My dear, lovely readers. If you are an old-timer, welcome back. You’ll recognize much from my other fictions. If you are new, welcome. Let me introduce you to the rules of this game. I will write, you will read. Of that, I am confident. Beyond that, you will note that this fiction is tagged with the notorious Reader Interactive tag.
I know, I know, but hear me out. The way it will work is simple. Our little dungeon core will spread, create monsters, and do all the funky little things that dungeon cores do, but if and when it succeeds in acquiring fresh...meat, its next mutation will be determined entirely by you. At the end of each chapter, there will be a poll. In this poll, there will be several mutations that will determine the future of the story.
Each mutation will be real. There will be no Ability A: Rabbit Hair, Ability B: Bear Fur, Ability C: Dragon Breath. All paths are viable; if you wish to go down two paths simultaneously, that is also viable. In the comments, I strongly encourage you to make your case for your desired ability. Sometimes, I may fumble, but that is not my intention.
You can find a more detailed description of how tiebreakers are handled, how to suggest abilities, and more in the end note of each chapter.
That being said, let us begin with a kidnapping...
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Richard kicked the door open, heaving the heavy cage into the workshop. He dumped the cage, ignoring the indignant squeal from the occupant, and poked his head out the door. He took careful glances up and down the snow-lined street. When he saw no one watching, he dashed inside and slammed the door behind him.
A heavily used workshop greeted him, full of materials, components, and half-completed projects crammed into whatever nook they could fit into. Mana lamps hung from the ceiling, casting an even white glow on a scared, thick-timbered workbench against the far wall.
A pained, mournful whine rose through the heavy bars.
“Shut it,” Richard cursed, kicking the cage enough to shake the heavy construction. He leaned down, golden eyes piercing the chained-up occupant with enough hate to burn. “Or keep making noise. In fact. Please do. I’d love to tear off another arm.”
The cage’s occupant shrank back as much as its chains allowed it, and Richard stood with a grimace. He shot a furtive glance at the door leading deeper into the house and then hefted the cage to the back of the workshop. He grabbed a heavy brown tarp and threw it over the cage.
He stared at his new resident for several moments, then cracked his neck and turned to sit at the workbench. There was still a lot of work to be done before the plan could be completed. This part of it, however, was far slower. He pulled out an intricately inscribed piece of silver steel and began engraving the detailed runes into it with a diamond stylus.
An hour passed swiftly as he worked. His massive muscles rippled as he deftly maneuvered the stylus to perfectly inscribe the runes necessary for the last phase of the—.
“Papa? I can’t sleep.”
Richard spun on his swivel chair for half a turn to behold his young daughter standing at the door to his workshop. She clutched her faded brown teddy bear to her chest like a lifeline in a storm. Her wide, innocent eyes glistened with the barest hint of tears as she leaned against the heavy oak doorframe that dwarfed her diminutive frame.
“What is it, Kerry?” Richard asked softly, loathe to disturb the thoughtful silence that had settled during the night. He carefully set down the diamond stylus and turned fully to face his young daughter. Before he even managed to go all the way, Kerrigan rushed across the cold concrete floor and buried her head into his stomach.
“I'm scared,” she whimpered into his rough spun sweater. “The monsters keep howling.”
“Shh, it's all right, sweetie,” Richard said, rubbing comforting circles on Kerrigan’s back. She responded by scrambling up to his lap and curling into his chest as if trying to escape the cool air of the workshop. “You have nothing to worry about. The walls always keep out the monsters.”
“But what if they don’t?”
“Can you remember a time when the walls have failed?” Richard touched Kerrigan’s chin, and she reluctantly abandoned her death grip on his sweater and met his gaze.
“I dunno...”
“If they never failed before, then there is nothing to be scared of, sweetie.”
“Hmff,” Kerrigan grumped, digging her small body into his chest again.
Richard suppressed a chuckle and kept rubbing her back in soothing circles. In his few short years of fatherhood, he’d learned that few lessons were more important than making sure not to belittle Kerrigan’s very real troubles. This particular one, however, was very, very real.
The warbling call of a corded vinewing seeped through the thick walls of the workshop like a corrosive ooze hungry for flesh.
His eyes wandered to the frosted window above the workbench. Ice gathered in the corners of the thick glass, partially obscuring the dark city and the massive eighty-foot-tall wall of polished granite. It loomed over the silent, slumbering city like a dark harbinger, foretelling dark times to come.
Movement flickered atop the wall.
His eyes narrowed dangerously as his gold-tier vision pierced the darkness easily to spot a cadre of furred hellbeasts flapping toward the wall. Not a second after he spotted them, a wave of faint blue energy bolts flashed out from the battlements, barely visible against the black sky. They slammed into the hellbeasts like the vengeance of an old god, tearing them to pieces in an explosion of gore that would have left Kerrigan shaking in fear.
