Ian Irwin placed his gnarled hand over his eyes and sobbed quietly to himself. His close friends and wife were waiting in the other room for him to pass. They knew no matter how much of a brave face he put on around them, dying so young was frustrating. Sure at two hundred and fifty seven years old he was at the common age of death for Humans, but that was for people who hadn’t trained themselves for years and infused their body with mana day in and day out. Considering his mana amount he should have lived to at least two thousand years old, the common death age for the longest lived race: Dragonians. Ian chuckled to himself at ‘longest lived race’, sure maybe of the humanoid races. After making a bad joke to himself, Ian went back to his brooding.

With a grimace Ian remembered all the effort he, his wife, and his friends went to to determine why he was aging so fast. While his wife and friends searched up and down the continent for information, he researched his body as only he could. If anyone else had his disease, they would come to him: the Saint of Life, the Peak Biologist, and his unknown titles: First EX Rank Mage, and SSS Rank Mana Artist. He’d known when they had gone off to discover the origin of his aging, they would find nothing because he could find nothing. When they had returned, no Alchemist, no Priest, no Mage, no Healer, nobody knew how a man infused with so much mana could be aging so fast.

None of these setbacks stopped Ian however, he continued researching, experimenting, and analyzing until yesterday when he had collapsed. His legs no longer moved, and he could barely move his upper body. After finding him his wife, Estella Irwin, had picked him up, carried him upstairs to his room, called his friends over with the mana crystal, and started nursing him. The look on her face at the time had told him all he needed to know. When his friends; Andre Wallace, Mackenzie Wallace, Nina Carson, and Seth Watson; arrived their faces changed from worry to resignation. He had smiled at them and told them they, including himself, had done all that they could do with the time offered to them. Each of them had said their goodbyes with tears in their eyes until only his wife remained.

His lovely wife. They had met early in his Dungeon Diving career, but he was loathe to enter a dungeon with another person. He had been just fine and would continue being just fine on his own. Even with his continued refusals, she pestered him until he finally relented, and they entered the dungeon together. After their team Dungeon Diving ended two weeks later, Ian had come to a realization: he was in love.

His wife hugged him sobbing as he lay in bed. With every effort he could muster, he wrapped his thin gnarled arms around her while tears streamed down his face. He hoped at some point in the distant future she would find someone else who loved her just as much as he had and still did. Estella left the room even though she had wanted to stay because through the years that they’d known each other she knew when he needed to be alone.

His breathing slowed and his arm fell to his side. The light slowly got dimmer until finally there was no light. He could no longer hear his breath and only feel his chest slightly move. Slowly but surely his consciousness slowly faded until there was simply nothingness.

✦✦✦✦✦

The nothingness of death did not last long as Ian’s eyelids jolted open and stared at what was in front of him. Behind a desk with stacks of paper and a single writing tool sat a man. The man had slicked back black hair with hawkish eyes covered by the clearest spectacles he’d ever seen. His nose was slightly pointed along with his chin combined with a strong jaw and a complete lack of beard. While his stern expression certainly may be have put some off, Ian believed him to be the most handsome man he’d ever seen. Beyond the beauty of the man, Ian almost instantly recognized him: the God of Order Tidon. Tidon looked at him, picked up a piece of paper, glanced at the top, and started reading.

“Name: Ian Irwin, Occupation: Researcher of Dungeons, Monsters, and Biology,” a small frown appeared on the God’s face but he continued, “Mage Rank: EX, Mana Artist Rank: SSS,” a much deeper frown appeared on the God’s face, “Cause of death: Old Age/Unknown,” Tidon’s brows instantly narrowed and worry tinged his eyes, “Estimated Dungeon Rank…” his hand slammed the paper on the table, looked at Ian, and said through clenched teeth, “I’ll be back. Don’t touch anything,” and disappeared.

Now, Ian certainly wanted to know why the God of Order didn’t seem to like the fact that he was strong because the other Gods seemed to like it. However while he had pondered Tidon’s expression the last words uttered by the God had sent waves through his body. The paper Tidon had been reading off of was most likely a list of his personal information, which meant he had an ‘Estimated Dungeon Rank’. He knew dungeons were alive, hell he’d even talked to a few, but they couldn’t tell him very much about themselves. He’d presumed something was restricting them but had no evidence. This had led to his long arduous study of dungeons, monsters, and the biology of organisms.

Was this how dungeons were made? The Gods were responsible? This conflicted with his known knowledge of the Gods that constantly encouraged them to strive to get stronger and learn more. However, the drive they encouraged while producing strong and smart individuals also produced a large number of deaths. But if they wanted the sapient races dead the smartest choice would be to encourage wars between nations. Instead if nations declared war on one another, blessings, quests, and powers of those tied to Faith plummeted in those nations. The amount of wars he seen in his lifetime was only one and the King’s head had been driven onto a pike within the week after he’d declared war. Ian’s thoughts came to an end as Tidon returned.

