Chapter 1: Digging Upwards
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Might as well move this here since it's gotten long enough to not be snippets anymore.
Day 78
“I'm hungry!” the adorable little girl with heel-length tentacle dreads complained as I dug into some stone. I was really starting to regret winding up stuck in a hole with a magical girl, a fallen angel, and gender-bent Majin Buu, at least when it came to food. I sighed and disintegrated another chunk of rock.
We'd been trapped underground for 78 days at that point. We didn't technically need to eat but that didn't mean she didn't want to, for that matter I was really wishing I could get a bite too. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me go back and explain how I came to be trapped in that pit.
I'll skip the boring bits, which is most of them. It turns out, around one in every 10.4 billion people is capable of bonding with a dungeon core and becoming a dungeon lord. Lucky me, I get to be one. That's how somebody as staggeringly un-lordly as a random wage slave like myself can wind up ruling a dungeon, the number of candidates simply isn't that vast so even a completely unqualified candidate becomes hyperqualified by virtue of an accident of birth. Lovely.
The situation is similar for divinely empowered heroes who hunt dungeon lords, with many universes producing a single hero every few decades. The gods of the multiverse, appropriately, power their heroes up to an obscene degree and wipe out fledgling dungeon lords like myself hand over fist when they can. Of course dungeon lords return the favor when they can. Apparently a hero gains a huge power boost from killing a dungeon lord, and a dungeon lord gets to Not Die Today from killing a hero. A fair system, no?
How does this lead to spending 78 days in a hole, you ask? I'm getting there.
As a consequence of being a viable dungeon lord I wound up yeeted by some ancient dungeon lord named Anastasia, trapped in her private sanctum and forcibly, well, recruited via core bonding. No, I didn't have a choice, not that I'm bitter or anything. I came out the other side with wings, horns, and a third eye in the center of my forehead.
It wasn't all bad. I also came out ripped like I was from the cover of a romance novel and about five times faster than I used to be. I terms of physical shape I'm pretty sure I was at least able to fight Captain America fairly. Of course the divine heroes I was going to be attacked by were straight out of a shounen manga so being that strong was actually... totally weaksauce. Of course it was.
I was given the option of going into debt to Anastasia in exchange for some better starting stuff and you better believe I went for it, given the odds. Normally I'd despise going into debt, I was very sparing with credit cards back home and I admit I looked down my nose at people that wound up in debt to their eyeballs from frivolous spending. This was different from wanting a nicer car or boat, this was survival. More than that, I had a sneaking suspicion that the old dungeon master “sponsoring” me was basically in it for what she could get, and if I didn't go into some debt so that she had some skin in the game I suspected I'd be thrown out. I didn't have anything she wanted except future power from my core as it grew. So debt it was.
Mostly I went for obtaining the most powerful companions, called core guardians, I could in hopes that I'd get a better initial defense, since it would take a lot of time to build a real dungeon and obtain any good monsters for that purpose.
Yes yes, 78 days in a hole, I'm almost to that point. Okay then, so I had the ability to select where I'd manifest in the world. This was really important, because if anything whacked my highly-vulnerable dungeon core, I died instantly. I could also only move my core once a year, not ideal at all since I wanted it away from pesky heroes. Further, I had to be near humans. My core was apparently half succubus or something similar; it would spawn succubi (a few other things but apparently it has some kind of succubus affinity) if I fed it power, and it generated more power when people were feeling frisky in it's territory range. So I couldn't just throw my dungeon core off in fantasy!Antarctica and forget about having to deal with people.
So I did what I took as the smart thing, and searched until I found a cavern underneath a harbor town, figuring voila, initial dungeon already built and my core safely at the deep part of the tunnel instead of right at the surface where any random farm boy could hit it with a stick. Boats of horny sailors showing up ever couple of days would supply a lot of lust and once I had enough power to start summoning, I could put some disguised succubi into the town and generate more. It seemed logical, a nice plan for what I had to work with.
I didn't realize until later the cave didn't connect to the surface. It wasn't lethal, my core gave me all kinds of magic and I was able to make lights and purify the air, but we were stuck. I also had the ability to disintegrate non-living matter so I started digging. Seventy-Eight days so far and I haven't reached the surface yet, and my assortment of really powerful companions are bored and hungry. Seventy-eight days of listening to the tentacle girl complain about hunger, the magical girl complain about being bored, and, well, the angel mostly just meditates next to my core, thank you for small blessings. The only reason I could even keep track of the date down here is because my baby core spawns a small white bird, a Caladrius, every 24 hours at the dot on midnight so I can count the days by counting the birds. I was pretty sure the tentacled girl has been eating them when nobody's looking, the count went down a couple of times. I didn't care, I'm pretty sure I remembered that the core can respawn them anyway and even if not, it was better than having her (more) unhappy. Also let me BS the other two companions about how long it had been so I didn't look as bad.
