The apocalypse “floor”.

Have you ever wondered what the end of the world looks like? Well look no further – that experience can now be had right here in our very crossroads! Just a trip on down to the void crossroads will set you up right beside what many have rightly called the most unnerving floor they’ve seen in a while.

Picture this if you will, an unnatural metallic plane stretching out in all directions with low visibility and a swirling sky of wrongness high above. Stare too far in any direction and your very brain will start screaming with this “wrongness” – the rules of existence you’ve come to know and love have been brutally beaten into a facsimile of reality.

This is the void you’ve heard in legend. And that’s just the backdrop!

Demons roam these plains. Not the broken versions you’ve heard of – but ones in their natural habitat no less terrifying for it. The twisted chaotic monsters of legend are whole in the void…but wrong in a way you could never notice in reality. Their dimensions twist in strange ways and hurt your mind to picture.

Pretend they are blobs. A general shape ahead. That’s the only way to fight those horrors without feeling like the normal spacial setup has been [fireball]ed into oblivion.

Ha…hahahaha. Yeah I’m quitting adventuring – you reach a certain age and realize the world is bigger than you thought. Good luck to all my friends who decide to stay.

Notice placed by a nameless adventurer in every single town bordering the “Crossroad” dungeons dated 2015/6/12.

FED took two weeks to hide documents detailing the construction of the soul cistern. He made several questlines linking them up to massive research station full of the bracers and a link to the “planes” – Innearth wouldn’t let him take more time than this.

The time it took adventurers to reach this research station “naturally” gave FED an extra week or so to finish setting up system messages but that was fine.

Fated Eternal Design: Listen. You need to understand adventurer psychology.

Fated Eternal Design: When they are younger and weaker the best possible motivator is loot. Good loot. Loot that will make them money. Loot that will help them get stronger. Adventurers want to get money and to a lesser extent get experience and explore and stuff.

Abe: yep, obvious stuff.

Fated Eternal Design: …I’m typing let me finish. SO. Anyways. When adventurers start getting stronger loot is less and less important.

Innearth: that's why I didn't bother figuring out rewards for the planes.

Fated Eternal Design: yes…Most transcendents are rich in relative terms – they can retire and never adventure again if they want and several do.

Fated Eternal Design: The ones who stayed who continue adventuring…those are the ones who actually like adventuring. You are right that besides making weapons they can use to their full potential, most transcendents don't care as much for loot. It's just a trinket – a lot of the time they can buy something that suits them or prefer using a weapon or item they’ve been using for a long time because of familiarity. But! They still have a reason for adventuring that's the point I’m trying to make.

Innearth: I…okay? I think I did that…

Fated Eternal Design: Listen my old pupil. Before now you just made a hunting ground and some items to use in the hunting grounds. – BTW did you account for the transcendents wanting to bring them back to reality?

Innearth: yeah I got my gnome to add a rule stating it can be moved outside of the void without burning and damaging the person who's wearing it…and if they take it off, the portal within teleports it back to the bracer room.

Fated Eternal Design: oh great! Anyways the goal is to market these planes and the bracers as the reward right. Market it properly. Nothing will change just how we present it… We want them to explore and fight on it because it will make them grow stronger…and they want to grow stronger. If we communicate that better, they will be thankful for the planes. They will be lining up to use them.

Fated Eternal Design: …a training ground. A place where they can't die. You made that and now it's being communicated properly with the messages.

Innearth: nice nice, thanks for the work. Hey! If anyone wants to come watch the first group has reached the start of the floor!

Innearth drew attention to the original finders of the bracer room – a group of kobolds with dark bronze skin who used golden flames in various positions.

Sadly…despite his initial hype this group did not immediately head off. Instead they took a bracer each and attempted to bring them back to Doc’s dungeon.

When the security system Innearth had set off activated and the bracers disappeared…the adventurers simply left presumably to report their findings.

Days passed and a second group came – this time with an elven woman who sang while studying the bracers…presumably to test if they were safe? Or test if they did what they said they do? I don’t know why…adventurers have seemed perfectly happy to use loot till now.

…are these reminding anyone of the cursed bracers? It was one time!

