“Lots of changes. I lost my [Bandit] class, but we knew that already. I was level 7, now I’m level 1. Some of my Stats are higher than they were at level 1, before. Same with my Vitals. My Skills and Perks are all different, except for [Status Check] and [Identify], but every Awakened has those… Kinda already know what that Status Condition does, I guess. The big one is my Titles. I have two new Titles, two more than before.”
The lich looked over her Status, as she was sharing the window with him. He gave a quick nod. “This is good for level 1, and I deeply suspect that you will get some very good class evolutions.”
Fia shrugged. “Never had a class evolution before, but what makes you think a lowly [Bandit] is destined for such greatness?”
“The unique circumstances of your resurrection, for starters. Class evolutions love a good struggle.” If the lich had any other thoughts, he didn’t share them.
Fia sighed, and attempted to stand up. Her eight legs click-clacked and tip-tapped as the sharp points at each end tapped the stone, and lifted her up. She looked up at the lich, who towered above her, even while she stood at her full height. “Am I smaller than before?”
“I don’t know what your size was before, but you are much smaller than a normal human. About a stride tall, maybe? You look like a young Arachne, not an adult one.”
Fia blinked. A single stride? The average human was a little over a stride and a half. She was the height of a child.
“The average Arachne reaches adulthood around 40 years old. They live to be around 80 years old, on average, and depending on their stats. You look about half grown, so I am assuming you are around 20 years old?”
Fia sighed. So, not only is she a spider lady, but she is a child. “Am I going to have to go through puberty again?” She asked, exasperated while the lich made a reverberating chuckle sound. She shook her head and opened her status back up, intent on examining her new… Everything. She’d start with Skills. Skills are active abilities that take conscious effort to turn on and/or maintain, unlike Perks which are passive for the most part. Her first two, she is already familiar with. [Status Check] is the first Skill every Awakened receives, giving one the ability to open their Status and give them personalize control over the System, such as the ability to share System windows or mute notifications. She almost skipped over it, when she got the feeling that there was more added to it. She scratched that itch, metaphorically, and a new window popped up that she hadn’t been able to open before.
[Dungeon Status] Name: Unnamed Dungeon Master: Fia Rush Theme: None
Core Vitals:
- Health: 51
- Mana: 50.8
Floors:
- [1: The Cave]
Rooms:
- [1: The Cave]
Fia shared her findings with the lich, who didn’t find it surprising. Dungeons are like an extension of the Dungeon Master’s body. Or, a Dungeon Master’s body are extensions of the dungeon. She is the brain, the Core is the heart, and the dungeon is the body.
“I suspect that your territory only counts as this cave, for now, as this is the only listed room/floor. If you left this cave, your ‘defenses’ would be down, though it doesn’t matter. I suspect your Core is currently as invulnerable as you are, as long as you have that [Gestation Period] Status Condition.”
Fia nodded, and checked the description of that particular condition, again sharing her findings with the lich, Season Darkbark Fellwood.
[Gestation Period]
Effects: Until your next class evolution, you are immune to all sources of damage. This extends to your Dungeon Core as well.
“Why is that? Seems like a crazy overpowered ability.”
“Dungeons are particularly vulnerable when they are young. You are like a newborn baby, with no defenders. A particularly motivated wolf could probably come along and slay you and destroy your Core. I suspect that, without this mechanic, dungeons would likely rarely get the chance to get to their first class evolution. For mortals, the world doesn’t particularly care. But for dungeons, well, they are very important for a variety of reasons, most prominently: They stabilize leylines.”
“I don’t know much about that. I know very little about magic.”
“Theory for another day. Though it relates to dungeons, I don’t believe it is something they actively do, so it is unimportant for now. What is it that mortal parents say? ‘You’ll learn about it when you’re older.’”
Fia blew air out of her mouth and facepalmed. Then, she noticed she didn’t feel any hair. She rubbed her hands on her scalp, careful to avoid scratching herself with her new claws. Yep. She’s bald. Great.
“Arachne grow their hair much faster than humans. You being bald is probably due to your body just being made. Now, continue with your Skills?”
Next-up on the list is [Spider-Climb]. This one is probably a racial Skill not related to her new Class.
[Spider-Climb]
Cost: -10 Stamina/second
Effects: The ends of limbs, such as hands and feet, will stick to most surfaces, allowing you to climb up walls and hang upside down from ceilings.
