Saga of the Soul Dungeon

Skills make all the difference. Prospectors will find the traces of gold in a stream where all others find only mud.

An Adventurer's Guide to Prosperity

Quest Complete

Route: Freedom

Method: Deception

Initial Difficulty Assessment: Severe

Deception Bonuses:

+ Quick Completion

+ Initial Escape Unnoticed

- Damaged (Deduction Removed: Damage Integral to Escape)

+ Evaded Active Detection

+ Difficulty Level Escalated During Escape

+ No Escape Specific Skills Purchased

+ Low Level

+ Escaped on First Attempt

Rewards: Severe, Upgraded to Titanic with Bonuses

Hidden (Reward Deferred)

Title Given

All Skills Start at Level II

Current Skills Below II Raised to Level II

Skills and Abilities Returned

Destructive Assimilation II

Matter Fabrication II

Found Dungeon

Some formerly disabled abilities are now available for purchase.

Title Gained

Escape Artist IV (Deception)

You are a master of stealth and misdirection. No one notices your escape until you are long gone.

+750 AP (50, 100, 200, 400)

+Learn or purchase abilities focused on deception much faster or cheaper. (-20% cost)

+Your Aura cannot be traced back to your core by anyone without a stronger detection title.

Destructive Assimilation II

Disintegrate an object, plant, creature, etc... to gain knowledge of its component parts. More complicated materials and enchanted items may require analyzing more than one sample.

Matter Fabrication II

Use mana to reconstruct items analyzed with Destructive Assimilation. Creating materials without an associated skill will be far more mana intensive. Some creations will require more than raw mana.

Current Associated Skills: Earth Manipulation

Found Dungeon

Instantly create a dedicated dungeon space to attract adventurers. Subsections may be used to create separate areas with different properties. Dungeon areas are inherently easier for you to control. Only one dungeon may currently exist at a time, your previous one must be removed to found a new one. Founding a dungeon completely heals a damaged core.

My mind reeled under the assault of this sudden barrage of information. My aura billowed outwards, no doubt a consequence of my new skill Aura Mobility, moving from I to II. Despite my momentary disorientation, I was quite pleased with my new abilities. There had definitely been things lacking from my abilities before; now I had the proper tools to make a dungeon.

Kind of ironic to call me a master of escape, when my absence was definitely noted before I was fully out of Tam’s area of control. Still… if that extra wall hadn’t been there, I would definitely have been completely gone before he noticed.

My musings were promptly cut short by the next notification.

Warning - Core Unstable!

You have received massive damage to your core over a short period of time, and from internal forces, which has made your core unstable without a dungeon to ground you. You have 2 hours to found a dungeon to heal in or you will receive further damage.

Shit. There was absolutely no way that I wanted to build a dungeon right next to Tam. I had a hard time escaping the first time. If he found me again… yeah, going to avoid that. Thinking about Tam felt odd.

Huh, almost no pulse of anger from Exsan.

Was he quiescent because I was free now? Or was that a side effect of the core being damaged?

Ha, maybe it damaged our connection. Talk about silver linings…

I took a very quick look at my status, but didn’t try to bring up the full thing, just looking at my “health.”

Ouch, forty four percent. Still, said it will completely heal when I found a dungeon, and I have a couple hours.

For the moment, I considered what new options were available for purchase. With a new level in learning, everything was even cheaper to purchase, an additional 5% removed from the costs. And, as promised, there were new purchases showing up. They were mostly variations on each other, actually. For the first time there were a few one time use purchase options. All of them were related to teleportation. I could do a random teleportation, teleport to a generic place suitable for a dungeon, teleport somewhere that I already knew, or…

I stopped, carefully reading over the last couple options that were available for purchase. They were expensive, at least by my current standards, and that was for a single use. I could barely afford one of them, and only because I just gained an extra seven hundred and fifty ability points, as well as the discount from Learning II. The best option was still out of reach… but I would be able to get something that helped immensely.

I brought up my status and a little timer was ticking down in it. Useful, if stressful. I had a little less than two hours to decide, and I needed to make the most of this time, so I started to move upwards.

I would test my new abilities along the way. I could check any skill changes later; I could already tell one thing had changed, however. My passive mana generation had doubled. Presumably that was from Soul Mana II.

I found my journey stopping abruptly, despite my original intention, when I reached out and used Destructive Assimilation on the stone around me.

Taste. Texture. Joy.

I hadn’t eaten anything other than mana for weeks, and I thought that was just how a dungeon was supposed to be, but it now became clear that I was intended to have more. A tiny bit of stone dissolved and I could actually taste it. It tasted… actually about how I imagined stone would taste. Mineral and metallic, and I could feel the texture of it crunching as it dissolved, like a piece of hard candy cracking between my teeth.

