The fae queen pauses to let it sink in. [Yeah, this system integrates the main monster into a dungeon core by making the core ride along through the lives of monsters of that type. How the system knows to stop this is it detects the core has fallen fully into the monster. That is why he is still stuck in it. That core of his identity won’t fall. Good for him as he won’t lose himself. Bad for him as he will be stuck until an outside force interferes or it overwrites his entire personality. Doyle is lucky to have you because We just submitted the bug report and they have decent response times. This should be fixed in the next couple hours.]

Ally doesn’t know how to deal with this. She throws her hands up in the air, “okay, what now?” [Why we catch up of course! Don’t think We would let you get away with how long you went without calling. We don’t blame you for not wanting to be around the court but that is what regular communication runes are for.] Cornered Ally has no choice but to talk about her life. Not that she doesn’t like it but the court nobles will hold it against her. Just another thing to target her over.

Doyle on the other hand has gotten into the stranger range of goats. The system has run out of normal earth goats to show him and so it is all about other-wordly or even other-dimensional goats. It shocks him how many goats end up taking on the fire element. In his opinion that isn’t a goaty element. Something like earth sure, but fire is just weird. Best he can tell, whatever dimension the system pulls from had some fire god with goats who pulled their chariot. The number of goats being raised by temples with that sort of imagery points to that at least.

It took well over five hours for someone to show up to help. When they did, it was quite spectacular. The system’s designer sent along an intern but their biology didn’t match up with this dimension very well and they weren’t powerful enough to ignore it. Instead, they showed up like one of those ‘ascended energy beings’ you would see in earth’s science fiction. It first showed up in the queen’s court and after they learned the basic details stepped through the communication portal.

The being exists next to Doyle’s core and pulls up a system panel. “Yep, there’s the problem. Stuck in a life loop. He has gotten deep into it. Though I guess the system is new here and there are few local lives to pull from so having to reach into the backup database would make sense. Okay, don’t want to force quit the current life or things could get messy. Going to put a short circuit in the loop before it starts the next one. Yep, right there and he should finish up his life soon enough. And he is done, out like a light as well. He will come to in an hour or so as his core settles. Anyway, time for me to head off. Have a nice day!” and the being blinks out of existence.

The fae queen has watched this all through the communication portal and now speaks up. [Huh, I did not know you could travel through these portals. You learn something new every year. Guess I have something else for my security to worry about. The good news is your friend will be up soon. Bad news is we will have to cut our chat short. You will keep in touch with me after this. There will be no hiding as the mail service delivers to dungeon cores and you gave me his name already.] Ally pouts, “yes mother.” They continue to talk for the remaining hour. Though once Doyle stirs the queen closes the line and the natural rune stone crumbles in Ally’s hand.

Doyle lets out a long suffering mental sigh, ‘I really need to stop this black out thing. This is like the third or fourth time I woke up like this in the last. In the last. Actually, you know what? I have blacked out so many times I don’t even know how much time has passed. How long was I out this time and what in the world was that?’

Ally sighs in relief. The intern and the queen had both told her that Doyle would be fine but to hear him and have him sound just like before was a weight off her shoulders. “You were only out for a few days. As for what happened, well congratulations, you found a bug in the system.” She then goes on to explain what the queen had told her. “And then the energy guy kicked you out of the loop and an hour later here we are.”

Doyle can understand some of what she explains and accepts he can’t deal with what he couldn’t. ‘Well, I have my starter monsters now. Though I think I got more out of the main monster choice than intended. Bet it costs me half of what they intended it cost me to summon one. Now though we need to move on. It would be nice to rest but I assume we are on some sort of clock?’

“Not a strict clock mind you.” Ally admits, “but it isn’t like you stop using energy. Our situation is like a human stuck in an airtight room. This hypothetical room is quite big and with you not having much to maintain will let us squeeze out some more time. Overall, I would give us a solid eight to ten days of time. Technically, it is more like two weeks but we have spent some time already. You really shouldn’t cut it so close to death when you don’t need to.”

