An Unnamed, Flailing Dungeon Core Story.

Earth, the first of July, 1976 Zaniya Havenfort, wearing her favourite and really rather skimpy hiphugger bikini, was merrily rollerskating down her favourite path, heading to her favourite beach to look at hot girls, seeing if she could spot her favourite one. She chewed on her favourite gum and blew a big pink bubble that popped along with her body when a truck struck her at high speed. When she opened her blurry eyes again she was in a very small hospital room which seemed awfully empty and not quite geometrical. The head lamps of the doctors bobbed and weaved around her. She couldn't understand what they were saying. They sounded as if very very high on helium. --"Bibibibi bi bi bi. Bibibib bi." --"Bi-bi. Bi..." --"Yeah, there we go--core language pack installed. Finally. Oh wow, its local treasure reference library is a little strange. Look at all this junk. Snowglobe. Viewmaster. Swinging people feeder. Where did the System find such a messy foreign soul?" --"Don't ask me where it gets them. The System has been acting weird ever since its dungeons started getting wiped out." Oh? She finally understood some of the words, but shouldn't they be saying stuff like "Suction. Hand me 14 CC of hydromicalin. Clamps on the ventral side! Where's the leg? Hand me that arm! No, the left one. We're losing the patient!" But the doctors seemed to be talking about something entirely different. --"Senses calibrated, and... that's job complete? Hopefully this core won't get destroyed as quickly as the last one. We're rather out in the middle of nowhere, and I can feel there's a bit of useful background mana. It might be safe for a while." --"The Deadlands used to be old dragon territory... is what I heard. Really, the System doesn't even have juristiction here. It has no reach, right? This core will be on its own." --"Un. Let's go and see if we can find another cave for contingency core 2 shall we?" Just as her vision cleared up she saw the "doctors" head out of the room. They didn't have any bodies. They were just the light itself--like floating sprites. When their light faded around a corner she found herself utterly alone. If it hadn't been for the faint light and humming somehow radiating from her body she would probably quickly lose her mind trapped in complete sensory deprivation. But her senses were unexpectedly sharp. The hospital room turned out to be a dimly lit empty cave with several exits. The rock walls appeared to have been melted, as if this place once had been a lair of some terrible dragon. Everything was so strange. For a while she thought she actually was in a hospital, tripping on some strong stuff while the doctors attached her limbs--which were still missing--but as the minutes passed the reality of her situation became undeniable. She was something else now. A floating basketball-sized orb with invisible limbs, kind of like tentacles. She could even pick up small rocks with them, and walk around; climb up into the roof like some creepy cave spider. Very very strange. After carefully exploring into the cave system she found that it was quite extensive--and quite lifeless, only being home to mosses, lichen and fungii, and whatever she was now. Something drew her deeper and deeper, as if instinctive. She crossed a lava river by climbing up in the roof. Beyond she found a cave full of cozy warm moss, that she sunk into as if a pillow. It was so very comfortable. She drifted in and out of sleep, experiencing the high of not having anything planned for the day. It was so very comfortable. This was bliss, she thought, and forgot, and thought again. Then a morning alarm rang, shooing away her bliss. She woke up the way one wakes up to a door salesman disturbing a midday nap. --"Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert! One class 9 catergory being has entered your unnamed dungeon!" A what now? Just as she panicked and tried to sense her surroundings, a three dimensional map of the cave appeared in her mind. It didn't look complete and only had the single winding path leading to her current location. A large angry red dot moved around further up before heading down at great speed. Her bedroom only had the one entry, so when she saw the red dot cross the lava river and stop outside, she knew she was done for. Looking at the entry she saw the long snout of a green dragon poke in. It snorted as it saw her. --"A dungeon core? In this day an age? I thought you had gone extinct along with that system ten thousand years ago. I must tell Lucius about this." It looked amused, but then its eyes narrowed dangerously. --"You! You! Have you been draining the mana gathering array of my long summer abode?" Draining the what