Cultivators, especially rogue cultivators hated unknown. Usually ‘unknown’ would portend unknown fortuitous chances, but also hidden dangers. To cultivators, who were going against the Heavens, just to live longer, unknown risk usually filtered down to exotic ways to die. And here the soul was facing an ‘unknown.’
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The first blue box was soon followed by a barrage of messages.
NOTIFICATION YOU HAVE ABSORBED 1 MANA FROM THE BLACK SILK SPIDER.
NOTIFICATION CONGRATULATIONS! YOUNG DUNGEON! ABSORBING MANA IS THE FIRST STEP IN BECOMING A STRONG DUNGEON. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!
NOTIFICATION
ABSORBING MANA AND CREATING YOUR FIRST ROOM, HAS OPENED GLOBAL DUNGEON NETWORK FOR YOU. NOW YOU CAN SEE, QUANTIFIED AND STATISTICAL DATA ABOUT YOURSELF.
GLOBAL DUNGEON NETWORK ACCESS LEVEL – BASIC
NOTIFCATION PLEASE UPGRADE YOUR CORE TO ACCESS FURTHER AND OPEN FORUMS, DUNGEONOPEDIA, CHAT ROOM ETCETERA
NAME ??? AGE ERROR LEVEL 0 MANA 6 AFFINITY SPACE, FIRE, EARTH. FLOORS 1 ROOMS 1 TRAPS 0 MONSTERS 0 TITLES
Fallen Star
The Calamity
The Harbringer of Death
Beloved Of Space
The Explorer
What the fuck?
What the hell is going on?
Has the illusion gone crazy? Creating such beginner level mistake? Everyone knows, that better an array the more its close to reality. What’s with the stupid blue boxes? Are they here to annoy me? This whole thing has stopped making sense.
And what’s Mana?
NOTIFICATION MANA IS THE MOST PRIMARY FORM OF ENERGY.
What? What was that again?
NOTIFICATION MANA IS THE MOST PRIMARY FORM OF ENERGY.
Did it answer? God, I am going crazy… An illusion that can read mind? Can answer ?
Take a deep breath…This illusion is completely crazy. It’s in its own league. A crazy annoying league.
Heavens! I need a moment to sort this out…
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The soul started walking to and fro. With hands folded and head facing the ground, the soul was in deep contemplation. The whole situation was weird and going out of hand. It couldn’t understand anything. The blue boxes, the pain which felt real, the answering illusion, all of the things were creating a mayhem in its head.
Finally, It did what a cultivator should always do when facing a problem. Meditate. Cultivate. Investigate.
It sat down, with its legs crossed , and took a deep breath. It started cultivating.
But something felt wrong. Incredibly wrong. No Qi energy could be sensed. In fact, the only energy it could feel was the chaotic energy, which it had felt in the so-called dungeon.
But this didn’t affect the soul much. It had guessed that they would probably seal the Qi near the array, to prevent him from cultivating.
But the weird energy felt different, and at the same time comfortable. When it was in the immortal estate, the same energy felt alien and painful , but now it felt comfortable like it was supposed to absorb this energy. It’s gut instinct told that he would be easily able to absorb this energy if it wanted, unlike the previous time. But it stopped himself from doing so. Th energy was completely alien, and it couldn’t be sure whether it was harmful or not.
Being prevented from cultivating Qi, it could only cultivate its soul. Anyway, its soul was barely keeping itself intact, and this would be a good time to repair it. It tried going into its soul, but it failed every time. It was like nothing was there to go into.
“ What is wrong here ? “ It was well versed with Builder Sect’s array and it could be sure that none of them prevented from going into your Soul.
All of this was incredibly fishy. In fact, their array’s were not even supposed to be so realistic and strong. It was like an entirely different sort of array.
But before investigating that matter, it really wanted to repair its soul. In fact, it knew it was possible as twice it had felt his soul being affected and slowly mending. But it couldn’t be sure, what was stopping him now?
Then it suddenly struck him. It WAS a soul. It looked at himself. It really was in soul form. In fact, to be exact it was in its nascent soul form, which very much looked like itself and was clearly not an illusion.
This was weird. Extremely weird and wrong. This shouldn’t even be possible. How had they separated and trapped it’s soul? They didn’t have the capability as its body was still there. Heaven’s didn’t allow forceful separation of soul and body. It went against the cycle of reincarnation and Laws of Heavens. Unless..
