You have died in a dungeon. Some of your experience and memories will be removed as a penalty for death. You have been resurrected at the entrance exactly 1 hour after the time of your death. All items on your person remained with your body. Thanks for playing! Please come again =)
I fucking hate that message, Jerry thought. The couple minutes leading up to his death were gone from his memory. That always got wiped, which was probably a good thing considering how gruesome dungeon deaths could be.
He heard the worst thing imaginable in the next moment: Cassie’s voice. “Whu .. what happened?”
Crap, how did she die? Everything was going so well he thought. Jerry sat up, Cassie had also moved to a sitting position, she cocked her head at him, “Jerry, why are you naked?”
Jerry winked at her and smiled, “You are too babe.”
A look of horror crossed her face, her arm immediately moved to cover up her breasts, and her face, neck, and chest turned red.
“Ah sorry, I was just messing with you, we adventurers end up in this room pretty often, nothing seen in this room leaves this room. There are robes to cover up just through that door.”
Cassie ran through the door quickly. She found the robes and put one on. There was awaiting room just outside the hallway with the robes and she waited there. Her hand moved out of habit to push up her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose, but her glasses weren’t there. She held out her hand, she could see as if she was wearing her glasses now, she had normal vision again!
“Perfect vision now? I thought that might happen.” Jerry had just entered the room to see her gawking at her own hand and the ceiling.
“How … why?”
Jerry Shrugged “I don’t know why, but sometimes when you die in the dungeon you get a fresh new body, all the wear and tear is gone. But not often enough to put any healers out of business haha.” He chuckled to himself thinking of a line of cripples lined up outside of the dungeon waiting to get killed by slimes.
Cassie was still feeling … something about being seen naked. She didn’t know if that ‘something’ was anger, fear, embarrassment, joy at being admired, or some combination of all of them. She would definitely have a long chat session with Melany later to work through these feelings, Melany knew much more about dealing with men.
Jerry led them down a wooden manmade hallway, the lighting was dim, and made worse by the mist in the air. Jerry opened a door and Cassie realized that they were in the bathhouse.
“Uh Jerry, why are we in the bathhouse?”
“Do you know of a better place where you can show up naked at all hours? Anyways I keep a spare change of clothes here, but there is a shop by the entrance over there where you can get new clothes. You can put it on my tab.”
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Jerry and Cassie sat in an outdoor tavern watching for a sign of the rest of their party. There were a few empty mugs in front of Jerry. They had tried to talk, but without the excitement of the dungeon they really had nothing in common. Now they just sat in silence watching the entrance of the dungeon and the bathhouse. It had been three hours including the hour they’d lost during resurrection. The sun was starting to set.
They were close to giving up when Cassie spotted the 12 witzies she’d come with leaving the dungeon in a hurry. She got up to go greet them. Jerry finished his mug and dropped a few coppers on the table as he got up. He didn’t see any sign of the rest of his party. He saw Cassie go up to the other witzies but they didn’t seem to be slowing down after Cassie reached them. They just kept a hurried pace down the street, and were blowing off Cassie.
Cassie turned back at one point and shrugged as if to say “i'm sorry but I have to go with them” and then ran off down the street after them. Jerry would have followed them if they had owed any money, but they had been paid up front with a bonus offer if all of the witzies made it out of the dungeon without dying.
He went to go sit back down at his table but it had already been taken by another group. He thought ‘ah fuck it’ and decided to call it a night, his party was competent they’d find each other at the tavern in the morning.
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Tom slowly regained consciousness. The last thing he remembered was being shut out of the dungeon functions and starting to panic. Something really bad must have happened, he had been conscious non-stop for over three centuries, so this whole ‘waking up’ thing was a new experience. He tried to spread his awareness through the dungeon, but nothing happened. He was afraid to do it, but he tried to check the dungeon functions.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Ah some good news he thought … I’m not locked out … and some bad news … most of the dungeon functions are completely gone. All that was left was his inbox (107 unread messages), his status screen, and his rune library. No monster spawning, no environmental manipulation, no access to the item database, and no contracts section for boss monsters. ‘I wonder if Gloop is doing alright without anyone to talk with.’
