The Dungeon Without a System

Chapter 86

-0-0-0-0-0-

The Dungeon, Medea Island, The Kalenic Sea

-0-0-0-0-0-

When I felt Wave push the monster core up against MY core, I was relieved. Keeping Instincts pushed up against the edge of my core had been getting harder and harder to maintain. For all that it couldn't innovate, it was merciless at exploiting and punishing the slightest weaknesses it could find in the wall of mana I built around it.

FINALLY! GET IN THERE, YOU LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT. I projected, pushing with every fiber of willpower I could scrape together. Suddenly changing tactics from defensive to offensive like that, with no build-up, threw the simple soul. It tried desperately to hold against my advancing mana, to no avail. I had too much mana under my control compared to it, and now that there was somewhere else it could go...

With an imagined pop, the soul named Instincts slipped from the dungeon core and into the monster core.

This entire process took less than a second. Good thing, too, as the monster core fell away moments after it was pressed against the dungeon core. The connection between the two cores was severed, and I was alone.

I had WON.

As much as I wanted to possess the skeletons on the Seventh and have them dance for joy in their traditional manner, I had far more pressing concerns.

I let my consciousness expand throughout the dungeon once again, quickly scanning through the floors. A few things happened.

Firstly, every single sapient Child had a visceral reaction to my presence. They all did one of three things. A decent chunk wept for joy, and the most pious fell to their knee-equivalents as they began fervently praying. The final group started partying. From the looks of things, most of my Children would be part of one celebration or another for the foreseeable future.

Secondly, one being on the seventh floor froze at the touch of my presence on her mind.

The human.

Well. Something was going on there I wasn't going to address at the moment. There was a Child in far more immediate trouble.

I fixed my gaze on Wave, who had collapsed below the stone hands holding my dungeon core next to the now-occupied monster core. The most mana-dense place he could possibly be. His body was immensely oversaturated, and mutations were running wild. Plenty of flailing unnecessary limbs and... other things. Well, I'd wanted to wait for this, but if any monster in the dungeon deserved this, Wave did.

After a few minutes of corralling the wild mana in his body, I pushed my intent into it. I silently begged forgiveness from the unconscious monster as I, once again, warped the very fabric of his being. I merged the ridiculous number of arms and legs into four, the front two doubling as wings. I increased the hardness and density of his scales and bones, then changed his proportions to match his new form while also trying to keep the deftness and mobility of his foreclaws in mind. I cribbed the design of the tail from a certain Night Fury as I extended it to almost twice the length of his torso, which would give him better agility in the air.

I tried to keep the arrangement of his horns mostly the same since I had to change the shape of the rest of his head. I added a few more, smaller, horns to the 'crown' he already possesses and one emerging from the tip of his nose. Almost off-handedly, I made him semi-aquatic. Gills that sat flush against his neck in flight could open wide to let him breathe underwater, and some changes to his wings should make them work just as well underwater. The tail would work well there, so I left it mostly alone.

One of the most mana-consuming parts of any transformation is changing their size, so I used the remaining mana to make him as big as possible, ensuring his core was sized appropriately for his body. I didn't want this to happen again, and the easiest way to prevent it was to give him a bigger capacity to handle mana. I threw in an Air affinity and increased his Ice affinity from the low-level one he'd had since his time as a snowbold to a fully-fledged affinity.

Ultimately, I looked down upon the newly risen Wyvern with satisfaction. He was still unconscious, and it'd be best to let him rest. As Paragon approached to inspect Wave's new form, I turned my attention away. I'd talk to the new Wyvern about his new body when he woke up. Either way, that only took a few hours, and my next task was a necessary one.

I still hadWAY too much mana in my core and accretion disk. Dangerous amounts. Wave's transformation had mostly used the mana he'd already absorbed, with a little extra that he absorbed during the process. I needed to get rid of most of this mana as quickly as possible, and I knew just how to do it.