now? Mana? As she thought it, a number appeared in her mind. "Mana: 1406669" That did seem like a lot. Was it magic? Was that why she felt so comfortable? Had she been robbing this dragon of his sleep high? Wasn't she in trouble now? The angered dragon opened its mouth, revealing rows and rows of dangerous adamantine teeth. Yep, she was in trouble. What could she do? did she have any special powers? "Upgrade core. Upgrade abilities. System query (out of order). Dig. Set nodes. Decorate and reinforce. Set nodes. Spawn treasure. Spawn equipment. Spawn creature. Message creature. Name. Hibernate. Self destruct. Emergency teleportation level 1 (20 meters)..." The list went on, but she stopped paying attention at emergency teleportation, which she activated just as the dragon's jaws closed around her spherical glowing body. "-100 Mana" She didn't pay attention to the cost as she found herself rapidly falling into the lava river. If it hadn't been for the reach of her ethereal tentacles that would have been her anticlimatic end. She swung along the roof of the river like Tarzan, just barely escaping the snapping jaws of the returning dragon. It had found her so quickly, but hadn't quite been able to reach her without stepping into the lava. Hah! She swung away through the smokey undulating heat of the lava tunnel and would've made a face at the dragon if she could. Her core was getting so hot she might be about to crack though. "Upgrade core. Upgrade core. Upgrade core." she ushered. The heat became more bearable. She hadn't made it very far when she heard a splash and turned her vision to see the dragon plow through the lava and charge after her like an angry big green swan. "Upgrade abilities: Emergency teleportation." It changed to 50 meters. She did it again. It changed to 75 meters. What a scam! Zaniya Havenfort had grown up poor and was instilled by a certain degree of frugality--too much for her own good in fact. Now, with her life in danger she was hesitating to spend mana even though she had so much and her life was in danger. She clenched her nonexistent teeth and upgraded it again. "Emergency teleportation level 4, max (75 meters, Dungeon jump unlocked)." She tried Dungeon jump, but got an error message. "Dungeon friend list empty." Damnit! What a waste! What utter bollocks! --"Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert! One class 10 catergory being has entered your unnamed dungeon!" What the- --"Haa! Little core, now you're done for. Lucius is here!" the lava drenched dragon roared as it pressed closer. Zaniya needed a distraction. A creature? She saw a list. "Slime. Beetle. Bat. Fungoid." She chose slime. Maybe it could slime up the dragon, slowing it down... like in that movie The Blob? A pink blob of jelly the size of a football appeared near her, and then fell into the lava, fizzing into nothing. Damnit! "Upgrade abilities: Creature creation (Dark, Light, Earth, Chitinoid, Slithery, Undead. Custom.)" Ah, there were too many categories! She likely couldn't come up with something suitable that could challenge a dragon- two dragons, in just the few seconds she had. On her map she saw that another big red dot had nearly reached the lava river. The two dragons must be in telepathic communication, or just had incredibly keen senses. She looked through her list of powers again, paying more attention to the stuff after Emergency teleportation. Reconstitute and Mystic action stood out, but what good would reconstitute do when she was cornered. It also cost 500000 mana, being some sort of top tier ability. Mystic action was 50000 with no indication of what it might do. Maybe that was the point. She activated it. The tunnel was filled by a very pleasant fragrance that lasted for but a moment in the heat, but long enough to startle the dragon. She activated it again. A large iron golem appeared out of nowhere and fell into the lava seeming unconcerned as it ominously waded towards the dragon. The two large monsters clashed. Zaniya's rising hope was dashed in an instant when the dragon easily pressed the golem down under the surface. However, the dragon stuttered as it tried to move further, as if being held by a prisoner's chain and ball. --"Hahaha! Look at you Herzon... was the core remnant too much for you to handle? Need a helping claw?" It was a voice so deep the tunnel rumbled. The other dragon had arrived. But it didn't bother to squeeze by the blockage in the tunnel. Instead it just pressed its black head up next to the green dragon's, and smirked. --"The... the little thing nearly completely drained one of my sixty mana chambers. A million mana--gone just like that!" --"Aw, you poor thing... looks like Razeguts is going to have surpassed you by the next millenium