“Look, Kerry,” Richard roused his daughter and pointed out the window. Her reluctant eyes peeked distrustfully through the frosted glass as several more distant blue flashes lit up a parapet. Melanie might have scolded Richard for calling attention to such violence if she were here. A sentiment Richard fundamentally disagreed with.
Not that it mattered. Copper sight had no chance of discerning precise details from this distance. To Kerrigan, the mana missiles ripping through and raining the ground with blood and viscera were no more than a black smudge with perhaps a couple of distant blue flickers.
“See the Kingsguard?” Richard continued. “Even in the darkest parts of the night, they stand vigilant on the walls and repel any hellbeast that dares to endanger our people.”
Kerrigan squinted through the window for several long seconds, then looked up at Richard with huge eyes. “Are they strong?”
“Super strong,” Richard smiled.
“As strong as Papa?”
“Definitely,” Richard chuckled, grasping his daughter in a huge bear hug. He couldn’t help but let a tiny fraction of his vital aura seep through his gold channels. Kerrigan’s mouth fell open in an O of surprise as even the tiniest fraction of her father’s power threatened to crush her. He quickly retracted his presence and sat Kerrigan on his workbench. “Good?”
“I guess,” Kerrigan shrugged reluctantly, though her teddy bear that lay forgotten in Richard’s lap told a different story. He scooted his chair forward, picked up the diamond stylus, and tried to remember where he had left off.
“Why don’t you run back to bed, then? You have school tomorrow.”
“You’re making a pee-on!” She gasped, entirely ignoring his request as she pointed at the silvery steel disk on the workbench.
“Pylon, sweetie,” Richard corrected halfheartedly. There was no chance Kerrigan would be willing to go to bed now. Might as well humor her. “And no. This is an evolution core.”
“It looks like a pee-on.”
“Hmm, good eye. The mana channels for this device are based heavily on a pylon frame. It needs to serve a very similar purpose at the end of the day. Can you find where I integrated the pylon controls into the superstructure of the spell matrix?”
“It's uhm, this spot does the sucking spinny thing, and uhm,” Kerrigan sucked her lip into the gap where her baby incisor had been only recently. “Oh! That’s the stabby part.”
“Mhmm,” Richard nodded, then pointed at a specific spiral with the diamond stylus. “That is correct. The Condensation Vortex extracts corrupted mana from the Mind Spike formation and purifies the sequestered mana into copper mist that can be used for personal cultivation.”
“What is sekwestard?”
Richard gently touched the modified pylon frame and drew out an unreasonably long strand of golden mana. His vital aura twisted a tortured screech as his iron will forced it to bend around his daughter and prevent her from suffering its effects. The mana was then attached to the stylus and carefully scratched into the silver steel of the evolution core.
“It means to keep the mana for themselves. Hellbeasts are very greedy.”
“But that’s not good!” Kerrigan gasped. “Papa! They need to be taught a lesson.”
“I know, sweetie,” Richard’s eyes hardened. “Monster hunters all over the world are trying to push the hellspawn back into the earth. It's hard, though, and no one is quite good enough at it just yet.”
“Well, when I grow up, I’m gonna be the bestest monster hunter ever!” Kerrigan balled up her fists and bared her teeth ferociously. “Sharing is caring. Even I know that, and I’m five!”
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Richard chuckled at Kerrigan's determination, a soft smile breaking through the hardened expression in his eyes. He ruffled her hair gently and said, "I believe you, kiddo. With that spirit, you might just be the one to do it. Just remember to be nice to people along the way. A cultivator’s strength is not for pushing people around.”
“That’s right,” Kerrigan nodded firmly. “A cultivator’s strength is for showing off to girls, right?”
“Exactly,” Richard nodded sagely, proudly patting her on the head. “You’re learning so fast.”
Kerrigan puffed up, and they fell into a comfortable silence. Richard returned to his work with the mana etching, checking pathways with his mana-flooded eyes for any error or flaw.
Kerrigan’s night terrors were long forgotten, and she started to hum a rhyme under her breath to fill the silence as she fiddled with other half-finished projects littering the workbench.
‘If you delve, don't lose sight.
Of what is wrong and what is right.
Monsters fierce, with teeth that bite,
will urge you to lose the light.
Hellbeasts swarm, simply to rend.
Yet, you must always fight the urge to descend.’
Richard finalized the evolution core design with just a few more long strokes with the diamond etching stylus. In principle, it was done. In practice, he had no way to test whether it was working properly. Such was the nature of non-human augmentation.
“Papa?” Kerrigan knocked him out of his train of thought by pointing at the evolution core. “You did this wrong. You’re not supposed to make long bits without curly bits.”
