“If danger arises in the present moment, there may be an emotion. There may even be pain. But that's a challenge, not a problem. For a problem to exist you need time and repetitive mind activity."

Eckhart Tolle

“Rule # 23 - Be wary of working with amateurs. They will, with the best of intentions, claim to be brave. What they are not, however, is trained. In the moment of danger, they will instead do the first thing that enters their mind.”

50 Rules for Dungeon Divers

==Caden==

I looked at the countdown, and then my available mana. I actually had a decent amount from, uh, cleansing this section. Assimilating the various bits of stone and organisms hadn’t seemed to cost much. I decided I should use the mana while I was here in the sewer to assimilate the items in storage. I could kill more things to get more mana, if I needed it. I made a shelf in the now excavated portion of the ceiling. I put out all the items I had liberated when I left. There was a wooden tree, velvet, a bone cup, iron, gold, silver, copper, the special pieces of gold that glittered internally with mana, a wooden box with metal hinges, and a simple wooden table.

I started with the wooden tree, absorbing it slowly. I already had replicas of it in stone. I had replicas of them all in stone. I stopped halfway through the absorption. I could sense the intricate pattern that made up the tree it came from. With half of the material gone, I still had significantly less than half of the pattern completed. I could replicate the dead wood easily enough, but a living tree was not possible. Well, I guess I was going to wait until I got better at absorbing things to do that.

I hummed in thought to myself. I should try with something less complex than wood. The gold, silver, and copper coins proved simple enough. I could easily replicate the shape and the metals. I could even tell that each had impurities, though the primary patterns were easy enough to separate out. The hinges on the box were easy too. They looked like some form of brass, copper with other things added in. I tried the velvet, and there was only the tiniest hint of another pattern. I dissolved a small piece of it, which was enough to understand the structure of the cloth and material. The structure of the individual strands of material proved to be unexpectedly complex, but still ridiculously simple compared to a living pattern. I tried the bone cup. Again, the structure of the material was easy, but I was only getting a tiny bit of the DNA. I stored everything that remained.

I hesitated for a moment and looked at one of the gold coins with the pattern of mana running through it. Eh, I might as well try. I tried to absorb a tiny section and I found the entire thing was absorbed. It was the easiest thing I had absorbed so far. I fully understood how to replicate the pattern of mana inside it, too. Huh, well that was odd.

I looked at my countdown, less than an hour and a half left. For a moment I looked at the sewer water as it flowed and hesitated. I had two equally good options. If I followed the water downstream I could potentially find an entirely new ecosystem. Who knew where all this water collected? Plus, I might find something that filtered out random objects that entered the water; there might be all sorts of useful items. The other way was an equally good choice. Heavier objects, as well as gratings, might hold objects that would not make it far downstream. Upstream would also be richer in both nutrients and remnants from plants and animals from the surface. However, the closer I came to any entrance, the more likely I was to run into people.

Ultimately, I decided to go upstream. I wanted a dungeon that was more than just an underwater ecosystem or two. I missed the sun, the grass, trees, and all the beautiful life from Earth. Water was beautiful, but I wanted more than that.

So I followed the water upstream. A few new interesting species caught my attention and they suffered tragic precision rock falls and then were collected by a dungeon. So strange. I encountered junctions and kept following the water upstream. The water gradually grew deeper. When the water had reached a few feet in height I encountered the first lifeform I would actually consider alien.

It looked like a ball of transparent jelly, and moved with exquisite slowness on the bottom of the sewer. It left a path of stone behind it that was scoured clean, like someone had taken a giant spatula and scraped a foot wide path on the bottom of the sewer. Even as I watched, I could see the creatures inside it gradually dissolving.

This, this was exactly the kind of thing that would be perfect for my dungeon. Besides, I wanted to study it. I took my time to carefully cut a three foot cube from the stone exactly above it. The cube smashed through the water and flattened the unsuspecting ball of slime. Bits of slime jetted out from under the cube, thrown away by the force of the sudden impact. The rest oozed out from under the cube. I quickly absorbed all the dead material.

Unfortunately, that didn’t include the slime.

Despite being crushed the slime was utterly unharmed. Even the bits farthest away and disconnected from the rest were unable to be absorbed.

Shit, really?

Bits of the slime began to slowly inch back together. Apparently it was immune to being crushed. And to having pieces of it torn off. Whatever it took to kill one of these, I just didn’t have it. Great, now I wanted one even more. I tried something I hadn’t yet, but trying to put it in my storage did nothing. Nothing living could be stored either. Actually, not quite true, fish eggs actually could be stored. Seems a little arbitrary, but sure, why not. With no idea how to kill or store the slime, and limited time, I grumbled to myself, but I moved on.

