The New Chimera

“So, think that sounds about right?” Kali asked, spinning her chair so she was facing Lilith.

“Yeah, I think that’s good.” Lilith replied. It had taken some back and forth, but she had finally gotten to a point where she felt like she wouldn’t be, essentially, creating a slave. “What now?”

“Now, you go take a nap…again.” Kali said. “While that’s happening, I’ll create the new Parallel and get Carmen’s permission. Shouldn’t take longer than an hour or so.”

“Alright.” Lilith replied. “Wanna do it here, or…?”

“Yeah, just lie down on the bed, we’ll have this done in a jiffy.” Kali said.

I’ll excuse myself and continue my work with mama. Mae said. Just inform me when my input is required to make the new Parallel.

Kali nodded. “Will do.”

Lilith got out of the chair she was sitting in and walked over to Kali’s bed, where she laid down and got comfortable. Though, at this point…it really didn’t feel like it was just Kali’s bed. Somehow, circumstances always seemed to end up with Lilith taking a nap there, or just getting tired while hanging out with Kali and falling asleep, where she would stay for the night. For some reason, it just felt…natural to do so, there were none of the inhibitions she would normally feel about falling asleep on someone else’s bed.

And more than once she had awoken to a sleeping Kali clinging to her tightly, a look of unbridled happiness on her face as she did. Kali had always explained it away as ‘instincts’, which Lilith couldn’t help but feel wasn’t totally the case, but she wasn’t about to question her on it. Kali knew a lot better than she did, and she never complained about how her room had, in essence, become Lilith’s as well, so Lilith wasn’t going to interrogate her on it.

“You ready?” Kali asked, wheeling her chair over to the side of the bed.

“Yeah.” Lilith replied. “Feel free to start whenever.”

“Perfect.” Kali said, and then everything faded, Lilith losing consciousness as Kali’s spell took hold.

---

The new Parallel opened her eyes…no, that was the wrong term? Her eyes were already open, since she was currently inhabiting the main body, so it was more like she…came into awareness? Whatever the term, she quickly created a new avatar, hopping into that and giving the assembled people a look.

“Call me Nuwa.” She said. “I’m rather looking forward to getting started on the dungeon, so let’s get this show on the road.”

Lilith blinked. “Are you sure you don’t want a bit more time to…orient yourself first?”

Nuwa shook her head. “No need. May I remind you that I remember everything you do, save for the last…however long it took you to accept me as a new Parallel? I would really like to get started on this as soon as possible, I’m sure every second of production is going to count.”

“I’m…not so sure, but that’s fine, I suppose.” Lilith replied. “Where are we going?”

 “I’ve got a whole room set up for it.” Kali said. “Follow me, I’ll explain on the way.” She took the group out of the room and began leading them down a series of hallways. “So, your dungeon is actually going to mostly be in an entirely separate plane.” She explained. “This one is just too restrictive when it comes to expansion.

“So, I picked up one of the dime-a-dozen planes no one really wants. There’s only some plant life and a few types of small animals, and it’s no more than…probably two hundred miles wide. Those have a tendency to pop up pretty often and there’s not enough demand for there to be conflict over them like there is over larger planes.”

“Conflict?” Lilith asked.

“Ah, right, haven’t told you about that yet. Um…we’ll get into it more later, and there are all sorts of complicated rules we’ve made for ourselves, but the long and the short of it is that planes sort of…just pop into existence out in the ether, and Administrators have to fight over who gets what. Then, the winner gets to choose what happens with the plane. Usually that’s just adding it to their universe, so people don’t run into resource depletion issues, but occasionally they get gifted, like Haven was.”

She stopped in front of a door and messed around with the handle for a bit. “Sorry, locked this in case Raphael got inquisitive and started poking around.” She said. “This should only take a moment.” A couple of second later, there was a click and the door opened. “So, this is where we’re going to keep the core. And by that, I mean Nuwa’s avatar. So, there’s gonna be a pedestal of sorts, just go sit on that and we’ll be able to start.”

Nuwa nodded, and walked into the room. Sure enough, there was a large pedestal in the center of the room, made out of some sort of stone. It was large, intricately carved, and any semblance of seriousness to it was obliterated by the large heart with “K + L forever” inside of it that had been carved into the front.

“Kali.” Nuwa said flatly. “What is this?”

Kali laughed nervously, face growing red. “Oh, I…forgot about that. Carmen had just given me a kiss and I was way excited so I…yeah. I’ll get rid of that later, for now we’ll…just pretend it’s not there, I guess.”

