She is in hell. Her body spasms in pain, muscles clench and cramp, locked into place. Every tiny movement, every shallow breath she manages to steal from the clenches of death, further increases her everlong agony. Cold, sharp, stinging fire courses through her veins and her heart and head both pound in a cacophonous symphony of pain and discomfort.
She’s dying. She has to be. She doesn’t remember why. What was she doing that led to this? She doesn’t know. Seconds march on into minutes, into hours, into days, into weeks, ad infinitum. Or has it only been moments since she awoke? This eternity of torment never ceases. Her eyes flutter open, or at least one of them does, with difficulty. The other is stuck closed, and trying to force it only creates a pulling sensation on the skin of her eyelids and her eyelashes that only serve to exacerbate the momentous headache that is a mountain troll pounding her head into gory bits. Through her only open eye, she sees nothing but darkness lit by a soft, pale, sickly green glow. Threads shine at angles, floating in the air, and silky wraps of cloth bind her limbs. Sharp, painful, steel wires dig into her skin, and she feels blood trickle down her arms and neck, pooling into sticky crevices of skin.
Her left leg is turned backwards, she thinks. She can’t actually feel it, though her hip is molten magma. But now that she notices it, it’s like a dark, empty, void of numbness, an escape from the bright flare of pain that is the rest of her existence. With difficulty, her eyeball, in its socket, flicks to the left, moving for the first time. Seconds, then, it’s hard to stare in place for too long. She notices the source of the green glow illuminating her silky cocoon prison. A crystal, the size of her fist, slowly growing, but fast enough to notice with the naked eye.
She has absolutely no idea what it is. Obviously something magic, magic loves glowing fucking crystals. She knows little to nothing about magic, but maybe the System Notification when she touches it will tell her something? Maybe it’s a weird, freaky looking Awakening Stone? She doubts it, but it is the only thing she can see in the dark, sticky, humid environment she is in. And she will die soon. That is clear. Maybe it will explode and take whatever did this to her with her, and put her out of her gods damned misery. Slowly, she lifts an index finger, and pain wracks her existence even harder than before, like a wave crashing against the side of a ship and grinding it into rocks jutting out of the ocean. An ocean of pain, that is. Poetry is beginning to fail this feeling. The finger taps down on stone, and a new jolt shocks through her bones, while her beating heart and pounding brain do their best to escape their bony confines. Another finger lifts, taps, pain and agony. Middle finger. Ring finger. Pinky finger. Thumb. Index finger. Like the world’s slowest spider, walking on glass shards and acid and molten rock and pure distilled fucking agony. Spider. For some reason that thought jogs a memory, and a connection is made to the wraps of cloth around her limbs, the thin steel wires pushing into her skin, and the glinting lines floating in the air. She’s in a fucking spider cocoon. Her insides are filled with poison and probably quite literally melting.
One finger at a time, her limp arm slowly drags across jagged stone, like a piece of cheese on a grater. Soft moans and groans of the dying fill her ears, but they’re coarse and rough, panged by dehydration. She can’t tell if they’re barely whispers or if they’re louder than a dragon’s roar as they beat on her eardrums like an Imperial tax collector looking for their money. Her eye closes, clenched, pressing tighter, like the vice grip of a stone elemental forcing it closed, before it flashes back open. A blink? Another second, probably.
Seconds more pass, though to her, it may as well have been years. Until, eventually, she touches something. Her eye flicks to the left again, seeing her finger touch the crystal. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t feel like anything. More like a magic barrier. Or maybe temperature-less glass.
Ding! Congratulations! You are the first creature to touch a newly formed Dungeon Core. You are now the Dungeon Master of this newly formed dungeon!
Ding! Congratulations! New Class unlocked: [Dungeon Ma-
And then, everything goes black.
—---------—---------—
When she next awoke, her head was foggy, groggy, and her mind felt like a bottle of gnats buzzing around in slow motion. But there was no pain. That was the first thing she noticed. A blissful, stark, absence of pain. She felt like crying. If that was all some weird dream - nightmare, then it was a cruel joke. She lifted her hand to wipe a tear from her eye when she noticed something odd. Her skin. Pale alabaster, ever so slightly translucent, skin. Her skin was darker than this, by a lot. She turned her arm over and splayed her five fingers out, taking stock of the fact that her usually trimmed and unpainted fingernails were now pure black, and elongated, tapering off into sharp points.
“What the fuuuuck?” She complained, bewildered, unsure how to even act. Even her voice was different, much higher in pitch than before, making her sound like a child.
“Fascinating.” A thunderously soft voice boomed, echoing throughout the chamber she was in. It sounded like a whisper, but felt as if it could carry itself to the ends of the world. There was power behind that voice.
Startled, she whipped around, noticing in slow-motion that the stone in this cave was incredibly smooth, unnaturally smooth, even, in areas she could see it. The rest was covered in webs, a thin gleaming film in some places, and thick mossy sheets in others. Though the cave seemed empty, devoid of life, until she finished turning around and laid her eyes upon… A skeleton?