It was pretty much exactly what she suspected. At level 1, she’d only be able to sustain it for a few seconds, but at higher levels it would be practically free. Useful, but not surprising for a spider monster. Next up on the list:
[Spawn Monster]
Cost: Varies
Effects: Spawn a monster from your list of available monsters. The monster spawned is classified as a Monster, not Fated or Freewilled, regardless of what the species usually is. The monster obeys all commands from the Dungeon Master to the best of its ability and cannot harm or attack the Dungeon Master unless explicitly and clearly ordered to do so by you. The monster can also understand the Dungeon Master's commands, regardless of the monster's language perks. The monster does not need to eat or drink, and is sustained by mana provided by the Dungeon Core.
Available Monsters: [Arachne], [Aranea], [Arrack], [Common Spider], [Ettercap], [Giant Spider], [Silent Spider], [Sorrow Spider], [Web Drake], [Web Weaver], [Werespider]
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
When she shared this information with the lich, it seemed mildly surprised, maybe? It is hard to tell its emotions, having no facial features to read. “That Skill is quite decent, much better than many summoning spells, due to the very fact that it seems permanent. A level 1 permanent summon Skill is very good, though not unexpected for a dungeon.”
Fia nodded. It made sense. Dungeons are filled with monsters, after all. But if a skill this good is showing its head at level 1, what do higher levels have in store? Shrugging her shoulders, Fia activated the skill and chose a [Common Spider].
She lost 10 mana points, and a rainbow-colored light filled the palm of her hand. A small candle flame containing every color imaginable, like fire made of rainbows, coalesced into the shape of a tiny spider the size of a fingernail on her palm, before the flame died away, leaving an ordinary little brown spider in its place. It stood still, unmoving. She felt… Absolutely zero aversion to it. A spider being on her hand should be creepy. She should be feeling the primal urge to immediately flick her hand, throwing it away, and perhaps a scream along with it. Instead, she felt that it was almost… Cute. She held her hand out in front of her, fingers splayed apart, and ordered it to create a web between her fingers as a test. The second the words left her mouth, it began slowly walking from her palm to one of her fingers, where it stuck a strand to her and dropped, swaying side to side until the strand connected to another finger, as it got to work. After a minute, she told it to stop, and then she placed it on one of the strands of web criss-crossing the cave. All the spiders and spider-adjacent creatures that filled this cave before may be gone, but the webs they left behind stayed in place. She ordered it to start weaving a chest wrap for her as a second test.
“It’s made of mana, right? What happens when it dies? What about any webs that it makes?”
“One of the fascinating abilities of dungeons is that the creatures it makes, despite being non-sentient monsters, are very real. When it dies, it will leave behind a corpse like any other creature. That is part of the reason dungeons are popular for harvesting monster parts.”
She nodded. It made sense. Well, with that out of the way, the next thing to test would be her perks. The [[West Firnian Language (Human)] Perk is one she already had before, nothing out of the ordinary there. [Labyrinthine Understanding], however, is very new.
[Labyrinthine Understanding]
Affinity: Spacetime
Effects: Increased sense of direction in all three dimensions. Increased ability to mentally visualize maps of areas you have explored. Massively decreased chance to get lost in caves, mazes, forests, city streets, and other complicated areas. Increased ability to backtrack exact paths already taken. Effects scale with Spacetime affinity.
Fia raised an eyebrow and her eyes widened at this. This seemed like a very good skill. Way too good for level 1.
“This skill isn’t unique to Dungeon Masters by any means. I’ve heard of it before. It’s an advanced evolved skill that is a combination of several other skills such as [Mental Compass], [Tracking], and [Mental Map]. Possibly a few others, I’m not completely sure of the prerequisites. A useful skill to have, especially for a Dungeon Master.”
Useful indeed. Once her dungeon grows larger, it would basically make it impossible for her to get lost in it. She closed her eyes and tried to mentally imagine the cave she was in, and she found a 3D image of it appearing in her mind, in black and white, as if a [Sculptor] chiseled it out of stone. She could view it from different angles, and there were even glowing orbs inside it, representing herself, the lich, and the [Common Spider] she had summoned.
Next up on the list, [Acrobatics].
[Acrobatics]
Effects: Increased balance and control over your body. For example, increases ability to not slip on ice, balance on a tightrope, and perform stunts such as dives, rolls, flips, and somersaults. Effects scale with AGI Stat.
It’s a common skill that even she is familiar with, though she did not have it before. She likely got it from becoming an Arachne, rather than her new class.
[Insight]
Effects: Increases ability to determine the intentions of others, determine truth or lie, and predict someone’s next move. Effects scale with WIS Stat.
