Saga of the Soul Dungeon

Death is not the end. Though Gods are sparse on the details, even we mortals can perceive the soul. Still, post-mortality’s uncertain trajectory adds poignancy and joy to the life we do live.

Take the time to live, and to love one another. We should mourn at a funeral, but not for the loss of potential and dreams unfulfilled. Instead, let us live so that at the end those who remain mourn the loss of our presence and how much we gave to the world.

-Funeral speech attributed to Theins the Cleric

My body wasn’t supposed to bend like that. Of course, the fact that I was staring down at it was already a pretty strong clue that something had gone terribly wrong.

I didn’t want to believe I was dead. Not just because I was dead, but did I have to die like that…

I mean… who rolls their foot on a pencil and falls over a railing? That had to be the most clumsy way to die.

If I meet other ghosts I’m telling them I died in a car wreck or was pushed or… something.

Not that I see any other ghosts at the moment.

I looked up from where I stood in the central courtyard to the fourth floor. I had fallen from there, where my apartment had been for the last semester. Looking up I could trace the trajectory of a narrow parabolic arc, leading down to where my body now lay. It was amazing, how fast that fall had been. One second I trip, then, before I even understand what is happening, crunch. Not that there hadn’t been a certain timeless moment in the air, but it was barely enough time to even register how my stomach was trying to seek refuge in my skull.

I’ve had better falls on roller coasters.

You only get to die once, presumably, and it was annoying mine has sucked so much. Well… no, in fairness, it had been pretty much instant. As far as dying goes, that was about as good as things got.

What did you want, a long torture session so you could come to the gripping reality of your situation? A monologue by some evil mastermind…?

My thoughts felt floaty, disconnected.

I looked around.

So… now what?

No grim reaper, no bright light?

I categorically refused to haunt my apartment building. I barely wanted to live here, I wasn’t spending any more time here than I could get away with. I was starting to get a little worried about being stuck as a ghost.

Should I just start walking?

Where would I go?

Well, no, not yet. I did kind of want to follow my body, see my funeral eventually.

The world started to fade away in white light, the outlines of things fading. It didn’t feel like I was moving, or that light was blinding me to the rest of the world. Instead, as the light grew, I had a sense that the light had always been there; now finally it was allowed to shine through everything that had obscured it.

Oh thank god.

I wasn’t going to just be stuck here.

Then, with startling suddenness, I was jerked… sideways.

Sideways, but not in any way I had ever done before. I was moving sideways to everything. Not on a normal spacial axis, but orthogonal to all of them at once. I could see the inside of my body, the coarse concrete tiles and plumbing beneath me; everything unfolded and became more than merely three dimensional. Then it accelerated.

What…?

I screamed wordlessly in confused disorientation.

The world around me jumbled into a series of impossible images as space intersected upon itself in overlapping kaleidoscopes of dizzying shapes and color, and then reality abruptly snapped back into place as though it never had the indecency to get so mixed up in the first place.

I was in a room carved directly out of solid, though not uniform, stone. The room had a flat lightly textured floor and was a hollowed out half-sphere. A single archway, simple and unadorned, lead out of the room into a short hallway. The hallway turned a corner to the left, and then disappeared from view.

The stone exterior of both the room and hallway, was mostly shades of grey and tan, though veins of something that looked like marble ran through it in streaks of white, grey, and black.

My emotions were dull, which I noted absently.

I was detached, simply existing and observing. Without concerns, there was no curiosity. Both of those emotions would normally be appropriate, as I was not where, or what, I thought I ought to be after death. Would I normally be terrified?

Probably.

I should be more focused on death too, I remembered that being normal. Surely, that should have warranted some emotion? Now that I thought about it clearly, I had probably been in shock right after I died. It wasn’t important, though.

Is anything?

I thought these things, noted them, and continued on with my apathy. Apathetic to even the apathy itself. Thoughts and analysis continued because that was what I did. Patterns from a short lifetime of human experience had entrenched grooved into my mind, and thoughts continued along them like water along well worn stream beds.