“As for what’s next, well we get to choose your first path. Though by choosing I mean you get to pick the Dungeon Core path. It will be your only choice and required to live. It is considered a class path. You will have seen on my status page the path Dungeon Companion one. It is a class path as well and shows off their special feature. Instead of cluttering your path section it just keeps advancing when you fill it. When I next put a point into a path there will be the option of Dungeon Companion two with ten out of probably 25 points already in it. My fae magic one path despite looking similar will instead stay on the list with a fae magic two path showing up and starting at zero points in it. One final interesting fact about a class path is they will always be listed first on the list in order of which has the most points in it. Regular paths appear in the order you get them.”

“Now to pick your path you call up your status. You should have one path point given to you for taking part in the tutorial up to this point. Select the path section and it will bring up the screen that lets you pick your path. The Dungeon Core path should be completed with a single point.” Doyle pulls up his status page.

{Name: Doyle Huxley

Race: Dungeon Core

Companion: Ally Huxley

Paths: [1]

Level: 0

S[6] A[7] C[9] I[10] W[9] P[5] D[12] K[20] L[16]

Skills:}

‘Yep, there’s a point there. [Paths]’

{Path Points: 1

Completed Paths:

Invested Paths:

Available Paths: Dungeon Core 0/1}

‘Very empty but Ally said this was to be expected. [Put a point in Dungeon Core] please.’

{1 Point applied to Dungeon Core path...

You have earned 2 Stat Point, Constitution set to 10, +2 Strength, +2 Intelligence, and +2 Destiny

Dungeon Core path completed...

Completion Bonus: Territory Control lv0, Dungeon Rules lv0, Universal Deconstruction lv0, Dungeon Pattern Database lv0, Creation (Energy Powered, Pattern Based) lv0}

Ally takes a glance over the screen and nods, “okay, everything that should be there is. I would say as expected but we just had a bit of a snafu so it is nice to see everything is back on track. As a side note so that next time you complete a path you aren’t disappointed. The number of skills you got for completing the path is completely out of whack with the norm. Class paths do generally give skills but not that many at once. A good example is my class of Dungeon Companion. For taking it I got the skill tutor and upon completion of Dungeon Companion one I got fae glamor. The fact I got a second skill right away is also somewhat rare. Most classes give one to three skills when taken and stat points afterwards.”

“The skills you received are all needed to run your dungeon and that is the only reason you get so many freebies. Universal deconstruction does what it says on the tin. Territory control lets you shape your dungeon how you want to and dungeon rules will then let you make things stay that way. A good example of the two is you can use control to make a room freezing cold and then set a rule which keeps it that way. The rules only let you keep things the way they are. Without control you can make the room stay the current temperature. The control is an active thing so without the rules when you make the room freezing it only stays that way until you stop controlling it. At which point it would warm up again.”

“Now we come to the last two skills. Dungeon pattern database and creation with the pattern modifier are special. Creation is easy enough to explain. It has two modifiers, what it uses and what it creates from. In this case it uses energy to make things and what it can create is based on whatever patterns you have. Patterns which will be organized under the, you guessed it, dungeon pattern database. Of course if you get another method to store patterns you can use that as well but for now we can focus on your database.”

“Long story short, databases are special collections which prevent crafters from ballooning their path points while also preventing someone from just grinding out nails then making a legendary sword on their first attempt. If you pull up your status panel now the database skill will not be at level zero. Instead it will be, at the moment, the level of your best pattern. Later on once you get a lot more patterns you can level up the skill even if you are unable to improve your best pattern. I don’t really know the full rules for that but then again no one really does. It takes everything from how many patterns you know, to how those patterns relate to one another into account. This also means you will get some path points right away. Not that you can use them as even dungeon cores are restricted to a single path during the tutorial.”

“Anyway, that is a general rundown of your skills. Each of them have some quirks to them and that is without getting into the concepts of skill splitting, combining, and altering. About the only other important thing to note about skills is the limit. Without a class you can get up to five skills at once. A class path will start let you get five additional skills which fit it. For instance, a warrior could learn dodge and it would count towards his class skills and not his general skills. The only problem is that it is criminally hard to remove a skill and class paths have requirements to both gain and advance. Of course since you received 5 skills from you class it is a bit of a wash. You got five extra skill slots only to have them filled right away. But let's go back to the warrior example.”