Wood splintered as a clawed hand forced its way through the door. Zaria’s hands tightened on the shaft of her spear, and she thrust the weapon through the newly formed gaps. Her arms, tight and corded from years of fieldwork and so pale from fear she could practically see her veins, were far steadier than her pounding heart would suggest. The first strike drew a squeal like a stuck pig, and the tip came back coated with the beast’s sickly green ichor.

It didn’t deter the brute.

Instead, its slashes grew more frantic, the powerful talons ripping deep furrows in the wood. Zaria thrust again, but her timing was off. The creature grabbed onto the spear and, heedless of its own injuries, yanked forward. Zaria hadn’t been ready for that. The motion pulled her forward, slamming her forehead against the stout wood.

She stumbled backwards, her raven hair flopping forward over her vision and blocking her sight. A coppery smell filled the air, and before Zaria could regain her senses, her hair was plastered in place with blood. She was only barely aware as the spear went back through the door, cast aside by the creature on the other side.

Moments later, it resumed its brutal strikes against her door. Still stunned from the blow to her head, for a moment that felt like an eternity, Zaria could only wonder at how the creature was smart enough to use her own spear against her, but lacked the faculties needed to comprehend how to turn a simple latch.

Someone screamed outside, and that snapped Zaria back to reality. She was in her kitchen, sitting on the simple packed earth floor, and if she didn’t do something soon, a demon was going to tear its way into her house. She righted herself, but her vision wobbled from the effort, and her stomach tried to escape through her throat. A knife. She could get a knife and… die with a knife in her hands. She had chosen the spear for reach. Did she have anything else to use against the attacker that wouldn’t put her in range of the creature’s claws?

A final shattering sound let Zaria know it was too late for that question. It was already in the house. She stared at it, transfixed. This was her first time seeing one of the demons in person. It was built like a man, but with a more sloped frame, its long hands touching the ground in front of it. The creature was hairless and had the pallor of death. Zaria thought her own skin had looked pale, but in comparison she looked positively dusky.

It also had no eyes. Where a man would have had eyes, this beast had four horns erupting from its face. Two curled back close to its skull, while the other two jutted forward and curved downward. In some horrific twist only the Gods of the Haunted Night could have devised, the horns were the exact same light gray of Zaria’s own eyes, as if the creature was built to mock her specifically.

It had no lips, just rows of teeth, and it chattered its teeth together. Clik-clik-clik. As if somehow the sound allowed it to see, it whipped its face towards Zaria and stalked forward. She scrambled away, her vision spinning, until her back hit the countertop. Clik-clik-clik. Now that there was no barrier, the beast was moving slowly. There was no caution in the lines of its motion, and certainly none of the uncertainty of Zaria’s own desperate struggles.

It was toying with her.

That realization provided the last bit of clarity Zaria needed, fear replaced with fury in an instant. Her fingers closed on the handle of a blade, and she whipped it in front of her. The demon cocked its head to the side, chittering again. It held out a hand towards Zaria, and curled its fingers inwards in a “come to me,” motion.

So. This beast had killed at least one of the villagers already. Enough to gain basic thoughts. That explained the door and spear earlier. Just the understanding it needed to taunt its prey.

Zaria grit her teeth and tensed her legs, taking a quick instant to look at the mana bar on the back of her hand. She had a simple Peasant Core, just enough to allow her to enhance her strength a bit. The core had been in her family for five generations, and in that time it had reached Tin 3. Barely anything, but enough to give her some very basic power. She channeled her mana through the core, giving her the Workday buff. It was a slight boost to her strength and stamina for the day. Not nearly enough, but something.

The creature got bored with waiting. It put its claws on the floor to stalk forward again. She had to move before it did. Maybe she could get lucky and kill it. Or maybe-

The thought was obliterated as a hand punched through the wall behind Zaria. The meaty fist of another creature grabbed her by the neck before she could even react. The demon in front of her leapt forward at the intrusion, grabbing Zaria’s ankles and pulling her towards it. She tried to struggle and channeled a secondary buff, but the creature behind her just twisted its wrist with inhuman strength.

Zaria’s neck snapped like a twig. She died before she was ripped in half. A small blessing.

But not the last one Zaria would receive.