I could see all directions simultaneously, though the view below was mostly blocked by the object I was resting on. I had a good guess as to my current physical form. There were no objects in the room that were red, but there was a pool of light on the ground that looked like spilled blood against the pale mottled grey. Ergo, I must be red and transparent, which meant I was a red glass or clear stone. Or I could be a transparent container filled with red liquid…

The room held other items that would normally have held my interest and now were simply cataloged automatically by my mind due to a lack of anything more meaningful to do.

Bright balls of light floated just below the top arch of the ceiling and gave off the gentle warmth of barely yellow light. There was also a spherical crystal on a stand, with another crystal at the bottom of the stand. Based on the circumstances, and the lines of silver metal beneath me, I was likely on a similar stand.

The crystal was black and as large as a grown man’s heart. The surface of the crystal was like obsidian, dark and impenetrable, but hints of translucence around the edges suggested at inky depths. The stand was approximately waist high, though it was hard to tell scaling without a proper frame of reference, and was composed of two hollow circles linked by a helix. The bottom circle rested on the ground and spiraling metal extended from it, terminating in the second circle, where the black crystal was held aloft. Directly attached to the circle on the ground, a milky white crystal was held in place by prongs and glowed with dull light. The metal of the stand was a silvery color, like polished stainless steel, though the faintly shimmering writing that traced the outside of the helix was decidedly not so mundane.

So. Magic or sufficiently advanced science. I absently hummed in thought, uncaring.

Time had no meaning without emotion. My thoughts flitted about in contemplation of the room: the world, kittens, teleportation, and any thought that crossed my mind became as worthy of interest as any other.

Into that timeless instant stepped a man.

I watched the man, my attention automatically fixing itself on him. I think I should be feeling surprise. Surely, he ought to have the standard wise and mighty wizard look: long white beard, possibly glasses and twinkling eyes, an ancient face that would give an old paper bag a run for its money, robes, a gnarled wooden staff, a pointed hat, the usual. Instead he was far more mundane and practical.

The man was, in fact, wrinkled, but it was the wear and tear of someone who had spent many days braving the sun, wind, and weather. His wrinkles were less the softness of over-folded paper, and more carved across his face like ancient river beds, now dried to dust. He was balding, with neatly trimmed salt and pepper hair forming a half circle near the level of his ears, though it was more salt than pepper. His nose was thin, short, and perfectly straight above teeth that gleamed like polished ivory. The man wore brown leather boots, with sturdy pants and a long shirt, both the same shade of whitish tan. His hips sported a leather belt studded with various pockets and pouches.

The first thing the man did upon entering the room was examine me. He moved his hands and spoke, the sound having the rhythmic cadence of ritual or an incantation. As far as I could tell, nothing had happened, but the man’s eyebrows rose and his eyes crinkled as he smiled broadly. He nodded his head, and repeated more gestures and incantations, several times. Each time he smiled again afterwards. Finally, he looked between me and the black crystal. With a smile he rubbed his hands together and took a piece of chalk from a pouch at his waist.

The man carefully drew a large circle close, and equidistant, to the perimeter of the room. For all that it was done freehand, it was still a perfect circle. I knew I should be impressed. For a moment my attention wavered, reminded of a story about an artist who proved their skill by drawing a perfect circle on a piece of paper.

That was some time during the renaissance, wasn’t it?

My attention wandered back to the present. The man was drawing two more circles inside the original one. A larger and a smaller one. The way they were set up, the two interior circles touched both each other and the two sides of the circle 180 degrees apart. A straight line drawn through the center of both smaller circles would perfectly bisect both them, and the larger one. Within the larger interior circle he drew two new circles, each about a foot and a half wide. These circles did not touch either each other or the larger circle, each being several feet apart. Me, and the stand I rested upon, were placed in the center of one of the newest circles, while the black crystal and its stand were placed in its twin.