I raised a new island for the future Elemental Isles. This one would be Air. As such, it was more of a spire that burst from the sea. There was little beach, and the Island was mostly hollow, filled with tunnels and passages of all shapes and sizes. I blew some wind through it and felt satisfied at the keening groan it gave off. I made sure there were plenty of chambers of various sizes and gave the Island an enchantment to keep its peak in eternal cloud cover. I named it Zephyr Peak.

The next one would be Terra Island. Not to be confused with Terror Island, which is an important distinction.

For this Island, I raised a massive slab. I had no doubt that this would be the largest of the islands. There was a single, small beach at the base of the vast, vertical cliffs that covered every other side of the Island. These were treacherous cliffs, covered in loose rocks, and their bases littered with sharp, pointy rocks. Unlike Zephyr Peak, this Island had only one entrance to its labyrinthine cave system. An enormous sinkhole in the dead center of the Island. There was no easy access point for this sinkhole. If one wished to explore it, they'd have to find their own way down.

I switched gears back to Zephyr for a moment. I carved an incredibly steep staircase from the beach around the mountain's base, up at least 200 meters of the mountain. There it met the lowest of the carved caves. I inscribed details, carved out some bricks, and squared off walls. In these carvings, I crafted an intricate story in runes and friezes of the monks who once lived here, seeking enlightenment in how the wind wove through the caves.

I briefly did something similar to Isla Fuego. However, that story was about how the islanders sacrificed a virgin woman once every ten years to keep the mountain quiet. I added small journal entries carved in stone tablets, littered throughout the village the manabeings had constructed for themselves, detailing how the latest woman wasn't a virgin, and the mountain's fire swept them all away. The Author was the only survivor, and the journals document his slow starvation.

These diversions didn't use much mana, but I had used enough to make the islands that I felt more comfortable dealing with more minor details.

Of course, both Zephyr Peak and Terra Island were barren. I put some hardy weeds on Zephyr and some with rattle-like seed pods that would grow in the caves and add to the music. For Terra, I made sure to give it a thick layer of dirt on the plateau. It was a large area, and I wasn't quite done when Wave began to stir.

-0-0-0-0-0-

The Core Island, the Eleventh Floor, the Dungeon

-0-0-0-0-0-

Wave felt odd.

His proprioception was the first sense to return as he clawed his way back to consciousness. When he collapsed, Wave was uncertain how many limbs he had precisely, but he now only felt five once again. A long, powerful tail uncoiled itself from his curled body, and as the tip was removed from his face and his eyes opened, the rest of his senses returned.

He raised his head, blinking rapidly as he found his point of view far higher than it'd been before. He looked down at himself, turning his flexible neck to examine the changes wrought upon his body.

His tail was incredibly long and tipped with two broad fins, which he could twist and manipulate independently of each other with little effort. He followed the line of his tail down, rainbow patterns peaking past the intense royal blue he was more familiar with. The softer scales on the underside of the tail were a light blue, resembling the color of the sky on a cloudless day. He could see the muscles under the scales flex as he twisted it, testing its range of motion.

Next were the two most striking additions to his body since they were draped over his torso. He raised his right arm, closely inspecting the changes. His three outermost fingers had been... elongated and connected back to his torso by tough, scaled skin. The middle of his new wings held the remaining fingers, which still numbered five, oddly. Wave supposed the wing fingers had been added during the transformation. He flexed them, watching as his wing folded and unfolded. It was a profoundly odd feeling, but he was sure he'd get used to them.

Folding his wings away one final time, Wave brought his right claw to his snout. The five fingers, tipped with retractable claws, were webbed slightly. A flex had the webbing extend completely, then retreat. He wiggled them, marveling at how they were just as agile as before, even with all the additions.

Wave stood. At first, he attempted to stand on his back legs but found his body... not exactly made for that. Trying just stressed the muscles on his back and legs; it felt far more natural to stand on four legs. He kept falling onto his front limbs, and after a few more tries, he resigned himself to being a quadruped. He turned his sinuous neck again, examining the ridges that ran down the middle of his back, and the shape of his back legs.

