Well.

I suppose this is existence then, hmm.

I was somewhat confused by how-

Mm, I wanted to be polite about this, but-

This world was crap. I’d never seen such a mess. Which was a given seeing as I’d just been born, but still! Everything was sandy and dry, and half of it was irradiated with unstable magic. The kind of ambient glow of the arcane that would seep into living creatures and melt them. I swept out with my senses and found nothing but tiny little lifeforms, the kind of rough survivors that could live on a drop of water and burrow under the sand to escape the absolute lunar cold of a desert at night.

I was new to this, but-

No. This wasn’t how a world should be, When I thought of a world, I imagined, oh, forests, oceans, big sweeping landscapes and so forth. Leviathan creatures so mighty their roar made the clouds in the sky tremble, entire forests taking root on their back. Sea-serpents whose every motion churned the waves into a tumult as they hunted vast shoals of glimmering fish.

I didn’t know how these things were in my head, really. Without ever seeing an ocean, I knew what one was, the salt and fury and the calm depths below. I suspected I’d quite like to meet one.

I suspected I’d like most anything. I, I decided, was an agreeable and friendly sort, although not to be trifled with, definitely not a doormat, patient but not without a little steel in my backbone.

It’s very easy being a dungeon core because if anyone tells you you’re not agreeable, you can feed them to your monsters.

Although I thought I might have to fatten them up first, if that skinny vagabond was any indication. My poor monsters would starve if everyone’s skin and bones like that. God, and no oceans meant no salt. What a sad dinner, eating nothing but gamey, stringy human meat without a hint of spice.

Speaking of!

I was somewhat, mm, lacking in the monsters department. The lizards who previously made their homes here were nice, certainly, but-

If anything bigger than a sandfly bothered me we’d be in trouble.

Awaken, Servant of the Gods, Lowly One Gifted With Divine-

An angelic voice rang in my head, musical and monotone like a crystal chime. I didn’t much like the tone, so I pushed back, grasping the source with my will and changing it a little. Bending the mindless voice to my will was gratifyingly easy.

Oh Wise One! Radiant Beacon of Clarity in the Wasteland!

Awaken to your purpose!

[Clearwater Core] [Gold-Rank]

Born from a single drop of an ancient river crystallizing into a core, this genotype bears unparalleled skills in healing and nurturing life. Water flows endlessly forth, costing no Mana, and all that it touches will be filled with strength.

Worthy spirits gather to you, for your heritage once led the way to the underworld. Small chance of receiving high-rank monsters.

Gain the Blessings of the Open Sky and the Lunar Augur.

Gain 2 Schema picks of [Silver-Rank] or below.

Oasis Dungeon

Soul Fragments

0/10

Mana

80/80

Mana Regen

4.0

Anima: 3

Logos: 1

Arcana: 2 Blessing of the Open Sky, Blessing of the Lunar Augur.

The rainfall of a sky sundered by war.

Schema? That seemed right. I sort of-

It would be hard to describe this to anyone who’s not a core. You see, where most sad, meaty things had muscles, I had what could be thought of as spiritual threads. Resonances and magic connections that extended outwards from my core, binding me to the world.

Some of them went further, past the mundane world and into the substrate of deep magic beneath. The Pale Beyond. The place our world grew from. Like a seed contains the dream of becoming a tree, there are things below that dream our world into being.

The Forms.

For instance, somewhere below, there was the Form of Water. The first and original raindrop, which was also the first ocean, the first spilled blood. All mundane water was just a fraction of this ideal Form.

A tiny thread ran from my soul to the Form of Water. Binding me to the spiritual nature of Water.

Now, Schema were just lesser Forms, living ones, like the Form of Ants and the Form of Hawks. I had two empty ‘sockets’ that I could use to connect myself to new Schema, learning how to forge those creatures from Mana.

And since my mind couldn’t comprehend the Pale in its infinite glory, not without shattering into a million raving-mad pieces, I had my angelic ‘voice’ - a kind of second mind that served to translate the infinite sea of magic into a form I could understand.

O’ Brave and Valiant Core.

Pure of Soul and Noble of Mind.

Choose Your First Schema.

Strangler Vine [Unranked] - Able to disguise itself as a common vine, this predatory creature grabs and constricts prey with its thorny feelers, using them to incubate its seeds. Adaptable and hardy, it can survive in almost any environment.

