Chapter 1: Axle. Darkness, my old friend.

I was in complete darkness, darkness though; it may not be the right word to describe the utter lack of sensory deprivation that I was currently experiencing. No sight, sound, taste, smell, or feeling was added as sensory input into whatever was passing for my neural processing unit, AKA my brain, but seeing as I did not have a body, I don’t think I can completely qualify whatever is housing my thoughts as a brain. How did I find myself in such a terrifying and odd situation, you may ask? Well, that's less easy to explain.

I had just finished reading a dungeon core novel late into the evening on a stormy Friday night. I had gotten home from my job at an architecture firm, where I had the distinct displeasure of ensuring the engineering veracity of the overly artistic architects. Many of my colleagues had a notable disdain for me when one of their brilliant masterpieces was deemed to be completely infeasible by me, thus forcing them back to their drawing boards. I had finished an especially hard week and decided to spend my Friday night cooped up with another great book that brought me an immense amount of joy. Then I was going to read more Gamelit and pass out. My weekend plans were comprised of repeating that process until Monday, with the only brief interlude being a possible Tinder hookup if the opportunity presented itself.

The storm raged outside; thunder boomed across the city as great bolts of lightning cracked through the sky. The rain, well, it came down in a heavy torrent. The coastal city I was in was experiencing a larger-than-average storm for this time in the season. My plan to read through the weekend seemed to be a good one, considering only the most fool hearty would be out in this kind of weather. The lightning had blown the power grid a while ago, but luckily my e-reader was fully charged, and a few candles let me immerse myself in the last few pages of the dungeon core book I was on. When I finished the last page of Endless Dungeons, something odd and terrifying happened. My computer screen, the TV in the living room behind me, and the TV in my bedroom all began to admit the static screech of white fuzz, and the stark fluorescent flicker of gray-white light filled my home.

The intense flash of light and return of sound jolted me out of my seat. The E-reader fell to the floor. “Oh shit!” I exclaimed at the dose of adrenaline I had just received. The noise, light, and static were sporadically flickering on and off, increasing in their severity as the pealing crack of lighting tore through the sky. I was shaken, scared. I had not felt fear of a storm since I was a small child.

“I hope that…” was my last thought. Arcs of lightning tore from the walls and appliances and danced a deadly death into the interior of my home. I barely had time to think it was odd that dozens of bolts should so directly target me before the blistering pain overtook me.

The pain only lasted a second and forever before I was thrust down a kaleidoscopic roller coaster. It ended, and I was left in complete darkness. Well, complete sensory deprivation. I couldn't really tell how much time had passed during the kaleidoscopic journey though it felt like an eternity; now that it was over, though, it felt like it only took a second.

Time is a non-thing when you have no sensory input; you can't really tell how much time is passing. I tried counting in my head to 60 a few times to get a feel for how much a minute was in this place, wherever I was. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. After doing this about a dozen times, I finally began to have a sense of time after the 60th Mississippi.

“Okay, okay, I’m, I think, I think I’m a dungeon.” The feeling came unbidden, almost like it was imprinted into me. What I actually was, was a rock, more precisely, some kind of crystal, I think, because the feeling I had was I was not wholly material. I had some innate abilities, expanding my body, consuming things and knowledge, as well as the ability to create stuff within the soul/core space that surrounded my crystal non-crystal. Myself, my body, I think, was the core/soul space.

“No need to panic. Panic, I’m not panicking. Where the hell are my increased senses. Oh, gods, did something get messed up? Everything is black, just black.” Why am I trying to speak? I don’t have a body, oh no, my body. Was I tricked, did something go wrong. Air, I need air, no I don’t, no I don’t. Just focus, Axle, and put all the worry into a small box. You know how to deal with fear; you’ve dealt with it all your life.

At that moment, I felt a sort of shutter go through me, and all of my fear, worry, and panic was sectioned off. The blackness was now not only just a dark blank void of nothing. My emotions that, despite my best efforts, were running rampant were now sectioned off in my mind and began being regulated. There was a spot I could feel, and almost see, where my endocrine system and the resulting emotions were now located, almost like looking at a map, and were being regulated by something else, someone else, but me at the same time.

“Right, I’m a rock thing that can grow its body and make stuff. I’m a fucking dungeon. Really?” I questioned myself for a while longer, but, yep, it checked out. I was a dungeon or at least the core of one. From what I new about dungeons from the fantasy books I had read, I checked the largest of the boxes to be considered a dungeon core. Crazy.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Another thing that happened at this moment that I will never forget is I felt the first drop of energy Qi enter me. It seemed to coalesce and drip in from nowhere and everywhere all at once and hit somewhere deep within my soul. And just like I had imagined, I consumed it almost out of instinct than with any focused will of my own. As soon as the tantalizing static electric flushed into whatever was passing for me, my body, currently, was filled with an innate deep understanding of what Qi was.

Qi was Crystalline and flowing all at once; it attached itself to the strings of reality at the smallest of the quantum level. It was a force, energy, just like gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the weak and strong nuclear forces. It bound and guided reality, holding within it endless possibilities and potential.