fest. She'll really rub it in, you know." The green dragon lifted its forelimb out of the lava, the lumpy iron golem still attached. --"It spawned a class 7 guardian out of nowhere." The black dragon looked at it. --"That's rare." Zaniya didn't pick up the rest of the conversation, having sped around a turn in the noisy lava tunnel and right into a lava-fall. On the way she had used two more Mystic actions, first dropping a cool looking sword into the lava, then emitting a strange pulse that uncovered the entire cave map. It was enormous and interconnected, and full of dragon treasures. She however, was stuck in a dead end, unless she wanted to push through the lava that was presently flowing over her core. Could she upgrade and hope to hide in the lava? Or use dig, maybe making a tunnel so narrow the dragons couldn't follow? Might be too slow and if the powerful dragons had dug out this cave system she could be no better. While she pondered, she almost failed to notice that a red blip had moved very close to her. She panicked and was about to teleport, but suddenly felt lucky and used another Mystic action. Whether she was lucky or not was up to debate, as she found herself in space. Below her she sensed an enormous planet. She could tell it was enormous because of the large continents that laid endlessly scattered towards a far too flat horizon. She had never been to space but had seen pictures, and the horizon should definitely have some curvature to it. If she were to guess, the planet was the size of a large gas giant. She fell. Thin chill air started to stream around her body, cooling and cracking the coat of lava off piece by piece. She splayed her tentacles out, falling like a starfish. She briefly saw an enormous floating island, forests climbing its many peaks, opulent structures glinting like celestial crowns. After falling below it and looking up, she found that its underside quickly grew dim, then invisible aside from a few glowing dots. Then she fell through a layer of near vacuum, on towards the enormous ground plane with its continents. She had 602009 mana left. A fully upgraded core could perhaps make the fall survivable. What if she teleported just before hitting the ground? Would this cancel her momentum? Oh shucks--now she figured out what she should have done right away. She should have created a flying creature, then rode it to the floating island. Though the bat might not have been able to carry her since she was the size of a basketball. Would she get another chance later though? Out of the available creature categories she could unlock, the chitinoid class seemed the most likely to contain winged creatures. However, for some reason the Spawn creature option seemed half disabled, as if there was a penalty to using it. Because she was a dungon core outside of a dungeon? If she reached the ground safely, she really didn't want to be left broke and vulnerable. Sure, she had 600 thousand, but she had gone through 400 awfully quick. What if she aimed for a lake or ocean? She might be able to control her fall with her faintly substantial manipulators, though they were far from being able to form a useful parachute. Also, since she didn't appear to have any sideways motion she would accelerate to a speed so high that the air gradient would become tangible. Ignoring that huge issue, her terminal velocity would still be at least 300km/h when she hit the surface. Getting an idea, she accepted the penalty of spawning a creature outside of a dungeon and created a bat. It appeared beside her, fluttering helplessly in the near vacuum. She didn't plan on trying to ride it, instead she activated emergency teleportation level 1. Looking around, she failed to find the bat. It had zipped out of view. Ignoring the poor bat--she hoped it wasn't a real living creature--she cheered inside. Her momentum had been reset. Now the only question was where to land. Hmmm. She could breathe under water, right? Were dragons good swimmers? Was there a rule against underwater dungeons if she made one? She could've queried the System about it... had it been alive. Maybe if there was a beach nearby she could spy on pretty girls, like a creepy nautilus? That settled it. She upgraded her core to level 7 at which point the mana cost was getting a little high, and was surprised to notice that it still only corresponded to "High Class 2". Those dragons had been Class 9 and 10. She was certainly fortunate to have gotten away, even if it had cost her a lot. With her improved body, her tentacles were able to extend further. But at her current altitude they weren't of much use. After a 10 minute drop she whistled into a new air layer and rapidly heated up due to atmospheric friction. When