Ow, my head, was my first thought upon regaining consciousness. Man, in all those dungeon core stories I read, I can’t remember if any of them had to deal with going unconscious so often. Hopefully, AND YOU STAY AWAY DEMON MURPHY! I don’t have to experience this as much anymore thanks to that perk... Though did anyone get the license plate of that bus that hit me?

I sat up, happy on seeing my core and the little mana generator orbiting it. I stretched my arms to the side, sadly not feeling better for having done so, and sighed at being incorporeal once again. As I stretched, I noticed that the portal I had come through was still open, and I could see Valdur’s core just floating there, menacingly.

“Oh hey, you’re finally awake,” Angela’s voice said behind me. I was startled, and looked at her. “You were out for about five minutes sitting there, boss. About two days before that... And we’ve... got a situation.”

“Alright,” I replied slowly, standing up. “What happened?”

“I still can’t believe it, but a boat just crashed its way through the entrance of the dungeon, smashing all the undead in its way, flying over Shreddy, and sadly taking out both of the large golems that were providing a wall on his other side before coming to a halt in the first intersection chamber. Contents of said boat include two animated skeletons, one dressed as a knight and the other as a pirate of all things, ten children, two nuns, and two human sailors.” Angela explained to me. I looked at her, incredulous. “Everyone has also managed to level up something fierce, they’re all between levels ten and twenty now, with myself at level seven.”

“That’s great!” I exclaimed happily. “But uh, how’d you get to level five, if you don’t mind me asking? I’d... gotten a notification about that a little bit ago.”

“So, a part of a dungeon advisor’s role may or may not include a bit of mind-reading of the advisee, to better help the advisor help the dungeon,” she replied, a confused blush on her cheeks. “Let’s just say that one, you have an incredibly dirty mind, enough that I’m thankful your core isn’t blue, and two, the wealth of schematics you saw in your homeworld, from all sorts of different universes, gained us an incredible variety of schematics to make here, which once I found those brought me up to level three. Unfortunately, many of them require materials we do not have, are far too big to make in our current area of operations, will have to figure out how to substitute materials, or are not complete and thus require more research. I am also now familiar with the sheer amount of information you had on both my universe, as well as others.” She took a breath and straightened her posture, dusting off her outfit as well. “I’ve taken the liberty of tasking a new group of cored golems with the excavation of your second and third floors, they’ve already run into a coal vein, as well as a copper vein on the second floor, an iron vein has been tentatively located on the third floor, and they are mining to it as soon as they can. Making the golems, and sending them on their tasks also brought me up to level five. In addition, every five levels I receive more information from this Legacy System about how to operate and run a dungeon to help you expand and master your abilities.”

That’s good, but uh... oh god if she can read my mind... Oh. Oh no.

“Yes, I just heard that thought, boss,” she smirked, still blushing. “Now, back to the sudden guests? What should we do with them?”

“I uh... right, you said there’s kids?” Angela nodded, and I rubbed my temples with a sigh. “Alright, something tells me that the two skeletons are different from the zombies that have been assaulting us. Let me go and take a look at what we’ve gotta deal with.”

With that, I moved from the core room to the former barracks room. Halfway there, I stopped and stared at what appeared to be another person like Angela and myself.

“Can I help you?” I asked the person.

“Hmm-wha?” The person recoiled slightly upon seeing me. “Oh dear, I did not realize there were any ghosts here! This might be a tad sudden, but may I ask if you would like to join the Death Guild? We could use all the help we can get with the problem upstairs, and yo-”

“Woah woah woah there buddy,” I held up my hands in a stop gesture. “That name is ominous as hell, so I’m going to say no, for the foreseeable future.”

“That’s fair,” the ghost replied. Looking at him better, I noticed he was in a sailor’s garb, with a kerchief as headwear. “Lieutenant Lewis Clarke, of the airship Necropolis, or at least, formerly of said ship.” He gained a crestfallen expression. “Myself, the ship’s captain, and over a dozen survivors of the recent boarding action against our ship have crash landed in this cave system under the city of Urstem. I’ve been in a lot of places, but this place takes the cake for weirdness. Such high mana concentrations, forcing a ghost like myself to travel through the passages rather than through the walls... Mind if I ask how long you have been down here?”

