I got off work late as usual. Went home, threw some pizza rolls and frozen burritos on a tray in the oven and took a shower. Grabbing the tray I took it to the solitary seat in the house, a computer already running in front of it. Setting down the tray and taking a bite I began scrolling through the internet looking for political groups to join. Eventually I click on one “our dying nation”, that’s gotta be fun right?
Joining the voice chat I notice two members, Aryan King, and Antifa Chad, oh yes, my people, or close enough I suppose. “Hey guy, either of you on?” I say lamely by way of introduction.
Aryan king’s icon lights up. “Yeah, I’m here, the antifa sissy’s gone to nuke some trendies.
“Ah, king, nice. Ok, by your name you’re probably a supremacist, so mind giving me a quick rundown on why?” Without waiting for a reply I begin typing a name for myself too “Lone Librataerian”, that’ll do.
“No, I mean I’m not a supremacist or anything like that, everyone deserves to live, they should just do it somewhere else, I mean it’s mad uncool how they’re all killing us in our own country ya know? We gotta get ourselves an ethno state for our own protection here brother. Birth rates are down, the man is telling people not to have kids, and they’re porting in blackies by the thousands to replace us all. Our culture’s being eroded, they’re coming for our guns, they’ve already taken our speech, and soon they’ll have us all dead. There’s just nothing else for it but to make an ethnostate, the Jews have one, the Muslims have one, and if we can’t get one here we need one somewhere before we’re all gone.”
“Well, that sounds rough.” My eyes flash to the gun I keep in arms reach of the computer, but then they drift away back to the conversation.
“You don’t believe me? I can send you statistics.”
“Lies, damned lies and statistics, I’m familiar with them, and for what it’s worth, you’re not wrong, your government is trying to kill you, kind of. It’s the easiest way to make you and the country richer and more prosperous. The low birth rates mean your personal line is likely to decline into nothing, you got a wife or kids?”
“Haven’t found my trad wife yet, but yeah, when I do we’ll do it, just gotta get financially stable first.”
I cast my eye around my own empty house with a weary smile; I have no room to judge. “Ok, here’s the thing though, what you’ve told me is more or less the classic white supremacist sales line in modern times, mind if I fill in some of the missing details?”
“You can try.” Aryan King replies with an almost bored confidence.
“Well, for one the policies that lead to declining birth rate don’t just effect whites, if anything minority communities often suffer from even lower birth rates. The G-men be killing our black brothers every bit as fast as they be killing us, it’s just easy to ignore in demographic numbers since it’s mostly the first world that adopted these strategies, drawing migrants from the third world. Ya see, it’s nothing personal per say, but for greedy bigwigs in gov it’s an easy answer to demographic collapse and economical losses from an aging population, everyone wins so to speak, well everyone but your children and your children’s children. Add to that that after age fifty or so depression and thoughts of suicide skyrocket among those without kids, or perhaps more importantly the prospect of ever having grandchildren, and you could probably say they’re trying to kill you all. They aren’t really, but the incentive structures just aren’t right. Most people look to first go to school, to than work and earn enough for financial stability, and throughout all of that they’re aging, if you look at fertility statistics you’ll notice that fertility drops precipitously by age thirty when most are ready to start trying, and by then it’s an uphill climb to have one or two kids let alone the five or so you probably want if you’re trying to counteract that demographic decline. Moreover they’re not lying to you about the cost of raising kids. Ya see, used to be the future of the economy relied on raising kids, whether they worked for you to earn their keep or whether the gov fronted some funds, it’s generally cheaper than this to raise kids, now it’s seen as a luxury, even in the third world I hear people telling me how poor it will make you to have a big family. That’s the true sacrifice to your ideals if you’re serious about it.”
“That can’t be right, if they were disappearing as fast as we were wouldn’t we notice it? There are still tons of them!”
