Saga of the Soul Dungeon

“To touch the soul is to touch divinity.”

Habert of Marte

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Of all the many things that had already happened to me this might be the most important. I had died and moved on to a new world. And now I had seen what was actually moved. I knew I had a soul. I already knew that, by status page said so, and I certainly wasn’t in the same body I used to occupy. So when it told me my soul had been moved I believed it.

It wasn’t the same as seeing it.

It was the most beautiful, intricate sight I had ever seen, and I could tell I had only glimpsed the surface. For just this alone I wished I could go back home. How would the world change if everyone could see what I had seen? To show those who struggled, who felt that they had no worth that they were something truly beautiful beyond description.

There was so much more than I could even put into proper thoughts.

I remembered that feeling from just a moment ago. My soul stretching forever like an infinite plane below me. I felt like I should be crying. If I had my old body I probably would be.

The most singularly spectacular beauty I had ever seen was myself.

I laughed to myself, that felt so narcissistic.

I knew it wasn’t just me though. I knew that everyone was like this. Some knowledge was just there.

It took a while for me to recover. I wanted to drive back inside, to lose myself in that beauty, but my emotions felt like brittle glass. I was drained and overflowing with energy at the same time. It was probably for the best if I gave myself a break. I could dive back into my soul again at a later time.

I… needed to get something else done. I looked at my mana slowly ticking up with annoyance. And then I wanted to bang my head against a wall.

I still had the feeder stored away. I was such an idiot.

Well those feelings of vast wonder at my incomprehensible beauty sure did fade fast.

No reason to get mad at myself though. I was fully aware that I needed to meditate for a reason. If I wasn’t careful I became tired and then overwhelmed. At that point it became easy to miss the obvious.

I needed a room to collect my thoughts and put important things.

I aimed my crystal at a nearby wall and merged with it seamlessly as I headed for a large volume of solid stone.

Even before I arrived I was clearing space away, breaking down stone in the interior and then condensing the stone in the walls until they were dense and impenetrable. A few minutes later I arrived and hung in the center of an enormous cube. I placed the feeder slightly off to one side and then sunk it an inch into the stone so it would be absolutely stable.

I extended a tendril of stone from the floor and used it to turn it on. I left the tendril there so it would be simple to turn it on and off with a thought.

The crystal on the bottom of the feeder glowed with a steady white light. The feeder started up and the crystal on the top started to glow and cast faint shadows behind me.

Huh, I had completely forgotten that it glowed. The lights in the prison had always overshadowed it, even at night when they were dimmed.

I took out the mana drain stand and placed it off to the other side, letting the white crystal on the bottom gently light a small corner of the room. Around it I placed various statues of Tam, his spells, and the various shapes that I had cast into stone. They were rough, and I could certainly made them polished, but I decided to leave them that way. They were memories, and I could make perfect or improved copies if I really wanted to in the future. Not like I was going to run out of stone.

I placed the chair there as well. All the rest of the items that remained were placed on top of the table. I would need to consume more of these later. See what I could make. I might be able to make the materials from the seeds I had gathered anyway.

That reminded me of all the seeds and eggs stored away. They were in no particular order at moment. I brought out just the seeds and there were dozens of different types. I decided to store them in something a little more neat. I started creating a series of tiny stone boxes and amused myself by letting out my artistic side. With my ability to precisely shape stone it was easy to make what I visualized reality.

I could really have used this ability in ceramics class. Man I sucked at molding clay by hand.

Even perfectly fitting hinges and a simple sliding lock were no trouble to make now. I made a different box for each type of seed as I sorted them out. The first box was solid obsidian with a delicate stone flower on the top; the leaves and petals were razor sharp and so thin that light passed through. The other boxes similarity featured other designs inspired by nature or just pure geometry. Fractal patterns contrasted against landscapes from Earth and animals from my past life. The materials varied just as much. Clear gypsum crystals, sandstone, basalt, marble, and more were matched and blended to my designs, each complementing or contrasting.

Some seeds types only had a single seed, others only a few. Those were put into tiny boxes and stored away once again. Some types of seeds had a dozen or two. A few of these seeds were set aside and crushed while I absorbed the remains; the rest of those seeds were stored away. A couple of seed types had hundreds upon hundreds of seeds. I divided them in half and crushed half while the rest was stored again. The super numerous seeds were all tiny, and based on the information I gained from them, I was fairly certain that they were all different types of wild grass.

I was not actually sure what to do with the eggs. I would need to recreate the environment they lived in if I wanted to be sure they were not damaged when I brought them out of storage. I was fairly certain I could do that now, but it would take more mana than I wanted due to creating large amounts of organic material and bacteria. I would wait and see what the next few levels gave me. Assuming I could level, it should be easy enough to get the mana from the feeder since it was running. Leveling might give me better tools to work with too.

For a minute I debated what to do with the various enchantments that I had stored away. Optimally, I wanted to actually understand what they did, and how. And I also wanted to absorb that silver metal. Well… I did pretty much know what each one did, and I could store them back away if there were any problems. I raised a pillar of stone a good distance away from myself and placed the beam array into the far side away from myself. I waited for a moment and could clearly see the threads scanning an area the size of my old prison. Man… that seemed so tiny now. I was glad it was working fine though.

I put the rune array that generated the old barrier around me some distance from the other array and set it into the floor. I could feel it was trying to do something, power flashing around, but it was erratic. I still had the runes I had removed from it. I was fairly sure of where each one was supposed to go. I did consult one of the statues I had made, just to be sure. After checking, I slotted the missing runes back into place. The enchantment snapped back together and activated fully.

