She had finished the first couple of videos. In doing so she had figured some things out about her interface. The first thing she learned was that she could open up multiple screens to use the Knowledge Engine. Which functioned like a search engine, but given that there was no internet here, she wasn’t sure what it was connecting to. Asking the engine itself revealed it was connected to “The Domain of Knowledge” which was “The repository of all information ever written down or recorded.”
Which was a whole existential crisis on its own. Holly imagined; rooms literally filled with sticky notes of reminders people had left themselves, file cabinets of old grocery lists, and warehouses stacked with notebooks full of half?understood class notes.
Her current existential crisis was inspired by the system in which she found herself and its sheer scale of power. Someone with a Stage 3 resilience, classified as “superhuman”, could be impervious to bullets. She was currently at Stage 1 “mundane”. Which meant anyone with high enough attributes could just walk into her dungeon and rip out her core. Once her core had been removed from her dungeon she would die … Again. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Just dead.
The leveling aspect of the system awarded attribute points. While not everyone in Pallimore had a class, level 12 or higher class holders didn’t seem that uncommon from what she could tell. That meant any mid-level adventurer could kill her if they felt like it. There would be consequences, but those wouldn't really matter if she was dead.
Her spiral was interrupted by her influence suddenly hitting the surface and stopping abruptly. While she had started expanding in all directions, she quickly figured out that she could control her expansion and focused it upward. Well, the direction she assumed to be upward. Until Cheshire dropped his orb and it fell upward. Meaning he had been upside-down the whole time, forcing her to readjust the direction of her expansion.
Holly shifted her focus up to the forest on the side of the mountain. There were small gaps in her senses. Judging by the shapes, there were various burrows and nests of the local wildlife. The newly formed core reached out and caved in the holes. While she couldn’t extend her influence into the small beasts' homes, she did already control the ground around them. Making the soil around the holes unstable enough to collapse was as easy as making a fist.
The act was instinctive, like crushing a bug crawling across your skin. Holly didn’t feel anything as she absorbed the animals gaining their patterns as well as energy in the form of levels. The horror didn’t set in until she was looking over her recent notifications.
The patterns she had obtained from absorbing the animals weren't just a basic template. She also had variations based on the kind she absorbed. The developing core now had patterns for a fox, a vole, a mouse, and a rabbit. There were also options for gender and age range. Holly's nonexistent stomach dropped. She had just casually whipped out whole families of woodland creatures. It hadn’t just been easy, she hadn’t felt anything while doing it.
“Hey Cheshire, why are there gaps in my dungeon senses?” Holly asked her familiar.
“Hang on, I'll have to take a look.” the still floating cat responded as he fiddled with his orb.
Eventually the projection of the mountain that was still up changed. Turning into a visual representation of the upper portion of her core’s influence.Seeing them projected in front of her, the layout finally made sense—the tunnels formed a clear network, branching into what could only be underground rooms.
“It looks like you have someone living on top of your nascent dungeon.” The colorful feline said, as his patterns and colors began to change and swirl around again.
“That would be why you can’t enter or see inside. Your influence and senses are largely spiritual based and therefore you can’t brute force your way past the threshold of someone's home. There are other ways around it. A home that is being lived in and occupied by a family has an energy around it called a threshold. If you get any permanent residents in your dungeon you will also develop a threshold.” he continued.
Holly was only partially listening to the explanation. While the snarky cat had been pulling up the information, she had been poking around with her senses and had found a recently disturbed patch of soil that was about half-dozen feet deep. Most things that were close to the surface were only partially underground and therefore inside her influence. That, paired with the fact that she couldn’t absorb still living things, meant there wasn’t a lot of organic material she could absorb. She could still absorb any of the various materials that were currently making up her form. However that was why these bits of organic material buried in the earth stood out to her.
She didn’t have enough experience with her new senses yet to be able to discern what the buried objects were. If she had thought about it then maybe she wouldn’t have done what she did next but she didn’t. She absorbed a block of material including the organic material she felt. Information flooded into her core and popped up as a helpful notification that would tell her what she had just absorbed. A material pool also popped up on her dungeon builder interface. As one of the intro videos had explained, it was easier for the cores to break down matter into its base components and store it in an extradimensional space than it was to convert it to energy and then back to matter.
The notifications made her sick to her nonexistent stomach.
Pattern for ‘Fae Goblin’ absorbed
Pattern for ‘Fae Goblin’ has been removed. Dungeon Cores can not create mobs of sapient races.