it became unbearable, she teleported again and fell slower. The continent below, part of an island-string string of continents, filled her field of view and she got a better sense of down. She had absolutely no chance to land in the ocean as planned, and it even looked like a lake was out of the question. Long ago she had heard the sprites talk about the some deadlands, but this didn't seem to be it. The continent was lush like the Java Islands. She was falling towards a mountain range. She thought she saw the indentation of an enormous hand print that the forest had buried, but maybe it was her imagination playing tricks. She also saw a large city some 40 km off from where she would land. It better belong to people and not dragons. She got her answer when she landed, because after a well timed teleportation she dropped into the middle of a battle. None of the bugmen noticed her as she rustled into the crown of a tree. It was red antmen versus black beetlemen. Or maybe they were all women. Wasn't that how ants worked? The beetles could be men though. Clad in heraldic light armour they fought with swords, spears, axes, maces and crossbows, spilling ichor and guts. The beetles seemed to be winning, but then an ant general made a brilliant decision and flanked the beetles, causing them to route. Zaniya sat frozen in the tree, trying to seem part of nature. The battle turned into pursuit, and Zaniya breathed out in relief, only to freeze again when the ant general turned to look quizzically at the tree she was hiding in. Then a trumpet blared and the general moved on with her troops. To Zaniya's horror the general stopped after a few steps and called up two soldiers, pointing at the tree, then sped up to join the vanguard of her formation. The two ant soldiers crept up on her hiding place, their short swords resting on the top edges of their round shields; their antennas poised like the ears of an alert cat. Zaniya broke a twig and threw it in one direction, then teleported. The twig she had thrown hit her own core with a twack. Damnit--how unlucky could she get? What a waste of mana. Now in a bad mood she just scurried off on her tentacles, discovering that she was quite fast at her level. The ants were fast too, shredding the foliage on the forest floor as they darted after her. Back on Earth they would have won the 400m sprint easily, but here it wasn't enough. She quickly outpaced and watched them give up in confusion. She sighed. Teleportation only cost her 100 Mana, but for that mana she could spawn a dozen of simple creatures like the bats and slimes if she was in a dungeon, so it 100 really was quite a lot... not speaking about those 50000s she had blown on the mystic stuff. But now what? She really needed to properly hide, didn't she? Not thinking about it further, she dug on the spot. Over the course of ten minutes she watched as the soil slowly shrunk back where she focused. The ability made this peculiar one by one meter square indentation that might look too man made and conspicuous, but perhaps she could disguise it later. After entering the hollow she got a strong sense of being home. It made her want to quickly expand. Realizing that it would take her days to even make a room the size of a house, she decided to upgrade the ability to level five, and watched thousands of mana disappear. She dug five meters straight down, then veered off to the side. Digging cost mana, but it was barely noticeable, perhaps a single point per two meters of these standard corridors. Oddly enough it was cheaper to dig at 90 or 45 degree angles. When she thought about it, perhaps she knew the four directions of the world now--just not which of the four was north. As a precaution she put a spear trap at the bottom of the entry, and a slime to guard it. It was just 2 points. Maybe it would eat any corpse--just like The Blob--preventing a stink. It did have the same pink colour, but looked cuter where it bobbed on the dungeon floor. To the side of the trapped entry she made a small room, but it wasn't very cozy. It was too close to the surface and didn't have the comfortable buzz of the dragon's lair, so she put five bat guardians in it, watching as they flew up and perched under the roof. The bats were quite chunky, sporting dark scales rather than hair. They looked more like carnivores than bloodsuckers--something more akin to a flying piranha. She continued downwards at an angle from the bat room. This automatically made steps. Stairs for whom? She didn't need them. It would be better to make a slick slope and put a tap at the bottom. When she thought about it, wouldn't it be best to just collapse the entry of the dungeon? What was the drawback with that? She thought carefully about