Crosspost from SB. Apologies for the lack of an update for Banneret. Been reading There Is No...
Needs More Monsters [Dungeon Core]
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1. Floor 0 - The Chapel (1)
Crosspost from SB. Apologies for the lack of an update for Banneret. Been reading There Is No Epic Loot, Only Puns lately (and to a lesser extent, Bunkercore) and got inspired a bit (and I don't do so well with juggling ideas).
EDIT: Submitted to RRL (Verification
).
* * * * * * * *
Waking up to find oneself disembodied is…a curious experience. Not strictly unpleasant, but definitely disconcerting. There's a suite of sensations I'd always associated with getting up that were just not present; no phone alarm to drowsily turn off, no covers to lazily crawl back beneath. Hell, no skin to feel the covers upon, nor eyes to screw shut against the unwelcome morning light. Not even just darkness and weightlessness; no bits to even process the absence of such things.
All that remained was a tiredness that stretched far deeper than bone and the vague impression of the passage of time.
I had the sneaking suspicion I was dead at this point. I couldn't remember say how, exactly. Though my more distant memories seemed intact, things got blurry as I tried to think forward. I could remember splitting time between work and university, and the slowing, growing exhaustion that came from trying to split my attention...But anything more specific eluded me.
I was content to let things stay as they were for a time. How long, I couldn't say, but there came a point where I became cognisant enough to realise I was awake. And with that realisation came the vague obligation to get up and do something. Slowly, I managed to open what I now had instead of eyes and took in my surroundings.
There was a room.
My perception of it was at once impeccable and indistinct. I could sense the entirety of its shape. Every nook and cranny, from the great vaulted ceiling above, to the rocky foundation beneath the floorboards. I could tell the entire building was ever so slightly crooked as handmade structures are more or less guaranteed to be. I could sense weaknesses along the sides, at even intervals gave the impression of what I could only guess were windows. Chapel was my immediate instinct. As whatever contrivance granted me vision began to kick into gear, I appended that to abandoned Chapel. Rows of old, dusty benches, all in some level of disrepair, lay neglected on one side of the room, while the other was dominated by the altar and an old, broken down organ, all coated in a thin layer of dust. There was this feeling of ownership over its entirety. Like I was less looking at an unfamiliar room and more my own hand.
If this was the afterlife…Well, actually, I found that unlikely. It was always a possibility, in that philosophical 'What if the world was created last Thursday' sort of way, where technically anything was possibility if you doubted the concrete nature of reality (and believe me, with how strange my situation was at the time, I was considering it), but I ignored that possibility, as usual. I might not have believed in any specific afterlife, but I always assumed that, if one existed, it'd at least make sense. Or, failing that, aggressively make no sense. My current situation was confusing, but not so much in a Dadaist 'everything is chaos' manner. More like I'd turned the page to find an entirely different story in a completely different genre.
My conclusion was, even if I was dead, I probably wasn't in a place for the dead quite yet.
As tightened my grip on the waking world, I noticed something out of place in this otherwise unremarkable place. In the centre of the aisle, a figure stood over a thing on podium. Though entirely unfounded, I couldn't but feel threatened by this. Beneath her gaze, maybe an inch above the podium, floated a small, metallic orb. One that I knew with uncharacteristic certainty was me.
"You're awake," she declared, with all the affection of a particularly disagreeable hornet.
Mm'zhat?
KKKZZ'TT
GLRGH-THE HELL?!
The shock was more surprising than painful. It focused my attention somewhat, at least, which mostly manifested in a far more detailed sense of the room's contents, albeit from a position high above eye level. My assailant was probably a witch or mage of some kind (or thought herself as much, insisted my arbitrarily sceptical side), given the purple traffic cone she wore. The lustre of her long, black hair and her thin-ish body shape implied both a certain youth and vanity, though such things could easily be called into question by the presence of what appeared to be magic. The cape and the stiff, ornate dress that went down to her knees implied she was less fairytale hag and more along the lines of an anime character.
"I will not tolerate inattentiveness, dungeon spirit. I have not the time today to repeat this. You have been evoked here to serve as the training ground for beginner and low level adventurers. Serve your purpose adequately and you will be allowed to subsist off the ambient mana here without interference. If there is any attempt to overstep what might be considered fair…"
She trailed off, allowing the sparks of energy running up her hands to punctuate the threat. Intimidating though she might've been, the effect was rather muted by how I was watching her from what I guessed was five or six metres up in the air, rather than being loomed over.
My apologies, ma'am, but you'll have to excuse me if I have no earthly idea what the hell you're talking about. Also, that's not how respect works. Your earn it, not 'deserve' it.
Her eyes narrowed and I was briefly mortified by the thought that I'd somehow vocalised that thought to the very unhappy looking magic user.
A moment or two passed.
Then she scoffed and turned her back on the orb and I breathed a metaphorical sigh of relief as she decided not to go in for a more vigorous round of shock therapy. A more complicated set of gestures etched a set of arcane circles beneath her, as she made one last declaration.
"Faryea, ensure this matter is dealt with. I expect this place to be ready for the first run in exactly one week. You have permission to form a contract with the dungeon until then."
Wha-Who?
Before I could articulate anything more eloquent, a gout of fire erupted from the ground, briefly engulfing her. A moment passed, as her silhouette disappeared into the flames and she was gone, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
What a unpleasant individual.
Someone cleared their throat, drawing my attention and disproving my previous assumption. The individual was tiny and blue. A deep, navy blue that had no business being a skin colour, punctuated only by a shock of white hair. I tried my best to do a non-visual version of squinting. A curious sensation, considering I didn't have eye muscles, but it seemed the phantom response managed to trigger something as my bird's eye not-sight warped, coming to rest at normal eye level and resolving itself into a fair simulation of standard binocular vision. The return of more familiar senses was reassuring, though the absence of any personal features left me feeling like a cheap FPS protagonist.
Speaking of being inside a video game, my attempt to examine this new individual was suddenly interrupted by something very unexpected.
A menu prompt.
Actually, scratch that. 'Mildly' unexpected. I was far too overwhelmed by all the sudden changes to be surprised enough to consider it 'very unexpected'. I was a disembodied being in what was likely a fantasy world. Why not also make it 'basically a video game'? Made as much sense as anything else. More sense, actually, if the explanation was that I'd suddenly become trapped in an RTS.
The left side of my vision had a small, option prompt running right through the middle.
The right side, on the other hand, was completely obscured by a box full of context-less stats.
Instinctively, I pushed the menus to the peripheries of my vision, allowing me to take a good look at the imp herself. The summary was impersonal and generalising (and vaguely insulting), and I had no frame of reference for what the stats meant. Those could be figured out later anyway.
Faryea, I presumed, reminded me of a cross between a librarian and a shoulder devil. A set of thick rimmed glasses sat upon a face that might've looked slightly feral, with it's tiny fangs, long pointy ears; almost bat-like, but more narrow, and monstrous looking eyes; a cat's pupil, ringed by a yellow iris upon a black schlera, if it wasn't completely …de-fanged by her boundlessly worried expression and black, pageboy haircut. A hairstyle only one step removed from an actual bowl. Her body couldn't quite be called child-like, despite her full high putting her just above where I'd expect my knees to be. Even through what were more or less loose fitting robes, one could tell her features were definitely more developed than that.
'Chibi' would be the word, I suppose.
I hesitated, torn between the accommodating parts of me saying 'yes', my contrarianism and caution saying 'no' and the rest of me saying 'can I put off answering this until the sun explodes?'. On one hand, she looked sincere enough and it wasn't like I'd have much else to do if I said no. On the other hand, 'looks can be deceiving' and making any sort of contract with what appeared to be a living, breathing demon immediately set off the alarm bells.
The only thing I could conclude concretely was that I needed more information. Asking what this even entailed was an obvious place to start.
Okay, before I sign anything, may I quickly get a 'What's going on?', please? What exactly am I agreeing to?
Surprisingly, rather than the raspy squawk I'd been conditioned to expect by popular media, Faryea sounded more like an embarrassed school girl, awkwardly admitting she'd been talking in class rather than listening.
"Uh...Sorry…? I can't answer questions I can't hear…"
I paused, about to launch into 'IF YOU CAN'T HEAR ME, HOW CAN YOU KNOW I WAS ASKING A QUESTION?!', but I stopped. The light bulb turned on and I did my best simulation of a sigh.
So you can tell I'm asking a question, but not what I'm saying?
An entire awkward pause passed.
...No shit, Sherlock.
"...I, uh, guess you want to know why we were, uh, here."
...Not as such, but I'll take what I can get, I suppose.
She hesitated, likely sensing my resignation. It'd take some time getting used to the idea that my emotions could be communicated directly without a medium for them.
Go on.
I pushed as much 'impatience' into those two words as I could. Stumbling and stuttering with the sudden impetus, Faryea explained, "Well…So, the boss is...Well, she's a Warlock, as you probably can guess. I was…awarded to her as a familiar when she reached level 10..."
A'right, pretend I understand what that means and keep going. I'll figure it out as we go, I guess.
"Uh, the two of us work for the Southern Reaches Adventurers' Guild. Have you heard of-wait, no, you...uh...of course you haven't. The boss is a professional hero, so she's had a lot of experience around dungeons and…"
She froze, likely realising she'd just made a horrific fauxpass that would've gone right over my head if she hadn't drawn attention to it.
"...NOT THE BAD KIND, I MEAN, she's...uh, not that kind of hero. Anyway, the Southern Reaches and...uh...the rest of Atraria...that's the country you're in. You know what a country is r-Alright, I'll, uh, get on with- So we're currently at war with the Northern Union as of last week, so not only are random monster encounters set to explode because 'threat to the king's rule' and all, but all the soldiers and guards that'd usually keep smaller towns safe are marching off to the front...So our guild's been hired to protect them in their stead...But the boss says 'Okay, there's no way I'm going to be able to save an entire town from war tier monster attacks, so I better train up some newbs to help me out'...Only we're out in the middle of nowhere here, so there's nowhere to train, so the boss may...have…uh…invoked her patron demon and artificially accelerated the creation of a dungeon here to give everyone something to gain combat class levels in...Y'know, what anyone in her position...would...do...Um, that's the long and the short of it."
'That only raises more questions!'
"So, if you could, y'know, accept my contract, I can help you gather materials from the outside world and make you a dangerous and attractive dungeon that...uh...some adventurers might want to...maybe...visit..." she deflated as I forgot to reign in my scepticism.
I'd like to say I wasn't convinced. I'd like to say I wasn't so easily swayed. The prospect of being 'attractive' had never been something I'd particularly cared for and the idea of being 'dangerous' actively repelled me. Her story seemed authentic enough, but her word was all I had to go on and, while she had all the trapping of a terrible liar, that too could also have been a deception, plus she seemed to be working with someone actively willing to threaten a complete stranger for what seemed like no reason.
I still had no idea what I was getting into. I still had no idea what I contract even meant.
But, well...
Fine, fine, enough with the puppy-dog eyes. I Accept.
* * * * * * * *
Will try to keep this going at a reasonable rate.
EDIT: Submitted to RRL (Verification
).* * * * * * * *
Waking up to find oneself disembodied is…a curious experience. Not strictly unpleasant, but definitely disconcerting. There's a suite of sensations I'd always associated with getting up that were just not present; no phone alarm to drowsily turn off, no covers to lazily crawl back beneath. Hell, no skin to feel the covers upon, nor eyes to screw shut against the unwelcome morning light. Not even just darkness and weightlessness; no bits to even process the absence of such things.
All that remained was a tiredness that stretched far deeper than bone and the vague impression of the passage of time.
I had the sneaking suspicion I was dead at this point. I couldn't remember say how, exactly. Though my more distant memories seemed intact, things got blurry as I tried to think forward. I could remember splitting time between work and university, and the slowing, growing exhaustion that came from trying to split my attention...But anything more specific eluded me.
I was content to let things stay as they were for a time. How long, I couldn't say, but there came a point where I became cognisant enough to realise I was awake. And with that realisation came the vague obligation to get up and do something. Slowly, I managed to open what I now had instead of eyes and took in my surroundings.
There was a room.
My perception of it was at once impeccable and indistinct. I could sense the entirety of its shape. Every nook and cranny, from the great vaulted ceiling above, to the rocky foundation beneath the floorboards. I could tell the entire building was ever so slightly crooked as handmade structures are more or less guaranteed to be. I could sense weaknesses along the sides, at even intervals gave the impression of what I could only guess were windows. Chapel was my immediate instinct. As whatever contrivance granted me vision began to kick into gear, I appended that to abandoned Chapel. Rows of old, dusty benches, all in some level of disrepair, lay neglected on one side of the room, while the other was dominated by the altar and an old, broken down organ, all coated in a thin layer of dust. There was this feeling of ownership over its entirety. Like I was less looking at an unfamiliar room and more my own hand.
If this was the afterlife…Well, actually, I found that unlikely. It was always a possibility, in that philosophical 'What if the world was created last Thursday' sort of way, where technically anything was possibility if you doubted the concrete nature of reality (and believe me, with how strange my situation was at the time, I was considering it), but I ignored that possibility, as usual. I might not have believed in any specific afterlife, but I always assumed that, if one existed, it'd at least make sense. Or, failing that, aggressively make no sense. My current situation was confusing, but not so much in a Dadaist 'everything is chaos' manner. More like I'd turned the page to find an entirely different story in a completely different genre.
My conclusion was, even if I was dead, I probably wasn't in a place for the dead quite yet.
As tightened my grip on the waking world, I noticed something out of place in this otherwise unremarkable place. In the centre of the aisle, a figure stood over a thing on podium. Though entirely unfounded, I couldn't but feel threatened by this. Beneath her gaze, maybe an inch above the podium, floated a small, metallic orb. One that I knew with uncharacteristic certainty was me.
"You're awake," she declared, with all the affection of a particularly disagreeable hornet.
Mm'zhat?
KKKZZ'TT
GLRGH-THE HELL?!
The shock was more surprising than painful. It focused my attention somewhat, at least, which mostly manifested in a far more detailed sense of the room's contents, albeit from a position high above eye level. My assailant was probably a witch or mage of some kind (or thought herself as much, insisted my arbitrarily sceptical side), given the purple traffic cone she wore. The lustre of her long, black hair and her thin-ish body shape implied both a certain youth and vanity, though such things could easily be called into question by the presence of what appeared to be magic. The cape and the stiff, ornate dress that went down to her knees implied she was less fairytale hag and more along the lines of an anime character.
"I will not tolerate inattentiveness, dungeon spirit. I have not the time today to repeat this. You have been evoked here to serve as the training ground for beginner and low level adventurers. Serve your purpose adequately and you will be allowed to subsist off the ambient mana here without interference. If there is any attempt to overstep what might be considered fair…"
She trailed off, allowing the sparks of energy running up her hands to punctuate the threat. Intimidating though she might've been, the effect was rather muted by how I was watching her from what I guessed was five or six metres up in the air, rather than being loomed over.
My apologies, ma'am, but you'll have to excuse me if I have no earthly idea what the hell you're talking about. Also, that's not how respect works. Your earn it, not 'deserve' it.
Her eyes narrowed and I was briefly mortified by the thought that I'd somehow vocalised that thought to the very unhappy looking magic user.
A moment or two passed.
Then she scoffed and turned her back on the orb and I breathed a metaphorical sigh of relief as she decided not to go in for a more vigorous round of shock therapy. A more complicated set of gestures etched a set of arcane circles beneath her, as she made one last declaration.
"Faryea, ensure this matter is dealt with. I expect this place to be ready for the first run in exactly one week. You have permission to form a contract with the dungeon until then."
Wha-Who?
Before I could articulate anything more eloquent, a gout of fire erupted from the ground, briefly engulfing her. A moment passed, as her silhouette disappeared into the flames and she was gone, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
What a unpleasant individual.
