The Dungeon Without a System

0-0-0-0-0-

The Seventh Floor, The Dungeon, Medea Island

-0-0-0-0-0-

Kata wandered the village and couldn't help but think how empty it seemed without Drake-kin in the training arena. They'd been a constant presence, the noise of steel-on-steel ringing over the village at all hours. They'd taken their loss the day before personally. Even with all of them at once, the guilders had pushed through them and, ultimately, beaten Tear and Sonum.

It'd rankled them, and after they'd respawned, they'd thrown themselves into training again. This time, they had a new method. Water shamans played out the part of the water mage, clumsily mimicking moves they'd seen him do. A couple of the stronger Drake-kin had commissioned a few warhammers from Tear and were doing the same. There wasn't much they could do to prepare for the archer except keep an eye on her and be ready to dodge or raise their shields. The knight... as with the warhammer-wielding woman, their best choice was to not be hit.

As she heard descriptions of these guilders... Kata gained more and more of an idea of who they were dealing with, and she felt a tingle of dread crawl down her spine.

A knight with a red cape on his left pauldron bearing the symbol of the god of Fire. A woman wearing enchanted robes wielding an intricately carved warhammer. A woman with a magical bow that could grant ordinary arrows various elemental effects. A water mage of exceptional skill and wearing the robes of a master mage...

She'd never met or even seen them personally, but everyone had heard the stories of Them. The Heroes' Descendants. The children and grandchildren of the greatest heroes of the Phenoc Kingdom. The Heroes were instrumental in subduing and destroying the oldest dungeon in the known world, which had been conquered for centuries before it rebelled against its master. It had threatened the entire kingdom with the hundreds of thousands of monsters and mana mutants that poured from its entrance.

The Heroes had been paragons. The strongest guilders in the kingdom were brought together in a never-before-seen gathering of power. After descending and defeating the dungeon, the group split into several smaller parties and eventually settled down. Their children had the best of everything; The best training, the best servants... anything they asked for.

Years after their parent's deaths, their children roamed the land in similar parties. The only difference being that... the Heroes Descendants were decidedly not moral paragons. They were spoiled, petty people. Tales of their exploits were used as cautionary tales, in contrast to the heroic ballads their parents inspired. Then, even these heroes had children. Their children were, if anything, worse than their parents.

These were the guilders who made up the current groups roaming the kingdom.

The knight was, therefore, Hallmark. A vicious killer, known to hold grudges over the smallest of slights. The Water Mage was Xerat, perhaps one of the better guilders of the Descendants. That didn't mean he was innocent; far from it. The archer was Chana, the thief. Towns she passed through found important documents and relics inexplicably missing. The Robed Woman, Auora... She was one of the quiet ones. She mostly kept to herself and let others do the talking. She often took up the role of silent intimidation, with her warhammer slung over her shoulder.

As far as Kata could remember, they were all members of different groups. That they were all here, together... Kata felt she was very out of the loop. What happened?

Where were the rest of them?

She was jolted from her thoughts by the sound of wood striking wood, and she soon came across a group of serious-looking drake-kin juveniles. They barely reached Kata's hips and were practicing swordplay with wooden weapons. She made her way over, shaking her head.

"Oh no, no, no. This won't do at all," Kata began, and the juveniles blinked in shock at her, then quickly looked to the ground with guilty looks. "Your footwork is completely wrong, and that is not how you swing a sword. You'll hurt yourselves like that. Let me show you how to do it properly," Kata offered. The juveniles, realizing they wouldn't be punished, jumped at the opportunity for actual instruction.

Half an hour later, they were lying on the ground with exhausted but happy smiles. "Thank you, Miss Kata," The oldest of the group, Cleave Bloodscale, said for the group. The others, too exhausted to join in, waved an arm each in the air with tired cheers. Kata gave them a kind smile of her own.

"It was no trouble, young ones. It's never too early to learn the sword, my father always told my brother." Kata replied with a nostalgic smile. Ah, the days of her youth. Her father was so disappointed Kata insisted on pursuing the bow rather than the womanly arts her mother attempted to teach her.

"How old were you when you learned?" Cleave asked, tilting his head like all Drake-kin and Kobolds did when curious about something.

"I didn't start learning how to use the sword until my twentieth year. I trained in daggers and the bow for most of my childhood," Kata informed them.

"Twentieth year? What's a year?" The juvenile asked again, this time confused more than curious.

"Ah. I forgot how young you all are," Kata said, a little sheepish. "I'm going to need a reference from you guys. How old are you?" Each less-tired-now juvenile responded quickly.

"I'm two weeks old!" "I'm three!" "Four weeks!" "Two and a half!" "I'm five weeks old!" Cleave finished, proudly.

