217, 2/2

Erick read for several hours, while everyone downstairs struggled out of Fairy Moon’s [Tea Time]. Sometimes people would get out of it. Mostly Quilatalap, every half hour. But then the archlich’s eyes went red and he Raged, and the world filled with impotent black magic, but only briefly. At Quilatalap’s first act of destruction once released, Fairy Moon’s power instantly wrapped around him again, and Fairy Moon repaired the tea set Quilatalap had broken, or the table, or stood directly in front of a blast of dark power that would have killed someone else at the party.

Erick wanted to help Quilatalap, but that Rage scared even him.

Aisha gradually, surely, ate away at the power holding her down, but every time she got up and gave the excuse that she ‘needed to use the bathroom’ or ‘go over here for a moment’, Fairy Moon pulled her back with calming words, saying the discussion was not over yet. And since the discussion was not over, Aisha had to come back to the table.

… Erick would save all of them soon enough.

But as he read the black book, over and over, understanding it all and yet finding new insights with every re-reading… The only real problem Erick saw going forward was the loss of [Teleport] for the entire world. And Fairy Moon’s tea party was still going over that problem, everyone speaking calmly, discussing the issue and foreseeable problems, and then trying to understand how to solve those problems now, in the week that remained before [Teleport] was taken away from Veird entirely.

They could work on that issue.

Erick read about dungeon cores.

According to this book, which may or may not be true, each dungeon would start off as a swirl in the manasphere, and then condense down into a special dungeon slime. This spawning process would work exactly how normal dungeons manhandled the mana to make slimes, or how rads coalesced in areas of strong, singular mana, transforming water into water slimes, or air into wind slimes, or any of the basic building blocks of mana into slimes, or into other, stranger monsters, like undead rising from corpses left on great battlefields, or lava elementals rising out of volcanoes. The mana that condensed in the case of dungeons was perfectly balanced mana, but there was an extra restriction on that condensation, for a dungeon could only spawn at a minimum distance from another dungeon, based on the size of those other dungeons all around.

This slime would then burrow into the ground. Normally, anyway.

From there, the dungeon slime would metamorphose into a Dark Rift, and begin sending out perfectly balanced mana in order to lure things to the Rift. The spewed mana was normal, natural mana. But the base mana of a dungeon was Melemizargo’s mana. This was pure Darkness. To stand near a dungeon was to be under the eyes of Darkness.

Which was a terrifying thought, but not all too much different than normal.

… Anyway. The dungeons soaked their area in power, transforming the overworld into a mana rich environment, usually with lots of plants, but also with slimes that spread outward, all under the direct control of the dungeon. The dungeon wouldn’t be sentient at this point; everything would be instinctual.

That instinct would be to begin cycling the mana of its surroundings, empowering life all around and then taking in power through death in the vicinity, making itself larger through those deaths.

Eventually, the dungeon would reach a level of power that allowed it to disappear through a [Gate] of its own making, and that’s when it truly got going. From there, the dungeon would gain true control over its environment and begin naturally spawning slimes as fast as it could, to grow at a mostly linear rate. Every life born of the dungeon would grow normally, and upon death, either natural or on purpose, the core would take that life’s mana production for itself and use that production to grow itself, allowing for more interior space to allow even more life to grow…

And the cycle got bigger.

Erick had no idea how Melemizargo expected that sort of growth to be linear. It would be multiplicative, at least, or some other mathematical term.

Because there was no real limit to the dungeon’s size. Not inside a gate space…

It was probably limited to the size of all the other gate spaces nearby, actually…

Which was in line with why dungeons were only capable of spawning a certain distance from each other. Now this wasn’t written down in the book, but Erick suspected that if he had control over a ‘world dungeon’, or whatever it would be called, then no other dungeons would spawn. Which would be one way to solve the random danger of dungeons popping up everywhere. It’d be damn difficult to control a single dungeon though.