“There are still tons of you too brother. Most of the folks I know descended from slaves are only an eighth or less slave by now, ya can’t just look at the color of their skin to judge it. The immigrants aren’t any better off mind you. To someone who’s lived in abject poverty the sheer wealth and prosperity we all enjoy is more addictive than crack cocaine. Many throw themselves into it so far that they’re more American than most Americans, they live paycheck to paycheack enjoying every moment of it, enthusiastic to even have the opportunity, they throw themselves into work, they buy nice cloths, they buy a car, they cheer more patriotically than anyone in the room celebrating the freedom and chance to climb that they’d never have back home. Same in Europe. These are the immigrants everyone wants, they work hard, they’re smart, they boost the economy even more from their endless spending than from their endless will to strive to better their lives, and just like you they wait for their trad wife to start their family and have just as few kids. On the other hand you get plenty who bring their families who carry more traditionalistic values, and who’s grandparents demand they get married and have kids, but a generation or two in and they’re as blue blooded of Americans as you and I. They don’t have that hunger from having experienced poverty because the only poverty they know is a twenty thousand or thirty with overtime a year maccy dee’s salary, not famine, not war, just hunger and want.”
“Hey guys, I’m back.” Antifa Chad announced.
“Well, nobody’s convinced in a day. I continue, think on it, research independently, and decide for yourself what kind of life you want for yourself. After all, nobody else can tell you what you want in life, it’s all on you King.”
“Yeah, I, thanks I guess, I’m not sure but I’ll at least think about it.”
“That’s all I can ask brother. How about you Chad, how ya doing, day alright?”
“Yeah, day’s okay I guess, mom yelled at me again, but she just doesn’t understand, how am I supposed to live my life if she keeps meddling?”
King snidely remarks “Yeah, if only you were earning your keep like the rest of us rather than being such a self-entitled leech you wouldn’t have that problem.”
“You shut up you racist asshole, it’s because of the systematic oppression of turds like you that it’s so hard for me to find a job, you think it’s funny to laugh at the pain you cause? Lets see who’s laughing when you get a brick in your face asshole!”
“Woah woah, easy easy, King, let’s give Chad a chance here alright? Chad,” he’s still talking, but now that King’s stopped he’s starting to slow down, I’ll take that as my opportunity, half expecting the conversation to either devolve into a childish argument or for someone to leave any min now. “Chad, that’s a terrible thing they did to you, I do not wish that on my worst en- King, let me finish first!” I can hear the anger in my own voice, but I bite it back, or at least try to, everyone’s passionate about some things, we’re only humans struggling to understand each other, to be heard over the noise. “The worst, most cruel, most inhumane thing someone can ever do to you is to convince you that you cannot succeed, that you will be stopped by some evil force that targets you, suppresses you, and hates you purely because of things you cannot change. The greater evil of this is that it demotivates you; it gives you excuses for failure that you can give yourself, it makes you give up on yourself, and that is the best ducking way to lose at life. Even worse by providing you an enemy to blame, to hate, it makes you turn to those outsiders who are not hearing this alongside you or telling it to you and it makes you hate them so bad that they won’t want to even tell you otherwise letting you suffer this fate alone, or if they do it will make you ignore and fight them. Whoever thought up this cow poopy is as ducked as-“
Unable to hold himself back King cut in “Did you just fucking say cow poopy? What are you man, four?”
“I’ll curse however I turtle-bubbling please, thank you very much!”
“What’s this crap, pick myself up by the bootstraps, soldier on champ? What are you meant to be, a retarded father figure?”
“Nah man, I come from a family of immigrants and faced my fair share of taunting physical abuses and racist slurs, I was born with peanuts and I’ve worked a one hundred hour week before. I’ve been deep in debt and I’ve lived on anywhere six and a half to ten thousand bucks a year at times like the lowest in our country live. You get one room, you share a bathroom and a kitchen with those who don’t wash their hands and leave food to rot, you walk through baby vomit or live near gangs. Some live off the same in cramped apartments filled with fellow retirees, others off the same in trailer homes cooking off their radiator cuz they have no cash for gas to run a burner. Nevertheless, that’s not homeless, that’s housed, clothed, fed, with utilities and clean water. I’ll tell you, the most ducked thing in the system is how people trying to do right by each other comes out ducked. It’s our vary ability as a populace to control the government through votes and through action that makes them such manipulative ducks that play us off against each other sowing hate and division, trying their worst to get us at each other’s throats, because when we hold the power to change things that is the only way to control us. I’m not your dad, I’m just telling you not to fall for their-“
My screen flashed and a red box appeared. “You have been banned from ‘our dying nation’ for flaming and trolling. If you believe this to be in error you may dispute the claim and can expect to hear back from our staff within two months. Thank you for your understanding.” A sigh slipped out from my mouth. I looked to fill it by popping a pizza roll in. It tasted bland, less filling than they used to have, almost none; inflation driving the prices up, shrinkflation diminishing the quality of products to offset it.