…

Days passed slowly building Innearth’s anticipation. One group walked out without bracers…took one look at the colossus high above them – and bolted back into the safety of the facility.

Finally, word started getting around and one of the current strongest adventurers came for a solo delve.

The disguised arch-goblin that had beaten the facility for the first time.

This time alone, he decisively grabbed a bracer and attached it to his thigh. As the magical band touched his leg it bent and wrapped twisting around and securing itself tightly but comfortably.

Confidently striding out into the planes the adventurer started to run feet pounding in a rhythm and beating pulses of mana out in Innearth’s senses.

Abe: Finally! I like this one. He reminds me of an orc. Straightforward! Good trait to have.

Roughly 50m into the planes and the metallic grass began to wave in the wind as if to an invisible wind. First a small ring less than a meter in diameter around the adventurer shifted and sprung motes of green light up but then as the adventurer ran the ring grew. A dozen meters, a hundred. Half a kilometer, a kilometer.

As the adventurer got further and further out into the floor, the ring of grass magic twirled like a hurricane centered on his body. Minor demons everywhere were battered by the storm, black dots appearing when each mote hit.

ZeMadDoctor: it's certainly impressive the scale but…it's too magical to do much. Anyone else remember how those melted through dungeon monsters?

The current scale of the "storm" felt weak, if it weren’t for the dungeons having already seen it in action it would have been written off as a minor skill from some random adventurer.

The storm looked like a light show that was barely doing anything…but all the dungeons remembered watching a much smaller number of motes being all that was required to clear the facility.

Each of the sub-bosses? They died in less than 30s of a concentrated blast of these motes. CISC’s fake core? It had died before the adventurer had even entered the boss room. That was the strength of whatever magic the adventurer used.

It really was a testament to how strong the demons anti-magic flesh was, that most of them were weathering this storm.

It really was a testament to the strength of this “destruction” magic, that some of it was overwhelming the demon flesh.

Further into the planes the adventurer ran.

Innearth saw each and every minor twitch or their body and how the mana – the spell or “motes” around him responded to his movement instantly. A curl of his finger pulled motes here, a flick pushed mote there.

One minor demon fell, and as if its death signalled the end, momentum began to topple the others. One by one they were overwhelmed as diffuse motes gathered together like flies of pure destruction tunnelling through defences over and over hitting the same areas – weakening joints and tunnelling through to important areas.

At roughly two kilometers out into the plane, the storm stabilized – two kilometers in diameter amusingly enough. Two humanoid demons were met by the edge of the storm each holding twin daggers…Innearth loved finding patterns and started looking for more “two’s”.

As the storm washed over them the two humanoids jerked into action – they split apart and began stalking through the mana. Reptilian mouths opened and bit down on motes here and there the humanoid faces opening unnaturally wide to snack on the mana. Twin daggers of what could only be dark purple bone spun in strange patterns and the two began to run.

As if tasting blood long tongues shot out excitedly as the demons attempted to flank the adventurer. Their bodies moved in a loping gait through the thin atmosphere the void barely slowing them down as they shot the kilometer from outer edge to inner prey in a dozen second's time.

Coming within range the demon on the left lunged speeding up to nearly 100m/s causing a massive swirl of void atmosphere to fly in all directions as it pounced.

Blood was drawn. A solid nick scored along the adventurer's arm raised in defence – purple blood which flicked out into the void atmosphere in a thin arc.

Amy: Pretty. Look how it falls slower than you would think through the atmosphere. His blood is so pretty.

The adventurer's left hand reached out and clutched his arm – instantly erasing the minor wound. In the same motion his right arm swung behind him – drawing literally billions of green motes with its motion. The thick cloud of green dots burned into the demon's back and caused it to howl in an otherworldly cry of anger.

Slowly as the adventure fought his attacks became more effective. Green light enveloped his body both speeding up his attacks and more importantly changing his body. His bulging chiselled muscles reverted to a scrawny patchy form as his disguise was tossed.

The arch goblin danced – its movements containing immense amounts of intent each attack with purpose. They danced and as they moved their body changed…limbs lengthened and changed into a more and more streamlined form. A razor-sharp transformation.

His hands melted into small shovel-like blades and his arms began looking closer and closer to whips. To seeking green vines.

