When I say the world went white, I mean that quite literally. The dark void from which I interact with the crystal was suddenly flooded with text, white text, so much white text that I couldn’t see anything anymore.
“No no, no, oh ducks on a hamster wheel! You can’t do this! I can’t do this! How am I supposed to survive if I can’t see or do anything during an attack?” I try hollering at the now white void for a while, but that doesn’t seem to do anything, I only feel worse about that when I notice that I can’t even holler, I can only think vary loudly at people who are vaguely connected to my soul, or the soul of the crystal. It’s been so long that I even forgot that there was any distinction between us. Any distinction such as, for example, A LITERAL WALL OF WHITE TEXT LITERALLY BETWEEN US!
Alright, alright, I’m calm, it’s just, no I’m not calm. I’m just resigned to my inability to reverse this. So instead I begin to read, and as I do the text slowly fades. I’d think that’d make me feel a lot better about my situation, but quite frankly it was a drop in the bucket, I’d be reading five encyclopedias worth before I could do anything, and that means I’m useless in this fight. I just hope Brice does better than I’m doing and pulls us through.
The white text, as it happens, seems to be an autobiography or perhaps a memoir. This only further frustrates me making me question why of all things I’d be magically compelled to read someone’s shitty book while I sit unmoving in the face of mortal danger, but it really seems like I can’t do anything else for the time being. I try to console myself, it’s not my first time being cut off from all sensory experience and trapped within a prison of my own mind, at least this time I have a book.
The book starts out pretty boring, lots of laments and grandiose sweeping statements like an old man sighing about having too much cosmic power, apparently enough to compel me to read his poopy life story. Slowly it begins to fill context back in and narrow in on a more specific message. The writer as it happens is the dungeon of rules, one of the earliest dungeons in this world, and bar none the most powerful this world has ever seen. From the sounds of things he had the power to unilaterally rewrite the rules of reality, which as one can imagine let him live a long time and grow rather big. He claims that at his peak he made up around forty percent of this world’s landmass and challenged the gods themselves. Unfortunately he lost. Rather, he gave up, got tired of life and felt the game was rigged against him so wanted to rig is back.
In the book is the history of the world. The world began when about twenty gods gathered to better refine reality into power they could use. Refine, extract, purify and repeat, adding more and more to the pot. The dungeon of rules doesn’t sound all too interested in he broader points, like how they’re obtaining these so called “trashy” worlds en mass, or what happened to these worlds, or where they came from, but these gods seemed to have tons of them and just sorta cobbed them together into one big mess. That’s where we come in, dungeons are known to parasitize worlds and are generally disliked, but when you want to suck all the blood out of a world you want leeches.
There’s a bit of dungeon physiology on that topic, for example those blackish spots that gather in my field when I’m not blasting manna out into the world are the waste they want separated out. Thoughts, emotions, bits of physically matter that cannot be magically deconstructed apparently there’s lots of stuff in there, but the dungeon of rules didn’t seem too interested and just life it at that. On the other hand dungeon cores are pure divine jet fuel. Clean, filtered, perfect for any world that manages to kill them. Apparently most of what I can’t eat, gods can, but it’ll duck them up in some way, makes them crazy.
When gods “create” a world however, they are granted a certain leniency to change and shape how stuff works within those worlds, this is the origin of the system. All those convenient level up notices, the increases in strength, the obtuse abilities. These are the shackles with which the gods cage us. A system instituted as the will of the world.
I admit, I was a bit interested now, what was the system, how did it work? From what I can tell it’s the divine equivalent of computers, high technology that most don’t understand well but which has convenient multifaceted uses that make life easier. In this case the system handles micromanaging and shaping of the world, keeping energy flowing where it should. Theoretically the gods should be able to do this without a system, I can’t tell if they’re distrustful of each other or just lazy.
At this part the dungeon of rules sounds as wishy washy as a load of laundry, completely unable to make up his mind whether to be angry or grateful. He seems to lose track of his thoughts a couple times and dives back into lamentations. Is seems that at least in part this system was really beneficial to us dungeons. On the other hand it was the benefit given to cattle by the farmer. Apparently dungeons do not innately have these sorts of queer specializations in elements or concepts, we’re innately generalists that can do anything we want, but only within our sphere of influence. This, somehow, helps with our digestion. On the other hand we are bound by it, trapped in this realm. So long as this world and its system exist we are destined to die here.