Between these circles the man wrote out runic characters in a straight line, directly from the edge of one circle to the edge of the other. Off that line, he proceeded to scribe out branched lines of runes in different shapes. Sometimes it was merely another straight line, but sometimes these lines had further branches, resembling trees. Other shapes were present as well: zigzags, spirals, and curlicues. Additional runes soon encompassed the perimeter of all five circles, though these runes were spaced farther apart and had less complexity.

Once all the runes were drawn, the man carefully checked that each one was correct. Afterwards, he did the same thing again. He made no corrections, but the did not deter the intensity of his focus. He moved with a glacial slowness, checking every line for errors.

Once he finished his check, he moved, carefully looking down to monitor the placement of his feet, until he stood in the center of the empty smaller inner circle. With a few gestures of his right hand, and some spoken words, the chalk drawn painstakingly across the floor lit up with bright light. Afterward, he kept his right hand frozen where his gesticulations had placed it, and, slowly and deliberately, he moved his left hand into one of the pouches at his waist. The rest of his body held absolutely still, his left hand emerged with a handful of silvery dust which he tossed into the air. His right hand streaked down when the dust reached the top of its arc and the dust drifted downwards. It was pulled unnaturally toward the chalk waiting below, stopping like it had hit a solid surface an inch above the lines, mirroring the runes and circles perfectly. He raised both his hands together and said a word; the chalk dissolved into motes of light, which faded away into nothingness.

The man gestured with both hands, each moving independently of the other while he spoke an incantation firmly and clearly, the diction of his speech noticeably precise. The silver runes in the air started to glow, becoming brighter and brighter as he continued until they silhouetted the entire room with actinic ferocity. The contained power blazed while the air thrummed with vibrating power.

Whatever else might have happened after this, I missed. As the chanting continued, my view grew more and more constrained. I was focusing more and more on the black crystal across from me with an inhuman intensity. The black shape grew before me. First it was a dark moon, then a black world, then a deep cave, and then all my world was darkness.

When I awoke my mind was functioning properly once again. Though I immediately started to doubt my sanity. Probably because the first thing I saw was a few floating screens of text.

Your status has changed!

Status

Name: N/A

Type: Dungeon Core – Soul Hybrid

Level: 1

Crystal Status: 100% – Undamaged

Status Effects: Mana Drain

Available Mana: 0/25

Passive Mana Generation: 10/Day

Cost for next level: 15 Mana

Subsections Available: 1

Ability Points: 850

Skills:

Mana Absorption I,

Limited Omniscience (Dungeon)

Soul Mana I

Dungeon Aura Expansion I

Titles:

Reborn Soul

First of its Kind

You have been awarded new titles!

Reborn Soul

Your soul was captured just after death and reborn into something new. You are aware of yourself as a soul in a way few people ever are. Take this new chance and make the most of it.

+250 Ability Points

+Learn and level up soul related skills in half the time (50%)

First of Its Kind

You are the first of your kind, a dungeon with a mortal soul, and are potentially the progenitor of a whole new existence. The weight of the world rests on your shoulders, but you have unlimited potential.

+500 Ability Points

+Learn the first level of any skill in half the time (50%)

New Quest Obtained!

Freedom or Dominion

You are being held captive. Some of your abilities are being suppressed. Escape, or kill, your captor to regain your abilities. Exceptional accomplishments in this task can earn greater rewards.

What?

My emotions whirled in a tumultuous mishmash, and the screens that popped up were not helping. My recent experience of becoming post-mortal jumped to the front of the emotional conga line.

I died.

And… now I was reborn… well, sort-of.

Am I in a game? I doubt that, pretty sure we were a long way away from that being possible yet. More like I am in a place that functions like one. And I am going to rip out the throat of this petty magician that dares to…

What the hell!?

That was not my own thought. Well… it was, but not really. There was a foreign set of instincts that had momentarily twisted my thoughts.

I could feel that I was no longer alone in my own mind. Or, perhaps, it was better to say that my mind had extra bits that I wasn’t used to having.

I was sharing my new crystalline existence with something… other.

First contact with a silicon based lifeform and it’s me in the mirror darkly.

