James woke to almost complete darkness. The only thing he could see was a bright blue box, floating in front of him.
Welcome to the Dungeon Interface. This system will help guide you through how to survive as a Dungeon Core. Please pull up your menu to look at your options.
Converting materials into DP. You have gained 21,572,839,017 blueprints and you now have 2,410,776,175,041,385,527 DP to use. Blueprints can be found in the Dungeon Catalog.
You have graduated from Dungeon training. You now have access to all options for a Dungeon Core.
Due to immense data on electronic technology, new attribute ‘Cybernetics’ has been unlocked.
Incorporating attributes of ‘Cybernetics’ into Dungeon Catalog...
You now have access to the global Dungeon Catalog.
Due to your experience in the Irro days, you now have access to a countdown until the next Irro day.
Congratulations! You have set a new record of accomplishments while remaining level 1. You have been granted access to premium Dungeon Core benefits.
Well, that…was a lot to take in. What materials--oh. Those materials. Wait, did those come with him? How did that even work? Also, from what he could understand, he was a dungeon now? A glorified rock?
Whelp, not much he can do about that now. Now came the question of his menu. How was he supposed to pull up his menu?
Name:
Level: 1 (+)
DP: 2,410,776,175,041,385,527
Affinity: Fire - Water - Earth - Air - Light - Dark - Cybernetic (artificial)
* Dungeon Mobs
* Dungeon Traps
* Dungeon Rooms
* Dungeon Management
* Dungeon Catalog
Irro Days (16 days until next Irro Day)
Okay, that all looked dandy and all, but where was his name? Shouldn’t it have kept his old one? That, and it didn’t tell him how he was supposed to actually expand things. That is what a dungeon is supposed to do, right?
Download Dungeon Basics? Y/N
Huh. Does the menu just respond to his thoughts? That’s pretty nifty. With a mental shrug, he selected yes. A sudden influx of knowledge poured into his head, and if he still had a body, he would have doubled over in pain.
Once the pain passed, he spent a few more moments doing nothing. With the mental equivalent of a shrug, he started pushing his aura out.
Aura was an interesting thing. It was entirely dependent on how much dp a dungeon had ever gathered, multiplied by its level. Due to James’ extremely high dp, he was pretty sure he could rival the best of the best. He just had to make it there.
He started out slow, trying to get the hang of it. Knowledge isn’t experience, after all. As he pushed out, he started receiving the information of what was in his aura. It was as if everything was completely bypassing his normal five senses, and was being uploaded directly into his brain. It would have felt much weirder if he actually had any of his senses still.
There was some grass. There was a rock. Ooh, some more grass. What about underground? Dirt. Dirt. Stone. Dirt. Worm. Dirt. There was so little here. Oh well. That can be dealt with later.
For now, he wanted to get at least his first floor done. Safety over protection. Wait, that doesn’t make much sense. Hm. Oh well. It makes sense to him. Anyone else can get fucked.
He started to carve out the ground beneath him, as he couldn’t move by himself. He had to use the terrain to manipulate himself. It was at this moment he was reminded of something he had said earlier. Knowledge does not equal experience.
Instead of calmly lowering the ground beneath him, he instead accidentally deleted a solid ten feet of dirt. Falling without being able to feel almost anything was certainly one of the weirdest experiences he had ever felt.
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Instead of his viewpoint being the one that changed, it was more like the entire world moved. Add to the fact that he started spinning in midair, and it looked like the world was doing cartwheels around him.
Everything was brought to a jarring stop when he hit the ground. There was something between him and a rock, but he didn’t notice. Because, apparently, dungeon cores are very fragile.
He didn’t feel anything. Not because his mind had been overloaded, but because his new body just couldn’t feel. But his thoughts went all wobbly. Words had their meanings mixed lift.
He stared surrounding, attempting to appear out what happened. He had down, and then snrkk. Now he’s now. Was he now earlier? No, he was then. How can he then? He scrolled through what he know-gained, and gained a new know.
Wandering to his menu, he chose the (+) next to his height.
#̸̫͓̞͚͉͗̎͋̋)̵̖̙͎̞̰̓̔̃̐̃*̴̫̰͒p̴̹̼̑͊̓r̴̫̬̃̕ ̶̺̺̮̑̃͜&̷͖̩͔̥̄̓͠)̷͇̙̙̩̉͗͘*̸̢̪́̉̈́̉̕ ̷̩̟͇̹̭͐̆͠p̸̛͈̤͙̿͑(̷̲̺̮̜̩͒̏͐́o̷̧͇͇̳̿͑͝$̸͚̂ ̶͔̫̔̀̃̎̚^̶̡̠̲͗)̸̛̫̖̟̬̐̂ ̸̑̀̀ͅp̷̛̱̊̽$̸̧̨̦̪̲̄g̷̥̪̞͊̄̈́$̵͓̌̂͗̿͘ṗ̴͍̤ ̸̯͚̦́͜*̸͍̼̞̤̦͊́̚_̵̮̺͚̖̻̊̀̐̂'̵͇̻̙͊͛̾́ ̶͍͚̰̀̅ͅ&̸̨̬̒͆̀̏"̶̧͙̟̈́́͆̍j̸̞̰̖̇͐͌͜͝
He…could understand zero. But not no. He wants to then, which meant he must this. And to this, he must not no.
