He stalked across a small meadow. His legs were tense, ready to spring at any given moment. His eyes scanned the clearing, looking for any sign of danger. His ears twitched as the sound of a waterfall echoed through the forest.
He moved stealthily. Nothing audible was created as he passed into a small riverside. The rocks moved slightly as he continued to stalk silently. He leapt over small distances towards the waterfall.
He stopped for a moment when he found a faceted blue stone by the riverside. Likely a low-quality water quintessence. He wondered who had left it there, but took it anyway.
As he moved further and further towards the waterfall, he felt the ambient mana rise. He only grew more cautious as he moved.
Ambient mana usually meant a powerful monster had recently been killed and dispersed, but that was always accompanied by dense essence. This area had a bit thicker than normal, but not enough for a monster to have died recently.
He activated Ear of the Rabbit and Eye of the Scout. The ears atop his head twitched again as all auditory and visual responses were intensified.
He noticed the small cerulean and ocean blue stones scattered throughout the more normal rocks of the shoreline. Small water essence stones and mana stones. He picked one up and analyzed it.
[Mana Stone - F-Grade Density, G-Grade Purity, Tin Rank]
[A Mana Stone weighing approximately 31 milligrams. Unrefined. Used in many crafting and combat-based rituals, procedures, and other purposes.]
He was right. It was a mana stone. This was most curious, and a little dangerous. But he stood back up. If this was a threat, he had to find out.
He ventured closer and closer to the waterfall, finding more mana stones in slowly growing quantities. They never got much larger than a grain of sand, but their frequency was the worrying part. If whatever was causing these stones to appear continued to exist, it might turn this part of the forest into a full mine. He hated to imagine it.
He finally reached the waterfall and peered behind it.
Behind the waterfall was a small cave. Inside of which was a… child?
Their rabbit ears were a different color from their hair, a dark brown compared to their multicolored black, blue, and white hair. But it was clearly a rabbitkin. A rabbitkin child alone in a cave.
The scout stepped into the slippery room and picked up the child. They were a little cold to the touch, but the gentle rise and fall of their chest showed they were alive, at least.
He held the child and left the cave, not even noticing the odd section of darkness behind a large boulder.
Seven Days Earlier
Azotreh awoke inside their dungeon core. Their soul ached, and their mind trembled. Death was awful.
The warning about something about nine remaining terrified them. Did they have to go through another nine of those lightning strikes? The idea was so existentially dreadful.
Nicholas had gone into remission, and Fuzem was barely holding herself together. She'd returned to her pond, and while Azotreh was barely clinging on themselves, Errazorrus just seemed mildly damaged.
Azotreh pulled on their bond with Ruby, so she would come back. Then their spiritual body collapsed and returned to their room, going into remission.
Errazorrus took control. The tribulation was rough, but clearly not on him as much as it affected the others. As such, he decided to continue their progression however he could. First were the new notifications that appeared after the death and blessing ones.
[You have entered the initial phase of your dungeon core!]
[Detecting factions…]
[...]
[...]
[Factions: Red Dragon, Blue Dragon, Black Dragon, White Dragon, and Rainbow Dragon detected.]
[Faction: Cerulean Slime has been generated.]
[Dungeon Avatar selected: Azotreh Nightshade.]
[Select initial faction]
Errazorrus considered for only a moment before following his gut. He selected the black dragon faction because he was, himself, a black dragon initially. While the rainbow dragon faction sounded appealing, Azotreh did have the Abomination of Dragonkind title from being a rainbow dragon or just having its bloodline.
[Faction: Black Dragon selected!]
[Granted monster blueprint: Black Salamander]
[Granted 1 ERR]
[Due to possession of the Infinite System, limits on dungeon capacity have been removed.]
[Granted 1 unit of Dungeon Mana Regeneration for each point of Mana Regeneration.]
[Dungeon Mana: 360/360 (17)]
[Dungeon monster upkeep requires 1 unit of dungeon mana regeneration. Upgrade your dungeon to increase your dungeon mana regeneration.]
[Traps, Nodes, and Rooms do not require upkeep through dungeon mana regeneration. Instead, they require a repair cost if broken or harvested.]