Suddenly the lights cut out and a loud splintering crack resounds behind me, almost without pause another bang follows, this one deafening. I flail my hands blindly through the air as the voices slowly return “Room two clear, room three, He’d got a gun! Open fire!” Then there was gunfire. Something hit me hard enough to make me turn and fall from my chair and I saw faceless figures in tactical gear, than darkness.
I waited, holding my breath, hoping for the darkness to fade, then I noticed it had been too long so I began to count, one, two… two thousand, that was higher than I should be able to count without suffocating. I tried to breath in and out, to flail my limbs. There was no feeling, no response, but no feeling of inability either. It’s like I’m in a sensory deprivation tank jacked up on painkillers to the point I can’t feel anything. Is that it? Am I alive? Am I going to get any better?
Slowly I ran through the events of the raid a few times until it stopped making my nerves all jittery. That, that was probably a no knock raid right? “Ducking government overreach through and through.” I complained to myself angrily, but there was a hint of hopelessness to it. What can I do, what productive actions can be taken? The most obvious and simple answer was what people get isolation pods to do. Life nowadays goes a million miles an hour with constant connection to the internet, fast paced work environment, and any number of sensory stresses and signals filling every city. People who rent sensory deprivation pods tend to do so because they find themselves unable to just calm down and think, to run through what they know and process it, to consider thoughts from new angles and get some quality rest.
I don’t know how long I’ve been alone with my thoughts, it’s maddening and often as not the logic seems to circle in on itself. Not for the first time I wish a monster was lurking in that ominous darkness, if it bit me and chewed me up I’d at least have some sensory input, something new, something to think about, something to feel, something to prove I was alive. I wonder if this is hell or perhaps purgatory. I’m reminded of a funny meme and can’t help but think absentmindedly to myself “If only I had spent more time arguing with strangers online.” It’s a funny thought, but somehow my emotions don’t seem to think so, I’m crying again, I don’t regret it, I think I’ve done as much good as I can. Often people on all sorts of sides aren’t so far off from each other these days. We’re all human, we all want everyone to be happy, to be healthy, to have fun and enjoy life. Sometimes we get hurt and need to vent, sometimes we get disappointed and wish life was better, but what people in this world really need is just more calm levelheaded voices that don’t return anger with anger, voices willing to listen, to share the common ground of both sides that get lost in the anger and shouting. People just need a brotherly hug, a slap on the back, and a reminder that the world is a great place and that while not everything’s going well, most things are. That the world will not end and sky will not fall no matter how exciting and fun it might be to think they will.
Perhaps I am an unrepentant sinner of some faith I’ve never learned, but I was always told that I’m more stubborn than a donkeymuel, and I’m not going to change my mind now, at least not without compelling reasons delivered with rational civil dialogue rather than cosmic brinksmanship. Of course that only applies to faiths I’ve never learned because I already broke down and begged every god I’ve heard of at least once for release, after all I am a human, hypocritical and weak no matter how stubborn. Gradually my emotions calm or perhaps just become unhinged enough to reach an equilibrium.
I’ve been noticing more and more times that I simply have nothing left to think through, even my embarrassing moments, even the mistakes that led to myself and others feeling broken and hurt, even the guilt, self-pity, and cringe are feeling circular and meaningless. So I turn my mind towards spiritual practices and meditation. If you have the opportunity to improve and you don’t than you cannot cry that you didn’t have a chance later. It was a philosophy I’ve forgotten how long I’ve held. It certainly did ring true that nobody would understand and look out for your interests as well as you. Even with a gift from a lover what’s truly heartwarming is the understanding and intent that’s shown in the gift that let you know they’re trying and in part succeeding in doing so. Moreover self-improvement only helps future actions to be easier and do more, much like an investment. Alas it has always been easier for man to command another to work hard than to work hard himself, and a free man has no master but himself. Thus it is his own decision should he choose to be a kindhearted master who lets his slave relax, or a harsh taskmaster who looks to the future and encourages the slave that is himself to do their best.
