Saga of the Soul Dungeon

"You want to know how I got so proficient at death magic? I tried to save people, and they took it wrong. Some were actually grateful, but most people get weird about it. I mean, does it really matter that I used material from a corpse to save your life?"

-Al'kusad Jfogaoi, Master Necromancer

==Caden==

Right… It wasn't all bad.

I hadn't only brought death. It was nice to know that my plan worked, and people lived, when they would have died. That I had been able to give that to them.

I would have thought, looking out at the vast expanse before me, that it would be easier to keep that in mind.

Except, for all the trees that tossed their branches about in the storm, as if they were at a rave and bouncing their heads to the rhythm of the winds, for all of that and the countless animals and monsters that lived within me, they weren't what mattered. I didn't hold them sacred, at least not in the same way.

Sure, there was something special about being in nature and the quiet certitude it could bring… but it was special because I was there. Me, and others who could appreciate it.

Nature was meaningless… without meaning.

It seems a trite thing to say, but it was true.

Intelligence made nature into more than just a cycle grinding out the remaining time of the universe.

So… yes, I prized people above nature. Prized the potential of what they could become.

Nature should be saved because we care about other people. Because we want others to have that same experience and connection. Because we want it to remain for the future.

My ability to make and unmake it had cheapened its value, somewhat.

I was sad that I had, of necessity, unmade so many natural caverns to suit my own goals. I had left the ones I could, but my very presence had altered them.

You might think it would make it easier to let people die, knowing their soul would go on. And, if it was truly them, simply moving on to a heaven, that might be true… but it wasn't. This version of them would die.

Maybe.

So… yes. I was glad to save some lives. To prevent the loss of something that could never be regained. To allow this facet of them to shine brightly for a while longer.

I'll shine my best.

I pulled up the next notification and continued.

Not anything that I had been expecting, though I suppose leaving my mana at full, simply due to everything working fine off the ambient power levels, was unusual. If I was conscious, I certainly would have been spending the mana, after all.

The dungeon, and aura, had expanded while I was gone, and with things progressing far enough out there was now a whole ancient city that I needed to deal with, though it wasn't all in my area of control, just yet.

I thought Exsan had done it.

Apparently not.

I shrugged, there wasn't much for me to do with this. It was one less thing I needed to deal with, really. With the inclusion of the automated dungeon conversion, this method probably expanded my dungeon faster than if I created aura using my full attention.

It was useful, but not earth shaking. I moved on.

If I had been standing, I would have staggered. Knowledge rushed through me in waves.

Thousands of animals, monster, plants, fungus, traps, and other designs swept through me.

Most of my shards were consumed to handle the influx, but I still remained.

I let myself bask for just a moment.

Are these from the world in general, other dungeons?

I smiled. I didn't know, but I could ask.

Some of the plants… were strange. I wasn't sure what to make of them. The animals and monsters were obviously odd, but I was more used to that.

I shook my head.

Something to deal with later.

It wasn't a bad thing, after all. I would need to massively expand my evolution and testing areas, but that was always going to be true.

I had scarcely done more than acknowledge them once I returned.

Onward.

I waited for a moment, but that was it.

Guess some of them are simple.

A wave of additional patterns started flowing in.

Oh, right… the discounts.

Learning was a universally helpful skill, but its biggest application at the moment was a universal discount, which meant more patterns fell below the 50 point threshold.

Same thing with vital comprehension, it already directly made 'summons' cheaper. Guessing that was the name for all the living stuff in the patterns. Whereas the construct intuition worked the same way for all the not so fleshy things.

Guess people were still making offerings while I was gone.

It was the only reason for those skills to go up while I wasn't active, unless Exsan had been doing something with them.

None of the patterns I was getting were stronger than the strongest I had already created, though a few came close. The strongest ones, appropriately, were those aligned with the life elements, seeing as I had the largest discounts there as a result of the titles that had just been upgraded.

I already wanted to explore the various elemental effects more, but this was just additional incentive.

Like I don't have enough to do already.

I just smiled and shook my head.

More things to learn isn't really a problem.

I pulled up the next notification.

Snarky as ever. And ugh… that pun.

I was absolutely too stubborn for my own good.

Need to be more careful.

I probably would have been more shocked about almost dying, but… I kind of already knew. My arrival had required me to regain control of my body. I had pushed myself because I wanted to win, because I wanted my soul to be mine.

I smiled as I felt the resonance with Exsan.

Very alike in some ways.

I had expected more patterns to be added onto my current queue, but there was nothing.

Either none of them are that cheap, or there just aren't any.

I had noticed that when I had looked over the system's list of soul skills before.

Soul skills were rare. There were not very many of them. And they were expensive, too. The skill store was hardly comprehensive, and I doubted that the pattern store was any different, but even so, there were a lot of things inside it.

At least now I had a substantial discount on buying one of the few available soul skills, if I were so inclined. My initial titles on arrival only gave me substantial benefits in learning a skill, not buying them.

I would figure it out on my own, if needed, just as I already had.

More notifications blinked at me, not so patiently waiting. On to the next…