[Currently available dungeon monster blueprints: Black Salamander]
[Currently available nodes: none]
[Currently available traps: none]
[Currently available room layouts: basic 5x5x5]
[Note: besides the initial faction granted monster blueprints, you cannot gain monster, node, or trap blueprints through faction advancement. Faction advancement will instead grant greater quantities of raw advancement.]
[Reach ERR]
[Reach faction stage 100 to gain an additional faction]
Okay then. This was a lot. So it'll be harder for Azotreh than it would be for most dungeons. Well, guess Errazorrus should do something. Considering the giant heart that held their nexus was rather exposed, he decided the first plan was to move the core.
He pushed his aura through the heart, finding it only emerging from the crystalline nexus. It also had a strange limit. Azotreh's aura could blanket a space of around one and a half meters around them, and while the nexus seemed capable of much more, there was a hard edge.
Auras spread out in a circle around the body, but the nexus aura stopped flat at the mouth of the cave. Errazorrus pushed against the solid wall of their aura, but made no progress. It wasn't like anything Azotreh had ever encountered; it was utterly solid.
So instead, Errazorrus focused on something else entirely. Maybe he could expand the dungeon instead?
He turned his attention to the side wall of the cave and willed the stone to move. It followed his will without much resistance.
He willed the wall to simply cease existing in a circular shape, and it did. The solid material vanished like magic, and a small gauge appeared in his vision. One reading [1/1000].
He ignored it. Instead, he dug some more, reaching [3/1000] before stopping. Then he willed the nexus to move into the hole in the wall.
The beating heart and crystalline eye slithered on thin arteries into the hole in the wall. Then he tried to hide the core.
When he tried to will a new wall into existence, he was told that blocking the core was against the rules.
[Blocking your Dungeon Nexus from invaders is against the rules.]
He began to experiment on what counted as blocking it. Turns out, there had to be a single inch of space between the core and the outside. So he made an almost perfect wall, with a single inch of empty space from the bottom to the top of the tunnel facing the back wall, and then returned inside their soul.
Experimentation with dungeon nexi and stuff could happen later. For now, he had to clean up the astral infection and try to heal Azotreh, Nicholas, and Fuzem's damaged psyches.
[Soul Damage Threshold: 8.31%]
Mason and his party were rushing to a location marked on their Minimap ability. It was a convenient power usually taken by loners, utility specialists, and strategists. The entire party had one, which was peculiar, but not truly weird.
They had just gotten notified of the location of AZ-087. The twins in particular seemed to be putting in extra effort to reach the experiment.
Over the last three days, since the collapse of the dungeon, the pair had been rather quiet and unwilling to do much beyond healing minor injuries and contributing to the occasional fight. But finding AZ-087 seemed to have filled them with renewed vigor.
Mason didn't really care why, though; he just wanted some time out of this eternal twilight and endless fighting. Nightshade had a higher-than-normal monster spawn rate due to its proximity to the labyrinth, and their days had been nothing but fighting, fighting, and more fighting.
He was exhausted and sick of this stupid forest. He missed his bed; he missed his life. But if he brought in AZ-087…
The sky split open. A cylinder of storm clouds appeared, a bright sigil carved into them. Around the cylinder, it began to rain. Mason put up a personal shield, capable of resisting most basic elemental attacks, but found it was of little use. He kept pouring vibrancy into it as they ran, faster and faster.
Just as they saw the adventurer quartet that had immobilized the draconic child, the world split open.
AZ-087 was swinging dozens of now-frozen blades of slime and draconic claws. They were still as a statue, as a mark on their head glowed.
Zinni and Izia gasped upon seeing the child, who, now that he was looking, reminded Mason of the twins in a strange way.
But he didn't have time to think much about it, as the sky released the most powerful bolt of lightning he'd ever seen, directly at their target.
It struck in a moment, blinded the world.
He put up a shield, Leo raised a dozen shielding powers in a split second, and both Zinni and Izia raised their own plant shields. But in a single moment, every barrier between them and the lightning shattered.
That single moment was enough for Alabast. By using his weird little octopus familiar, he touched all five of his fellow party members and teleported them to safety with a rushed teleport.