Many would call it an impractical philosophy, idealistic in its roots, but what harm is there in self-betterment? You have nothing to lose but time and effort and plenty to gain. So it was that I began to meditate, initially it was to try to commune, to reach out, to feel myself, to find answers to who I am or why I’m like this, but in time that was lost in favor of simply meditating on nihility. There was nothing else here, nothing new to think about, I was giving myself a headache with how often my thoughts spiraled in on themselves so I choose to think of nothing. Every now and again a thought flashes across my mind, but it feels like a longer and longer span of time has passed between each one. Perhaps it’s cheating to not even be able to feel your own breath and heartbeat, but I think I’m doing rather well.
Then something new happens, or maybe it was there all along, it’s small, indistinct, hard to see in the vast darkness, but it’s a little fragment of crystal. What a weird thing to hallucinate, not that I’m complaining, I hope the hallucination continues, anything to feed my sensory starvation. Looking close it looks like one a fragment of glass, long and sharp. There’s a slight tint to it, but I think I see something inside it, or perhaps through it like a lens? A grainy texture but vaguely uniform, it’s probably brownish or maybe orange, is that, mud?
Oh how I miss mud, gummy sticky slippery wet stuff that fills your pores when you rub it, which sticks to your boots and tries to climb in. How I’ve missed mud. How I’ve missed everything. I want it; I want a little mud to accompany me in the void, anything to take from the bland blank nothingness of this place. I reach out with my will for I cannot control my arms, I will for the mud to come, and something bizarre happens, strange white lettering appears in the dark nothingness beside the crystal fragment. Euphoria flooded my mind and in shock I didn’t even read the message, overwhelmed by so many new things happening so quickly. The lettering vanished and it was a while longer before it occurred to me the lost opportunity I’d missed to better understand my circumstances. Perhaps prolonged sensory deprivation made me too accustomed to moving slower over longer timespans, perhaps I had thought through my thoughts too completely at the expense of time, the present as it were. Reaching out my mind I attempt once more to draw in the mud and am pleasantly surprised to find a new message.
[+0.0001 manna]
There was no mud in the darkness, given the nature of mud it was hard to even be sure if anything had changed within the crystal, I dimly thought the pattern of the mud shifted slightly, but I couldn’t be sure. Still, this was new, this was… fun? Perhaps not exactly but it was something to do. It didn’t seem like a quick process with the lettering never forming before it disappeared again, but in an infinite boring nothingness it was something that could be counted. Lets see, three zeroes after the decimal, that meant he needed ten thousand to get one? What would happen at one?
[+0.0001 manna]
[+0.0001 manna]
[+0.0001 manna]
At the count of two thousand the soil had seemingly dried a fair bit becoming more rigid. Soon I found that only the bottom surface of the crystal was pressed against the dirt, almost as if there was some gravity within the crystal pulling what was left to one side, but it was weird, if there was only one crystal fragment worth of mud, why would it dry before it had all been pulled to make notifications? A chilling possibility struck me, maybe the dirt isn’t inside the crystal. I certainly didn’t feel like I was in the crystal with it being a little floating thing in the void with me, but even if I wasn’t, it at least seemed to be my only access to new things. Could there be a whole world here?
[+0.0001 manna]
[+0.0001 manna]
[+0.0001 manna]
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
The crystal slowly sunk into the dirt, soon it landed on rock, but it seemed that the rock was pulled as easily as the mud, giving way as the crystal fell deeper and deeper into some alien world. “I wonder if I’ll hit magma soon, would that be bad? Would the crystal be damaged? I mean I can’t see temperature so I’m not sure how I’d be able to tell… I considered carefully, but ultimately decided to keep going, after all, if I were to stop there would truly be nothing to do.
[+0.0001 manna]
[+0.0001 manna]
[+0.0001 manna]
The crystal sank slowly through the stone until the message changed.
[Invalid target specified]
I looked closely and frowned. I’m no geologist, it’s hard for me to say I know one rock from another, the previous seemed black and grey with specks of white, this one seems more like… swirls of white in the same black and grey? Regardless it seems my fun had come to an end. Thinking more deeply about it now that my distraction from thought was gone I noticed this was eerily akin to a game system. Was such a thing a feature of the alien world or of the strange lens that showed and interacted with another world. Was this alien technology, magic, some strange religion? “Status, menu, options, root, analyses, observe, character profile, abilities, system, view skills.” The stillness of the dark void remained unchanged and free of mysterious white text.
