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The Dead Dungeon
Ch. 1 Shattered

Ch. 1 Shattered

[You have died.]

'Wait... WHAT?!...'  The tinkling sound of shards of RJ's core was all he could hear.  His majestic green and yellow core, which had been nearly the size of a basketball, was now shattered and lying all around his core room.  Where had these humans come from?! why didn't he sense them? All moot questions now.  RJ felt his soul flicker as the mana leaked out of the shards.  The humans were gathering up the pieces of his body, bits of him were vanishing into magical bags of holding even as his consciousness faded.

'I'll get you... for this... you bastards.' 

RJ didn't know how much time had passed.  He could barely concentrate on anything, and it felt like almost no time at all when a tiny dribble of mana reached him.  He woke up to find his dungeon sense only reached a few inches away, around him he felt the granite and limestone his dungeon used to be made of.  Examining himself RJ found that all that remained of his once beautiful core was a tiny sliver of blackish purple crystal, no bigger then a childs thumbnail. 

'Ha!... didn't get all of me!.. ha ha... i'm fucked aren't i?' he tried to stretch his dungeon sense out and failed.  The tiny trickle of mana was gone now.  Taking a moment to gather his courage he opened his dungeon menu and nearly cried.

Dungeon  Menu

Dungeon name: Dead Dungeon

Core Name: RJ

Dungeon type: Dead

Mana: 1/10 (necrotic)

Rooms:0

Monsters:0

'What the crap is a dead dungeon?'  Rj looked over the menu and noticed all of his tabs were missing, no list of achievements, no titles and one mesely mana.  Worst of all, it was a necrotic mana.  He had smartly stayed away from undead, not wanting to deal with churches of any kind. 

He sighed in resignation. 'Well... if it's what i got, its what i got.  If i don't at least build a core room i'm never going to get any more mana of ANY type.' 

[Would you like to create your core room?  Warning, mana used to create the core room will set the theme for the dungeon. Y/N]

'Oh... well crap, thats not good.  uh.... '  RJ thought for a moment and then winced.  There was no telling how long it would take for any other kind of mana to seep down as deep as he was.  He could be here for years waiting for even a hint of mana, and then it could be something worse.  like Water. RJ shuddered at the thought of a water dungeon.  He'd always used to have nightmares about sharks and fish as a child, the thought of those things swiming around his core made him ill.  'Nope! nope nope nope, not waiting.  Necrotic dungeon it is! just call me bone daddy from now on.'  Rj shuddered one last time before hitting the Y with a mental tap.  

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

RJ's dungeon sense spread out around him, consuming the fallen debris and stone.  He immediately noticed that he got no mana from the stone.  'oh, right, not an earth dungeon anymore.  Lovely.' He found his tiny sliver of a core sitting on a stone pedestal seemingly carved into a pile of skulls, the stone walls around his now ten by ten room  were lined with what looked like rib bones as supports, and the ceiling has a faux spine running along it. It almost seemed like the room flexed, as in how a creature breathing in would look from the inside, if it lacked all organs.  

'o...k... that was creepy.  Please don't do that again.'  RJ felt his dungeon sense all around the room, finding a small dead mouse near where his core has been. 'ah, so you're the reason i'm like this.  Well little one, looks like you're going to have to be my starter.'  RJ wrapped his dungeon sense around the tiny mouse corpse and absorbed it. 

[Creature absorbed! A new monster has been added to your bestiary.  Due to the type of mana your dungeon uses, your monster pattern will be altered.]

'oooof course it will.  Well, let see.  maybe i'll get lucky and it'll be giant rats.'  he thought about the mouse. 'i'm not that lucky, am i?'  he sighed.

[Bestiary entry: Ghost mouse, These spectral vermin often haunt ruins over flowing with necrotic energy. Ghost mice are not considered individually dangerous, but in large swarms their necrotic infused bodies can leech strength from adventurers.]

'That... is not utterly useless.  At least they aren't skeletal mice, i'd have to make thousands to kill even an F ranked adventurer.'  he spawned his first ghost mouse, the small translucent creature appeared sitting in front of his core pillar, it's tiny nose twitching.  'oh my god, they're adorable. I'm going to be the laughing stock of the dungeon world.'  He sighed to himself and ordered the ghost mouse to patrol the room, not that there was going to be anything coming in, he still needed to tunnel back to the surface. 

'wait, how far down AM i? i hope i'm not actually at the bottom of my dungeon, one hundred floors of rubble is going to take me years to dig through.'  He looked at the tiny ghost mouse and then around his core room. 'Well, at least i have a core room, i'll get my five mana per twenty four hours with this.' 

He took in the core room again and started to modify it while he waited, boredom was his worst enemy now, luckily he had a lot of stone from creating the core room.  He began to carve out designs and runes on the rib like pillars around his room.  They were all meaningless nonsense but it gave the otherwise bare room an arcane feel. his pillar of skulls became three stone skeletons, arms uplifted to hold a stone pedestal. After a few minutes of thought he modified the skeletons until they were each of a different race, human, elf and dwarf.  The next person who dared enter his core room would know what he thought of the sentient races. 

While Rj worked the ghost mouse explored his new home, his tiny nose twitching even though he couldn't 'smell' any more.  After the pillar changed the little mouse crawled in between the skeletons and claimed the open area between them as its nest.  Satisfied it curled up, only to realize it shared a similar problem with its master.  Neither of them slept any more.

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