Aurora

I collapsed, no that wasn’t right. I had been on the floor to begin with. Everything hurt. I took a breath and my lungs vehemently protested that action. When I tried to raise my arms, nothing worked. I was really out of energy. I couldn’t even will myself to open my eyes.

“Have you returned to us, master?” Losa’s voice came to me in the darkness.

“Perhaps. How long was I out of it?” At least my mouth and voice operated well enough in my drained state.

“Two days.”

“I really over did it, didn’t I?” I asked sullenly. I felt bad for Losa. Stuck with a dungeon core like me. Sure, I designed him thanks to the system, but that only made it worse for him. I was basically his mother.

“A little. I have something for you,” Losa said before I felt a stone something press against my mouth. When the tint of iron and copper reached me, my mouth shot open as the still warm liquid flowed into my mouth. Strength began to return to my limbs. I jerked up and grabbed the cup, as I gulped the contents down as fast as I could.

I opened my eyes and looked at the imp. “Thank you.”

“It is no problem. I am of service to you master,” Losa replied with a small bow. Looking at him, I felt he seemed… depressed.

“Are you alright?” I asked concerned for the imp.

“I have not come to any physical harm,” he replied with a confused look.

“I meant mentally. You seem upset.”

“I am… not upset.” He turned away and seemed to be trying to hide his face. I only needed a split second to understand the reason for this. It was likely me. I have been told from multiple sources that my trance like state is to the level that I seem to adapt another personality. One that is… hard to be around. I basically start to treat everyone around me like servants.

“I understand. I am sorry, Losa. Trust me when I say this. Anything that I might have said during my trance means nothing. You have been nothing but helpful and a pleasure to be around since you came to me.”

Losa looked back over to me and seemed to be a little relieved. “I will take your word. Master. You have quite the hidden demon inside you!” he said returning to his cheerful demeanor like it was nothing. I smiled at the imp and nodded at his statement.

“So I’ve been told.” Losa helped me up and I took in the room around me. The first thing that drew my eye was the pile of goblin corpses just outside the room. A few demon corpses as well. “What happened?”

Losa looked at the pile with a nervous expression. “You said the red you were using wasn’t… deep enough. They pushed further into the caves near the dungeon and encountered a goblin camp. We won, but a few demons were lost in the process. You summoned a few almost absentmindedly and had us leave the corpses of the ones that fell here. I believe you used their blood in some places as well.”

The demons bled yellow. When I thought about it, I did feel there had been a point where I had wished for both colors to be… better. I groaned a little at my actions but when I got like that, nothing short of physically knocking me out could get me to stop. I felt bad about the demons but at least I hadn’t killed them myself.

I rubbed my face then decided I had been putting it off long enough. It was time to see if my creation had been worth the pain that had come from it. Calming my heart, I looked more closely at the walls.

There were several… men, maybe they were angels that held blood red lances that stood in many different environments. Some were in civilization, others were in wilderness. No two were the same. The angels I decided finally due to the fact they possessed wings, all looked different as well. Some looked like wise men, others looked like savages. A few women were among the angels, I realized as I noticed a few with beautiful faces.

The main factor that tied them together were the red lances. Each were exactly the same. Three pronged and dripping with blood. They looked like three pieces of metal had been twisted into one solid piece. They looked cruel and deadly.

The angels were all pointing their lances toward the sky or the ceiling. I followed the line made from their weapons. The ceiling appeared to represent the heavens. A beautiful white city resided among the clouds. I had pulled from the idea of Olympus no doubt. At the center of the city, and at the center of the room, there was a circle of yellow. It reminded me of the rays the sun sometimes made when it hit the clouds just right.

A black throne sat at the center of the yellow ring, almost as if contradiction. A man dressed in equally black robes sat at the center, his face covered by flowing locks of hair. From the strong manner of his body, I would wager he was handsome, but with the hair it was impossible to tell.

Lines that almost looked like cracks extended from his eyes that glowed orange. I could only tell they came from his eyes, as the orange glowed through the black of his hair. The lines extended all over his body as they were also on his hands and feet. The only feature of his face that could be seen clearly was his mouth. A smile that seemed to say the world belonged to him graced him. Looking at the overall painting, I had a feeling this man was not good.