Someone cleared their throat, drawing my attention and disproving my previous assumption. The individual was tiny and blue. A deep, navy blue that had no business being a skin colour, punctuated only by a shock of white hair. I tried my best to do a non-visual version of squinting. A curious sensation, considering I didn't have eye muscles, but it seemed the phantom response managed to trigger something as my bird's eye not-sight warped, coming to rest at normal eye level and resolving itself into a fair simulation of standard binocular vision. The return of more familiar senses was reassuring, though the absence of any personal features left me feeling like a cheap FPS protagonist.
Speaking of being inside a video game, my attempt to examine this new individual was suddenly interrupted by something very unexpected.
A menu prompt.
Actually, scratch that. 'Mildly' unexpected. I was far too overwhelmed by all the sudden changes to be surprised enough to consider it 'very unexpected'. I was a disembodied being in what was likely a fantasy world. Why not also make it 'basically a video game'? Made as much sense as anything else. More sense, actually, if the explanation was that I'd suddenly become trapped in an RTS.
The left side of my vision had a small, option prompt running right through the middle.
The right side, on the other hand, was completely obscured by a box full of context-less stats.
Instinctively, I pushed the menus to the peripheries of my vision, allowing me to take a good look at the imp herself. The summary was impersonal and generalising (and vaguely insulting), and I had no frame of reference for what the stats meant. Those could be figured out later anyway.
Faryea, I presumed, reminded me of a cross between a librarian and a shoulder devil. A set of thick rimmed glasses sat upon a face that might've looked slightly feral, with it's tiny fangs, long pointy ears; almost bat-like, but more narrow, and monstrous looking eyes; a cat's pupil, ringed by a yellow iris upon a black schlera, if it wasn't completely …de-fanged by her boundlessly worried expression and black, pageboy haircut. A hairstyle only one step removed from an actual bowl. Her body couldn't quite be called child-like, despite her full high putting her just above where I'd expect my knees to be. Even through what were more or less loose fitting robes, one could tell her features were definitely more developed than that.
'Chibi' would be the word, I suppose.
I hesitated, torn between the accommodating parts of me saying 'yes', my contrarianism and caution saying 'no' and the rest of me saying 'can I put off answering this until the sun explodes?'. On one hand, she looked sincere enough and it wasn't like I'd have much else to do if I said no. On the other hand, 'looks can be deceiving' and making any sort of contract with what appeared to be a living, breathing demon immediately set off the alarm bells.
The only thing I could conclude concretely was that I needed more information. Asking what this even entailed was an obvious place to start.
Okay, before I sign anything, may I quickly get a 'What's going on?', please? What exactly am I agreeing to?
Surprisingly, rather than the raspy squawk I'd been conditioned to expect by popular media, Faryea sounded more like an embarrassed school girl, awkwardly admitting she'd been talking in class rather than listening.
"Uh...Sorry…? I can't answer questions I can't hear…"
I paused, about to launch into 'IF YOU CAN'T HEAR ME, HOW CAN YOU KNOW I WAS ASKING A QUESTION?!', but I stopped. The light bulb turned on and I did my best simulation of a sigh.
So you can tell I'm asking a question, but not what I'm saying?
An entire awkward pause passed.
...No shit, Sherlock.
"...I, uh, guess you want to know why we were, uh, here."
...Not as such, but I'll take what I can get, I suppose.
She hesitated, likely sensing my resignation. It'd take some time getting used to the idea that my emotions could be communicated directly without a medium for them.
Go on.
I pushed as much 'impatience' into those two words as I could. Stumbling and stuttering with the sudden impetus, Faryea explained, "Well…So, the boss is...Well, she's a Warlock, as you probably can guess. I was…awarded to her as a familiar when she reached level 10..."
A'right, pretend I understand what that means and keep going. I'll figure it out as we go, I guess.
"Uh, the two of us work for the Southern Reaches Adventurers' Guild. Have you heard of-wait, no, you...uh...of course you haven't. The boss is a professional hero, so she's had a lot of experience around dungeons and…"
She froze, likely realising she'd just made a horrific fauxpass that would've gone right over my head if she hadn't drawn attention to it.
"...NOT THE BAD KIND, I MEAN, she's...uh, not that kind of hero. Anyway, the Southern Reaches and...uh...the rest of Atraria...that's the country you're in. You know what a country is r-Alright, I'll, uh, get on with- So we're currently at war with the Northern Union as of last week, so not only are random monster encounters set to explode because 'threat to the king's rule' and all, but all the soldiers and guards that'd usually keep smaller towns safe are marching off to the front...So our guild's been hired to protect them in their stead...But the boss says 'Okay, there's no way I'm going to be able to save an entire town from war tier monster attacks, so I better train up some newbs to help me out'...Only we're out in the middle of nowhere here, so there's nowhere to train, so the boss may...have…uh…invoked her patron demon and artificially accelerated the creation of a dungeon here to give everyone something to gain combat class levels in...Y'know, what anyone in her position...would...do...Um, that's the long and the short of it."
'That only raises more questions!'
"So, if you could, y'know, accept my contract, I can help you gather materials from the outside world and make you a dangerous and attractive dungeon that...uh...some adventurers might want to...maybe...visit..." she deflated as I forgot to reign in my scepticism.
I'd like to say I wasn't convinced. I'd like to say I wasn't so easily swayed. The prospect of being 'attractive' had never been something I'd particularly cared for and the idea of being 'dangerous' actively repelled me. Her story seemed authentic enough, but her word was all I had to go on and, while she had all the trapping of a terrible liar, that too could also have been a deception, plus she seemed to be working with someone actively willing to threaten a complete stranger for what seemed like no reason.
I still had no idea what I was getting into. I still had no idea what I contract even meant.
But, well...
Fine, fine, enough with the puppy-dog eyes. I Accept.
* * * * * * * *
Will try to keep this going at a reasonable rate.
Last edited:
2. Floor 0 - The Chapel (2)
Now, can you understand me, or is some sort of emotion-based charades equivalent required to communicate anything more than 'affirm or deny'?
It seemed this contract was immediately effective at solving the communication issue, as the imp froze in apprehension, eyes darting around the room, before settling on my core.
I'm going to take that as a yes. Now, if I may, I have some questions that I'd appreciate answers to before we continue with...Whatever it is that I'm expected to be doing.
Ten seconds passed as I waited for a response, before I realised my new 'minion', as the new addendum to her stat screen title helpfully informed me, was off in her own head and hadn't parsed my question.
Ma'am?
"Oh...Sorry, you're the dungeon spirit r-Of course you are, I-I mean you're just, uh, more coherent than I was expecting..." she replied, looking away from where she imagined I was standing. I wasn't sure who she was trying to fool with her half-hearted attempt at playing down her shock. If even someone as inept in social situations as I could see through it, no-one was going to be fooled.
May I ask how coherent were you expecting, exactly?
"...Not. At all. Usually, uh, dungeon spirits take so long to mature that their personality's all gone by the time they-Oh, right, we evoked the core over three days, rather than...uh... twenty thousand years, so I guess it makes sense you're still, uh, lucid..."
I pretended I hadn't heard that for a moment, lest my unpleasantly morbid imagination run away with my attention. I'd have time for stomach-churning 'what-if' scenarios later, once I had some idea of what I'd been dropped into.
Thank you, and to your master, for saving me from that fate, I guess. Now, the task at hand, if you'd be so kind.
"...Uh...Be a dungeon...?"
I was not amused.
And what exactly does that entail.
"S-sorry, I just, uh, well, y'know, we need you to-uh, be-"
Perhaps it was hypocritical of me to have so little patience for her tongue-tied stammering when I'd so often had problems with it myself, but her stop-start speech and the constant references to concepts I had no contextual understanding of had already become trying.
Stop.
Her sudden silence and almost mournful expression reminded me of a scorned child and I immediately felt guilty, even if the more detached parts of my brain insisted I wasn't being unreasonable (and that I was far too easily swayed).
Take a deep breath.
...
...
Now, if you would, please explain what exactly I'm expected to do here, both in general and for your...summoner?
"I'm, uh, not a summon. I'm a familiar. She's my boss...She, uh, hates being called 'mistress'...But, uh...I'm not an expert on dungeons...My job is to...y'know...manage the boss's inventory mostly...But shouldn't you know this? I mean, I know most dungeons spend years as, like, a room in the middle of nowhere, but you seem...human-y? So shouldn't you know this already?"
I mentally took a deep breath, briefly weighing up my options. On one hand, TV and fanfiction told me it was tradition to withhold facts like 'I'm from another world' in these sorts of situations for vague, usually important sounding reasons. There were definitely more practical reasons to keep your mouth shut, especially if you couldn't afford to seem foolish, or didn't want to draw attention to yourself.
On the other hand, bugger that. I'd never been one for keeping arbitrary secrets and, if I was going to have to deal with doubt and mistrust, I was going to bite the bullet and deal with it now.
Mmmm...My apologies, but we don't have dungeons where I'm from. Or imps, for that matter. Naturally, I can't say for sure, but I'm think I might be from a different world. Maybe a different universe or dimension or plane altogether, considering inexplicably present menu options and combat statistics are another foreign concept, for the most part…
I braced myself for suspicion, or maybe laughter.
"Oh... I guess you're from one of the unenlightened realms then..." said Faryea, surprised but not particularly shocked.
...
Uh-huh?
...
As the possibility that her statement might be construed as an insult dawned on her, I cut off her impending string of apologies. Sure, I might've been a little sceptical that the world as I knew it could be considered 'unenlightened', but I was far more interested in how easily my statement had been accepted.
Look, calm down. I get it. Technical term, no insult intended. Whatever. And whatever you expect I'm going to do to you...I'm probably not that sort of guy. Anyway. Topic. Other worlds. Those are a documented...thing?
"...Mmm. Yeah. There's the other dimensions that outsiders come from, and the...uh...unenlightened realms beyond that. Which is where you're probably from. Those are the ones the gods haven't reached yet...So, you won't have knowledge of stat...stuff..." she said. I wanted to object, to perhaps explain more about the place I came from, to question just how concrete her assessment was, considering how vague she was being, but I didn't. It wasn't an explanation I was happy with, but I wasn't going to bother looking for a better one while there were other, more pressing matters to be considered.
"So, the boss, uh, wants the first floor to be usable by level one adventurers, so 'Recommended Level: 1-5' is what's needed, I think. They'll need material to bring back to town for gear, and they'll need monsters to kill for combat class exper-Wait, you probably d-"I am familiar with the concept of experience, don't worry. "...Oh, okay...? Uh, I don't know much about...I'm not the one that does dungeons…But since you're able to access the gods' command system, help should tell you the basics...I think," she finished lamely.
I would've sighed if I had the necessary organs for it. Partly because I still had a thousand and one questions unanswered, all burning away in the back of my mind, and partly because, as someone who considered themselves a habitually accommodating gentleman, this was really all I needed to go out and do what was asked of me.
Alright...Let's see what this magic menu system thing can do. Help.
* * * * * * * *
Strike the Earth!
A dungeon core can excavate unclaimed earth at a rapid pace with little more than a mental command and a small investment of Mana. It should be noted that, though mass select might trick one into thinking it can be adjusted to the spirit's exact desires, the excavate command is rigid and immutable, limited to one specific set of dimensions that is known as a 'Tile'. As a result, dungeon excavations will always occur in set patterns (even if room upgrades can allow for more minor alterations to room shape).
The magic that supports a dungeon's structure is ever growing, but finite at any singular point in time. There is a hard limit on the number of tiles that the dungeon can support, known as 'Space Capacity' or SC. If the dungeon core attempts to excavate more tiles than are available, the command's natural magic will fail.
Any set of tiles with a minimum size of 3 x 3 can be designated a room. Any area not designated a room is considered a 'corridor'. Rooms are considered a single entity by the Dungeon Core and have a stronger link to it than corridors, allowing them to be upgraded directly. A Core can only support a limited number of 'Rooms' per floor, depending on its strength. This is known as 'Room Capacity' or RC.
* * * * * * * *
After skimming through the explanations of basic dungeon architecture and the mental commands to quickly access the menu's help function, I immediately dove into creating the skeleton of what would be my first floor, spurred on by both curiosity and the barest silhouette of a plan. Some might've already had greater ambitions, others might've already started thinking about getting home, but, for now, I was more than content to just learn the ropes of what I was doing. If this was going to be my life, I was going to get invested in it.
Firstly, though, I needed to actually reach the first floor.
There was a certain gratification in the process of digging, in watching the roughly hewn tunnel drill downwards, one regularly shaped block of earth at a time crumbling into nothing. While the novelty would likely wear off quickly, especially with how time consuming it was, going one at a time, for now it brought a sort of cathartic glee, with just enough of a sense of effort that I could grok that it was me doing it.
Two minutes of digging opened up a tunnel that corkscrewed from underneath where the altar once stood (for where else would you put the entrance to a dungeon in an abandoned chapel), all the way down to the limits of what I could reach. While each tile needed to be laid edge to edge on the horizontal plane, it was possible to connect each tile half way down the last (known as a 'step', according to what I was quickly beginning to call 'the manual'), which allowed for what could roughly be considered a staircase.
I didn't dwell on it, for the sake of preserving my companion's opinion of me, but 'FEAR MY POWER OVER THE VERY EARTH, MORTALS' definitely crossed my mind.
From there, I opened up a small entrance hall, just big enough for me to designate it as a Room.
As liable as I was to 'mash' through random menu prompts normally, I wasn't too keen to do something I likely couldn't reverse. More pressingly, however, was what the prompt had indirectly brought up. Knowing my core was housed in a 'temporary room' was a little disconcerting and immediately put me on edge. What did that exactly entail anyway?
Mulling it over, my general good mood evaporated, undercut with 'oh god, did I screw something up?'
I knew it wasn't exactly a rational thing. In fact, it was likely the same sort of overreaction I had whenever I tossed out bread a day expired. Unfortunately, telling myself that never actually helped. If I tried to stomp down on it without anything else to distract me, it'd bother me for days. I had to be certain.
With an off-hand thought, I opened up the Chapel's status page.
Most of the screen went in one ear and out the other. My attention was held by a single, stomach turning word. 'Perilous' wasn't a reassuring word. It was the opposite of reassuring. Still, my logical, detached side that stood in place for optimism reminded me that the specifics could mean anything.
Elaborate.
It was like suddenly noticing ominous cracks in the ceiling above your bed. I couldn't not think about it. I was considering just spending the mana and dropping my core in the newly made room...But then I'd also lose the chapel, which triggered feelings of 'waste not, want not'. I briefly warred with myself over the matter, before my attention briefly skimmed over the menu once more and I noticed the Stabilise option. How convenient.
I checked my remaining mana. Thirty six out of fifty left.
Manual, Explain Mana Generation
...
Manual, please Explain how a dungeon spirit gains, collects or restores the resource marked as 'Mana', if it would behove you.
I very deliberately didn't think about the implications of that last one.
Absorbing objects that contained mana seemed like the obvious way to go. I eyed the 'absorb' option for the Chapel, but ultimately dismissed it. I could, but it seemed like a pretty pitiful amount of mana and I found it hard to tell what exactly was being absorbed. Really, I could put that off till later.
No, obviously, if I was going to sustain any sort of expansion, I needed to obtain such things from an external source...Even if it made me uneasy. 'Mana rich matter' was suspiciously vague and I had a bad feeling regarding its most commonly used sources. There had to be more to it than that, even if the manual had little to say regarding it.
I needed a second opinion on the matter.
* * * * * * * *
Sorry if the ending there's a little abrupt. In any case, I'm going to be editing/reviewing part one before I start on the next bit.
EDIT: Second pass complete.