I just kept digging towards the surface. It was so boring.
I'm never playing Minecraft again.
Day 81
“Surely we're nearing the surface now?” Cecily, the magical girl, asked me. She was doing her best to look cute.
Granted normally that wouldn't be hard for her. She was short, busty, animated and cheerful, and had the most ludicrous blonde hair drills I'd ever encountered. But right now, she faced an uphill battle in the “looking good” field. She had bags under her eyes and she was smeared with dirt and clay, not the easiest situation to look cute in. Her hair drills were clogged with sand and she smelled like she hadn't showered in a year, rather than the eighty-one days it had been so far. Then again I probably wasn't much better.
”It's just,” she began, “I'm so tired of sleeping on the ground, can't we find some way to get something softer?”
I tried to bite back a sigh, I couldn't really blame Cecily for complaining. This sucked.
I could actually create matter, albeit slowly, but nothing living and at my current level of skill, only basically water, dirt, stone, and sand. So drinking was covered, and we didn't actually need to eat, but we still all had to sleep and a bed of sand was the best I could do.
I never agreed with Anakin Skywalker so much as my first night sleeping on a bed of sand. I'd been digging a sloping tunnel upwards for 81 days now. The boredom was immense and morale among my three companions was at an all time low.
“I know it's been a bad time. I picked a rotten spot for us to start,” I admitted, “Once we reach the surface I'm going to make sure you get a bath and a bed, and Kraken-”
“The Kraken! The Kraken!” The Kraken interrupted me, having somehow snuck up while I was examining the wall, “Don't refer to me like I'm just some ordinary creature! I'm legendary!” the Kraken puffed herself up.
Yeah, the dreadlocked girl is actually The Legendary Kraken, don't let her know I said it that way or she's liable to start demanding I use the word Legendary as part of her name, not just 'The Kraken.'
“-The Kraken,” I answered, trying to be agreeable, “Gets fed before I do anything for myself. And whatever Seraphina wants, has anybody checked on her recently?” I asked curiously.
“She's good, she was telling stories to the Sword Devils earlier,” Cecily told me with feigned cheer.
“Good, good, she... wait what? What Sword Devils?” I said, doing a passable double-take in the process.
“The baby core summoned them,” The Kraken told me as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Which, I suppose, it was. Dungeon Cores summon stuff, it's what they do, and baby cores do it without any rational thought on account of not having a human soul stapled to them.
I hadn't even gotten to explaining the baby dungeon core have I? Yeah, dungeon cores have kids and multiply like any other parasitic life form. Due to the extreme shortage of humans to bond with, there was a rather hefty surplus of extra cores waiting for a human to be born in the multiverse to bond to. In addition to stapling my soul to one of her spawn, Anastasia had also forced me to babysit another of her kids for safekeeping. Someday, she'd promised, I'd get to find a human with dungeon master potential of my own, staple it to my baby core, and extort their future power from them (not that I was going to be a jerk like that).
Of course that system was based on seniority and there were dungeon masters billions of years old floating around, so you can guess how likely it was a eighty-one-day-old dungeon master was going to be up for that privilege anytime soon, even if you defined “soon” in the geological sense. The whole system stank to high heaven. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
This left me with a problem. Being about half as smart as Clippy, the baby dungeon core spawned monsters automatically and without any sense or reason. I had a limited ability to control it so I'd set it to summoning Caladrius instead of the murderous imps it wanted, and it dutifully called one from whatever Caladrius dimension it plugged into, at midnight each day.
Which was okay but if it was also summoning Devils now we had a problem. Caladrius couldn't really make trouble, being basically magical pigeons with some limited healing power. The worst an evil Caladrius was going to do was crap on a statue and that was the kind of evil that wasn't going to bother my conscience too awful much.
Sword Devils sounded much more evil and that worried me. I hadn't really summoned anything yet because I was resolved to not be a completely evil monster and try to help people, and also because I wanted to be able to pull something tough out of my behind if a hero showed up unexpectedly the instant I reached the surface. Also since my core was powered by lust, killing people was counter-productive, I wanted them happy and frisky in order to generate more power. Sword Devils didn't seem to contribute to that.
I thought about it for a long moment. Then I applied my life skills as a wage slave from having too many managers and bosses giving too many instructions, specifically the skill to procrastinate on jobs that weren't immediately urgent. Until we reached the surface unexpected Devils weren't doing jack to anybody so I could safely put off doing anything about them until then.