✦✦✦✦✦

With a hand to his forehead, Tidon, sighed and slumped in his chair. “They always do votes without me because I’m stuck doing all the paperwork and only ask my opinion if I’m the deciding vote. Luckily this time I agree with them. Upon first glance this seemed like a stupid idea, but they surprisingly thought this one through.” With a glance at Ian, Tidon straightened the tie of his impeccable suit, and coughed into his closed fist. “Ian Irwin, your soul has been summoned here for one simple reason: to be reborn as a dungeon.” One of the largest smiles Tidon had ever seen on a human graced Ian’s face no longer gnarled from age, and he could only do one thing in return: smile back. “I left so quickly previously because I felt making you into a dungeon would be disastrous, and I needed to consult with the other Gods.” Tidon paused to see if Ian had any complaints, but the man seemed to hang on his every word. “After hearing their argument, I agreed with them, you are the perfect choice for us to attempt making a splash in the universe after such a long time.” Admittedly the pleading eyes of Ian’s patron Gods and Goddesses to give him another chance at life after it being cut short did help a little. The cause of death being partially unknown to even the Gods did worry Tidon however. They would need to investigate that. “Now let me tell you what being a dungeon entails.”

✦✦✦✦✦

“Normally we give most souls a very basic explanation and send them on their way. The special dungeon you’ll become means we can give you more information. First, why we create dungeons. While dungeons are a way to earn money and advance fighting strength to the races like Humans, Dragonians, Elves, Dwarves, Naga, etcetera; they are also known as death traps. This is very similar to what we want. We want the races, every race not just the sapient humanoid ones, to gain strength and knowledge in the dungeon while the dungeon also culls their population.” Ian’s enamored face slipped at that. The Gods truly did want to kill them. “The look on our face is asking why we want to kill you even though we spend so much effort improving you.” Ian nodded. “It’s simple. We made a mistake when we created this Universe, we didn’t use enough mana.”

A memory of the scariest moment in his life rose to the forefront of Ian’s mind. He had crossed the Ocean of Unbidden Rage to reach a new continent and discovered an odd area surrounded by greenery with nothing but dirt. As he entered the circle of dirt all his summoned monsters instantly disappeared forever and three fourths of his nine hundred trillion mana disappeared in five seconds. That was the day he had lost one of his closest friends. Tidon was nodding at him, “Yes, mana dead zones. They absorb all mana that enters them near instantaneously. The fact that you were able to survive one is testament to your incredible strength in life.”

Ian knew gods didn’t like being interrupted but he had to ask, “Once you discovered the ...'Universe' was the word you used right?” A nod. “Once you discovered the Universe lacked enough mana why didn’t you simply make more?”

With a wry self derisive smile Tidon responded, “For the same reason we never directly interact with the worlds. We simply can’t. We can create from mana, we can interact with souls, and we can direct mana. Interacting with the physical world is not possible for Gods of our level.”

“But what about Quests, the Status Menu, Faith?”

“All interactions through mana. We twist mana to give messages and quests. We give mana as rewards and experience increasing your power. Faith is simply a targeted mana boost. In fact we can only do as much as we can with mana because it was gifted to us by a Greater God.”

“Gifted by a Greater God?”

“Yes, us Gods and Goddesses were a group of friends that envied the worlds and universes that Greater Gods created. After noticing a universe that ignored its large reserves of mana, we asked the Chief God there if we could use some to create our own. The Chief God agreed but made us pick how much mana to take.” With a sigh Tidon continued, “You may think why not simply take all of it, but higher gods are known to go back on deals if you do not pass their tests. We were afraid if we took too much, the chief god would consider us greedy and not allow us to take any. Thus we underestimated the growth of living beings and ended up with our current predicament.”

“If this Chief God gave you mana before could he give you some again?”

With another wry smile Tidon responded, “After we noticed the problem we immediately went back to ask for more, but he said we must deal with the consequences of our actions. However, we didn’t stop there. We pleaded and explained the situation to him and after numerous tries he finally relented a little. He allowed us to slowly siphon mana from his world to create an equilibrium. However while we could create the openings we couldn’t control how much mana came through, the creatures we created had to do that.”

“The dungeons,” murmured Ian.