It seemed this contract was immediately effective at solving the communication issue, as the imp froze in apprehension, eyes darting around the room, before settling on my core.
I'm going to take that as a yes. Now, if I may, I have some questions that I'd appreciate answers to before we continue with...Whatever it is that I'm expected to be doing.
Ten seconds passed as I waited for a response, before I realised my new 'minion', as the new addendum to her stat screen title helpfully informed me, was off in her own head and hadn't parsed my question.
Ma'am?
"Oh...Sorry, you're the dungeon spirit r-Of course you are, I-I mean you're just, uh, more coherent than I was expecting..." she replied, looking away from where she imagined I was standing. I wasn't sure who she was trying to fool with her half-hearted attempt at playing down her shock. If even someone as inept in social situations as I could see through it, no-one was going to be fooled.
May I ask how coherent were you expecting, exactly?
"...Not. At all. Usually, uh, dungeon spirits take so long to mature that their personality's all gone by the time they-Oh, right, we evoked the core over three days, rather than...uh... twenty thousand years, so I guess it makes sense you're still, uh, lucid..."
I pretended I hadn't heard that for a moment, lest my unpleasantly morbid imagination run away with my attention. I'd have time for stomach-churning 'what-if' scenarios later, once I had some idea of what I'd been dropped into.
Thank you, and to your master, for saving me from that fate, I guess. Now, the task at hand, if you'd be so kind.
"...Uh...Be a dungeon...?"
I was not amused.
And what exactly does that entail.
"S-sorry, I just, uh, well, y'know, we need you to-uh, be-"
Perhaps it was hypocritical of me to have so little patience for her tongue-tied stammering when I'd so often had problems with it myself, but her stop-start speech and the constant references to concepts I had no contextual understanding of had already become trying.
Stop.
Her sudden silence and almost mournful expression reminded me of a scorned child and I immediately felt guilty, even if the more detached parts of my brain insisted I wasn't being unreasonable (and that I was far too easily swayed).
Take a deep breath.
...
...
Now, if you would, please explain what exactly I'm expected to do here, both in general and for your...summoner?
"I'm, uh, not a summon. I'm a familiar. She's my boss...She, uh, hates being called 'mistress'...But, uh...I'm not an expert on dungeons...My job is to...y'know...manage the boss's inventory mostly...But shouldn't you know this? I mean, I know most dungeons spend years as, like, a room in the middle of nowhere, but you seem...human-y? So shouldn't you know this already?"
I mentally took a deep breath, briefly weighing up my options. On one hand, TV and fanfiction told me it was tradition to withhold facts like 'I'm from another world' in these sorts of situations for vague, usually important sounding reasons. There were definitely more practical reasons to keep your mouth shut, especially if you couldn't afford to seem foolish, or didn't want to draw attention to yourself.
On the other hand, bugger that. I'd never been one for keeping arbitrary secrets and, if I was going to have to deal with doubt and mistrust, I was going to bite the bullet and deal with it now.
Mmmm...My apologies, but we don't have dungeons where I'm from. Or imps, for that matter. Naturally, I can't say for sure, but I'm think I might be from a different world. Maybe a different universe or dimension or plane altogether, considering inexplicably present menu options and combat statistics are another foreign concept, for the most part…
I braced myself for suspicion, or maybe laughter.
"Oh... I guess you're from one of the unenlightened realms then..." said Faryea, surprised but not particularly shocked.
...
Uh-huh?
...
As the possibility that her statement might be construed as an insult dawned on her, I cut off her impending string of apologies. Sure, I might've been a little sceptical that the world as I knew it could be considered 'unenlightened', but I was far more interested in how easily my statement had been accepted.
Look, calm down. I get it. Technical term, no insult intended. Whatever. And whatever you expect I'm going to do to you...I'm probably not that sort of guy. Anyway. Topic. Other worlds. Those are a documented...thing?
"...Mmm. Yeah. There's the other dimensions that outsiders come from, and the...uh...unenlightened realms beyond that. Which is where you're probably from. Those are the ones the gods haven't reached yet...So, you won't have knowledge of stat...stuff..." she said. I wanted to object, to perhaps explain more about the place I came from, to question just how concrete her assessment was, considering how vague she was being, but I didn't. It wasn't an explanation I was happy with, but I wasn't going to bother looking for a better one while there were other, more pressing matters to be considered.
"So, the boss, uh, wants the first floor to be usable by level one adventurers, so 'Recommended Level: 1-5' is what's needed, I think. They'll need material to bring back to town for gear, and they'll need monsters to kill for combat class exper-Wait, you probably d-"I am familiar with the concept of experience, don't worry. "...Oh, okay...? Uh, I don't know much about...I'm not the one that does dungeons…But since you're able to access the gods' command system, help should tell you the basics...I think," she finished lamely.
I would've sighed if I had the necessary organs for it. Partly because I still had a thousand and one questions unanswered, all burning away in the back of my mind, and partly because, as someone who considered themselves a habitually accommodating gentleman, this was really all I needed to go out and do what was asked of me.
Alright...Let's see what this magic menu system thing can do. Help.
* * * * * * * *
Strike the Earth!
A dungeon core can excavate unclaimed earth at a rapid pace with little more than a mental command and a small investment of Mana. It should be noted that, though mass select might trick one into thinking it can be adjusted to the spirit's exact desires, the excavate command is rigid and immutable, limited to one specific set of dimensions that is known as a 'Tile'. As a result, dungeon excavations will always occur in set patterns (even if room upgrades can allow for more minor alterations to room shape).
The magic that supports a dungeon's structure is ever growing, but finite at any singular point in time. There is a hard limit on the number of tiles that the dungeon can support, known as 'Space Capacity' or SC. If the dungeon core attempts to excavate more tiles than are available, the command's natural magic will fail.
Any set of tiles with a minimum size of 3 x 3 can be designated a room. Any area not designated a room is considered a 'corridor'. Rooms are considered a single entity by the Dungeon Core and have a stronger link to it than corridors, allowing them to be upgraded directly. A Core can only support a limited number of 'Rooms' per floor, depending on its strength. This is known as 'Room Capacity' or RC.
* * * * * * * *
After skimming through the explanations of basic dungeon architecture and the mental commands to quickly access the menu's help function, I immediately dove into creating the skeleton of what would be my first floor, spurred on by both curiosity and the barest silhouette of a plan. Some might've already had greater ambitions, others might've already started thinking about getting home, but, for now, I was more than content to just learn the ropes of what I was doing. If this was going to be my life, I was going to get invested in it.
Firstly, though, I needed to actually reach the first floor.
There was a certain gratification in the process of digging, in watching the roughly hewn tunnel drill downwards, one regularly shaped block of earth at a time crumbling into nothing. While the novelty would likely wear off quickly, especially with how time consuming it was, going one at a time, for now it brought a sort of cathartic glee, with just enough of a sense of effort that I could grok that it was me doing it.
Two minutes of digging opened up a tunnel that corkscrewed from underneath where the altar once stood (for where else would you put the entrance to a dungeon in an abandoned chapel), all the way down to the limits of what I could reach. While each tile needed to be laid edge to edge on the horizontal plane, it was possible to connect each tile half way down the last (known as a 'step', according to what I was quickly beginning to call 'the manual'), which allowed for what could roughly be considered a staircase.
I didn't dwell on it, for the sake of preserving my companion's opinion of me, but 'FEAR MY POWER OVER THE VERY EARTH, MORTALS' definitely crossed my mind.
From there, I opened up a small entrance hall, just big enough for me to designate it as a Room.
As liable as I was to 'mash' through random menu prompts normally, I wasn't too keen to do something I likely couldn't reverse. More pressingly, however, was what the prompt had indirectly brought up. Knowing my core was housed in a 'temporary room' was a little disconcerting and immediately put me on edge. What did that exactly entail anyway?
Mulling it over, my general good mood evaporated, undercut with 'oh god, did I screw something up?'
I knew it wasn't exactly a rational thing. In fact, it was likely the same sort of overreaction I had whenever I tossed out bread a day expired. Unfortunately, telling myself that never actually helped. If I tried to stomp down on it without anything else to distract me, it'd bother me for days. I had to be certain.
With an off-hand thought, I opened up the Chapel's status page.
Most of the screen went in one ear and out the other. My attention was held by a single, stomach turning word. 'Perilous' wasn't a reassuring word. It was the opposite of reassuring. Still, my logical, detached side that stood in place for optimism reminded me that the specifics could mean anything.
Elaborate.
It was like suddenly noticing ominous cracks in the ceiling above your bed. I couldn't not think about it. I was considering just spending the mana and dropping my core in the newly made room...But then I'd also lose the chapel, which triggered feelings of 'waste not, want not'. I briefly warred with myself over the matter, before my attention briefly skimmed over the menu once more and I noticed the Stabilise option. How convenient.
I checked my remaining mana. Thirty six out of fifty left.
Manual, Explain Mana Generation
...
Manual, please Explain how a dungeon spirit gains, collects or restores the resource marked as 'Mana', if it would behove you.
I very deliberately didn't think about the implications of that last one.
Absorbing objects that contained mana seemed like the obvious way to go. I eyed the 'absorb' option for the Chapel, but ultimately dismissed it. I could, but it seemed like a pretty pitiful amount of mana and I found it hard to tell what exactly was being absorbed. Really, I could put that off till later.
No, obviously, if I was going to sustain any sort of expansion, I needed to obtain such things from an external source...Even if it made me uneasy. 'Mana rich matter' was suspiciously vague and I had a bad feeling regarding its most commonly used sources. There had to be more to it than that, even if the manual had little to say regarding it.
I needed a second opinion on the matter.
* * * * * * * *
Sorry if the ending there's a little abrupt. In any case, I'm going to be editing/reviewing part one before I start on the next bit.
EDIT: Second pass complete.
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3. Floor 0 - The Chapel (3)
Functionally, they do. Will get into the specifics a little bit later.
Pseudo-SI is the term I usually use. I reserve 'SI' for the full self-insert. Sorry if I wasn't clear.
* * * * * * * *
"…WHAT?!"
I hesitated, taken aback by the sincere shock and horror in the imp's voice. I'd thought my request for 'something I can use for mana' had been innocent enough. As ill-informed as I was, I couldn't be more specific, nor could I make any sort of qualifying statements, but I'd thought, at worst, it'd just be a 'can't do that; those are rare and expensive'. (Yes, but what was that about a sacri-)
I tried to remain optimistic.
In the uneasy silence, the imp nervously scooted away from the core of my being, as though it were an angry guard dog, held in check only by an audibly fraying leash.
"W-W-AAAH!"
Whoops. An inch too far, Faryea toppled through the broken window and out of view, arms windmilling and tiny bat wings flapping wildly.
Thump.
Before I could rush my perspective over to check on her, she'd already clawed her way back into her seat, looking only slightly ruffled. Her stat page helpfully informed me the fall hadn't even dealt damage. Though it diffused the tension briefly, I can't say it did much to help the slowly mounting dread. I ignored the potentially unpleasant revelation in place of being polite.
You, ah, you okay?
She mumbled her assent, still carrying a hurt expression that perfectly conveyed a guilt-inducing mix of resentment and betrayal. Whatever I'd actually asked for was obviously more than just a faux pass (pleasedon'tmandatehumansacrifice). As much as I really didn't want to voice the question, wanted to maintain the possibility that my growing suspicions were just my morbid imagination, I bit the bullet and asked.
M-my apologies, is there an issue?
"Y-You can't just-I mean, YES, OF COURSE THERE IS," yelled Faryea, her frustration bubbling over and briefly overcoming her usual stutter.
Explain it to me, please. Pretend I have no clue what you're talking about.
As doubt seeped into her self-righteous expression, throwing her off balance again (more metaphorically this time), it seemed that wasn't where she expected me to go with it. With that, her stride was broken and it took another set of half-started sentences and interruptions, all tinged with a sort of exasperated frustration.
"I-You can't-" unable to articulate whatever she'd set out to say, her self-righteous frustration slowly guttered out, leaving only a resigned glumness, "I'm not that kind of demon, okay? I'm not…I'm not up to going out and murdering someone who did nothing wrong," she finished with a depressed slouch, as though admitting some embarrassing secret.
Well...
My
Bugger.
In a way, I guess this exchange was a good thing. Regardless of anything else, I was vaguely thankful that the imp meekness wasn't just a layer of cowardice covering the heart of a sociopath ('Per her words, at least'). On the other hand, well…The fact that mana appeared to be most commonly harvested from living, likely sentient beings...
...Oh. Well, I guess that's... Ah, Well that's…unfortunate. With slowly my mana regenerates, there's…I don't think there's much chance of me getting much done, unless furnishing these rooms is literally free. I don't suppose there's a better way of procuring such a thing? One that doesn't involve murder...?
Faryea's expression softened as I spoke. By the end, she'd settled on 'sheepishly embarrassed', as I admitted my lack of knowledge (and my own reluctance towards murder).
"...Oh. Right. I kinda just…The, uh, the boss said she picked this place because, uh, because there'd be a lot of…uh…mana in the soil here, she said...I mean, I could ask the town down the hill if they have anyone who's recently di-"
A phantom feeling of nausea struck where I imagined my stomach to be.
L-let's keep that as a back-up plan. A back-up plan for any other back-up plans we come up with.
Perhaps I was being overly squeamish and, in time, I'd look back at my current outlook as hopelessly naive, but I frankly had no desire to even encounter a dead body, far less create one.
Regardless of my (former, I suppose) video game habit, I always considered myself a peaceful sort of person.
As a last resort, in self defence? Perhaps.
…
Actually, make that 'hopefully'.
On the other hand, pre-mediated murder for personal gain?
Worse, for the sake of expediency?
Regardless of the situation, regardless of how a more savage world might change my outlook, I hoped myself incapable of sinking to such a depth. It might've been nice to call it impossible; to have that sort of certainty in my own moral character, but that would've been dishonest. I'd never been tested in such a way. I'd never really wanted for much.
If forced to go without what I was usually accustomed to? I couldn't say. While it was something I'd occasionally dwelt upon, in some of my more introspective moments, it wasn't something I liked thinking about.
In any case, on the off chance your boss is mistaken...Is there anything less morbid that might suffice?
"…Sorry, I don't think so. If you can't draw mana directly from the realm of the gods, the only options are to take it from those who can..." she trailed off, looking ever more forlorn, "Is…Is there anything else? I can't…Y'know…But I still want to help."
As it happened, there was. It wasn't quite as urgent as ensuring I had the mana for building. In fact, it was basically a moot point, if I didn't, but the next thing on the agenda was obtaining stuff. Things. Having found the initial options for upgrading my first room to be underwhelming, I turned to the manual once more and found the solution. All I needed to do was Catalogue the item in question, and I'd be able to both duplicate it as a construct and integrate it into my room upgrades. I tried Cataloguing the Chapel to mixed results. While I now had '[Dust Bunnies]' as a viable construct, most of the furniture remained resistant to my efforts. Questioning the Manual successively directed me to 'Restrictions While Adventurers are Present', 'Dungeon Rank' and 'Unique Items' before I gave up and decided to kill two birds with one stone.
I needed stuff to experiment with...And I needed stuff in general.
Well, while I try and hunt down that cache of mana, would you mind popping into town and picking up a couple of things for me?
* * * * * * * *
Stretching my senses outwards, back into that overhead not-sight view, felt strange and unnatural, but it was unfortunately necessary. I couldn't just waste mana sifting through every grain of soil until I found whatever it was I was looking for, nor did I have the patience for the same. To my surprise, my dungeon sense (as I had 'imaginatively' named it) had changed in the half hour since I'd used it. With the dungeon's expansion, the extent of what I could sense had expanded even further. While limits of my Domain were bright and detailed, I could also feel all the way out to the edge of where I could expand to, albeit only in a sort of vague, disconnected way. Able to sense where I could dig, where I couldn't dig yet and where I couldn't dig at all, I was able to make an educated guess at the shape of my immediate geography.