And it was darker and more primal. A creature of urges and instinct rather than intellect. Well… humans were admittedly not shining examples of intellect triumphing over instinct themselves. Still, it was something I wouldn’t want to be trapped in the same room with, let alone the same mind. I could feel the impulses that ran this foreign other half, now that I was aware of its existence. I could feel how it was tied into my mind. The thoughts had been my own, after being twisted by these new feelings rising up with a murderous rage and overweening arrogance against the man who had placed me here.

Great.

This could be dangerous.

My other half resented being trapped. Well… I wasn’t fond of the idea either, but resent was too light of a word. It raged against being confined. It would destroy the world to gain its own freedom. It was a primal need to be free, to expand, to protect itself. It needed it like I used to need water. It needed to bury itself, and the urge to dig tunnels deep in the earth and form a lair, to hide was almost overwhelming. Most of all, it wanted to lash out at the man that posed a danger by being too close. TOO CLOSE!

I marshaled my thoughts, trying to remain calm and tamp down the rampant emotions of my other half. Right, time to focus on the now.

I still had sight in every direction, but now I could both see and feel everything within a few feet. Mostly, I was focused on the man (too close), who was, in turn, seemingly fascinated with me.

Yes, yes, I’m very pretty, but personal space is a thing.

Even in my mind, the joke fell flat.

I was also keenly aware of myself. Unlike before I could actually see myself, and even inside of myself. I was now a purple crystal, no… a gem. I was generally spherical, but with hundreds of small facets. My lower end was held firmly in the same type of stand the black crystal was in before.

I could actually see even more now.

Feel more?

I traced the faint movement of air currents. Each breath the man made, and the interchange of air flowing around me, made currents and eddies that gradually faded. And, in the air, something else. I had no idea what to call it, but those instincts I was trying to bury recognized it with hunger. It was power; I almost taste it.

The power to change… something.

My thoughts fell flat as the instincts failed to really provide the stable ground of an answer. The power was everywhere, gleaming faintly in the air, and it slowly swirled in a whirlpool flow towards me. It condensed into a stream, entering into my gem. Then, however, the power left again as it was pulled away and diverted down into the helix of the stand. It followed the runes along the structure until it disappeared into the crystal below.

My other half was, to put it mildly, rather upset about this. If I let it alter my emotions it would have me ranting and raving in no time.

Instincts that will drive me mad in captivity, so far this isekai sucks.

I could just imagine someone trying to sell this experience to the pre-dead me: “New resurrection package, now with 20% more murderously unstable roommates for your brain.”

I snorted internally.

Admittedly, I might have been stupid enough to do it for magic.

Regardless, my mind was captured by a different interest.

The old man made a few familiar gestures and words. Unlike before, I saw something radically different. As the man’s hands moved, traceries of power gleamed like a web spun onto the air.

It was breathtakingly beautiful, like a spider making webs of glowing light.

The web finished and sank into my crystal, leaving a filament of power that lead back to the man. The man squinted slightly, while his eyes went back and forth, looking unfocused.

Is he reading?

Perhaps he was watching the same type of screens I had seen earlier?

What kind of information does it say about me?

Sadly, now I thought about something I had been subconsciously avoiding. Equally sadly, my conscious mind was more than happy to wave it in front of my mind like free donuts and coffee on campus club day.

I am a dungeon.

Well some odd form of hybrid dungeon. Plus I was dead, cannot forget that little detail. Well, that wasn’t exactly true though, was it?

I was dead.

My mind was rather focused on this.

Yeah, strange that, couldn’t imagine why.

The idea of death had certainly preoccupied my thoughts from time to time in my last life.

I remembered attending my grandfather’s funeral. Images of the waxy complexion, and feeling the cold body at the viewing, played counterpoint to fragmented memories of people speaking. I had been young, then, unable to truly grasp and hold onto what had happened. More deaths had come in following years, each time understood a little more for what it was, if not why it was.

Death occupied anyone’s mind who was aware of what it meant, was aware of the mysteries that lay locked behind it.

Were locked, anyway.