Because, of course, while a dungeon would start off using slimes for growth, for slimes were the only monsters that actually spawned, other monsters would be drawn into the dungeon by the perfect mana emanating from the [Gate]. Just like how monsters went down, down, down into the Underworld, following the paths of the mana rivers flowing to the Core of Veird, in order to accrete near those densities and grow stronger, monsters would follow the mana inside the dungeons, too. They would go inside and live and the dungeon would use that space to grow, too, but the core would only ever have control over the slimes…

Except that wasn’t true, because the core could eventually create a mimic slime which would then go out and transform into one of the monsters that had come inside the space, allowing itself to protect itself from utter destruction. That was the main way in which a dungeon protected itself. The dungeon copied a monster, and gained that monster’s powers in an ‘avatar slime’ that became its main defender, in case someone should attack the core.

That was rather terrifying, because copying any monster? Well… Erick was technically a monster, for he had a core, but apparently this book didn’t qualify real cores as ‘monstrous’. Only messy cores like those labeled as grand rads qualified for copying; the spiky ones with too many facets, taken from raging beasts.

So not Erick.

But a wyrm would qualify.

… Problems upon problems.

According to the book, though, wild dungeons mostly protected themselves and did nothing else, like a tree simply growing in the forest… That ‘tree’ tried to kill everything that entered their core room, but it also allowed everything else to survive and thrive under its aegis.

Sometimes some monsters would leave the dungeon, but only if the dungeon got overcrowded, or some bigger thing moved inside…

Hmm. That could be a problem, too.

Instead of needing to destroy the core to destroy the dungeon, could you just destroy the [Gate]?…

Nope. If a [Gate] was destroyed, the dungeon would make a new one in some random location, near the gate space of the dungeon. The only way to kill a dungeon was to kill the core, which caused the dungeon to target you with everything they had.

… And from there, things got complicated, because working with dungeons allowed for a person to become a dungeon master, and from there…

It got complicated.

A master could guide the core’s growth anyway they wanted. They could even make the core make extra dungeon slimes, which could copy other monsters, and with each dungeon slime killed the killer could gain innate mana production. The dungeon would lose that innate production, but the killer would gain that production. This, then, was the whole way in which Melemizargo wanted people to be able to grow in the New Cosmology. Most people only produced an average of 10 mana per day, but through ‘mini-avatar’ kills, a person could gain 10 more mana per day, and if they fought and won enough, they could gain a lot more than that. The real gains were in true learning of magic, according to this book… But Erick felt that taking a monster’s mana production was the actual biggest draw. For other people, anyway. Not for him. He already made a million mana per day, naturally.

But taking someone’s mana was an act considered worse than taboo everywhere on Veird, and in the Old Cosmology too, but apparently Melemizargo was changing his tune?

What the fuck.

… The dungeon master program looked pretty good on paper, though. By appointing a dungeon master, that person could then change everything about the dungeon, as long as they directed the dungeon in positive growth.

[True Resurrection]s for delvers, or whatever the adventurers ended up being called.

Eternal resource generation, as determined by the dungeon master, or randomly by untamed dungeons.

The capability to set up real danger, to teach people real lessons of all sorts, from aura control to mana sensing, to things like gridwork, through puzzles.

The ability to test out a hundred different Script configurations was what really resonated with Erick, though. That was the real draw here, since a dungeon master could configure an overlay in the dungeon space that would restrict the people inside. No Script magic was possible. Baseline capability of intruders was another.

People could even test out spells before they bought them, if the dungeon master set it up that way. Touch a specific rock, gain [Fireball] for an hour, or for X amount of casts, or any other spell the dungeon master wanted to set.

Of course, becoming a dungeon master was not simple at all. Ohhh… the act itself was simple; touch the core and bind yourself to it. But the meaning of a ‘dungeon master’ was not simple at all. What actually happened was that a mimic slime came out and copied the dungeon master and then the copy would be the actual dungeon master, and then you would have to talk to your copy to get things done in the dungeon…

Which…

Terrifying.

But the dungeon copy could not grow. The dungeon copy did not have any of the original’s spellwork. It was by design that someone could set up this system and put an ‘avatar’ inside who could be easily eliminated if they should grow unruly…

Which was also fucking terrifying.