...Right. Drake-kin grew exceptionally quickly. Something that had noticeably slowed since she'd been allowed to join the village. Most of the warriors she'd trained were around three weeks old, and those were the ones out fighting right now.

"Okay. You all know that one week is seven days, right?" Kata asked, and the monsters all nodded. "Well, there are four weeks in a month and twelve months in a year. Cleave would be one month and one week old. I'm..." Kata trailed off. Calculating her age in months wasn't something she often did. "I'm three hundred and fifteen months old. I turned twenty-six years old about three months ago."

The juveniles looked at her, stunned. Cleave was the first to recover.

"Wow, You're Old.

Kata felt an eyebrow twitch. The Cheek on this kid.

"If I'm so old, then you should easily be able to go another set, hmm?" Kata saw their pupils contract and breaths quicken, then produced a shark-like grin. "Well? Get to it. This time, I won't go so easy on you."

-0-0-0-0-0-

The Eighth Floor, The Dungeon, Medea Island

-0-0-0-0-0-

As they emerged onto the Eighth, Auora could say... they'd at least come out of that fight slightly better off than the last time they'd been in that arena.

They'd gone into the fight more prepared for what they'd face and could easily maneuver themselves such that Xerat and Chana faced Tear, while Hallmark and Auora took down the Elemental. Facing something they were more suited to defeating significantly reduced injuries, though not entirely.

From what she'd seen of their fight, Tear had been entirely unprepared for facing off against two ranged fighters, both of whom were more agile than him and could remain at range. They spent most of the fight running around the edge of the arena throwing potshots at him, wearing him down until Chana landed a lucky shot that made it through the visor of his helm.

The Earth Elemental was a different thing entirely.

The manabeing was huge, and you'd expect something that large and made of stone to be slow, but it was deceptively fast.

All their most pressing injuries were almost entirely healed from a single potion, and they pressed on.

They hadn't expected the wall of white beyond the Eighth's entrance.

"Snow?" Xerat wondered, turning some white powder that dusted the entrance to the floor. "I can use it, but unfreezing the water takes a bit of effort. Blace would've loved it here..." He trailed off, and the silence hung in the air.

None of them were close to Blace. The ice mage had been distant and spent most of her time with Titon and Dorin. The brothers were arrogant womanizers, yes, but they'd been reined in by the cold woman in the months before they'd come to Medea.

Auora remembered one evening, they were at the top of some high cliffs on the west coast. She and Blace had drawn the midnight watch and spent a few hours talking near the cliff's edge. They might have been standoffish people... but there were damn good fighters. Auora had no doubt they'd still be alive if the dungeon hadn't snuck in and kidnapped them.

She shook her head. No good dwelling on might-haves or could-have-beens.

"Can you shield us from the blizzard?" Hallmark asked, staring unblinking into the whiteness.

"Yeah, some," Xerat claimed, though he sounded unsure. "I can make a shell of water around us, but it'll be taxing to keep the water from turning to ice. We'd need to find or make a shelter every few hours, so I can recover." Hallmark nodded.

"That'll have to be enough," the knight stated. "Xerat, stay in the middle of us. I'll go first, Chana after Xerat, and Auora will be the rearguard. Get out the enchanted cloaks; I doubt we will find the cold pleasant." Auora pulled the cloak from her pouch, suddenly glad they'd shelled out for the enchantment that regulated both heat and cold. It had cost extra, but it had definitely been worth it.

"Whenever you're ready, Xerat." Hallmark prompted when they were all prepared.

The water mage took a few deep breaths, centering himself. In a preternaturally smooth motion, Xerat pulled the water from the flasks at his hips and spread it into a barrier. He moved forward, and a few yards ahead of him, the storm was pushed back by the wall of water. While it kept the air clear... it did little for the noise the storm produced.

They moved along the cliff wall, minimizing the chance they could fall off the edge. They quickly arrived at the point they'd been buried under a ton of snow, surprised to discover the mound had disappeared entirely. It would have delayed them, even if only slightly, had it remained. So why had the dungeon removed it?

A vague rumble, barely audible over the roar of the blizzard, prompted the party to rush forwards. Behind them, snow slammed down in the exact same spot.

That was why they'd cleared it. It was a trap, and the bird had set it off the first time. They'd thought it was something it'd done and discarded the idea it could have been a trap.

Sloppy, very sloppy.

"We keep moving!" Hallmark shouted, turning away from the mound of snow. "Keep your hearing sharp; we can't see anything in this weather!" Auora nodded, though he couldn't see her, and she quickly moved to keep up with the party.

The next hour was... confusing and disorienting.