After following the main flow of the sewers farther upstream, my faith was finally rewarded. Seeds. I found the first tiny seed floating in the water. Absorbing it proved impossible, but it popped into my storage without issue. So eggs and seeds could be stored, but not absorbed directly. Potential living things appeared to operate under slightly different rules. Again, I thought it was a rather arbitrary distinction, but I didn’t make the rules. Continuing upstream I passed more slimes with increasing frequency plus more seeds and other organic materials. The seeds were stored away, and the various sticks, twigs, bits of bramble were dissolved if they were sufficiently dead. Being more recently dead, the patterns showed up in my head fairly easily.

I treasured each new plant and the eggs and seeds I acquired. Each one represented a living organism that I might never be able to acquire again in the future.

As I continued forward the fish and other life on the bottom got larger. I collected eggs where I could, but I was keeping an eye on my countdown as it got closer and closer to zero. With less than twenty minutes left I hurried along the rushing current, moving through the stone underneath the sewer as fast as possible.

I finally started to find corroded pieces of metal, which were welded to the stone beneath by rust, verdigris, and various corrosion. The slimes apparently couldn’t destroy the metal as quickly, or maybe they didn’t recognize them as food and so didn’t absorb them at all. I absorbed any metal I came across and continued on. I even found another piece of the strange gold with mana running through it. It had the same pattern and had settled into a tiny dip in the stone floor. I stored it and moved on.

The clock counted inexorably downward. I started coming across small dead animals floating in the water. I have little doubt that I confused the poor fish as their meals simply dissolved away. Many of the tiny corpses were the already familiar mice-bugs, or a very close relative. Maybe I should find a better name for those eventually… I also found a considerably larger variant. Rat-bugs?

I encountered more normally structured insects as well. Both dead specimens and living ones feeding on various refuse. It seems cockroaches were eternal. It figured the only animal, other than humans, I had come across in this world that I knew would be something I could do without entirely. Oh well, they were pretty tough, maybe I could scale them up into some kind of dungeon monster? If not, I am sure something would enjoy eating them.

I could feel the clock ticking down. I decided to ignore at least some of my caution and rose up farther through the stone so that my aura would extend out wider. I could see some additional tunnels off to the sides now. And people. Shit!

I just kept moving for the moment. The two people I saw were in a side tunnel. That tunnel had small paths raised above the water for people to walk on. They wore leather boots that extended above their knees. They both seemed agitated. Their glances searched the tunnel by the torch that one held slightly behind and above his head. Huh, it that the proper way to carry a torch? I never knew.

I wasn’t sure if they were agitated because they were in the sewers, they could sense me somehow, or something else. They were arguing now. Their voices raised, and gesticulating at each other. The one with the torch seemed to have a placating tone to their voice.

The torchbearer turned and tried to run away. The other man pulled a knife from his belt and threw it at the other. I thought he was trying to aim for the heart, but the man’s running steps caused the knife to go lower which severed the spine in the middle of his back. Blood seeped out around the wound, but it was less than I was expecting. There was a faint stirring of blood-lust from Exsan, but it was very faint.

The man’s legs collapsed under him mid stride and he hit his head on the wall and then bounced into the water. The other man took a quick step toward the body and the torch quickly fading in the water. He grimaced at the fish that were already attracted to the blood in the water and pulled out a stone that shone with light and mana. He ran in the opposite direction and was quickly out of sight.

Why hadn’t he used the light stone before instead of using the torch? Maybe it required a charge or something. I shook off my thoughts. Shit! I could feel the man in the water, the blood as it seeped out, and countless fish coming to eat. A slime was slowly halting and turning around in response to the blood too.

I hesitated. Should I just not interfere? That would be easy and I could just take the body… No. No. That was not who I am. It was not who I was going to be either. Life might be cheap here on this new world, and I had fairly good evidence of that right in front of me. Heaven knows that life was still cheap plenty of places on Earth, but I knew better than that. Besides, it was possible that they had sensed me and the death would be my fault.

I tried to take a steadying breath and was aware of my own lack of a body for the first time in a while. Right, no lungs.

The man, first I need to get him out of the water and away from the fish so he wouldn’t drown, be eaten, or both. The slime was slow enough that I didn’t need to worry about that right away. How the hell was I going to get him out of the water? The man was buoyant and floating on top of the water; unfortunately he was face down with the knife sticking up out of his back like a macabre fin.

Don’t eat him fish, can’t you see he is a brother?

Well it looked like the timing on my humor was as inappropriate as ever.

