---James---

What was a dungeon? Why was a dungeon? How was a dungeon?

Who, when, where, are dungeons? James had taken the monster holes for granted up till this point. Cave in the ground, some messy stuff with space maybe being expanded or twisted or something.

And yet spending a single moment to think about it, the rank 3 dungeon…it looked like nothing more than an entire world. How big was this pocket world? It couldn’t be located inside the town they had just come from could it? Was it another dimension the doorway simply a gate? Some place they were teleporting to? How did it even work?

How high was the dungeon? Was there a cave roof above them? Was the sky an illusion?

James was distracted from his sudden bout of questioning by Maddy beginning to hum. As she softly vocalized a stream of little dots began to stream out from her pursed lips. Quickly the mage summoned countless small dots of light like fluffs of a dandelion being blown out into the breeze. There had to be hundreds of the little motes – each floating and filling the surroundings and then beginning to pause in the air.

James saw rough outlines begin to form. Very rough humanoid light stencils in the air. M, JA, T, JE – each had a floating letter or group of letters indicating who was who.

Maddy continued to hum – it was a nice sound – and James watched as each figure split off slightly as if going to scout or explore.

“So, follow future us?” Jess began questioningly but Maddy held up a hand finishing off her hum before speaking slowly.

“That’s the future if you get sucked into the dungeon’s rhythm. We are stronger together – notice everything started getting worse in our last delve when the dungeon separated us. It’s trying to do that again if you look at the results. The real question is…do we let it separate us again or ignore it?”

“I handled dodging the boulders without checking the dungeon constantly last time.” Troy spoke. “Far as I’m concerned, we can handle telling the dungeon to get fucked. Even if we can’t survive getting squished – just dodge. It wasn’t impossible.”

James would have been fine heading off alone but…yeah. Fuck the dungeon trying to screw them around. Stick together out of spite!

The group continued on. In the distance they could see the town they had spent the majority of the time in during their last delve. James didn’t know if this was the same entrance the group had taken last time but it was much further away from the town than the exit they had taken when they had left weeks ago. From a bird eyes view the town was maybe half a kilometer from the cliff? The cave entrance they had just left was around two kilometers to the right of that. Maddy had stopped at tablet when they entered copying some drawing down on her wooden sketchpad before continuing on so…it was probably a different entrance?

James could have just asked but it didn’t feel important.

“I’m going to test out the new rune as we walk. I’ll still be paying attention from the surroundings” Maddy spoke suddenly pulling out her sketchpad again and beginning to write something.

That seemed to be out of nowhere? Why begin walking and then suddenly decide to test things a minute later?

“Is she always like this?” James asked quietly after saddling up beside Troy.

Troy tilted his head and nodded slightly – a small grin on his face as he watched his friend begin to fully immerse herself in the board in front of her.

“Yeah, whenever we get new concepts she zones out for a bit. Once she even completely missed our camp getting attacked – I swear she didn’t even notice us fighting off all the monsters or cleaning up afterwards-” Troy stage whispered.

“I did notice – you two had it handled” Maddy spoke still glued to her pad drawing and scribbling out random nonsense everywhere.

An eyeball with brilliant green irises suddenly appeared on the back of her head staring directly at James before disappearing as if blinking out of sight.

…that was creepier than she thought it was. James had wanted to squish the first eye he saw like a bug when it had popped out of the couch beside him.

It was fine.

Walking a bit in tense anticipation James continued to glance upwards trying to spot something against the brightness of the sky.

He could barely see anything – the asshole who designed this dungeon was shining a bright light directly from where potential boulders were coming from.

Would an attack come from a different direction? They were in a relatively open plane – could something dig up underneath them? Invisible buggers attack from the side?

After nearly a minute of silence Maddy pointed up with one hand. “Rock” she added absentmindedly.

How had she seen it?

Where was it?

Jess was beginning to create a giant yellow barrier above the group but James found himself crouching even as he squinted upwards. His eyes were little more than slits as he attempted to filter out the light and catch a glimpse of his prey.

There.

He spotted the rock less than a second before it appeared overhead.

It was fast. A literal comet coming down so rapidly it felt like there was barely time to dodge sideways… and yet James jumped upwards instead of to the side. James had started jumping as soon as he spotted it and met the boulder four-five meters above them.

These things felt like they had to be falling faster than terminal velocity – how come they only noticed them around the group? You’d think they would be falling in the background like hail if they came down so often.