Apparently, beyond death lay a very odd form of reincarnation. At least for me. I could still recall the weird feeling of being jerked away after world had already started to transform into light. The transition between the two had not felt natural…

Pretty sure I was supposed to go somewhere else, originally.

I was past death now. I actually knew I had a soul. That… was quite a shift. I was not dead, but rather undead, formerly dead, not as dead as I used to be, the dungeon formerly known as dead. I laughed to myself, poor though the jokes were.

I shook my head, or rather I tried and nothing happened. It was the strangest feeling, because I felt like I should have moved, but nothing had changed at all.

Will I need to deal with phantom limbs?

Focus… Focus.

I was getting distracted, and I was letting it happen. I was avoiding the suddenly massive issues facing me. I died. My former life was now over. I had read books and watched movies where people are transported away and whined and moped until they got back home. That was not an option for me.

Well… The part about going home. I could whine and mope all I liked.

...for all the good it would do me.

I was dead. No ruby slippers, or even silver ones, could tap together and whisk me homeward.

I was dead. I repeated that to myself, because, while I knew that it was true on an intellectual level, it seemed hard to convince some part of myself that stubbornly argued that I was alive. My friends would mourn. My parents and family would cry over a grave.

Wonder if any of my organs were still able to be donated? Think someone had called 911, wasn’t really paying attention to the bystanders.

Hope I didn’t traumatize anyone too much.

My old life was over.

I started to worry about my old life… when I stopped. All of this felt hollow. These worries, this grief. It hadn’t hit me the way I expected. I had been avoiding thinking about these things because I knew what emotions I should feel.

It was like being careful around a pot that had come from the oven. Now I had actually brushed up against, and flinched in expected pain. And nothing was there, the pot was cold.

So what the hell is wrong with the oven?

I still remembered my old life, but all these… wounds, of death, seemed like something that happened years ago. I still loved my family, and I would miss them, but I was not devastated I wouldn’t get to see them. I wasn’t broken, that I wouldn’t get to help Dad run the soup kitchen again on a muggy summer day. I ought to be devastated.

I wasn’t sure why this happened, but I suspected. The period where I had had no emotions… that was probably to blame. Somehow, that state of mind had quietly filed everything away without the usual emotional mess it would normally take to get there.

More efficient, sure, but… not exactly human, is it?

Should I be grateful or feel wronged? I hadn’t had the chance to properly grieve. I also hadn’t needed to grieve.

I was not human anymore, but other than a single, and strange, emotional interaction… mentally, I still was. As far as I could tell, my soul, emotions, and memories were all the same, with the only notable exception being the new set of instincts shoved into my head.

Quite the notable exception…

It was a relief to know that while this world was vastly different, my old one being remarkably short on professional wizards, no guarantees, he could be an amateur, my mind was more or less intact.

It’s the less that might cause issues.

This was a world with magic, and one styled as a game, or at least with a game-like interface; that was fairly easy to understand, at least theoretically. The many worlds theory said there were potentially an infinite number of universes and worlds within them. Each universe might run on different rules than our own. Infinite meant that a universe orchestrated by a system was a possibility.

Honestly, I’m lucky I can actually understand everything… even if does veer well beyond merely being strange and into the surreal.

Okay, one more time… Get a grip; sum things up.

I was a dungeon of some type. I was made of crystal. I was the heart of a dungeon to be, even if all that belonged to me for the moment was a sphere with a diameter of four feet. A sphere small enough I couldn’t even perceive the floor with my aura.

Regardless, the dungeon’s instincts were fiercely possessive. I might not have much, but it was mine and mine alone.

I always did want more magic in my life. Something out there has a sense of humor.

I did not want to die to see more magic, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Makes me think of the birches poem by Robert Frost, and his wish to not be misunderstood by the gods, and taken away from Earth forever.

Enough. I need to see what I can actually do.

I read through the screens more fully, now that I had calmed down.

Doesn’t mention Caden anywhere.

Did it not know my name or did I need to be named in some other way?

At least the mana drain status explained why I could see the energy passing into me and then leaving just as fast as I consumed it. And now I knew that that energy was mana, too. Obviously, I was being kept at zero mana. Presumably so I could pose no threat to the man studying me and keeping me captive.