I admit, it’s a rather extreme stance, or at least seems so to me. Aren’t they just forcing us to oppose them, to destroy the world, to kill them if we want to live? Then again, there’s something in the scope and scale of it that I can’t really see, can’t understand. As I understand it the dungeon of rules was an entire world himself, but I’m a fortress at most, less than a village. To me this world seems endless and infinite. In my last world I had no aspirations of space travel or wormholes either, so this bitterness kind of goes over my head. I wonder if, when the time comes, I’ll care too. In any case the dungeon of rules found that unfair, he couldn’t fight the gods and he couldn’t escape, he mostly just seemed bored, but it was a boredom splashed with pity. His hobby became watching other dungeons grow and die, observing our life cycles, our strategies, our fates. Probably trying to figure out his own existential problems.
In the end, the sweet blissful end that he drags on for quite a while, he explains quite simply that while he didn’t want to live, he found our fates unfair, perhaps cruel, and wanted to give us an advantage. It seems the physical body of the system isn’t so different from us, a crystalline lattice of soul stuffs. He managed to embed his core into part of it, letting himself be overwritten into part of the system’s hardware. Presumably he used skills here, working within the system to augment it rather than barging into its core full of fury and fire. The result? Every dungeon that is not conquered or controlled, on the level before their level hits double digits, gains the power of rules. With that power they also gain a manual on how to use it, the preface being the dungeon of rule’s own autobiography. Yes, apparently that explains why my vision's still full of white even after reading and summarizing his life story. I want to sigh.
First lets go through common dungeon growth strategies. Lets see, send monsters rushing out day and night killing as many as they can seems to be the default, but it’s suboptimal, mostly just overflowing resources to the surroundings, the dungeon itself primarily benefits when people start fighting their way in to kill the monsters and probably destroy the core. The second most common is to just expand endlessly without walls, just eating as much ground as you can. Apparently there are other dungeons that predate on those foolish enough to do that. I’m going to file that away under good to know. An odd one that caught my interest was a simple walled box in which the dungeon would continuously reinforce its own walls. While the largest hurdle to this strategy was maintaining the balance of manna so as not to explode, it seems there was another downside. Such dungeons never developed and existed solely as tests of strength whereby which someone would eventually find and crack them open to break their cores.
In this sense the dungeon of rules was unique, using puzzles mazes and riddles to befuddle and outwit explorers, creating a game that could be played and enjoyed, but not won outright. Feeling it a broadly objectively better way of life, the dungeon of rules made sure to emphasis the importance of this.
Looking over what the power of rules can do, I’m downright disgusted. There seem to be no hard limits nor constraints, only suggestions on how to make the efficiency better by constraining your own demands. That is not to say there was no cost to the power of rules however. While the dungeon of rules could use “rules manna” to sustain them, other dungeons like myself couldn’t just use “death manna”, but would rather have to use the pure manna that could otherwise let us level up, or in extreme cases, use entire levels themselves to cover the cost.
It quickly became apparent that this was how the dungeon of blood and dungeon of humans had sent announcements to other dungeons, perhaps it was a mainstream form of communication between dungeons now? Having an actual example is showing me more about manna affinities than I’d really understood. It seems that there’s a degree of creative freedom that can be applied to them, but that their overall effects need to fall broadly in line with their nature
I wonder, what is the nature of death as an affinity? Does it just make things die? No, because there’s undead. Death is eternal, but undead aren’t. Then again with my soul tethers maybe undeads were? This itself however is the perfect illustration of the limitations of affinity manna, that being that it’s still of a limited pool, no matter how limited or unlimited the scope one could only exert a degree of influence locally, and only one proportionate to one’s own strength. When I run out of death attribute manna I will no longer be able to kill all who enter my domain nor resurrect my defenders without limit. Instead I will be… vulnerable, defenseless, nothing but a lens of glass worth a fortune in experience to any who seek to claim it. Thinking carefully about it, the dungeon of rules was much the same, the attribute of its manna was useful, but far less meaningful than its sheer scale and might.
That was an odd one to chew on, the success or failure of an individual is rarely attributed to what the individual themselves attributes their success to. Often times luck or opportunity or drive to improve themselves, or even a passion for their work makes them much more successful than they would be from knowing that one secret trick or life lesson they’d have focused on themselves. That’s without even getting into the sheer degree of egoism such success encourages, something the autobiography I just read embodies perfectly.
So aside from absolutely everything, what could rules do? Sending messages to others within a certain range or with a certain distinction looked like it got vary expensive fast, but even if you got a lot of active engaged minds it’d be a chat room at best, at worst everyone in range might be mad and non-communicative. It’s worth noting that the biggest limitation on this is that it cannot send messages to those who do not have the power of rules themselves. Or it could but rather that was a separate function which displayed automated messages to those within your dungeon itself. Setting conditional responses seemed to be a common one. Quickly I searched for the most iconic dungeon puzzle, a door that would not open until the riddle was solved. I was quickly disappointed by an answer magnitudes from what I can afford. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but they’d be a slight fraction of the strength of my walls otherwise.
