---James---
James tumbled out of the portal to another world, falling hard on solid glassy ground.
His domain – held together long past the point it wanted to fail – flickered in the crossing. Then, as if realizing he was safe, his enhanced state failed him. His sense of control diminished. His ability to throw complicated commands to his mana and then toss them into his aura slipped away.
Full clear! Dungeon of Fate
Visits to clear (2)
Secret areas found (1/9)
Advancement at start of dungeon visit (Rank 3)
Domain germinated: “Essence of self”.
Noteworthy actions: (7)
----------------------------------------
Calculated reward:
Crystalized skill: Directed Danger Sense. Feel the motion of future attacks against the self, resulting in short precognition for bodily harm.
🙇 Achievement get: Please don’t break me (uncommon)
Description: Gained your first crystalized skill – a skill containing strength that could be lost were it to shatter.
----------------------------------------
Stat: +1 soul power.
For a second a huge spurt of blood leaked out of James’s severed leg. A cup's worth at least. A headache inducing throb suddenly built behind James’s eyes and it took a painful effort of will to began manually controlling it once again.
I need to stop losing limbs. Stats and body make it non-lethal, but getting them back is a pain.
Twisting himself around into a seated position, James reached over and dragged his prize to the edge of his knee. He then snapped off a tiny chunk of stone and popped it in his mouth.
It was too hard for his teeth to grind, so James teased a bit more momentum and kinetic weight into his jaw and teeth. Feeling the way his mana flowed through capillaries and enforced several key points, James lost his self while chewing. A loud crackling rang out as James chewed and then swallowed.
It tasted like…well, exactly like what you would think a rock tasted like. Gritty bland and – as James chewed more and more – coppery. Like the stone was infused with blood or metal dust.
Outside of the lacking taste, there was a faint but incredibly potent energy that trickled like sparks through James’s mana circuit. An army of ants on a meandering path to infuse his bones. Just the single bite had given him some sort of stat.
James licked his lips. Damn how do I eat the rest without dealing with the taste and texture.
His monster meat instincts gave him the idea he could grind miniscule amounts of the whole into a dust and use it like a seasoning. A tasteless seasoning but one he could mix with stuff.
He’d honestly rather make a smoothie. Chug it down like a questionable health shot you took after working out.
James’s AI chugged through the problem and vaguely pointed to the idea of processing it into something edible – his ai even brought up memories to reinforce its point. ‘Look, edible metal’ his AI exclaimed bringing up slides without finishing the vital ‘how’.
It did remind him to message Richard – first sending some ‘hey fren: what does?’ style pleasantries. James queued up a more detailed question about his problem and then realized he was way too sore to charge up a response with mana.
Attempting a pulse and expecting it to fail, James was pleasantly surprised when his AI was able to successfully send its message. All the overpowered pulses he had done with the rocks increasing his base skill?
Suddenly a tumble of hair fell in front of James’s face.
Maddison was standing behind James, her translucent hair flowing and twisting as the girl bent her body in a strange unnatural position.
Her face was upside down and close to James’s as she stared curiously down at his stump.
“Can you help or are limbs too hard to heal?” James asked after an agonizingly awkward pause.
“Youuu’re pretty forgetful, aren’t you? I’ve forgotten plenty of stuff before, but I don’t think she ever forgot her leg. Do you need help remembering it?” Maddy asked a concerned look on her face.
What?
James took in his ally and maybe friend more closely for the first time. Her face…it looked almost badly air brushed. Like someone had fuzzed the skin and shape into a blurred state. Her eyes looked normal – heterochronic dark green and turquoise. They each contained depth and brilliant details. James thought they looked like digital art – like anime eyes brought into reality and shoved through countless filters for realism.
Her body…it looked broken somehow. James couldn’t quite tell ‘how’, just that it was.
Reaching down to James’s leg without receiving a response, Maddy held her hand and focused. After a strange pause, the woman swiped her hand at James’s flesh in an attempt to grab it.
Maddy’s fingers raked straight through the flesh. She swiped again – not a single bit of her hand actually touching him.
James frowned slightly. Her hand was moving…he should be able to feel that moving – if he was still using his active domain he definitely could have. Why couldn’t he feel her? Was she…in a different dimension or something?