His back claws held the same webbing muscles as his foreclaws, and when he was done, Wave realized he wasn't alone.

He froze, then turned to stare at Paragon. Now that he was paying attention, he felt the amusement the manabeing was giving off and its calculated observation. The presence of The Creator in his head was more analytical, and Wave felt a few odd sensations as He made some final adjustments to his body. Wave stretched out and, in doing so, noticed his... size.

Before, he had stood little more than six feet tall. Now, if he counted from the end of his snout to the tip of his tail, he was more than fifty feet long, at the least.

How do you feel, Wave? The Creator asked. Wave turned to face the Core, still shining bright but far more tolerable than the searing beacon it'd been before.

"I feel... odd," Wave admitted, feeling strange at how his voice was deeper and rumbled slightly in his chest."I expected some changes, yes, but this..." He trailed off, shrugging his much-expanded shoulders and partially extending his wings. "I can't say I expected anything like... this." Wave felt apology and compassion radiating from The Creator's presence in his head.

I had not intended to create a Wyvern for a while yet. But you deserved a reward for your aid. The Creator told him. He was a Wyvern, then? This wasn't a Drake? You risked your life and walked to my core, knowing what awaited you. If you hadn't managed to push through, to reach my core... If you'd collapsed before reaching me or had taken another day or two more... Well, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Wave felt a chill at how close it'd been. "Surely Paragon could have picked up the core and put it against the Dungeon Core in my place if I had failed?" As he spoke of the manabeing, Wave felt its mental presence. It'd been observing the conversation silently and now joined in.

"Your faith in me is undeserved, though I am flattered. Unlike monsters, we manabeings don't have physical bodies that can absorb the same amount of mana you did." The manabeing explained. "The only reason we are so powerful is thanks to the Golem bodies. The monster cores we inhabit grant us a buffer to store and absorb mana from at will. If I had dared get any closer to the core, with the mana in the air as dense as it was... I wouldn't have been able to contain it. The core of this body would have shattered, and the force of it would have torn me to pieces."

Wave felt naked, somehow, as the manabeing scanned his body again. "Honestly, your core wouldn't have been able to contain it either." Paragon continued, "It was only thanks to your physical body using the mana to twist itself into knots that you survived. With a core the size of the one you have now... you'd fare better. Perhaps you wouldn't have collapsed, but it wouldn't have been pretty."

Reminded of his core, Wave reached inwards, feeling his mana and core. He was astonished at his core's sheer radiance and how densely mana filled every crevice of his body. He looked further and found... he had another affinity. Where before he had Water with a small talent for Ice, Wave now found Water, Ice, and Air, all three affinities equally strong as their respective mana types cycled through his body.

Wave abruptly looked up, a stray thought suddenly the focus of his entire being. He had an Air affinity. He had Wings. He could...

In an almost instinctual motion, Wave spread his wings, then beat down. He pulsed Air mana through his wings, where they found natural pathways and...

He was airborne. He opened his jaws to shout in joy but found another sound passing his lips. Blooming from deep in his chest, then vibrating up his neck, Wave let out a true Roar. The noise satisfied some deep part of himself, even as the impulse passed, and he started whooping and laughing.

He could get used to this.

-0-0-0-0-0-

The Dungeon, Medea Island, The Kalenic Sea

-0-0-0-0-0-

I watched Wave fly about with a knowing fondness that came from my memories of possessing Gull back when I first woke up. That first flight, the air rushing past your wings... it was incomparable. I let him be. He'd work it out of his system eventually.

I turned my attention back to Paragon, my Core Guardian, and now that he had my full attention, he said the words I could feel burning within him. "Contractor, I apologize for my misidentification of your symptoms. I spread false information through the dungeon of your situation and beg your forgiveness." I'd have blinked if I could have. He must have caught my incomprehension since he then clarified. "I spread that you were transforming to the next stage of your existence, as manabeings do. I had no idea you were merely spawning."