I couldn’t actually do much other than manipulate stone or dissolve things. Or use storage. I couldn’t move stone too near living things either. Right… this was impossible. How can I prevent him from drowning, let alone the rest, if I cannot touch him. Wait… I had things in storage. The wooden chair, the wood should float right? I really hoped so.

With a faint ripple the chair appeared in the water beneath the man and floated up beneath him. It didn’t do much on its own to lift the man up, but it was a start. Moving as fast as I could, I extended a tendril of stone out of the wall slightly down stream. As the man slowly floated by I clamped onto the back of the chair where it protruded from the water and lifted it up. I kept the man firmly centered. Water and fish poured back into the sewer.

I quickly stored a portion of the wall to make a hollow and drew the man into it. I eased him off the chair and onto the floor. Damn, I wish I had time to make that scrap of cloth into a proper rug for him. I placed the chair back into storage and simply looked at the man.

Now what?

I could feel a faint pulse through vibrations in the air and stone, but he was not breathing, and various bits of his flesh were nibbled away from the short time he had been in the water. Blood was mixing with the water beneath him and forming a reddish pool.

Well, I should be able to replicate anything I absorbed, right? And I had already absorbed things from right next to living objects. So… there were a few potential ways I might be able to help. God, I hoped this worked.

I absorbed the pool of blood and I was overwhelmed by patterns once again. I could tell that something was missing though. I had the shape of the man, but it was lacking detail. Maybe I needed more than just DNA? Perhaps I needed the various types of cells. I had smashed my previous prey to bits, but there would have been plenty of mostly intact cells amidst the debris.

Right. I examined the body more closely. Well, the top layer of skin was supposed to be dead, but the layer of mana was clearly covering it. No wait… there. A small gobbet of flesh hung from the wound on the back. It was clearly not protected anymore. Cannibalism ho! I absorbed the flesh. Oh god, that should not taste so good!

More information flooded into me. It was not conscious knowledge now, but I could see the pattern and how it was supposed to go… mostly. The man’s pattern was still off, not that I found that greatly surprising.

The pulse was weakening. The mana barrier around the mana wavered for a moment before snapping back into place. Okay… there might be something that I can do with that. I wrapped a tendril of stone around the knife and prepared to extract it. The mana barrier faded to nothing again. With a flash I pulled out the knife and stored it while another part of my mind simultaneously absorbed a small cross section of the wound. I would need the information on how the bone, nerve, and everything else worked if I was going to repair the wound. At the same time I absorbed the water straight from the man’s lungs. Another absorbed anything else that didn’t belong in the blood. He had fallen with an open wound into the sewer; it would be foolish of me to repair the wound only for him to die of sepsis later.

As soon as the full pattern resolved into my mind, various parts of myself sprung into action. Several minds worked together on the wound, since it was the most serious issue and needed the most attention. Mana poured out of me as flesh knit to flesh, bone to bone, and nerve to nerve. Other parts of the man’s pattern felt off and were repaired by other parts of myself. I figured that they might be old issues, but there was no sense in taking chances. Another mind repaired the bites from the fish. An instant later and it was done. I was almost dry of mana; everything I had gained by reaping life here in the sewer, and more, was gone.

I looked at my timer. Crap! I had less than a minute. I looked at the man. He had started to breathe again and the mana barrier around him was strong. He should be fine right? I looked at the slime, even as I realized that there was no light down here. I could imagine the slime rolling over top the man and extending down into his throat… yep, no, not going there. Damn it! If I left him like this then he would probably still die. Okay, time to move as fast as possible.

I cut a slab of stone out from under the man and lifted him up into the air, even as my core approached through the stone. I had still been cautious when I encountered the two men, but the time for caution was over. My core came up and I slotted into the front of the slab of stone. Tendrils of stone came out of the walls as the slab was lifted up and out of the recessed hole and into the tunnel. A tendril of stone reached from ahead even as others pushed from behind, catching the platform and moving me as swiftly as I could manage. Honestly it wasn’t that much. I was fairly sure I could have moved faster in my old body with a brisk jog.

I followed the tunnel upstream and instantly felt it when my timer hit zero. I felt a searing pain. I had no body, no place to ascribe the pain to, but that provided no relief. Very faintly I could feel Exsan screaming in my head. For a brief moment I lost track of myself and the stone stopped moving. The man started to slide towards the front as he decelerated and I hurriedly started moving again. I wished I could go faster.

For a brief moment, I considered dropping him off in a quick alcove again. However, it was just pain. I had dealt with migraines in my last life, the first at the age of five. I had rolled on the floor clutching my head at the pain. I had been highly resistant to novocain and had no idea until I was an adult. I had suffered exquisite agony at dentists for years, simply because I assumed that numbing was only supposed to take a tiny edge off the pain. The system message had said that forming a dungeon would heal me. I didn’t want to form a dungeon right here, I didn’t know how long I would need to keep a dungeon. I just needed to endure for a little more, and then I would be fine.