With the rush of knowledge came the first sensation I had ever felt in my new form, pain. Then I promptly blacked out because that pain was something else entirely. It was like a long electric screwdriver being shoved up your backside that had a blender option that was inconveniently turned on.

Graphic descriptions of pain aside, when I once again was aware of myself, still within a complete state of sensory deprivation, I had a new sense. I was full, like I had just eaten a complete dinner and some dessert. I know I didn't have a stomach, so this sense of fullness must have come from the Qi. I now had an awareness in my mind of a spot within the form I was inhabiting where the Qi resided. My Qi pool.

"Awesome!" I tried to vocalize, but that definitely did not work, being that I had a distinct lack of lungs and vocal cords.

I sat for a moment, maybe 100 years, maybe a second. I really Didn't know, not having any way to gauge time at all. Suffice it to say, I came up with my next move. In all the books that I had read, dungeons ate things and then gained knowledge about them. Seeing as I had Qi, I decided to focus on using it to try and eat what was outside of me, outside of the darkness.

Creating the mental picture of a Pac-Man character in my head, I focused outside of what I determined to be me and chomped twice. It was a blind act of faith. In the brief second it took me to execute the eating action, a few things happened. First, my Qi pool was depleted by half.

Second, I gained an incredible rush of knowledge about granite. It would appear that wherever I was, I was completely encased in the substance. Good old quartz, potassium feldspar, mica, and amphiboles. Now the knowledge that I gained was far more than just what the material was; I understood the atomic composition of each of the molecules. The way the crystalline structures were latticed, and, most importantly, their durability. This equated to my understanding of how much of the axle forces the materials could be subjected to.

Third, I realized that chomping granite was not going to be the most efficient way of consuming the material. In fact, grinding rocks together in a chewing motion is probably one of the most inefficient ways to consume granite.

Fourth, the two fist-sized sections of granite that I had consumed I was now completely aware of. Instinctually I had interlaced my influence into the area, and it had stuck to the edges I had carved out with the Pac-Man experiment.

Taking my newfound knowledge and the two small fist-sized sections I was aware of, I began a process of dissolving the granite all around me except for what was directly under me. Because now that I actually had space around me, I was able to feel the pull of gravity, and I knew, at the very least, what direction was down. Pushing small amounts of Qi out of me, I coated the stone around me and began the process of dissolving and digesting the stone. This process was far more Qi efficient than what I had tried previously. By the time I had two fist lengths all around me and above me, I had only used about 10% of the Qi that was currently inside of me.

I didn't know if anything bad would happen if I used up all of my Qi, So I decided to only use another 20% of my Qi, leaving my internal Qi pool at 20%. The radius around me was now six fist sizes in a dome.

I waited and waited and waited. My Qi pool only filled with the slow, steady drip, drip of Qi coming in from outside of me. It was during this time that I discovered a wonderful ability inherent to the form I was currently inhabiting. I assumed I was a rock, gem, or jewel of some kind and was not biological in nature, as I would surely be dead by now if I was. That ability was to affect how I perceived time. By focusing on the drip of Qi coming into me and a lot of wishing it was full already, I noticed it seemed to speed up. The drips came at the same intervals and intensity but faster and faster by my perception. Then, through experimentation, I could make the time between drips last longer and longer. In computer terms, I was adjusting my frame rate, the process by which I perceived the flow of time.

"Thank the heavens," I tried to say once more upon figuring this out; it didn't work. Same problem as last time, no vocal cords, no flesh, no air, no squishy bits.

So quickly, at least from my perspective, my Qi pool was full once more.

During this accelerated time as well, I became aware of what I was calling my internal subconscious map. This was the mental-physical representation of all of the subconscious processes my current body was handling. The space that I had hollowed out took up a tiny portion of this vast black backdrop. It gave me the ability to see the alcove that I had created. I was aware of everything inside of it, but keeping the three-dimensional 360-degree observational view was very disorienting, considering I had spent close to 30 years of my life with binocular vision. So, I quickly learned to form the same kind of vision within my mental landscape. I was also able to see Qi, well, more precisely, three distinct forms of energy that were present within the alcove I had created.

The first was what I was going to call my dungeon influence. The composite energy that made up my body, core space, my Qi that had bonded permanently with the surrounding space, me. The second was the active effect of Qi, or the Qi that came from inside of me that I used to influence the world around me. The third and final was unattenuated Qi. Raw or wild Qi that filtered in from outside of my dungeon influence but was not under my direct control.

With my Qi full, I became aware of a feeling of increasing pressure. It felt much the same as when you dive into a swimming pool and swim to the bottom. Tolerable at first but continuing to gradually increase in pressure over time. I returned my frame rate back to normal and could feel the increasing pressure. Along with the increase in pressure came a feeling of a deep instinctual need to relieve the pressure, like when you have to pee really bad. Deciding that it was probably best to follow whatever ingrained instincts I was given by whatever it was that brought me here, I continued expanding my alcove.

Doubling the size of my domed alcove, I had expended 50% of my Qi once more. The pressure that I had been feeling was almost instantly alleviated and did not begin building up as fast as it had when my Qi was at 100%. I realized that this meant that I would be in a continual cycle of expanding and regenerating my Qi, and if I stopped for too long, It felt like something bad would happen.