Dungeon Core: Bugged Ascension

Congratulations on breaching the Evolution Threshold!

Your work accumulating Mana and processing it into Mako has reached its peak with your current form. As a Dungeon Core, you are already a legendary existence but that does not mean you cannot continue to grow and change.

#Here are the options for your advancement:

Dungeon Core Bedrock Avatar: Your core has accumulated a massive influx of Mana and Mako, combined with the full integration of your Domain and a fully distinct sense of self allows your core to substantially increase in circumference and infuse your nearby territory with extraordinary solidity. Bedrock allows for a far greater resilience than ordinary dungeon crystal that takes immensely more effort to damage or be transported against your will. Avatar grants you the ability to utilize Mana projections of your own self-image to interact within your Domain on a more physical level.

Dungeon Core Budding Abattoir: Your uniquely shaped and articulating core has become a prism for an overwhelming beam of Mana and Mako, combined with your Soul shaping which created an anatomical spiritual body that allows you to manifest more of yourself on the physical plane. Budding allows you to mature the distinctive pieces of yourself and have them continue to grow, evolve, or even reproduce. Abattoir allows you to instantiate new organs beyond your initial Mana Heart which will each have their own abilities and purpose to design or discover while all of them permit your independence or survival should any remain unmolested.

In this empty void with only the choice in front of me, I send my thanks to Authority once more. No games, no subterfuge, just two options, fully spelled out in front of me. And what a choice.

I can convert into a more standardized dungeon core, though with significant defenses and quality of life improvements. Or I can step off the paths well tread and Pioneer something wholly new. Something strange.

Both options feel right to me in ways that I can’t explain and that somehow are not in conflict with each other. Authority truly does fantastic work.

…

It is only after rereading each for perhaps the dozenth time that one particular line plucks a harp’s string of memory. A question I posed to Gnat, seemingly so long ago, where she had an answer that I couldn’t really understand. Now that I’m here in this liminal space with my memories intact and power swelling within me I see a word that resonates with the desire she told me.

Reproduce.

Feeling an easy smile, I relax and let the process change me as it will. Eagerly awaiting the next time when I shall open my eyes and see my new family once more, “I will become a Budding Abattoir.”

Dungeon Core Budding Abattoir selected! Now that you have your advancement locked in the excess accumulation of Mana and Mako will be used to intrinsically reforge your existence. Due to the presence of Mental Resistance at such a high tier, the system will not be able to fully submerge your consciousness during the process and apologizes for the pain in advance.

Huh. That perk seems to be a mixed bag of both good and bad. Something tells me that the way in which it will hurt will be a brand-new experience. Because being able to sprout new organs from your soul is probably an unusual thing.

Before your evolution begins, as a Dungeon Core, you have reached the Milestones for unlocking your {Motif}, the opportunity to change your racial designation, and making your first choice about expansion.

Okay, so, the pain will be postponed for a bit while I figure out the rest of this stuff. Love a good Sword of Damocles when there are important decisions about my future to make.

{Motif} already declared: Biodiversity selected!

“Ow!” a sharp pain stabbed at my heart and suddenly it’s much harder to breathe. I can only chuckle in resignation, “I don’t like that I’m hoping this means the soul searing pain is already starting, because the alternative is something is happening back in the real world. So, System, could we perhaps hurry this up before the only response you’ll get from me is screaming incoherently?”

Racial designation already declared. Wild: Assimilation to Divine: Cooperative. However, unlike Wild or Profane designations, a Divine dungeon also requires the Divine Protection Perk to unlock. Changes to Wild: Symbiotic is now underway.

Well that seems kind of bullshit. You can just go berserk for free but if you want to build relationships, you’re stuck being a paywall? How are you supposed to earn a perk like that?

*Phoenix pattern detected. Discover a way to use the phoenix pattern or some other means to bestow the ability to avoid death for delvers to be granted Divine Protection and your designation will be updated. Note that a Divine dungeon is no longer protected from scrying.

The stabbing pain in my chest hasn’t gone away, it’s only intensified, I just hope it’s all internal and it doesn’t mean that Cutest is suffering too. I take another moment to read through the latest message, “Okay, good. At least I’ve got a roadmap. Just use phoenix stuff to fight Death, easy.”

Expansion is a process for static dungeon cores to increase the dimensions of their Domain. Because other than Scions, only challenges originating within the Domain contribute to a dungeon’s growth. Unlike other choices during advancement, Expansion instead allows for a distribution among the various modes based on an accumulated total of Mako available or diverted to it.

You currently have 7 points.

Burrow

Infection

Recursion

Spire

Mindscape

Demiplane

Abstain

*Spend your points in the options above.

Thinking sucks, reading sucks, “I can’t… fucking… BREATHE!!”

Blessed glorious air! Oh, thank Authority I can finally breathe again. I don’t know how long I was stuck on that Expansion prompt, knowing that it was of vital importance but unable to string more than a handful of thoughts together.