Remembrance of The Desolation of Mankind - You have created a work of art that will make the world tremble. The Desolation of mankind once brought the world to its knees. Only the sacrifice of the gods managed to defeat him. By bringing his memory back into the world you have returned a portion of his power. Some of that has been granted to you. The rest… Being a dungeon core, the artwork is endued with magic allowing it to persist through the ages of time.

“That’s probably not good,” I mumbled as I scratched my head. If I just revived some ancient destroyer of worlds… actually that was just like my luck. I glanced at the notification again then just shrugged. I couldn’t undo what I had already done. If the Desolation was going to be a game ending problem, then the devs wouldn’t have put him in. I dismissed the message only for it to be replaced by another one.

Remembrance of The Desolation of Mankind – Legendary. A fresco of the utmost quality. This was created with a goal in mind. To create mana. Because there were no gods remaining in the world, the artist used a being of even greater power as her motif. The consequences are unknown. The rewards are. Personal: Night Lord à Night Queen. Dungeon: Mana generation à +25(Dungeon Level) per hour.

Legendary Painting created. Cooldown – Two months. Artist title awarded.

That was a lot! Shit that was a lot of mana. I could almost summon a Worg an hour without moving a finger. Coupled with excavation and killing monsters that got near my dungeon, it would be increasingly hard for me to run out of mana. The fact that it went up as I gained dungeon levels. Plus, all the other rewards, I almost wanted to shiver a little.

--

Name: Aurora Nightingale

Level: 4

Race: Vampire,

Sub: Dungeon Master – Night Queen

Sub: Dungeon Core

Total Mana: 50/1500

Abilities:

Blood Sucking

Blood Magic

Elemental Magic – Fire, Earth, Death

Basic Sneak

Dungeon Menu

--

[Dungeon Core: Vampire – Night Queen. Owner: Aurora Nightingale]

Dungeon Level: 2

Total Mana: 277/1000

Absorb.

Create.

Destroy.

Summon.

--

Looking at my status, I actually got a little excited. I might be trapped in this nightmare, but at least I was moving up in the world. My gaze lingered on the Night Queen and a description appeared. Night Queen – All Night Lords are aggressive toward you, however, if you defeat them, their souls will be bond to you. So… I’ve just got a bigger target on my back. The other lords would have been at my throat anyways. I didn’t see the real issue. I felt it was still better than the demon lord option. In fact, since they were aggressive toward me, they might actually be sending people to my doorstep. The gamer in me chuckled about potential experience points being delivered to my door.

I took one last look at the man in the center of the mural. I couldn’t see his face, but I felt he was right in my strike zone. Maybe if he does revive, I could convince him to treat to a night or two. Shaking my head, I laughed as I walked out of the room. Man… it might have been a while too long for me.

“Losa,” I called with a singsong voice.

“Still here, master,” he replied from right next to me. I was so in my own world that I had forgotten about him being with me.

“I knew that,” I said smiling. “How do I make an Aura Forge?”

His face took a contemplative expression as he dived into his memories. A second later he returned to his normal relaxed visage. “We need a few things. Magic metal of at least the second level. A few mana stones and an activation stone.”

“Did the goblins have any of those on them?” I asked since we’d slaughtered quite a few of them. I paused as I realized how… detached I had felt about that thought. I really didn’t care about killing the goblins. Well… They were just NPCs.

“A mana stone, actually. But that was the best they had to offer,” Losa replied. He led me to the room next to the natural cave system. A small pile of what could best be descried as junk laid next to the wall. I walked over and absorbed everything getting access to a few more plants, iron, copper, tin, and a bunch of other miscellaneous objects. A vampire walked over to me once that was done and handed me a golden gemstone that glowed softly.