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A lich. Her blood ran cold. There, only a stride or two in front of her, stood a terrible being most humans could go their entire lives without ever seeing, nor ever seeing anybody who had seen one. It stood, towering over her, like an obelisk of bone and cloth. Obsidian black bones made up its skeletal body, with purple robes trimmed in lime green with gold filigree, and an obviously elven skull adorned with a crown inset with rainbow crystals.
“W-w-w-” She started, high-pitched, in terror, as her mind froze up after taking in the details. She took a step back, one of her many legs making a clicking sound on the smooth stone- many legs? Before her mind could process that new detail, however, the voice stopped her.
“Calm yourself, child.” And immediately, she was calm. The voice felt like the will of a god, filled with unspeakable amounts of power and magic, probably able to bend reality to its whim. “I will not hurt you. Or, rather, I cannot. I already tried, see?” The being said.
Suddenly, a System window was shared with her, its silver-blue sheen, like a thin sheet of mithril, aglow before her eyes.
Warning! Dungeon Masters cannot be damaged during their gestation period. All damage has been nullified. Further attempts will result in damage reflecting back at the dealer.
That brought little comfort. This was a lich she was dealing with. Surely it could do some soul-attack on her or something. Then again, the System was above even the gods. Maybe she was safe. Though, it did admit to trying to harm her, and even shared a window showing proof that it had.
“What do you want?” She asked, hoping her voice would be filled with some modicum of confidence. It was not.
“I felt a new Dungeon Core form in my territory. I knew it was a matter of time before this region sprouted another. It’s been a few years since the last dungeon here was destroyed, and since the leylines here didn’t change, I knew a new one would spawn. Ah, but where are my manners? I am Season. Season Darkbark Fellwood.”
Three names. So in life, this lich was a noble. Elven, too, though that was obvious by the skull.
“Fia. Fia Rush, Lord Fellwood.” The woman, Fia, replied, attempting a bow. It was then that she noticed that she was unclothed, her bare breasts having been in full unfiltered view of the lich. Even lower… Her legs were gone. Her human ones, at least. Coming out from where her thighs would start were two… Small spider legs? Pedipalps. Her eyes grew wide as she turned and looked behind her. A spider body, eight legs, all behind her.
“I see you know human customs. I thought you had just recently been born when I saw you, but I was quite curious to see a human soul inside the body of young Arachne.” Replied the lich, before she had a chance to freak out.
“I’m… A monster, now?”
“I’m not quite sure. Arachne are a Fated race, so they are sentient. They are neither beasts, nor monsters. I am curious as to whether you are still Freewilled, though I am also more curious about how you came to be.”
“I… I was dying. Yes, I was human… before. I was walking down the road out in the woodlands, and then I woke up in this cave, inside a web cocoon.”
“An ambush. Arachne are good at that. And?”
“Like I said, I was dying in the cocoon. Veins filled with poison, err, venom. I saw this green crystal and touched it. Then I blacked out.”
“I see. Perhaps check the System notifications you got while you were out?”
Fia nodded, and a window appeared before her. Her Status. She ignored it, afraid of what she would see, and opened the notification log next to it. There were dozens of notifications.
[Notification History]
Ding! Congratulations! You are the first creature to touch a newly formed Dungeon Core. You are now the Dungeon Master of this newly formed dungeon!
Ding! Congratulations! New Class unlocked: [Dungeon Master]. New Class automatically applied.
Notice! You are already Awakened. Skipping Awakening Sequence.
Warning! Incompatible Class detected: [Bandit]. Ineligible for [Dungeon Master] Class.
Error! [Dungeon Master] is a mandatory Class. [Dungeon Master] Class cannot be removed.
Warning! Incompatible Class detected: [Bandit]. Ineligible for [Dungeon Master] Class.
Critical Warning! Recursive loop detected, requesting [Administrator] intervention.
Ding! Class [Bandit] successfully removed.
Notice! 3,901 unallocated experience points. Next time you gain experience, these will be allocated alongside the newly gained experience points.
Ding! Class [Dungeon Master] is only current class. New Vitals per level: 20 Health, 15 Stamina, 50 Mana. New stat points per level: STR +1, CON +2, DEX +1, AGI +3, SEN +5, INT +5, WIS +2, WIL +4, CHA +0, SOU +1.
Warning! You are taking damage! Dungeon Masters cannot be damaged during their gestation period. All damage has been nullified.
Ding! Status Condition [Poisoned] has been removed.
Ding! Status Condition [Neurotoxin] has been removed.
Ding! Status Condition [Paralysis] has been removed.
Ding! Status Condition [Confusion] has been removed.
Ding! Status Condition [Hemotoxin] has been removed.
Ding! Status Condition [Heart Attack] has been removed.
Ding! Status Condition [Brain Hemorrhage] has been removed.
Ding! Status Condition [Internal Hemorrhage] has been removed.
Ding! Status Condition [Bleeding] has been removed.
Ding! Status Condition [Partially Digested] has been removed.
Warning! Health value is negative!
Notice! You have died.