Nihility welcomed me back into its silent embrace, but I’m doing allot worse at it now that there’s a distraction in front of me in the form of a little tinted crystal. I don’t know how long passed, but it seems there is now water with a bit of dirt, did it rain? Silently I reprimand myself, perhaps I was up in the water table before I bored a hole straight down through the bedrock, but from another perspective I suppose I was now sitting in a little self dug well. What was my count at again; three thousand six hundred and seventy four? Slowly I pulled the water into the crystal watching the familiar notifications again.
[+0.0001 manna]
[+0.0001 manna]
[+0.0001 manna]
After two hundred and twelve any dirt and water that had come down was gone. Time passed slowly, I don’t know how many times it rains a year, but every time the water came there were fifty to six hundred notifications, perhaps variance in rainfall? Ten thousand came and passed, I now had more than one manna, whatever that does, or maybe more accurately the crystal did, after all nothing passed over to this side aside from white text. Twenty thousand, thirty thousand, I’m beginning to think this stupid crystal is every bit as bad as the darkness itself, but I persist, at least it’s something I can do, it’s either that or trying to not exist as hard as I can, and despite the time and effort I’ve put into not existing by now, it still rubs me the wrong way to give up what could be an opportunity, but my nagging thoughts remind me that this is hell and my tormenters are doing a good job at pissing me off. Forty thousand fifty thousand sixty seventy, truly an endless climb, I wonder if the ticker resets between every rain, if I just passively bleed out all the manna before I ever get a point of it. Still I refuse to quit, thank you donkeymuel stubbornness. Eighty ninety one hundred thousand seems to be a magical number.
[Soul mote successfully created]
[Unlock one basic metric]
[Detecting relevance]
[Unlocked imminent threat detection]
Suddenly I felt like an ant in the road, suddenly noticing that the crack was not the whole of the road. That rock beneath me, the one that could not be absorbed. I’d never paid any more thought as to why it couldn’t be absorbed, assuming it was just a special kind of rock or some kind of special formation, now I felt stupid. I couldn’t see through the rock around me that lay just out of reach, but it was as if the entire flat plane beneath me stretching far into the distance was glowing red with danger, a giant entity capable of stamping my puny little crystal to death in an instant. I took a while and let that sink in, watching the remaining water from this last rainfall sitting against it alongside me. Vaguely I wondered if it wanted this water, if I was stealing its precious resources. The water seemed entirely unaffected, not even a drop leaking into the rock. It seems it’s safe, at least relatively speaking, for now. Tentatively I continue pulling the water into the crystal. Three rainfalls later I conclude that there really isn’t any immediate threat from it, but somehow the warning bells have not stopped, the monolithic red danger sign still glowing red hot beneath the crystal to whatever new sense I’d acquired at one hundred thousand.
Perhaps more interestingly this “soul mote” was a little speck of light that seemed to float about inside the crystal fragment. I’m not sure what it does, but whatever it was it was interesting to observe up until it wasn’t. At the next hundred thousand another “soul mote” appeared, and it unlocked a manna stat, as expected it went up to ten, thankfully I was not losing manna constantly. The “stat” was weird, just a set of numbers floating eerily in the void that never faded.
[2.0161/10 manna]
It meant I could finally stop counting my brains out. I solemnly vowed to myself that in my next life I would do my utmost not to become a bank teller, I’d nearly counted my brain out as it was, and it had taken some time to finally shake the habit of counting anyways. It seems when the manna accumulated to ten it would be used to generate a soul mote. With the third soul mote he gained a health bar that simply read 1/1, suggesting anything that could hurt the crystal would break it. Next a stamina 0/0, because inanimate crystals could not exert themselves physically. The following one was something abstract about souls that I didn’t understand or really know how to put into words, were these letters not English? I also noticed that as my interest in everything but the manna stat waned they simply disappeared from the void. Five soul mites and four manna something happened. The rain stopped.
Had something happened? Had the water been obstructed? Mournfully I looked at the upward facing side of the crystal at the hole I had “dug”, had something obstructed it, a stone or clump of dirt? Perhaps I’d never have water again, and I still have that lingering sense of terror from below me so even if I could absorb that rock I wouldn’t.