***

Zaria was falling, except there was no her to fall. It was a drifting of the mind, but physical reality somehow seemed to warp around her as she fell.

Welcome, New Core! It is an infernal day on Sahlena, and you are a new [Value Not Found.] Due to current instability with [ALL WORLDS ARE BROKEN], you have spawned as a mutant core. There is a [Value Not Found] % chance that you will explode shortly, and resume your trip to your destined afterlife. Due to the high likelihood of imminent detonations, no Wisp is to be assigned. You are alone.

Please stand by!

Zaria stared at the words, horror clutching at her… well, not her chest. She didn’t have one. She didn’t have a her. But she had sensations. And with the ominous message hanging in front of her, none of them were pleasant. Right now, it was just the feeling of something contracting and tightening. She could remember that before this, there had been fear, too. She had been afraid. There had been a thing, and a door, and then claws, and… oh. That should have hurt.

Good news! There is a small but nonzero chance - precisely [Value Not Found] - that you can be stabilized. There is an immense but not certain chance - precisely [Value Not Found] that stabilization will be agonizingly painful. Do you wish to proceed with stabilization? Y/N?

That wasn’t really a question as far as Zaria’s was concerned. Life and pain were just synonyms with fancy dressing. She’d chosen life her entire life, so why not now?

Attempting Stabilization.

Scream.

That last word barely had time to register before the pain hit, coursing through her being like liquid metal running through her veins. Zaria did scream, unable to stop it even if she wanted, and her cries filled the void that surrounded her. She lost… not consciousness. Awareness. For a moment she was there, then she was back, and time had passed, but she had no memory of what had happened during that gap. Slowly, however, her eyes… no. That wasn’t right. She didn’t have eyes anymore. She didn’t have a being anymore. Yet she still had vision, and slowly that vision was clearing to show more words floating before her, the only things besides her in existence.

Stabilization partially successful! You are a new type of Core. Welcome to Sahlena, Yagacore! Because you are not fully stabilized, no Wisp will be dispatched to your location. You are alone. However, basic instructions for how to function as a Yagacore will be placed into your mind. Begin knowledge transfer? Y/N?

Again, Zaria saw no choice but to focus on the Y.

[ERROR: Yagacore_Instructions.dci not found.]

Zaria finally screamed at the voice, having had enough of the games.

She realized, only after speaking, that those were the first words she could ever remember uttering. A furious plea for clarity.

That did not bode well for her existence going forward.

For a few minutes, or seconds, or hours - time had no meaning in this void - nothing happened. However long it was, it was enough time for Zaria to start to fret that she’d somehow offended the impersonal messages that kept appearing in her vision. Then, finally, words returned.

Quest Available: Stryga, Bless This House. Form a bond with a willing mortal Witch to serve as your Stryga. Reward: It will probably stabilize you.

Quest Available: Fissure it Out. Aid in the destruction of a Fissure, and consume the Fissure Core. Reward: Unlocks new advancement options. Will aid in stability somewhat.

Basic Dungeon Instructions, which may or may not apply to you, are available. Would you like to attempt knowledge transfer? Y/N?

Yet again, to her mounting frustration, Zaria felt she had no choice but to select the Y. At least this time there wasn’t an error message. She had just enough time to think that before, all of a sudden, her mind was flooded with knowledge. All she could think was it felt like trying to drink a waterfall, but with her brain, and somehow succeeding at the task.

Her mind was spinning, and Zaria forced herself to come to grips with the new information. she said to no one. But then again, she could, couldn’t she? She just had to make a friend. But first came the most basic task - sending her mana out into the world.

The process was not unlike meditation, but in reverse. Instead of pulling your focus inwards, she just had to gradually shove her focus outwards, letting it expand to fill the available space. The information in Basic_Dungeon_Instructions.dci let her know that she should be underground somewhere. However, that was not the case for her. There was air flowing over the top of her… not body. What she had, instead of a body, was a crystalline structure, and it was sitting on packed, hard dirt. Dirt that had recently been scraped into deep furrows by some kind of immense claws.

Zaria had a feeling she knew where this was going.

Moments later, she found it. Just a moment ago, she thought she hadn’t had a body, but that wasn’t entirely true. It was right over there, to the left. At least, the top half was. The bottom half was to the right. And behind her. And there were also the interior portions of her body, which was everywhere else. Except for her heart. A very deliberate hole in her torso told her that had been removed purposefully.

