Silver Spoon Series

Veelzarama was glad to finally be rid of that annoying human. It had been over a hundred years since a white grade adventurer had managed to make it all the way through her final floors. It had been almost ten years since anyone had managed to complete her dungeon. That normally would have caused a dangerous and painful overload of power, but Veelzarama was able to mitigate this in two ways.

The first was the fact that she had an extremely large pool of aether and mana. It took a very long time for it to fill. The other way she was able to deal with the build up of ambient aether was to use it to move through space. Dungeons used aether to create their creatures, and because of this those same creatures leaked small amounts of that energy over time. The longer it had been since their creation, the more that energy leaked out. This aether, even though it originally came from the dungeon, couldn't be absorbed by the core.

Instead, some of it was absorbed by other creatures, empowering them, while the rest built up, causing interference with the dungeon's normal functions. There were only two ways to deal with this. The first was to create monster cores just on the edge of the dungeon that would absorb the ambient energy to form its own creature. This is where monster leaks came from. The same thing could be done inside the dungeon, but if they stayed inside the core's territory the monster would start emitting aether as well, making the situation worse overall.

Veelzarama had been around a long time and she had learned of another way to deal with the energy. You could use that ambient aether as fuel for travel between planets. It wasn't needed to travel around on a planetary body, but to move through the emptiness of space required massive amounts of energy. That same otherwise harmful aether that built up inside of them could be used to shift their territory very quickly between the stars. She had spent the last thousand years shifting from one star to the next, looking for low mana density areas to settle in. Once established, she would suck the energy from dead adventurers to increase her core's strength. After it became known that there was a killer dungeon in the area and she stopped getting visitors, she would move on.

It hadn't always been this way. Once upon a time, she was bonded with a talented golemoid crafter. Veelzarama had shaped her dungeon to support her master in his work. Resources, tools, and rare ingredients were the rewards she gave for completing her simple challenge. She hadn't grown all that much since the struggle was low, but she had been happy.

Then came the day when a nearby dungeon got greedy and started moving towards her domain. If it had managed to get close enough it could have stolen her entire domain, and absorbed her energy into its own. In an effort to save the young core he was bonded to, her master had entered the encroaching dungeon and tried to reach the core. If he could have found it, he could have forced it away or even destroyed it if it proved unreasonable. Instead, he was the one to perish, leaving her alone.

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Veelzerama had been broken when her master died, and she had done nothing but wait for his killer to absorb her as well. It wasn't until it had finally started to drain a portion of her energy, an experience that was ten times worse than any buildup of aether she had ever experienced, that she returned to her senses. Her master wouldn't have wanted her to die, by continuing to exist she could keep the memory of her master alive.

The young core had fled to the sky, making her first trip through the stars. That was a terrible time. Not only was she still dealing with the loss of her bond, but she had also not discovered the trick to fast travel between celestial bodies yet. She spent several years just moving to another planet in the same system. Everytime she moved, she purposefully targeted low mana areas, figuring that none of the dungeons there would be a threat to her. In those first few decades, that hadn't always been the case, but as her energy continued to grow and she continued to choose low to mid white grade areas, she soon outstripped her competition. It had been more than half a millennium since another dungeon had dared try and invade her domain.

She hadn't realized at the time what she was giving up for this security. Not only had it apparently slowed her growth significantly, but it seemed to have some effect on her thinking as well. It wasn't until this persistent adventurer, who could actually hear her, started talking to her that she realized she had been living in a daze. She was finally waking up now, thanks to some long talks she had had with him, but there was no way to really know what she had lost in all those centuries.

In a way, she wished she was still in that hazy existence. Life had been safe and things had been uncomplicated, but she also hadn't been honoring her master's legacy. In thanks for freeing her mind, not that she told him why, she had rewarded the adventurer well. To be fair, he had also earned it since he had completed all eight of her floors, even in their overpowered state. That was an impressive feat for someone who hadn't progressed beyond opal classes. Hopefully he would appreciate how generous she had been.

On the other hand, he had been an uppity little thing. Where did a lowly human get off telling an exalted being such as herself what to do? His suggestions had been good, but the presumption still burned. If she could smile she would have been grinning across her entire core as she thought of the parting gift she had been able to give him. It was the reason he had been forced to stay there so long at the end. He had almost reached the limit where his presence would have become painful for her, but he had managed to leave before it became an issue.

Veelzerama had to admit that he was an intriguing mortal, and she wasn't sure whether to wish him luck and hope for his return, or curse him and pray for his demise far away from her. Too bad she didn't know of anyone she could actually pray to.