If I had been human, using taste buds, I would have called the flavor disgusting. Apparently my sense of taste was altered with my change in form, because I found the rich complexity of the stone’s composition delicate and refreshing. And, as I consumed other pieces of stone, the faint differences of flavor came in simultaneously with information on how to recreate the stone.

So I did.

It was easy. I replaced the small pieces that I had taken and the edges slotted into place naturally, creating a fully natural pattern. Earth manipulation slotted perfectly into Matter Fabrication and it was cheaper and easier than it had ever been. I could tell that these were a gestalt ability, the two halves doing far more together. I could only roughly sense the patterns that made the stone. I understood no molecular or atomic information, let alone anything deeper than that. However, I could tell that the pattern held more underneath. Perhaps one day I’ll reach that far.

Eager to try new flavors I threw myself upwards through the stone, using Earth manipulation to shift stone aside and push me upwards like a bubble of air slowly rising through honey. I tried the different strata of stone, savoring the subtle variations, and the occasional explosions of flavor of entirely new types. In a gluttonous haze I rose upward for a good ten minutes until I felt something truly new: flowing water.

As I rose farther, I could tell it was more than that. It was quickly obvious that it was a sewer system. Faded brick walls, spotted with the occasional bright brick of a more recent repair, lined flat walls and rose to meet the solid stone of the ceiling. The stone beneath the water was solid and unmarked.

Why bother with the bricks, why not all just solid stone? Easier for someone without magic to maintain, maybe?

Was the floor made with magic, or just old enough that the water had removed any tool marks? The equally flat and perfect ceiling suggested magic, but enough care and polishing with precise tools would have produced an identical result.

No way to say for certain.

I couldn’t feel any light, though everything in my aura was as clear as ever, save a few notable exceptions. The water was a haze of mana, though I could see insects and tiny fish outlined as even denser murky spots in the faint mistiness. Along the bottom of the sewer were small creatures; they looked like they belonged in the ocean. Small hardened cones attached to the stone under the water, and from the top they extended slightly fuzzy tentacles that would wave with the movement of the water, periodically curling back into the shell, only to extend again a moment later. Looks like a type of filter feeder. There were others types, too. Fans and tubes grabbed at the water as it passed. Everywhere I examined, the water showed more and more life. When I focused on the water itself, the haze resolved into countless tiny critters that looked like jellyfish, insects, and more.

This… this was a full ecosystem. A complete balanced biosphere. How long would a city need to exist for an ecology like this to evolve from a sewer? I could not even imagine. It would need to stay in more or less constant use too, or the ecosystem would die out.

Many creatures had adapted to human cities back home, but nothing on this scale. This system was like a cross between an ocean reef and a cave. It was beautiful and insane.

Somewhere along the line I had made a mistake. My experiences with Tam had exposed me to a whole two types of living creatures, other than dungeons: Mice-bugs and humans. Some part of me had looked at the game interface for the world and made the assumption that this world’s life was simplified. Nothing could be farther from the truth, this tiny system was as complex as any from Earth.

I looked at the water with wonder, though it was tinged with a certain dubious dread. There were some fantastic reasons for consuming some, but… it was sewer water, and I was going to taste it. If I didn’t taste... I wouldn’t have even bothered to hesitate. Still, water was essential to life. And some of the creatures might be very useful.

There is a fully functional ecosystem here, not acquiring it is stupid and wasteful. I only have two hours: DO IT.

I sighed and started. Oh thank god. To my relief it did’t taste bad. It tasted organic, in the same way that decomposing leaves smell of sweet cinnamon decay and new earth.

As I drank, the water my mind opened. The water was simple. A clear signal that rang in my mind as a single pure note. However, it was surrounded by a symphony. Thousands, millions, of uncountable patterns swirled with unfathomable complexity. They were layered over each other and growing ever more complex as I consumed more. Overwhelmed, it took a few moment before I came back to myself.

What was that?

I could see vague shapes in my mind. They were impressions of what the completed products would look like. A rod and a tail, others with wiggling… Wait. I know what this is. Bacteria. They seemed to be even more complex than all rest of the biosphere. I couldn’t make out any particular separation between the various patterns of bacteria, though the fact that they were individuals in some fashion was obvious. If I was going to make them, they would all be made together. Probably for the best that I don’t need to choose the specific bacteria I need out of so many different types. And there were other things in the water too. Complex molecular shapes perhaps? There was not enough information to say. I could see the various simple bits of stone and other things dissolved into the water as clearer signals that could be separated to be used individually.

Something was wrong though. All the living creatures I could see with my senses continued on undisturbed. None of them had been absorbed. I focused on a small tentacle cone and tried to absorb it. Nothing happened, no matter how hard I tried. Are living organisms completely immune? Had I simply absorbed dead bacteria? There would be absolutely no shortage of that in the water. Or maybe it was a matter of size? I concentrated again, this time focusing on a particularly tiny jellyfish, smaller than a mote of dust.