And this, more than anything else that had happened so far, drove home the reality of her new situation. Because the reality of her dismembered and disembowled corpse being spread around her should have been sickening. Instead, it was just odd. More like she was looking at a painting someone had made of her in this state rather than her actual body.

At that, to confirm what she suspected, her mana brushed against the walls and began to soak into the structure. She didn’t remember anything but the kitchen where she had fought and died, so it was nice to see the rest of the rooms, all of which were less gruesome.

It hadn’t been much. The kitchen was really an overblown term for a room with a simple wooden counter, a washpot to cleanse her implements, a jug of water, and a carefully sealed crate full of food that would keep for some time. Time was slowed to a fraction of reality inside, allowing food to remain fresh for years. The room also housed a simple wooden stove for both cooking and warmth. Behind that was the general purpose room, where Zaria had kept a well worn haysack for more comfortable seating and her candles, plus some books for reading. The home had two other rooms, both narrow and along the back wall. One portion was a room that contained almost nothing but a bed, a simple mattress stuffed with hay and linens that had once been white but now were stained with age and use. The other was just a storage room, with her clothing and her few valuables stashed away in an ancient chest that had belonged to her five-time great ancestors.

In her new state, with the power of a core flowing through her and into her surroundings, Zaria was struck by how… basic her life had been. It hadn’t bothered her in life - or at least, not enough to matter in the final moments she could remember. But now that she was no longer human, it all felt so depressingly simple and restrictive. Everything was grey or brown or worn so hard from age that it was headed in those directions. Her nicest dress had frayed at the sleeves and hem. Her life had lacked color - surely she could have found some way to add some! Even plucking flowers and adding them would have brightened her world more than her existence had been.

Per the instructions, her mana should have kept going, but its expansion came to a halt after the last bit flowed out her front door and onto the porch. Once it reached that limitation, it built up inside her house - what was now her body.

Hopeful she’d find a problem, Zaria tried to follow the instructions on the manual in her mind and pull up her statistics.

Greetings Yagacore! Statistics are not available until mob type has been selected. Due to your unstable nature, you will not be allowed to participate in normal entity Containment. There is too great a risk that you will explode and create a fracture that will release the entity, and with demons invading daily, there’s too great a risk. You can make things worse. Instead, the following selections for mob base type have been prepared for you:

Hauntings: Summon incorporeal beings able to act upon the world in a limited fashion. At higher ranks, they will be able to engage in more complex tasks, and become much more dangerous to anyone who dares challenge you.

Nightchildren: Bats, Rats, Frogs, Flies, Wolves, and more! The Children of the Night category gives you a wide variety of creatures to choose from and enhance with your power. At higher ranks, chimeric creatures are unlocked.

Mimics: You can create and imbue physical objects with hunger and biology. Mimics are capable of hiding in plain sight and changing their shape to become objects they have been fed. Their semi-organic nature makes them highly durable. However, they are slow moving until higher ranks, and cannot become objects created by your mana.

Undead: Zombies, Skeletons, Vampires, oh my! Undead include a wide variety of necromantic constructs of only the corporeal variety. However, the undead retain some degree of desires they carried over from their former life, and failure to meet their needs can result in rebellion.

Moonbourne: Creatures from beyond, the Moonbourne are ravenous devourers of flesh, far worse than even the demons that ended your life. You can make some yourself and play with them! Please don’t select this option yet, since no one knows what it does, but it could very easily be bad.

Zaria said. Only… not. Just now, she was getting a feel for her speech. They were thoughts, but somehow they felt external. This entire time she’d been doing them and not realizing it.

Of course, the words didn’t answer her right away. Zaria was starting to sense there was some kind of intelligence behind these, working on them in real time, but the mind in question moved at glacial speeds. Zaria turned her attention back to her house. The mana was building up nicely, and… her corpse. It was far more dissicated than it had been when Zaria had a last look. Her influence was keeping the flesh from decaying, but the water in her body was evaporating in the absence of anything breaking her body down. How long had she been here?

More importantly, how long did she have left before she exploded?

Periods of inactivity carry a greatly reduced instability risk.