The chapel sat on the far edge of a small hill, probably overlooking the town. Its crest was unnaturally flattened, likely levelled when the building was first constructed. There was a gentle curve to it, with a fuzziness to its outer limits that I guessed was grass. A lonely stone statue stood behind the chapel, though for what purpose, I couldn't tell.
Whatever I was looking for, it wasn't on the surface, and it wasn't at the base of the first floor. With how deep I'd already gone, this still left a pretty large amount of soil to sift through. Scanning through the soil, a curious difference in density attracted my attention, where the soil had been actively turned at some point in the recent past. What that exactly meant, I couldn't tell. Geology wasn't my strong suite. Instead, I focused my senses for a closer look.
Then I found the dead body.
At first, with my detached perspective, I didn't react. Years spent playing video games and watching cartoons had conditioned me to just accept that skeletons were a thing you'd just see while going underground. Then the shock hit, as I realised, no, this was an actual dead body. Someone had been buried here...Long ago enough that their body was almost entirely wasted a way, but not quite long enough to be an all out fossil. Completely forgetting what I was looking for in the first place, I snapped to attention, first in shock, then wondering if I'd stumbled upon something I shouldn't have.
It was perhaps a silly thing for a dungeon to think, but I was nothing if not set in my ways.
Then I noticed the rest of them.
A couple of metres...Or, perhaps, six feet under the surface, lay a mass of corpses, most little more than skeletons. For a moment, I was horrified, thinking I'd stumbled upon some sort of mass grave, for there were no coffins, nor the sort of neat separation you'd expect from a cemetery
…Oh.
Right.
...
That would explain why the chapel isn't in the exact centre of the hill.
Right, this was a local parish in what was probably a small, out of the way, medieval town. I vaguely recalled that the more respectful, egalitarian cemeteries were a more modern invention. Regardless of how off it felt, this was probably just…the normal way of doing things around here.
Reluctantly, I burrowed a rough tunnel up to the edge of where the bodies started, unwilling to excavate passed the invisible border. I waited a minute. Then, I waited a couple minutes more. I still didn't really know how mana worked and part of me was still holding out hope that it'd just sort of flow into the newly opened void. Constructing a room didn't help; still no options beyond the most basic, aesthetic improvements and no changes to my now dwindling mana pool. I cursed the task I was being shepherded towards. With the walls so close, I was somehow able to…I suppose 'smell it' is the closest equivalent.
Focusing my altered vision through the earth, I could
I immediately regretted it.
Mana from corpses. I hadn't expected to be able to taste it. If anything, I'd expected it to taste like decay. Like the smell of half-rotten meat or curdled milk, which were what that 'rotten food' evoked to sheltered little me. It didn't, but it was nearly just as bad. It was sickly sweet in a way that went beyond anything I'd ever tried before. A sort of horrible intensity that eclipsed any sort of other flavour I'd ever encountered. The imagery it evoked somehow became more vivid, far more than what one should be able to ascertain by taste alone. Within the mana, there was an untainted cheerfulness that rejected the very idea of tragedy. Injury and death were erased by its touch. Bones mended, flesh knit, madness cured and anger calmed. Beneath that…No, not beneath. There was no 'darker' side. That it was so pure was the most uncanny part. Dogma and unwavering faith were baked into all aspects of its existence, for good or ill.
I was repulsed by it.
I had always been one to cherish doubt and the ability to question my own judgment. Certainty without reason was anathema to me. I pushed it as far away from the core of my being as I could. I'd have spat it out, if I could. Thrown it up, if I could. But no, I just had to stomach it as I watched my power eat away at the hard-packed soil, then at the lone corpse it contained. As the spell finished its work, the intensity began to fade, eventually receding to leave only a thoroughly unpleasant after taste and the oily feeling of unwell-ness that I always associated with overeating.
* * * * * * * *
Fair warning, wrote a bunch of this super late. Will come back to do another pass later. Next up is my second pass at Snip 2.
EDIT: Second pass complete[/color]
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4. The Imp (1) - Odds & Ends
Faryea was confused.
It was a feeling she'd become well acquainted with as a Witch's familiar. Though she had an instinctual grasp of magic, as one might assume would be normal for a monster that had 'Hex' innately, she still only a level eight Imp. Per the 'Call Familiar' spell description, her job was to provide twelve extra inventory slots and complete menial tasks. That was it. At less than a third of hermistress's boss's own level, she was always out of her league in combat and, as a D-Rank monster, she was locked out of gaining the class levels that would grant her proficiency in crafting. As often as she wanted to ask questions about potion brewing or ritual casting, it'd been well-established that breaking her boss's concentration would not be tolerated.
In the end, she'd suppressed her curiosity and resigned herself to watching silently and cleaning things up after the explosions had finished. Though her worries and hunches were sometimes depressingly prescient, she often found herself wondering whether such things were vindicating her instincts or her pessimism.
So far, it looked like her time as a Dungeon Minion would be more of the same.
Okay, that was unfair. This was an entirely different breed of confusion. A complete sort bewilderment, exemplified by her riddle of a first task. Her real boss, Miss Shadowspire, was an oft transparent taskmaster, even as she refused to divulge her full intentions on principle. Faryea's cursory knowledge of a Witch's crafts and abilities frequently allowed her to divine the finished product, or at least make educated guesses. The dungeon's request, on the other hand, had her completely stumped.
She scrolled through her inventory, now full of painfully mundane items, checking them off against the list in her head.
Rope. Check.
Ladder. Check
Bucket of water. Check.
'Something metal-y; whatever you can find'. Scrap Iron cut-offs. Double-check.
Candles...
That was all but two of the requests wrapped up, not counting 'anything interesting you happen across' (not that she was holding out hope; the quiet little town was about as far away from anything interest as you might get). So far, it'd been fairly easy. Despite their simple, salt of the earth nature, the townspeople were surprisingly accepting of the two infernally aligned guests. All she needed to say was 'the boss needs it' (technically true, for she never specified who was her boss) and both the blacksmith and that one farmer at the market who'd first greeted them were more than happy to help.
The candles, on the other hand, were a different story. When she'd asked the nice farmer about borrowing some, the imp been handed a horrible, misshapen thing made of what she could only guess had to be tallow. So shocked, she'd nearly fumbled the offering. Once out of sight, a quick test showed it burnt with a horrible, ashen smoke that did make her drop it, despite her resistance to fire. She didn't have the necessary expertise to see its item level, but no self-respecting chandler would've ever let that see the light of day. No, she'd have to...have to ask her other boss for one.
Which was why she found herself out in the open, slowly navigating her way south. Asking around town had directed her towards a small field, where the boss had brought one of the prospective members of the Town Watch to unlock a class. It was easy enough to find them. Out in the open, a young-ish boy with short, brown hair fired arrows at a distant target. Jarod, she recalled vaguely. One of the few to volunteer for the position. Sat beneath a lonely tree, the only patch of shade in the area, the boss watched with her usual half-focused displeasure. As always, it was hard to tell whether it was something in the present that'd drawn her ire, or if she was bedevilled by some distant thought.
Such things had become common ever since her boss's trouble with her boss.
At first, she wondered if she hadn't been noticed, but as she approached, the boss addressed her.
"Faryea," she said, voice detached and attention still focused on the boy. Following her bosses eyes, she observed him for a moment. From his tense stance, wavering aim and reluctance to fire, he still obviously wasn't at home with the bow in his hands. Faryea had to guess this was what an F-rank in a Weapon Skill looked like. Reaching E-Rank was the main prerequisite for the Archer class. Humans had to start somewhere, she supposed.
Thought concluded, Faryea remembered her task.
"Um, boss-?"
"Faryea, what have I told you about starting sentences with 'um'?" her boss interrupted.
"S-sorry, boss," she replied, halting herself before she added more fuel to the fire, "I was hoping to ask to borrow a candle, please."
A moment passed without an answer, the field silent except for the semi-regular whistle of arrows, and Faryea faltered, wondering what she'd done wrong now. In a slow, deliberate movement, the boss sat up ever so slightly, attention fully on her familiar, as she asked, "What for, exactly...?"
"The, uh, the dungeon spirit asked for one," she answered reflexively. She froze, half cowering, as it became obvious that wasn't the right answer. Her boss finished sitting up and lean forward, expression intent.
"Faryea, how does the spirit know to ask for a candle, and what did it say it needed it for?" asked her boss, an intensity to her gaze rarely present outside combat.
"The, uh, the spirit's from...from another plane, it said. It, uh, still has its memories...and it didn't say why it needed it..." she trailed off. Listening to her own explanation made her realise just how potentially stupid she'd been.
Her boss studied her expression, allowing the magnitude of her potential, future error to sink in. She was gathering items at the behest of a dungeon spirit. One that'd retained its knowledge from a previous life. A complete being, in possession of one of the most powerful artefacts fathomable. One that could multiple any object it could get its hands on and synthesise unholy combinations of objects with a logic-breaking ease. As polite and agreeable as she'd found it, what little she knew about the spirit was from only a brief and shallow conversation. For all she knew, she could've been on the verge of handing it the keys to any number disastrous creations.
"What else did it ask you to retrieve?"
She rattled off the list, looking away in shame. The worst part was she still couldn't see what was staring her in the face. Candles were a well-known part of plenty of magic rituals, as was water, but few could be performed without additional reagents. The other parts? They seemed mostly worthless. Knowing how these things went, there was probably something she was missing. Silently, she braced for that cold, dispassionate explanation of just how exactly those six items that had seemed so innocuous could be used for something horrific.
But it never came.
She hesitantly looked back up, expecting the dressing down to begin at any moment.
Far from the grave disappointment she'd expected, there was a sort of vague amusement to her boss's expression, punctuated by a sigh that she'd almost call relieved (though her pessimistic side would've probably called it 'resigned'). Unable to see what assuaged her boss's worries left Faryea only more confused.
"Boss...?"
"Yes, yes, take a candle. Just remember to bring it back. They're level thirty three items, and I have to spend another entire week on that cart, just to pick up more from Ezzimire's, I will be pissed." she answered, tone light and barely acknowledging her previous misgivings. Faryea nodded uncertainly. The boss wasn't usually one for suddenly changing her mind like this (or being this ammenable in general).
"I, well, y'know...It's-You just said-It's a dungeon spirit, right?...Are you, uh, sure it's okay...?" she tested, still caught off-guard by the sudden turnaround. That earned her little more than an impatient eye roll.
"What'd I just s-Look, so long as it's not going to murder the brats and it doesn't do anything that'll bring the Knights down on us, it's fine," said her boss, before she returned her attention to the archer-in-training.
Faryea answered with a nod, still failing to follow her boss's train of thought, yet unsure what else she could say. They sat in what was almost a companionable silence for a while, watching the continuing volley of ill-aimed arrows, the boy seemingly unaware of the conversation that'd just occurred behind him. Watching the slow, failure-fraught progress (or, at least, she hoped it was progress), Faryea was glad she'd never had to unlock her own class.
Faryea had little experience with the usual class unlocking process, or progression of any kind, really. During the entirety of her time as a free demon, she'd gained a total of two levels, neither of which of her own volition. As a familiar, her experience gain was linked directly to her Mistress's and self-improvement was rarely a consideration.
There was an unexpected bitterness attached to that thought. One she hoped was just an instinctual thing. She…well, she didn't particularly like working for Miss Shadowspire. She could admit that to herself. It was dull, often demeaning work that she didn't consider herself suited for, and rarely earned her gratitude, let alone anything more, but Faryea always tried to look on the brighter side. It was safe and it was stable. Those were meant to be positives. Her lack of immediate, tangible progress (or even its possibility) was part and parcel with that. More than anything, it was better than the alternatives she'd found.
It was better than being a wandering monster, hiding in the shadows, searching for an appropriately Dark-aligned victim (or worse, creating Dark-aligned victims), until the knights finally found and ended her.
It was better than serving one of the four big Demon Lords, destined to clamber over the bodies of her peers, until she eventually let her guard down, or attracted too much attention and found herself as someone's next meal.
It wasn't exactly glamorous or engaging, but it was a peaceful existence, relatively speaking. It kept her fed without forcing her to resort to doing something terrible.
It was better than being dead.
That morbid thought turned over once in Faryea's head before she realised exactly what she'd been thinking, the ensuing shock sending her crashing back to the real world. She wasn't sure what brought such things to mind, but she was certain she needed to distract herself from it. Didn't she have something she was…?
…
…
It was then that Faryea remembered that this wasn't a social visit.
"AH! I, uh, I-I have to go. I still have, the, y'know, stuff and things," she stuttered, her mouth refusing to cooperate with her brain without at least two weeks warning. Mercifully, her boss didn't scold her for it. As she jumped to her feet, she was given one last parting request.
"When you go back to the dungeon, tell it this. Two rooms with three level one Shambling Corpses. Give me that by next week and something for a party of level fives on the second floor after that. That's it. All I want is...Well, all I'm asking for is that, by the time the fighting starts to heat up, I can trust the brats to hold their own against a couple dire wolves long enough for someone to find me. "
And with that, it was obvious she was dismissed. Slowing only to gingerly pick a Beeswax Candle out of her boss's bags, Faryea rushed off back towards the town, wings buzzing furiously, chased by the invisible spectre of her own imagined deadline. With the field rapidly shrinking behind her, she went over her inventory and list once more.
Rope, candles, ladder, water, metal...Ughhh, I should've asked the boss where I'd even find a 'Backgammon or Chess set'.!
* * * * * * * *
Kinda short update. Will likely be expanded heavily when I get around to my second pass on it, but I'm kinda too tired to go further atm.
Fun fact, this was going to be a completely different thing until this evening.
EDIT: Updated
It was a feeling she'd become well acquainted with as a Witch's familiar. Though she had an instinctual grasp of magic, as one might assume would be normal for a monster that had 'Hex' innately, she still only a level eight Imp. Per the 'Call Familiar' spell description, her job was to provide twelve extra inventory slots and complete menial tasks. That was it. At less than a third of her
In the end, she'd suppressed her curiosity and resigned herself to watching silently and cleaning things up after the explosions had finished. Though her worries and hunches were sometimes depressingly prescient, she often found herself wondering whether such things were vindicating her instincts or her pessimism.
So far, it looked like her time as a Dungeon Minion would be more of the same.
Okay, that was unfair. This was an entirely different breed of confusion. A complete sort bewilderment, exemplified by her riddle of a first task. Her real boss, Miss Shadowspire, was an oft transparent taskmaster, even as she refused to divulge her full intentions on principle. Faryea's cursory knowledge of a Witch's crafts and abilities frequently allowed her to divine the finished product, or at least make educated guesses. The dungeon's request, on the other hand, had her completely stumped.
She scrolled through her inventory, now full of painfully mundane items, checking them off against the list in her head.
Rope. Check.
Ladder. Check
Bucket of water. Check.
'Something metal-y; whatever you can find'. Scrap Iron cut-offs. Double-check.
Candles...
That was all but two of the requests wrapped up, not counting 'anything interesting you happen across' (not that she was holding out hope; the quiet little town was about as far away from anything interest as you might get). So far, it'd been fairly easy. Despite their simple, salt of the earth nature, the townspeople were surprisingly accepting of the two infernally aligned guests. All she needed to say was 'the boss needs it' (technically true, for she never specified who was her boss) and both the blacksmith and that one farmer at the market who'd first greeted them were more than happy to help.
The candles, on the other hand, were a different story. When she'd asked the nice farmer about borrowing some, the imp been handed a horrible, misshapen thing made of what she could only guess had to be tallow. So shocked, she'd nearly fumbled the offering. Once out of sight, a quick test showed it burnt with a horrible, ashen smoke that did make her drop it, despite her resistance to fire. She didn't have the necessary expertise to see its item level, but no self-respecting chandler would've ever let that see the light of day. No, she'd have to...have to ask her other boss for one.