‘I ate a dead goblin!! THAT’S SO GROSS!’
Holly wanted to throw up but couldn’t. Those goblin corpses were now a part of the base matter that made up her material pool. Apparently the small critters she had murdered then absorbed hadn't been enough to form a pool. The former young woman's mind froze.
She had completely forgotten about her casual massacre of woodland creatures only moments before. Just like when she started questioning what was going on… But Cheshire was saying something important.
Holly tuned back in as the cat of many colors was finishing his explanation on thresholds.
“It looks like there're goblins living above us.” She reported as she searched goblins in the knowledge engine.
What came up was not the small green skinned creatures she had been expecting. Instead they looked like a cross between an ewok and an ape, with a bat-like face. ‘So less D&D and more Spiderwick. Got it.’ She thought to herself.
“Those do look like goblin dens, but how are you sure?” Cheshire asked
“I’m not sure, just a feeling.” She responded automatically as she read up on her new neighbors.
“Well they probably aren’t alone. The smaller fae tend to travel in groups on Pallimore.” The feline familiar explained.
The main problem was she couldn’t see into the dens due to the thresholds and she couldn’t see above the surface. While apparently there were types of dungeons that could expand into water, through plants, or into the open air, Holly wasn’t any of those types. She could only expand through the ground for now. According to “Dungeon Building for Beginners", if she tried to expand her influence onto the surface her mana would just disperse and dissipate into the air. That thought, brought her up short.
Her Dungeon senses, as far as she could tell, were based on the density of her mana in a given location. That was why she could see everything inside a room in her dungeon, the room was filled with her mana. She didn’t have to expand her influence to see what was going on; she just had to flood the area with her mana.
Holly immediately opened up tiny holes into the areas on the surface she controlled. She began flooding her mana into the holes, as before, it began to disperse, however it was growing dense enough to give her vague shapes of what was going on. Keeping an eye on her slowly dropping mana she turned her attention back to the projected screen. The screen now had blurry shapes moving around just above where her influence ended.
“Nice work, I thought it would take you much longer to figure that out.” Cheshire complimented her with only a little bit of snark.
“They definitely seem to be excited." Holly observed.
“How long has it been since you were incorporated into the system?” The cat made a show of checking his.. Wait, did he actually have a watch? Upon closer observation Holly realised it was a pattern of gray and black fur made to look like a watch.
“Yeah, that’s probably about you. The ley strings in this area would have been going crazy for weeks before your rebirth. The fae are much more in tune with their environment than humans, although not as entrenched in their surroundings as a core.” He continued with a smirk.
“So you're saying they have the best of both worlds? Dungeon core like senses and legs? I’m almost jealous.” She responded dryly.
The notification that popped up was so unexpected that it made Holly curse out loud.
“Fucking shit!”
“What happened?!” Suddenly Cheshire's attention was almost a physical pressure.
“I got a notification. Hold on.” She answered, almost more startled by his reaction than the notification itself.
Would you like to accept the ‘Dire Rabbit’ Pattern?
Accept Decline
“Cheshire I just got the option to get a dire rabbit pattern randomly.” Holly informed her familiar.
“What? No. Couldn’t be.”
The cat started messing with his orb again. Then the projected image shifted sharply.
“Holly, focus on releasing more of your mana in this area.” He directed.
It took her a moment to locate the area he was talking about but soon found the place where people seem to be congregating and flooded the area with her mana. The image started to take on a sharper definition. Revealing a number of figures in colorful garb dancing around various fires that seemed to be circling an altar.
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The figure in the middle was draped in a garment made of bones and not much else. Leaving her fur like body hair to preserve her modesty as she chanted. The audio coming through was faint but distinct enough to make out singing, drumbeats, and the sounds of people chanting in what could only be some kind of ritual.
Since the projection was based on her senses she couldn’t make out what the older looking goblin woman was chanting any better than the image.
“Oh cool, animal sacrifice, I haven't seen this in a while.” Cheshire said excitedly. Then drooped, “This better not turn into another cult situation, I hate dealing with cults.”
Holly elected to ignore all the questions those comments raised for the sake of her sanity.
“So should I accept this pattern or…?” She asked.
“Yeah, it should be safe. I have no idea how a family of wild fae got their hands on a dungeon tribute ritual form, but it should be safe enough. “
“So they're sacrificing those animals to me?” She asked as she accepted the notification.
It only gave her the base pattern, meaning that if she tried to generate a dire bunny, aspects such as its attributes, sex, age, even fur color would be completely random. She hadn’t watched “Your mobs and you” yet but she had figured out that much. She assumed she would have to absorb more dire bunnies or practice more with her mob generator.
“Technically they’re sacrificing them to your core. A ritual like this only works if you’re literally right on top of the dungeon or inside of it. Either you just got lucky, or Bas is stacking the deck in your favor. The fact that they’re already giving you tribute most likely means they want some kind of alliance, they may even want to become full-time residents in your dungeon.”
“You’re going to have to explain most of that to me. I’m still new to this whole dungeon core thing. Are there built in alliance features in the MIS? How do I make someone a resident?” Holly asked.
“All in good time young padawan.” The snarky feline shot back.
He shot over to the projected screen and pulled out a stick from nowhere. Then the multi-colored cat pointed at the image dramatically as it changed. The top of the screen now said “Fae Sociology 101”.
“Oh joy, I feel like I’m back in college already.” Holly snarked rolling her crystal in an attempt to mimic rolling her eyes.
“If you don’t like the room, change it. It’s your dungeon.” Cheshire replied.
Which was actually a good point. Why was she floating in a dank cave? Holly turned off the mana spouts on the surface and pulled up her dungeon interface again. She absorbed all the water in the room and began to reshape it slowly. Reshaping ate into her already low mana pool, but if worked slowly enough, she could change her core room while letting her mana regeneration out pace the mana she was spending.
She listened to Cheshire's lecture as the stalactites, stalagmites, and those already connected began to shrink and separate.
“So I know how I said I wouldn’t info dump but this is fairly important to you getting along with your new neighbors so strap in. Without getting into the finer details, the smaller fae tend to organize themselves into extended family like communities. While the taller more human like prefer to organize themselves into a court like system with noble houses and the like. Then the fae lord is over everyone else.”
As he spoke graphics popped up featuring stick people of varying heights. Some had pointed ears while others had more batlike ears. A dotted line formed down the middle separating the smaller stick figures from the larger ones. The shorter group was labeled “families” the other was labeled “courts”. Then more words popped up with arrows pointing between them to the left.
Families → House Holds→ Noble House→ Courts
Holly listened as she watched her mana bar slowly creep up past half. The room was still slowly reshaping and the feeling was odd, kinda tingly, like moving a limb that she hadn't moved in while and it had partially fallen asleep.
“A quick shorthand on the Fae. The taller, prettier, and older they are the more powerful. So if you see a fae that looks like Lady Dimitrescu… Well I was going to say run away but by the time you see them coming it’s probably already too late for you.”
“Oh, that's super comforting.” The new dungeon core said.
“Don’t worry there are only a handful of those on the planet.. Probably. No more than a dozen anyway and you probably won't even run into them.”
“My confidence is overflowing.”
“Anyway, moving on.”
The screen changed again now saying “A Brief History of Pallimore” and showing an image of a planet that kinda looked like earth but all the continents were even more broken up and in the wrong places. She could even still kinda see where they would fit together.
“Roughly twelve hundred years ago Pallimore was inhabited mostly by the fae and giants.”
the image of the planet then populated with stick figures of varying sizes
As she listened Holly pulled up her mob maker. She currently only had a few options.
Mob Categories:
*Animated Object (n/a ) ?
*Animals +
*Dire Beast ?
*Rabbit
*Mimic ?
*Small
*Slime-
*Small acidic green slime
The Animated Objects was grayed out because she didn’t currently have any object that fit the requirements to be animated.
“Then the magic of the planet shifted. Why, is very complicated and we don’t have time to go into cosmic ley lines. However, the important part is that due to this magic shift the portals to their plane of Mythos were cut off. Trapping the ones who were still here on this planet as the ambient mana density rose rapidly.”
The planet image was replaced with a door with a big red x through it and a stick figure with pointed ears looking sad.
Holly tried making a slime. An image popped up with its stats with a smaller image like an 8-bit sprite from an old video game. She could distribute the slimes attribute points but elected to have them distributed randomly. Then she dragged the sprite from the mob maker screen to the dungeon builder scene, which was just her little cave, and designated where to summon it. The mana flowed out of her and a little green slime about the size of a basketball popped into existence on the floor in front of her core.
"Of course, most of the important people got off the planet before that happened. The surviving population formed communities. Then the gods saw a planet that was mostly uninhabited with an absurdly high ambient mana density and decided to start running experiments with their new magic interface system.”
