Dungeon at the End of the Universe

Quest: [Special]
For the System to exist somewhere, a mere Anchor is not enough. A suitable environment is just one more of a multitude of requirements.
Objective: Rank-Up Ability [Mana-Cycle]
Reward: Ability upgrade

“You want to do what!?” I am interrupted from my musings by a, once again, enraged fairy.

“You know, expand my monster database. It was a whole thing we had to solve the first time around and I thought it’d be nice to have more options. Plus, it’d be a bit boring to only have constructs in the Dungeon, wouldn’t it?”

“Who cares about variety! Y-you, you, I can’t believe it! Do you even know what you’re suggesting?” is the spluttering reply from my magical assistant.

“No?” I guess, even though I’m fairly sure I do. I mean, what’s the big deal? It’s just a corpse and I do need more monsters.

“That’s me! Me you’re talking about! You want to turn me into a mindless monster!”

Frankly, I am a bit insulted at this accusation, “First of all, no. Neither is that you, nor do I want to turn you into a monster. And second, monsters are mindless? I didn’t know that.”

Faellen is a bit speechless at my retort, so I go on, “but let’s leave that as it is for now, the corpse isn’t going anywhere. I got a quest from the System to Rank-Up my mana cycle. How do I do that?”

I’m just about ready to hear out Faellen’s reply when something comes to my mind. I had completely forgotten to inform my companion of my new Aspect! I interrupt it and quickly do so, which prompts another whole explanation of the hows, whys and whats.

At the end of that, when I’m almost ready to resume our earlier discussion, I’m struck by another question, so I immediately blurt it out. “Wait, did you know that Abilities had ranks and levels?”

“Yes, most people do. Then again, most people are born on planets or other celestial bodies and not in the bum-fuck of nowhere in deep space. From what I know, planets act as sort of channellers for the System and therefore theirs inhabitants gain a sort of ‘indirect’ increase to System access.”

Great, another thing I’m deprived of as consequence of my stupid Aspect choice.

“Anyway, mana cycle?” At my nod, Faellen explains, “If you have the Ability – and that’s actually really rare for anyone to get it, even for beings suited to it like Dungeon – then it should be Rank 1, yes?” I nod again. “Yes, that’s because the mana cycle we made is, frankly, a bit shit. Not only did it consist entirely of just machines, but it’s also gone now, with the time loop resetting and all. Plus it was tiny.”

“Hold that though,” I interrupt, “Are you saying it’s bad to only have one type of monster? Should I, perhaps… gain a new patters?”

Faellen is silent, then continues as if I hadn’t said anything, “So step one would be to re-establish what we had before. Which means you better get back to enchanting the walls. Step two would be making all of it bigger, so expanding your Dungeon,” for a while that seems to be it, but then, “And then, and only then, can we even consider talking about adding some variety.”

With that more or less done, I got to work. Enchanting the walls was still tedious work, but with me already having done it once before, I knew what to do. In fact, I sort of got into a groove after a bit and only had the follow the motions, it sort of happened all by itself.

I came to some time later to find all of the enchanting already done. Looking for Faellen, I found the fairy once again meditating over something, likely cooking up another plan. Hopefully a more thought out one this time.

When I was then filling the Dungeon with mana, I came across a bit of a problem. As I still didn’t exactly have control over Ignore That, I wouldn’t be able to make matter out of nothing if even a smidgen of mana was present. This resulted in a sort of awkward juggle where I made some air, destroyed it into mana, realised it wasn’t enough, transformed it back into air with Create, and on and on on repeat until I judged it to be enough.

The only thing missing at that point was summoning forth some placeholder monsters to use said mana. With the easiest part done, the mana started flowing again.

“What do you say, good enough?” I asked.

A slight sniff, then a deep inhale, and the resident fairy answered with a content sigh. And that’s where its answer should have ended, but: “Good enough. Now try expanding it.”

Oh well, we can’t all be perfect.

Expanding a Dungeon is boring work, but fortunately that same ‘mindless’ trance as happened with enchanting came over me, and the time almost seemed to slip by. The construction had to have some actual thought put into it this time, unlike what I was doing during my brief tutorial.

Since my Dungeon was now filled with air, and the outside space was a vacuum, there was an ever-present need to manage outer wall integrity, or risk a leak. To combat this, I expanded in all directions equally and didn’t make any rooms. Not yet. I can hardly imagine something sturdier than a (almost) solid ball of stone.

I had just about doubled, maybe tripled, my diameter when, with sudden horror, I realized a horrible fact. I’d have to re-enchant the new outside of the Dungeon! The old enchantment was still there, but it hadn’t moved with my expansion.

Sigh, off we go enchanting again.

I took advantage of the excess stone my Dungeon ball was made of, and multitasked my way through this task. I carved out new rooms for my Dungeon, then used the mana produced through that to enchant the shell of my Dungeon. All the while Making sure a minimum of a meter of wall remained between me and the outside world. The outside dying world.

When I was done, my Dungeon looked sort of like pumice rock. Except much more hole-y, with much larger air pockets.

That reminds me, I have to fill it with air. And mana too, since the first enchantment separated it from my Core Room. Mostly mana, actually.

Actually, I wonder. How much mana can my enchantments even handle? With a question worthy of testing like that, I changed my plans slightly. Instead of simply filling the new section of Dungeon with mana, I would increase the mana in my Core Room until it overloaded the mana barrier and spilled into the rest of the Dungeon.

