You know, it’s strange, why haven’t I tried it yet? The answer is perhaps more disappointing than mystical and enticing. I forgot. Perhaps I can excuse myself, the ominous orange glow is still hanging in the cavern like a building storm, the roar of its ongoing conflagration only muffled by the distance between us, and the steady dripping of humidity into the deep waters that fill the cavern between us. I wonder what it means, I wonder if we could talk, I wonder if coexistence is possible, if it hates the world or just hates Ha-Na-Na. I wonder if I just let it past, if I just let it send its armies to decimate the town, would I be spared? Could I even do anything about it if I wanted to? How long will I have to decide? Well that brings us back to what I’d forgotten. I look back to the expanded menu and read the familiar words. “Creatures”, “Skeleton Cost 1”. It looked so familiar and yet so foreign. The once vacant list is now filled with five options. Skeleton warrior, skeleton mage, zombie, but if it only takes time to turn a skeleton into a skeleton warrior, why not simply buy a skeleton? It’s cheaper and gets you the same in the end, all it costs is time.

Do I have time? I wonder sometimes. Time seems to flow right past me, it’s eerie how fast the years pass, how fast time moves. One day I see a child in the village through Johnathon’s eyes, another day she’s a young lady grown and that playful spark in her eyes has switched to bashful adoration towards her young peer who’d gone from scrawny rugrat to, well, big muscular rugrat. Every bit as boyish and immature as he was just bigger, but if I look again would he still be that? I remember a similar thing before the raid. I was admittedly quite bad at keeping up with friends, but at the same time I could shamelessly reach out to someone I hadn’t spoken to in five years as if it was nothing, and their lives went so fast. I would have just been working, every day passing like the last, and they’d be out there with a family already. I wonder if any of them miss me? Some might but to most I was probably just a flickering scene in the background much like they were to me, how can you truly treasure that or hold it dear; and yet, I may have. I didn’t have deep relationships in the more common sense but I cannot say I did not care for them, that I do not care for them today. Can I watch that child die, burned alive by something I might have stopped? Will my patience to grow as I will, without forcing it or risking my own death, cause her to meet that fate?

I look to the next option, one I’d long ignored. “Haunting Spirit Cost 1”, the cheapest creature I have ever been able to make, and yet one I never chose to after all this time. Looking back at it I think I understand a little better why it’s there. If a skeleton can grow flesh and walk around, what can a haunting spirit become? Can it grow bones? Will it become a ghost? Will it simply be a prankster demon? Most importantly, would this be a sound investment? I struggle to see any reason it wouldn’t be. Even today if I created all the undeads that follow me as they are now it would cost me a substantial sum, no less than that I spent back then even with my larger manna pool, additionally I have been lent additional growth in the mean time through them. I still think that might be the way; the best way to grow. Sure, I have an ample supply of wood and stone for the moment, but for how long? How fast could trees this tall regrow? How deep could we safely dig before we hit something we don’t want to find, or worse yet bring a mountain’s worth of stone down below us by not setting good foundations? I admit, I’ve thought of it probably more than I ought to.

I press my intent into the option and watch as a faint wisp of manna drifts forth from me. Was it always this small? Was this truly once a full day’s worth of accumulation? Now it feels so... pitiful.

I watched the manna coalesce, twisting into the shape of a man. For just a moment I saw myself. Not me as I am now, but me from before the raid, human me, and than he collapsed into a swirling stream of mist. The mist flowing up down left and right over every surface like cloudy water across a riverbed, that is if water flowed upwards as easy as downwards. Johnathon began talking with him and told me it would be some days before he could understand well enough to hold still, but I’d thought I had seen something, so I did the only logical thing, I summoned more, and more, and with each I watched closely, seeing my own face form over and over again. I looked at the skeletons that choose to stay near me and I note their eerily similar shape and size, only, they are no longer as they were. Once they stood identical like figures cast by the same mold, but now they carry variations, their levels and evolution giving them their own characteristics and traits. Take Vance Brice and Johnathon for example. Vance is quiet, reserved, and shy, but with a keen attention to understanding the world around him. Brice is strong and independent fighting for his own way while daring to take risks. Johnathon is less interested in understanding the world or taking risks and more keen to study and learn all that can be found in a book. Such distinct people, a mage a warrior and a zombie at that with different figures, Brice more thick boned and sturdy than Vance.

The dots are beginning to connect. How are creatures unlocked? When Johnathon became a zombie, that is, when I came to control a zombie, I gained the ability to make them. That suggests that at some point the spirit and skeleton were controlled by me too. Initially I’d been thinking of it like a video game with starting and unlockable options, it’s hard not to with manna totals and health totals, even system prompts, getting in the way. Yes, the creatures I could create, those which are born of my manna, are me. I am creating my own skeleton or spirit and commanding them to defend me. I’m watching in real time as hundreds of versions of me diverge into different entities with their own experiences and understandings, to the point that I can no longer truly recognize them as myself. It’s unnerving in a sense, but at the same time feels like something I should have noticed ages ago. I don’t think they’re truly me though, or at least I don’t think of it that way. At the start they’re stupid, newly born without any conception of the world. Later they gain conceptions of the world that I may not share. They are my children, yes, but I suppose I almost see them more like acquaintances most of the time. I’ll admit, that’s mostly my fault for being as distant as I am to them, for not having taken part in their lives. At most I regularly acknowledge their efforts and encourage them in their pursuits from time to time. Is it just harder for me to form lasting bonds when I don’t take the time to truly get to know everyone? Probably, there’s also probably some kind of instinct to it, or maybe that’s just logic I’m taking from video games and books again. Monsters defend a dungeon, it is their purpose, is their duty, it is simply what they do.

After seeing the world through Daisy’s eyes I wonder how much I missed, how much I did wrong. Not wrong in the moral sense, rather our focuses are quite different, while she contemplates what would be the right thing to do I wonder how best I can survive in this world. The bugs that invaded her field grew rapidly into defenders, fed by her manna aura. I wonder, is this how a dungeon is meant to be? On the surface of it this makes me a selfish and greedy thing. Daisy’s aura was shared freely with and greedily consumed by those around her. I wonder if one can truly live and grow like this seeing as she did not even begin to gain levels until there were deaths within her confines, on the other hand those deaths spurred growth, and a far more rapid growth than I tend to experience. Likewise she gained a mining ability! This only further reinforces my need to gain something marketable, else I’ll have nothing to truly contribute to the markets if I want to buy my way into advancement. Doing so must be better than what I’m doing, right? Else I’ll be forced to rely on the untiring labor of my children to refine and manufacture things. This is a decent backup plan, but means I’m truly imposing on them as a dependent. Something about that feels wrong. It’s not like the exchange of gasses, or I suppose manna, but a lifelong one sided demand that they serve me. Has my slip into autocracy brought me so far that I’d really consider that an option?

I suppose I’ve delayed it long enough, I’ve gotten quite good at not thinking of things, but it’s better to address the dungeon in the room. Daisy. It’s a sad story, perhaps even heart wrenching, but it smells of a greater political move at play. Well, maybe that much was apparent from the start, I’m not sure how a dungeon can send a message to others; but for the dungeon of humanity, the implications of which existing have yet to truly set in for me, to countermand the statement it means it felt implicated. The reasoning to that was simple enough, humans were painted somewhat negatively there, all the more so to any who are too lost to madness to reason the context there. Setting aside whatever dynamic dungeons have with people, the fact that humans only appeared after Sen-Gin both found Daisy and left to do something was suspicious, not to mention how much he egged on conflict. In the memory Sen-Gin himself said that dungeons are broken people, and he’s sent an empathetic appeal laced with his own muttered provocations to all the dungeons within a large area. While it’s uncertain how deeply the dungeon of embers has considered this, it’s apparent that it has at least roused it to some form of action. I wonder what that means, is it weak? Is this my best chance to live, or is my best chance to keep away from it?

I think back to something Fra-La once taught Johnathon. “Never fight a mage in his tower, never fight a dungeon master in his dungeon, never fight a god in their divine realm, never fight a will of the world in its own world, and never fight the fairy, though those are long dead in this world.” It sounded like some kind of common saying relating to places of power and the advantage they give in a conflict. I mean, that’s great and all, but as a living place of power I haven’t a clue what that even means, how that helps me, what kind of advantage I’d have if attacked. Thinking carefully about it I can think of a few. The first is the inherent advantage in a defensive battle, that of defensive structures and fortifications, perhaps even enchantments though I don’t have any of that last one, others apparently do. The next obvious answer is what people think of when they think of a dungeon; traps, monsters, riddles, an endless labyrinth of death. If it had been left to me I would have but a single room, so I admit, Brice did good job, a loose net of fortifications loosely sprawl around me. A spiral of felled trees, a wooden fortress, there’s even defenses below ground albeit those won’t stop any who come through the fortress. I haven’t a clue how riddles could even be implemented, but I suppose I have at least mundane defenses, not that they’d help me against a foe that close. The dungeon of embers is a short span of tunnel away. I should instruct several of the miners to begin setting defensive positions along that hallway and ask that some of the skeletons be ready along it.

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The third advantage however is likely what the saying meant. My manna field is the only mystical defense I truly possess. It allows my skeletons to return from death, a feature I note that Daisy seemed to lack, and it will itself kill those who enter, albeit my death attribute manna is only keeping pace with the influx of wood and stone left for it to digest. It almost feels like a waste to digest stone these days given how little manna is released from it, but the fragments have little use so it’s better to recycle them than throw them away. Heavy stone bricks have begun moving upwards to replace wooden structures, but the wood is hard enough to digest that if I were to consume that spiral of felled trees as it’s replaced I’ll likely be well fed for a while. Is that a bad thing? Am I sacrificing a layer of defense in doing so? I’m torn, but ultimately the exponential nature of my advancement means advancing will pay out more so long as I’m not attacked tomorrow, and that incendiary cloud seems to just be hanging there for days on end. A looming threat but not an attack.

[Congratulations on reaching level 8]

[Detecting you have not interacted with anyone, leaving even your own defenders to act alone.]

[You have gained the ability Isolated]

Monkeyfarts, that was not what I wanted. I look over at the diligent blacksmiths and metals that my nearest children are working. I was really hoping for something production-based. What would isolated even do? How would that help me? I have one of them test approaching and he finds no isolationist barrier or obstacle keeping him from reaching me. Okay, only one more level, only one more chance, next time for sure I’ll get something good! I have them stack the money off to the side in my field and actively keep the death attuned manna from melting it. Between that and all the wood I have to get something, right? Brice informs me that there’s not much nearby to hunt. Him and over ten of his crew have reached their level cap already, that’s dampened their lust for battle a bit, but he insists that training and fighting is still helping, and those who were later to join him are doubly motivated to catch up now that they see an opportunity to. In the absence of other prey they’ve felled some of the remaining trees allowing a few patches of the outer spiral to be exposed to the sky. As expected this drew birds, the plan worked, but it furthers my worries to know even birds are this strong.

The birds are varied in size and form, some have four wings or two heads, some serpentine tails or arms of metal. I can’t say that I truly understand the ecology at play here. It seems to vaguely follow that of a normal ecosystem except where it doesn’t. That is to say if prey or predators are hunted more will stream in from surrounding regions to repopulate them, but some things just defy common sense. Wolves that explode into acid when they’re killed too quickly or easily for example, they fill a role in the ecosystem that simply did not exist on my world, acting as apex predators, at least among normal animals, while dissuading or killing stronger predators who seek to edge into their territory. It’s fascinating to consider what role levels and evolution play in an ecosystem, but it tends to boil down to everything being normal but with giant monsters like the cloud caterpillar on top. Among the birds there seem to be two main classes, those which hunt below the canopy and those that hunt above it. The former tend to be more in line with normal expectations, things that my children can and often do fight. Opening the canopy however opens us up to attacks from the sort of predators the aforementioned wolves are meant to keep away. Powerful creatures large enough to grab a cow off the ground and strong enough to fight a small army singlehandedly. It’s fortunate that Brice himself has a small army, but even then they die far more often than they kill anything. It reminds me of MMO boss raids watching them lay out plans with strategies and tactics, taking advantage of our own forges to replace weapons time and again. They swiftly learned that many of these creatures have no anus, presumably digesting and excreting through sheer magical nonsense. Additionally birds tend to have a second eyelid that’s transparent to block the wind as they fly, severely restricting the vitals Brice can target.

While they’ve manage to fell a few of them, the manna has all gone to these newly created haunting spirits, or more specifically to their soul tethers. As white mist they spread out blanketing my new defenses and allowing me vision of all that which falls within my domain. It’s weird, while I can’t parse everything at once, my thoughts have grown faster with my soul allowing me to follow more viewpoints at a time than I’d think I could. Now for example Brice is fighting against a giant blue bird the size of a medium family home with a thick curved beak and a split feathered tail, but each tail feather is long and flexible like a whip. I watch as if from the vantage of a god as Brice rolls to the side, dodging one of the tail feathers while one of his brothers tries to do the same only to end up as a cloud of bone meal. A spear flies towards the bird as another skeleton dies. This is what I mean, I was getting engrossed in the fight, but somehow still had thoughts to spare to notice that the skeleton that died wasn’t anywhere near the bird. In fact it’s on the opposite side of our compound standing guard.

That jolts me to refocus my attention, there’s no reason anyone should be dying over there. I first focus on where it fell, there is a soulless skeleton with several deep gashes. Not the paired gashes of claws and fangs but rather the clean cuts of a blade, though perhaps it’d be wrong to call them clean cuts when bone chips, shatters, and snaps rather than cuts. Regardless I look out through the now ever-present mist at the corridor around the fallen skeleton, but looking left and looking right there’s only empty mists. Than I hear something from beyond the wall of wood, closer to the fortress beneath which I lay. Shifting my focus to the next gap in the spiral I see a masked woman followed by a floating wisp of light.