Dire Antlion [Unranked] - The king of ambush predators, the antlion digs a deep well of sand, creating a pitfall that drags prey towards where it waits, buried below. This trap is rather obvious to intelligent beings but excels at capturing bestial prey.

Skyraid Dragonfly [Unranked] - While even common dragonflies show exceptional speed and agility in the air, the Skyraid Dragonfly is by far the most elegant. Sporting wings as wide as a man’s arm and razor sharp limbs, this fragile creature hunts with single decisive strikes.

Jade Twin-Tail Scorpion [Bronze] - With poisoned spurs at the end of each tail, this enormous scorpion is a relentless predator that uses reach and unwavering speed to hunt down its prey. Using its keen sense of smell, it can follow an unlucky target for miles across the desert, running them to exhaustion before closing in.

Shipwrecker Lobster [Bronze] - Dwelling in rocky pools, this slow but resilient beast uses its large claws to drag prey into the water and drown them. While it lacks in speed and is unimpressive in raw offence, it will grow enormous over time, while its shell draws in minerals to gain a stony strength that can shatter swords.

Dust Devil [Silver] - A form of elemental native only to the deepest desert, the dust devil is both wind and earth, a swirling vortex of sand that engulfs its victims and bleeds them from a thousand cuts. Being incorporeal, mundane fighters will struggle to wound it.

Hmmm.

Obviously, one was Silver-rank and the rest were lower, but - a higher grade doesn’t translate to pure combat abilities. Many harmless creatures achieved higher rank simply by adapting to their environment or possessing magical abilities.

A Gold-rank whale wouldn’t do me much good in this desert, for instance.

The dust devil’s chief virtue was being incorporeal, hard to wound with material weapons. But it wasn’t necessarily a strong fighter so much as a relentless pest. A small army of them could probably wear down a human, but a single dust devil would barely come up to a grown man’s hip.

Looking across the list, only the dragonfly, lobster, and scorpion were strong defenders. The antlion could be ruled out straight away. It was limited to its sandfall trap, and I’d already seen there were humans about in the wastes - humans who would take one look at the pit and go around.

The strangler vine was equally limited. Unable to move, it would be a stationary line of defense, and the moment it was spotted its chances of killing the foe would go down to nearly nothing.

The dragonfly was also a poor match against humans. Deadly, yes, but fragile. Flying creatures always were. It could take out a single combatant with ease, but if the rest mobbed it before it could escape to the air, that would be the end.

The scorpion was likely the strongest in pure combat. Poison, a decent shell, the ability to move overland for long distances. I liked the sound of it.

But.

This was a desert. Somewhere out there, I’d find all manner of hunters and scavengers. Things that would stalk through the sands after their prey. Poisonous and deadly.

The creatures that stood on the apex would have adapted. The humans too would know how to fight them. What they wouldn’t be ready to defend against was me.

My domain was already a small oasis. I knew I could make it wider, deeper, create a drowning pool and treacherous currents, hidden falls, yes, there were a million things I could do that the desert-dwellers wouldn’t be prepared for. Things they’d forgotten how to fight.

The lobster was the perfect fit for that environment, able to harass and pick away at invaders while retreating into hidden dens beneath the water.

I made my choice, and a thread of spirit formed. I felt a pulling at the other side, a desire to come into the world, the mind I’ve connected to a simple fiery spark of untamed desire, a raw need to grab and kill, grab and mate, to crush the world in its black claws.

I fed the thread with mana, and the thing was born into the world. A dark spiral formed in the little pool that housed me. The water churned and frothed as they connected to a deeper sea, a black abyss forming where there were only rocks and gravel before. From below, from the ancient brine, up crawled a leviathan of black shell spotted with red at the tips of each blunt spine. Its body was armored, plate after overlapping plate covering the meat and muscle below, with eyes on stalks and thin whiskers to feel the world with, and enormous, brute claws for defense.

Already, my creation was as large as a wolf, and it would only grow.

