“Darian!”

I groggily moved my head from one side to the other.

“Darian!” The voice repeated.

I slowly incorporated at the same time whoever was behind the door started knocking on it.

“Darian it’s time for work!”

That must be the assistant, I thought while simultaneously cursing him and everything in this world. If I heard Darian one more time I would explode.

“Yeah, yeah, fine. Give me a sec!”

I put on the fresh change of clothes and checked my status. It still showed my energy at 703/750; sleeping hand’t helped at all.

The only help the System was providing, a rather useless one, were the same neon-yellow lines that guided me outside of my room. Either to the assistant, or to the place I was supposed to work.

But that was not what I needed.

I couldn’t stop thinking that just after I had escaped death in live by the hands of the [Oracle], I was going to die by some technicality. I didn’t have time to work. That was beyond the point.

But did I have any other option? My bottom-left corner still showed a flashing dialog that kindly reminded me I was taking part on a summons request. One that I had voluntarily accepted, to make matters worse.

Grunting a few times, I finally made my way to the door. I was met with an unpleased assistant who promptly made me follow him to the lab. That’s, at least, what he told me. The system didn’t seem to agree that much with his opinion.

[You have entered a Dungeon]

He looked at me, and I suppose my puzzled face made him rethink a bit his words.

“Oh, this is a lab that we use to experiment with corruption. The system thinks that it is a dungeon, but it really is only a controlled environment.”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

As if that, somehow, made it better.

I knew first-hand what corruption meant, and out of all the words I would use to describe it, controlled environment didn’t even make it to the list.

“Your job is rather straightforward. Search for any corrupted object and report it back to us.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, yes. It should be easy with your [Divinator] class, is it not?”

I shook my head, hoping the universal gesture for no was equally valid here. The mission was clear, and to be honest it was beyond mundane. The problem was that it required using energy.

I sent a pulse, short and sweet I thought. And that it was, but the amount of information that came back was plain wrong.

“Ah,” I hesitated for a moment, “just what kind of experiments are you doing here?”

My simple ping had reported, at least, a hundred items. And I had constrained it to be rather short-lived.

[Ring] [Book] [ Machine] [Pencil]

There were all kind of menial items piled in every single corner of the room. None of them corrupt, as far as I can tell.

“We are analyzing the effects of corruption based on distance from source. Anything worthy of mention here?” I shook my head. “That’s a pity! Well, I’ll be behind that door over there. If you find anything, let me know through the System.”

“Wait!” I said two seconds later after I managed to process what he said. “Why are you going? How do you say am supposed to let you know?”

“The place you are going,” the guiding lines appeared again and pointed deeper in the room, “has a tad too much corruption for me. You should be fine, though. Probably. Anyway! Just open the summons request dialog, you’ll have an option to write there.”

That’s reassuring… I was being sent into some corruption hole with the promise that it probably would be fine. And the person sending me there refused to set a foot in.

To top it all, I was below 700 energy from just the last pulse and the stupidly huge amount of things in here. At 697 to be exact.

I sighed and started following that line. My pulses were kept to the minimum. I was being so economical with them that I even forced myself to learn how to direct them. I had been casting them as an sphere around me, but there was nothing stopping me from throwing straight lines.

So, for the next five minutes, I sent as little pulses as I could and, always, aligned with the System lines.

I didn’t feel the corruption going up, but I didn’t even know how to feel that to begin with. Maybe there was some skill, or some kind of reading machine? I hoped it was not the latter, otherwise they would hear me out for a while.

I kept on walking until the line stopped right in the middle of a spherical room. It was taller than anything I had seen before, and by all rights it looked religious. Actually, I couldn’t avoid thinking of Earth’s churches with those huge cupules adorned with paintings.

Maybe it had been one at some point. Right now, it was just roughly cut stone threatening to come down on me.

“Well, it’s now or never.”

I was standing in the center. The next step was crystal clear. Send a pulse that captures everything within the spherical room.

And I did.

A system dialog popped up.

[You have lost 697 ener-