There was quite a lot of mana in the air. I was not absorbing anywhere close to all of it, and there was far more around the man.

Probably not keeping me as some kind of mana battery, then.

Sadly, I still didn’t understand him when he spoke. I had been hoping that my merger with the dungeon would at least give me the ability to understand the language. No such luck. I moved on to familiarizing myself with, well... my new self. I focused on each skill listed and new information appeared.

Mana Absorption I

Raw mana within your aura can be drawn into your core to increase your available mana.

Limited Omniscience (Dungeon)

You can see, hear, and feel everything within your aura. Living entities and dense mana sources may block your senses.

Soul Mana I

Unlike any other dungeon, you have a mortal soul. Mortal souls naturally create raw mana. This mana flows into your available mana.

Dungeon Aura Expansion I

You may convert available mana to expand your area of influence (aura).

Pretty straight forward.

I could draw mana in or create it myself and store it. Then that could be used to expand my area of influence, my aura. Apparently, there were also perks because I was both reborn and a unique existence. I could level up with enough mana, and that would likely open more options for me. Of course, I had no mana, and was unlikely to get enough to level up.

Need to find a way to fix that.

When I focused on another element of my status, ability points, a massive array of purchasable options appeared. They were neatly separated into categories and I could even search through it.

My other half wouldn’t be able to use this. They’re nothing but instincts.

Presumably they would normally purchase something by feeling… somehow. Right now my other half was just urging me to do something about the situation. It didn’t seem to know how, or what, just pushed a desire for action.

Two enormous categories had plants and animals I could learn to summon, and a few things fell into both. None of the associated mana costs were zero, not surprising, so none of them were useful to me now. With some time I searched through the list, finding everything I could that had to do with mana. Upon searching, there was no option to purchase an increase in any of my skills.

Either not possible, or not available yet.

There were a few skills that looked promising. One skill resisted magic directly targeting the dungeon core, as well as resisting magic that altered its immediate area. Another offered a resistance to magical drains of any kind within my aura. That one also gave a lesser drain resistance to monsters in my aura. The problem with both was the expense, and the second one also altered how my aura worked. I also wasn’t sure if the second skill would help if something directly targeted my core, like right now. Several skills increased the mana I received under certain conditions, like the death of my own monsters, other creatures, etc… However, since I had no way to make that happen they were useless for the moment.

I had a special affinity with souls, so I took the time to search for related skills. There were few options available. Was that because I had not unlocked access to them via level, skill, some esoteric requirements, or was I the first dungeon with a soul capable of using them? One of the few options allowed the creation of undead creatures with the souls of dead adventurers. Another option used the death of creatures to create soul energy, whatever that is, though it was so expensive that it might as well not be listed. The only option that looked applicable, and potentially useful now, was soul perception. It would allow me to more accurately gauge the power of creatures and people. Even if they were not practical now, I was mainly searching for ideas of what was possible.

The titles I received had provided me vital information. If I gained the first level of skills easier, that implied that not every skill needed to be purchased or granted.

I can learn them.

I wasn’t sure if I could learn all, or even any, of the skills available for purchase, but it might be possible.

Even better, since so many of them are not cheap. Best not to waste ability points if I can get the skill another way.

Almost all the skills I looked at… were not affordable yet. With no idea how easy points were to acquire, I had to assume they were limited. I might get more each level, but I didn’t know. Even if I got 100 every level, I would want to save them for important things. And I could end up with far more, or far less. I might only get them from titles.

Maybe I’ll get 100 per day.

I would have to wait and see.

As long as I wasn’t in any danger, well, immediate danger, there was no reason to waste resources. I was trapped and did not want to just sit here endlessly, but I could afford some patience. I was going to kill that man.

No! Shut up you!

Great, now I was yelling at my own twisted thoughts. I was sure that boded well.

Nothing to see here, I’m sure this is perfectly healthy.

Right. I was not going to kill him. I was just going to make absolutely sure I escaped.