Nuwa sighed, but climbed onto the pedestal anyway. As far as she was concerned, it wasn’t her problem that Kali clearly had some sort of crush on Lilith. She was just going to bury herself in the management of the dungeon, and then she wouldn’t have to deal with anything social. Hopefully. She’d probably still deal with it by proxy thanks to the whole sense-sharing thing, but she didn’t have to put in the mental effort to respond.

“So, where’s this other dimension or whatever?” Nuwa asked. “We’re not in it now, right?”

“Yeah.” Kali replied. “After you establish the dungeon, I’m going to open a permanent portal to it. I want this here, so you have an easy way to come back to this plane without my help, though. You’ll get a teleport that brings you to the room your core is in once Lilith becomes the dungeon master.”

“Cool, I guess. How do I make this dungeon?”

“So, in a moment here I’m going to sever the connection between the two of you.” Kali said. “Once that’s done, just concentrate on making a dungeon and a window will pop up. Confirm and it’s done. Do it fast, though, since severing the two of you as completely as I can is really going to be hard on Nuwa. Oh, and I’m going to be sponsoring your dungeon, which will make your purchases cheaper, but it also means I technically get naming rights. So…what do you want it to be named?”

“Umm…” Lilith said, frowning. “I don’t know.”

“The Hall of Judgement.” Nuwa said immediately.

“Isn’t that…a little edgy?” Lilith asked. “You sure? I mean, this is your thing so I’m willing to go with whatever, just making sure.”

“Positive.” Nuwa replied. “A little edge never hurt anyone, and if we get visitors, we need them to know what they’re getting into.”

“The Hall of Judgement it is, then.” Kali said. “Once the dungeon’s made, Lilith will just need to touch the core, in this case Nuwa’s avatar, and then she’ll be able to become the dungeon master. Once that’s done, I’ll be able to reconnect you two and then we can really get started. Ready?”

Nuwa and Lilith nodded, and there was a sudden…disconnect. Nuwa felt weak, like she had just finished running a marathon, and the feeling was starting to get worse. She quickly focused on making the dungeon and, sure enough, a window popped up.

Nuwa mentally confirmed, and her body sort of…locked up. It curled up into the fetal position on its own, and then began to levitate a foot or two off of the pedestal.

Her senses expanded outwards, and she suddenly had sight on everything in the room at once. It was a little disorienting at first, but she quickly adapted, and watched as Lilith ran up and touched her core.

And then that disconnect ended, taking the exhaustion with it.

“Should we be worried about the whole…floating body thing?” Lilith asked, concern in her voice.

I’m fine. Nuwa responded. It’s not…well, it doesn’t feel like I can’t move. It almost feels more like that body is a decoration, my real body is…this room? I don’t know, kinda like how you don’t think of your brain as your body?

“If she so desires, she can become mobile again once she advances the dungeon enough.” Kali said. “But, now that we’ve got things going, let me explain how this works while we wait for resources to accumulate.

“Basically, you’re running off of two main resources, Mana and DP. Mana is just like the Mana you’re used to using, so nothing really to explain there. DP, short for Dungeon Points, is a sort of processed Mana, gained whenever anything but the core spends Mana inside the dungeon, or whenever anything dies within.

“This includes any monsters you make. You’re not going to get back as much DP as you spent on them, and if you buy a monster that respawns or a monster generator, you don’t get DP from those deaths. And the core and dungeon master don’t get experience from those deaths either, but if someone in your party just so happens to kill one of your monsters…well, you didn’t kill it, so experience is awarded as normal.”

She moved back a little and a large case suddenly appeared in her arms. She flew up and carefully slotted the case over the pedestal Nuwa’s core was on, then gave it a few taps. “Just a safety precaution.” She said. “It’s made of some really tough stuff. If, somehow, something gets in here and we don’t know about it until it’s in this room, this will give us at least a little time to react. And if you want it gone you can remove it from the inside pretty easily.

“Anyway, on the subject of monsters, dungeons usually have a specialty, but that’s tied to their Racial Class, so…you specialize in everything. And don’t worry about the monsters being sapient, either, even ones that have a degree of intelligence only mimic sapience, they’re closer to a really mediocre AI than they are to a living being. Well, until later on when you get the capability to make certain monsters sapient. But it’s very much a choice thing, point is, don’t feel bad about killing them.”