“About... six months, most of it unconscious,” I replied warily. Okay, so some sort of airship from this world showed up here, above the entrance to my dungeon? I was informed about those, but to have one so soon after I awaken is kinda weird. Eh, screw it. Might as well ask. “Question for ya, does this Death Guild happen to control zombies that tend to... well, morph together when slain?”

I swore I saw the ghost go pale.

“No, not at all!” He insisted, then floated towards me quickly. “While we have Unnatural Undead as members of the guild, like myself or the captain, the Natural Undead are bane to all! If you’ve seen them, how have you managed to not be consumed by them?”

“Because of Shreddy keeping them at bay?” I replied, backing up due to Lewis invading my personal space.

“Shreddy? Who’s Shreddy?”

“He’s a unique golem I installed in my first hall, turns out the undead can’t morph together if they’re complete mincemeat.”

“Your first ha-” Lewis’ expression blanked, then he recoiled and backed up against the wall in horror. “You’re a dungeon!”

“Ope, ya found me out bud,” I chuckled lightly. “Welcome to the newest Grand Dungeon on the continent!” I spread my arms out wide and did a little bow, taking a slight amount of glee as his face fell. “Name’s Fel, haven’t really named the dungeon proper yet.”

“By the Reaper... I gave you my full name too...” He slumped against the ground.

“Sorry ‘bout that bud,” I walked over and patted him on the shoulder, unsurprised to feel it physically in our incorporeal forms. “If it’s any consolation, long as ya don’t intend harm to me ‘n mine, I’ll try to keep ya safe from those damn zombies. Why don’t we go see your friends?”

“Do you promise not to harm them?” Lewis looked at me, determined.

“As I said, as long as they don’t try to harm me, or my people, I won’t harm you or yours.” I lifted him up and started walking. “Let me tell ya, dungeon-hood is a trip. Lots of stuff you have to get used to.”

We lapsed into silence after that, traversing the halls quickly to the crash site. When we entered the room, I noted that all the kids were off on one side, being tended to by Doc and two nuns. Is it just me, or is one of those nuns a demon of some sort? Eh, figure it out later. The two skeletons were near another wall, with several of the ODSTs keeping an eye on them. The last two, sailors by the uniforms, were sitting in a corner between the two groups with dumbstruck expressions on their faces as they stared at Max.

“Say Lewis, one more question for you,” I said quietly. “Can they see me?”

“Not unless you want them to see you,” he replied, still dejected. “Incorporeal beings can always see eachother, for what that’s worth.”

“Thanks. Well, I won’t keep ya if you want to go over things with your boss,” I shrugged and waved over the sergeant. Lewis floated off to crouch next to the pirate skeleton while the helmetless man jogged over.

“Sir?” He straightened his posture into a light at ease.

“Sergeant Forge, how’s everyone holding up?” I asked.

“About as well as can be,” he stated. “Angela told us about your little perk that brought us here, there were a few of us who went through a small existential crisis about being dead back home. But we’ve gotten over it for the most part. We did want to ask you a few things about this whole system, since you know more than we do about it.”

“I’ll make sure to answer as much as I can, in the meantime, have any of you spent your perk points you get every five levels?”

“Not yet, that’s one thing we wanted to ask you on,” he shrugged.

“Right, well, there’s a perk that I unlocked, that unlocked the option for everyone here. It’s called Break the Curse and... funnily enough it’s kinda cursed. On the plus side, no more getting KO’d from leveling up. On the down side...” I shrugged. “In five years time, a portal is gonna open up into another plane of reality that’s engaged in perpetual war. That’s from me. Each one of ya’s that takes this perk either enlarges the main portal, or makes a portal of your own. So a bit of damned if we do, damned if we don’t at the moment. Oh, congrats, another perk I got makes sure ya’ll won’t age anymore.”

Stolen story; please report.

He just looked at me like I had just told the most outrageous story while drunk. I sighed, and opened up my perk menu to show him, which netted a whistle of amazement from the man. This spurred a few odd looks from the foreigners, and for a few of the idle ODSTs and one of the Engineers to walk over and also take a look.

“From one endless war into another,” the engineer muttered. The others looked at him quizzically. “In the Cycle Break. Says we don’t age, but we also respawn if we die. Been through that process a lot with the Rebirth Nanites, though they’re much faster. Welcome to a form of immortality, friends, you’ll get used to it.”