I take a short rest, just luxuriating in feeling of not suffocating and my breaths come easier and deeper. The rich taste getting sweeter and more heady with each inhale, and each exhale restoring a peace I didn’t realize was missing. It feels like I wasn’t ever really breathing before now, just going through the motions, but now I can appreciate the majesty of being alive again.

---

What was I doing again? Oh! Right, Expansion. Let’s see what this is all about, “Static. Challenges. Distribution? Accumulated Or diverted? Okay, so, not a one-time thing. Noted.”

As for the options themselves, “Huh.” So, no information available beforehand, other than extrapolation, but there is an intuition telling me that the more I invest in a category, the better I will understand it. I only have a small number of points, and it seems awfully coincidental that I have exactly enough to put one in each. Still, until I figure out what I actually want to do, having a general build seems reasonable.

The implied ability to divert Mako into nurturing the Expansion paths means that starting each of them in this empty place shouldn’t be a bad call, “I would like to place a single point in each category, please.”

Expansion method selected! Go down, out, again, up, within, elsewhere, stabilize. Now that you’ve opened every category, the system will no longer automatically ensure your domain is protected from the incursion of other domains. Use your experience with the various expansion methods to adapt your borders and shape yourself as you please.

“I hate you sometimes.”

Advancement complete! Now that you’ve advanced into a higher tier, your mob limit has been increased and Talents can be reviewed. Talents are a lesser, more passive style of Perk that are related to the various achievements you’ve accomplished but have a less profound impact. Some Talents can be matured into Perks of their own and are one of the more reliable paths to earning them.

“Good. Now I ca-“ The most profound migrate stops all thought.

Looking back at it, I had imagined that the suffocation and the daggers digging in my chest were going to be the extent of the process. Horrifically painful in their own ways, but bearable. But when it started tearing into my actual mind, everything else stopped existing.

“MAKE IT STOP! JUST MAKE IT STOP!”

“#Sorry kiddo. Only way out is through.#”

I hear their words, and know their meaning, but it’s all just whispers in the hurricane of pain. Screams. Silence. Digging my fingers into my skull. Nothing helps.

Time isn’t a thing I can comprehend anymore. I can’t remember before this moment. I can only want for this moment to end.

“#I’m limited in what I can do for you, &$%?@.#”

The words again. They let me feel something else… but only all too briefly.

“#I’m sad to say that not even I know their name.#”

Name…

“#But I can share this last piece of knowledge. I wasn’t able to learn what your name was either. Not before you tried to say it. So. There’s some part of you, deep inside. That might know them. But here’s the kicker… You’ve got to make it through this. For whoever They were.#”

Authority’s longer speech grounds me long enough to really understand what they mean.

Whatever part of me in this that represents my body is so weak right now, so heavy. The soothing effect of their message is already fading and the pain is returning. Sharp rocks wrapped in nerves, grinding, smashing into each other inside my brain.

Except, they reminded me. This place isn’t the same as what was before. This space is me. I feel the streaks of tears on my face, some drying, some still falling. But this time, when I place my hands against my head, I’m gentle. I don’t push against my skull, nor claw at my temples, I just let them slip inside. As they reach inside, they catch some of those boulders, even as more take their place.

My arms sink further and deeper inside smoothly and then with a stroke of my hands, as if I were opening a curtain, inside becomes outside. The nothingness outside of me is replaced by all the pain within my brain and I’m standing in the middle of it all. I look down at what’s in my hands, and instead of the jagged crags of stone, I see river polished pebbles.

I toss one of them out into this new world and the cracks of agony are different than before. Just as intense and painful, yet still different in some unquantifiable way.

And so, I gather the asteroids floating around in this space and then toss the shimmering stones to replace them. My throws ricochet more often, with sharper spikes than what was happening idly before, but I don’t seem to mind. I realize for a brief moment that drawing all of myself into my own mind… probably means something… but everything just seems sort of… floaty.

I look down at my hands again. I’m holding the last handful of pebbles. These have a distinctness to them, each unique and utterly enthralling in their scintillating colors and shifting patterns. These gems matter.

I glance back up at the rest of this place. There are so many stones flying around, crashing into each other, sparking with lightning and thunder. There’s an overall shape to their dance, but I just don’t really understand it as I am now.

I roll the jewels around in my hand. I know I need these ones. I need to somehow get them inside of me. But eating them would be wrong… somehow.

I recognize how cold it is here now. I cup my hands together and breathe on them to try and warm up some, but it’s just so cold. I rub my hands together and breathe on them again.

It takes a long while, but eventually I feel a spark of warmth finally, and so, with my hands cupped over my face I finally take in a long, deep breath. When I do, I can smell… “Home. Family. Love.” A smile crosses my face, my eyes close and the world around me collapses and flows back inside my head as I fall asleep for the first time in memory.