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It rapidly tried sensing its body and could only feel the crystal. It's body’s imprint was gone. Both body and soul were connected to each other through Karma and Soul Imprints, that is soul’s essence and mark on the body. But both were gone. Not broken but gone, as if they never existed.
This could only mean its body was really destroyed. Destroyed in such a way that nothing was left or nothing could be sensed.
And for the first time since awakening from that bad nightmare, it questioned himself, “ What if all this was real?”
But it couldn’t accept it. It's consciousness once again dived into it as it tried sensing imprints. Maybe, just maybe the imprints had gotten shifted as its soul broke down? Nothing. It could feel and sense nothing. The whole soul sea was dried and broken. No imprints could be sensed.
Suddenly it felt two energy imprints. Excited it rapidly focussed on it but found that they were not its imprints. One felt like a mass of soul while another felt dangerous and Karmic in nature. It immediately realized what the dangerous imprint was. It was Heaven’s Mark or imprint left by heaven’s when Heavenly Oaths were taken. They tied the parties to each other and to heaven itself. That’s why it was impossible to break heavenly oaths as they were tied to the soul itself.
It put its consciousness inside and immediately terms of oath echoed inside its mind.
They were the same term’s which it had promised to the dungeon core and the dungeon’s side of the oath was completed.
“ It was real ?” It questioned himself. If it was real then doesn’t it meant that everything after that was real? Then it really had died? But why wasn’t it in the underworld ? Where was it ? Why was it still alive ? And dungeon’s side’s oath was completed ? Why? What? How? When?
One question was answered, and another hundred popped up.
Ignoring them it took a deep breath and relaxed. Thinking about things which it didn’t know the answer or was not going to help. He would only tire himself. But there was one good thing, At least it wasn’t trapped and made fun of by those baldies.
Moving its consciousness towards the boiling mass of soul, it dived in.
Pitch Black darkness greeted him. Nothing could be seen, heard and felt. And it had felt such feeling before,only when it would enter somebody's soul.
“Who are you?” It asked facing nobody.
In front of him slowly a body shimmered to existence. It was a humanoid looking phantom. Pure white in color and no defining feature, he looked more like a mannequin or doll.
“ Hmmm…It seem’s you have finally reached Titania…”
“ What do you mean ?”
Ignoring him the white doll kept talking to himself. “ I wasn’t sure, it would work. But it did. The theory was right. I really am a genius, but they still exiled me….”
“ *cough*” The soul interrupted.
The white doll looked up as if realizing for the first time that there was somebody standing in front of him
“ Hmmm Who ? Oh, it's you. Why are you here ?”
“ What do you mean by, ‘oh it's you.’ And what’s with the ‘why are you here?’ You are INSIDE, MY SOUL, and are asking me why I am here? Shouldn’t I be the one asking this?
“ Did you ask?”
“ What?”
“ You didn’t ask me. So why are you blaming me?”
Th soul couldn't believe the white doll’s shamelessness. What does he mean by did you ask? It wasn’t even given a chance to ask anything!
“ So why are you inside my soul?’ it asked, taking a deep breath to stop himself from kicking this doll. It was in an incredibly bad mood.Its day was already going pretty bad,and from what it could see, it was only going to get worse.
“ Technically you are inside my soul, although my soul is inside your soul. Well, let me introduce myself. I am dmmskcmdkmc. We had met a few years ago on the last floor of the dungeon.’
“It's you! You are that floating piece of shit!” the soul blurted.
“ Shit?!? Boy, I am a DUNGEON CORE! ONE OF THE CREATOR’S BEST CREATION and please control your tongue, and haven't your parents taught you how to talk to elders?”
“ What elder?” How easily the White Doll went from angry to shameless.
“ I am older than you human. Far older than you could imagine.” The white doll answered back arrogantly.
The soul could barely stop himself from kicking the doll back to hell, as it probably had answers to its current situation. Anyway who the hell would get arrogant on their age?
“ So where am I? Who are you? Why am I here?..”
“ Wait, wait…one by one, youngster. I am too old for such heavy work…”
“ So where am I?”
“ You are in a world called Titania.”
“Titania?”
“Hmm…next question. Four more then I am going.”
“Wait…what four more questions?...No no don’t answer that.”