This got a few ‘ohs’ from the gathered soldiers as I relayed the rest of the information that I had been made aware of while I was unavailable. There were a few concerned looks, but overall seemed to accept this new lot in life. Forge had two of his fellows head over to the core-portal to check out the other side’s light show, making sure they brought equipment that would let them see far into the distance.

“Do you know who they’re talking to?” I heard the pirate skeleton ask Lewis, who nodded gravely.

Meanwhile, the starstone golem waddled into the room with the hamster on top of its head. This drew the attention of all the Death Guilders as the duo approached the children, several of whom were sniffling and in general distress. The golem stopped once it was a few feet away, then gently set the hamster down.

The little rodent sniffed the air, and tip-tapped its way over to a half-orc child that was the most distressed. The child stopped sobbing for one moment as soon as the hamster approached, gently picked it up, and started petting it.

I smiled, looking upon the sight of a now happy kid, who had drawn the attention of all the others. I was a little perplexed at the hamster’s behavior, as I knew from all the ones I had had as pets, they don’t like being the center of attention. This one, however, looked like the cat that caught the canary as it was given gentle pats and strokes of the fur by the near-dozen children.

All of the adults were now staring in my general direction, jaws dropped. It was Lewis who broke the silence after it had stretched awkwardly long.

“Why does a dungeon have a hamster as one of it’s monsters?”

As he asked this aloud, the adult guests other than the pirate skeleton flinched and grew worried looks. I sighed, and finally had the thought of ‘wow, I can understand them, and they can understand me’ creeped up on me. I shrugged it off for later as I asked Forge to relay my answer, as I did not want to reveal myself to the non-ghosts just yet.

“It’s because... the dungeon likes adorable things,” he stated slowly, giving me a funny look. “The hamster was the first living creature the dungeon made, by the way.”

“You can talk to the dungeon?” The nun without the obvious demon features asked.

“Yeah, he’s my new boss,” Forge shrugged. “Now, to cut to the chase, as long as you don’t cause any trouble, the boss is willing to keep you safe here until we can figure out a way to get you out of here safely.”

That seemed to reassure the adults, meanwhile my attention was drawn back towards the stairwell. In addition to the neverending tide of normal undead, obviously mutated ones were beginning to appear. Each was unique, but there were trends. There were bloated ones, with gaping maws in place of stomachs that couldn’t take more than a few steps without trying to chow down on one of its fellows and growing bigger.

Lithe, agile-seeming undead sporadically appeared, with elongated claws or whips made of spines and bat-like rotting wings on their backs. Those ones were rapidly turned to mush via either rockets, well-placed grenades, or just general bullet hell. More numerous than the others, was one that appeared to have a scale-mail type of armor, made entirely of shoulder blades. Then there were the most numerous, those that were mutated and merely looked like several bodies hastily stitched together by a mad scientist.

Thankfully, none of the undead were making it past Shreddy, and two new golems were already walking up to take the place of the old ones, pushing the now inanimate rocks into the crushing teeth below. I nodded in that direction, noting that the new golems were more like moving firing positions, as both of them had a large hole in the center, which I saw ODSTs taking full advantage of as they picked off the special undead with carefully placed shots. Several of them were also moving forward the detached main gun from the Warthog, preparing to set it up behind one of the golems with assistance from the other New Conglomerate Engineer.

“Fel, the gentlemen you sent over have returned. You’re going to want to hear this.” -Valdur

I sighed, let my people know that I’d be back as well as formally leaving Sergeant Forge in charge of the defenses. I popped back up in my core room, noting that being able to go into the Dungeon Planner mode and then back into a normal first-person perspective in another part of the dungeon was a fantastic way of travel. I raised an eyebrow at Valdur’s core, who was busy talking with the two very nervous looking ODSTs.

“Ah, and there he is,” Valdur stated, his core turning in my direction. Well, at least I know which way is his ‘front’, the yellow scar on his right side is a dead giveaway.

“‘Lo there gents, what’s up?” I asked as I stepped through the portal, feeling myself become whole again as the mana rich environment permeated throughout my body.

“Huh, neat trick,” said the man toting a sniper rifle. “Don’t think I introduced myself to ya boss, name’s James Eckort, callsign ‘Cyclops’. This here’s John Doe, he doesn’t speak much.”