Maddy suddenly pouted – the look completely out of character. Like she was suddenly so much more childish than the mental picture James had had of her.
“Why is your body intangibleee. Stop hiding from me” Maddy pursed her lips then bent upwards once again.
My body’s normal? You’re the one passing through me…
“You know what. I’ll let you borrow mine just because we are such good friends.” Maddy suddenly made a decision.
Skipping around to stand in front of him Maddy’s movements were playful and whimsical. How exactly James knew a movement was whimsical? Well before James could figure that out, Maddy reached down and popped off her leg. She looked like a barbie doll being dismembered – maybe even a Mr. Potato head swapping off a component.
Crouching – no less mobile with her missing limb, Maddy stuck her tongue out in concentration and shoved her bloodless and fake limb into place on James’s stump.
Her entire body looked frayed – the loss of a leg destabilizing even more of her but as she attached a transparent limb to James and flowed mana through him a haze seemed to lift from her eyes.
“I can’t be lending out reality like this – what am I even doing? …well, with something to latch onto a creation of living leg is not too hard. The concept of leg is pretty strong in this leg,” Maddy giggled to herself even as eyes began popping out of her body in random places – as if coming over to see what was happening.
Maddy hummed a bit as she stared down at the transplanted illusion. One of her eyes – the left one located in her actual head – fell out almost absentmindedly before with a blink it was replaced by a dark grey almost dead alternative.
The fallen eye pumped mana into the limb before disappearing with a pop –replaced by another a second pop later.
“Really at this point fixing the limb is trivial – my bottleneck is mana. Heck I need to connect my pools again, this is so much harder than it needs to be.” Maddy continued to talk more and more sure of herself as she worked. Her voice felt clearer – her tone less confused and distant.
“There we go, Should mostly be healed now, your body will have to do the rest, so let it rest a bit first okay?” Maddy asked.
“Sure doc,” James joked stepping up and looking down at his new leg.
As Maddy had shifted her mana, the feminine shape had in fact blended into one that looked like his natural one. The limb felt real and solid – with the amount of life mana she had used in her last few bursts, feeling and ownership had returned to him.
The main problem now was…well a matter of stats. His body stats hadn’t transferred to the new limb yet…and the tempering large portions of his body had gone through hadn’t been copied over yet.
Would that even be returned to him? The system was returning stats…he was the one who had performed that tempering.
James would have to fix the weakness as soon as possible.
Meditating a moment, James felt out the connection and strange foreign…what was the nomenclature again? The...concepts. That was it. James felt his veins assimilate the construct feeding blood and mana through the weakened area while dragging bits of the foreign area into the rest of his body.
Despite being weaker it felt profound. Standing up James James flexed his will and felt that profound flicker across his aura. James spun to thank Maddy and found she had vanished.
Shit, once more in her debt – James didn’t like this feeling.
Richards's message returned.
If you were here I could sort something out in a hour or two.
Want to fly over with your prize? If you want to do it yourself…well I searched and got you an option. You will have to get a slot to use but here’s a potential method of performing the preparation. If you’ve ever seen those experiments replacing the lignin in wood to turn it transparent? Well this should be doing a similar thing to your stone. It should leave whatever aether and esoteric elements alone while burning away the common filler elements.
Remember, slot and then high school experiment. Tell me how it goes.
James looked over his cooking instructions finding them surprisingly accessible.
Sure, he’d try this.
----------------------------------------
---Maddy---
Maddison Graves had nearly died. She had been spiraling fainter and fainter for the past hour – her existence reduced to her eyes and a grain of body animating an illusion.
She’d stirred slightly as soon as she’d received the reward from the dungeon – something about a crystalized domain or a spell or something and a few dozen mental stats.
And then she had given James a leg and had returned from her spiral.
Some instinctual part of her body had sucked deep of the experience. She felt like she was starving and suddenly given a small meal. The meaning of her interaction was nourishing and pleasantly flavored – if small and humble. Nothing groundbreaking – nothing pallet changing. But a loaf of bread might as well be ambrosia for the starving girl…if she could still be called a girl.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
That deep part of her body pushed her forward. She needed to…she needed to make an impact. She needed to create more connections.
She gathered her two closest friends – her minions. She killed that remnant unflattering thought then killed the sound about them. Infusing her voice with mana but not directing it into doing anything Maddy began to talk for real the shape of her words showing her sincerity.