Tom started checking through his messages. The oldest 104 unread messages were automated mostly automated messages telling him things like which adventurers had died in the dungeon, or what loot had dropped as a result of a boss monster being beaten, or whether a room rebuild had been automatically started as a result of too much damage from a battle.
The three most recent were both interesting and terrifying. The first one he had received was a notice that user BigGuyInTheSky03 would be granted full administrative rights over dungeon core 007432 and that the current administrator soul [4da5e1e2-0d37-4d13-a493-dd8fd8965153] would be reprocessed. The second message was that there had been an error in the reprocessing of soul [4da5e1e2-0d37-4d13-a493-dd8fd8965153] with a series of runes that were active during the ritual at the time of the error. The third message was that former dungeon core soul [4da5e1e2-0d37-4d13-a493-dd8fd8965153] has left the dungeon with a new host. The message advised that the issue should immediately be escalated to the regional deity level, and that the dungeon core should be eliminated before it contaminates any ongoing experiments.
So bad news … he was wanted dead by some divinities. Good news … he had received the messages instead of BigGuyInTheSky03, so they might not know.
Tom opened up the part of his status screen detailing his dungeon skills available
Dungeon Soul Tom [4da5e1e2-0d37-4d13-a493-dd8fd8965153] Dungeon Soul Skill Status Operational Threshhold Inbox 97% Requires 90% Status Screen 80% Requires 10% Rune Library 538 Runes, 17 Rune Constructs Requires 10 runes, 1 Run Construct Monster Spawner 14 animals, 3 monsters Requires 20 animals, 10 monsters, 3 constructs Environmental Manipulation 20 mana/hour, 5000 mana capacity Requires 100 mana/hour, 100k mana capacity Item Spawner
* 4 treasure items
* 17 resource items
* 12 constructed items
* 10 treasure items
* 20 resource items
* 100 constructed items
Dungeon Contracts Soul Integrity: 4% Requires intact soul
Ouch. He might as well be a magical book for all he was capable of right now. It seems the inbox and status screen were self repairing without his input. The run library was working but it had taken a serious hit, he once had nearly ten thousand runes, and hundreds of rune constructs. He had slimes, slime boss, and goblins available as monsters, his weakest creatures. The items he had were mostly items he had created, or found in the local area. The mana regeneration and capacity were linked closely with the soul, so his low soul integrity was probably causing those problems.
His world suddenly lurched. He felt himself moving, which was an entirely new sensation for a dungeon core that had spent its life in a single spot. And there was also two pinpricks of light that started sending information to him. A flood of sensations hit him. He was in a body, a human body, and he was sharing it with another soul. Tom had gained enough power to wake up while the body was asleep.
What the hell are you!? How did you integrate with my soul?
Uh, Rude. My name is Tom. I don't know how I got here, maybe it's your fault. Weren't you part of the ritual around my core?
Wait what, I wasn't in that ritual, I was just guarding the witzies so they could get to the dungeon core. And what do you mean 'your core' are you the soul of earth elemental?
That pile of rocks doesn't have a soul. No, I'm the soul of the dungeon core.
Ok I don't really care what you are. You need to get out. We have two options. One is that I burn part of my own soul to destroy you. And the second is voluntarily leave into a vessel that can hold your soul. I've got a soul gem around here that should be a perfect fit for you.
I don't want to be in this squishy two eyed body any more than you want me here. But I'm not stupid, going into the soul gem will kill me just as much as you destroying my soul.
I guess that would have been too easy. What kind of body did you originally have? Using the right body will make it easiest for you to continue surviving after we part ways.
Were you not listening? I said I was a dungeon core. So just take me to wherever they sell dungeon cores and I'll be off your hands.
Uhh, no one sells dungeon cores. They are indestructible. No one knows how to control them, no one knows how new ones arise. No one until tonight has ever talked to one.
Well then I guess I'll have to just build one myself. I think I know where to get some raw material too. Or get it back since it was stolen from me. Do you know how to find those witzies that were conducting the ritual?