I froze, then glanced back at the monster core on the ground. I... guess from the outside, it could look like that. Within that monster core, I could feel Instincts raging. It was a soul in the wrong container and had no concept of how such an existence should work. Its natural ability to mimic and crib off of me was useless here as it flailed within the monster core.

I mean, That's not quite correct, but... it's close enough. I answered the manabeing, who was slightly confused but stayed silent. I pushed up the ground beneath the core, forming a stand for Instincts. This one I shaped as three hands, cradling the oval spheroid core from below. The core itself was unfaceted, as all monster and human cores were, instead bearing a completely smooth surface.

I reached out a tendril of mana, attempting to form a connection between the mana in the air and the monster core. I didn't dare connect it directly to my core in case it could ride the connection to return to the dungeon core.

The mana touched the core but then was immediately repelled. I tried again, forming the connection faster this time, and wondered if it'd somehow become immune to my mana. This attempt proved that hypothesis was false. I connected briefly and felt as Instincts violently rejected my mana.

Fine. If it wanted to wallow in its core, it could. It was helpless in there, anyway. I'd check in on it occasionally, but until it was willing to talk, I certainly wasn't going to force it to listen.

Leave my... child... alone, for now. I said to Paragon. It's in a crucial stage of development and needs isolation. I felt a pulse of acknowledgment and suppressed curiosity, then turned back to the dungeon.

In my absence... A lot had happened. From what I gathered from the memories of my Children, the remains of the 'Hero' group managed to get past the Metal Sprite Guardian on the Fifth Floor. They then proceeded to blitz through the Sixth and Seventh, using a stolen map to bypass the exploration of the Sixth. They took advantage of the Drake-kin's inexperience and relatively weaker strength to slaughter their way through the Seventh twice until one was killed during an ambush on the Eighth.

That death split the group. One woman turned back, then was captured by the Isid-Haythem-Clich raid. The Drake-kin supplied them with single-use teleport crystals, which... I had mixed feelings about it.

Yes, the decision makes sense. I can see their reasoning; let the woman out of the dungeon as fast as possible. But in doing so, she revealed that I had placed traps to intercept standard teleport crystals if they somehow managed to charge them after passing through the draining barrier at my entrance. I would also need to impress on them just how much the weapons they made would be worth to the humans to make sure they don't end up in an 'ignorant native' archetype.

After that, one of the two remaining humans was killed when Pyry broke the bridge between the First and Second Peaks. The final human... well, his determination was impressive. Alone, wounded, with dwindling supplies, he somehow managed to get all the way to the Ninth on his own, then survive there for days. It was only thanks to the human's choice to move upstream instead of downstream that he encountered Wave and his little 'monster party.'

Watching the memories of Towers and Aston showed it was a close battle, but even if they were weaker, they were fresh. The human was slow, exhausted, and wounded.

I quickly scanned each floor again for any immediate problems. I reset a few traps, then made them self-resetting. I momentarily let my gaze linger on Kataren but moved on without doing anything. Nope. Still didn't want to touch that just yet.

I let my presence settle on my core again, then started working on the most mana-hungry process I knew of. Atom-by-Atom, I expanded my Core. As the mana density of my core lowered, I drew in slightly more from the accretion disk, but not more than I could work with at one time. It wasn't a quick process; It took at least three days to work through the mana in my core. The mana in my accretion disk was many, many times that amount.

I certainly wouldn't get through this all at once, but I thought I could take a bite out of it. It'd make me feel better, at least. I worked until I felt a certain blindfolded Guildmistress enter the dungeon, followed close behind by her loyal assistant, aunt, and uncle.

I directed the kobold that usually met with her, and the Child was both relieved and worried that I was back. Confused, I scanned her memories.

Okay. I could understand why you let the meeting go on, but did you have to give away so many of my secrets?!

-0-0-0-0-0-