“Two questions: What exactly do you an by loot? And are you okay? Your voice doesn’t sound so great.” Were there random treasures to find in a dungeon? Considering the entire rewriting of what I thought were the standard rules of reality that I had already experienced since my arrival in this new universe, I wasn’t entirely sure why I was stuck on this concept alone. Still, for so reason, the idea of loot was just pushing my brain past the easy acceptance point.
“He’ll be okay. He’s just gotta get his body more used to channeling mana through his throat like that,” Cecile explained. So that was what the chanting before the weather effects was. That had apparently been my first exposure to soone casting real spells here. I added another note to my continuously growing list to read up on how exactly spells worked alongside mana channeling.
“Okay, and the loot, what are we looking for? Wait, actually, that shard I grabbed earlier. What was it?” I asked as I fished around in my pocket and produced the small crystalline object. Now that I had ti to look at it without the anxiety of looming monsters, I noticed that it glowed a faint pink, similar to the worms that had nearly engulfed .
“Good find, Dave! That’s a mana shard. Every monster should have at least one of them. We’re also gonna want to find out where the dungeon core rolled off to after I killed the snail. Can’t leave it for sothing else to get hold of, or the dungeon will start to grow again. As for other loot, it’s too new for that, bigger, older dungeons, well, those tend to have attracted other mana beasts, so there can be extra chambers full of strange things. It's those places that would hide magical plants or items with strange abilities from the dungeon-infused mana,” Cecile explained. I felt like he was leaving out another potential source of loot in the more dangerous dungeons—the possessions of those who didn’t survive their expedition.
“I saw where that rolled to. I’ll grab it. You two can dig through the ss that used to be the slugs.” The sll alone of the dead creatures was already getting to , and I really didn’t want to start vomiting during my search. This experience had already been bad enough.
“We should check the back end of the cavern, just to be sure there’s nothing else, but likely, yes, we only need the core and the shards,” Elicec said, his voice still scratchy.
I spotted the dungeon core, now a dull black, in a pile of rubble near one of the walls and bent carefully to pick it up. As I touched it, I realized my newest mistake in what felt like a series of nonstop blunders. I felt a small surge of energy tingle its way through my palm and up my arm. Apparently, it wasn’t dead, and the core still wanted my soul.
“Dave, have you changed your mind and considered letting take your body? That would be an incredible gift.” The voice’s smooth, almost lodic words blanketed yet again. This ti, though, I was more prepared for how it would feel.
“I told you last ti, stay out of my head.” I gritted my teeth, whispering these words, hoping the brothers didn’t overhear. I forced my hand to drop the core into my pocket, and the mont the contact was released, the voice vanished again.
So, the intelligence in the core persisted past the death of the host. Did that an the rock snail had no control of its own body at all? That explained why l was worried about going in here. What would happen if the dungeon core used my body to leave? Did it even want to?
“That’s all five shards over here. Did you find the core?” Cecile questioned, his voice full of excitent. It brought my mind back to the situation at hand. I didn’t have ti to plot the nature of dungeon cores yet. That was better left for when we returned to the archives.
“Yeah, safely tucked away in my pocket. Are these things sapient?” I asked, unsure what the ramifications of the answer would be.
“What’s sapient?” Cecile asked as a look of confusion had covered his face.
“It essentially ans intelligent. Do you ever read, brother? Yes, they can be. I assu it tried to speak to you?” Elicec asked while giving his brother an annoyed expression.
“Yeah, twice. It really wants my body. What would it do if it got it?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of . This really could have waited, but having a talking, body-stealing, otherworldly orb in my pocket made it hard to ignore the risks for the mont.
“I know it’s happened before, but I don’t really know the outco, probably nothing good for you, though. I know so people have based their classes and skill sets around dungeon cores, so it is possible to make the thing’s intelligence useful. You can keep that one if you want to explore its uses. Since it doesn’t have a body, there isn’t a lot it can do to you, just don’t eat it or anything stupid like that,” Elicec explained.
“Yeah, I doubt it’s worth much considering how weak it is, anyway. I can already feel the dungeon starting to lose its energy,” Cecile said. A few seconds following his claim, I also felt the weird feeling that had been with since we entered lessen.
“Co on, do a quick periter check of the cavern before all the energy fades. Grab anything that seems useful. We can check it later,” Elicec ordered. I picked the opposite side the brothers went to and started walking along the wall towards the far end. With the dungeon’s influence fading, I felt a little of the earlier fear go with it.
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In its place, so of the anxiety turned into an excitent of sorts. We had fought monsters and survived. That was sothing to be proud of. The usual aches and pains of my body didn’t seem to bother as much as I searched the cavern for anything of potential use.