Or maybe it really was just someone actively chucking rocks at their position. It was a dungeon. Best not to think of it as Richard would say.

As soon as James met the falling rock he waved his hand in a large swipe – the barest tips of his right hand brushing against the stone larger than a car. His fingers then bent painfully as James tried to spike the boulder.

An instant motion turned out to be slightly less than instant.

James had started seizing the momentum before the strangely cool stone even touched him. As far as his mind was concerned, he had altered it instantly and yet, his hand and entire arm stung as power was pumped down it and the impact nearly broke his hand.

James’s grasp and toss took just a bit over a millisecond and yet his arm was still violently thrown back.

As if shocked into trying to help – perhaps picking up a faint stream of his confusion – his AI helpfully spit out stats.

The boulder was moving at roughly 61m/s with a high degree of accuracy. Shifting the units a bit, that was 61mm/ms. In the millisecond – no, half a millisecond – James had taken to shift the direction, the boulder had fallen over 3cm. Over an inch of movement in a fraction of time.

James’s fingers and hands had higher defensive stats then the rest of his body but that was still a lot.

…this wasn’t good enough. James needed to be faster – considering he was already reacting faster than he could think, that might be a problem.

Over the course of a second, a scrap of stolen kinetic energy rolled down James’s arm traveling through his entire blood stream like a river.

Thump.

James landed beside the group who all seemed to be in various states of surprise.

Thump.

James was suddenly more awake.

Of course. Ever since he started using haste it had increased his perception speed. Right from the very start. Why was he taking so long to get to this point? Could he actively work on that instead of taking it for granted?

Grabbing his mana and “dragging” it upwards, James drenched his head in speed. His teeth chittered slightly as they vibrated against each other. Then for the briefest of moments, a sharp pain filled his head as James rattled his brain about.

Clamping down on the unwanted resonance, James held his mana in his head as firmly and calmly as he could his will a vise on his magic.

Despite everything no longer rattling, James felt his vision blur and tunnel the longer he held this state. Had he given himself a concussion?

James was distinctly aware of the blood flowing through his head. His heartbeat felt deafening as a torrent of red mana rushed by his ears.

He couldn’t just shove mana somewhere and hope it would do something on its own. He had to control it. Control.

James flipped his lens. One of his two cores dimmed slightly the second waking up. His kidneys felt like his new heart as the center of his being swapped.

All of the power in his head began to twist and buckle. James flipped back to magic. The storm stilled. He flipped back to science, the potential energy sunk into his flesh as his hold lessened. He flipped back to magic and his understanding changed.

He couldn’t just push vaguely in directions and hope for the best. He couldn’t just flip flop and hope that fixed everything in some hand wavy bumbling.

Nothing was that easy – what he wanted needed more actual intent. James needed to actively apply his concepts and actively start it all off.

With each flip, James was able to look at the problem from a different angle. Giving his brain more blood was theoretically giving it more oxygen. Giving it more raw potential energy was theoretically letting it perform better. There were some remnants of his shattered [haste] embedded in the flesh of his head. A part that had started to fade after breaking – his skill regrowing without the original effect as James abused it. James had tried to make [haste] do too much.

There really was only so much a single skill could do – and James had beat it into helping him fly. Other portions of it atrophying were only fair when there was a cost to everything.

Attempting to activate those fading constructs with aether, James flipped back to mana.

Giving his brain ‘speed’ was giving his head muscle more conceptual speed just like infusing his legs was giving his leg muscles more speed.

Aether had theoretically just increased his brain’s speed slightly and now it was mana increasing his brain's speed as the power lagged between forms.

From another angle, the concept was already working. He had already achieved his goal ever so slightly – he just had to grab it. The ‘feeling’ of the concepts James felt needed to be expanded. He needed to purposefully stretch those feelings with his will. Isolate the effect he wanted and enhance it.

James remembered a meme.

“I’m not smart, I’m stupid faster,” he muttered out loud and something shifted.

In the movies when someone had heightened perception, the world about appeared to slow down – everything moving as if reality was set to x0.2 speed. For James nothing so fancy manipulated his perception..

The world continued to move normally, his body continued to feel unrestricted if slightly stiff without a flow of mana.

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James simply felt less overwhelmed. He felt less like things were ‘happening too fast’ his thoughts coming to him quicker.

Theoretically his brain had some stats. Speed stats, defense stats similar to his bodies defensive mana channels.