The planet returned with significantly fewer stick figures that moved together. Then little dots started popping up on the planet with lines forming between them.
“So let me get this straight, the gods saw a bunch of refugees and decided to use their home as a testing ground?”
“Well yes, but the gods don’t really care about the peoples of Mythos. They are outside their purview, you could say. The gods are mostly concerned with mortals and those who worship them. The fae and the giants have their own form of gods known as royalty.”
Holly watched her new slime roll around as she processed the callousness of the cosmos.
“The earlier form of the system had the little unfortunate side effect of pulling other groups of people onto the planet.”
The planet on the screen had a figure in a Roman centurion outfit pop onto it then a British red coat, shinto robes, as well as some eastern style monks. Then some furry stick figures with animal heads and some with pointed teeth popped up.
Holly was looking at her mob related abilities when one caught her eye. Activating it and then selecting the little slime on her dungeon interface the option to name it popped up as the mana bar grew smaller. She named it Slurmp, a legally distinct entity from Futurama's green energy drink.
Name Mob
- Upon activation you permanently imbue a portion of your mana into a selected mob. This mob can now be named. Named mobs have an increase to their vitality pool and spirit rank. Named mobs can also be respawned. Level up this ability to allow mobs to retain experience through respawn.
"Fortunately that got patched pretty quickly, however there were now a bunch of people on the planet that weren't supposed to be here and trying to get them back where they were supposed to be would have been… complicated. So they stuck around and started forming nations and what have you. Conflicts arose as they do, and it only took the mortals about two hundred years to realise that if they kept fighting wars the way they were, there wouldn’t be much of a world left to rule over. Diplomacy becomes necessary when both sides can drop the human equivalent of a nuke on the other side.”
The image changes to a 2d map of the planet with fighting stick figures until one of them blew up like a bomb making all the stick figures around him fall down.
Holly’s crystal shuttered, even gifted with amazing powers that kind of personal power was terrifying. How did you stop someone like that from just going around and doing whatever they wanted?
“Now the important thing you have to understand about the small folk, and to a lesser extent their taller counterparts, is that they have an odd habit of forming attachments to mortal families. Once a bond is formed between a fae and a mortal they will consider that mortal as a member of their household. As long as a mortal is on good terms with the fae they will do them small favors the way you would do with any friend. Think less “taxi to the airport” and more “shoe factory by sunrise” or “milk-preserving superhero.””
Cheshire's colors were starting to drain away again. Meaning he was getting serious again.
“During the two hundred years of near constant war, the courts made alliances with the mortal nations. One of the things they traded was the ability for mortals to artificially create a stronger form of this bond with some of the small folk which allowed them to be made into indentured servants.”
“That just sounds like slavery with extra steps.” Holly pointed out angrily
“Yeah it probably is. Unfortunately slavery is one of those persistent evils that is too useful to those in power to ever fully eliminate. Last time I checked your country had a recidivism rate of seventy-five percent and your prison industrial complex gentrates eighty billion dollars of profit, so perhaps those in glass houses and so forth.”
The cat once again had a good point and it was starting to get on Holly's nerves.
“The point I was trying to explain with all that is, this family of goblins will probably be willing to work with you for shelter, protection, and resources.”
The cat drifted until he was once more in front of Holly's crystal.
“Furthermore, if you want to stay up on that high horse of yours, I feel the need to point out you aren’t some weak little magicless mortal anymore. You are a Divine Dungeon Core. Crafted by the gods. Granted sentience by a human soul and with the power of a ley line running through you. You are Holly Penhaligon Dungeon Core. IF you want to change something about the world, then get strong enough to do it. If they don’t want to listen, then make them. Your old life is gone now. Who are you going to be now?!”
The last word echoed around the room causing Slurmp to anxiously climb up the wall.
Holly looked at the screens in front of her. In her previous life she had always dreamed of making a difference. Protests and cyber activism only did so much. What would she do now that she could literally reshape the earth around her.
The stone walls of the cave were now as smooth as masoned stone.
She turned her focus up to the people walking on her surface. Who were they? Refugees? Run away slaves? Immigrants just looking for a home?
Holly remembered how helpless she felt in her old life.
‘No more’
“I think I know what we’re going to be doing tonight Pinky.” She said to Cheshire, who just gave her his signature unstable grin.
“What are we going to do tonight Brain?”
“What we do every night Pinky.”
“Oh this is going to be fun.” The cat let out a mad chuckle.