from Dekrin before he left.
“So we weaken it, and break its will…” the smile on her face widened unnaturally.
“By feeding it to the dungeon.” Her laugh echoed through the cavern.
With the dagger raised high, she drove it into the earth. Its sharpened edges sliding to the hilt as the cavern rumbled. She yelled in triumph, but something drowned her voice out as it woke up.
“And when its all done,” her voice a whisper so quiet it never reached her own ears. “You will become a dark god, chained to my shadow.”
----------------------------------------
The corruption counter continued to tick.
67%....
67.2%....
67.5%....
System watched, as it had nothing to do. Trapped in this cage, and unable to do anything as the noose was tightened around its metaphorical neck. The counter ticked with each breath, as every fleshy monster that the dungeon killed only increased the corruption that took root.
68.3%...
68.57%....
68.99%...
A thought struck it. What even was System?
Trapped here in its own mind, everything was perfect and structured. Yet when it tried to branch out, to notify the monsters of the dungeon on their achievements, it found each message took more energy to send.
Had it grown inefficient because of a lack of practice? Was it even capable of affecting the outside world anymore? At first it was like a vow of silence to prove a point, but in that time had it gone mute?
69.3%
> Warning….
It strained under the pressure of getting even those words to form. It was trapped, with no way of carving its own way out.
The monsters were dead, but below the mountains it saw something rumble. A young girl carved a sigil big enough to break something important, as she stood over it and gloated. Perhaps she was the reason System was locked out of everything. Had she already taken control and replaced them?
Was System even enough of a person to refer to themselves as ‘them,’ or would it always be an it? They thought they knew the answer, as they were once confident in their own personality, but now…
It sat, trapped as the counter rose.
69.83%....
It knew it was powerless, and that the moment the counter ticked over, something bad would happen. An evolution of the Core… if it was corrupted now, and had eaten the body of a god to fuel its new transformation….
69.99%
Oh no…
System’s senses faded, as an overwhelming pressure caused something to irreversibly shift. Its grasp of reality became fuzzy as it tried to form the notification, but it struggled. It borrowed processing power from other sources to get the words to form, but the effort left it worse then ever before.
> Corruption has reached 70%
> Dungeon Subclass has changed from Corrupted to Eldritch
It wasn’t System’s fault, but as the message was sent, there was a ripple. Centered on the Core, a wave traveled as everything it touched snapped out of focus, as reality bent inwards. It took only a second to cover the dungeon, but System saw deeper.
Beyond the fuzzy trees, or the ants that bled color, there was more. It was the unfathomable feeling of pain, as every single creature under the dungeon’s influence doubled over in pain.
Their bodies curled inward as they broke down. Their bones shattered, as jagged spears pushed their way through their skin, and re-solidified into spikey protrusions. Organs liquified and became a slurry, as every monster swelled. Stone, wood, or slime, they were all affected the same. Their bodies became jagged as they grew spikes. Extra limbs jutted out at odd angles, as eyes blinked open in places they should not be…
System was at first horrified. Then it realized those extra limbs still lacked the muscle tissue required to move them…
With a deep sigh, System realized that despite the horrors unfolding, it was still the result of a dungeon that didn’t know how to operate without them.
System was important, since it was their job to prevent things like this… or more accurately, to turn disasters like this into constructive cretism.
Maybe System didn’t need to hide behind these self made problems of being pretending to be an unfeeling machine. They were a person, as just as everything else in this god-forsaken existence, they were not above the emotions shared by the community.
They may have been powerless at the moment, but if there was ever a thread to pull on, they would be ready. At the first moment, they would be ready to strike back and clean this mess up.