Lilith frowned. “It kinda seems like there are a lot of loopholes to this. Should we be worried about it?”

“No, they’re purposeful.” Kali replied. “Most people don’t have the capability to be their own dungeon master, and most dungeons aren’t going to be particularly keen to have one at all if they can avoid it. The benefits are minimal compared to the downside of essentially being forced into a slave relationship. If they have someone they can trust, it’s great for broadening their horizons, but otherwise they just need to defend themselves.”

“If you say so.” Lilith replied. “Anything else we need to know?”

“Ah, there is one thing that I’m going to tell you about now, since it’ll probably be relevant sooner rather than later. There are these things called ‘effects’ that you can place over individual rooms, floors, or the whole dungeon. I’ve given you one called ‘Deathless’ to start with, which makes anyone who dies inside the area get sent back to a safe place elsewhere in the dungeon. I figured it would be handy if you were to use the place as a training ground.”

What’s the benefit of such an effect normally? Nuwa asked. It seems rather counter-productive to give your attackers another shot at you.

“It’s intended for really big dungeons to put at the beginning to be a bit more beginner friendly. You see, the things that die still give you DP, just a slightly reduced amount. So, you can place it in the early areas and the people who wouldn’t be able to get through the later ones anyway just get fed into you again and again and generate more and more DP.”

I see. Anything else you need to tell me before I begin?

“No, you should be able to figure everything else out yourself. Just let me know if you have any questions and I’ll be more than happy to explain.” Kali walked over to the far wall and gave it a tap. A moment later a door appeared, and she turned back to face Lilith. “This is the portal to the other plane.” She explained. “It currently only allows people I’ve allowed into this plane to come through. It should be a foolproof defense but…well, the system might automatically unlock it and lock the door to my house if an intruder comes?”

She frowned. “Sorry about that, dungeons usually require some way for assailants to get to the core, and I don’t know how that’ll interact with the door. Hopefully the restrictions I personally placed take precedence, but it’s hard to say. It shouldn’t come to that in the first place, though, so I guess we’ll cross that bridge if we get to it.”

Understood. I will take precautions, then. And with that, Nuwa turned her attention away from the two, and began to experiment with the new tools she had been given.

---

A few days later, Nuwa had gotten a pretty good handle on things. Aside from being able to claim territory, she had also found a handy little feature that allowed her to absorb a physical item and begin producing replicas for a small amount of Mana.

She had started getting into monster creation, too. There were a lot of options for her, but most were far too expensive to afford. For now. She had gotten together with Mae, and the two of them had worked out a magic formation that would automatically drain Mana and discharge it, converting it into small amounts of DP as it did.

She had attached this to a bunch of beds, and she was planning to have anyone who was willing sleep there. The formations would tune themselves so they drained slightly lower than the sleeping person’s regeneration, and all that extra Mana would be put to use enriching the dungeon. She had a similar one on her core that she could turn on and off, and she kept it on unless she really needed the extra Mana regeneration; she had more than enough Mana to go around and DP was something she was always in need of.

And she had found another substance she was tentatively calling “mana battery”. It came in the form of a Mana potion, something new that the new system made possible. She was still experimenting with it, but after dipping into the Alchemist Class and messing around, she found that evaporating the material released all the mana within…and almost all of it went back to DP. It was over three times more efficient than just spending Mana doing basically nothing.

If she could, she would be salivating over the possibilities. The evaporated liquid could be condensed back into a form that would accept Mana that was poured into it, which she could then evaporate for more DP, and so on.

Her only problem was getting enough DP to get enough of the substance to actually make use of it. She had drafted up plans for a turbine of sorts that would process the mana battery, but that would eat up a ton of DP to create, and she didn’t have nearly enough laying about to even begin working on either problem.

So, she shelved the issue and turned her attention to other things. She was working on expanding the structure of the dungeon to accommodate her needs and the needs of her family. That meant living quarters, places that would eventually become training rooms, and a grand hall where she could hold official meetings.

And defenses, of course. They were mostly in the form of traps, and she had made sure those traps would only spring if the person triggering them wasn’t on a list that she made.

But that was about everything. Progress had slowed and it had become a matter of waiting to get enough DP to do the things she actually wanted to do. Kali had assured her that things would speed up once more people were in the dungeon and Mana was been spent there more often, so Nuwa sat back, mentally pulled up a book that she had absorbed into the dungeon’s knowledge repository, and began to read while she waited.