Additionally there was some kind of trade system in place, though seeing dungeon cores and monsters as the primary trade items there are far far too many ways this could go wrong. My eyes however were glued to the final option. Challenge. An entirely free feature by which any dungeon could attack a dungeon of higher level. With it was a simple scroll bar list of dungeons, hundreds, thousands, maybe more?
Instantly afraid, I had to know more. It seems dungeons of the same level could challenge and reject challenges, but any dungeon of higher level could only accept challenges from lower level dungeons. I wasn’t sure there would be any warning before they began. Frustratingly it didn’t saw what a challenge was or how it worked, but the rules seemed to suggest it was a battle to the death. For the moment I was safe, but would this mean I could no longer safely advance my core? No, maybe just that I ought to be focusing more on defense and self protection whenever I do? I guess… that probably should have been a normal expectation as a dungeon shouldn’t it have?
Somewhat more casually I scrolled through the list to see where the dungeon of humanity sat, oddly it wasn’t on there. No, wait, no other type is, only dungeons of death? There were that many of them out there? I review the list again, slower now. It seems most of them are level 9-15, but at the top of them all I find a level 512. That’s it? Somehow I was expecting it to at least be into the thousands. Then again… Pausing to consider I’m reminded that level growth for dungeons is not linear but rather exponential. In theory though I could reach level 512 in a thousand or two years even without doing anything but breaking down garbage couldn’t I? No, that’s a common mistake, was there even that much garbage? Now with a forest of trees there’s plenty of food for me, but that won’t always be the case, moreover the more recklessly one consumes everything in sight, the more one will stand out. Isn’t that just asking for death?
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The question then is… is this the ancient dungeon of death, or is it truly dead? A question I won’t be able to answer at present. Perhaps for a long time.
...and HA! I’m finally able to catch a glimpse of the shard!
Hastily I begin to check, is everyone alright? Where are the intruders? Is the battle still ongoing? No, everything was still and lifeless. Moreover there seemed to be nobody left alive for me to peer through the soul tethers of either. Carefully I examine the interior of my dungeon. The skeletal lattice that normally holds me up and shields me from harm is cracked and broken, its bones barely able to hold the shattered stone overhead from having crushed my vulnerable lens. Unfortunately while they’d tried their best, I am my own worst enemy here. While unable to interact with the world my death attribute manna has been mindlessly consuming things within my domain, important structural skeletons, supporting pieces of rubble that keep other rubble from tumbling downwards, why I don’t think there’s even any more wood left in here, how much time has passed?
My consciousness flounders about blurring from sight to sight, from option to option, until I locate the soul of one of my skeletons. I push the stream of death manna I’m generating into it and sigh with relief as the manna finally begins reassembling one of my faithful defenders instead of furthering my own near doom. Turning back to the last notifications I see
[Congratulations on reaching level 10]
[Detecting you have reached the end of your initial growth period]
[You have gained the ability Cloning]
There’s no way you get a cloning ability and don’t try it out immediately. Clone clone clone!
[Congratulations on reaching level 11]
[Detecting collapse of dungeon]
[You have gained the ability Inhospitable Martyr]
[Congratulations on reaching level 12]
[Detecting no defenders in dungeon]
[You have gained the ability Isolated Defenders]
Then I saw spiderwebs of cracks spread across the lens all at once! No! Did a piece of rubble hit it after all? I didn’t see, did it have any damage? The cracks spread faster and faster until the whole lens seemed to shatter at once, dislodging larger chunks of crystals, but the cracks were not done, they instantly began spreading across the lens once more, and again chunks fell off, and then a third time, and thankfully then, only then, did it stop. Carefully I check my lens again and again, looking for defects, Perhaps I did that too long because now the first skeleton is fully revived. My observations however were not without fruit. Around the lens I have found no less than thirty three new lenses!
Is cloning so prolific? So broken? Immediately I declare clone! Oddly, nothing happens. Clone clone clone!, yet still nothing. Alright, slow down. I have my skeleton buddy who’s name I cannot recall move my main lens somewhere safer before having it lay out and sort the new lenses. Oddly, they are of differing sizes, namely three sizes, the largest size has twelve, the next largest size has eleven, and the smallest individual crystals are also the fewest with only ten among their number. I think by this point I can rule out the cracking having been caused by an impact to my lens, but there’s something more to that. My lens or dungeon core is the soul of the dungeon, a physical soul much larger and more solid than that of living beings. Gathering manna grows my soul, and thus my core, giving me levels, but what if parts of my core break off, what would that actually mean is happening to my soul? It’s rupturing, splitting, being ripped apart. These other lenses are, in effect, chunks of my soul which have been detached?