Theoretically mana could multiply that base. Sure his mind was supposedly separate from the physical brain but James hadn’t really understood the difference well. If it was currently sitting inside his brain he just had to fix his brain right? Upgrade the computer so the software runs faster?

Beside him Troy was staring, a strange look on his face his hand in the middle of reaching out. The man's body seemed strange. It looked almost like he was photoshopped into reality – the main problem was how wrong the lighting covering him was.

Troy looked like he was standing in dim light that didn’t match the bright surroundings. Like a shadow was cast across his entire body light, refusing to touch him.

Maddy had just pointed out a second boulder – was the the most important thing right now? James could actually make a conscious decision. It felt like he had grabbed just a bit more control over his body.

Troy finished reaching out and placed his hand on James’s cheek. James had been too distracted by his perception test he hadn’t noticed the reach until it had gotten incredibly close. At that point he might have flinched backwards or dodged but that response felt too socially awkward. James allowed the maybe friend to touch him.

As soon as the man's hand came in contact with James a slight ripple crossed James’s vision.

It felt like he had just put on sunglasses – the world was much darker but more uniform in its lighting. The darkest parts only dimmed slightly while the brightest parts dimmed quite a bit. Glancing upwards –ignoring the physical contact – James found the blinding sky was suddenly less a mystery.

So this is how Troy had been seeing the boulders to dodge? Maddy was probably doing something similar now that James thought of it – could he do this as well? Light was…moving right? Could he try and move the light that hit his eyes?

He didn’t have time to do a second experiment – James spotted the distant dot rapidly growing larger.

This time he had more time to aim and James slowly crouched allowing Troy’s hand to continue following him down and then ripping away as James jumped.

A remnant of the foreign mana remained for a second as James’s body ripped and began processing it attempting to steal the functionality and failing slightly.

Not the time.

Like a cannon being shot James rocketed upwards, burning a massive amount of kinetic energy because he knew more was coming soon.

Around two dozen meters up James met the boulder horizontally. Like he was landing on his hands and knees James allowed as much surface area to touch the boulder as he could while keeping his stomach and cores away from the initial impact.

James drunk deeply of the momentum from a dozen separate points.

This was too much energy – James lasted less than half a second of free fall before tossing the boulder – moving only slightly slower – to the side. He found his body rocketing back to the ground but smashing down onto his back was easy the impact barely worth mentioning if only for the added strain to his already packed channels.

Releasing a light stream of energy from his skin James felt like his body was being tempered.

This is what he’d been missing these last few calm weeks. Attacks strong enough to hurt slightly.

Really, James had started off using rocks to fight and now those rocks were fighting back. It was comical! James found himself laughing slightly as he floated his body up and back to a standing position.

A strange foreign feeling suddenly invaded his body – Maddy had cast a healing spell on him her mana crawling through his body in a creepy invasive way even as it tried to heal him.

She must have thought he had been hurt from the fall – he was fine!

Although as her mana reached his head and began spreading through his brain James’s thoughts became less erratic.

Trying not to rip the foreign energy apart James let it ease the minor bruises that covered his body even as he jogged back into place in the group.

Heals were nice. James felt even fresher than he had before the fighting started.

Glancing upwards again James attempted to grab the movement of the electrons hitting his eyes a wide smile filling his face.

This was fun.

----------------------------------------

---Maddy---

Maddy was balancing quite a few things currently. In all practicality, she currently had 28 separate minds each incredibly good at multitasking – if slightly weak and scattered. Each of her eyes had enough of her mind inside of them they could and did act separately but some of her mental state was still in her fleshy brain. After 'sinking into them' and 'committing' very little of her ‘main/brain hosted’ mind remained. Currently a majority of these eye minds covered her chest. They stared down at the hasty runework and tried to make sense of things.

Each eye had a different perspective and each saw her mana and the world differently. Each was influenced by their elements and almost had a slightly different personality because of that. Her eyes brainstormed the way her mana acted in the new concepts bounds like jealous scientists hording information and barely sharing their findings.

Several eyes dotted the landscape about them – mostly light/dark eyes as they had the best chance of seeing the boulders James was somehow able to deflect.

He seemed so much stronger than he had a few weeks ago – Maddy had felt like she was progressing well. She had felt like her permanent spells were massive jumps and yet looking at James now she felt like she was falling behind.

Was he a good indicator of the average earthling outside of their group? Was he an outlier? Maddy wanted to say he was different – she hadn’t heard or seen of anyone else taking so long to break and it really made her think about herself and how she could improve.