Nihility my old friend is here to welcome me back again. With the crystal being unchanging I just stare into its unmoving surface as nihility takes me. Dimly the thought occurs to me that I might have tens of soul motes by now if only the water came, but there’s nothing to be done, nothing to observe, not even anything left to think, probably. Than the silence of nothingness is broken, the rock shakes and cracks, but not the rock above me but rather the threatening horrifying rock below. Part of me inwardly cringes with sorrow expecting the crystal to break and disappear. Our time was good while it lasted little guy, but then it seems I spoke too soon. The crystal is now lying on a pile of rubble that carries a somewhat fainter but still ominous red glow in my senses. The glow seems to be slowly fading, but only vary vary slowly.
So I wait, I’ve gotten good at waiting, and surrounded by danger stones as I’m beginning to call this rubble I find myself unwilling to try any funny business. It’s like how I should never have burrowed into the bedrock, I know better than to touch mysterious danger stones. Nope, I’m a good dark void person with a lens and no body, I know better. As time passes water floods the danger rock cavern. At first I’m nervous, apprehensive, but it seems the danger rocks have no more reaction to the water than they used to. Is this a chance or a trap? I find myself thinking and worrying for some time, but ultimately decide there’s only one real choice, the water is not danger water according to whatever weird sense the crystal fragment gives me, so I begin pulling in the water.
[+0.0001 manna]
[+0.0001 manna]
[+0.0001 manna]
The water flows around the danger stones back to me like some kind of underground lake slowly draining, and as such manna comes to me faster than it ever has. A soul mote appears in record time, than another. Perhaps it’s not actually fast since the notifications still need to fade before each new one, but there’s no waiting for a new rain which makes it feel fast. With a stroke of clever inspiration I try absorbing only the water above me in some vein hope to float up. It only halfway works, offering a little bit of lift in the water before I drift back down moving only slightly with the currents. While this underground lake is filled with stones I really hope there isn’t a fish who sees a floating crystal and thinks it food. It’s slow going but after three more soul motes I’m safely away from the danger rocks somewhere among non-danger rocks, but still in this underground waterway. It’s a small comfort. Another interesting thing happens at ten soul motes too, they immediately fuse with the crystal causing it to grow from a splinter shape to something a little more like a nub, or perhaps a part of a greater shape. When it grew the soul motes came out as if to trace out new fragments, so perhaps the goal is to form some greater crystalline structure? Perhaps more importantly there is another change.
[+0.001 manna]
[+0.001 manna]
[+0.001 manna]
It seems the water is now being absorbed ten times as fast. It only took a thousand to get the next soul mote, still ten manna it seems, and then the next, sadly it seems no new features were being unlocked, but for the first time in a while I felt a sense of progression, a sense that there would be an end to this endless hell. At ten soul motes they traced out shapes again leaving a semi-spherical shape giving me even more encouragement.
[+0.01 manna]
[+0.01 manna]
[+0.01 manna]
Only a thousand per soul mote, but now a mini whirlpool was forming above the crystal chunk
[+0.1 manna]
[+0.1 manna]
[+0.1 manna]
The absorption was so fast now that the water level periodically dropped too low to be absorbed, but the water continued to flow in from elsewhere. Dimly I worried about the danger rocks noticing or of some fish coming, but I felt so close. The motes traced out a full sphere.
[+1 manna]
[+1 manna]
[+1 manna]
Eight, nine, ten, the motes fused with the circular orb of crystal giving it a brilliant glow; perhaps not a glow given the tint, but an inner light, like it was catching and reflecting a light from the surroundings which simply did not exist in this darkened void to be reflected. I wanted to pull in the water again to see a +10 notification, but it never came, rather there was an uncomfortable stifling feeling as if the crystal wanted to vomit back out the manna from it. Desperately I resisted this impulse and read the white lettering.
[Congratulations you have reached level 1]
[You have matured, name now viewable in status]
[Todd, The Dungeon of Death]
[Congratulations you have matured without outside influence]
[You have gained the ability Uncontrolled]
[Congratulations as a mature dungeon you have gained a manna field]
[manna field 0/25]
There was allot there, after all that time and effort I was now… level 1? Or at least the crystal was. It felt somehow disappointing in a way, as if one had climbed endless flights of stairs just to get to the first floor, but I suppose you have to start somewhere, and if level 1 is maturity, maybe it makes sense somehow? Uncontrolled on the other hand sounded ominous. Thinking back dungeons in fantasy are like houses or tombs or traps, often owned or made by someone, were there winding corridors within my crystal or, wait, no, I’d been looking through the crystal all this time, if there was an extra-dimensional space in it I’d know that right? Right? No, no, it looks like matter is converted into manna, unless it’s stored and displaces manna, but likely turned into manna probably. Manna field on the other hand sounded like maybe forcibly holding the manna in the crystal wasn’t so positive after all? This had to be checked, after all that absorption how much manna do I have?