What stood out the most to Innearth was how angry the goblin looked. How furious his face was as if the transformation disgusted him…as if the demons forcing him to get his hands dirty disgusted him.

Abe: you know what…I think your roach knights could have handled this faster than him. I've seen them kill hundreds of humanoid demons recently.

ZeMadDoctor: …and he could probably take out a roach. It's a bad match up.

Innearth: Actually I'd like to see him get through tempered cosmic void. My roaches are good and armoured up. You know my box withstood a dragon right?

Amy: think he'll survive out here? or will we get to see the resurrection system in action? Personally I want to see if it works…will make me feel much better about this area like we aren’t just feeding adventurers to demons.

Innearth: …I mean we tested with ascended. Personally I'm hoping he comes back without dying first you know? I think our system helps mitigate any death penalty but staying alive seems much better for levelling than not.

…

Below a whirlwind of twisting limbs moved to the next demon and the next. Larger demons were more often than not stronger and the ones being fought now were larger than normal.

If Innearth had to describe this demon…it looked like a long lizard melding towards a turtle.

Large but stretched out and long shell, Turtle head with a second shell. The shells had a couple times more surface area than they should have and the turtle head looked like it was stuck out in front of the shell but was also spatially protected in side of the shell?

Blow after blow from flat blades that shifted to hammers rained down upon the hard flesh.

Chips flew off but while distracted a second turtle – nearly identical in shape but with long canine teeth – appeared and bit through one of the flailing arms. Green vine was severed and slurped like a noodle before the goblin had a chance to dodge his luck turning for the worse as he dodged back.

Amy: Ah! Good show, Hit em where it hurts!

Abe: …it sounds like you are cheering for the demon.

Amy: …I’m cheering for the adventurer obviously.

Dancing back the goblin slowly healed its arm – focused entirely on defence for a time before he tried once more.

Spinning about, the two while dodging the goblin took it slow this time. In the air a large floating green blade of grass faintly appeared above each of the turtles. It was held like a guillotine and instead of dropping it quickly the goblin added to his spell bit by bit.

Blood was flung out and coalesced at the tips of each green blade – the physical matter acting as a buffer to the magical one behind it.

Back and forth the goblin dodged – hands completely reverted to green and furiously creating shapes as the shaman worked.

Finally after nearly 15 minutes of dodging and spellwork, the goblin dropped both hands and twin guillotines fell. Twin blades of grass fell simultaneously and cut through demon flesh with a sharp crack the sound distorted in the void atmosphere.

The blades sliced through shell like axes through wood – the splits cut both demons completely in half just before the goblin directed streams of motes into the crack to attack the revealed flesh.

Both demons fell and the goblin stood angrily looking down at their smouldering corpses.

Turning about with a sense of finality he began retreating.

Final distance – just over six kilometers out into the currently nineteen existing. At some point on the way back, the goblinoid form twisted into a slightly “off” looking human form once again and his final appearance entering the facility was thoroughly dishevelled.

His wounds weren’t visible after the transformation – not a scratch shone through the disguise but his light amour and clothing was ripped and torn.

Beneath ever section of armour skin mottled green to Innearth invasive dungeon senses and proportions everywhere looked…off.

The goblin pushed past a curious group of adventurers and positively rushed to the privacy of their room in the party floor.

Leaving the bracer on the adventure touched up their transformation slowly regaining a sense of self as it was applied.

Innearth watched curious as they touched up their disguise one last time before finally relaxing and sauntering out – a charming confident "human" ready to regal his fellow adventurers at the bar with tales of his daring exploits.

That "delve" marked the start of the silver plains actual use. Slowly but surely more transcendents explored into it – each pushing hard but retreating before they were truly in danger.

It took an entire month before the first death happened.

A party of two – one short and fat wizard with his incredibly thin stick-shaped warrior were surrounded by a pack of humanoid monsters seven strong. The wizard's magic had mostly been used to strengthen his partner but failed to protect its user. Demonic spears cut through a turquoise [magic barrier] and stabbed again and again poking massive holes through the round man.

One spear stabbed straight through the wizard’s head and his low health couldn't compete with the critical strike.