Shipwrecker Lobster

[ Bronze ]

Kingdom Animalia

Age - 22 Days

Physique - Bronze

Arcana - Null

Psyche - Unranked

Diet - Fish / Necrotic Tissue

Biome - Tide Pools

Cycle - Nocturnal Slow but steady, this ambush predator seizes hold of its foe and relies on its stony shell in a battle of endurance, ready to struggle for days without end to slowly pull its prey into the water and drown them. Its black carapace grows constantly, drawing reinforcement from minerals and metals swallowed into a secondary stomach, and the beast itself is capable of reaching leviathan size over hundreds of years. The largest specimens can indeed bring down entire ships, although they often slip into hibernation for lack of food. Born from the Oasis Dungeon.

Notable Features - Regeneration, constant growth, mineral consumption.

The lizards and hopping spiders exploring the edges of the oasis fled in all directions as the new apex predator surged from the waters, hauling itself up onto shore. Being born was hard work, and now my guardian was ravenously hungry. Those claws made short work of anything too slow to escape, snapping out like black guillotines, and each death caused a tiny spark of soul to flit into the air.

This is how a dungeon grows.

One by one, I reeled the souls in. They fell into my core and fed me, tiny bursts of memory playing through my mind. The feeling of the hot sand beneath a lizard’s belly as it waited and dreamt of tasty little sand mites to eat. Or the joy of a cool, shaded burrow for a spider, staring up at the moon through the entrance of a cave.

They weren't much, these little creatures, but each unfurled into a long chain of bright experiences, and I tried to hold on to each glimpse for as long as possible. To remember for them.

Somebody should remember this world. Too much of it had already been consigned to dust and damnation.

As I watched my lobster feed, I considered the business of names. Lobsters rarely got one. They weren’t the usual sort of floppy-eared, companionable animal you gave cutesy nicknames to, but on the other hand, I’d feel just silly calling this dim-witted leviathan Black-Claw, Scourge of the Wastes.

Lazarus. I chose Lazarus. A good name for bringing life back to a dead world, I thought. The act of naming made the structure of his soul shift minutely - drawing in energies from the cosmic sea.

He turned towards me, beady eyes staring, then back to his prey.

I needed to find some intelligent companionship before I went stir-crazy. Not that I was unhappy with Lazarus, but, yes, I was going to go completely insane without someone to talk to. I am a talker, if you hadn’t noticed.

I was talking to nobody just then. To the desolate wind that whipped across the sand in a low howl, chasing along bone scraps and tumbleweed. Ha. Maybe I was already insane.

For a moment I stopped.

And listened.

The desert was a bleak expanse of red dunes. My senses, which spread outwards from me in a web of secret energy, moving through the air and earth like the presence of a watchful ghost, felt every shift and turn of the sand. Burrowing things below. Hawks casting their shadows down as they flew on drafts of hot air from the burning sand.

A lonely place, desolate. I felt a sadness lingering in the shell of the broken tower that cast its shade over me. Bits of broken glass lingered in the hollow windows, catching the sun in brief sparks. Within were old, old bones, picked over long ago for valuables. The wood and fabric has all rotted to piles of mulchy mushroom colonies in the corners, forming a kind of soil on which small life could grow.

I wished I could see it in better times. Alive.

I was jolted out of my meditation by something coming from the west, entering the edge of my domain. The magic in the air went wild - suddenly violent and unstable, as if a storm was coming through the unseen layers of the world.

That storm had a name and a body. It was a god made flesh, wearing his divinity in a cloak of radiant soulfire that made the magic surge and seethe.

He was tall and muscular, a giant with bronze skin, his bare feet covered in flame so that each step left a crater of molten glass behind. His face was covered by a rough blonde beard, his hair wild and tangled with bits of jagged glass, chips of broken stone. He had dark, violent eyes, and a shit-eating kind of grin.

I’d say he was a madman if he wasn’t surrounded by a billowing aura of death, a godly power shot through by the wailing of damned souls caught inside. I could taste magic, and I wish that weren’t true, because his magic tasted like rust, oil, and blood.

His chest was torn open. His ribcage was on display, the bones curling like the bars of a prison cell over the body of a wolf.

Black-furred, with crooked yellow fangs and maddened eyes. Covered in scars and great patches of scabbed-over burns. It curled around the man’s heart, which glowed like a red cinder in its ash-colored grip. It was gnawing, chewing away at the bones that imprisoned it. Drool ran down, each spar of exposed rib covered in little pockmarks and craters from this teeth. I could feel that it hurt him. His pain bled into the air around him and made the desert cry out.

The god knew where I was.

He was heading right for me.