“Why’s that?” Richard raised a brow, impressed with his daughter's perceptiveness. Copper sight was terrible in the grand scheme of things, but as the old saying went: It's not the size of the boat that matters, but the motion of the ocean that ensures the completion of a voyage. An idea Melanie firmly disagreed with.
“‘Cause you said the whooshy bits get all jiggly, and then nothing works right. Also, it's dirty.”
“That’s intentional in this case.” Richard paused. “Unlike a regular pylon frame that allows harvesting of deep mana, I’m not designing the evolution core for mana extraction. It needs...the whooshy bits to get all jiggly, or else it won’t be able to do its job.”
“That’s stupid,” Kerrigan huffed. “You’ll get sick if you don’t woosh the mana.”
“Did mom tell you that?” Richard said, hiding a smirk as he pulled another overly long thread of mana and attached it to the construct, much to Kerrigan’s horror. “Maybe it's just girls who get sick.”
“Don’t be silly, papa!” Kerrigan commanded sternly. “You have to whoosh the smoke out before you eat it. Everybody knows that!”
“Mhmm,” Richard hummed, smiling faintly. “That’s true, I was just messing with you a little. The truth is I’m not going to sell this at the shop. I’m making this for a very special person.”
“Ahem.”
Kerrigan squeaked, jumping up and nearly falling off the table's edge. Richard smoothly caught her, then staggered as a wave of silvery blue vital aura washed over him like a tidal wave. For the briefest second, the platinum wave crushed his golden mana to the surface of his skin. Then it was gone, and he recovered enough to face his wife standing imperiously in the doorway.
“Mama!” Kerrigan squealed, having completely missed the wave of greeting. She squirmed out of Richard’s grip and ran into Melanie’s knees. Melanie shifted her gaze onto their daughter, and Kerrigan wilted under the assault.
“Off to bed,” Melanie said sternly, gently nudging Kerrigan around her legs. Kerrigan shot a regretful look back at the workshop before dashing deeper into their house. Melanie watched her run for a moment, then turned a mischievous grin toward Richard.
“A little birdie told me you made me something,” Melanie sauntered into the room and sat in Richard’s lap.
“Congratulations on platinum, honey,” Richard replied, scooting back to make his knee a more comfortable seat. He reached around his wife and handed her the evolution core. The silvery steel was dull, with visible engravings all across the frame. It wasn’t his best work, but it didn’t need to be pretty. “It’s done. Or as done as it can be, all things considered.”
“Thank you, honey,” Melanie turned and gave Richard a quick kiss. “I got you something, too.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a crystalline gemstone that pulsed regularly as if a heartbeat was present inside it. It was perfectly spherical and emanated a weak fragment of hyper-dense vital aura that still somehow managed to brush aside Richard’s presence like it was no more than cobwebs. More than gold. Far more.
“Oh! You found one of my...balls,” Richard chuckled awkwardly. “Where’s the other one?”
“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me,” Melanie smirked. The words carried a rote cadence to them. As if they were a comforting ritual shared only between the two. “We’re doing this? You’re sure?”
“Tonight,” Richard nodded firmly, squeezing his wife to affirm his conviction. “Did you bring the blood?”
Melanie nodded and pulled out a thin vial full of red fluid so dark it was basically black. Richard took the vial and carefully appended it onto a small spike on the underside of the evolution core. Then, he reached out and fed the construct a steady stream of his mana.
The device whirred to life, emitting a staccato buzzing as cerulean bolts of mana lightning zapped the small biological sample. The blood sizzled and darkened, filling the workshop with the smell of ozone and char. Seconds later, no more biomass remained on the sampling spike.
The device froze, then shot out a rapid-fire series of digitized pulses that rippled through the air like a mirage in a desert.
“Alright...let me see,” Richard yanked a notebook from the corner of the desk and flipped it open. The notebook fell open to a well-worn page all on its own. “Code 006 followed by...103 is...”
006:
103:
“Damn, I was really hoping we wouldn’t need a live sample,” Melanie grumbled.
Richard grunted in acknowledgment, then gently pushed his wife off as he went to the back corner of the room. He ripped off the tarp covering the heavy cage with a wrench to reveal its extremely disgruntled occupant.
The Putrid Urchin vibrated against its chains at the sight of Richard standing over it. The black metal creaked as the hellbeast flexed its two dozen appendages in a vain attempt to break its bonds. Pale yellow bile oozed from the oblong main body where several legs had been torn off and dripped onto the concrete floor, steadily burrowing through the hard material. Black smoke seeped from underneath its rigid carapace as if its flesh was perpetually burning. An oscillating air purifier hung above the chained creature and sucked in the continuous stream of smoke it produced.