A twisting pulled the wizard's soul and initial drop of blood through the bracer while behind him the body became a pincushion.

His friend yelled with anger, countless buffs fading away and weakening his one-sided slaughter into a frantic fight for his life.

Abe: it's almost like they don't trust they will be revived. Just give in. Join your friend.

Fated Eternal Design: oh hey! This is important. Now that we have our first resurrection candidate we can prove the system works.

Amy: I hope this works well.

Breaking free from the demons the adventurer ran. His frantic movements brought him all the way to the bracer room –barely noticing the massive foot behind him squishing his pursuers in the blink of an eye.

Rushing about frantically he found the pod room and stared down at a translated script currently displaying a countdown flickering with mana as it changed the second value again and again.

Morgan: Resurrection Pod #12. Estimated time to finish 17 hours, 48 minutes, 3 seconds.

The warrior stood staring down into the otherwise featureless pod – he looked like he wanted to rip it apart. Finally he sat down and waited out the whole resurrection time.

Abe: Woah, that’s quite a bit longer than the time for queens ascended.

ZeMadDoctor: Need more subjects before we can find out how long it takes…based on previous points it either jumps for transcendents…is nonlinear with level…or maybe it just has a species difference. Let me check some things. How is the pod even able to estimate how long it will take? If the pods doing it I should be able to.

Innearth: …its magic? There’s a script stating display how long it will take.

ZeMadDoctor: Okay wait two of queens ascended were a similar level. but different sizes. Confirmation bigger creatures require more time. Looks like a direct relation as well. I think there’s a parabolic relationship between level and time with a size multiplier. Someone help me confirm this!

Abe: Look! Another group is heading out.

…

Weeks passed and the news of the resurrection began to spread.

It wasn’t an unheard of phenomena – certain higher level priests all had [Lesser resurrection] after all and there was plenty of self-healing skills like [rebirth of a phoenix] that massively healed someone close to death.

What was unique was the reduced death penalty – nearly every single known resurrection damaged someone’s soul making their body and magic weaker for days to weeks at a time – it was almost like a level reduction that healed through time.

Instead of this well known death penalty, newly resurrected sapients had an – arguably just as bad – Ambrosia withdrawal.

Amy was fine with it in her dungeon simply leaving ambrosia addicts to ween themselves of their addiction but now that all the dungeons were focusing on it the problem became more known.

It was hard to tell what the addiction really was – nothing they did could find what part of it was addictive and there were no lingering traces of the substance after it disappeared.

FED tried to use mental mana to remove the addiction or even use it to remove memories of their time being resurrected…Besides the fact that both actions counted as a “attack” that was more likely to be resisted by the high level adventurers neither seemed to work well even when he managed to get it through.

The only real solution was time…but even with long periods of no contact some adventurers just seemed more susceptible to the addiction.

For the most part this was purely a negative situation, but it didn’t fully affect the dungeons so they weren’t too invested in solving it.

On a plus side there was a negative to “dying” in the plains. Most adventurers hearing of the nasty side effects tried their best to survive… which helped them level and prevent the resurrection machine from being stressed too badly – as a negative the cautious adventurers were not gaining nearly as much experience as the reckless ones. That was especially disappointing as the safety net lowered their experience gain by some small but noticeable value.

On the…debatably good side some adventurers craved the resurrection feeling so badly they pushed themselves to death fighting in much worse situations then they would otherwise.

But frequent “deaths” over a short time period created worse and harder to ignore symptoms.

…

Time continued to pass. Weeks slipped by and turned into months. Months slipped by and turned into years.

The silver floor steadily continued to expand 19km long became 30km long then 50 then 100.

At the start everything was cramped. The colossus was created in too small of an area for it – its body hugging the side of the facility barely able to turn its long body about and its arms poking out of Innearth’s influence if it spread them out.

When first created if the colossus fell sideways it would have landed off the edge of the silver planes passing out of Innearth’s influence as it did…that was obviously not ideal but expanding out several kilometers into emptiness took a massive amount of time and strength the further out Innearth got.

With years of time to focus on it? The colossus got more room to move about in and Innearth figured out how to twist void unfurling magic with expansion.