You’d just… What? Find yourself as a copy in a dungeon one day? A weaker version of yourself, unable to grow except through making the dungeon bigger? Better? And then your original self with all of your memories and all your hard work and everything that was you would walk away, and you’d be responsible for working the dungeon?! Could you even leave if you were the dungeon master— Yes. Three pages later: A dungeon copy could leave the dungeon… if they put a copy of themselves in the dungeon. So a copy of a copy. How did that work when…

Oh.

The copy dungeon master slime could come back inside the dungeon and merge with the one they left behind, and become the same person again. Memories of outside would join with those inside. Okay.

So.

Nightmare fuel! As Jane would say. So much nightmare fuel everywhere!

Erick set down the book.

He was too tired and it… It was all too much.

Erick looked back to the book, and had a weird thought. What if he set himself up as the dungeon master in a hundred places at once? All across the world? Dungeons didn’t multiply the magical or physical power of the dungeon master at all, but they did allow a person to be in many, many different places at once… Theoretically.

Hmm.

Would his copies retain his increased smarts and brain, though?

Erick picked the book back up and could not find a satisfactory answer to that question. Most signs pointed to ‘yes’, a clone would keep every mental part of the dungeon master, but there would likely be some lessening, of some unknowable way. The dungeon master would just be a mimic slime, after all.

… A mimic slime with the mind and a copy of the soul of the dungeon master, but still a slime without its own core, and without the ability to channel mana at all. The dungeon core could channel mana. The dungeon core could grow.

The copy could not grow in anything but knowledge and temperament.

Nightmare fuel and the ethics of slavery, all in one. Probably a whole bunch of other problems that Erick had not considered yet, but which would become apparent in the following years. A few people probably already knew what would happen, though. Not Fallopolis or Melemizargo, but the others. The ones who had approved of this happening.

The Relevant Entities of the Script.

– – – –

Erick imagined that all he had needed to do was say the name of any god at all, and he would have gotten an audience. He chose Phagar.

He got an audience with all of them.

The volcano caldera was black and wide, the ground knobbly with long-cold lava, the edges of the caldera rising up in the distance, all around, like great obsidian knives. Mist cut as it flowed across those knives, into this black space where the sun did not shine, and everything was illuminated anyway.

Phagar stood in front of Erick. It was like looking upon a mirror, but ever so slightly different. “Hello again, Erick. Hopefully we won’t have to have meetings like this every year.”

Erick would have laughed if he had been in a better mood.

The mist all around them filled with gods and others, most of whom Erick recognized. There was Sininindi, her clothes were torn sails, and a storm-tossed tree hovered around her back and around her legs like a scared child. Atunir filled the air with summer harvest. Aloethag was a white mountain with rivers of blood flowing across her body. Sumtir was a man in armor with a sword at his hip. Fangorl was a wild person, hidden underneath leaves and branches. Zepherspray was a small woman here, and then there, and then somewhere else, all without moving at all. A hundred others lurked in the deeper mist, and Erick knew all of them this time. From Demon King Dinnamoth in his Vile armor of red-gold Demonic power, to the Crown of the Host Adavido, in his gleaming gold and iridescent armor, with a dozen swords floating all around him.

Koyabez stepped out of the mist, wearing nothing more than his usual loincloth. He joined Phagar in the center of the arena with Erick. He said nothing, but he did nod in greetings.

Rozeta came next, looking normal in her white wrought woman form, wearing the same pantsuit as always. “The vote has already happened. We’re allowing the [Teleport Lock] and the dungeon cores. Wars only really happen on the Surface because [Teleport] is supported, and we need the mana from the cores.”

She had a lot more to say on that issue, but she did not. She would talk later on more specifics if Erick asked, though; he could tell. For all of the other Relevant Entities, this meeting was just them appeasing the Wizard, and ensuring that he didn’t ruin all of their plans.

It seemed like a cruel sort of calculus. But…

“… I can almost understand the dungeon cores,” Erick said, “Sure. I’ll be murdering every single monster I can find over the coming decades, and yet you need mana, and monsters produce mana, too. Monsters grow quickly and die just as quickly, so they make more mana than people, overall. So monsters need to exist somewhere since there aren’t enough people yet… And I suppose the removal of the main way in which wars turn truly deadly makes sense. The millions who died in Songli might even still be alive if it weren’t for [Teleport].