“Yes. However, the first dungeons we created infused with the souls of intelligent individuals were failures. They stimulated the birth rate of native creatures far past the amount of mana being leaked into the world. Before we could interfere the worlds they were on consumed themselves. We used the souls of less intelligent monsters for the next wave and even though the results weren’t what we wanted, technological progress stalled, the small increase in ambient mana gave us time. Through the long years we’ve time and again we’ve tried to find the right souls for the job some ended in massive successes while others were catastrophic failures.” Tidon straightened in his chair and looked straight into Ian’s eyes, “We believe you have the ability to become the greatest dungeon that siphons an enormous amount of mana into our universe, but with that possibility comes the possibility of failure and that failure could spell the end of most life in the universe.”

This was a lot for Ian to handle. The fate of the entire universe on his shoulders was a little much, but even with all that weight he was practically bouncing in anticipation of becoming a dungeon. With fire in his eyes Ian asked, “What else do I need to know to become a dungeon?”

Raucous laughter echoed through the white room with only a man, a God, a desk, a writing tool, and stacks of paper present. Tidon was extremely pleased with Ian’s answer, since it was what they expected and one of the reasons they were willing to take the risk. Tidon wiped the tears from his eyes and gave Ian his answer, “As I said prevously while I can’t tell you specifics about the dungeons, you get most of it during the Tutorial and after leveling up a bit, I can tell you some general information.

"Once again the purpose of dungeons is to spread mana from the other universe into our universe and prevent mana from becoming too condensed into living beings. Spreading mana into our universe leads into the secondary purpose of dungeons. With dungeons, monsters, and the lack of mana, technological progress has been somewhat stagnant. We wish to spread technological advancements from dungeons, but this has not been going well. Monster soul dungeons don’t generally understand technology and even when they do finding the optimum spread of technology while not increasing population growth is hard to do. I can’t tell you how to go spreading technology, but we hope you’re better at it than most. Although there might be a perk available to you during the tutorial that will help.”

Ian contemplated the spread of technology. Often weapons were discovered with unknown creation methods which led to smiths and enchanters improving their own methods. Unknown spell books, useful magic tools, rare minerals, and even toys on occasion were found in dungeons. If the Gods intended to spread technology, then he could see why even toys were present. The fact that the population of living creatures needed to be culled explained why he never found healing spells, items that increased life span, or items that increased birth rates. Being the Saint of Life he certainly wanted those in his dungeon, but to do so he’d have to be the best damn dungeon the world had ever seen.

Tidon continued his explanation, “Let’s see...about the type of dungeon you’ll be. Basically the content of your soul determines the type of dungeon you’ll be. You’ll be an EX rank dungeon. You know what that means right?”

“No level limit.”

“Correct. The first EX rank too. The reason I was so concerned at first was we’ve only had a couple hundred Rank 10 dungeons. Over half of those have failed so far which is not a high success rate compared to the other ranks. The main reason we’ve assumed this happens is Rank 10 dungeons need a certain level of intelligence which generally leads to a certain level of empathy. Generally this empathy leads to the souls not believing dungeons need to kill living beings and causing the worlds to consume themselves. Even though we can recreate worlds after they’ve been consumed, the loss of so much time and progress greatly pains us. There are two Rank 10 dungeons in your world, however they are on continents you never went to. We hope you get along with them in the future.

“Next your soul determines your dungeon trait which is a mostly unique trait that defines your dungeon. Well, will probably define your dungeon. You’ll learn yours during the tutorial.

"Similar in function to your dungeon trait, you can pick dungeon perks to enhance your dungeon. These perks generally have a weaker initial effect compared to your dungeon trait but dungeons rank 3 and up can choose more. As an EX rank dungeon you’ll be able to choose six during the tutorial. Another choice during the tutorial is what starting creatures, starting traps, and starting treasures your dungeon will have. You’ll get twelve of each to start. The perks and starting creatures are determined by your soul composition, so you’ll have a wide variety to choose from.

"Another trait you get during the tutorial is a Restrictive Trait. Restrictive Traits put limits on the dungeon however these limits are based on the dungeon’s soul, so a lot of dungeons actually like their Restrictive Trait. As a higher rank dungeon your restriction is more powerful than lower rank dungeons.

"Lastly you’ll pick a starting location for your entrance which will determine what types of terrain you can build.

“Other than options during the tutorial, there is general dungeon information. Dungeons all start at level one and raise their level to its maximum depending on their rank. It is possible to increase a dungeons rank if they meet certain conditions. With each increase in level a dungeon will get more area, more mana, and more dungeon points to work with. Every ten levels you can get a new creature, treasure, trap, and named monster. You do not start with a named monster however. Every one hundred levels you receive the chance to pick another perk and a new entrance for invaders to enter through. I’m certain your familiar with the concept of dungeon floors?”

“You know I am.”

