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The Core of the Problem
1 - Congratulations on becoming

1 - Congratulations on becoming

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> Lights out of the dark.

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> Two Gleaming eyes shrieking out at me then pain and pressure then the feeling of being impossibly stretched out and then nothing.

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> =-=-=-=-=

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Congratulations on becoming You are Core! Live and don't Die. Build monster and fight other Core. Don't die! Use monster to build House Place. Kill invader don't Die. Capture other Core grow Biggest.

"What the hell!" Shaking my head to clear the weird poorly written rectangle out of my vision but it seems to simply follow my point of view where ever I turn.The window however isn't entirely opaque and squinting or more accurately focusing my vision I could see through it to a dark uneven cave wall. My voice sounds tinny and seems to reverberate like I'm speaking into a fan.Except I'm not really speaking, at least not in the normal sense. I don't have a mouth or a throat, or ears, or eyes. I'm an orb, or oversized marble and with that realization the window congratulating me vanishes.

I look at myself floating over a misshapen puddle of water about a meter in the air and simply know that the smooth gemstone ball impossibly levitating is me. I also know that I exude a force that provides me with simple awareness of everything in it. My Domain. I can sense that the puddle beneath me is a few meters deep and fed by a spring that upon closer inspection is surprisingly mundane especially when compared to the floating clearly magical gem that is me in the center of the room. Following the water source as far as my Domain extends reveals nothing but more wet rock and zipping around the cave shows that the roundish chamber has a bit of air flow circling its walls which suggests that an opening to the outside can't be to far away. My Domain doesn't seem to sink into the stone itself very far, just enough to receive the special Domain understanding that the stone is in fact stone but otherwise not manipulable by myself directly. nice.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

A gap in the wall at the edge of my domain suddenly grabs my attention. The congratulatory message had told me not to die which would suggest that something was out there trying to kill me. It also implied there were other Cores. If my job was to fight other cores then their objective was likely the same. I couldn't move through the gap as hitting the edge of my Domain was like standing over a cliff. It wasn't a wall exactly more like nothing at all and thus nowhere for my focus or sense of self to stand on. This left the only other thing left to check being the clear fist sized crystal pearl.

Focusing on it, me, a sudden sense of vertigo overtakes me as I fall into myself. Everything becomes a swirling vortex of light and another of those windows pops up.

Build Monster and become Water Stone Fire Wind ...

A list, an impossibly long list ranked by how many motes of light exist in the vortex from most to least common. It also seems that common versus rare are rated on how esoteric the concept named was. Half way down the list was Death and immediately above that was Life. At the bottom of the list was Void which had only fifteen motes. thirteen. five. Then void was gone.

Wait what? The motes were disappearing at an increasing rate of speed currently eating its way through the handful of Cosmic labeled motes. Flowing down into what was now clearly not just a pretty swirl of color but in fact a funnel sucking away my options. I had to move quickly to figure out how to do what the system wanted me to do. I could select the motes by category and when I did there seemed to be a mounting point hanging over the event horizon of the vortex. It looked kind of like a mounting or socket that would bind it intrinsically to my being.

This was an important decision but I couldn't dilly dally too long or I would run out of options. And now Cosmic is gone. So here I go!

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