“I'll check them out in a bit,” I decided aloud, “In the meantime I think we're getting closer to the surface, see how this section is less solid rock? There's compressed mud here instead,” I pointed to where it was oozing through cracks in the rock, wet and slick, “So we'll probably reach the surface and get everybody a hot meal and a soft bed tonight,” I declared, getting cheers from both girls.
I aimed my hands at the wall, aiming up so that the tunnel would continue to rise, and threw down another disintegration ray. The muddy wall shattered, and ten thousand gallons of salt water came through in a flood and slammed me back on my ass in a sudden deluge.
Day 78
“I'm hungry!” the adorable little girl with heel-length tentacle dreads complained as I dug into some stone. I was really starting to regret winding up stuck in a hole with a magical girl, a fallen angel, and gender-bent Majin Buu, at least when it came to food. I sighed and disintegrated another chunk of rock.
We'd been trapped underground for 78 days at that point. We didn't technically need to eat but that didn't mean she didn't want to, for that matter I was really wishing I could get a bite too. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me go back and explain how I came to be trapped in that pit.
I'll skip the boring bits, which is most of them. It turns out, around one in every 10.4 billion people is capable of bonding with a dungeon core and becoming a dungeon lord. Lucky me, I get to be one. That's how somebody as staggeringly un-lordly as a random wage slave like myself can wind up ruling a dungeon, the number of candidates simply isn't that vast so even a completely unqualified candidate becomes hyperqualified by virtue of an accident of birth. Lovely.
The situation is similar for divinely empowered heroes who hunt dungeon lords, with many universes producing a single hero every few decades. The gods of the multiverse, appropriately, power their heroes up to an obscene degree and wipe out fledgling dungeon lords like myself hand over fist when they can. Of course dungeon lords return the favor when they can. Apparently a hero gains a huge power boost from killing a dungeon lord, and a dungeon lord gets to Not Die Today from killing a hero. A fair system, no?
How does this lead to spending 78 days in a hole, you ask? I'm getting there.
As a consequence of being a viable dungeon lord I wound up yeeted by some ancient dungeon lord named Anastasia, trapped in her private sanctum and forcibly, well, recruited via core bonding. No, I didn't have a choice, not that I'm bitter or anything. I came out the other side with wings, horns, and a third eye in the center of my forehead.
It wasn't all bad. I also came out ripped like I was from the cover of a romance novel and about five times faster than I used to be. I terms of physical shape I'm pretty sure I was at least able to fight Captain America fairly. Of course the divine heroes I was going to be attacked by were straight out of a shounen manga so being that strong was actually... totally weaksauce. Of course it was.
I was given the option of going into debt to Anastasia in exchange for some better starting stuff and you better believe I went for it, given the odds. Normally I'd despise going into debt, I was very sparing with credit cards back home and I admit I looked down my nose at people that wound up in debt to their eyeballs from frivolous spending. This was different from wanting a nicer car or boat, this was survival. More than that, I had a sneaking suspicion that the old dungeon master “sponsoring” me was basically in it for what she could get, and if I didn't go into some debt so that she had some skin in the game I suspected I'd be thrown out. I didn't have anything she wanted except future power from my core as it grew. So debt it was.
Mostly I went for obtaining the most powerful companions, called core guardians, I could in hopes that I'd get a better initial defense, since it would take a lot of time to build a real dungeon and obtain any good monsters for that purpose.
Yes yes, 78 days in a hole, I'm almost to that point. Okay then, so I had the ability to select where I'd manifest in the world. This was really important, because if anything whacked my highly-vulnerable dungeon core, I died instantly. I could also only move my core once a year, not ideal at all since I wanted it away from pesky heroes. Further, I had to be near humans. My core was apparently half succubus or something similar; it would spawn succubi (a few other things but apparently it has some kind of succubus affinity) if I fed it power, and it generated more power when people were feeling frisky in it's territory range. So I couldn't just throw my dungeon core off in fantasy!Antarctica and forget about having to deal with people.
So I did what I took as the smart thing, and searched until I found a cavern underneath a harbor town, figuring voila, initial dungeon already built and my core safely at the deep part of the tunnel instead of right at the surface where any random farm boy could hit it with a stick. Boats of horny sailors showing up ever couple of days would supply a lot of lust and once I had enough power to start summoning, I could put some disguised succubi into the town and generate more. It seemed logical, a nice plan for what I had to work with.
