I Shall Pervert the Heavens

"System... If... And I mean, if I use this Damaged Spatial Soul Mover, can I go into a world with my family still intact?" Zach hesitantly asked. Although he had no emotions according to his current body, he couldn't help but feel nervous awaiting the system's response.

[Host cannot return to his home unless completing the mission of proving he is better than the MC.]

The system's cold robotic voice poured chilling water over Zach, dousing his dream.

But at the same time, it made Zach confused. "You say mission of proving I'm better than the MC? How can I prove such when I don't even know which place I am in? I can't even leave this dungeon. I'm stuck in there and don't even know which region I am in," Zach let out, feeling imaginary anger rising within him.

[Host can take on Humanoid form temporarily each day to level up quickly rather than letting others take 90% of EXP if he uses his supercomputer brain.]

"..." At such a point, Zach truly felt like the system was after his sanity.

---

Meanwhile, Amy continued her training in the dungeon despite all the broken stone swords on the ground and bloody scabs on her hands.

Every night, the dungeon helped heal her hands and body back to new while she used blessing once in a while to flush away all tiredness in her body.

'How does it do it? It controls my energy, or mana, through some mana veins in my body,' Amy thought to herself helplessly as she looked down at her bloody hands and discarded another broken stone sword. 'What are these mana veins? Why have I never heard of them before? Surely there are others who discovered such a thing before. Is it known as something else?'

She constantly tried to feel these mana veins and her flow of mana when the dungeon was healing her wounds, but all she felt was warmth along with an itchy sensation. She did feel like she might be able to feel something spreading into the wounds, but it was a fleeting feeling, like trying to capture a mirage.

Grabbing a new sword, she began thrusting it toward the holes in the stone slab, starting from hole no. 1 and going chronologically. Each thrust had to be at the correct angle and rotation of the blade. It was easy to do it if you went slowly, but the dungeon grilled her that if she went too slowly and didn't push herself, she would never improve.

"Amy, I have found new weapons for you and placed them in your room. Use the knives to dismantle all the black sabers."

Hearing the dungeon's voice in her head out of nowhere was a common occurrence these days, and she had already become accustomed to it. She even found his voice incredibly pleasant and was elated upon hearing it, which... was strange!

He kept her safe, helped her get stronger, heal, and, most importantly, feel incredibly good during their "sessions."

Maybe this was a psychological effect of when one is helpless before an oppressor; even a tiny bit of kindness from the said person is seen as something huge.

She entered her room and found a new-looking longsword, two long curved daggers, and a handful of throwing knives.

She inspected the longsword first. It was mostly basic, but still nice with its floral design on it. When she pulled the blade out of the scabbard, though, she was truly stunned. It looked new and bright.

As soon as she held it, she could feel a connection with the sword. She could put mana into the sword and strengthen it. It didn't make the blade sharper, but it would prevent it from chipping as easily and make it feel more like an extended hand of hers.

The two daggers were of the same design. They were for dismantling monsters, something she had never done before but had witnessed others do. In an emergency, however, they could be used as weapons, which was why there were two of them.

"Don't know how to," she said to the dungeon.

This was her way of communicating with it. It didn't understand most of the elvish language yet, so she used distinct words to get her meaning across and communicate with it. That being said, she was truly shocked by how fast it was learning the language in the first place.

"Nonsense. Nobody ever learned to do something by saying they didn't know how to. If you do a bad job, do it better next time. Simple," Zach grumbled. He had been in a bad mood since communicating with the system, and if given an option, he wished never to talk to it again.

Amy helplessly laughed to herself. She understood the dungeon's personality much better after spending a lot of time with it, but there were still parts of it she found alien.

She also held affection toward it, which she wasn't sure was a result of whatever it did inside of her, her own gratitude for the ways it had helped her, or something else entirely. She simply didn't know, but her emotional attachment to the dungeon was getting stronger every day.

Amy was terrible at skinning the black sabers, removing the teeth, separating meat from bone… just about every aspect.

She apologized to the dungeon, but it didn't care and simply told her to focus on improving. Its bigger concern was how it was going to make a tanning solution to cure the leather hide.

The sabers should have been skinned while their bodies were still warm, and the hides were spoiled, but at least he got some meat, and she got to practice dismantling.

What was worth it, and would solve a great deal of Amy's complaints, was a large amount of fat, which could be boiled down to a burnable oil. There were better, more natural options available, but this was currently the best available.

Amy was the hands of the job when she wasn't practicing her thrusts. She carried all the fat and placed it into a large cast iron pot the dungeon made, which was then filled with water and set to boil. This process would take an entire day at least, so it was left to be, with a shroom gnome occasionally throwing more wood on the fire.

"How is the weight of the sword?" the dungeon asked in the elf's mind, unable to test it himself.

"Off balance."

"How much?"

"Like. Mace."

He felt like raging at that comment and mentally shook in anger. Did she know he sent one of his diggers out there to where all those beasts gathered, eating the rotten bodies of those knights, and got this best-of-the-best weapon among them for her?

"Can use. Still."

"How is it you cannot feel your mana veins and actively release and block mana, but you can release it into the sword?"

"Don't understand."

"I have been observing. You being able to release mana to empower the sword has nothing to do with the sword itself. It is you who is opening up your veins and allowing your mana to flow outwards."

"Don't know. Just, can."

The dungeon pondered over this and wondered whether perhaps it was a sixth sense she didn't have, but the system that controlled the world installed a piece into her that allowed her to do it instinctively when holding a weapon that could receive mana.

He tried having her touch the mana core, but she couldn't power that, even though it was basically the same principle.

His other thought was that rather than something automatically helping her empower weapons or equipment, there was something that stopped her from releasing her mana in ways "not allowed."

"It's time for you to head out and kill some goblins. We will focus on mana again later."

"Understood."

Amy was nervous, but she had been practicing with the sword for several days until thrusting had been ingrained into her muscles and bones. She had even earned the Swordsmanship skill and raised it to <Lv. 2> in such a short period of time too.

The constant training had also earned her an extra point in both dexterity and endurance, a helpful addition to her usual low stats.

She went into her room and equipped the old leather armor. She then took out a belt from her belongings, wrapping it around her waist over her tunic before tying the scabbards of the longsword and two curved daggers to it.

She drank several cups of water and filled up a leather pouch with more for the trip. She carried several herbs with her as well, as goblins could occasionally use poison, despite their low levels.

Three shroom gnomes followed her out of the dungeon and began stealthily moving toward where the dead knights lay. She had to be reminded often, but she was constantly applying Concealment to herself on a day-to-day basis.

The dungeon would even wake her up when she was sleeping by dropping cold water on her face, forcing her to activate concealment before she could sleep again.

Killing all the black sabers had also put her very close to leveling up. Elves were a naturally long-lived species, and almost as if to balance them out with other species, they required much more experience to level up. The world was both fair and unfair in many ways.

~~~~~

The knights' dead land, as Zach called it, was very close to the dungeon. It was a surprise the goblins hadn't discovered it as of yet, but they were still preoccupied with scavenging the site. They had even eaten many corpses, which deeply made Amy nervous.

The other corpses lying around were ghastly pale but hadn't begun decomposing yet, thanks to their vitality and higher levels. The black sabers were similar, as higher-leveled monsters had stronger materials that wouldn't spoil for even longer.

Their fat would also create an oil three or four times higher in quality than that of standard animal fat.