With an almost blinding pain, he felt himself start to know back together. His thoughts started to make sense, and he could actually understand what he was trying to think. About halfway through his healing, he felt a lump.
It wasn’t painful, but it was immensely uncomfortable. Like sitting on a three inch butt plug. Very obviously there, very obviously uncomfortable, but you can get used to it after a while.
He tried to figure out what it was, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t find the source of his discomfort. He tried to ignore it, but he just couldn’t. Realizing he could only distract himself, that’s exactly what he did.
He looked around the little pit he had dug himself into. There were rocks covering the bottom, the walls were made of dirt, and laying beneath him was the squished body of a worm. Acting on instincts he didn’t know he had, he quickly absorbed the worm.
There was a slight pulse of energy, and knowledge poured itself into his head. The strange lump he felt pulsed slightly with the energy, before settling down. If that was going to happen all the time, it would get annoying real quickly.
He pulled up his menu to see if anything had changed, and, lo and behold, he was now level two. He also had three more DP, though that was barely worth mentioning. There was nothing else different, so he decided to get back to expanding. If he was a dungeon now, he wanted to be the best dungeon ever.
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After he had expanded out to encapsulate around a mile around him in his aura, he started to work on trying to puzzle out a design for his first floor. He naturally wanted the first floor to look completely natural, which required careful planning.
Dirt caves aren’t really all that feasible, so he’d need a way for people to get straight to stone. Now, what natural way is there for that to happen? Sinkholes seemed the best. Sinkholes happened when stone eroded away, and the dirt collapsed in, right? It was most common with limestone, right? Could he make any limestone? Yes, okay, good.
He filled a space near the outer edges of his perception with limestone, before he hollowed it out. Nothing happened at first, so he slowly kept hollowing things out until the ground above sagged a bit.
He then started pushing some of the dirt down into the limestone hole he had made. He kept at it until there was barely any dirt remaining between his man-made natural pre-sinkhole and the surface. With a mental smirk, he moved on to creating the tunnels.
Underground tunnels were usually formed through small underground streams, so he would need to have a small trickle of water run through the hole he made for a sinkhole. A bit of experimentation later, and he had water enter the cavity through one side, and exit through the other side, slightly lower than where it entered.
He started making little tunnels that wound through his entire influence. Sometimes, he’d have small little caverns open up, each one consisting of very uneven terrain, but he mainly focused on the tunnels.
He took a strange amount of pleasure in making the tunnels awkward to navigate, sometimes flattening out, forcing whoever would travel down here to almost crawl, while other areas were tall, but narrow enough to force people to walk sideways. It was moments like that where he was glad he had toured caves before.
Occasionally, some of the tunnels would intersect, and sometimes they would just dead end. All-in-all, he was pretty proud of his cave. Naturally, the next step was to populate it with traps and mobs.
Traps would be rather difficult to incorporate, as he still wanted the first layer to seem like a natural cave. He could set up a few extra slippery sections, and maybe add a few tripping hazards for people to snap their necks on, but not much else.
His mind flashed back to one of the caves he had toured once; at one point, there had been a small shaft that led from the upper section of the caves to the lower, formed completely by water. It was extremely steep, and had no traction, so they had to block it off to prevent accidents.
He ‘grinned’ and made a few of those shafts. He didn’t want people to climb back up them, however, so he made them open up as you went down, like an inverted cone. An idea hit him, and he quickly connected all of the shafts into a massive room underneath the entire cave system.
This would be the boss room. You’d have to purposefully jump down, with no way back up, in order to move on. Though, then he’d need to make a way back up and out. Hm. He made a small tunnel that circled back to the sinkhole entrance, though he didn’t connect them fully quite yet.
The next step was to choose the mobs. He pulled up the list of available mobs to look over what he could choose.
Dungeon Mobs
* Burrow Worm (G) --- 5 DP (Customize)
That was…severely underwhelming. He pulled up more information, but learned next to nothing. The only thing of note was that Burrow Worms formed little cavities in the earth where they would return to.
He mentally clicked the customize option, and was inundated with options. Staring at the options he could play with, an idea started to form in his head. If he still had a face, people would be backing away from him.
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He had just finished populating his dungeon with his customized Burrow Worms when he felt something enter his sphere of influence. All of his upgrades had moved the cost of the Burrow Worm up to 20 DP per worm. He only had around 100 of them in his dungeon in total, but that was fine. If everything worked out, that would be enough.
His attention turned to whatever was walking around above him, and he grinned in excitement. There were people.