Another common skill she’s heard of before, though this one was likely granted by her class. It’s not particularly potent, but even someone like her could see how it could be increasingly useful for a Dungeon Master, especially if combined with other [Tactician]-like Perks later on.
[Webweaver]
Effects: +5 DEX per level. Increases resistance to the sticky effects of webs created by spiders and spider-like creatures. This effect scales with DEX Stat. Immune to the sticky effects of webs created by you.
Another Arachne-granted stat, for certain, though she was not ecstatic about the prospect of spinning her own webs. She looked back at her spider-body’s abdomen behind her, and the two spinnerets on the end of it. She could control them, like two little hands attached to her butt. Fucking weird. Lastly, the one she had been most curious about.
[Lowlight Vision]
Affinity: Light, Shadow
Effects: Increased sensitivity to light, increased ability to see in low-light conditions. Effects scale with SEN Stat and highest between Light and Shadow affinity.
“Maybe it’s because my Senses Stat is only 15 but… I’m not noticing a difference at all.”
“Perhaps it has to do with the two eyes you’ve kept closed this whole time?” Asked the lich.
“Wait wh-” She started, before her mouth dropped open. She hadn’t even noticed until pointed out, like how you don’t consciously notice your tongue when you don’t think about it, but she indeed had two eyes below her currently open eyes. The eyes she’s had open this entire time were slightly above where normal human eyes are on a face, and the two closed ones are slightly below it. If you drew a line through the middle of where a normal human would have eyes, the top of her bottom set of eyes ends there, and the bottom of her top set of eyes ends there, the two sets of eyes sharing a ridge for their respective eye sockets. She felt her face up with her hands, and came to another startling revelation. She had even more eyes, another set of closed eyes, much much smaller than the other four, much higher up on her forehead, pretty much right under where her hairline would start, if she had any. She had to imagine what they were for, as even with short hair, they would definitely become covered. Tentatively, and minding her fingernails, she rubbed the closed eyelids of her bottom set of eyes and slowly pried them open, trying to get a feel for the muscles involved. Like learning to wiggle your nose, it took her a minute to find the muscles, but eventually she got used to it. These new eyes did, in fact, see through the dark of the cave better than her normal eyes, the soft pale green glow of the Dungeon Core in the center of the cave being much less like bioluminescent moss and more like torchlight, letting her see the walls and ceiling of the cave, as well as letting her see many more of the thousands of tiny, light, silk threads running through the air. The image created by her lower two eyes was set over the image created by her normal, middle two eyes. When she put her finger too near to her face, she could see four fingers. Closing any individual eye would turn it into three fingers. With her middle two eyes closed and her bottom two open, she could see the dark room in much clearer detail. Opening her middle, normal two eyes again turned the room a little darker. Like having one eye open and staring at a campfire at night, then turning away and opening the other eye, which is well-adjusted to the dark. Except her middle two eyes could not possibly adjust as well to the dark as her bottom eyes. It was a really, really neat feeling.
“This is freaky, but kind of cool.” She admitted to herself and the lich, aloud. Next, she did the same game with the two extra-tiny eyes below her hairline, prying them open, before becoming used to the muscles. They were much harder to get ahold of, like trying to flare your nostrils on command. However, only slightly distressingly, these two new eyes appeared to be fully blind. She thinks. Weirdly, opening these two eyes would shrink her field of vision, like lowering your eyebrows in a scowl, creating a pitch black band along the top of her field of vision.
“I believe Arachne also develop the ability to see the heat given off by living creatures. Perhaps at a higher level, or an older age, those eyes may gain a Perk for it.”
Interesting. She closed the tiny top two eyes again, and rubbed her finger over the lids. It felt flush with her forehead, rather than being indented like her other four eyes, and like normal human eyes. No eyelashes or bulge, either. Only a single, top eyelid, rather than two that meet in the middle. With them closed, it is nearly impossible to tell they are even there, and with hair, it will be entirely impossible to see them. Some small comfort, there, though her bottom night vision eyes are just as obvious as normal human eyes when closed. Not to mention her giant spider body. She’d never pass as a human anyways.
With her current Perks out of the way, the only things left are her Titles.
[Dungeon Master]
Effects: Immortal. If killed while in dungeon territory, body will reform near Dungeon Core, if enough Dungeon Core Health and Mana are available. If Dungeon Core Health reaches zero, you will immediately die, permanently. Monsters under dungeon control are friendly and loyal to you.
[Reincarnated]
Effects: You have died and been reincarnated into another body through direct intervention of a [God] or [Administrator]. Massively increased quality of Perk, Skill, and Class evolutions.
“Huh.”