While a mind spiraled into that rabbit hole others were more productive.

They weren’t collaborating well but information was shared between them even if intermittently.

The first concept contained in this dungeon was something like ‘premonition’ but that English word failed to encompass it properly. The concept was tied to the ‘future’ but altered somewhat – if Maddy had to explain it it felt like the first concept was a shape for a word in a different language that would be a sentence to explain in English. One which allowed her to tap into and perform the spells to ‘see’ the future – although the ‘future’ was quickly starting to just look like something the dungeon wanted them to see.

Was she truly able to ‘see’ the future even if only in the domain of the dungeon? Did the dungeon have a concept that allowed it to ‘alter’ the future? Was the premonition concept simply allowing her to ‘see a story’ and the dungeon could ‘show a story?’ no real 'time' coming into play?

Either way that was what the original rune allowed her to do.

This new concept was something along the lines of ‘history’ with an equally convoluted bit of uncontrollable meaning. It was tied to the ‘past’ but had so much foreign context it was hard to understand what her mana was even doing – except at least by viewing the result.

Of course Maddy almost immediately created a ‘past sight eye’, the spell burning rapidly through her combined pool to fuel.

The view was similar to the one seen through future sight but altered in a way to make it obvious it was different. If the future was smoke the past was clearly mist. They looked similar but moved in a different way.

Her spell became slightly more efficient as she burned it but it wouldn’t be something she could cast constantly for days.

Maddy might be able to permanently try and embed the spell into her bones but that felt colossally stupid.

It wasn’t her concept – taking in the foreign concept like that only to use it in this dungeon and nowhere else was dumb…and the chance of being able to keep it outside of the dungeon felt slim…

Maybe if her perception was better? If she simply imagined she could steal the concept for herself?

No…It was best not to try and cheat the ‘magic works how you think it works’ by tricking her mind into new thoughts. That was the entire reason for secrecy and trying to let people find their own way through magic before crystalizing her domain.

Why hadn’t she done that yet?

Another mind spiralled away into a rabbit hole of contemplation.

That was fine. Still plenty of productive minds working in the present.

Distantly Maddy noticed something in her past sight. Her group – the three original at least – entering the dungeon for the first time.

Oh…oh no.

All her minds came together in a sudden rush of clarity.

She knew what she had to do.

She was supposed to…she was supposed to perform the role her future self had.

Silence.

Every one of her disjointed minds froze. Maddy even forgot to mention the next boulder – James seemed to have fended it off without her help so that was good. This level of shock could have killed them, Maddy needed to snap out of it.

A majority of her minds were now on the same page however, they followed the logical conclusion through to its end.

Maddy’s mind ran through the scenario and understood what the dungeon wanted from her.

She thought maybe the dungeon would spawn some puppet and say it was her past self.

No…the dungeon wanted her to pull the trigger herself.

She understood the scenario – her ‘history’ concept agreed, the magic almost purring as she came to the understanding.

She would have to lead her past self about until the point where she could travel to the past. She would then have to kidnap herself in one of the moments she split off from Jess’s protection.

She would have to pretend to be stupid or insane and allow her past self to fight and win against her.

Despite the fact I know how that battle progressed. I know exactly what I need to do to beat her. I can prepare a spell to neutralize every single one of that version of Me’s attacks.

It would be so easy. She knew her past self’s plan and could trivially plan against it.

Theres no way she should be able to lose.

Could she do it? Could she act how her past self had? Could she trick herself?

Maddy was embarrassed to admit to herself she probably could. Even if she was trying to grow as a person. Even if she was trying to move past her past, if she really needed to…she had a life time of acting experience behind her. Enough she could probably trick herself – especially if she tried to enhance that with magic.

Could she survive following the stated path?

Could she pretend to die? Throw an illusion of herself melting at the end of that fight?

…she had remembered burning light-sight when her future self died. She had accounted for illusions and made sure the copy had truly been defeated.

What if she used some of her knew knowledge? Tried to use the one mana type her past self hadn’t had…thrown some reality into the illusion.

That…might work? Except where could she find the reality.

Maddy was struct my a new thought. If she tried to mimic the teleportation her eyes were doing. If she grabbed the reality of herself and pushed it to a new position…then she could probably trivially perform that feat.

She hadn’t attempted that yet for one single reason. It felt dangerous in a way nothing else had. Her magic was warning her it wasn’t that easy. Her concepts and the instinctual sort of whispers her budding domain told her said that wouldn’t be possible.

