THAREK
The pain in his back and side was gone. Not just the recent pain… all of it, that he’d lived with for a few years now. Even magical healing couldn’t get rid of some of the grueling injuries that Tharek had suffered in his lifetime. Too many accidents, not enough healers to go around.
The complete lack of sensation was a worry, though.
Tharek reached for the System, though he didn’t have the skills to have a good health breakdown. It should be able to tell him the biggest, most obvious problems.
The message was blunt and simple. It made sense, and Tharek could only ponder his feelings while he waited. He wasn’t upset, he concluded. He hadn’t been old, yet he was no longer young either. He’d been in pain the last few years, and he knew that even if he’d survived the bricks that had fallen atop him, he’d have been unlikely to work ever again without healing he couldn’t afford.
This was not how Tharek had envisioned his death would go. He was a simple man. He’d been born into the muscular bigast Totem, but studied under a builder to escape the simple laborer job of his parents, and by the time of his death he had directed many small teams to lay foundation and brick for the growing cities. It was good work – hard, but satisfying. Despite his early death, Tharek was proud of his life. What else could he be good at?
If Tharek had possessed eyes, he would have blinked. He knew what a dungeon was… he’d died during a war over one, though not as a soldier. The idea that they were run by people who had died was new to him. The idea that there was more than one in the world was equally new, though he knew the world was huge. It didn’t surprise him that there was more than one.
Many in the city looked down on Tharek as little more than a laborer. They failed to note that he had gone a slightly different path than his parents, though it only earned marginally better living conditions. He never got the opportunity to express it much, but Tharek was a very curious vaskan. A whole aspect of life that he’d never glimpsed before? That was too tempting to pass up. He selected Yes.
This baffled Tharek for a moment. He’d had no idea so many different options would be available! The choices marked restricted or unavailable were greyed out and could not be selected, but the rest ignited his curiosity. Intrigued, he selected every option but the Polied or Tribal vaskan. He knew those, and wanted to see something different before he passed on. He didn’t know what Polied meant, but if that was what he was, then it made sense to keep it unselected if he wanted something new.
Being able to talk to other Dungeon Cores seemed like it would keep him from getting bored. Tharek selected the Connect option that wasn’t greyed out. He felt a strange sense of unease at choosing all of this. The System let him choose his classes and abilities, but most of the adjustments were automatic. This was far more under his control.
He wondered if what he’d heard was true… if death normally returned him to the world, to watch over his descendants as an animal or spirit. Would he remember this? Would it grant him greater wisdom? The System seemed to be unable to reveal that.
Tharek finally found the empty void that he’d been reading the messages against replaced by a lush forest, viewed from just on the ground. He didn’t recognize any of the trees, but they were definitely trees. They were also very blurry, except for the tree right next to him.
He could see himself, as well: a thumb-sized ball of glass just laying on the ground between two roots. Not very impressive.
This was worrying to Tharek for all of a few heartbeats. Opening the Dungeon Status immediately rewarded him with some further knowledge… including the ability to shape his claimed Domain. It was small at first, but if he could shape it, that was all that he needed. He’d been given no restrictions on how it needed to be shaped, or what the appearance should be.
He burned several dozen DP to expand his Domain, covering the size of a large house. It became more expensive to expand the further he went, but this much gave him some room to work. He could shape how his Domain expanded easily enough, with little cost, and that meant he didn’t have to keep going wider and wider.
| SWIRLING DUNGEON: Hello, new dungeon! What were you before? ?
| UNNAMED DUNGEON: I was a bighast Totem vaskan from Chall. ?
| UNNAMED DUNGEON: Why don’t I have a name? ?
| SWIRLING DUNGEON: You need to pick one. Your old one won’t work, because your dungeon name gets used for Quests. You have time to make one. ?
| SWIRLING DUNGEON: I’ve met one other vaskan-based dungeon. I was an Aravel elf, myself. ?
| UNNAMED DUNGEON: I don’t know what that is. I was hoping to learn. ?
| SWIRLING DUNGEON: Plenty of time to do that later. For now, get your core sealed away and figure out what kind of main chamber you’ll have. Protect your core. It doesn’t have to be reachable, you can just cover it with layers of rock or something. ?
| UNNAMED DUNGEON: Thank you, I will.
Tharek was glad that his first interaction had been friendly. Whatever an Aravel was, they didn’t seem to be vicious monsters. They could speak and reason just as he could. Were they vaskans that bred true for long enough to become their own people? He’d seen an aquatic variant in the list. The word was unfamiliar, but the meaning was conveyed as water-related.
He began shaping again, forming a large wall just inside his domain, and squaring it off. Layering earth like this wasn’t very hard, but it took DP to harden it and make it tougher. Stronger.
Strong enough for what he was planning. Something he’d always wanted to help build. Something which already gave him an idea for his name. He opened up the chat once more to fix the whole naming problem.
| UNNAMED DUNGEON: I already know how I’ll design my dungeon. It will give me a good name, too. ?
| LURKING WEB: A new dungeon already in the channel? Hello. ?
| SWIRLING DUNGEON: Very new. Don’t rush into it, new person. Don’t worry about Web… she has a scary name and scary ideas but she’s helpful. Gives good advice. ?
| LURKING WEB: Make sure your name looks good on the Quest menu. ?
| UNNAMED DUNGEON: I think it will. Just let me try this. ?
| [UNNAMED DUNGEON HAS RENAMED TO: GRASPING SKY TOWER] ?
| LURKING WEB: I think we have a real talent here.
Boostrap