“ Who….no no…what is a dungeon core?” asked the soul. It did remember that the crystal had introduced itself as a dungeon core. Also, the blue boxes did call him a dungeon core. So if all this was true, there was a high chance the white doll and it was the same.
“ Ohhh..clever one. I thought you would continue with your stupid questions. To begin with, dungeon core is the closest creature to The Creator. We look like a crystal which is crystallized mana and soul power when we first get born. Gradually as we grow ,we start growing our selves. Our soul and mana, take over the surrounding turning them into our body. The more land we take over, the higher our mana regeneration and the stronger we grow. We are Gods in the area we take over.”
“ So basically we create a domain,where we control everything. That includes the creation of those monsters ? Hmmm”
“ Yes.”
“ By the way, I didn't ask a question old white. I was just clarifying it to myself..” the soul calmly mentioned it an if stating a fact. It was testing the waters when it had asked that question to whether it could wheedle an extra answer or two.
“ What? No, you didn’t! That was a question!” said the white doll angrily.
“ No...No old man. You see, I was talking to myself. I never said that I was asking it to you. Now now..forget that. Here’s my third question…see I am clearly stating that I am asking a question.”
Th white man humphed angrily in annoyance. Although the extra question sounded simple, a clever man could make out many things. Like the creation of weird monsters and plants was very well possible in a domain. Similarly, with more facts and information, other things could be guessed like the creation of an environment.
“ Why am I here, in Titania, as a rock..sorry a dungeon core?”
“ Hmmmppphhhh. I sent you here.” Clearly, the old white was answering the least he could as a form of revenge.
“ You didn't answer my question. I asked why am I here, as a Dungeon core?”
Old White looked at the soul in anger and replied. “ I sent you here. But sending you as a human would have been impossible as you would have died in space. Plus I didn’t have enough energy to carry that whole bag of flesh here. So I separated your soul and destroyed all connection with that world until you were an abandoned soul. Me entering your soul and passing my responsibilities to you tied your karma to Titania, my birthplace. On the way using energies present in space I remolded your body until you were a soul crystal. Absorbing mana made you a dungeon core. So here you are. As the Creator’s greatest creation!”
“ But you didn’t answer, why Titania?”
“ Are you an idiot? I am from Titania, that’s why I sent you here. Idiot.”
The soul wanted to ask several other questions like, Why him? Who are the two Gods? Why was he in the Immortal World? Why did he made him dungeon core and not anything else? But it could only ask one more question, so it asked the most important one.
“ What’s a dungeon?” When it was in the Immortal World, it had thought Dungeon referred to a prison or maybe it was the immortal estate’s name. But going through past conversations it had come to the conclusion that Dungeon was not something so simple.
“Hmmm… The dungeon is what we call our domain. You see, our cores are extremely rich in mana. We refine chaotic mana in nature into something more refined and accessible. This mana is released into the world and is absorbed by others. In fact, in this whole world, only we Dungeon’s are able to absorb chaotic mana. Not even Gods apart from the Creator himself has the ability to do so. But this also makes us an attractive target. Imagine having your own personal refiner?”
The soul nodded. It was slowly getting an idea of what the White Doll was trying to say,
“ During the early eras, several of our brothers and sisters were made slaves to Gods, Humans, Beasts, dragons, and others. Seeing this, the elders decided to do something. And so dungeon as of now came to life. Using our power we would create obstacles, traps, monsters, and barriers to keep them away. Slowly as time passed by, we have come to an uneasy cooperation. We will allow them to access our Dungeon’s for training and materials. While we will absorb their mana. It’s a symbiotic relationship.”
‘ But we can absorb mana ourselves, why do we need them?” asked the soul. The previous answer was quite clear and in fact answered lots of question, but brought up even more of them.
“ Boy, that your last question. Not answering another one…Hmmphh anyway, you already got an extra chance.. don’t wake me up! I need to rest!” saying this the white man vanished but not before throwing the soul out of his soul.
Coming out of the Dungeons soul, the soul couldn’t help but laugh. Fate had played a bad game with him. But also given him a chance. Here it had new opportunities to reach divinity and experience new wonderful things, although its whole life has been destroyed.
The meeting ha answered lots of doubts and at the same time create more. Now he could only wait until old White called him again.
“ Wait, isn't it like having your very own Grandpa in a ring?”