She stood in a half crouch with twin short swords in hand, garbed in what appear to be large exoskeleton plates bound by leather straps that were worked through them to make a rough plate mail. Additional strips of leather were inserted between the plates in order to prevent them from clacking against each other as she moved. A skeleton was approaching, but it had not yet seen her, hastily she made her way to the inner tree line, and without hesitation lithely twisted her thin frame into a mass of roots. More curious than concerned, at least for the moment, I opted not to inform the skeleton where its prey is, and instead watched as she waited for it to pass, the wisp hidden between her back and a mass of wood.

One of my haunting spirits swept in closer, rolling across her vary skin, sending a chill through her spine and making me feel a trifle disoriented. It was a tactile sensation, but not the tactile sensation of sliding your fingers along a surface, rather the tactile sensation of a something worming its way through your flesh. Nevertheless it gave me more information, she had tan lines on her wrists where golden sun-scorched and calloused skin gave way to eerily pale almost sickly flesh. Curiously there was no parting between her mask and her face as if it were her bones themselves. The mask had deep ridged brows with expert attention paid to giving it rounded almost dimpled cheeks and faintly parted lips as if in a sigh with a delicate little nose above. There were no eye holes, only dull marbled eyes staring stonily ahead.

Is that some kind of assassin organization trademark, or a servant’s brand? It’s as if she has a face of carved ivory, or perhaps marble. Stoic and expressionless it’s unmoving, her eyes don’t even twitch as she watches the receding skeleton and glances about to make sure there isn’t another. With a shift in her core muscles she grips a root and rotates out and back into the root mass without even touching the ground. Winding her way through the roots she manages to find a path connecting to a more inner portion of the spiraling path, effectively evading the majority of the skeleton crew that was left to defend it while Brice fights the bird. Okay, that’s a bit more concerning, were there always gaps in our defenses there? We had always assumed that anyone crossing the trees would have to climb onto them leaving them vulnerable to archer fire, was it stupid to trust a spiral to do anything? Moreover I wonder if the fortress walls would even do anything against an invader like this.

She slips behind another skeleton severing its head in one strike to the neck, than quickly uses the end of her blade to pry the joint at the top of each limb apart while she stomps on its skull. Then she’s moving again, so I direct more of my children towards the intruder, but she seems to notice quicker than I’d expect. As soon as she sees three undead walking towards her path she spins in place and begins retracing her steps, disappearing back into the root mass in the blink of an eye. No, someone who escapes is a loose end, but so would be ignorance of who they are, I ask one of the specters to follow her, feeding it a greater length of soul tether so that it can range further out. Two minutes of dizzying root acrobatics and one unfortunate skeleton later she’s running through the woods.

Here she seems to run normally albeit with many added circles, the occasional move to cover her trail, and several glances over her shoulder. I wonder dimly why she feels the need to be so cautious, but I similarly wonder that she hasn’t noticed the haunting mists chasing behind her. In fairness I’ve kept them up above in the trees in order to hide their flowing movements asking them to more subtle flow from one branch to the next where possible, but they’re probably much easier to spot when speeding through the air than when simply swirling. They follow her for perhaps two hours before she makes her way back to what appears to be a temporary outpost, a mostly cleared field with the minimum required tree cover to keep the larger birds away. Just under twenty tents are scattered about, all made of leather hides and hardened shells, most of which small enough to only house one person.

My attention wanders from my observation target for a moment as I take in the peculiar nature of the residents. They all look like normal humans, but each has a given peculiarity, moreover they each share one of four peculiarities. First were the stone faced people, men and women with artistically crafted faces of stone, presumably similarly devoid of the fleshy faces one would expect to lie beneath them. Second were a group that stood with rather good posture but had twin golden blades extending from their shoulder blades perpendicular to their spine. These blades were perhaps only an inch in width and thin as any sword, but varied in length from about twenty five to fifty inches, hah, eat that metric! The swords were somewhat eerie, looking exactly like how holy magic and magical healing look like in game, a subtle but blinding golden glow. The third were those who lacked for one limb, generally an arm, and in its stead had either a pincer, a talon, or an appendage resembling the tail of a scorpion. The fourth group were perhaps the most mundane of the lot, their teeth were sharply pointed rather than the standard human mix, and with a forked tongue to boot. Their eyes were slit like a cat’s but with a blood red glow to them that drew the eye.

The stone faced girl was waiting outside a more decorative tent where two red eyed women barred her path. I have the Haunting spirit move slower around the camp, but continue to reposition it until it’s in a tree overhead that tent. Slowly moving it down along the trunk I position it to allow me to see within. One representative of each deformity sit about a single table tossing dice, each looks calm and assured, I’d have thought this normal, but for the vaguely forced charismatic grace with which they emphasized their own assurance to each other. I smell politics.