it. Was it the mana? Perhaps she was like an ant lion. Her mana situation was a bit unique since she had robbed a Class 9 dragon. Normally a core might need to trap prey. She had the power to create traps and treasures after all. Was that it? It made sense she thought. She really was a very elaborate ant lion. So would those antwomen and beetlemen try to invade? Dungeon cores might be both predators and prey... she had to be careful. The dungeon needed an easy part to lure prey in, a hard part that killed it, and a safe part for her to sleep. Perhaps she could build one of those mana gathering arrays? Yeah, right. At any rate she had to dig deeper. Deep is safe. Except for when there's dragons. Every 10 meters she made a turn in the staircase. Maybe later she could make separate floors around it, but for now she just kept going, the dim light of her body illuminating her descent. Then her light went out. Or was it the walls that disappeared? No, she was falling! Her desperately flailing tentacles extended towards total blackness. Before she could come up with a plan, she hit something hard with a Poing and crackle. She actually hadn't fallen very far, just some six meters. It appeared to be a natural cave, the walls lined with black coal which barely reflected any of her light. A big flat chunky layer had fallen down with her and now she sat in the black rubble. Would be coughing or dying if she was a human. She had seen a documentary once showing coal miners knocking slabs off poorly supported cave roofs. They often got buried alive. Looking up, she couldn't see her point of entry in the darkness, as her light radius was rather limited. She did have a map though and saw that she was right under her stairwell. She could probably climb up, but perhaps something else would come loose. To her side was the hint of another exit. Just a tiny hole for her to squeeze through--which she did after seeing a faint glow beyond. She emerged in a natural cave, but there was a collection of smashed urns sitting along a wall. They were partly covered by stalactites... no that wasn't right... it was stalagmites wasn't it? At the center of the chamber sat a podium, and around it laid shards of something suspiciously similar to the material her own core was made out of. She shuddered. This was a crime scene. There was an opened treasure chest. The whole placed had definitely been looted. A few mineralized bones now seemed part of the floor. Whatever happened here happened long ago, and it probably wasn't ants who did it. The only thing of value she could find was a small jade statue of a human. It broke when she yanked it out of the floor and the alarm voice appeared in her head, quite startling her. --"New creature type subsumed!" Huh? What? What was it? She looked at her list of creatures. Nothing new there. So obtuse! She searched the room more thoroughly, beginning to dig into parts of the floor. --"New creature type subsumed!" There was another one! Had perhaps the former owner made... tradeable creature plans or something? Maybe there had been some sort of economy... trade between cores? She hadn't really looked into how her creature library worked yet, having been quite busy not dying. Well, she had done a bit of sleeping too, but who could blame her when it was so comfortable? She really should look into it though, so she unlocked the Earth category for 100 mana. --"System inaccessible. Fallback. Withdrawing random Class 1 samples from central celestial library... ... Red worm, Pufferbong, Leafcrab, Thorn turtle. Snapjaw." So it was random? There was no bloody explanation for anything. So obtuse! Pufferbong sounded cute, so she made one on a whim. It looked like a barstool-sized stubby green mushroom. It vaguely emitted a stench and seemed like it could really get going, because it had little puckering orifices on its cap. Zaniya was going to send it out of her dungeon, but realized that it wouldn't be able to climb out the vertical entry. So she recycled it, regaining half of the 8 mana it had cost. Getting an idea, she looked into her Custom category which seemed to have unlocked on its own. Ah! There were actually two things there. THe first one was called Rancid slitherwocky and that didn't sound like anything she'd like to make. The second entry made her curious and she made one on the spot. It turned out to be a dirty little woman wearing a scrappy leather top and bottom, looking very much like a not-hot version of Raquel Welch in the movie 1 Million Years B.C. Zanyia observed the wildling creature wearily, not sure if it was a monster, human, or something inbetween. Was it an it, or a she? The short and trunky being stood and combat ready, muscles playing under scarred skin tanned