“But I know why [Teleport] was put in the Open Script, and so do you. It was given to the people because monsters threatened to overrun Veird. And you’re bringing that back. Even if I put the Gate Network out there again, millions will die because they won’t be able to get away from the big threats… though millions more will live easier lives, not worrying about someone [Teleport]ing into their homes and killing them like they did at Songli.

“On the whole, I understand why this is happening, and I know what I can do to alleviate the problems these changes bring… But this is too much, too fast.”

The mist shifted.

Melemizargo appeared as a black fog, overlooking all, his eyes rapidly forming, looking like twin white suns. Then the black fog retreated, revealing the dragon God of Magic in all his usual ways. Black scales. Wings, a tail. The same thing that Erick saw when he transformed into his own dragon form.

“It’s exactly as much change as it needs to be.”

Erick glared up at the big dragon. “One of my people asked me this morning if I’m you. Why did you make me look like you?”

Melemizargo grinned. “Surprisingly enough, all I did was make you black! I have no idea why you look like me so much, but I imagine it’s because you had me in mind when you thought of power. I allowed it because it pleases me, for all the best dragons have wings like me, which makes this a world of two.”

…While that might have been part of the truth, it was hardly enough to really qualify as an answer.

Erick moved on, asking, “Are you going to help me mitigate this disaster, Melemizargo? I don’t know… Slowly seep in the [Teleport] lock from the wilds, down to the cities? Not deploy it all at once?”

Melemizargo grinned even more, showing off glowing white fangs. “An excellent suggestion! I already thought of this and offered it and it was accepted. This is how the deployment will happen.”

“… I suppose we puny mortals can only ever toil under the decisions of you gods, eh?”

Melemizargo leaned in, eyes going bright. “Do you want to become a god?”

“Maybe some other time.” Erick suddenly asked everyone, “You couldn’t wait for at least ten years before you started to make these sweeping changes?!”

Melemizargo smiled. “Nope!”

Rozeta glared at her father, then said, “Unfortunately not. The option for more security existed, and I took it. In a generation, no one will be able to purchase [Teleport], and all the world will be empty of monsters. The Lock might come down then, but likely not. As for the other issue: Much like the Dragon Exodus, the Dungeon Exodus is happening, and all the true dangers to Veird will be soon be drawn beyond the veil of mortals by the promise of rich mana, sequestered behind Gate Spaces as far beyond mortals.”

“And people will learn of true magic in those spaces, too!” Melemizargo said, “Maybe the entire Script could change based on whichever dungeon eventually rises as the best one. Set yourself as a dungeon master in a few places, Erick, and test out your dungeon of [Cleanse], [Mend], and some basic healing magics. Make an entire city out of your choices, using the random person character option to spawn endless random people! Maybe even connect your dungeons through the Dungeon Network I plan on making, so that a real fake culture can develop on the other side of shadow.”

Erick’s eyes went wide.

That wasn’t in the black book. Just how much was missing in that black book? But besides that—

“That’s… Perhaps the most insane thing I have ever heard you say.”

“Ha! Why?”

“Because the dungeon slime clones would be…” Erick organized his thoughts. “Because the dungeon slime people would have memories of being not that and they wouldn’t be able to grow in power or as people. They couldn’t have children with each other. They couldn’t really form a society at all! They would be slaves to the mana, acting out parodies of real life, only existing for the killing of all who would come in afterward! That’s all they would be. A horrible life as a person who was made to be killed, and they would know that. A living nightmare. A horror.”

“Then I suppose I will have to make some changes!” Melemizargo looked to Rozeta, happily saying, “You heard the Wizard of Benevolence! Let’s make the dungeons fully sapient, this will, of course, trigger the anti-Slave protocols I placed in the Script so long ago.”

Rozeta rapidly said to Erick, “Take back your words right now, or else these dungeon cores will cause untold devastation.”

“Wait a fucking second! Melemizargo made those anti-Slave magics?”

“Yes,” Koyabez said, “And he made them apply to everyone. It was yet another purge he was responsible for, and just like back then, we turned that tragedy into something good for us all. We took control of that change and worked it into what it actually should have been, if Melemizargo had been his usual self. We took the Mind Mages and made of them a positive influence. We repaired the Script after he tricked the Old Demons into committing the Death of All Halves, re-enabling love between interspecies to produce children once again, but not nearly as much as we used to have. We have taken every single great one of his additions to the Script and made them good for us all.