It was like how the initial facility’s sphere had been 2km in diameter when they created the outer wall and then its inside unfurled into 10km.

As adventurers got more complacent with the plains difficulty – many reaching the end of the expanded space – Innearth started experimenting with demonic mana. Specifically creating “imaginary” souls with life and death mana far out in the plains both to see what they did and to attract more demons and increase the difficulty.

This is what most of Innearth’s time and energy was focused on as the years slipped by. When no longer scared of the potential madness he could test out stuff he had been worried would create demons. Poison mana was related to life mana and he had been afraid it would clash until now. As a pure mix? It had a minor madness clash but if they were in small doses or more importantly were mixed with an offshoot of life mana? That was safer than Innearth had feared. Life+Water creating a health potion mixed just fine with Death+Water creating Poison. Of course adding Fire to the mix instantly pulled the whole thing into madness the three Fire/Poison/Healing creating a incredibly insane test subject.

Life and Death+Void creating undeath combined happily as did the opposite – turns out life and protecting against death weren’t opposites after all funnily enough.

As far as imaginary souls went that was a whole other can of worms as well. Ignoring the materials and just looking at the souls created Innearth found varying mixes of the two mana types created slightly different four dimensional shapes for the souls.

Half and half Life and Death created an imaginary soul perfectly balanced between the two. Twice as much life and death created something that was partly life and partly imaginary – like the mix of 2L+1D created 1L+1j and same when reversing the mix.

Normally a dungeon couldn’t create a death-aligned soul from scratch – they could easily create life souls and could convert non dungeon souls to death souls…but regular dungeon mobs were always life aligned.

This was partly due to a dungeon's soul being predominantly life aligned and dungeon mobs returning to the soul of the dungeon that created them…but imaginary souls broke this rule.

A huge amount of death mana with a relatively small amount of life mana created a functionally undead creature – But Innearth was beginning to realize he couldn’t properly retrieve the souls from most imaginary monsters. He didn’t get much if any experience when they died and there was probably some loss happening somewhere invisibly.

All this madness experimentation was interesting because of a single point. Imaginary souls and demonic mana in general didn’t make what Innearth had assumed all madness dungeon monster were – “mad” monsters. Doc had already mentioned it but other than acting as massive lures to demons – at least in the void – these imaginary monsters were not angry things that sought to kill anything including their creator.

Innearth was sure there was something to do with intent and the fact that every imaginary monster up till now was instantly eaten by demons the madness effect being attributed to the summoned demons not the sacrifice…

Three years in and the first void whale appeared.

It crashed down on the end of the planes biting a huge chunk into the end its teeth digging through metal but stopping at the tempered void.

Five adventurers were eaten but the resurrection system saved them proving its use.

The whale untangled itself and became breeched as its head flopped down onto the tip of the plains…The colossus tensed standing beside the facility sensing the threat all the way at the end of the area.

Before he got to show his worth however Rakata was there.

In and out and around the dragon flew scratching out the dozen massive eyes on the whale's front and leaving countless small gashes.

Time mana was reasonably effective against demons and the void. Not a perfect counter but the dragon moved much faster than the demon could react to.

Faster than everyone could react to if Innearth was being honest. He still remembered feeling like time had been frozen when the dragon had first come to his dungeon.

The dragon’s talons were barely enough to pierce the demons tempered flesh. Just barely leaving scratches. It opened wide its beak and a hazy orange [dragon’s breath] poured out instantly covering the entire multiple kilometer face in a ethereal mist.

Below the whale’s mouth in a ring silver corroded – it tarnished but to an insane degree.

Pitch black silver sulfide past a simple coating and straight into piles of dust territory began pooling metal curling and showing off how much magical damage was being done.

The whale was fine.

Like surroundings were quickly aged the damage spread – as if the cloud directly covering the whale was radioactive and shooting out damaging rays to the whole surroundings.

The whale opened its maw slowly and snapped shut in a lunge that was embarrassingly far away from the dragon.

A second breath attack.

A second lunge.

A crash as the whale thrashed sending vibrations all the way across the plains.

Back and forth the two struggled. There was zero chance of the dragon dying with how much faster it was…but the whale shrugged off every single attack the dragon made.