I absorbed it and found it was the mana stone. “That’s one item off your list.” It was almost a bad thing that I absorbed it. Had I had any more mana, I would have lost out of a few points since I got nearly five hundred points from the object. I recreated the mana stone and it seemed to ask how much mana to put in. I couldn’t create one with less than a hundred mana points. Once decided, my pool drained instantly before a much smaller golden stone appeared in my hand.

Tossing it up in the air, I watched it with a grin as it vanished, and my mana went back up by ninety-nine points. Now I didn’t have to worry about overflowing my mana pool. I could save some in these stones for later. The act of creating and destroying it must be where the one point was lost.

“The camp the vampires found was nearly an hour from here. It was only an outpost. There should be a larger concentration. The goblin you captured did claim there was a king. They found no such being at the camp,” Losa reported.

I glanced at him and nodded. Since two days had passed, I should have almost twenty-four new vampires in my service. I was about to ask Losa when I felt a number come to mind unbidden. There were thirty-one vampires total. I decided to switch questions. “How goes the mining?”

“We’ve pushed the tunnel another hundred meters. We were about to reach a stopping point.”

“Stopping point?” I asked. Were they close to the exit? I had told them to stop from breaking out to the surface. Losa gestured and I followed him out into the second room that was part of the natural caves. I had to almost immediately stop as the room was nearly completely full of dirt, stone, and a few other rocks that I hadn’t seen yet.

“As you can see. We are running out of space to put it. Without an Absorption Point, the dungeon cannot take care of this. Your monsters will be reclaimed by the dungeon but anything else needs to be taken to one of these points.”

“Why weren’t my demons back in the Gallery absorbed?”

“Because you deemed them necessary to your work, and the dungeon accommodated.” I raised an eyebrow at that. This game was very intuitive. I vaguely recalled that had wowed me the first time I played as well. “Many dungeons will have low level slimes to “clean” their passages.” Losa said making quotes when he said clean. I chuckled at the implication that Losa didn’t care for slimes.

“Okay. I’ll keep that in mind. For now, how do I set up one of those points?”

“Just focus on a spot and think about using Absorb permanently.”

I nodded then moved to the center of the room. There was a sort of path that led to the tunnel from the main section of the dungeon. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to take a single step. I did as Losa instructed and soon a glowing empty circle of black light appeared where I was looking. I used my foot to push a bit of the dirt into the circle and it vanished instantly with my mana going up a fraction.

Looking at the magic, I had an idea. “If I can do this and the spawn point, can I set up a place that will automatically create items?”

I walked back to my core room. I found Dersoa standing idly in the corner of the room. Without any orders, he was left without anything to do. I made a mental note to create a few rooms for him to work on. I asked him to leave the room then went to an enclave that he’d made. I placed my hand on the way and soon another room adjacent to the core room existed. In the center of the room, I pictured a spawner that would create a mana stone for a hundred points if I ever got near full.

The construction cost me a grand total of five hundred mana, but it would prevent me from reaching full and losing mana in the future. Just a bit of insurance. Now that I was gaining fifty mana an hour, if I went into a trance, it was liable, no it was for sure going to happen. I walked out of the mana stone vault then created a solid door made from iron. Mana was my life blood. I needed to protect it.

Closing the door, I stared at it for a second as I had an idea. I held out my hand and iron took the shape of a cane. I went ahead and placed a mana stone on it for two hundred mana. Since I was creating the iron with my mind, I was able to shift it almost as I willed. I had a vampire’s head for the head of the cane. Once I was done, I held the item out to Losa.

“For me?”

“Yeah. I think it really completes your image,” I replied. He took it with a revent sort of gaze. He was so taken with the item that he stroked it with a gentle and possessive passion. He did finally snap out of it though.

“Thank you for the gift, master. I will treasure it.”

“Sorry its made out of low quality iron. Until I get something better, it will have to do.”

“Never would I complain! This is the first item made by my master. I will treasure it!” he repeated much more fervently. I patted his head with a smile. I enjoyed it when people liked the things I created.

A cane was easy since I didn’t have to overtly worry about balance or sharpness. I would need a specialized monster for something a bit deadlier. Good thing I had a lot of mana to play with now. I moved over and took a seat before I got to thinking about what sort of monster to create.