You will die in a months time. By your own hand. I just 'saw' it.

Or something. Her memory was fractured at the moment. Self teleportation seemed trivial to visualize right now while other mundane thoughts were distant and hard to picture. In many ways she might even fulfill the prophecy as told. She would die in one spot and be reborn in another. She would destroy her body and ‘life’ then recreate it at a new location.

Simple.

If the dungeon had 'seen' her die could she 'blind' it?

Maddy could see half a dozen different spell methodologies that might work.

And yet self teleportation seemed too useful. Too much power if it was truly that easy.

Magic has limits.

Something that ‘powerful’ conceptually would have a pretty high cost wouldn’t it?

Her first teleportation experiments had all sort of failed. Her eyes had degraded. The recreated item had been slightly ‘less real’ as if bits of it had been left behind or had decayed in the meantime.

What would that mean for her body? Would she give herself cancer's or brittle bones or something?

Instantly she knew she would.

Could she heal those?

Maybe…but that would feel like the cost wasn’t strong enough if it could just be wiped away in a moment.

Could she practice and refine her spell on another living creature first? Any of the natives here? No that would be wrong…Even if she used a monster that sort of clinical testing felt morally wrong. Killing monsters was one thing but experimenting on them felt like torture.

She could experiment on her body but experimenting on others bodies was a slippery slope. Even if she said it was just monsters it was a line she didn’t want to cross right now.

…

One of Maddy’s minds had shifted slightly, ripping itself out of the spiraling loop many of her eyes were currently experiencing.

She watched her past self stop outside of the town. This is around when she saw her future self right? If she was going to play out the history this is was the time to jump in.

There was another question. Besides the idea of ‘if’ she could do all of this.

Besides the plan of trying to survive the story laid out for her…

Well. Did she want to?

Her past self began to sketch something. She would look around and see Maddy soon even if she didn’t step forward.

Did Maddy want to submit and follow the rules laid out for her? In many ways part of Maddy…really wanted to say yes. She wanted to win within the rules. Rules were there for a reason after all. The Maddy of months ago would have said yes.

The Maddy who had allowed her mother to make all the decisions for her would have said yes. Who saw an arranged marriage as a trap she couldn’t possibly fight against. Something she had to adapt to. A challenge she had to complete instead of something she could refuse.

That Maddy who nodded and allowed others to control her even as she controlled her own web of simple people would have just gone with this simply saying it was the way the world worked.

She might even succeed! Although her past self had failed when it came to her marriage so…that confidence was probably misplaced.

The real problem was the woman didn’t want to be that Maddy anymore. She wanted to be someone else – she wanted to change. She wanted to step away from that person – so many of her decisions were about forcing herself out of that life and into another.

She had pushed too hard in some ways. She knew she was overcompensating in an attempt to escape but…

But that was what she wanted.

She didn’t want to meekly go along with a stronger powers plans for her anymore. She wanted out.

Her friends had nearly immediately jumped to fighting against the fate of this dungeon. That’s who she wanted to be.

She wanted to fight the dungeon on her terms. She had already decided that – when had she stopped thinking that? She didn’t want to give in and work around it no matter how easy that sounded.

When did I start thinking of ‘history’ as ‘my’ concept?

Maddy immediately paused as a thought from moments before came back to her.

This concept wasn’t hers.

Maddy immediately snapped the sketchpad and sent destructive mana through the runework melting it away into nothing.

This way of completing the dungeon wasn’t set in stone. In some ways the entire event with her future self had only happened because she had used the dungeons concept to see ‘the future’. She had been poisoned as soon as she drank the water at the start of the dungeon. The foreign magic had set in motion all the events that had happened.

How would the dungeon have changed if she hadn’t acted the way she had? Considering all three of her companions had experienced different trials…that meant none of this was set in stone.

That felt obvious. More and more obvious the more she distanced herself from the dungeon’s runes.

If the future was really set in stone than nothing would matter. If the challenge was truly impossible – if she had walked in and instantly been told ‘you will die’ the dungeon would have been even more unfair. It had adapted and reached that point because of how she had acted. The future had changed as she had interacted with it.

Bubbling up in this sea of thoughts Maddy thought through what she wanted to do.

One answer felt obvious.

She was so overwhelmed by the dungeon's story for one single reason. It had a domain and she didn’t.

The easiest way to force her way through all of this was simple.

It had even been her original plan before she somehow got sucked into the dungeon’s rhythm.

She simply had to crystalize her domain.

Simple.