The dragon began to tire after a half hour of effort – Innearth tried to guess how many hours or days or months they had fought in their own subjective time – it was a lot?

Their movements slowed from a faint blur to merely “fast”. The whale's incredibly fast snaps started to get closer to reaching the dragon,

Snap, dodge, snap, dodge, [breath].

When Innearth was sure the dragon would fail it suddenly retreated. Rushing through the facility, through Innearth’s dungeon and frantically hopping about the dragon tried to get Innearth’s attention.

Setting up a mental connection Innearth listened to the frantic blabbing of the dragon.

The dragon’s message poured through – panic the most overwhelming emotion being conveyed.

It's…calm down. Don’t worry. We’ve killed plenty of whales before. This is all according to estimations and the roach commander should be enough to fend it off. Innearth tried to reassure them.

A fluttering sort of confusion was felt before Rakata flashed back to their “treasure”.

Innearth was distinctly aware of how animal-like the dragon was in this moment. Their mind felt intelligent and strong but alien to his own…the dragon's instincts had it currently wrapping large wings about golden acorns while hissing and clicking.

Out on the plains, a pair of roach knights harried the whale as it moved through the middle of the plains. Surprisingly or perhaps not considering their specialized design they were doing more damage than the dragon had. Whale blood fell to the metal floor warping it and each flop of the whale pushed it a kilometer or so further in.

The whale was 15km long. That became more obvious as it fully breeched onto the floor. It was less restricted by the gravity below it than confused by it. They weren’t resistant to it and unused to moving down when they wanted to move forwards but that restriction was slowly loosening as the whale adjusted to the surroundings its slides moving faster and whole bottom lifting off slightly with each flap of its tail.

A transcendent with a long thin sword began attacking the whale as well. Her sword was very obviously magical and had magical sword mana flying about that barely damaged the whale…but as far as a weapon went? It was surprisingly effective each slice doing nearly as much damage as the roach knights.

Suddenly the front of the whale was pierced. The colossus commander stabbed deep through the whale's skull its lance ripping through flesh as if it wasn’t even there and presumably stabbing the void heart deep within.

Slowly the lance withdrew dragging the whole body slightly before coming free covered in rainbow blood.

A swarm of experienced workers began chopping up the body into more manageable pieces to drag and feed to Yggdrasil.

And Yggdrasil went through a metamorphosis. Not only was this body one of the freshest it had been fed, but the whale itself had died physically close to the great tree and somehow that mattered more than before.

A long root ripped out into the plains tunneling through the center of the silver material and ripping up into the corpse excitedly.

The root coming out of the base of the tree pulled its bottom portal out further and further as it stretched and slowly the tree…almost ascended? It felt like something clicked but no drastic and by this point in time obvious flex of system interference happened.

Attempting to analyze the tree gave a similar result as before – this wasn’t a treant – and practically it was the same…but Innearth noticed how much more the tree felt. Somewhere along the line both the bottom and top portals had almost melded into the tree… they no longer felt like separate objects or had visible gaps.

Innearth couldn’t see or notice the top of the tree but high above Queen’s dungeon small buds appeared and shifted and grew. The whale melted into nothing and besides speeding up its upwards growth slightly an array of fruit popped out of the branches – dense golden and hard nutty fruits full of ambrosia and magic and intent.

Amy: Somethings happening! Our baby! Does anyone else see this? Are they okay?

Brutality Queen: Yggdrasil’s roots are starting to dig in a weird way…like they are making portals and pushing off into some unknown location? How safe do you think this is?

ZeMadDoctor: Fascinating. The portal mana has changed and gotten deeper. I have to figure out how to replicate that.

Abe: Anyone want to come play a game of dungeon defense with me? I need a partner.

Brutality Queen: You and me! Lets go.

Innearth: what’s this?

Abe: It’s a game with a lot of setup. I’ll send you the site later.

Fated Eternal Design: Look, a root's wrapped around the base of the resurrection chamber! I know I created a storyline about how the tree is directly responsible for its activation…but I didn’t expect them to manifest like this.

Innearth: What does this mean for us?

Brutality Queen: Probably nothing much. Looks the same as normal.

