Dave closed his eyes, activating Phantom Sight and the dim cavern around him became painted in a thousand stars. The shattered dungeon core was embedded in rough stone along with bits and pieces of the dead Champion, entwined with the souls of slain undead adventurers and Void-beasts.
His body throbbed with deep pain of torn tissues caused by the core explosion. Blood - both his own and that of the fallen - stained his tattered clothes, mingling with the acrid stench of decay that permeated the cavern. His muscles ached, protesting every movement, and a myriad of bruises painted his skin in a palette of purples and blues.
But the physical pain was nothing compared to the hollow ache that gnawed at his very core. The betrayal he felt, the doubt unleashed by the life and death of Litsh Wabbor clouded his perception of Cedez, left a void within him that seemed insurmountable. It was a hunger, not of the body, but of the soul - a desperate need to fill the emptiness he felt with something, anything.
The essence of Wabbor, the addiction to magnified Strength crowded his head, muting the sound of Sherlock’s violin in his soul. The spirit’s memories refused to fade away.
The sea of stars below his feet called out to him like a Siren’s song. It was a chorus of power, of knowledge, of experience just waiting to be consumed. His trembling fingers reached out towards the soul-shard littered ground. Bit by bit, moving ever so slowly, he reaped the bounty of this underground battlefield of slain foes, sparks of magic rushing up his fingers in a desperate attempt to fill the cold, gnawing hole in his heart.
He felt the primal hunger of the Voidbats, their insatiable need to feed on the life force of others. The Voidcrawlers' memories flooded his mind, filled with the sensation of folding space around their segmented bodies, slipping between the cracks of reality. The Depthknells sang of the cold, calculating precision of their teleporting spikes, the thrill of the hunt as they stalked their prey through the twisted caverns.
In feasting on the multitudes of dungeon monsters, Dave felt his human sense of self slipping away further and further. Ebbing to the back of his mind, his consciousness floated atop of their desires to kill, rip and tear, to consume and to infest and to propagate.
More.
He wanted, needed more, reaching out to the brightest shards belonging to the dungeon core.
The remnants of the crystalline corpse flooded his mind with memories of another life.
----------------------------------------
He was young monster hunter Zolish Yaslor, armed with magitek weapons crafted by the Magisterium of Xandria. Wide-eyed and eager, he accepted a Quest from Adventurers Guild and joined Duke Lumir's monster slaying expedition as a privateer.
He listened to the strange song of the Voidwhale as their dragonheart powered skyship chased it across the sky.
He smelled the acrid ozone as magitek harpoons across the deck discharged, magisteel bolts piercing the massive beast's hide, binding it to a single location and not letting it bend space to get away.
He saw the Voidwhale’s death throes as the Archmages targeted the beast’s head from top deck. He trembled and cowered as the bodies of his comrades and skyship bulkheads closest to the beast came apart with dying screams, bodies and metal sheared by discharges of dimensional magic.
Standing on a small skyboat amongst other privateers his age, he pulled out his rapier. He, just like the other unaligned men, clawed into the still warm flesh of the Voidbeast with his weapon, carving out big chunks covered in violet blood.
He tasted the metallic taste of the kill as he and his comrades in arms feasted on the magic-infused steaks carved from the heart core of the beast.
He, unlike the others, whalloped in victory as the [CORE SKILL ASSIGNED: VOIDMANCY!] message ignited atop of his banking bracelet.
He made fun of the other privateers as they merely procured a mundane increase in Attributes. He alone gained the incredible power to fold distance like paper, to step through the fabric of the world as easily as walking through a doorway, to teleport objects into objects.
----------------------------------------
The line of his personality blurred like raindrops mixing together.
Was he Zolish or Wabbor or Dave?
It didn’t matter.
There were more pieces to devour, more stars to collect, more to remember.
His hands reached to the core shards on the ground.
----------------------------------------
Zolish, now much older, kneeled before a motherly figure in white and red robes.
“Saint Saria,” he whispered. “Bless me with your touch.”
He felt the touch of her hand on his chest, watched as she drew the life essence of a condemned criminal next to him, channeling magic of life into his soul. He heard the cheers of the other noble heroes around him as youthful vigor once again refilled his body.
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
“Thank you,” he said, bowing.
The Saint bowed back to him and he saw an odd, black collar with a triangular rune in the center.
He didn't think much of it.
Thanks to the Saint, he would continue to enjoy centuries of opulence and intrigue within Xandria's gilded halls.
----------------------------------------
The Saint… He personally knew the Saint. What happened to her? He had to know more.
His feet moved his hands towards other shards belonging to the dungeon core.
----------------------------------------
He felt panic grip his heart when General Nox's grand army advanced towards Xandria. A horrid shadow stretched across the mountains hovering above the armored men and magi like a vast shield, absorbing all magic fired from the white towers of Xandria.
A leviathan monstrosity, unlike anything that he’d seen, rose from the black cloud into the sky, a thousand silver-blue eyes of a Shadow-beast ignited atop of its head, staring into his soul.