I didn't realize until later the cave didn't connect to the surface. It wasn't lethal, my core gave me all kinds of magic and I was able to make lights and purify the air, but we were stuck. I also had the ability to disintegrate non-living matter so I started digging. Seventy-Eight days so far and I haven't reached the surface yet, and my assortment of really powerful companions are bored and hungry. Seventy-eight days of listening to the tentacle girl complain about hunger, the magical girl complain about being bored, and, well, the angel mostly just meditates next to my core, thank you for small blessings. The only reason I could even keep track of the date down here is because my baby core spawns a small white bird, a Caladrius, every 24 hours at the dot on midnight so I can count the days by counting the birds. I was pretty sure the tentacled girl has been eating them when nobody's looking, the count went down a couple of times. I didn't care, I'm pretty sure I remembered that the core can respawn them anyway and even if not, it was better than having her (more) unhappy. Also let me BS the other two companions about how long it had been so I didn't look as bad.
I just kept digging towards the surface. It was so boring.
I'm never playing Minecraft again.
Day 81
“Surely we're nearing the surface now?” Cecily, the magical girl, asked me. She was doing her best to look cute.
Granted normally that wouldn't be hard for her. She was short, busty, animated and cheerful, and had the most ludicrous blonde hair drills I'd ever encountered. But right now, she faced an uphill battle in the “looking good” field. She had bags under her eyes and she was smeared with dirt and clay, not the easiest situation to look cute in. Her hair drills were clogged with sand and she smelled like she hadn't showered in a year, rather than the eighty-one days it had been so far. Then again I probably wasn't much better.
”It's just,” she began, “I'm so tired of sleeping on the ground, can't we find some way to get something softer?”
I tried to bite back a sigh, I couldn't really blame Cecily for complaining. This sucked.
I could actually create matter, albeit slowly, but nothing living and at my current level of skill, only basically water, dirt, stone, and sand. So drinking was covered, and we didn't actually need to eat, but we still all had to sleep and a bed of sand was the best I could do.
I never agreed with Anakin Skywalker so much as my first night sleeping on a bed of sand. I'd been digging a sloping tunnel upwards for 81 days now. The boredom was immense and morale among my three companions was at an all time low.
“I know it's been a bad time. I picked a rotten spot for us to start,” I admitted, “Once we reach the surface I'm going to make sure you get a bath and a bed, and Kraken-”
“The Kraken! The Kraken!” The Kraken interrupted me, having somehow snuck up while I was examining the wall, “Don't refer to me like I'm just some ordinary creature! I'm legendary!” the Kraken puffed herself up.
Yeah, the dreadlocked girl is actually The Legendary Kraken, don't let her know I said it that way or she's liable to start demanding I use the word Legendary as part of her name, not just 'The Kraken.'
“-The Kraken,” I answered, trying to be agreeable, “Gets fed before I do anything for myself. And whatever Seraphina wants, has anybody checked on her recently?” I asked curiously.
“She's good, she was telling stories to the Sword Devils earlier,” Cecily told me with feigned cheer.
“Good, good, she... wait what? What Sword Devils?” I said, doing a passable double-take in the process.
“The baby core summoned them,” The Kraken told me as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Which, I suppose, it was. Dungeon Cores summon stuff, it's what they do, and baby cores do it without any rational thought on account of not having a human soul stapled to them.
I hadn't even gotten to explaining the baby dungeon core have I? Yeah, dungeon cores have kids and multiply like any other parasitic life form. Due to the extreme shortage of humans to bond with, there was a rather hefty surplus of extra cores waiting for a human to be born in the multiverse to bond to. In addition to stapling my soul to one of her spawn, Anastasia had also forced me to babysit another of her kids for safekeeping. Someday, she'd promised, I'd get to find a human with dungeon master potential of my own, staple it to my baby core, and extort their future power from them (not that I was going to be a jerk like that).
Of course that system was based on seniority and there were dungeon masters billions of years old floating around, so you can guess how likely it was a eighty-one-day-old dungeon master was going to be up for that privilege anytime soon, even if you defined “soon” in the geological sense. The whole system stank to high heaven. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
This left me with a problem. Being about half as smart as Clippy, the baby dungeon core spawned monsters automatically and without any sense or reason. I had a limited ability to control it so I'd set it to summoning Caladrius instead of the murderous imps it wanted, and it dutifully called one from whatever Caladrius dimension it plugged into, at midnight each day.
Which was okay but if it was also summoning Devils now we had a problem. Caladrius couldn't really make trouble, being basically magical pigeons with some limited healing power. The worst an evil Caladrius was going to do was crap on a statue and that was the kind of evil that wasn't going to bother my conscience too awful much.