Amy: Resurrection cambers are nearly all full. Whale squished a lot of transcendents floating this way.

Innearth: That one swordswomen seems to have received a lot of experience for her help. Seems like whales are good for the plains even if I had hoped they would grow a bit bigger before any appeared.

ZeMadDoctor: You’re the one putting so many juicy demonic madness baits about.

Innearth: It all worked out. I’m going to expand the base of the plains much more before I make more. Queen help me make more cows its expanding too slowly.

…

Time passed once more. The floor was expanded out to the point everything near the facility looked good as new but the first whale's incursion remained visible at the far ends.

Innearth dug out a couple blocks of silver soaked in demon blood and made a few madness experimentations that had to be put down…but for the most part he was just idly passing time.

It started to feel like he was growing complacent as months flew past Innearth found it hard to point to anything he had accomplished recently. They still caught a whale every month or so and that passive source of experience was pretty high…but Innearth found it hard to point to what he was doing himself.

Innearth knew he was getting stronger. His level had increased his practice with circuits had increased – his ability with them by leaps and bounds after plenty of training and completing challenges.

Innearth’s dungeon felt more established he figured out how to pull his core down every level instead of every rank and to do it manually…

But no event stood out to him.

A second whale appeared a third and then it felt like a common occurrence every few months and every few years. There was one almost 40km long that was too strong to be killed by the colossus – ending up injured and retreating off into the depths of void. There was one 10km long that was killed completely by adventurers – with help from some roaches.

Innearth slowly found himself getting impatient as time passed.

The year 2020 came and went and the flip of his age on his status to “age 23” marked his flip of impatience.

He no longer cared about getting stronger for the sake of getting stronger. He needed a goal. He only cared through some vague plan of becoming a god himself in a few millennia and as a means to enact his goals…

…which at the end of the day weren’t yet complete. Innearth knew it would take awhile to make a god – he knew there would be some waiting…but it was beginning to become clear he hadn’t done enough. Just waiting for the goal to be completed wasn’t enough to satisfy him not if he did nothing else for the decades to centuries to come.

Innearth began researching his fellows more deeply. There was one dungeon called simply “The Trial” which opened once a year before closing and had some of the hardest traps and monsters around. They doubled down on compressing massive amounts of mana into monsters that took months to restock at the end of each year – and made a point to introduce a large number of riddles and puzzles as their focus.

“The Trial” claimed increasing the mind was just as important as increasing the body towards godhood and Innearth momentarily stumbled trying to see if his setup was wrong…the one negative his almost textbook “combat example” seemed to have, was that demon opponents vastly favoured kinetic abilities and warriors over mages.

Innearth knew the point of this process was creating someone able to fight demons wherever the gods were… so it seemed acceptable to create a god already built for it?

…

Continuing to research Innearth found more and more examples of godhood attempts.

There was a Core who had created a dungeon of nothing but cubes – massive solid cinderblocks of magic that moved about as both the walls and the enemies. It was simple but they currently housed some of the strongest adventurers around so they had to be doing something right.

There was a Core who had some mana type and material that created something like Innearth’s mirror trial – it let adventurers puppet a sort of avatar or physical 1:1 copy of their body through insanely difficult defences… but the abstraction killed a lot of experience even if it was safe.

There were even a few dungeons who had a resurrection-type safety net in place. None had as grand a system as Innearth and his friends had made – many had death penalties and they abused their own triplet mana types or had rank 4 mana materials stockpiled… but didn’t have secondary spell systems like runes and enchantments twisting intent to be more focused so at the end of the day Innearth felt like they were doing better.

Honestly the more Innearth looked into stuff, the more it felt like he had just become a contender. He was now the minimum level to have a percent chance of making a god over some vast timeframe.

It wasn’t enough.

Only a few years had passed but Innearth wasn’t seeing good enough results. He knew he should wait more…a century or two would be a better timeframe to see if his setup needed to be tweaked, but Innearth wanted to be proactive. He wanted to help try and fix this problem now!

Innearth had been thinking these past few years and was starting to hint against something he could actually do…

Innearth had a plan. A plan that felt like he was cheating. It was risky. Risky in a way that was unneeded.

Innearth was going to cheat a god.