He heard screams of terror all around as many of his men abandoned their positions on the walls, throwing themselves down stairwells, fleeing from the eldritch colossus of shadow tentacles, wings and silver eyes.
His hands clawed into the parapet, pure, absolute terror digging deeper into his mind. He had to run, had to get away from this thing.
They called her Leviathan Nightingale, the power of General Nox, the Hammer of Citadels, a skill that obliterated mage towers and fortifications with a single swing of her abominable shadow claws.
From the reports from the other cities that fell to the Verdant Republic, he knew that General Nox would not spare a single Highborn Lord of Xandria, preferring to install her own people.
He tried to get away, but the gate would not open, likely due to one of the spatial-magic disrupting hexes of the invaders.
Desperate and afraid, he pushed his space-bending abilities harder than he ever had, knowing that there was no defending Xandria.
There would be no mercy for him, every Lord, every Administrator including the Saint and the Duke were going to be executed as soon as the Ward and mage towers fell.
With a snap, his skill broke through whatever magical barrier the Verdant magi had set up and then there was nothing but pain.
He came to, haggard and alone in a dark cavern, his lower body broken and twisted. He clawed at the rocks breaking his fingernails and weeping, the lower half of his body fused into a megalithic column.
He died slowly and horribly and then only his skill remained behind, seeking vengeance, seeking to devour all, seeking to grow and thrive and multiply... infecting everything around it with Void.
----------------------------------------
He blinked, trying not to throw up.
He wasn't Zolish, the Voidmancer who died here long ago.
Dave… his name was David Horowitz Walter. He was a programmer from the Midwest United States. His dad divorced his mom in 1997. His mom succumbed to hoarding, filling their house with useless junk. He moved out from their trash-filled bungalow in 2002, never looking back. He interned at Serv0tek in 2004 and got a job there, which eventually resulted in him working in a cubicle, renting a bachelor apartment and hating his failure of a life.
He remembered almost dying due to a taxi and meeting… Lari.
Lari.
David pushed all of his points into Intelligence and once again went over the memory of Saint Saria belonging to Zolish.
His best friend’s blue eyes looked cold, distant as she pulled magic from a bound criminal, the man’s body losing colors, turning into a gray, ossified corpse. Her left hand devoured life and her right pushed it into Zolish Yaslor’s body, extending his life. This wasn’t Kitlix-based healing at all, this was an execution!
Lari’s healing skill was a monstrous curse, one that was clearly haunting her, tearing up what she was, what she had been. The paramedic stared down at Zolish Yaslor with an expression filled with absolute hatred.
“It is done,” she said, her voice tired, dull and uncaring. “Rise, Lord Zolish.”
Her blue eyes looked past the Void mage, right at Dave, seemingly judging him, shaming him, reaching out for him across centuries.
“I’m sorry,” Dave choked. “I’m sorry… that I wasn’t there, that I didn’t… couldn’t save you.”
Something inside of him shattered.
Not thinking, not feeling, Dave trudged through the dark caverns, lighting his way with the mana gem on his wrist. His hands became instruments of oblivion, reaping the essence of fallen Void beasts with mechanical precision.
Occasionally, stragglers emerged from the shadows, but their attacks were uncoordinated now without the core. A shambling Sentinel here, a feral Voidcrawler there - all met their end with brutal efficiency of bullet-time rock to the face. Each vanquished foe became another spark of soul-light, consumed and added to the growing river of power within him.
Hours bled into one another, a purgatory of destruction and absorption. Exhaustion clawed at Dave's bones, but he didn’t listen to it, focused on getting stronger. Every shadow held another target, another vile thing to cleanse from this God-forsaken place.
[Phantomancy level 6 reached] His bracelet announced. He ignored it.
As he worked, self-loathing festered in his heart. The memory of Lari - no, Saint Saria - using her "healing" to drain life from the condemned to give it to the highborn mages played on repeat in his mind like a loop binding his heart in chains of sorrow. His best friend, the wonderful, always positive sweetheart who had saved him six years ago… broken and made into an instrument of death by the people of Xandria, turned into an uncaring machine, a tool.
Eventually, the last spark of magic in the dungeon winked out as the soul of the last Voidbat became subsumed by his skill. Dave stood alone in the cavernous silence, his Timelessness skill ticking down to zero.
He looked at his stats, pushing everything he had gained into Vitality to quell his throbbing body. The number there was now [46.3952].
He picked up one of the rust-covered swords belonging to the Void Sentinels and attempted to slice the tree with it while slotting everything into Strength. The sword simply shattered against the thinnest root of the upturned Voitree. He kicked the thick edge of the fallen tree in irritation and winced as his foot throbbed with pain. It was as if he was kicking a solid wall. The tree didn't even move an inch. It was as if it was spatially anchored to where it had fallen.
Dave sighed, abandoning the damage-impervious tree.
Finishing off his water skin, Dave made his way towards the entrance. As he emerged from the maw of the cave, he realized that it was midday now.
The world above seemed too bright, too colorful.
Dave squinted against the sunlight and began limping across the mountains back to Shandria. Hopefully, no other insane shadow princesses or Champions would show up because he didn’t have another dungeon to throw at them.