In my haste, I almost missed it. Growing from the crack between two rocks was a small black flower. I reached down, pushing the pebbles away to reveal more of the stem. I grabbed it firmly as far down as I could and carefully plucked it. I had no idea if this was just a natural cave plant or sothing special, but that was knowledge I could find out later. I stood back up, keeping the flower safely in my hand, and continued my path, finding nothing else until I bumped into the brothers.
“Hey guys, found a black flower, what did you guys find?” I lifted the flower into their field of vision, giving them a glimpse of my potential loot.
“Nothing, but that looks like it might be magical. We should plant it when we get back. I can test so of my magic on it,” Cecile said. I liked the idea. I didn’t have any idea what to do with it, and they had given the core to keep. It was only fair that they got sothing as well. I handed the flower to Cecile, who smiled brightly as he grabbed it from .
“All yours, buddy. Are we good to get back now?” I asked. I was exhausted. I wanted a nice long shower, so food, and then to get back to a safe world of research. The mory of being stabbed flashed unbidden in my head. Okay, so it wasn’t always safe, but that was exactly why I needed to get back to it. I had to work on my core so that I could avoid future incidents while trying to accomplish other tasks.
“Yep. Honestly, that went quicker than I thought it would. I know we’ve got experience to spend, so I bet you can’t wait either, Dave. Let’s et up tomorrow at the Adventure Hall around lunch. We can give our full report and see what we wanna do with the shards,” Cecile said, clapping on the back gently. The man’s enthusiasm was almost contagious, and I couldn’t fault him for it. I was glad he had invited to this, not just because of what could have happened without , or even the potential level increases. This was an experience I had needed. It gave a better picture of what was coming and reinforced how far I had to go.
After much small talk and assurances of seeing each other tomorrow after lunch, I was finally back in my room and no longer covered in the gri of the day. I sat down at my desk and pulled up the System’s interface. I had points to apply. I quickly dismissed the list of notifications and started by looking at quests. It seed the dungeon’s completion had counted as a series of new quests, and more interestingly, it had been given a na.
Dungeon ExplorationSlimy Slithering Depths!Dungeon Boss DefeatedSlimy Slithering Depths!Dungeon LootedSlimy Slithering Depths!
I had gained another seventy points of experience from the quests, and three new skills as well, not that I could use them yet: Cartography, Malacology, and Treasure Sense. The first and last, I was already aware of what they were. They were basic skills that most people ended up with access to. The second one, though, I wasn’t sure about, and outside of diving into books, I had no way of learning until I reached level twenty-five and considering how much experience I had gained already, that wouldn’t be far off, assuming I could get my core ford to get past the level twenty barrier.
Speaking of levels, I checked my status. I was sitting at level fourteen, which, when you take into account I started the dungeon at level five, was quite the jump. How many attribute points did I have to spend? I quickly moved to my attribute section and found one hundred and ten points waiting to be assigned, which didn’t add up to what I had expected.
I should have had less. I checked back on the level-up notification logs I had earlier dismissed, and apparently, once I hit level ten, the attribute points I was gaining had increased to fifteen. I rembered skimming sothing about point values increasing with levels, but it hadn’t been my focus at the ti. I’d look more into it tomorrow.
The first thing I did was push all of my reactions to twenty-five and my ntal use as well. I hit the caps in all three, so that looked like it might turn out to be true across the board for . I had seventy-six points left. I moved each of my soul stats up to twenty and put the remaining into my physical score. I figured I was probably going to need the soul attributes if I wanted the core experints to go right, learning from the last ti I did each of my increases separately, letting my body settle after each.
The biggest change I felt was a growing presence inside of , but not an alien one like the dungeon core had produced. It felt like it was my own self, almost coming awake within . Was this tied to the growth of my soul?
I thought I understood now why a stronger soul made it easier to fight off sothing like a dungeon core, as it was the master of its own system, my body. This had the added effect of increasing my confidence in the core experint. I believed my soul was ready, but there was no reason to rush it just yet. I could still gain another six levels’ worth of attributes, which would help fortify my body as much as possible before I did this, and I would gladly take all the help I could get. Then there was the question of the dungeon core: what exactly did I want to do with that little monster?
The Floating Empire is one of the rare examples of an old faction that long sat at the top of the Spiral hierarchy to lose nearly everything. They went from a people that controlled entire clusters of universes to having a singular ho planet and being mostly scattered throughout the Spiral. All because their king chose to support the wrong man…
Opening statent from the dissertation A History of Power, the Rise and Fall of the Floating Empire by lhelm VII
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