For the first time.
She burned inhibitions away and started again for real.
…
“I’m worried.” Maddy spoke staring at both of her friends in this significant moment.
“I’m trying not to worry so much but…I’m sure I’m still controlling both of you. I’m worried…I’m worried you only like me because I ‘made’ you like me. What you like isn’t actually me – it’s the persona I’ve presented for you to like. Even if I’m trying not to manipulate your perception, I don’t know how to not. The only way I can work against what I’ve been taught is to do nothing and yet every interaction I make is a slip. A subtle way of getting you to respond favorably towards me – I don’t know how to stop.”
…
----------------------------------------
---Jess---
Jess’s best friend seemed especially scrambled by that worrying ritual she’d done earlier. Enough she was saying all sorts of silly anxious things. Jess remembered the anxiety from when she’d been injured and lost everything. When she’d lost friends who’d learned she couldn’t play soccer anymore. Maddy seemed to be going through something worse but with magic junk it got a bit complicated.
Considering how much Maddy supported them it was only right they try and help her as much as she helped them.
“Of course I like you for you. What makes you think you are manipulating us?” Jess asked for the umpteenth time.
“When I talk I try to say things in a way you would like. I try not to address your insecurities and I make sure to try and make you feel included and appreciated.” Maddy confided once again.
She really was dumb wasn’t she? That wasn’t manipulation that was…just normal friendship. That was…that was just being a good friend who wasn’t self centered? Was she overcompensating for her narcissist mother by being even more selfless
…It sounded like her parents had messed her up more than she’d let on.
How could Jess help? What could she say?
“That just means you are being a good friend. Hearing how much actual work you are putting into our relationship is heartwarming but that’s not manipulation.” Jess tried to reassure her.
Damn, Jess really wasn’t good at this sappy junk.
“If that’s manipulation then every conversation held by anyone is manipulation. Don’t get full of yourself, you’re not some grand misunderstood mastermind you’re just more socially adept than us. That doesn’t translate to manipulation – we’d know if you were trying to trick us into following you. We are here because we want to be.” Troy tried in his own bumbling way to contribute.
He was getting much better at speaking his mind lately – Jess had to keep in mind his own issues with speech.
Yes, exactly right. How…how do I protect Maddy from herself? Damn does Maddy have to deal with this every time I get effected by something? It’s exhausting.
----------------------------------------
---James---
James was doing science. His first step was to source certain chemicals. An oil based solvent that could survive incredibly high heat. A void aspected item that could resonate with his kinetic mana. A bag of sugar dissolved in distilled water. A pure diamond. A furnace that could stay hot at roughly 330-340°C for an extended period of time.
There were specific ideal chemicals with certain material numbers he could use in an aether city…but with a database of common monsters and a list of processing steps James muddled his way through the ‘experiment’. He took a walk through the adventurer's market. Bartered for all the items he needed and began to deep fry his diamond in oil.
The slot wasn’t actually important – James just pushed mana into the diamond and then shifted his perspective into aether maintaining a steady flow of power.
He could only maintain a connection within his aura – and needed to slowly slide it down the side of the pot with one hand carefully maintaining the connection through the metal and manipulating the crystal with pushes of mana. The magic filter corrupted his stored aether but only slightly.
The diamond acted like a battery slowly raising the tier and boiling point of the wyrm fat.
As he fed aether into it the gem spun like a magnetic stirrer – something that shouldn’t have happened and proved a bit too much movement was still held in his aether.
A slot was in part to purify that ‘alignment’.
At least the gem only seemed to be spinning – it shouldn’t affect the experiment.
It took almost forty minutes to boil the fat into the temperature range he needed – dropping a chunk of stone half as tall as he was into the soup, James stirred his giant pot. The seller had called it a pill furnace – and for now it was his pressure cooker. Trying desperately to relate the colour change of the pots metal to a specific temperature, his AI began giving him a value +/- a few degrees.
Confident the pot was at least 300 – and noting the oil was beginning to smoke – James dropped the temperature slightly. Keeping it just before smoking, James took out and tossed his most expensive purchase – the tooth of a neitherbeast – into the pot.
As soon as the tooth hit the boiling oil it burst into flames with a sharp crack. A chip of bone impacted James’s shoulder as the tooth began to dissolve. Like water being tossed in boiling oil, the pot began to vigorously seethe – several blobs of molten oil tossing dangerously about his room.
James flinched in pain as the oil touched his chest – immediately ripping the heat out of the burn and converting it to power with a hiss of pain.
Trying to connect aether to the dissolving tooth James linked and shifted – trying to maintain the connection even as the power spread throughout the oil.
His connection broke – James didn’t actually have a ‘slot’ and his mana tendrils flipped to aether held more kinetic concept than a pure aether slot should give.
That’s why he made sure to buy a void item that should have worked with kinetic mana.
An attempt at fixing this problem before it appeared – welp. It turned out James wasn’t a good enough chef to start making those sorts of substitutions in his cooking. A last sad scrape of his will through the oil and burnt lump of ash. Useless flickers between lenses.
Just as he was about to give up James felt something. The conceptual remnants of the tooth were still here – moving slowly away from the intent of the bowl but…still there.
Shifting entirely to mana, James focused on that feeling. He pushed his aura harder – instinctually flipping on his domain and ignoring the trickle of blood that began flowing down from his nose.
Stay.
James trapping whatever he was sensing. He pushed it down into the pot, moving it in and swirling it about like a funnel linked to his still spinning diamond.
Grasping for the remnant concepts, James closed his eyes while attempting to feed power into the area.
He could move the concept – because it was moving away and he could sense that…but he couldn’t influence it beyond that. Conceptually did he have a way of connecting to this?
No…
Feeling like he was blowing fading embers to keep a fire alight, James pleaded with the pot. He slowly infused his wishes through his mana and failed to catch hold again and again. His will was like a hand fingers squeezing shut on the magic.
Finally flickering to aether and back James felt a mental click and the oil began to vibrate. A hissing sort of hum sounded out in his room as he moved mana into the concept.
There was a smell of smoke in the air – James had ignored it up till now assuming it was just his pot – but a flash of warning came through his new skill. James spun and saw a splash of oil had started a fire on the wooden floor.
Cursing, James jumped over and ripped the heat out of the fire. He converted it to power while stamping out the danger before it started.
Switching back to his pot James tried to connect once again. With a panicked rake of will, James finally reconnected.
The oil began to vibrate once more, the power leaking into the nearly molten stone and turning the red lump yellow the lump now molten despite being below its natural melting point.
James continued to put out fires and fix small problems as he worked. The final steps were to physically remove the diamond and drop it in the sugar water. A remnant field of ‘boiling point raising power seemed to cling to the diamond as he floated it up and dropped it in his bucket of sugar.
The water hissed even as it shifted and turned yellow like highlighter infused caramel.
Beside him the pot of oil began to rapidly boil up as its melting point began to drop.
Treating the whole experience like he was laminating a custard, James stirred his sugar for a minute then dumped it into the oil manually – there was a science behind the perfect point to do things but he was going by feel by this point.
Slowly stirring the melting and weakened stone with the now thin soup of caramel James kneaded the lump while resonating the void concept. Finally declaring it was done when he had nothing but a goupy lump of yellow, James pulled his block out of the oil and began ripping heat out of it pulling some of the magic junk out of the power and cycling it through his system.
The sugary lump cracked as it cooled quickly but James didn’t mind – he was the only one who was going to eat this.
Finally the lump cooled completely. James looked down with pride at the grey slab – his meal looked like a block of greyish-clear fudge the size of his head.
👅 Achievement get: Edibles (Rare)
Description: Transmuted an inedible element or material into an edible one.
----------------------------------------
Stat: +1 tongue (taste) power.
Passive information gained:
Memories of a gourmet.
Stat: +1 mental 'cooking memory' power.
Pulling out a knife James cut off a slice marveling at how smooth it felt.
Raising the clear candy to his mouth James took a bite. And another.
It wasn’t…it wasn’t delicious. Flavour wise it was…it felt like something he’d describe as an acquired taste. Sour caramel with a ashy fried undercurrent of burnt chicken.
And yet it was a mile better than raw stone and with how proud James was, it might as well have been ambrosia.
James took another bite and another – eating more sweet than was healthy. As he ate – far faster than a human could digest a building flow of stats lumping in his stomach and lurching towards his twin cores.