“The dungeon floor concept you’re familiar with doesn’t exist. The layout you see in most dungeons is the most basic setup after receiving new dungeon area. While most low rank dungeons simply don’t have the mental capabilities to form complicated structures, the smarter dungeons keep this formation on the upper floors to maintain a sense of camouflage. Because of the low rank dungeons, the sapient races see dungeons with unusual areas close to the entrance as trap dungeons--”

“If it’s related to how the sapient races view dungeons, I certainly know almost everything about that.”

The white room dimmed and Ian felt a shiver down his spine, but before he could do anything the room was back to normal and Tidon continued. “Of course. Self preservation. You get it. Anyway, you’ll have a year to prep your dungeon before it opens to the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if before you even opened to the world you were in the top ten percent of dungeons.

“There are two events that take place every year between dungeons: The Dungeon Auction and the Dungeon Competition. The Dungeon Auctions allows each dungeon to auction off twenty items, twenty patterns, or a mix of both and earn dungeon points. Patterns are much more expensive since they allow another dungeon to create that item or creature even if they normally have a restriction against it. The auctions are also a place where dungeon souls can mingle and get to know one another, it is also the place where we introduce new dungeons. It should be noted if you sell something at an auction then all other dungeons will know who sold it. To prevent higher level dungeons from taking away from lower level dungeons a gifting system is in place where dungeons may gift one item each auction to another dungeon.

"Dungeon competitions are for entertainment and learning about different dungeon designs. Randomly selected but around the same level dungeons with attempt to raid each others dungeon and reach the core and the first one to do so wins the dungeon point prize. There is no danger to the dungeon or creatures in the dungeon because we instance the dungeons in a separate space. Beyond the random competitions it is possible to challenge other dungeons with dungeon points on the line. We only allow a maximum of two of these however. The yearly auctions and competitions are for every dungeon in the world, but every hundred years are Universal competitions and auctions. I don’t think there’s anything else you need to know that isn’t covered in the Tutorial and that I can tell you. It should be time to become a dungeon.”

“Before you make me a dungeon can I ask some questions?”

“Sure, I can’t tell you much more though.”

“In addition to asking about dungeons, I...I was hoping to ask about Estella and everyone.”

Tidon’s stern face softened to a light smile and slightly rounder eyes, “Of course. I’ll tell you as much as I can.”

“Are they doing okay?”

“You’ll be reincarnating as a dungeon the moment after your death, so they’re as fine as someone can be having lost their best friend. Which means it will be a year after your death when you finally open to the world.”

“Will I be able to see them again after I become a dungeon?” said Ian his voiced laced with hope.

“...It’s possible. You’ll be a dungeon in your former world, and you get an avatar at level 100. However, as long as they aren’t part of a dungeon you cannot tell them about your mission.”

“Yeah, I’ve experienced that before,” grumbled Ian. With a downcast face and a slight frown Ian remained silent for a few minutes but eventually continued, “Can you give me examples of good dungeons and bad dungeons?”

“Hmm, I can do that, but I can’t tell you why they’re good or bad.”

“That’s okay I can probably figure that out myself.”

“Haha! True, True. Bad dungeons include the Demon King, the Dread Lord, and the Sun King. Good dungeons include the Ballast Dungeon, the Imp Feast Dungeon, and the Illusionary Dungeon.”

“...I knew the Demon King and the Dread Lord were dungeon cores, but the Sun King? ...If he was a dungeon core, then he was definitely bad with how population boomed under him. Tch, to think I was never able to discover that the Sun King was a dungeon core.”

“Haha. Don’t fret too much. The Sun King destroyed his own core, so no one knew he was a dungeon core.”

“You can destroy your own dungeon core?”

“Only if we allow it.”

“Why did the Sun King destroy his own core?”

“That is something you’ll have to figure out for yourself.”

“...I see. Some cores can be destroyed while others only let you form an item after touching them what’s the difference?”

“Dungeons that can be destroyed are dungeons that aren’t doing their job properly, and we’ve designated as destructible. Creating items is simply means to motivate cores to protect themselves and kill adventurers. You’ll learn more about that after you become a dungeon.”

“Okay, I have one last question. I will preface this question with ‘I want to be a dungeon so damn much please let me be a dungeon’, but if I didn’t want to be a dungeon could I refuse?”

“No. Even if a soul truly feels that they don’t want to be a dungeon, we attempt to pick souls that would be best for the job beforehand. So, refusing the job is not allowed.”

“Wouldn’t that create dissenters that try to ruin the purpose of dungeons?”

Tidon heaved a heavy sigh, “It’s not like there are none, but most take the hand they are dealt and try to survive their best and the best way for dungeons to survive is to fulfill their purpose.” Tidon picked up his writing tool and wrote something quick on Ian’s personal sheet. “Is that the last of your questions, Ian?”

“Yes.”

“Then, I wish you luck Ian on becoming the dungeon we dream you can be.” And with that Ian disappeared.