Which was why she found herself out in the open, slowly navigating her way south. Asking around town had directed her towards a small field, where the boss had brought one of the prospective members of the Town Watch to unlock a class. It was easy enough to find them. Out in the open, a young-ish boy with short, brown hair fired arrows at a distant target. Jarod, she recalled vaguely. One of the few to volunteer for the position. Sat beneath a lonely tree, the only patch of shade in the area, the boss watched with her usual half-focused displeasure. As always, it was hard to tell whether it was something in the present that'd drawn her ire, or if she was bedevilled by some distant thought.
Such things had become common ever since her boss's trouble with her boss.
At first, she wondered if she hadn't been noticed, but as she approached, the boss addressed her.
"Faryea," she said, voice detached and attention still focused on the boy. Following her bosses eyes, she observed him for a moment. From his tense stance, wavering aim and reluctance to fire, he still obviously wasn't at home with the bow in his hands. Faryea had to guess this was what an F-rank in a Weapon Skill looked like. Reaching E-Rank was the main prerequisite for the Archer class. Humans had to start somewhere, she supposed.
Thought concluded, Faryea remembered her task.
"Um, boss-?"
"Faryea, what have I told you about starting sentences with 'um'?" her boss interrupted.
"S-sorry, boss," she replied, halting herself before she added more fuel to the fire, "I was hoping to ask to borrow a candle, please."
A moment passed without an answer, the field silent except for the semi-regular whistle of arrows, and Faryea faltered, wondering what she'd done wrong now. In a slow, deliberate movement, the boss sat up ever so slightly, attention fully on her familiar, as she asked, "What for, exactly...?"
"The, uh, the dungeon spirit asked for one," she answered reflexively. She froze, half cowering, as it became obvious that wasn't the right answer. Her boss finished sitting up and lean forward, expression intent.
"Faryea, how does the spirit know to ask for a candle, and what did it say it needed it for?" asked her boss, an intensity to her gaze rarely present outside combat.
"The, uh, the spirit's from...from another plane, it said. It, uh, still has its memories...and it didn't say why it needed it..." she trailed off. Listening to her own explanation made her realise just how potentially stupid she'd been.
Her boss studied her expression, allowing the magnitude of her potential, future error to sink in. She was gathering items at the behest of a dungeon spirit. One that'd retained its knowledge from a previous life. A complete being, in possession of one of the most powerful artefacts fathomable. One that could multiple any object it could get its hands on and synthesise unholy combinations of objects with a logic-breaking ease. As polite and agreeable as she'd found it, what little she knew about the spirit was from only a brief and shallow conversation. For all she knew, she could've been on the verge of handing it the keys to any number disastrous creations.
"What else did it ask you to retrieve?"
She rattled off the list, looking away in shame. The worst part was she still couldn't see what was staring her in the face. Candles were a well-known part of plenty of magic rituals, as was water, but few could be performed without additional reagents. The other parts? They seemed mostly worthless. Knowing how these things went, there was probably something she was missing. Silently, she braced for that cold, dispassionate explanation of just how exactly those six items that had seemed so innocuous could be used for something horrific.
But it never came.
She hesitantly looked back up, expecting the dressing down to begin at any moment.
Far from the grave disappointment she'd expected, there was a sort of vague amusement to her boss's expression, punctuated by a sigh that she'd almost call relieved (though her pessimistic side would've probably called it 'resigned'). Unable to see what assuaged her boss's worries left Faryea only more confused.
"Boss...?"
"Yes, yes, take a candle. Just remember to bring it back. They're level thirty three items, and I have to spend another entire week on that cart, just to pick up more from Ezzimire's, I will be pissed." she answered, tone light and barely acknowledging her previous misgivings. Faryea nodded uncertainly. The boss wasn't usually one for suddenly changing her mind like this (or being this ammenable in general).
"I, well, y'know...It's-You just said-It's a dungeon spirit, right?...Are you, uh, sure it's okay...?" she tested, still caught off-guard by the sudden turnaround. That earned her little more than an impatient eye roll.
"What'd I just s-Look, so long as it's not going to murder the brats and it doesn't do anything that'll bring the Knights down on us, it's fine," said her boss, before she returned her attention to the archer-in-training.
Faryea answered with a nod, still failing to follow her boss's train of thought, yet unsure what else she could say. They sat in what was almost a companionable silence for a while, watching the continuing volley of ill-aimed arrows, the boy seemingly unaware of the conversation that'd just occurred behind him. Watching the slow, failure-fraught progress (or, at least, she hoped it was progress), Faryea was glad she'd never had to unlock her own class.
Faryea had little experience with the usual class unlocking process, or progression of any kind, really. During the entirety of her time as a free demon, she'd gained a total of two levels, neither of which of her own volition. As a familiar, her experience gain was linked directly to her Mistress's and self-improvement was rarely a consideration.
There was an unexpected bitterness attached to that thought. One she hoped was just an instinctual thing. She…well, she didn't particularly like working for Miss Shadowspire. She could admit that to herself. It was dull, often demeaning work that she didn't consider herself suited for, and rarely earned her gratitude, let alone anything more, but Faryea always tried to look on the brighter side. It was safe and it was stable. Those were meant to be positives. Her lack of immediate, tangible progress (or even its possibility) was part and parcel with that. More than anything, it was better than the alternatives she'd found.
It was better than being a wandering monster, hiding in the shadows, searching for an appropriately Dark-aligned victim (or worse, creating Dark-aligned victims), until the knights finally found and ended her.
It was better than serving one of the four big Demon Lords, destined to clamber over the bodies of her peers, until she eventually let her guard down, or attracted too much attention and found herself as someone's next meal.
It wasn't exactly glamorous or engaging, but it was a peaceful existence, relatively speaking. It kept her fed without forcing her to resort to doing something terrible.
It was better than being dead.
That morbid thought turned over once in Faryea's head before she realised exactly what she'd been thinking, the ensuing shock sending her crashing back to the real world. She wasn't sure what brought such things to mind, but she was certain she needed to distract herself from it. Didn't she have something she was…?
…
…
It was then that Faryea remembered that this wasn't a social visit.
"AH! I, uh, I-I have to go. I still have, the, y'know, stuff and things," she stuttered, her mouth refusing to cooperate with her brain without at least two weeks warning. Mercifully, her boss didn't scold her for it. As she jumped to her feet, she was given one last parting request.
"When you go back to the dungeon, tell it this. Two rooms with three level one Shambling Corpses. Give me that by next week and something for a party of level fives on the second floor after that. That's it. All I want is...Well, all I'm asking for is that, by the time the fighting starts to heat up, I can trust the brats to hold their own against a couple dire wolves long enough for someone to find me. "
And with that, it was obvious she was dismissed. Slowing only to gingerly pick a Beeswax Candle out of her boss's bags, Faryea rushed off back towards the town, wings buzzing furiously, chased by the invisible spectre of her own imagined deadline. With the field rapidly shrinking behind her, she went over her inventory and list once more.
Rope, candles, ladder, water, metal...Ughhh, I should've asked the boss where I'd even find a 'Backgammon or Chess set'.!
* * * * * * * *
Kinda short update. Will likely be expanded heavily when I get around to my second pass on it, but I'm kinda too tired to go further atm.
Fun fact, this was going to be a completely different thing until this evening.
EDIT: Updated
Last edited:
5. Floor 1 - The Mortuary (1)
Once I had my bearings, my first act was to burn through nearly all the mana I'd just absorbed to stabilise the chapel. With both the discomfort of Mana Overflow and the persistent unease of my natural paranoia alleviated, I thought I might have a moment to reorientate my thoughts, but it was not to be. Even as the action was resolving, the mana was already flowing again, its foul taste only lessened by the reduced volume and a slightly more prepared mindset.
With how it was acting, the graveyard's mana seemed less like a vein of ore and more like an aquifer I'd just tunnelled into.
Waste not, want not, I immediately tried to match its influx with a flurry of action, expanding both the room I'd just opened and the one at the entrance. I dug another corridor off from the mining room, then a cul-de-sac at its end, which became a room, expanded it, (Oh, what's this option?) fortified it (neat), fortified the other rooms, fortified the tunnels, split the entrance tunnel's half-tile drops into a proper stairway, lowered the step height, lowered it again, despaired at the lack of a guardrail option, considered turning it into a ramp, discarded that idea...
Then I stopped.
(Strictly speaking, I'd 'stopped' after that second step lowering, but it was then that I 'officially' stopped.)
Forty five minutes (or so) of work and I had already lost a lot of ground against the tide of mana. Most of it while fretting over what to do with the entrance. I had easily met its flow while in motion, but that wasn't something I could maintain. I'd never been an especially agile thinker and I'd always had trouble when forced to make plans on the fly. With each task completed, I had to centre myself and parse what next?, which took longer and longer as I slowly went down the most obvious options. No, this wasn't sustainable. Especially not when I was eventually going to run into the non-mana limits of the system. I needed to staunch the flow and give myself time to think. I needed to dam the river, not drink it dry.
Which meant going through the manual and finding a proper solution. Which, unfortunately, meant I'd need to stop building and risk exceeding my mana cap again.
Minutes passed as I fruitlessly searched the manual for some way to store or bank the mana I was gaining. Though I studiously avoided the status screen, for once I started checking it, I wouldn't be able to stop myself, I swore I could hear it tick upwards in my head. As I approached what I estimated to be the limit, I braced myself for the returning sense of nausea.
...
...
Finally giving in, I checked on my current numbers.
I continued watching it warily for about a minute, just to make sure. Certain that it'd actually stopped, I sighed in relief (menta-look, you get the picture already).
...
Wait...Where's it going then...?
The answer was blindingly obvious as soon as I took a quick peek at what I was quickly coming to call The Mortuary. The mana was flowing through the breach, just as it had previously, but rather than being directly absorbed into my mana pool, it was now leeching out into the room as a thick, pale blue fog. I observed it tentatively, but it seemed mostly harmless enough.
Now that the matter didn't seem quite so pressing, I was able to calm down and find a solution at my own pace. Usually, now that it wasn't immediately health threatening, I would've left it until I had no other choice, but I was still in a sort of active frame of mind.
Once I found it, it seemed obvious.
At my command, the earth drew upwards, reaching towards the breach like a flower towards the sun in time lapse. In my head, I imagined it following conductor-like hand movements and felt vaguely sad that I couldn't indulge in such fantasy. For now, it wasn't much to look at. For now, it was little more than an oddly shaped spike, jutting out of the ground. In my own pseudo-sight, however, I could see the ghostly image of its eventual form overlaid upon it. Over time, eerily beautiful crystals of the same colour as the fog would sprout from its surface like the leaves of some alien plant. It was a precarious looking thing, each crystal far larger should've been feasible. If not for the structure's supernatural nature, surely such a set of crystals would collapse under their own weight.
I smirked. That should hold things for a while.
Then, I backpedalled.
Wait a second, that wasn't...
'Enhance' hadn't been available from the status screen before. I remembered that. My options overall had be quite limited before now and even so, that resource...node, I suppose...was the only option I'd been presented with. For a moment, I wondered whether I was only capable of accessing options I was actively aware of…Except, I'd still been able to 'Catalogue', 'Absorb' or 'Abandon' things in the chapel, even before I'd known what any of those things were. Odd. Out of curiosity, I went to experiment with the enhance feature, only to find it'd vanished from the room's list of options.
It seemed I'd need more time with the Manual. A frustrating task to be certain. Beyond my initial luck with its basic functions, finding anything within it seemed unneccessarily difficult and finicky. At some point, I'd need to figure out how to use the accursed thing without resorting to what was likely just the 'I Feel Lucky' search function.
Without warning, a half-pained, half-startled wail punctuated my thoughts and shocked me back to reality.
Very timely, UI.
It was then that I discovered menu pop-ups and alerts appeared behind the Manual text box. Rushing towards the sound, I found Faryea in that small entrance room, hunched over and retching, as though about to throw up. Though I'd stopped the flow of the Holy Mana into the dungeon, the fog already present had diffused across the entire first floor, eventually settling as a faint tint in the air around chest height. Human chest height, that is. With the height she usually defaulted to, Faryea's head would've been well under it.
I spent a few moments paralysed with panic, unsure how to even interact. The shock was cleared by a thought; get her out of there. Without thinking, without even really knowing what I was doing, I took Faryea in my Grasp and Shunted her back up to the Chapel, away from the obviously toxic mist, before gingerly laying her on the ground.
Faryea! Are you o-?
"W-what-" she covered her mouth, as she was accosted by her gag reflex. While she dropped to her knees, retching, I quickly examined her stat page. No health lost. No icons or effects noted on her status bar. As far as the system knew, there was nothing wrong with her, which only lead me to think that the status page I was looking at wasn't as reliable as I'd come to expect from video games. Hopefully, my gut feeling was wrong and I was being overly panicky as usual. With a little bit of time, the initial rush of panic decayed into a less acute sort of worry, as things remained stable and it seemed she wasn't in immediate danger.
"Wh-" she tried to start again, before she dropped to her knees and continued dry heaving. With no clue what the underlying cause was (beyond the blindingly obvious idea of 'Holy magic probably doesn't agree with demons', which I should probably have considered previously) or whether this would even appear in the numerical system part of this reality, I couldn't even really use the manual to figure out what was happening without likely flipping through fifty irrelevant entries.
Will you be okay?
I immediately cursed myself for asking the question when she was having trouble speaking (WHAT DO YOU THINK, IDIOT?!). Still, she did her best to struggle through it.
"Yeah...It's..." she pushed herself into a sitting position, still visibly unwell, but growing more stable with each passing moment, "Mmm, I'll, uh, be fine. In a day or two. I'll be-urgh, I'll be okay. I've seen some of the other imps get Mana Poisoning before, when they...they did...mmph. It's...Not fun."
I latched onto that phrasing with a vengeance.
Where were those helpful alternative links when I actually bloody needed them?
Oh, very helpful. And very specific. Still, I let out a metaphorical breath I hadn't know I'd been holding. Obviously, it wasn't nothing, but it didn't seem dire enough to still be fretting over it. Hopefully, I'd just triggered the monster equivalent of Lactose Intolerance.
Managing to fight passed whatever sort of nausea and other ill-feelings she was suffering through, Faryea had a moment to parse what exactly had happened and realised just who was likely at fault.
"Wh-…Ughc…what did you do?" she choked out, voice tinged with a mix of frustration, shock and 'I'm really trying not to throw up'.
…I opened up a tunnel to the cemetery and I wasn't quite fast enough at placing down something to catch it, sorry.
That earned me an exasperated, vaguely sceptical glare as she tried to push herself into a position to more comfortably direct her ire towards my orb.
"By-mmph-by Vedrunn's great knobbed staff, how does that have anything to do with the fact the first floor is flooded with holy mana?"
At first, I hesitated, mostly out of confusion regarding the unfamiliar turn of phrase (Is that literal, or is that a euphemism?), until I realised what she was specifically asking about. I bit back my first answer ('Excuse me? I was under the impression this was exactly the stuff you'd asked be to go after') and calmed myself. Obviously, she had no clue what this was about. Obviously, it wasn't her I should be irritated at for not having all the answers when it was likely her boss who organised this entire setup. Even if it seemed whatever happened wasn't necessarily my fault (which was always the first thing I was drawn towards proving), that didn't mean it had to be her fault.
Unfortunately, I couldn't help but let a little irritation bleed through.
How would I know? You're asking someone who doesn't even know how mana works. I opened up a hole to get to it, and that's what poured out. Maybe it has to do with the fact it's a cemetery next to a chapel?
A few moments passed as we stared each other down (well, I stared her down, and she stared through me at the orb), before Faryea flopped forward, sprawled on the floor, likely having run out of adrenalin or whatever else she been running on. Silence reigned for a time as she lay there and I hesitantly kept an eye on her, immediately feeling vaguely guilty.
After some time, she shifted, struggling to pull herself back up. Failing that, she craned her neck upwards.
"Oh, uh…right…I-mmph- got the stuff."
* * * * * * * *
Another short one that'll need to be heavily expanded upon and revised. Definitely not super happy with this one, but I felt like it'd be best if I do the adjustments for part 4 first and revisit this once I'm done.
EDIT: Second pass
With how it was acting, the graveyard's mana seemed less like a vein of ore and more like an aquifer I'd just tunnelled into.
Waste not, want not, I immediately tried to match its influx with a flurry of action, expanding both the room I'd just opened and the one at the entrance. I dug another corridor off from the mining room, then a cul-de-sac at its end, which became a room, expanded it, (Oh, what's this option?) fortified it (neat), fortified the other rooms, fortified the tunnels, split the entrance tunnel's half-tile drops into a proper stairway, lowered the step height, lowered it again, despaired at the lack of a guardrail option, considered turning it into a ramp, discarded that idea...
Then I stopped.
(Strictly speaking, I'd 'stopped' after that second step lowering, but it was then that I 'officially' stopped.)
Forty five minutes (or so) of work and I had already lost a lot of ground against the tide of mana. Most of it while fretting over what to do with the entrance. I had easily met its flow while in motion, but that wasn't something I could maintain. I'd never been an especially agile thinker and I'd always had trouble when forced to make plans on the fly. With each task completed, I had to centre myself and parse what next?, which took longer and longer as I slowly went down the most obvious options. No, this wasn't sustainable. Especially not when I was eventually going to run into the non-mana limits of the system. I needed to staunch the flow and give myself time to think. I needed to dam the river, not drink it dry.
Which meant going through the manual and finding a proper solution. Which, unfortunately, meant I'd need to stop building and risk exceeding my mana cap again.
Minutes passed as I fruitlessly searched the manual for some way to store or bank the mana I was gaining. Though I studiously avoided the status screen, for once I started checking it, I wouldn't be able to stop myself, I swore I could hear it tick upwards in my head. As I approached what I estimated to be the limit, I braced myself for the returning sense of nausea.
...
...
Finally giving in, I checked on my current numbers.
I continued watching it warily for about a minute, just to make sure. Certain that it'd actually stopped, I sighed in relief (menta-look, you get the picture already).
...
Wait...Where's it going then...?
The answer was blindingly obvious as soon as I took a quick peek at what I was quickly coming to call The Mortuary. The mana was flowing through the breach, just as it had previously, but rather than being directly absorbed into my mana pool, it was now leeching out into the room as a thick, pale blue fog. I observed it tentatively, but it seemed mostly harmless enough.
Now that the matter didn't seem quite so pressing, I was able to calm down and find a solution at my own pace. Usually, now that it wasn't immediately health threatening, I would've left it until I had no other choice, but I was still in a sort of active frame of mind.
Once I found it, it seemed obvious.
At my command, the earth drew upwards, reaching towards the breach like a flower towards the sun in time lapse. In my head, I imagined it following conductor-like hand movements and felt vaguely sad that I couldn't indulge in such fantasy. For now, it wasn't much to look at. For now, it was little more than an oddly shaped spike, jutting out of the ground. In my own pseudo-sight, however, I could see the ghostly image of its eventual form overlaid upon it. Over time, eerily beautiful crystals of the same colour as the fog would sprout from its surface like the leaves of some alien plant. It was a precarious looking thing, each crystal far larger should've been feasible. If not for the structure's supernatural nature, surely such a set of crystals would collapse under their own weight.
I smirked. That should hold things for a while.
Then, I backpedalled.
Wait a second, that wasn't...
'Enhance' hadn't been available from the status screen before. I remembered that. My options overall had be quite limited before now and even so, that resource...node, I suppose...was the only option I'd been presented with. For a moment, I wondered whether I was only capable of accessing options I was actively aware of…Except, I'd still been able to 'Catalogue', 'Absorb' or 'Abandon' things in the chapel, even before I'd known what any of those things were. Odd. Out of curiosity, I went to experiment with the enhance feature, only to find it'd vanished from the room's list of options.
It seemed I'd need more time with the Manual. A frustrating task to be certain. Beyond my initial luck with its basic functions, finding anything within it seemed unneccessarily difficult and finicky. At some point, I'd need to figure out how to use the accursed thing without resorting to what was likely just the 'I Feel Lucky' search function.
Without warning, a half-pained, half-startled wail punctuated my thoughts and shocked me back to reality.
Very timely, UI.
It was then that I discovered menu pop-ups and alerts appeared behind the Manual text box. Rushing towards the sound, I found Faryea in that small entrance room, hunched over and retching, as though about to throw up. Though I'd stopped the flow of the Holy Mana into the dungeon, the fog already present had diffused across the entire first floor, eventually settling as a faint tint in the air around chest height. Human chest height, that is. With the height she usually defaulted to, Faryea's head would've been well under it.
I spent a few moments paralysed with panic, unsure how to even interact. The shock was cleared by a thought; get her out of there. Without thinking, without even really knowing what I was doing, I took Faryea in my Grasp and Shunted her back up to the Chapel, away from the obviously toxic mist, before gingerly laying her on the ground.
Faryea! Are you o-?
"W-what-" she covered her mouth, as she was accosted by her gag reflex. While she dropped to her knees, retching, I quickly examined her stat page. No health lost. No icons or effects noted on her status bar. As far as the system knew, there was nothing wrong with her, which only lead me to think that the status page I was looking at wasn't as reliable as I'd come to expect from video games. Hopefully, my gut feeling was wrong and I was being overly panicky as usual. With a little bit of time, the initial rush of panic decayed into a less acute sort of worry, as things remained stable and it seemed she wasn't in immediate danger.
"Wh-" she tried to start again, before she dropped to her knees and continued dry heaving. With no clue what the underlying cause was (beyond the blindingly obvious idea of 'Holy magic probably doesn't agree with demons', which I should probably have considered previously) or whether this would even appear in the numerical system part of this reality, I couldn't even really use the manual to figure out what was happening without likely flipping through fifty irrelevant entries.
Will you be okay?
I immediately cursed myself for asking the question when she was having trouble speaking (WHAT DO YOU THINK, IDIOT?!). Still, she did her best to struggle through it.
"Yeah...It's..." she pushed herself into a sitting position, still visibly unwell, but growing more stable with each passing moment, "Mmm, I'll, uh, be fine. In a day or two. I'll be-urgh, I'll be okay. I've seen some of the other imps get Mana Poisoning before, when they...they did...mmph. It's...Not fun."
I latched onto that phrasing with a vengeance.
Where were those helpful alternative links when I actually bloody needed them?
Oh, very helpful. And very specific. Still, I let out a metaphorical breath I hadn't know I'd been holding. Obviously, it wasn't nothing, but it didn't seem dire enough to still be fretting over it. Hopefully, I'd just triggered the monster equivalent of Lactose Intolerance.
Managing to fight passed whatever sort of nausea and other ill-feelings she was suffering through, Faryea had a moment to parse what exactly had happened and realised just who was likely at fault.
"Wh-…Ughc…what did you do?" she choked out, voice tinged with a mix of frustration, shock and 'I'm really trying not to throw up'.
…I opened up a tunnel to the cemetery and I wasn't quite fast enough at placing down something to catch it, sorry.
That earned me an exasperated, vaguely sceptical glare as she tried to push herself into a position to more comfortably direct her ire towards my orb.
"By-mmph-by Vedrunn's great knobbed staff, how does that have anything to do with the fact the first floor is flooded with holy mana?"
At first, I hesitated, mostly out of confusion regarding the unfamiliar turn of phrase (Is that literal, or is that a euphemism?), until I realised what she was specifically asking about. I bit back my first answer ('Excuse me? I was under the impression this was exactly the stuff you'd asked be to go after') and calmed myself. Obviously, she had no clue what this was about. Obviously, it wasn't her I should be irritated at for not having all the answers when it was likely her boss who organised this entire setup. Even if it seemed whatever happened wasn't necessarily my fault (which was always the first thing I was drawn towards proving), that didn't mean it had to be her fault.
Unfortunately, I couldn't help but let a little irritation bleed through.
How would I know? You're asking someone who doesn't even know how mana works. I opened up a hole to get to it, and that's what poured out. Maybe it has to do with the fact it's a cemetery next to a chapel?
A few moments passed as we stared each other down (well, I stared her down, and she stared through me at the orb), before Faryea flopped forward, sprawled on the floor, likely having run out of adrenalin or whatever else she been running on. Silence reigned for a time as she lay there and I hesitantly kept an eye on her, immediately feeling vaguely guilty.
After some time, she shifted, struggling to pull herself back up. Failing that, she craned her neck upwards.
"Oh, uh…right…I-mmph- got the stuff."
* * * * * * * *
Another short one that'll need to be heavily expanded upon and revised. Definitely not super happy with this one, but I felt like it'd be best if I do the adjustments for part 4 first and revisit this once I'm done.
EDIT: Second pass
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6. Floor 1 - The Mortuary (2)
A glimpse into the mind of Flintlock.
Friday Evening: 'Well, tomorrow I'll be done with Management Accounting, so I should have more time to write.'
Saturday Evening: 'Woo! Now I can spend all my spare time playing video games without feeling guilty!'
As the immortal line goes, 'If you want something done, ask a busy person.'
As of last Saturday, I stopped being busy.
Also, there's a foot note in this chapter. Since I used asterisks for scene dividers, I've marked it with a '^'.
* * * * * * * *
"So...uh...I know it's probably not my-"
'Why the stuff?'
"...Uh...Yeah. That."
I mentally smirked. I'd honestly hoped she'd ask. Partly out of ego, admittedly, but it was also reassuring that, after only about an hour, Faryea was feeling up to putting forward the question.
Why don't you give me your best guess first, and I'll give you my answer after.
"...Well. There's...uh...I thought it was the four base elements at first. Candle for fire, the bucket for water, metal for earth...But, there isn't an equivalent for wind...Um...The ladder is a ladder...And you can use rope for a lot of things. But I have no idea what the chess set's for..." she answered tentatively, with all the grace and certainty of an inattentive student attempting to answer a teacher's question on the fly. Having been that student more than once, I graciously declined to needle her.
Mmm, not quite. The candle, the rope and the ladder are functional. I've already put the candles to use with my first set of upgrades-
"So, you ARE making a summoning circle, I knew-"
I'm installing them along the entrance staircase because it's pitch black.
"…Oh. That's…uh…" she trailed off with a frown.
Dull? Uninspired?
"…I was going to say 'fine'…" she finished unconvincingly.
Hmmph. The water and the metal, on the other hand, are building blocks. As far as I can tell, while I'm capable of fabricating just about anything, I need something to start with. I want to see how far water and metal get me. I have a couple ideas on how to use them, but I suspect I'll need to put more thought into them before I see anything appear.
"...That doesn't explain the chess set," she answered. I paused,
…I would've thought that'd be self-evident. What do you think it's for?
"Well, I've heard of golems made to look like che-"
It's for playing Chess.
"…Wha-Why? You're a dungeon. Why would you want to play chess?"
Because I'm easily bored and, while I'd prefer cards, I'd have to play through you. Which rather defeats the purpose since you're also my only likely opponent. Assuming you're up for it.
"...Wh- 'Bored'?" she asked, with a sort of baffled curiosity. Not quite the question I'd been expecting.
…Yes…?
"How can you get bored when you don't have stats? When you can't get statused?"
This time, it was my turn to rendered silent by utter confused.
Wh-How-What do you mean, 'How can I be-', what, boredom's a status effect!?
I boggled at the menu prompt I was met with. It seemed patently ridiculously. Boredom was…well, boredom. It was just a thing. The idea that it was a literal status effect in this place…
"Yeah…I…Uh…Yeah," she mumbled, likely as confused as I was. What a stupid way for the world to work. The very idea was…
…
I paused as I turned the idea over in my head, forcing myself to play devil's advocate. 'Confusion' was often a status effect. So was 'Berserk'. By that token, why not 'Boredom'. Its effect was sensible enough (at least by RPG logic). If you were bored, you probably weren't going to learn as well. Continuing on from that, if you looked at a monster that was immune to such statuses, like a machine being immune to mental status, wouldn't you assume them incapable of feeling the respective emotion?
As much as I expected my experience with RPGs to help me, it'd also instilled a lot of preconceptions. I still needed to know more about the system I'd been dropped in, among other things.
I'm, uh, I'm not exactly well-versed with this whole...system...Maybe I'm completely wrong and this is completely opposed to the reality of things...But I'm going to take a wild punt and propose the possibility that the potential for boredom exists in all beings, even those that can't suffer from status effects.
"Wild wh-?"
Guess. Wild guess, more or less. I think I can assure you that…Well…Regardless of how else this transition has affected me, I'm pretty sure boredom is still on the table.
Faryea furrowed her brow, deep in thought. Briefly pausing to make sure she wasn't about to suddenly bring something else up, I covertly exited the conversation. Which mostly just meant turning my attention elsewhere Perhaps it was a little rude, but there was something terribly uncomfortable about her baffled expression. It left an unpleasantly guilty aftertaste. Besides I had my own unanswered questions to mull over.
During the conversation, something had struck me. Not wanting to get sidetracked, not wanting to accidentally vocalise it, I'd carefully pushed the thought aside, but now that I was thinking about the less immediate curiosities of this place…
'If it wasn't for fun, why would they even make chess in the first place?'
In my mind's eye, the catalogued chess set was frozen in the typical pre-game state. It'd been carved of two types of wood, one a deep red and the other a light tan, and had a distinctly hand-made quality to it. Beyond that, it was indistinguishable from its counterpart from home, as far as I could tell, which seemed all the stranger the more I thought about it.
As much as I wanted to avoid going mad with boredom, there were other distractions I could've asked for. I didn't even particularly like chess. Its deliberate pace never sat well with me and my amazing knack for overlooking problems staring me right in the face did my winrate no favours. I'd asked for it, along with backgammon, mostly because it was old. I hadn't put that much thought into it beyond 'I'll probably find those here unlike, say, Monopoly' (not that I'd have asked for that blight upon family gatherings).
The question I'd overlooked was 'Why would chess exist here, anyway?'
Chess was Indian in origin, as far as I recalled. The thirty two pieces originally represented the types of troops from that place and period, before time, revisions to the rules and the dissemination to other cultures rendered that mostly forgotten. Identifying each piece, I was reassured that, yes, it was still what I expected…And yet, also not what I expected. Did this world have an equivalent to the Middle East that the game emerged from? Why would the game have developed as it did when magic existed and was likely a major part of warfare.
I pondered the idea for some time, but couldn't make it sound any more plausible in my head. Either that was one incredible coincidence, or there was something sketchy about this place.
On one hand, I wanted to learn more about this place. About what exactly I should be expecting. While Faryea's boss might've reassured me that I'd be left in relative peace, I trusted her about as far as I could throw her, and that was taking into account my current lack of arms.
On the other hand…
Was there any real point worrying about it now?
For the moment, I was stuck where I was, with no company beyond Faryea, who didn't seem especially informed about anything, really ('No offense'). As much as I would've liked to pick the brain of someone more knowledgeable, that was little more than wishful thinking right now. Reluctantly, I tried to push the idea out of my mind for the time being.
And so, I returned to busying myself with building.
That was my intention at least. Unfortunately, as I returned my attention to the entrance hall once more, it was only fractionally more complete than the last time I checked about twenty minutes ago.
000:05:27:37
000:05:27:36
I glared at the timer, daring it to slow or stutter, before dismissing it. Only a smidge more than one twelfth of the way done. I stewed for a minute or two, indulging in what was functionally petty grumbling, before I grew impatient with my impatience and addressed the Manual again. After my first attempt assured me I could instantly complete the construction of an object or room by spending 'Divine Essence', I'd thrown the menu window aside in violent disgust (though I didn't know what it exactly was, I could guess). My second had frustrated me with what felt like a series of deliberate misinterpretations regarding a set of spells that would enhance the statistics of a golem.
This time would be different.
I forced myself to calm down and approach the problem systematically. After a series of false starts and red herrings, I finally managed to extract what I was looking for.
My own variation on the command came to mind, along with the urge to giggle.
Assuming direct control.
For a few short minutes, the entrance room became my world. I could feel the automated mana slowly boring a hole in the wall that'd eventually become the next indent. A weak, wispy haze, attacking the wall with all the ferocity of a sloth eating porridge. Even not entirely knowing what I was looking at, I knew in my bones (figuratively) that this was agonisingly slow. Like watching an octogenarian gingerly chopstick their way through a two paragraph word document.
Even if I hadn't asked for this, I wouldn't have abided by it.
Making an indent was easy-ish. Making an indent identical to all the others was also easy-ish, though admittedly, it took a moment for me to wrap my head around it, to look back at the indents already created and copy them to memory. Doing so with exactly regular spacing should've been just as effortless, but I managed to make it difficult for myself by trying to judge the distance on the fly, rather than marking the points beforehand like a smart individual. Thankfully, it seemed I was just as capable at filling the gaps as I was at making them. Duplicating the candles and slotting them into place was about as difficult as if I'd been using the actual cut and paste computer function.
End
I took a moment to admire my handiwork.
It'd look better in stonework, I thought to myself. I'd smoothed the walls down with my earlier, mana-fueled adjustments. Enough that, in poor light, one might almost think they were plaster. Still, the weak candlelight didn't look quite right against it. I would've preferred a more classical castle look to the place. I made a mental note^ to ask Faryea to bring something I might use for such a facade the next time she was out.
Still, that was the entrance lit. Ostensibly six hours of work, complete in twenty minutes.
I was also mostly spent. Despite no longer having a physical form to actually succumb to fatigue, I still felt like I'd just endured a three hours study session. Worse still, all the little ways I usually would do to help alleviate the feeling, like rubbing my eyes or stretching my legs or taking a shower or even having a good night's sleep, seemed lost to me.
Indeed, far as I could immediately tell, I only had one actual adequate distraction.
Which meant dealing with the fact I'd awkwardly left my only current companion hanging for something like half an hour.
Looking back in on the Chapel, she thankfully didn't seem distraught or unwell or anything. If I was lucky, she'd spent those thirty minutes in deep thought, barely noticing I'd stopped talking to her. Unfortunately, this also meant I'd probably have to start the conversation myself. Without a 'good reason' within my own sort of pessimistic logic, I spent some time umm-ing and ahh-ing over how I wanted to start the conversation, until-
"Uh, dungeon spirit? Y-you wanted to say something."
Oh, you can sense-So…Uh…About ear-Well...Since we ha-I don't suppose you'd be up for a game of chess?
An entire awkward pause and a half ensued.
"...Uh...suuuurrreeee...I guess...?"
And that was how the next three hours vanished.
Though I was pretty certain I was the better player, neither of us were particularly good at the game. Faryea played with all the confidence and nuance of someone not even certain in their knowledge of the rules, and I'd never graduated past the point of using Chess as an excuse to skip mandatory sports day. Still, it was...nice. Though quiet to start with, things gradually thawed out as we played, and we both got comfortable enough to do more than slide pieces and dictate moves respectively. While it didn't get any more laid back than 'cordial', I was quite sure neither of were taking the game particularly competitively by the time we reached the second game.
Though I kept it to the back of my mind, there was a sort of melancholy to it as well. It felt almost like a reversal of the times I used to play my father, back when I was young. In time, I grew to match and pass him, before mostly leaving the game as I found other past times more to my taste. Though the time I'd spent in between my home world and this one had assured me I wouldn't be returning, I couldn't help but wonder what was happening over there. Yet another thing to wonder about without hope of answer, I supposed.
It was about halfway into our fourth game that Faryea posed the question I'd been really hoping to avoid.
"So…Uh…When are you going to add the monsters?"
…Yeaaaahhhh…About that…
* * * * * * * *
^ Within twenty minutes, I'd completely forgotten about this.
Friday Evening: 'Well, tomorrow I'll be done with Management Accounting, so I should have more time to write.'
Saturday Evening: 'Woo! Now I can spend all my spare time playing video games without feeling guilty!'
As the immortal line goes, 'If you want something done, ask a busy person.'
As of last Saturday, I stopped being busy.
Also, there's a foot note in this chapter. Since I used asterisks for scene dividers, I've marked it with a '^'.
* * * * * * * *
"So...uh...I know it's probably not my-"
'Why the stuff?'
"...Uh...Yeah. That."
I mentally smirked. I'd honestly hoped she'd ask. Partly out of ego, admittedly, but it was also reassuring that, after only about an hour, Faryea was feeling up to putting forward the question.
Why don't you give me your best guess first, and I'll give you my answer after.
"...Well. There's...uh...I thought it was the four base elements at first. Candle for fire, the bucket for water, metal for earth...But, there isn't an equivalent for wind...Um...The ladder is a ladder...And you can use rope for a lot of things. But I have no idea what the chess set's for..." she answered tentatively, with all the grace and certainty of an inattentive student attempting to answer a teacher's question on the fly. Having been that student more than once, I graciously declined to needle her.
Mmm, not quite. The candle, the rope and the ladder are functional. I've already put the candles to use with my first set of upgrades-
"So, you ARE making a summoning circle, I knew-"
I'm installing them along the entrance staircase because it's pitch black.
"…Oh. That's…uh…" she trailed off with a frown.
Dull? Uninspired?
"…I was going to say 'fine'…" she finished unconvincingly.
Hmmph. The water and the metal, on the other hand, are building blocks. As far as I can tell, while I'm capable of fabricating just about anything, I need something to start with. I want to see how far water and metal get me. I have a couple ideas on how to use them, but I suspect I'll need to put more thought into them before I see anything appear.
"...That doesn't explain the chess set," she answered. I paused,
…I would've thought that'd be self-evident. What do you think it's for?
"Well, I've heard of golems made to look like che-"
It's for playing Chess.
"…Wha-Why? You're a dungeon. Why would you want to play chess?"
Because I'm easily bored and, while I'd prefer cards, I'd have to play through you. Which rather defeats the purpose since you're also my only likely opponent. Assuming you're up for it.
"...Wh- 'Bored'?" she asked, with a sort of baffled curiosity. Not quite the question I'd been expecting.
…Yes…?
"How can you get bored when you don't have stats? When you can't get statused?"
This time, it was my turn to rendered silent by utter confused.
Wh-How-What do you mean, 'How can I be-', what, boredom's a status effect!?
I boggled at the menu prompt I was met with. It seemed patently ridiculously. Boredom was…well, boredom. It was just a thing. The idea that it was a literal status effect in this place…
"Yeah…I…Uh…Yeah," she mumbled, likely as confused as I was. What a stupid way for the world to work. The very idea was…
…
I paused as I turned the idea over in my head, forcing myself to play devil's advocate. 'Confusion' was often a status effect. So was 'Berserk'. By that token, why not 'Boredom'. Its effect was sensible enough (at least by RPG logic). If you were bored, you probably weren't going to learn as well. Continuing on from that, if you looked at a monster that was immune to such statuses, like a machine being immune to mental status, wouldn't you assume them incapable of feeling the respective emotion?
As much as I expected my experience with RPGs to help me, it'd also instilled a lot of preconceptions. I still needed to know more about the system I'd been dropped in, among other things.
I'm, uh, I'm not exactly well-versed with this whole...system...Maybe I'm completely wrong and this is completely opposed to the reality of things...But I'm going to take a wild punt and propose the possibility that the potential for boredom exists in all beings, even those that can't suffer from status effects.
"Wild wh-?"
Guess. Wild guess, more or less. I think I can assure you that…Well…Regardless of how else this transition has affected me, I'm pretty sure boredom is still on the table.
Faryea furrowed her brow, deep in thought. Briefly pausing to make sure she wasn't about to suddenly bring something else up, I covertly exited the conversation. Which mostly just meant turning my attention elsewhere Perhaps it was a little rude, but there was something terribly uncomfortable about her baffled expression. It left an unpleasantly guilty aftertaste. Besides I had my own unanswered questions to mull over.
During the conversation, something had struck me. Not wanting to get sidetracked, not wanting to accidentally vocalise it, I'd carefully pushed the thought aside, but now that I was thinking about the less immediate curiosities of this place…
'If it wasn't for fun, why would they even make chess in the first place?'
In my mind's eye, the catalogued chess set was frozen in the typical pre-game state. It'd been carved of two types of wood, one a deep red and the other a light tan, and had a distinctly hand-made quality to it. Beyond that, it was indistinguishable from its counterpart from home, as far as I could tell, which seemed all the stranger the more I thought about it.
As much as I wanted to avoid going mad with boredom, there were other distractions I could've asked for. I didn't even particularly like chess. Its deliberate pace never sat well with me and my amazing knack for overlooking problems staring me right in the face did my winrate no favours. I'd asked for it, along with backgammon, mostly because it was old. I hadn't put that much thought into it beyond 'I'll probably find those here unlike, say, Monopoly' (not that I'd have asked for that blight upon family gatherings).
The question I'd overlooked was 'Why would chess exist here, anyway?'
Chess was Indian in origin, as far as I recalled. The thirty two pieces originally represented the types of troops from that place and period, before time, revisions to the rules and the dissemination to other cultures rendered that mostly forgotten. Identifying each piece, I was reassured that, yes, it was still what I expected…And yet, also not what I expected. Did this world have an equivalent to the Middle East that the game emerged from? Why would the game have developed as it did when magic existed and was likely a major part of warfare.
I pondered the idea for some time, but couldn't make it sound any more plausible in my head. Either that was one incredible coincidence, or there was something sketchy about this place.
On one hand, I wanted to learn more about this place. About what exactly I should be expecting. While Faryea's boss might've reassured me that I'd be left in relative peace, I trusted her about as far as I could throw her, and that was taking into account my current lack of arms.
On the other hand…
Was there any real point worrying about it now?
For the moment, I was stuck where I was, with no company beyond Faryea, who didn't seem especially informed about anything, really ('No offense'). As much as I would've liked to pick the brain of someone more knowledgeable, that was little more than wishful thinking right now. Reluctantly, I tried to push the idea out of my mind for the time being.
And so, I returned to busying myself with building.
That was my intention at least. Unfortunately, as I returned my attention to the entrance hall once more, it was only fractionally more complete than the last time I checked about twenty minutes ago.
000:05:27:37
000:05:27:36
I glared at the timer, daring it to slow or stutter, before dismissing it. Only a smidge more than one twelfth of the way done. I stewed for a minute or two, indulging in what was functionally petty grumbling, before I grew impatient with my impatience and addressed the Manual again. After my first attempt assured me I could instantly complete the construction of an object or room by spending 'Divine Essence', I'd thrown the menu window aside in violent disgust (though I didn't know what it exactly was, I could guess). My second had frustrated me with what felt like a series of deliberate misinterpretations regarding a set of spells that would enhance the statistics of a golem.
This time would be different.
I forced myself to calm down and approach the problem systematically. After a series of false starts and red herrings, I finally managed to extract what I was looking for.
My own variation on the command came to mind, along with the urge to giggle.
Assuming direct control.
For a few short minutes, the entrance room became my world. I could feel the automated mana slowly boring a hole in the wall that'd eventually become the next indent. A weak, wispy haze, attacking the wall with all the ferocity of a sloth eating porridge. Even not entirely knowing what I was looking at, I knew in my bones (figuratively) that this was agonisingly slow. Like watching an octogenarian gingerly chopstick their way through a two paragraph word document.
Even if I hadn't asked for this, I wouldn't have abided by it.
Making an indent was easy-ish. Making an indent identical to all the others was also easy-ish, though admittedly, it took a moment for me to wrap my head around it, to look back at the indents already created and copy them to memory. Doing so with exactly regular spacing should've been just as effortless, but I managed to make it difficult for myself by trying to judge the distance on the fly, rather than marking the points beforehand like a smart individual. Thankfully, it seemed I was just as capable at filling the gaps as I was at making them. Duplicating the candles and slotting them into place was about as difficult as if I'd been using the actual cut and paste computer function.
End
I took a moment to admire my handiwork.
It'd look better in stonework, I thought to myself. I'd smoothed the walls down with my earlier, mana-fueled adjustments. Enough that, in poor light, one might almost think they were plaster. Still, the weak candlelight didn't look quite right against it. I would've preferred a more classical castle look to the place. I made a mental note^ to ask Faryea to bring something I might use for such a facade the next time she was out.
Still, that was the entrance lit. Ostensibly six hours of work, complete in twenty minutes.
I was also mostly spent. Despite no longer having a physical form to actually succumb to fatigue, I still felt like I'd just endured a three hours study session. Worse still, all the little ways I usually would do to help alleviate the feeling, like rubbing my eyes or stretching my legs or taking a shower or even having a good night's sleep, seemed lost to me.
Indeed, far as I could immediately tell, I only had one actual adequate distraction.
Which meant dealing with the fact I'd awkwardly left my only current companion hanging for something like half an hour.
Looking back in on the Chapel, she thankfully didn't seem distraught or unwell or anything. If I was lucky, she'd spent those thirty minutes in deep thought, barely noticing I'd stopped talking to her. Unfortunately, this also meant I'd probably have to start the conversation myself. Without a 'good reason' within my own sort of pessimistic logic, I spent some time umm-ing and ahh-ing over how I wanted to start the conversation, until-
"Uh, dungeon spirit? Y-you wanted to say something."
Oh, you can sense-So…Uh…About ear-Well...Since we ha-I don't suppose you'd be up for a game of chess?
An entire awkward pause and a half ensued.
"...Uh...suuuurrreeee...I guess...?"
And that was how the next three hours vanished.
Though I was pretty certain I was the better player, neither of us were particularly good at the game. Faryea played with all the confidence and nuance of someone not even certain in their knowledge of the rules, and I'd never graduated past the point of using Chess as an excuse to skip mandatory sports day. Still, it was...nice. Though quiet to start with, things gradually thawed out as we played, and we both got comfortable enough to do more than slide pieces and dictate moves respectively. While it didn't get any more laid back than 'cordial', I was quite sure neither of were taking the game particularly competitively by the time we reached the second game.
Though I kept it to the back of my mind, there was a sort of melancholy to it as well. It felt almost like a reversal of the times I used to play my father, back when I was young. In time, I grew to match and pass him, before mostly leaving the game as I found other past times more to my taste. Though the time I'd spent in between my home world and this one had assured me I wouldn't be returning, I couldn't help but wonder what was happening over there. Yet another thing to wonder about without hope of answer, I supposed.
It was about halfway into our fourth game that Faryea posed the question I'd been really hoping to avoid.
"So…Uh…When are you going to add the monsters?"
…Yeaaaahhhh…About that…
* * * * * * * *
^ Within twenty minutes, I'd completely forgotten about this.
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7. Floor 1 - The Mortuary (3)
Well, this took longer than it had any right to, especially with how little actual content there is. Had a lot of trouble figuring out where I even wanted this part to go, which caused the length and time spent to suffer. Honestly, if anyone would be interested in helping with beta reading/editing, I would super appreciate it.