Those words weren’t from the other messages. This was in a section in the Instructions in her mind. The back of the tome, for lack of a better word, contained a hasty section labeled “Mutant Cores.” Full of errors in the text and comments full of “possibly” and “it is assumed that”, she’d ignored it. But that line was one of the few definite statements - as long as she wasn’t doing anything, she could afford to just wait. But the moment she was active in any way, her risk would start rising.

Which was good, because right now Zaria was realizing that she was unmoored from the concept of time. If she let her attention wander, even for a moment, she could apparently lose days. Which also meant the messages in her head had been happening much slower than she’d anticipated.

As a yagacore, you may be able to unlock more options as you bond with Striga. This feature is untested and is not guaranteed to function, but the Striga bond will provide enough stability you won’t detonate from the attempt. However, it is recommended you consider the first choice carefully, as you may be stuck with it.

That was good enough for Zaria. She had been pondering the options. Hauntings and Undead were right out from the get go - Hauntings sounded like they’d be too weak from the outset, and Zaria had no desire to tend to the needs of ravenous corpses. The inclusion of that reference on the undead implied that it was not something she needed to worry about for the other options.

Of course, she didn’t even contemplate Moonbourne. Children were told stories of those nightmares, creatures that even the Gods feared, and Zaria would have no part in releasing them into the world.

For a moment, the oddity of that knowledge struck her. She would have been told those stories, yet she could remember none of them, and no details save ‘the gods fear the moonbourne.’ Yet, she was quite certain that was a true statement, as sure as she was of her own name. It seemed that she retained the general information she’d accrued in life, yet none of the specifics.

Pushing that distraction aside, Zaria focused on the two remaining options. The Nightchildren and Mimics. Having animals by her side certainly sounded tempting, but there was the challenge that she’d have to find them herself. None had come to peck at her corpse yet. If she had monsters of her own, she could send them out to find creatures - but if she selected the Nightchildren, she’d have no way to catch her first one. That left Mimics. She had objects here, the remnants of her old life. They were really the only option she could work with, although she’d never heard of such creatures.

Zaria focused her attention on that option.

Mimics selected! Showing statistics:

Name: Zaria

Theme: Mimics

Maximum Mimic Size: Small

Tier: Tin

Rank: One

Mana: 50 / [Unknown, Calculating for Yagacore]

Regeneration: 10 / Hour

Regen Bonus for Upkeep: 0 / 0

Command: [Unknown, Calculating for Yagacore.]

Area of Influence: [View]

Region Map: [View]

Rooms | Mobs | Upgrade | Core Stability Logs

Zaria knew that some of those details were different from what the Dungeon Instructions prepared her for, so she focused on one of the ones that didn’t fit in her understanding. Region Map.

Immediately, an overhead view of the area flashed into her vision, like she was a bird hovering monstrously high over her surroundings. Directly below her was the village she had once called home.

At first, it looked utterly devoid of life. There had only been a couple dozen buildings here to begin with, and now only three stood intact - one of which was her home. Aside from that, some of the buildings had been reduced to ash in the battle, either in part or in full. Others had been torn apart by demonic claws and fangs and fists and blades, but unlike her home, the support of these buildings had been destroyed, leading to partial or total collapse. Thatch roofs were caved in or scattered about, both of which had just provided more fuel for the flames.

Then something moved in one of the two intact buildings, crawling out the window. She immediately recognized the beast. It had lupine characteristics, but its fur was mangy and patchy, and its spine more curled, giving it a sloped, apelike posture. A human arm hung from its jaw, and the beast raised one of its forelimbs to hold the hand like a parent clutching a child’s wrist - just so the creature could chew more easily on the remains. Its eyes had started to shrink inwards, the beginnings of horns emerging from around the socket.

A Wyrdhound. A wolf or dog or jackal that had fed on demonic ichor so much, it had become a warped and twisted mockery of what it had once been, and now had the demonic taste for human flesh.

It sniffed the air and padded towards the next home.

So. That explained the lack of scavengers. The Wyrdhound’s corrupted stench would keep untainted animals well clear. It wasn’t much larger than a normal dog, but it was unnatural and that presence would deter anything that wasn’t similarly mutated.

A perfect test for Zaria’s mimics.