“And as the dungeon slime core system is right now, before any changes, the copies created inside that space are not fully sapient. Whatever the copy gains from the dungeon master truly goes into the core itself. The people-like things walking around are like [Familiar]s, or like fugue-state shadelings. The only truly sapient things are the cores themselves, once they gain enough maturity, or once they are assisted in gaining sapience through a dungeon master.” Koyabez said, “And so, the only way to make this a nightmare scenario, as you say, is to enact this change you wish, to make them all fully sapient from the start.”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Erick rapidly shifted through a hundred thoughts and came upon a question that emerged from this new knowledge. “What happens when the [Familiar]s become real?”

“They spill out into the world, and find other dungeons!” Melemizargo said, “Or they become real people. Depends on the dungeon’s proclivities; a break, to invade other dungeons, or a birth, to make real what had once been little more than imagination. In this way, a lot more people are born in ways impossible through normal means, and soon, we will spread! We will fill this universe with life, Erick!”

“… My vote does not matter, then?”

“No,” Rozeta said, “This is happening.” She looked to her father. “And you’re not changing what we already agreed upon.”

“Fine! Fine! I won’t change anything! It will happen as we have already agreed.”

“I abstain from giving more opinions.” Erick said, “If this turns into a horror I will use all my power to end this magic.”

As though the entire caldera breathed a sigh of relief—

Melemizargo suddenly laughed. “That’s what they were all counting on anyway!”

– – – –

Erick opened his eyes. He was back in his room.

And he felt weird.

He did not like how this decision about the world was made without him. But also, he wasn’t a Relevant Entity of the Script, so of course it was made without him. And yet, he could solve this dungeon problem on the back end, with killing every core as they spawned out there in the world. Or at least on the Surface… if [Cascade Imaging] even worked that way. He would need to make another [Cascade Imaging]; something that could search for mana signatures, to search for Darkness Rifts… But no. That would not work. That particular search would just ping on Melemizargo, who was already everywhere in this world already. Probably.

He could figure it out.

He would need to greatly expand his Gate Network to solve the [Teleport Lock] problem, though. Work with the Wayfarers to do that… Ah. All those people were going to lose their entire life’s work. Forget simply purchasing [Teleport] from the Script for a point. Many of those people learned how to work [Teleport] properly. And now all that learning was useless, even though it was still relevant. They were the ones who had given him a guide on [Teleport], and had truly started Erick down the Worldly path—

Now that pissed Erick off. More so than much of the rest.

Made him mad enough to call out to the shadows in the corner, “Melemizargo. I want to know if you’re going to invalidate every single Wayfarer’s life’s work— If you’re going to make every single Teleport Mage obsolete.”

Melemizargo whispered from the Darkness, “Rozeta has a plan for that. It involves you giving those people [Reincarnation]s. She hasn’t spoken to you about that yet?”

Rozeta stepped into the room in her human form. “I haven’t had the chance, but yes. [Reincarnation]s from you was one option that I have considered. If you donated a copy of that spell to the Script I can have registrars do that instead, like how you donated [Exalted Rain] to Atunir. It would be a lesser working of that magic, to simply reset a person to their current age and body and such, but it would reset their soul in the process, and that is what I would ask for you to give the Script.”

“… Yes. Fine. I agree to donate a copy of that spell. I had been wondering when we would get around to that, but I suppose since we’re doing a lot already, we might as well add more to the pile!” Erick said, “Anyway! That’s not what I meant when I complained about the Wayfarer’s loss. I mean the loss of Spatial Magic as a type of spell taught in school because it’s no longer usable.”

“Derelict magic is what Wizards are known to keep in their towers in case it is ever needed again. This event you see as a problem is not much of a problem at all.”

Erick could barely believe what he was hearing.

Rozeta said, “There are millions of magics that no longer exist. Spatial Magic is a large part of Veird right now, but it is not necessary for it to remain that way, and it would be better for us all if easy [Teleport] went away.”