I got to work, using up all the mana in my already established mana cycle to Create air. Then I started creating blocks of stone, as I had changed my mind on what to create when I remembered that stone makes more mana when destroyed.

Once I had a good stockpile, I began to Destroy.

The ambient mana quickly skyrocketed into double what it was previously, with no end in sight. I had to consciously slow down, lest I miss the moment of breakage. Only moments after that, I felt the enchanted mana barrier strain.

Still, I did not stop as that is exactly what I wanted. To see how much it can take at my current enchanting skill.

At around a sixfold increase to what I had in my previous mana cycle, the barrier broke. Only at one spot, mind you – the rest still held – but even that one break caused a great spill. What felt like torrents of mana rushed forth to escape confinement, and I let it.

I had already prepared a second barrier after all, so I wasn’t worried. Plus, it’ll have much more space to expand into now, so the pressure on the enchantment should be lessened.

“Testing your work, are we?” I heard Faellen, “Well why don’t you open a passage and we can check it out.”

Oh, right. In my trance induced work frenzy I sort of forgot to actually make a passage connecting my Core Room to the rest of the Dungeon. Small mistake. Easily fixable with a light application of Destroy. I’ll need to do that more anyway if I want to fill all this new space with mana.

My fae assistant flies through the hastily made tunnel and out into the Dungeon proper. After a minute spent aimlessly wandering it turns to me (which is a weird feeling, when there’s a bunch of stone between us).

“You really just made a huge maze, huh. I swear, Dungeons everywhere are the same.” I’m almost ready to argue, but it continues before I can start, “Still, it’s good. A nice variety of tunnel width and length. Should be great for my plan.”

“Aha! I knew you had another plan! Care to enlighten me this time?”

“Oh, yes, sorry. We know we can access the Wyld now, even if crossing through it isn’t feasible. So I though, why not bring some of the plants over here? Much better than resorting to cannibalism with extra steps.”

Sigh, okay fine. I guess I won’t be getting that special monstrous fairy pattern for my database. I’ll have to ask about that cannibalism thing sometime later though. Seems like a weird thing to say.

“Right, you work on filling this with mana, I’ll get started on another Wyld portal,” and off it went, back to doing its own thing. Guess I can’t fault it, I do the same most of the time too.

With the larger Dungeon, the process of filling it with mana is much the same as before, just takes a lot longer, courtesy of cubing (thanks 3D space!).

Once finished, I turn to Faellen to find another portal is almost ready to go. So I provide that final push by saying my nameless Truth.

(AN: I really wanted to end the chapter here, but didn’t. Be thankful)

The familiar portal opened and I definitely did not flinch at the memory of going through it. Luckily, I didn’t have to. Faellen would.

“Thanks for the assist. Alright, I’ll just be in and out, five minutes tops. Get ready for a brand new plant specimen,” it said with a grin and vanished.

Contrary to expectations (and Murphy’s law), nothing bad happened. Yes, I know, extremely surprising, but it’s true. About three minutes later, Faellen exited the portal holding some kind of wooden branch.

“Ta-da!” it held up the branch up high, “A completely fresh cutting of a Wyld-tree!”

“Wyld-tree? Does it not have a name?”

“That is its name! As I mentioned, things in the Wyld are weird. It’s actually all the same plant there, it can just look completely different depending on its environment.”

“Oh, well that’s perfect then!” I say, the infectious excitement spreading to me.

“Yes, especially since it won’t have any light to grow.”

“…”

“…”

“Oh…”

“You didn’t know!?”

“How was I supposed to know? I can see just fine!”

With that little awkwardness over with, I quickly destroyed the small branch and looked at my Create Ability. Unexpectedly, I had two new entries. The expected one in the monster category, Wyld-tree. But also one in materials, Wyld-wood.

It would seem things just keep going my way.

The Wyld-trees, when spawned, came to be as only a seed and not a whole formed tree. I interspersed them with some more constructs with a ration of about two trees for every machine. That just sort of felt right.

Once everything was in place, I waited and… nothing.

“Did I do something wrong? Why isn’t it cycling?” yes, I was worried, but who wouldn’t. I’d just spent however long preparing all this, and now it was all for nought?

“Don’t worry. With larger cycles it takes longer to start. That is, unless you have someone great at mana manipulation who can give it. A little. Push,” and with those final words Faellen did something, and the whole world moved.

Well, the whole mana based world. Rivers of energy formed, each of my monsters taking a little sippy (AN: little sip) then passing it onto the next. The rest then flowed into me, where I absorbed something and released it back. The circle of life, well, mana.

Quest notification:
Quest complete!

And there it is. Let’s see about this Ability Upgrade.

Ability upgraded!
System Anchor → System Node

Goddammit! I don’t even get to choose?

System Node (System)
Unranked Unlevelled
Thanks to your nature you are capable of housing small node upon which the System can anchor itself and thus be dragged along. Thanks to your effort, the System shard connected to you can now also retain a fraction of its capabilities. Provides you with even more access to the System, as well as actionable Authority.
Note: Additionally provides semi-periodic Quests

Yeah, I shouldn’t have expected some great change. What does even more access even mean, let alone actionable Authority?

Query [System functions definition] received.
Providing answer: