Chapter 1_The Realm Beneath: A Dungeon Story

Chapter 1

Awareness. What is it?

Furthermore, what does it mean to be aware?

Well, whilst the dictionary would say it was knowledge or perception of a situation or fact. To me it meant pain, not physical per se but certainly mentally.

It came in sharp bursts that seemingly shattered my mind leaving me wallowing in an inky blackness without a hint of light. An impossibility I was sure, as for it to be as dark as it was I must be blind. Surely, I wouldn’t have been born blind!

It lasted for ages, who knows how long those waves of lancing pain lasted? Not me!

But with each one my awareness increased. Gradually I could see again as the darkness retreated to the recesses of my mind, and then, with one final burst, it left entirely. My aching mind the only sign of the pain that had broached me.

Now that I could see, I decided to look for the first time in my short life. The world was awash in blue, patterns of light and dark that permeated my vision swirling around, moving and shifting like the wind as eddies and ripples upon the water do. Infusing the patterns of my world was the blue, this blue seemed to merge with them so that the patterns glowed with a faint light, moving in an endless stream, past me and off into the distance they went, to where I couldn't even comprehend. Off, and off it went leaving me far behind. As I watched the blue marching off like soldiers, I felt a sense of sadness flood through me, welling up from somewhere, I did not know where. Like a mother watching her sons trudge to battle, I felt the sorrow of that loss. I screwed up my eyes trying to bottle down that sadness.

I had blinked.

And upon blinking and opening my eyes, the world was washed in greens, though not as intense as the blue was, this new green seemed to get more intense the higher it got. Higher? Where did that thought come from? I wasn't aware of any height or reference frame by which to measure it, but still, it felt right. Like layers the green blossomed away and out of my vision. The sadness that I had felt from the blue was gone now as I stared at the greens. They pulsed with colour fading away to the background green and then flaring in vivid colour seconds later, like a heartbeat, it thump thumped along to its own rhythm, ignoring all that was not it.

Blinking again and the world was washed in reds, and oranges. This time they darkened and became more intense the further down it went. Down? Where did that come from? But I was just as certain I was right as I was about the aspect of height. Yet I knew I had never experienced any of these. The reds filled me with a sense of wonder as the colours seemed rich and happy, they didn’t pulse like the green or march ever onwards like the blues, rather they seemed to waft up and suffuse the world with a gentleness and comfort that I found lovable, they flowed around everything centring around each and every creature.

Well, everything except me. Stupid red’s, ignoring me. Well, I didn’t need them!

Each time I blinked, the aspect with which I saw the world changed colour, but still the underlying patterns were evident. Undisturbed by me, they floated along to their own tune. From the Blues, Greens and Reds there was also Purples, Browns, Blacks, Whites, Yellows, Silvers and Greys with hundreds of shades and colours in between, in a near endless spectrum of colour.

Eventually I realised that what I was seeing was the texture of the earth around which I was surrounded, the fractures and cracks, the different composites of the harsh rock conditions, the macrostructure and imperfections that made up my newfound environment.

Stretching my vision, I could see signs of life above me. Bugs and critters crawling around and exploring the soft, loamy earth somewhere up above me, carrying out their lives oblivious to me.

They went back and forth searching for something, something that eluded my sight. Carrying on with their lives, finding food, water, building their colony, and surviving to repopulate like any good member of a species.

I don't know for how long I observed their lives but before long a new generation was born, and all the while information was filtering in to my subconscious mind. Collecting and collating it all into a comprehensive picture of what was around me. As I watched them go about their lives, the colours slowly drained away, it didn’t flicker constantly between all the colours and soon they all seemed to coexist as some sort of vivid picture. The picture showed me earth. Lots and lots of earth, earth everywhere in fact.

I was buried deep within the earth.

So far down that I couldn't find any sign of the surface, yet the pressure wasn't so immense that I felt I was buried too far down. The surface must be close I concluded, yes close to me, I was certain of it. A feeling welling from with me. I was near to the surface.

I thought that I must be quite small for this to be true and so I made an arbitrary unit of measurement, I called it the Metre or m for short and it was 20 times my width in length. With this concluded I felt happy and content and I decided a nap was in order.

Sometime later I woke feeling odd, what was different. As I observed everything I could sense that nothing had changed, so what was different? There must be something?

A few moments later, I realised what it was.

I could feel the layer of earth that contained life somewhere above me. It wasn’t a horizontal layer though, it seemed to be at an angle sloping upwards. Neat!

I could feel it. I could FEEL! That was what was different, before I could see it, but now? Now I could FEEL IT! It was amazing.

From this information I could assume I was in a mountain of some sort. Mountain? Where did that come from? Oh well, I’m sure I’ll find out at some point I thought dismissing it.

With my position and environment answered I now had to find out what do next. I had first searched outside of myself, so, now it seemed about right to search inside.

I tried to move any limbs that I could, but I couldn't find anything there, hmm how odd. Since I wasn't in pain I could assume I wasn't broken. Well, that’s good!

I pondered this matter for a long time before it occurred to me to observe myself the way I had my surroundings. When it worked, I felt like an idiot, I almost glanced around in embarrassment before realising that no-one would have noticed. Thank god. God? No never mind, I’ll ponder on that another time.

Further analysis revealed I was some sort of crystal, gem or stone. Not without flaws though, I could sense I had cracks and fractures on the macro and micro scale as well as chemical dead ends where the crystal structure was broken up or twisted slightly creating imperfection in my body.

It annoyed me to no end and I promised myself that if possible in the future I would improve myself I would be the most perfect gem ever. People would stare, awestruck at my majesty. But first… first I would… what would I do?

An issue for later.

Before too long, I began to feel a little hungry, it worried me as I seemed to have no way to combat this issue, you know, not being able to move and all. But I resolutely put it out of my mind in favour of exploring my territory. Looking around where I could, I had soon gotten an accurate picture of everything possible to see. It was at this point that the issue of my hunger resurged with much harsher pangs.

What once had been a minor concern was now pressing on me heavily, I had started to feel mightily uncomfortable and it was bordering on pain. On perhaps only a whim I sucked in a strand of colour, red if you must know, stupid red! I felt a warmth suffuse my body and I felt overwhelmingly full. Oh, Lovely red! You aren’t stupid anymore!

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~~Congratulations! You, ______ New Dungeon have reached level 1. Having found the skill of |mana absorption| you can now feed yourself, survive and thrive. You need only to think Menu to open up a world of opportunity~~

~~New skill acquired: |Mana Absorption|~~

~~New item acquired: ~~

Thinking menu to myself a new window popped up in front of me.

Name

???

Race

Dungeon

Titles

Renown

Undiscovered

Skills ^

Rating

Level

Health

10/10

Mana

1/2 (2 for Lvl Up)

Knowledge

Dungeon Points

Status

Attunement

Rooms

Floors

Bosses

Monsters

Creatures

Creature Types ^

Unique Items

Item types ^

Manipulating my menu, I managed to open the dungeon guide for dummies and began to read enthusiastically not having much else to do.

~~Hello New Dungeon and welcome to the world.

Your first question I imagine is what is a dungeon?

A dungeon is a volume of land that is under the control of a dungeon crystal, (that's you). You, the dungeon, must manage the land, cultivate its life and existence and live. Like any other aware being, your primary instinct is to live. And in order for you to do this, you must make your dungeon uniquely you. By expanding your area of influence and creating caverns, mazes, rooms and floors whilst sustaining life and ecosystems. You will find a purpose to live for. Another avenue you may wish to pursue could be that of a dangerous dungeon. By opening up your body to the surface world and inviting down the sentient races to challenge the monsters you create you will find a world of amusement and fun awaits you. By offering rewards you can entice adventurers from Stone to Scarletite and exchange in a competition to see who emerges from a life and death battle.

...

When I finished reading the book, I had a much clearer idea of my existence, and the idea of creating a dangerous dungeon appealed greatly to me.

I was a dungeon, a being that would create a network of caverns to sustain life and challenge adventurers, if they died I would absorb their life energy and Mana with which to challenge another.

Having a masterful control over magic, I could accomplish things that would blow the mind of the other sentients. Whilst it would have been fun to perhaps try that, I was not keen to expose my secrets to them. Secrets with which they might beat me.

I got the feeling however, that I wasn't a typical dungeon and having felt that, it provided me enough evidence to suggest it was in fact the case, a normal dungeon wouldn't have thought this, of that I was sure.

I was buried in a mountain as I suspected, though not too far underground, it seemed my scale was off, and I was in fact no more than 50m from the surface, sigh. Having nothing else to do I set my mind to building my dungeon.

I first began to absorb mana from my surroundings, that's what it was - my vision - by the way, mana, from the stones and earth and life and more. With the stupid delicious fire mana rising up from below. Where from, I had no clue but somewhere down there it was produced.

~~Level up: 2~~

~~Level up: 3~~

~~Level up: 4~~

~~Level up: 5~~

~~Level up: 6~~

~~Level up: 7~~

~~Level up: 8~~

~~Level up: 9~~

~~Level up: Congratulations on reaching level 10. ~~

The requirements to reach the next level were greater each time, exponentially so, and each time my mana reset to 0. Additionally, I needed to use mana as my power source for my dungeon-based activities.

Deciding I needed a room to start with, I began to absorb the stone in a circle around me until I had carved out a sphere of radius 4m with a central column to support my crystal.

~~New skill acquired: Material Absorption~~

Next, I kept the bottom of the sphere and flattened the bottom to create a kind of dome and kept expanding until I had a rough dome of 10m across by 5m high. Just making this room had spent all of my mana several time and I had to wait another full day to recoup my losses, it was slow progress.

I pondered my issues for a long time. Unfortunately, it was a hard problem and thinking on it wasn’t helping much.

I decided that for me to formulate any kind of plan I needed to have a greater awareness of my surroundings, so, for the next few weeks, I spent my time pushing mana into my sight, expanding my vision until I could see the top of the mountain, a whole kilometre above me.

Since my vision expanded like a bubble it meant I had a lot of open air in my vision which was clearly not going to be a good strategy for me. I had also discovered that I seemed to be in an enormous mountain, which whilst it seems good it was evident that there was nowhere for humans, or any other species of adventurer to set up camp. Hmm what to do? What to do?

Eventually, I decided that I would try to sink my crystal down until I discovered the bottom of the mountain, expanding my bubble if necessary, so that I could always feel a few metres of air at the surface.

~~New skill acquired: excavation~~

The problem with this was that I had underestimated the size of the mountain. It took me the next couple of years or so to accomplish this, and if I wasn't so stubborn I probably would have and should have given up long ago. But I was stubborn as hell and I finish what I start.

I had fallen through the mountain about 4km and my vision now extended out about 5km in all directions, so it still comfortably encased the upper reaches of the mountain, the useable bits anyway, the very tips of the peaks that I had once known all about were thin and craggy with no useable space.

I had also had to level up in my spare time as with my insufficient mana capacities I could accomplish much at any one time, so for a beginner dungeon I was probably overpowered.