Spiraling through his flesh in waves James had enough of these stone giant stats they went through a qualitative change. They…compressed and gave James a sense he could control them.
Treating them like special ‘free stats’ James directed a chunk of the stats on the way for his bones into his aura instead.
His…his soul. He was pretty sure this was his soul. As he fed stats into his magical range it grew, not by an insane degree – not in the meters but it tripled and stiffed gaining a dense feeling to James’s senses.
His domain flicked on and began strengthening as well. In that moment James’s instincts brought his eyes towards the crystalized skill and he hesitated.
It…it had said he shouldn’t break this. It might be weakened if he broke it…
But the only way for it to grow stronger was to break it? James reached out and shattered the skill into his aura even as he pulled his stats about the area.
It felt like he was shattering an egg into a strainer. Incomprehensible bits of the skill threatened to move away but James already had some practice with moving stuff he didn’t understand.
James held it moving those random scraps into his circet and watching his ai struggle to give him a description of what he had done.
Stat: +3
Unknown Esper field detected.
And then another blue box appeared – announcing he’d ‘cultivated’ to the level cap of this zone disabling all achievements and politely asking him to move on.
It was fine, James was ready.
Floating up over to his bed and mentally flicking off the lantern without even looking at it, James closed his eyes and smiled.
He could advance tomorrow.
He felt strong.
----------------------------------------
---Maddy---
Maddy…Maddy’s body dragged itself back to reality by feeding off of her connection to her friends.
They…acknowledge her. They accepted her. They…liked her. Her.
She’d been more vulnerable than she’d been in a while. It felt…freeing.
She saw her friends. Saw them in a way she hadn’t up till now.
They were people. People with thoughts and feelings – goals and aspirations. Obviously, obviously she knew that on a intellectual level. But emotionally…emotionally up till now some vain part of the person she had burned. That slime had thought of them as her companions. Not as their own people…just as accessories for her adventure.
That part was gone. She accepted them for real letting them into her heart.
Was part of it her new body’s urges and addled brain turning her loopy? Yes, yes that was a huge part of it.
She was happy it had happened and felt freer than she had been in a while.
Trying to look in at herself Maddy shattered the crystalized skill. She ripped the conceptual mirror out of the ‘alter ego’ spell she’d been given. She’d seen some way of summoning a copy of herself from another time – a copy of herself that had chosen differently. Had kept her scythe. Had chosen a body foundation and grown as a warrior.
A strong spell she wouldn’t have been able to easily make alone – especially as it had contained some seed of time mana twisted into a filter for her creation mana. Without a source of mana and meaning like the one within the dungeon – without some powerful natural treasure as a sacrifice it would be impossible.
Maddy smashed it anyways. She saw more of the structure of skills than she’d ever seen before and…it felt like leaving a backdoor in her soul to keep that skill around.
Most of the skill sunk into her body – losing its potential even as it shored up her ‘stability’ and made her feel full.
Maddy twisted her new concept – sketching a stretched out sort of four leaf clover and expanding its center into a light-reflecting flicker on the wall.
In that moment Maddy exchanged a bit of its potential for a bit of ability, then created a mirror in front of her.
“Mirror mirror on the wall. Reflect my soul and show my shape. Please tell me the form my metaphorical self does take.”
She had to know.
Slowly the mirror rippled. It twisted sucking her mana…and then revealed itself. Before Maddy stood…a crumbled lump of random colours and eyes. An eldritch tentacle covered in eyeballs flickered out of it and then disappeared once again. A flutter of fractal wings and petals of cotton candy.
Broken nonsense.
Maddy smiled.
She stared at herself dozens of eyes boring deeper and deeper into the monster in the mirror.
She was beautiful.
This was what she had achieved.
Maddy was ready to move on.
Or more accurately, she had already 'moved on' and now she was ready to advance.
The rest of her night was spent making magic.
Not for any real reason – just because she could. Every new spell she created raised her stability ever so slightly no matter how small. Maddy finally got around to creating a 'status' spell – linking her mirror concept and idea of reflecting information into a mental panel to show off her gains. She ripped apart the groups only translator converting it into a spell to translate stuff she heard into english. Maddy made a dimond butterfly that sung and created a ball of light that helped awaken all those its rays touched.
Nonsense spells made for fun.
She felt free.