They had no reference. No landmarks to navigate by. They almost fell down a cliff three times, saved only by the cleared air around them, which let them see the edge before it was too late.

"This is pointless!" Auora insisted over the roaring wind. "We need to find somewhere to bunker down. Now! We'll wait for the storm to pass!"

Hallmark sneered at her but nodded. "Auora's right. Find a cliff. Xerat can form a shelter from the snow!" At this declaration, all hell seemed to break loose.

Solid icicles pierced the calm air bubble, and Chana cried out in pain as half a dozen shot straight through her leather chest piece, lodging themselves there. She was thrown from the calm bubble by the force of the attack, and Auora lost sight of her immediately.

"Chana!" Xerat shouted, arm extended and eyes wide with disbelief. Hallmark's near-perpetual frown turned murderous, and he roared in anger. He drew his sword and dove right into the blizzard in the direction the icicles came from. "Fight me, Cowards..."

His voice trailed off to nothing, and Auora shivered despite her cloak. She drew her hammer and stood with it raised.

If she was to die today, she'd take whatever did it with her!

-0-0-0-0-0-

The Core, The Eleventh Floor, The Dungeon,

-0-0-0-0-0-

Every second was a struggle.

Every effort was monumental.

But slowly, surely, I forced the dungeon's original soul, hereafter referred to as "Instincts," into a corner.

I had no illusions that this was over, far from it. As the fight continued and the core gathered more mana, we started using it. While it couldn't empower our souls directly, it made a decent tool for claiming territory over the gem that contained us.

It was a while into fruitlessly wrestling with Instincts that I figured out this trick and so had a headstart in its use. I took advantage ruthlessly, forcing the other soul into the 'tip' of the gem. It had taken... a long time. Instincts quickly mimicked my method and pushed back almost as hard.

While it was definitely struggling and wriggling, trying to push my influence back, it was slow enough that I could finally get an update on how my monsters were holding up. I couldn't let my attention wander too far, or Instincts would take advantage. Soo...

I reached out to the closest thing I could. Paragon.

"Paragon, may I view your memories of the time since I've been... occupied?

"Of course, Contractor," the spirit replied, as he mentally jumped in surprise. "I was sure it would take at least another two weeks or so for your transformation to complete..."

Transfor-what now?

The memories were easy to access, with Paragon's explicit permission and him bringing his memories of the last few weeks forward. I kept Instincts in mind, wriggling in the corner as it was, while I looked through the selection before me.

There were a few moments of note. The initial retreat into the core and how Instincts and I looked as we wriggled around each other was fascinating. Paragon's interactions with my monsters were even more so.

Without my constant presence in their lives, they'd gathered and organized themselves. In the process, they used a name to describe themselves I'd heard before, but with the meeting, it had become official. The Children. The collective government of all sapient monsters born of The Creator, aka; me.

The Courts were all the manabeings I'd contracted, each represented by the king or queen of the respective elements. Obviously separate, but respected in their role as fellow guardians of The Creator.

I agreed with Wave. I'd undoubtedly give every court an island of its own, and Paragon was first on the list. It was only fitting as a reward for his diligent service.

It was distressing to learn the remnants of the Hero's Descendants had penetrated me so deeply. They'd passed right through the Sixth and Seventh, even after facing Tear and all the drake-kin population bound to respawn crystals.

I briefly wondered how he'd gotten all this information and had my answer quickly. Though Paragon had been isolated on this island, the Air Spirit's subjects had taken up the role of Messenger. They'd been zooming up and down the dungeon, taking advantage of all the small tunnel's I'd built between floors to expedite the process. The various leaders had spread all this news to keep the Children and Courts updated and to prepare them.

The most shocking thing I observed was the sheer amount of mana building around the core. This was far more than I'd ever allowed to gather before. I could see how Paragon would interpret this as a transformation, given his own experiences and knowledge, no matter how wrong he was. He was right about the timeline, though. In a few more weeks... The core would accumulate enough mana that it would explode.

It would shatter into a million tiny shards, unable to contain the sheer volume and density of mana. The only way to avert this catastrophe would be to divert the mana to something that would use much of the stuff or convert the mana in the core into another layer of manacrystal.

Both options were untenable while I was still fighting Instincts. I couldn't afford a distraction like that. Which meant I needed to find a resolution to this conflict in the next two weeks.

Or it was all over.

Before I could attempt to do something about my impending demise, and the destruction of all I'd created, Instincts surged from the corner with newfound strength. I cut the connection to Paragon and surged back against the soul. Our struggle resumed. As I pushed back against it, I started thinking about how to resolve this as quickly as possible. I was on a timer now, after all.

-0-0-0-0-0-