Richard ignored the horror quivering with hate before him and reached through the bars to jam the thin spike of the evolution core into the creature's main body. Golden mana flared as the evolution core drained more and more of Richard’s mana. Bolts of electric blue flickered over the putrid urchin’s body, scorching the carapace and causing the creature to spasm as it struggled desperately against its restraints.
The lightning dug deeper and deeper, and after only a few moments, all that was left of the hellbeast was a steaming pile of ash and char.
“Gods, that’s gross,” Melania muttered from the back. Richard curled his lip but maintained focus as he sprinted back to the workbench to record the staccato series of digitized signals coming from the device.
“006, 104, 104 and yes! 104. Let me...just,” Richard crowed, spinning the notebook around and frantically deciphering the encrypted message from the device.
“It works,” Melanie glanced over his shoulder. The traits themselves mattered less than the fact that the machine had succeeded in extracting anything at all. “How far were you able to reduce the timeframe of the assimilation?”
“It’s still too long,” Richard grimaced, then got up and stood in the prepared area in the center of the room. “Hopefully, fusing it with the platinum core should speed it up.”
“But you don’t have much hope,” Melanie said, noting her husband's tone. She stepped behind him and put her hands on his shoulders. Her vital aura flared, filling the room with enough electrifying potential to make breathing difficult.
“No,” Richard said. He took a deep, steadying breath. The monster core he held in one hand and the evolution core in the other. “Begin.”
Richard’s gold mana rushed out, flowing and suffusing both objects with power. The evolution core accepted the mana readily, but the monster core fought. Platinum mana was strong. Viciously strong, but there was only so much the fractured foundation of a broken spirit could achieve against the full might of a high gold cultivator.
It succumbed with a hiss of displeasure, and Richard brought the two items close. With all the dexterity a lifetime as a crafter imparted, he wove his mana into a dense web of pulsing connections. Second by second, hundreds of strands bound the two tighter and tighter.
Compressing. Crushing. Combining.
The two objects started merging, sharing the same space under the immense pressure of a high gold’s will. Waves of distorted, unstable pressure shot out from the meeting point, only to be caught by the heavy web of Melanie’s aura.
“Almost—” Richard gasped. Sheets of sweat poured from his temple as he strained to elevate his creation. The two cores were fundamentally incompatible. On the one side. Biological. Domineering. Powerful. On the other. Mechanical. Tyrannical. Unyielding. Both vied for control. Neither willing to give an inch to the other.
“Now!” Richard wheezed at the moment when he could push no further.
Melanie’s response was instant from the outside, but an instant to a copper was an eternity to a platinum. Melania hesitated as she gripped her husband's shoulders. This was the most brutal part of the plan. A most heinous act that would haunt her for the rest of her days. But it was worth it. It had to be worth it.
Melanie snarled as she directed her vital aura into Richard’s back. Right over where his heart resided. Instead of flowing around him as normal, the concentrated platinum aura spike stabbed right through the fragile flesh and imploded within.
Richard’s mouth snapped open in a silent scream as twin beams of brilliant cyan shown from his eyes. His flesh turned transparent as his skeleton pulsed with an internal light. A blooming flower of golden light bloomed from above his heart, opening slowly to engulf the twinned cores struggling for dominance in his hands. It melded with the thousands of golden threads. Refining them. Strengthening them. Pulling the two cores together and forcing them to exist in concert.
Silence.
The light faded from Richard’s eyes as he slumped back. Melanie caught him and gently lowered him to the floor.
“It’s done. Breathe, honey, breathe. I got you,” she whispered. Despite knowing what she had just done, she couldn’t help but probe her husband with her aura. Gently. Oh, so gently. And yet, she still shivered to find nothing there. Only an empty shell. Breathing, but barely.
“It’s done,” Richard croaked, his eyes sagging into his skull as pounds of corded muscle over his frame withered away in seconds. "I believe--" *cough* "I have learned some valuable lessons from this. Death isn't real, and I am basically god."
"Oh, hush you," Melanie relaxed, unable to prevent a short chuckle from escaping her. If Richard was joking then he would be fine.
Richard smiled wanly, holding up the pulsing crystal that was the result of all their effort. “The unbridled power of the hellbeasts combined with the flexible ingenuity of humanity. Kerrigan will be safe with this.”
“And held together with her father’s remnant. Don’t forget that,” Melanie shook her head. “Can you imagine, a remnant not full of hate, and we use it to create a weapon of war.”
“We’ve done everything we can to prevent it from turning monstrous.”
“And if it does? Turn monstrous in the end?”
“Then it turns monstrous. But if she dies, it dies. No matter what happens, our baby is surviving this.”
“I can live with that.”