more mustard than red. Oily black troll hair sat plastered over a face darkened by as much grime as the rest of the body. Tangled bangs hid a snarling face that seemed to had come to a realization, because it shifted into an uncanny friendly grin that revealed unnaturally sharp teeth, white as in a toothbrush commercial. Something was stuck between them. Zaniya didn't want to think about what this wildling liked to eat, or the fact that she had just created a person. But then again, normal people could create persons too--it just took a little more time. The wildling's eyes seemed to gradually gain intelligence as the two stood facing each other in the cave. The wildling suddenly frowned and her mouth began to move as if she was about to speak. But she didn't and instead just wandered off, slightly cowlegged, to examine her surroundings. She moved like a human who had never been judged or cared about it, scratching her butt as she disappeared behind a massive stalagmite. Maybe she was a goblin in a woman's body? Thinking about it, this was the first human she had seen since coming to this world, and she hoped it was more person than monster. Zaniya would much rather be in the company of people than rancid slitherwockies and stinky mushrooms. Well- this girl was a little stinky too, but still... Decided, she made three more of the wildlings, each coming out subtly different. These ones immediately started wandering about, playing with rocks, sitting cross legged and doing what can only be described as caveman stuff... or cavewoman stuff as things were. The first one returned to join them, instantly a friend. Gradually their behavior became more complex and they were grunting, socializing and making crude jokes... much like goblins. They really were being quite nasty, but maybe they would clean up nicely? She could give them magical swords and nice enchanted clothes, or at least better bikinis. So she tried to make a bath, but there was no such thing in her menus. She only had stuff like acid and drowning traps, and a magical "pool of rejuvenation". When she focused on it, more information appeared. 300000 mana--Yowsa! She just needed a simple bath. Maybe she could dig a hole and somehow fetch water? Use the drowning trap? No, she got a feeling that when it came to decoration she had to design things mentally first rather than just thinking of an abstract word. --"Oi!" --"Oi!" They had started speaking. --"Give me! Give me!" --"Ha-ha." One of them ran off with an appropriated piece of fossilized bone. A chase ensued with three against one. It ended badly when the ditzy thief broke her nose against a stalagmite and fell with a thud. Her body stopped moving where it laid, lifeless, a dirty hand still grasping the fossilized bone. Crap. Zaniya scurried up close on her tentacles, attempting to part the three surrounding wildlings who had fallen deathly silent. They seemed to have come to some sort of realization as they nudged the still body. --"Nian Nian? Nian Nian?" The three wildlings looked like they were about to break down. Zaniya sighed, and sighed again as she watched her remaining mana dwindle. A black pool slowly formed on its own in the middle of the cave. It was a little weird, but compared to creating complex living beings out of thin air, changing a bunch of rocks and making liquid was perhaps nothing to write home about. When Zaniya picked up limp body with her tentacles a jolt of information appeared in her mind. "Nian. Mid Class 1 Dungeon creature of Zanyia Havenfort's unnamed dungeon. Dying from internal hemorrhage." Zanyia momentarily froze. Not dead yet. The three wildlings nervously followed her as she carried the body into the shallow pool. The body sunk under the black surface, making ripples. The buoyancy was all wrong. Just as Zanyia reached to lift it up, Nian sat up on her own, looking startled. --"Eeeh?" she said, only seeming surprised that she was in water. Huh, this pool of rejuvenation worked pretty quick. --"Nian Nian!" the others cheered as they hastily waded in, splashing. Nian apparently took this as them trying to snatch the fossil again, and she hid it behind her body. Zanyia breathed out. --"Alright, alright. You all clean up now." The four wildlings seemed averse to cleaning up at first. Then they didn't want to leave the pool and Zaniya went to explore the natural cave as the expensive black water was splashed and probably muddied quite a bit. -------------------------------------------- She named the dungeon Havenfort. Make a training room. Of course buys an expensive super equipment panties for 100000, wasting more points. That was the dumb idea for this story. "Oh, the shuffleboard seems fun. Huh, I wonder what this curta thing does."