My soul or the lens’ soul? I suppose it matters less so long as I know it’s the one I can grow and recover over time, but I suppose that does limit the abilities of cloning. Hesitantly I extend some death manna to one to see if it can be reabsorbed. It feels oddly like a key entering a lock, immediately disintegrating the clone into a cloud of manna which is absorbed back into my core granting me an even one soul mote. I had tried with one of the smaller lenses and was surprised to fine a soul mote, a tenth of a level, from absorbing one of ten clones, did that mean? Did that mean my level regressed? That I no longer have cloning?
I pull up the challenge option under rules and find that I indeed am still a level 9 dungeon. Interesting, but not how I’d have expected it to work. With a fright I suddenly have the presence of mind to ask myself, how many of those level 9 dungeons are ancient immortals with thousands of clones? Rather, do dungeons even die of old age? I kind of assumed not since they’re basically manna rocks that they wouldn’t but never really asked anyone. If nothing else I can’t see any signs of decay. The ancient dungeon of death is, well, ancient, so that’s probably something. I begin reviving another skeleton as I work to get these remaining bits of white text either cleared or organized, oh yes and all the lenses too! I also try absorbing one of the largest clones too and get three motes and a third of my pool of manna. It seems they return the flat amount of manna you invested in them, not a fixed amount per clone, which I suppose makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that when I gain a level I produce twice the death attribute manna, but when I split off a level of clones, they cannot match me in manna production, rather it looks like they’re not even producing any at all. Then again, how much did I produce before I’d formed a dungeon proper?
Come to think of it, how does manna production work? I mean, I sort of take it for granted since it’s my most fundamental ability, but it’s really not that simple is it? For example my creations produce less manna than I do. The main reason for that I earned from the little cultist lass in Jonathon’s classes. Death attribute manna, or really any attribute is just… less. They are firmly embedded with a concept which can aid them in things aligned with that concept, they are also unstable, chaotic, breaking down the substance of the world into regular manna. That tends to give people a misconception about them since they don’t actually have as much power as they seem to. Spells using them use the concept to guide the formation of the spell better, but tend to draw upon the energies of the world that is actively destroyed by their use instead of the power in the manna itself. This is apparently made more efficient by wizard towers which are built with expansion and deconstruction in mind better controlling and channeling the process.
That didn’t explain all the loss though, death attribute manna was produced by corpses and undeads too, but they had nowhere's the efficiency that a dungeon has. I theorize that that soul-stuff that fuels them is just focused on other stuff than producing manna, though that does make it kind of weird that mages use cities like wellsprings of magic. Is all that manna just the unused productivity of the masses? Would that suggest that the strongest mages live in ideal utopias where people eat, sleep, poop, and be entertained?
Brushing aside the tangential thoughts I refocus on the clones. Should I eat them to regain the manna and continue efficiently growing? It was a hard decision at the same time as it wasn’t. It was like paying the rent when you only have enough money to, was there a better option? Not really. I hadn’t survived this long by growing optimally, in fact the vast legion that lays shattered around me is evidence of my extremely wasteful manna spending. It clearly wasn’t the best way to grow, but who would safeguard my lens otherwise, the rule of law? Ha! Nay the simple truth is that for a dungeon as small as myself I have more defenders than can even fit in my room, and cramming the room full of corpses, well, it’s a meat grinder of death far stronger than such weak corpses have any right to be. The bear itself is testament enough to that. While a powerful bear can fight on its own terms, a clever rabbit has three burrows. Having seen how that ends, I know which I’d rather be.
What further cements this decision is seeing that in the infinite darkness of the void, new fractured windows are opening. New lenses through which I can see the world around me.
Finally after what feels like forever the first skeleton manages to take form around one of the weaker souls. Not Jonathon yet, he’d cost a lot more. Quickly the skeleton gets to task at shifting rubble and guarding my core, slowly excavating us back out of this hole. The rubble shifts uncomfortably making me think it’ll collapse in on us again for a moment, but thankfully it’s just my nerves. Piece by piece until finally we are free. At east, that would be the ideal, but instead we just have a clump of wood and stone for me to digest and a somewhat secure roof in the buried pit trap I am.