[0/100 manna]
Well that… On the one hand maybe it’s good that it’s more than ten, on the other hand maybe that’s bad? Regardless it seems what I’m holding in is a big fat zero, is there any point in holding it in? I try letting it out and see a faint black stream of gas emit from the crystal sphere, but as soon as it touches the water it acts like it met acid, rapidly burning and melting it. Unlike absorbing materials this seems more like a violent fight for supremacy. I try to pull the water into the crystal again, but this time it doesn’t work, so I instead observe the reaction more closely. The black gas leaves the crystal, it meets the matter in the surroundings, water, and stone, I have a faint nauseous feeling as I see the stone below the crystal begin to dissolve again, will this be a repeat of the previous experience? The Black gas seems to only reach about a hundred sphere-lengths in every direction, as if it wants to carve out a sphere of influence. When the matter dissolves white gas is released which similarly remains within one hundred sphere-lengths. It occurs to me that I have no real way of measuring the size of this sphere, but it’s probably a bit late to start worrying about that now. My eyes hover over the manna totals as I watch the water and stone slowly erode, but the numbers are both stubbornly remain at zero. Yet again the water level dips and I notice that the black gas also eats away at the air. Am I stupid? Why did I not think to even try pulling air into the crystal back when I could pull things into it? Could this all have been achieved long ago? Observing the exchange of gasses I note that while they seem to dissolve, releasing as much white gas as there is black gas consumed, it seems that melting air consumes more volume than water, and that stone consumes less volume than water, could this be because of density of matter? Nevertheless the limiting reactant certainly seems to be the black gas which is not coming out nearly fast enough to fill the rather sizable hundred sphere-lengths that the field takes.
Oddly, it seemed that water wasn’t pushing its way into the effected region anymore, neither was air, creating a sort of void around the crystal orb, unfortunately gravity was not so forgiving, and with its pull the orb stayed firmly against the stone even as the stone slowly melted into the hemispherical void that was forming above it. Down, down, down again. What will happen if I hit a danger stone like this. Why did the danger stones detect as an imminent threat even though they never bothered me?
It wasn’t my first time wondering about this, but now that I see my crystal sphere indiscriminately melting the surrounding matter in order to vie for supremacy I wonder what would happen if it did that on a danger stone. Would the stone melt, be absorbed, fight back, or is it the black gas? Would it be able to detect the black gas? As a thought experiment I considered if the danger stone were a giant dragon, for it not to kill me it likely either knew my crystal was there and considered it as its own property or it didn’t notice. In either situation a casual observation or whim could crush my crystal. In either case such sudden automated attacks would spell the end for the crystal, and with it slowly sinking into the ground once more I’m really worried. After watching my crystal sink about two hundred sphere-lengths into the ground I can no longer see any direction but up. I stare numbly at the white text that still remains.
[Todd, The Dungeon of Death, Level 1]
[manna field 0/25]
[0/100 manna]
Not even a fractional total, was this a little destruction ball now that would do nothing but melt the world away into nothingness from now on? No, that’s not right, there was that exchange of gas in the field, I could see something building there, I tried to pull it into the crystal but it continued to swirl about, ignorant of my attempt. I focused so hard on the 0/25 that if I had eyes I’d think they’d have dried out or have shooting pains, but the numbness refuses to give way to discomfort and pain. Something else however does give way, The words seem to shift into a neat list with a slide bar. “Terrain” it reads. Hungrily I read through it. “Wall Cost 10”, “Gravesoil Cost 5”, there were more, but for some reason I couldn’t read them, it was like the contrast wasn’t set high enough to make them visible against the dark void. Still this, this might help, could I use a wall as a platform to hold up the crystal? It cost ten, ten what? The obvious answer would be manna field. I tried staring at, willing my thoughts to interact with the text for wall, calling for a floor to appear and hold the crystal, but it just continued to sink, how deep was it, twice as far as last time? Roughly, but it was already hard to gauge before and only growing more so.