At first, I thought that nothing was happening. However, as continued my intense focus, pushing my skill, its mana drew dimmer, brighter, and then dimmed again. Its mana throbbed, pulsing faster and faster. Finally the mana winked out and the jellyfish vanished like bursting soap bubble. Again, information flooded my mind, and I knew the creature inside and out. It joined with disjointed information that was already present. Apparently, tiny traces of the jellyfish had already been absorbed from the water, but had I had gathered was not nearly enough to do anything with. Now, however, I knew that I could create it. Admittedly creating a tiny jellyfish smaller than people would even be able to see was not exactly going to inspire terror. It’s a start.

I took a look at my mana. Damn, are you kidding me? It had actually taken two mana to break the creature down. This was not an efficient way to harvest… anything. I wonder… It didn’t look like any defenses remained, once they were dead, considering I had absorbed dead bits from the water, so I would just need to find a way to kill everything. Presumably, all the patterns from the DNA and cellular residue would be enough. Maybe? No way to know until I try it.

If nothing else, I could kill some, then use the mana they release to forcibly absorb some whole ones.

My thoughts turned to murder. What was the most efficient way to kill everything in a specific section of the sewer? When I tried to move the stone directly under the water, I felt it resisting. It still worked, but the closer the stone was to the water, and the life it contained, the more it cost to alter. The range restriction was not very far, but trying to manipulate anything within a few inches of the water quickly became prohibitively expensive.

Let’s see, I could create stone to cut off the water and “drown” them all with air. Might take too long, and some of the ones with cones might last for hours, or more, with just whatever water remains inside. I could push stone in from the walls, like a trash compacter, though the restriction would make it expensive. No… probably best to simply overwhelm sheer force. Gravity can work in my favor…

I lifted my crystal up farther within the stone, bringing the entirety of the stone walls and the ceiling several feet into my aura. There was still a small amount of resistance at the ceiling, likely from the small insects and the fungus I could feel on it, but it was much easier, and cheaper, than near the water. With a quick bit of destruction, I outlined a rectangle of stone. It was about a dozen feet long and smaller than the width of the sewers by several inches on each side. I cut stone free from the top, working from the inside and then working outward. I stopped when I felt the tension in the stone reach a peak. Several inches of stone remained attached to the ceiling all around the sides, forming a hollow rectangle. Next, I used a trick I learned from making sculptures, working to alter all the remaining stone simultaneously. I hollowed it out, making it increasingly porous, sabotaging the connecting stone, that last connection progressively weaker and weaker. Finally, a sharp crack rang out, and it came loose. A block of stone weighing multiple tons plummeted towards the water waiting below.

The intricate ecosystem waiting below didn’t have time to react before it was obliterated. The giant block of stone only fell a short distance, relatively speaking, but gravity had already decided it was going to move and inertia, bitch that she was, would not be denied. Upon hitting the water a shock wave of pressure propagated outwards. It claimed the first victims; organisms ruptured under the pressure differential. The stone had lost some tiny fraction of its momentum, the water carrying it away in a thunderous rush, but it hit the bottom only moments later. Shells and living tissue alike ground down to a thin paste beneath the inexorable weight and motion. The stone settled into the sewer channel, even as some of the solid stone beneath it cracked and buckled, with a sound like cracking thunder, fitting the crash of waves and the spray of water rising up and then cascading back down in a torrent that trickled down to rain.

I was simultaneously delighted, though mildly sickened by the gore. Mana poured into me as I focused on sucking it up from the deaths, and it was deeply appreciated, but I did slightly regret the loss of life. Plenty more ecosystem here… it will recover. Well, no sense letting it go to waste. I absorbed the paste under the stone and where it had been extruded from the sides. For a timeless moment I was lost to sensation. Holy crap… The flavors were intoxicating. Obviously, living things were the most satisfying meal for me. Appropriate for a dungeon, I suppose. It tasted of umami, the bold savory flavor of flesh, and the vibrant mineral tastes of salt, marrow, and bone.

And information flowed, just as intoxicating.

Taste and a flood of information. All other thoughts were swept away. I tried my best to comprehend what I was learning, even as I felt it slot into place and become something I could use. Even with many trains of thought simultaneously brought to bear, I could only catch tiny flash: A vast intricate assemblage, perhaps a protein, parts of cells that looked vaguely familiar, and dual helical strands of DNA that stretched to infinity in both directions, or DNA that was folded and folded again into intricate knots. Gradually, as I absorbed all that I could, I became aware of the creatures that I could create, but even the simplest of living things had unimaginable amounts of detail. For all my clumsy attempts to grasp and recreate what I absorbed, I remained like a man making a sculpture. Everything was only surface level. The skill itself would handle the rest.