The pain did not subside. It was growing. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it. I repeated this to myself over and over again like a mantra, losing myself in the action. I let the pain wash over me, not allowing it to engage.

My reverie came to an end when I sensed light passing through my aura in a parallel tunnel. I immediately opened a passage between the two and hurried my unconscious passenger though.

Someone is going to be very confused by all the changes I have made in the sewer.

As I entered the tunnel I could see the light off in the distance. A faint shape of light in the darkness. As I neared it, I could see stairs that lead up into the daylight, but they were blocked by a gate at the top.

Really, another obstacle?

I hurried up the stairs. As I got nearer to the light much more entered into my aura. Dirt, leaves, grass, and sprouts of various plants were around me, all under a layer of snow. The bars of the sewer gate contained mana and extended far into the stone. For a normal person this would present quite the barrier. With a small thought I pushed the door through the stone until it popped out into open air and I stored it.

The stone I left behind was smooth and unmarked. Wonder if there are mages that can do what I just did with stone? If not someone is going to be wondering how I did this soon…

I emerged into the sunlight. The area was clear and there were no foot prints I could see left in the snow or the soil beneath. Behind me was a stone cliff. Okay, I just needed to make sure that the man was safe and I could leave. I kept myself attached to the cliff and moved to the side.

Other parts of myself had been frantically scavenging everything that they could as soon as the dirt had entered into my reach. Dead branches, seeds of dozens of types, snow and ice, dead leaves, insect eggs and carcasses buried within the dirt. The dirt itself was also stored and absorbed in giant heaping handfuls.

One part of myself simply relished the feeling of being outside and had simply started to focus on all the various details. The beauty of the snow covered landscape and trees, the mountains visible all around, the sun…

What the hell is that?

There in the sky was a large red ring. It was faint, but at least triple the width of the sun. Admittedly the sun looked smaller than on Earth. I have no idea what that is. If it was the planetary rings of a nearby planet it ought to have a shadow passing over them, but I couldn’t think of anything else it might plausibly be in the moment. That part of my mind marveled even as the rest of me kept working.

My hurry increased as I felt my aura begin to diminish. At the edges, where my aura was in the open air, it was unraveling. The threads disconnected, unfurled, and vanished into the raw mana it had been made from.

I found a quartz outcropping a short distance from the entrance. It would have to do. I cut a section loose in the shape of a door. Just before I entered, the quiet scream of Exsan, which had been continuing this entire time abruptly went silent even as I heard a distinct crack in my core. The world flickered and it seems like a wave of something distorted it for a moment. I had no time to think about that. I quickly absorbed the stone and moved backward into the cliff as fast as I could. My aura stabilized again as it reentered the ground.

As I entered I replaced the first section of stone, forming almost invisible hinges and barred the door from the inside. The quartz let in enough light to see dimly. Even from the short exposure outside, the man was shivering and his lips were turning blue. The man would freeze if I left him in wet clothes so close to the frigid landscape.

I went as far back into the stone as I dared, the pain growing beyond my ability to bear, and I lowered the stone platform. There should be enough air in here to last a long time.

I needed to get him warm. Cloth, I could do that. A part of my mind absently absorbed a loose thread hanging off the man as I started to work. I replicated the cloth and made it larger and thicker. I had replicated it in stone before, this was fairly simple. I could, however, feel the drain on my mana from creating the single piece of cloth. I slid the man off the platform and onto cloth. I replicated another blanket a couple feet above the man’s body and watched it drop onto him.

Well, that ought to be enough to hold off hypothermia. I looked at my mana, it was almost completely drained. There was nothing more I could do for the man, so I prepared to leave.

Another part of my mind had decided to leave an apology gift, leaving it behind before the cloth was even done being made.

Sorry for almost getting you killed, maybe this will help.

All the coins I had in storage clattered to the ground clinking faintly.

Even as I released the coins, and the cloth settled over him, another part of my mind made the purchase and 1575 ability points drained away.

You have purchased:

Optimal Dungeon Location

You will now be teleported to the best location for you personally to found a dungeon.

Teleportation Commencing!

Hope setting up that dungeon heals me like it promised.

In a brief moment Caden was elsewhere. Without even looking around Caden immediately founded his dungeon.

==Sevso==

I woke feeling better than I had in years. In the dim light coins glinted in a pile next to me and two new titles announced themselves: Lucky Fool V and Back from the Brink I. However, I froze on seeing a single new Status Effect: Life Debt.