I should look into that later. It was interesting that an enchantment could be disassembled and then put back together. I wonder if I could take enough out of one that it would collapse entirely? Something I could consider and experiment with in the future… far away from my core. These things had a ton of mana.

I considered what to do with the four aura holding enchantments. Well I already knew I wanted to study them, but I really only needed one since they were identical. If I decided to do any experiments on the structure of enchantments it would be good to have extras though. For now, I would eat one, put one out to examine its effects, and store the other two for later experimentation.

I needed to make that other purchase first though. Otherwise I might waste something I couldn’t replace.

A moment later there was a notification.

You have purchased a skill.

Mana Construct Intuition II

Naturally understand constructs made of mana. This applies when absorbing magical structures, learning magical symbology, and purchasing non-living magical blueprints. (10% Boost to learning speed and 10% discount to purchase costs.)

Done with that, I started to absorb one of the arrays that prevented aura growth. I tried to absorb all of it at the same time. Hopefully that would help me understand it as a whole. It was consumed with exquisite slowness. As I consumed it I started to understand the metal first. It felt almost like a crystal, and I could feel its rigid structure as it firmly held itself in place.

And woven in and around that structure I could see mana firmly anchored into place. Mana knotted and twisted itself up around the metal. The runes, I could tell they were not just symbols, there were words, or… commands. And they were not just two dimensional, either. They had a three dimensional structure that formed out of the rune. I could feel a vague understanding form of how these things were related. The order of the runes, the locations, and the relative size all mattered. One symbol repeated, but the mana structure it produced was different. It was obvious that Tam had been a master of this language.

And this was a magic that I needed to master myself. I had no capability to do incantations and hand waving. However, this was magic that I could create directly. I suspected that the incantation provided another layer of information, a way to direct how the symbols related to each other. However, unlike Tam, I could see the mana directly, and I might be able to build the structures of mana myself.

As I finished absorbing, I could vaguely understand a part of what was happening. I could tell that the shape of the symbol reinforced the idea behind the commands, but it was fuzzy. I could make the metal with no problem, at least. I considered for a moment. I knew that I would likely need to absorb the same magical object more than once to understand it. My absorption skill had specifically mentioned that would apply for enchanted items. And I did still have three more…

I checked my mana. It had increased by about twenty between Exsan and I. I could not say I was surprised to gain mana from it, the runes had been infused with immense amounts of it. However, the absorption had taken a long time, so it was obvious that it had proven difficult for my abilities. Twenty mana was a decent chunk for me, but compared to the amount that had been put in the runes, I had only just done better than breaking even. I had likely gained and spent hundreds of mana taking it apart.

At least it still increased my mana. Eh… I might as well go for broke. I pulled out another one and started to absorb it. It was just as slow as the first but when it was done I felt like I was on the brink of an epiphany.

The blinking light of a notification distracted me and I willed it open.

Skill Available: Mana Lexicon (Language)

Skill acquisition will take some time and you will be unable to perform any other tasks.

Would you like to learn this skill now?

Yes No

Huh, first time it has asked me something like this. I guess this is a little more involved than most skills. Of course learning a language was a very involved process.

Obviously I did want to learn it, that was not even really a question. I just needed to make sure I was safe first. I scanned through my aura. Nothing new seemed to be going on and I was in a completely self contained room.

Well… just in case I dropped my core down in the stone until I was several meters deep. I quickly hardened a shell of stone around me. That should protect me well enough. If not, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do much about it anyway.

I picked yes.

My mind filled with symbols.

Many became like old friends, I knew them intimately. I knew what they did, how they acted. Others appeared and became slightly familiar. And it continued on and on. Knowledge flowed and my mind felt stuffed with relationships of symbols, spacial proximity, modifiers, exceptions, alternative shapes, and more. Eventually the flood dropped to a trickle and finally stopped.

I became aware of the world once more.

I pulled up the notification that was waiting for me.

You have gained a new skill!

Mana Lexicon II (Language)

You know a part of the language of magic. The more you know, the more you can do. Its potential is infinite. Combining runes together you can create spells, for temporary effects. Enchantments with a single rune create simple persistent effects. Emblems with multiple runes will create complicated persistent effects. The medium used affects the permanence. Other possibilities may exist.

Huh, looks like what Tam was doing was were actually emblems. The symbols were actually called runes, so I had gotten that right. I don’t know that I had actually seen any enchantments. And I would obviously need to look at those spells I had transcribed into stone again.

I looked at the simplest emblem here as I moved myself back to into my cube. I could understand various parts of it now. I saw the basic symbols for mana, connection, and light among the runes. The modifiers on the runes were more complicated though. I was fairly sure that the modifiers were what produced the gentle white light it made when it absorbed my mana. However, I couldn’t be sure. And I was fairly sure from context that one of the runes after mana specified the range it applied to.

Unfortunately I now knew enough to understand exactly how little I really understood. And the other emblems were even more indecipherable. Mana showed up in all of them, and I could see symbols that could mean earth or stone depending on the context. Other than that they were like gibberish.

I felt like a caveman with a club and I was staring at a crossbow. And that was just the simplest emblem. I could see a little of how it functioned, and I might be able to operate it with a little knowledge. However, I didn’t understand how or why it worked. The other emblems might as well be a car or television. I knew they worked, but had no real idea why.

Well that was not what I should focus on at the moment. I had rudimentary knowledge of this language now. I was not going to be performing any miracles with it yet, but I knew enough that it might be possible for me to make a few useful items with it. Even without any monsters I might be able to make a decent trap dungeon… with a lot of time and effort.

Suddenly words sounded in my head.

Language. Words. Order. I see. Know. I Exsan. Core is self. You Exsan not Exsan. Who?