As my focus shifted back to the crystal the “Terrain” scrollbar turned back into “manna field 0/25”, inspired I tried the same with the “0/100 manna”, this time it turned into a scrollbar titled “Creatures”, but the options were similarly baron. “Skeleton Cost 5”, and “Haunting Spirit Cost 1” if I’m looking for a way to stop the crystal from sinking into the ground haunting spirit sounds like some kind of a ghost or soul, maybe an existence like myself trapped in an infinite void unable to physically interact with anything? OK, maybe I’m venting a bit, calm, calm, that one sounds useless unless there’s some kind of telepathy. Skeleton however costs half as much as wall and sounds allot more capable of grabbing the crystal and running somewhere safe, hopefully.
My attention turns back to the sinking crystal, I suppose there are worse ways to disappear from the world, at least this time it’s not at the hands of a government sworn to protect. I sighed, or at least imagined myself sighing. The clearer gas was growing palpable, than all at once it surged into the crystal like a mist dispelled by a sudden gust of wind.
[Todd, The Dungeon of Death, Level 1]
[manna field 0/25]
[1/100 manna]
OK, that’s something, think positive, overflow with positivity! I look up through the crystal lens and feel like I’m looking up from the base of a veritable stone pit. So more than four hundred sphere lengths, but perhaps less than six or eight hundred before a single point was gained? I wish I could enter nihility and forget the suspense forget the stress forget my worries, but that would be counterproductive, who knows when I’d wake from it again? So instead I wait, and like with counting I watch the numbers slowly tick up over an agonizing span of time. I try counting seconds, and while I can’t say with any confidence that I didn’t count too fast or slow, by the count of sixty sixties nothing of note had happened, and nothing happened shortly after. I tried once or twice more than gave up, it probably took more than an hour to get one point, or, I remind myself, maybe my brain was supercharged, you never know with dark infinite voids.
Two, three, four, five; I was focusing on skeleton before the gas even entered the crystal, and was rewarded for my patience. As soon as the clear gas entered the crystal a torrent of clear gas was expelled flooding the manna field and coalescing into titan of bone and something that looked like a soul mote. Sleek clean curves as if it had been bleached and boiled, but with none of the fading and decalcification that would entail. The skeleton was kneeling, crouched down over the crystal with its head on the ground, knees laying heavily to either side of the crystal against the solid stone, rib cage gaping overhead like a hungry maw of bone hungrily waiting to consume. Within its sleek white bones a single point of light danced and flowed, a little mote of soul like I’ve grown accustomed to seeing within my crystal. At first I honestly thought it was within the crystal again, as accustomed to them as I’ve become, but shifting my view I found that the mote could pass out of my field of view suggesting that it wasn’t really in the crystal itself but rather being seen through it.
For a long moment the skeleton lay there unmoving and I stared at it in growing horror as I noticed how easily it could smash the crystal. As we remained mutually still I watched the exchange of gasses continue, the erosion of the stone underfoot continue, and crystal and skeleton both continuing to sink deeper and deeper into the ground. That wasn’t all though; oddly the exchange of gasses seemed to interact with the soul mote too. It would breathe in a sliver of the black gas from time to time and expel a sliver of the white gas. Was it perhaps entirely unnecessary for the crystal to be devouring the world itself in order to acquire manna? The grim irony sat on my tongue like, well as best it can without me having a discernable tongue. Pretty sure the physiological response would be for my tongue to go dry and me to try to gulp to remoisten it or some such series of events but it feels like it’s been ages since there was anything but numbness.
Not sure what else I could do to break this stalemate I tried talking to the unmoving titan of bone “Hello there, can you hear me?” The skeleton for its part didn’t even twitch, but oddly enough the little soul mote seemed to dance happily and soaked in a few more slivers of black gas, without outputting any extra clear gas I note.
Then I felt it, some kind of questioning innocent curiosity, like a baby looking at the world for the first time, but somehow less, more dampened, as if there just wasn’t as much there as with a baby. While a baby would look around capturing details marveling at the contours and edges of shapes, trying to drown itself in a thousand senses taking in the world in great gulps, this innocent curiosity feels more dazed; like my own sensory deprived stupors where I see something like white text and instead of looking at it just sit there marveling like an idiot that such a thing can happen at all. OK, counting was tough, but faced with raising an infant bone titan who’s never seen the world, somehow I wonder if I can’t just get another round of counting after all.