They appeared on the ground far away, bleeding from every part of their body that could bleed. Eyes and ears, nose and mouth. Blood pooled on the ground, soaking the forest floor in sticky crimson. Zinni and Izia were up first, having used healing magic on themselves. All six got the same message at once.
[Body Damage Threshold = 0.01%]
Mason didn't know what it meant, but from the way Alabast, Zinni, and Izia all gasped, he assumed they did. But now wasn't the time for questions. Zinni and Izia were looking around, sniffing the air. Their auras were on full blast, using some kind of technique to amplify each other's range and perceptual depth.
They did it for a long moment until Zinni gasped even louder. She grinned a wide but bloody smile.
"They're alive."
The Vampire Lord of Nightshade had invited one of his old pals, Chief Bloodskull, to the hydra's lair. The trio watched through a blood crystal as one of the vampire's bat avatars watched the confrontation. The vampire and hydra had already explained what was so important about the child to the chief, and he was getting impatient watching the fight.
"If the kid is so important, why don't we save 'em from the puny humans?" The towering orc asked.
Orcs grew larger with rank. Not as drastically as beasts, but not with the same reasoning as most of the other humanoid species. They usually get taller because height is attractive to most species. Orcs do it because they do it.
The vampire lord raised his hand to placate the orc and said, "Wait for it."
The orc was tapping his foot, waiting impatiently.
Then the first drop fell, burning into one of the humans. The orc's eyes widened in realization. His muscles flexed, ripping the fancy suit he was wearing and revealing purple and green skin.
The trio watched in anticipation as the rain intensified. The vampire was easily able to negate the transcendent rain. It may overcome rank disparity, but that mattered little when the resources of a true amethyst ranker were used on a tribulation three tiers below them.
Then, the tribulation hit. A blast of lightning that's aura echoed back through the crystal. It sent all three powerful people back a step from its intensity.
The bat was damaged, but not killed, and the vampire pulled on his sanguine reserve to give the bat the healing it needed.
They watched as the smoke cleared, revealing nothing but a scorched clearing and dead wood. The bat began to look around.
The trio looked disappointed, the hydra even saying, "Some big shot that kid was."
Her tone was sarcastic, but instead of laughing or even smiling, a look of concentration overtook the vampire's face. The bat was telling him something that shouldn't be possible.
"There are traces of the kid's aura still present."
"WHAT?" both hydra and orc shouted. If the aura remained, it meant that they'd survived somehow. The vampire shrugged.
"I don't know how, but the kid's alive."
A knock echoed on the door of the Lich of Nightshade's door. The old necromancer stood before going to the door. The slight energy of reality that had appeared a moment ago had disturbed him just a bit.
The door creaked on its hinges as the bony hand of the lich opened the door. On the other side stood a snowman. Three large balls of snow stacked atop one another. It had a large carrot for a nose, four pieces of coal to make a smiley face, two sticks for arms, and a pair of bright amethyst crystals for eyes.
"Snowman? Rare to see one of your ilk so far south."
The snowman chuckled good-naturedly, "there are plenty of my ilk further south from here. You just don't find them because they resumed their… original form."
"That's what I meant you old fool. Don't think I haven't noticed the sticks giving off small amounts of cold, snow, frost, and carrot essence."
The snowman sighed at that with a downcast look.
"At least four of my brothers were eaten by rabbits mistaking them for carrots."
The lich laughed as he looked at the remorseful snowman. The collective of the north sure are entertaining.
"Well, what can I do for you?" The lich asked.
"You felt the tribulation?"
"I'm old, not blind."
"Right. Anyway, one of the scouts was nearby and reported the aura signatures of all five people around when the tribulation occurred. Four humans and some new thing we didn't recognize."
"Damn humans."
"The humans don't matter. What does is that the scout also reported that the weird one died, but another scout just reported an identical signature near the glacier's bend 3 waterfall."
"Identical? Not just very similar?"
"No, identical."
"How… Well, I guess I should keep an eye on the signature. Give me a moment."
The lich grabbed a stone from his pocket and smashed it, summoning a mass of black tendrils. He gave it a small golden crystal before having the snowman show the mass the aura signature, and telling the horrific monster to track it.