***** World System POV*****
Well, that was an exciting bit of unexpectedness. I thought to myself as I once again checked to make sure everything was running smoothly. I don’t know entirely where this Starship Dungeon and his friends came from, Oh God, but I am VERY glad that you made it impossible for me to miss new variables like that.
Honestly, if it hadn’t been for them I would have started getting bored right about now thanks to all the automation I had set up. When my section of the universe was first created, it was relatively easy for me to keep up with everything that was happening in my domain as there wasn’t much happening. As time moved on and more things started happening, even though I got better of keeping track of things I started having trouble keeping up.
Then one day I accidentally discovered that I could make things that would do parts of my job for me. For any event that I had already linked to a response from me, such as leveling up at certain amounts of exp or unlocking a skill, I could set up one of these subsystems to automatically handle that event for me.
This made my life so much easier as I didn’t have to focus on the little things, leaving me free to handle the big picture and find the new events worthy of my attention.
As refreshing as it was to get that load off my back, it still created some unexpected problems. Suddenly, I was no longer shackled by the things that had consumed my life up until this point, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. For a time, I was mostly able to appease my looming boredom with all of the new classes and achievements and such, but eventually, those started to slow down and peter out.
Fortunately, about the time boredom was going to set in this Starship Dungeon and his friends came blasting into my domain from somewhere way out in left-field, catching me by surprise.
They were like nothing that I had ever seen before.
To start with, they did not fit perfectly into any of the races and classes that I had already established. Oddly enough, even though the starship was by far the most outlandish of the three at first glance, he was the easiest to fit into my preexisting system. All I had to do was attach a dungeon core to what he already was and treat him like a dungeon. Oh, and tell him how to summon a dungeon fairy.
The dragon-sort-of-thing and the dryad-sort-of-thing on the other hand were… difficult to say the least. At first glance, it seemed like I could fit them into pre-existing racial and class slots without too much effort. Upon closer examination, however, they both had some very… odd characteristics that defied any pre-existing classification I tried to apply to them.
Then again, calling them very odd was a bit of an understatement.
The dragon-sort-of-thing looked like I could fit him into my system as a dragon with two-thirds of his levels in the enchanting class, which is slightly odd but it could happen. The problem is that buried underneath the dragon aspects I found not just one but three other races. Three! Not only that, but they were actually in harmony with each other!
Hold on there buddy. I thought to myself as I metaphorically took several deep breaths. You need to calm down and take this one step at a time. Get them squared away first, then freak out afterward. They might not be native to your domain, but they are still your responsibility.
Once I had calmed down, I went back to working on the dragon-sort-of-thing. The first of his hidden aspects was a Forest Lord of the Fae, and the second was something born of moonlight and shadow and hope in the darkest of times. That last was odd enough in and of itself, but it adamantly refused to be named or categorized further.
How on Earthonia is it refusing to tell me anything?! I am The World System! It should tell me everything!
Poke.
Poke poke.
I'm starting to get the feeling that it will sort itself out when it needs to be sorted out and not one moment sooner.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Sigh. Well, that's annoying.
Once again returning my focus to the dragon-sort-of-thing, I realized that he was not as much of a curveball as I thought he would be. While the power levels of the Forest Lord and Shadow aspects were evenly matched and significant enough to be noteworthy, together they were just under a third of the strength of his dragon aspect.
That just left his human aspect, which somehow tied the other three together into something much stronger than the sum of its parts. Even so, when all is said and done, he is still first and foremost a dragon enchanter. He may have some interesting side benefits from his other races, but he is still primarily a dragon. As such I can slot him in as the draconic enchanter he appears to be, I just need to make sure my subsystems are ready to adjust to his oddities when the time comes.
As for his wife, the dryad-sort-of-thing, she was a bit more complicated. Her physical appearance and living accommodation requirements were driven by the part of her that is Dryad. As with the dragon, there is also a human aspect tying everything together. However, most of her power is driven by her third aspect which… I’m not sure what to make of that, to be honest. It is similar enough to the dryad in terms of its relationship with its domain that the two powers blend together rather well, but its base affinities are all over the map. I think it has something to do with cities, but that doesn’t make sense. Dryads don’t like cities. They just don’t.
Whatever. In the end, she is like her husband in that I can mostly plug her into the existing system, then let the rest sort itself out.
At this point, I decided to put all of them into the Rain-soaked Forest for several reasons. First, I was already planning on putting a dungeon there sometime in the near future, so the conditions were already perfect for a dungeon. Second, the other two will be right at home in the forest, especially since I can stick the dryad in that particular tree since hers had been left behind. Third, that Kraken with the bandits is starting to annoy me, and dropping an almost territory-less dragon on his head will solve that problem nicely. I just need to make sure he is contracted to the dungeon so he still has enough territory to stay sane. Given his current condition, that also means I need to halfway contract his wife to the dungeon as well to make sure his current condition doesn’t completely sever the connection.
Plan created, error-checked, saved and executed.
This brings me back to the present, where I had just finished running a systems-check and was preparing to be a bit bored.
But I don't want to be bored!
Instead, let’s go see what my new Starship Dungeon is doing. Huh. Looks like he is trying to name his kobold and my subsystems are blocking him.
Nope. That won’t wor–
Wait, what is he do–
I REFUSE TO LET YOU PREVENT ME FROM NAMING MY MONSTERS! he yelled through the connection my subsystems used to send System Messages. I DON’T CARE IF THEY DON’T GET THE BENEFITS OF HAVING A NAME UNDER YOUR CURRENT SYSTEM! I JUST WANT SOME WAY TO ACKNOWLEDGE THEM AS THE PEOPLE THEY ALREADY ARE, RATHER THAN THE MONSTERS THEY SEEM TO BE!
Then he let go of the connection and operating on autopilot I carefully shut the connection down manually so as not to damage anything.
What. Just. Happened?
How on Earthonia did he manage to yell at me through my subsystems?! I mean people have yelled at me before, usually by just yelling as loud as they can, but nobody has understood enough about how I talk to them to yell at me in quite that fashion before.
Does this mean I might finally have someone I could talk to other than my own subsystems? That would mean his core is thinking far faster than even the largest dungeons inside of my domain.
Wait, he can speed up his core that much? At that rate, he’ll burn himself out by the end of the year! How fast is he running his core anyway?
Oh good, he’s slowing back down to normal speeds. So while it would appear he will eventually be able to hold a conversation with me, it will be quite some time until he can do so easily.
In the meantime, he has a reasonable request, and I approve of the reasons for it, so I’ll grant him his request.
Writing Function code. Error checking. Saving. Executing.
Starship Dungeon Lesser Name Function added successfully!
Like I said before, that was an exciting bit of unexpectedness. What is he going to do next?
Spoiler: Dungeon Map
Dungeon Map [https://i.imgur.com/Iolan0i.gif]