* * * * * * * *
Ascribing the emotion of 'contempt' to a blank menu screen may have been a sign of madness, so I studiously didn't. It wasn't mocking me. Not even in an imagined sense. Just because things had gone awry without an immediately obvious cause didn't mean I needed to create one and blaming what was likely little more than a mental prop was beneath me. That's what I told myself, at least. Unfortunately, accepting this meant accepting there wasn't anyone to blame for the moment, so the most I could do was sulk. I stewed in a general, undirected annoyance that mixed with my existing boredom to make an especially unpleasant cocktail. Sulking was stupid, I knew that, but I couldn't help myself. If I'd had anyone to talk to, it would've likely manifested itself in terse words and mental snark.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, I didn't.
After one of the least fruitful brainstorming sessions I'd ever experienced (top five, at least), Faryea conceded that she had no idea why I still had no options for monsters to summon. As an imp, she wasn't privvy to such things and, according to her boss, simply being near the graveyard should've been all that was needed to add the 'Shambling Corpse' to the list. It wasn't difficult to conclude that it was likely linked to the presence of holy mana, which, in turn, probably had something to do with the chapel, but neither of us could do more than speculate. I had little understanding of the mechanics behind mana in general and whatever Faryea knew didn't seem to gel with what'd happened.
We'd had a bit of a difference in opinion on how to proceed from there.
"Wha-Why are you giving up so quickly? The boss said we need this done. It shouldn't b-"
Look, if you want to go ferry the message over to her and ask what could be causing it, be my guest, but I'm not going to bother stumbling around blindly, trying to find a solution to a problem via blind guessing. Sure, maybe there's some manner of monster creation that I can access with what I currently have, but I'm not going to bother looking for it when my personal interface only seems to react to things I have concrete knowledge of, and when it's also possible there simply isn't.
After an uncertain pause, she left without saying anything more. I could probably have made an effort to explain myself better, or ask where she was going, but I didn't. There were any number of things she could be doing and I had a thousand and one things I could be doing, even if I'd have preferred to continue playing chess. That'd been at least twelve hours ago. Probably more. It was hard to keep track of the time, but the Chapel had gone from gloomy, to pitch black and back to gloomy again. While that wasn't hard measurement of the passage of time by itself, for the length of a night was hardly consistent even back home, it was enough to back up my estimate.
Whatever contrivance usually allowed me to communicate with her seemed only able to broadcast the barest details across the distance she was at. Asking of her status, I could more or less discern '[-placate-]' and '[-apologise-]' from the tone of her response, but anything more complex was lost. Though I did check back a couple of times, I mostly accepted that whatever was keeping her wasn't cause for alarm (and really, was what she did with her time even necessarily my concern? She might've been titled 'minion', but I wasn't exactly going to enforce the meaning of such a thing). While bored and frustrated, at least I didn't have to deal with being worried as well.
If I'd been allowed to keep busy throughout this time, I'd likely have been in far better spirits, but I'd been consistently stymied. As much as I'd have liked to have a fully functioning Venus Lighthouse filled with interconnected puzzles and traps, everything but the monsters in place, there was only so much I could do as things currently stood.
For one, I was still stuck with a maximum of fifty mana.
If I were able to directly siphon mana from the Mortuary to the task at hand, it would've been full steam ahead, but I couldn't. To do anything, it had to pass through the bottleneck of my personal mana pool, which meant nearly every option I considered, researched and added to the 'Enhance' ended up discarded. To grow the pool, I needed warm bodies, either to consume or under my control. Permanently adding the chapel was naturally out, as were the majority of the more all-encompassing works. And, for the most part, it seemed most 'enhancements' needed to be done on a room-wide basis.
As a result, creating that cobblestone facade I'd considered earlier had to be done manually, detail by detail.
In some regards, it made me think of painting. Manual adjustments and enhancements, as I'd done with the entrance, consumed mana on an action to action basis, which meant every now and then I had to stop and refill my pool from the store, as one might with a paintbrush. Suffice to say, as someone who dropped visual arts as soon as I'd had the option, the process rapidly began to wear on my patience. Maybe half an hour of trying to redecorate the dungeon starting with the entrance saw me finish less than half a room, then give up. Though inexpensive in small bursts like the candles, trying to create something out of whole cloth over such a wide area taxed both my mana and patience. I'd do that once I could fire and forget.
Unable to stand the unfinished adjustments, I scoured them away with an errant thought.
Having discarded that particular avenue, I instead decided to try for something more self-contained. A task I similarly gave up on swiftly, as I remembered my distinct lack of artistic talent. Amateurish flourishes and additions were similarly wiped away. Evidently, interior decoration was far more difficult without all the pre-built assets one might find in a base building game . Of all my initial efforts in improving the dungeon, the only thing I didn't erase was the vaguely humanoid statue hunched over the chessboard. Formed of the same, hard-packed soil as the dungeon walls, its thinker-like pose was vaguely amusing, even as it served no real purpose. Honestly, it just seemed appropriate.
After an amount of time wasted on idly milling around, uncertain of what next, I settled on spending time experimenting with my newly acquired materials. At first, I approached it in a casual, only half-interested manner. Unfortunately, far as I could tell, cataloguing the items hadn't added their constituent parts to my overall repetoir, just allowed me to recreate them. Or so I thought, at first. Replicating the exact objects was what was easiest, at only a mana per scrap and bucket (and likely only because I suspected I couldn't consume mana in fractions). With a little effort, on the other hand, I was able to manipulate things a little. Removing the bucket from the bucket of water was doable, though for some reason, the water sans bucket managed to cost more.
It only occurred to me afterwards that having Faryea pour out the water, then cataloguing it would've likely been easier.
The scrap metal was perhaps a little more interesting. At first, I was limited to a directly recreating the exact bits and pieces I'd been given, but a little focus allowed me to manipulate it slightly. First in combining the bits into one clump of jagged metal, then that same clump, but with the dirt and soot removed. A couple more passes through the creation and destruction cycle gave me a feel of what the material was as a whole. It ceased to be a single object and just became the contiguous idea of 'Pig Iron'. Less an object and more a feeling.
An idea struck me.
I repeated that process a few times, juggling the different feelings in my head; the state I dematerialised the object in, the feel of the metal, and the feel of what wasn't. Each time, I removed a little more of what I was pretty sure was impurities, and with time, I could sense a change in what I'd created.
The task ended with 'Wrought Iron' added to my personal mental...repetoir? Recipe list? Regardless, I felt a little (and likely inordinately) proud of myself for that.
Having spent some time actively manipulating materials on a smaller scale, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't really done much with my newly acquired powers over fabrication. There was the candles, yes, but those had been duplications. I'd done a little manipulation of shapes with my decoration attempts, but nothing with any real detail. That seemed like as good a next goal as any.
A sword had been the first thing that'd popped into mind. Not exactly creative, but appropriate given the circumstances. As a proof of concept, it seemed like an easy enough task. I wasn't trying to craft anything particularly masterful. I could more or less envisage what it'd look like in my mind and I had the materials to make something that would at least technically qualify as one.
Unfortunately, my first attempts were...not the most encouraging.
The blocky cross shape that had been intended as a sword was good for little more than a school play prop and, once fully produced, I could no longer shape it. A second was just as bad, but inverted; a paper thin blade that snapped itself in half as it clattered to the floor. Over the dozen or so further tries I managed, progress was slow, inconsistent and disheartening. Adjustments were clumsy, and it was hard to tell what they'd result in before the creation was produced, after which it was too late. In the back of my mind, I remembered that, even I were able to make a sword that looked right, that was a far cry from making one that'd survive any sort of use.
On the other hand, progress was progress, and I had to remind myself that the goal wasn't 'make a sword', but 'figure out how much control you have over this sort of thing'.
Still, as time passed, I found my thoughts wandering to anything but the task at hand. Always a bad sign for me. Regardless of the progress I was making, the tedium was getting to me and I was honestly looking for something to distract me. In fact, I was almost pleased when Faryea finally struggled her way back to the dungeon, dragging the wolf carcass.
EDIT: Second pass made
* * * * * * * *
Ascribing the emotion of 'contempt' to a blank menu screen may have been a sign of madness, so I studiously didn't. It wasn't mocking me. Not even in an imagined sense. Just because things had gone awry without an immediately obvious cause didn't mean I needed to create one and blaming what was likely little more than a mental prop was beneath me. That's what I told myself, at least. Unfortunately, accepting this meant accepting there wasn't anyone to blame for the moment, so the most I could do was sulk. I stewed in a general, undirected annoyance that mixed with my existing boredom to make an especially unpleasant cocktail. Sulking was stupid, I knew that, but I couldn't help myself. If I'd had anyone to talk to, it would've likely manifested itself in terse words and mental snark.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, I didn't.
After one of the least fruitful brainstorming sessions I'd ever experienced (top five, at least), Faryea conceded that she had no idea why I still had no options for monsters to summon. As an imp, she wasn't privvy to such things and, according to her boss, simply being near the graveyard should've been all that was needed to add the 'Shambling Corpse' to the list. It wasn't difficult to conclude that it was likely linked to the presence of holy mana, which, in turn, probably had something to do with the chapel, but neither of us could do more than speculate. I had little understanding of the mechanics behind mana in general and whatever Faryea knew didn't seem to gel with what'd happened.
We'd had a bit of a difference in opinion on how to proceed from there.
"Wha-Why are you giving up so quickly? The boss said we need this done. It shouldn't b-"
Look, if you want to go ferry the message over to her and ask what could be causing it, be my guest, but I'm not going to bother stumbling around blindly, trying to find a solution to a problem via blind guessing. Sure, maybe there's some manner of monster creation that I can access with what I currently have, but I'm not going to bother looking for it when my personal interface only seems to react to things I have concrete knowledge of, and when it's also possible there simply isn't.
After an uncertain pause, she left without saying anything more. I could probably have made an effort to explain myself better, or ask where she was going, but I didn't. There were any number of things she could be doing and I had a thousand and one things I could be doing, even if I'd have preferred to continue playing chess. That'd been at least twelve hours ago. Probably more. It was hard to keep track of the time, but the Chapel had gone from gloomy, to pitch black and back to gloomy again. While that wasn't hard measurement of the passage of time by itself, for the length of a night was hardly consistent even back home, it was enough to back up my estimate.
Whatever contrivance usually allowed me to communicate with her seemed only able to broadcast the barest details across the distance she was at. Asking of her status, I could more or less discern '[-placate-]' and '[-apologise-]' from the tone of her response, but anything more complex was lost. Though I did check back a couple of times, I mostly accepted that whatever was keeping her wasn't cause for alarm (and really, was what she did with her time even necessarily my concern? She might've been titled 'minion', but I wasn't exactly going to enforce the meaning of such a thing). While bored and frustrated, at least I didn't have to deal with being worried as well.
If I'd been allowed to keep busy throughout this time, I'd likely have been in far better spirits, but I'd been consistently stymied. As much as I'd have liked to have a fully functioning Venus Lighthouse filled with interconnected puzzles and traps, everything but the monsters in place, there was only so much I could do as things currently stood.
For one, I was still stuck with a maximum of fifty mana.
If I were able to directly siphon mana from the Mortuary to the task at hand, it would've been full steam ahead, but I couldn't. To do anything, it had to pass through the bottleneck of my personal mana pool, which meant nearly every option I considered, researched and added to the 'Enhance' ended up discarded. To grow the pool, I needed warm bodies, either to consume or under my control. Permanently adding the chapel was naturally out, as were the majority of the more all-encompassing works. And, for the most part, it seemed most 'enhancements' needed to be done on a room-wide basis.
As a result, creating that cobblestone facade I'd considered earlier had to be done manually, detail by detail.
In some regards, it made me think of painting. Manual adjustments and enhancements, as I'd done with the entrance, consumed mana on an action to action basis, which meant every now and then I had to stop and refill my pool from the store, as one might with a paintbrush. Suffice to say, as someone who dropped visual arts as soon as I'd had the option, the process rapidly began to wear on my patience. Maybe half an hour of trying to redecorate the dungeon starting with the entrance saw me finish less than half a room, then give up. Though inexpensive in small bursts like the candles, trying to create something out of whole cloth over such a wide area taxed both my mana and patience. I'd do that once I could fire and forget.
Unable to stand the unfinished adjustments, I scoured them away with an errant thought.
Having discarded that particular avenue, I instead decided to try for something more self-contained. A task I similarly gave up on swiftly, as I remembered my distinct lack of artistic talent. Amateurish flourishes and additions were similarly wiped away. Evidently, interior decoration was far more difficult without all the pre-built assets one might find in a base building game . Of all my initial efforts in improving the dungeon, the only thing I didn't erase was the vaguely humanoid statue hunched over the chessboard. Formed of the same, hard-packed soil as the dungeon walls, its thinker-like pose was vaguely amusing, even as it served no real purpose. Honestly, it just seemed appropriate.
After an amount of time wasted on idly milling around, uncertain of what next, I settled on spending time experimenting with my newly acquired materials. At first, I approached it in a casual, only half-interested manner. Unfortunately, far as I could tell, cataloguing the items hadn't added their constituent parts to my overall repetoir, just allowed me to recreate them. Or so I thought, at first. Replicating the exact objects was what was easiest, at only a mana per scrap and bucket (and likely only because I suspected I couldn't consume mana in fractions). With a little effort, on the other hand, I was able to manipulate things a little. Removing the bucket from the bucket of water was doable, though for some reason, the water sans bucket managed to cost more.
It only occurred to me afterwards that having Faryea pour out the water, then cataloguing it would've likely been easier.
The scrap metal was perhaps a little more interesting. At first, I was limited to a directly recreating the exact bits and pieces I'd been given, but a little focus allowed me to manipulate it slightly. First in combining the bits into one clump of jagged metal, then that same clump, but with the dirt and soot removed. A couple more passes through the creation and destruction cycle gave me a feel of what the material was as a whole. It ceased to be a single object and just became the contiguous idea of 'Pig Iron'. Less an object and more a feeling.
An idea struck me.
I repeated that process a few times, juggling the different feelings in my head; the state I dematerialised the object in, the feel of the metal, and the feel of what wasn't. Each time, I removed a little more of what I was pretty sure was impurities, and with time, I could sense a change in what I'd created.
The task ended with 'Wrought Iron' added to my personal mental...repetoir? Recipe list? Regardless, I felt a little (and likely inordinately) proud of myself for that.
Having spent some time actively manipulating materials on a smaller scale, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't really done much with my newly acquired powers over fabrication. There was the candles, yes, but those had been duplications. I'd done a little manipulation of shapes with my decoration attempts, but nothing with any real detail. That seemed like as good a next goal as any.
A sword had been the first thing that'd popped into mind. Not exactly creative, but appropriate given the circumstances. As a proof of concept, it seemed like an easy enough task. I wasn't trying to craft anything particularly masterful. I could more or less envisage what it'd look like in my mind and I had the materials to make something that would at least technically qualify as one.
Unfortunately, my first attempts were...not the most encouraging.
The blocky cross shape that had been intended as a sword was good for little more than a school play prop and, once fully produced, I could no longer shape it. A second was just as bad, but inverted; a paper thin blade that snapped itself in half as it clattered to the floor. Over the dozen or so further tries I managed, progress was slow, inconsistent and disheartening. Adjustments were clumsy, and it was hard to tell what they'd result in before the creation was produced, after which it was too late. In the back of my mind, I remembered that, even I were able to make a sword that looked right, that was a far cry from making one that'd survive any sort of use.
On the other hand, progress was progress, and I had to remind myself that the goal wasn't 'make a sword', but 'figure out how much control you have over this sort of thing'.
Still, as time passed, I found my thoughts wandering to anything but the task at hand. Always a bad sign for me. Regardless of the progress I was making, the tedium was getting to me and I was honestly looking for something to distract me. In fact, I was almost pleased when Faryea finally struggled her way back to the dungeon, dragging the wolf carcass.
EDIT: Second pass made
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