Sword Devils sounded much more evil and that worried me. I hadn't really summoned anything yet because I was resolved to not be a completely evil monster and try to help people, and also because I wanted to be able to pull something tough out of my behind if a hero showed up unexpectedly the instant I reached the surface. Also since my core was powered by lust, killing people was counter-productive, I wanted them happy and frisky in order to generate more power. Sword Devils didn't seem to contribute to that.
I thought about it for a long moment. Then I applied my life skills as a wage slave from having too many managers and bosses giving too many instructions, specifically the skill to procrastinate on jobs that weren't immediately urgent. Until we reached the surface unexpected Devils weren't doing jack to anybody so I could safely put off doing anything about them until then.
“I'll check them out in a bit,” I decided aloud, “In the meantime I think we're getting closer to the surface, see how this section is less solid rock? There's compressed mud here instead,” I pointed to where it was oozing through cracks in the rock, wet and slick, “So we'll probably reach the surface and get everybody a hot meal and a soft bed tonight,” I declared, getting cheers from both girls.
I aimed my hands at the wall, aiming up so that the tunnel would continue to rise, and threw down another disintegration ray. The muddy wall shattered, and ten thousand gallons of salt water came through in a flood and slammed me back on my ass in a sudden deluge.
Loosely based on the "Dawn of a Demon Lord CYOA"
Monsters
81 Caladrius
2 Sword Devils
Core guardians:
The Kraken
Cecily
Seraphina
Current power generation: Avg. 88,000 per day. 7,128,000 banked.
The Build
Mutations: 3
Wings
Third Eye
Horns
Traits:
ATK XXXXXX
SPL XXXXXXxxxxxx
SPD XXXXXXxx
MOV XXXXXXxxxxxx
HEA XXXXXX
TGH XXXXXXxxxxxx
RES XXXXXX
Basic Abilities: Immortality, Status Immunity, Summon Demon Core(1/year), Creation and Removal, Matter Manipulation, Bulwark
Abilities:
Disguise, Elemental Magic, Summon, Teleportation, Contract Magic, Elemental Magic, Clone, Unique Trait(Fallen Angel:Healing Hands)
DPU Generaton: Lust
Minion Specialty: Demon
Lvl 1
x2 Caladrius
x2 Electrofin
Lvl 2
x2 Siren
x1 Sword Devil
Lvl 3
x1 Gargoyle
x1 Succubus
F Witch
Lvl 4
F Dragon F
x1 Fallen Angel
Core Guardians: The Kraken, Seraphina, F Cecily (12pts)
Demon Core Upgrades:
Territory Enhancement x2 (25km radius territory instead of 5)
Custom Minions
Incarnation Circle
Lesser Demon Core
Traps: 4
Arrow Trap
Rolling Ball Trap
Orb of Imprisonment
False Demon Core
Servants: 3
Dwarven Craftsmen
Alraune Apothecarists
Spirit Enchanters
Starting World: Scar
Title: Lord of Healing
Monsters
81 Caladrius
2 Sword Devils
Core guardians:
The Kraken
Cecily
Seraphina
Current power generation: Avg. 88,000 per day. 7,128,000 banked.
The Build
Mutations: 3
Wings
Third Eye
Horns
Traits:
ATK XXXXXX
SPL XXXXXXxxxxxx
SPD XXXXXXxx
MOV XXXXXXxxxxxx
HEA XXXXXX
TGH XXXXXXxxxxxx
RES XXXXXX
Basic Abilities: Immortality, Status Immunity, Summon Demon Core(1/year), Creation and Removal, Matter Manipulation, Bulwark
Abilities:
Disguise, Elemental Magic, Summon, Teleportation, Contract Magic, Elemental Magic, Clone, Unique Trait(Fallen Angel:Healing Hands)
DPU Generaton: Lust
Minion Specialty: Demon
Lvl 1
x2 Caladrius
x2 Electrofin
Lvl 2
x2 Siren
x1 Sword Devil
Lvl 3
x1 Gargoyle
x1 Succubus
F Witch
Lvl 4
F Dragon F
x1 Fallen Angel
Core Guardians: The Kraken, Seraphina, F Cecily (12pts)
Demon Core Upgrades:
Territory Enhancement x2 (25km radius territory instead of 5)
Custom Minions
Incarnation Circle
Lesser Demon Core
Traps: 4
Arrow Trap
Rolling Ball Trap
Orb of Imprisonment
False Demon Core
Servants: 3
Dwarven Craftsmen
Alraune Apothecarists
Spirit Enchanters
Starting World: Scar
Title: Lord of Healing