It’s crazy to think that at level 9 my manna generation is a whole 512 times what it was when I was level 1. Then I could regenerate a single skeleton each day, and now I can regenerate… six. Less than a third of my manna generation went to removing derbies, yet all together I only managed to recover six of my creations. I mean, they’re not level 1 either, it’s not like they haven’t grown, it’s just a bit disheartening. In the end it takes the better part of three months to get my house back in order. Not that there’s much house to it anymore, the tunnels collapsed in on me and so too did the fortress. Over the next several months the skeletons work to build new fortifications, slowly dragging the fallen trees to the center for me to consume, and then replacing them with stone block constructed tunnels and fortifications webbing out in a maze-like pattern.
I’m beginning to come to terms with what may be the biggest opstical to dungeon growth. Consumption. The giant trees do well to mask the problem, being alive and full of whatever rich nutrient that is for me, but the clearing around the fortress is growing, perhaps suspiciously so. I don’t really want to stand out, so instead I begin amassing death attribute manna again, growth is overrated, being able to regenerate my defenders is where it’s at. That, however, is not a long term solution, as much as I may wish that it were.
Had I grown to the same scale underground I’d be a monstrous void in the earth, large enough for the entire group of settlements to collapse into my depths. Truly dungeons are beings naturally inclined to slaughter. Am I ever better decimating an ancient forest like this? I think to the skies, all those dungeons floating through the air. That’s why they do it, at some point there is no other food that can sustain dungeons aside from other dungeons. Sure, high level adventurers too. Both of those things kill us in turn, a vicious pool of piranhas feasting in a sea of blood. Was I ready for that, did I want it? Vaguely my gaze is drawn towards the smoldering orange corridor that continues to slowly inch towards me. It comes in waves, often dimming for days on end, like a dying flame. Other days it pulses and cracks heal, the attributed rocks form out of swirling clouds of blazing manna, rubble and water are disintegrated by those same clouds of swirling embers that clash against them like an immune system battling off disease.
That was one of my options, a dungeon ready for me to consume. An old dungeon several times my age that had been fostered by a mage for years on end, with all the advantages I couldn’t even dream to snatch. Could I even win? Our conflict is inevitable, but I’m betting on the big guy. It’s not that I have no pride nor confidence, but rather that I know how fast dungeons can grow. We have exponential growth. Every year we can double in power. What does it mean to battle someone twice as strong as you? What does it mean to battle someone a hundred times as strong as you? Can an ant fight a human if they both know?
It’s wounded and recovering, I can tell that much, it reminds me of my own several month recovery period, resurrecting people one by one ad infinitude. How big could it be, how numerous its defenders to take so many literal years to recover?
My gaze similarly drifted to the pile of new core clones in the corner. That was another avenue of growth. I could spread my seeds to the wind and be everywhere, like dandelions in spring. My growth would be slower, but it’d be dispersed and hard to notice, each core growing quietly in another corner of the world, no longer drawing attention to a single devoured patch of forest. Individually we’d all be weaker, and this strategy would be predicated on remaining weak.
Looking at the growing mound of death attribute crystals, I knew my decision was already made and that I was just stalling. No point going to war without reserves when you can go to war with them. What’s that about taking out a downed opponent rather than letting them recover? Nonsense, he’s been recovering since I’ve been alive, if I don’t prepare for war and instead just jump in half cocked than I’ll probably just be crushed under his weight. I mean, honestly, I probably will anyways, that’s why…
Giving him the biggest clone, I send Johnathon away. Perhaps he can find somewhere safe and start me again, maybe through this I will survive another death. It feels ironic, a dungeon of death struggling not to die, but I’d take the entertainment of the lens over the dark solitude of the void any day.
Hahaha, this chapter’s a lot harder to write than I thought. Initial trouble is remembering and lining up the lore correctly. Things like how I wanted a system, but with minimal options with lots of hidden implications. I could have gone systemless, but frankly it feels like a hype fad. I wanted someone grasping in the dark at shadows so full system seemed a bit wrong for it. Made that decision off book style rather than world lore tho so it fits in a bit janky. It does of course still fit. The main problem tho is the lore itself, there’s too much, it’s too complete, I could probably autistically explain it all like tangling together spiders webs, but that’d really go against the fun wouldn’t it? The mystery, the sense of grasping at straws and struggling to know, that’s part of the grit of this story, moreover it makes no sense for truths of the inner-workings of the universe to be so easily acquired. So I rewrote it a time or two to keep details out. That said I use the same setting for all my books, so I have literal chapters in an unreleased book dedicated to parsing out universal constants of how the world works, how magic works, excetera, part of why I figured this one would be so easy to write, little did I know having more info than I need in an infodump chapter would stab me in the back like this, lol. Maybe another day.