The other man shrugged in response as I looked at him, lazily holding his battle rifle as he looked around the room. Valdur had done some incredible work in the scant minutes since I had left the place, with a very mesoamerican theme to the room, with the occasional dash of gothic architecture. Stone skulls with orbs of fire in the eye sockets lit the place in a pale blue glow.

“We went topside and took a gander around in the area you said to look. You’re right, it’s a veritable light show out there in the distance. Here, I took a recording, perhaps you can make out just what the heck is going on over there,” he said as he handed me a datapad and slipped in a chip from his scope.

I watched the video, which started out with a slow pan of the area around the entrance to Valdur’s half of the dungeon. The land had started changing slowly, with a few trees beginning to pop up around the hill, along with what I was suspecting was the beginning of a bubbling spring near the entrance.

The view slowly turned in the direction I had seen the light show and began zooming in. Magic must be enhancing that scope, because we’ve gone far beyond the normal 9 times magnification of that rifle. Though his says x10, so he must have been on Reach when he was supposed to die. With the magnified view, what was a simple light show turned into several massive fleets engaging eachother in battle. My eyes flew open as I recognized the ships.

“Let’s see here, Venators, Acclimators, Imperial I Star Destroyers...” I started listing off from the first fleet I spotted. I couldn’t make out any smaller vessels than those. “And in this fleet, Paris-class, and some Halcyons, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think we’d have allies in that one.”

“Why do you say that?” James asked.

“Because of the abundance of weird fleshy growths on the ships. Whatever’s crewing them ain’t human anymore,” I replied with a frown. Plus side, that fleet’s the smallest, and it’s getting absolutely hammered by the other two. Down side... “And that just leaves the last fleet, the biggest one. Judging by the hodge-podge array, we might be looking at Asari and Turian dreadnoughts? They’re also the farthest out, but I definitely recognize that big ship in the center of their formation.”

I sighed, knowing I was about to get some major headaches if any survivors made their way over in this direction. As I was about to hand back the datapad, a large purple flash near the Halo ships caught my eye. Giant swirling vortexes of violently violet and red energy sprang up and out poured angular ships that were festooned in arches and weapons. I barely kept my stance as I watched ship after ship after ship come pouring out of the portals, smashing into the smallest fleet and burning their way towards the others.

Oh fuck, this isn’t good at all! I mentally screamed as I counted well over forty vessels making their way through. One in particular stood out to me as it burned at full throttle towards one of the Asari dreadnoughts, guns blazing and not even bothering to dodge. I recognized the giant jagged symbol on its once-white flank. More and more ships for the other two fleets were also beginning to appear.

“Okay, we must make ABSOLUTELY SURE that we do not draw any of their attention,” I stated strongly. “Because if that fourth fleet finds us, we’re dead. No ifs, ands, or buts. I know our guns are good,” I nodded to Jame’s rifle. “But there is no way in hell that we’ve got enough ammunition to stop an entire World Eater’s battle fleet. Hell, I’m not sure if we’d be able to withstand a squad of them.”

“How bad are they?” John asked quietly.

“Take a Spartan II, make them about another foot taller and much wider, give them several-inches-thick armor that’s in quite a few ways better than the Spartan’s Mjolnir armor, a bloodlust that cannot be slaked alongside an obsession with melee combat, centuries of experience in said style of warfare, and a fifty-fifty chance of being supernaturally enhanced even further. And they can shrug off all but anti-tank weaponry.” I sank to my knees and held my head in one hand. “Ya know, I was sincerely hoping to not have to worry about those kinds of things until we were well established. Valdur, for now, let’s put a hold on adjusting the outs-”

“Unfortunately, I haven’t been the one doing any of the modifications outside the dungeon,” Valdur interrupted. “From what I can tell, it is actually due to you. It helps that since you’re from the Primordial Universe, being in a place like this and it’s abundantly rich mana saturation would cause what you say to happen quite literally.”

“Wait, hold on. I asked if you could add in... so many things. Oh god if mountains and an ocean show up that’s gonna be...” I facepalmed so hard it could be heard all the way by the Sunderer.

“One hell of a ‘something’s here’ beacon,” James added into the silence. “On the plus side, if what I was reading in my scope is right, they’re several days away at a minimum, even if they’re in space.”

“If I may, might I suggest choosing your next summons very carefully?” Valdur helpfully asked. I groaned and nodded, silently cursing Murphy all the while.