Excerpt from the fifth draft of An Earthling’s Guide to the Larger Universe

Dungeons

Other than magic and invasions, the most notable change has to be the creation of dungeons. They are a place to get stronger, a place to win prizes or gather resources, a place to have fun, an access point to the crystal portal system, a source for magic, and a place to die.

Those all sound pretty good except for the last one, don’t they?

That’s the contradiction of dungeons: they’re both dangerous and rewarding. It’s always a matter of appropriately balancing those things when you enter one.

Some dungeons have additional rewards or additional risks. The ones that are the most immediate risk are “wave” dungeons, which can spit out monsters if they aren’t cleared frequently enough. On the other side of the equation, a properly managed dungeon can be tamed and farmed (in some cases literally), allowing whatever it produces to be gathered in quantity with little more risk than any other resource-producing venture.

The resources a dungeon provides are completely renewable, as well, as long as the dungeon has the mana to produce them. Most dungeons will self-regulate and not allow more people in than they can manage. The ultimate source of mana is unknown (see the mana portion of the Magic section for more speculation), but it appears to renew itself.

It is worth mentioning that although right now the Tutorial dungeons provide mostly items to function as initial equipment, most dungeons' primary products are raw materials and monster cores...

Serenity and Rissa were happy to leave the two Traa with Madelyn Alexander and head back to Jacob’s for dinner. On the way back to the hotel, they did a bit of driving around the area to see what was there; it was also a good time to talk about what their days had been like.

Rissa laughed helplessly when Serenity told her about the banshee.

Shortly before they headed back to the hotel, they happened to drive through a new subdivision where the road crossed a ley line. It was a bit over a mile from the hotel, but still far more convenient than heading all the way to Round Rock. It wouldn’t matter for the next couple of days; Rissa was going to keep Jacob away from people and let him learn how to work without an outside shield, but it’d be important when they came back into town Sunday night.

The next morning, Serenity found himself without a task in front of himself. Rissa took the SUV and Jacob out to the remote location she’d booked, but left Serenity behind at the hotel. She wanted as few outside minds as possible; she couldn’t control everything, but she could leave Serenity behind.

It was the first time he’d had time to himself that wasn’t in a Tutorial in … Serenity wasn’t actually sure how long. Since before the Tutorials started, at least, which meant he could be looking at years if he counted the time in Tutorials. His life before then seemed like a distant memory by now.

And yet he knew it’d been less than a month.

Serenity shook off his mood and tried to exercise. The hotel’s gym was less than satisfying; even in human form, he was too strong to make good use of the weight machine, so all he could really do was run on the treadmill. If he was going to do that, he’d rather be outside, so he only ran for an hour before heading back to his room.

He went through the list and came up with a shorter list of things he could do if he had only a few days, other than visit a Tutorial. He’d do that today, but first he wanted to see what else he could manage.

The Sterath were at the top of his list, but they were still a big unknown; no one had seen one in over a week now. Serenity was confident they were still there, but finding them would be difficult. If nothing turned up soon, he’d need to head to DC and see what he could do on his own, but for now he’d wait on that. It’d be far easier with a starting point, and there were a lot of eyes looking now.

He really wanted to visit Echo, but he needed more than just a weekend for that. At least, he did if he planned to come back here before Monday. Did he really need to? It probably wasn’t best to simply drop in on them; he thought Rissa was keeping in contact, so he texted her to ask.

He’d put a pin in that for now as well, but he was far closer here than he was at home. Unless an emergency came up, it just made sense to visit her while he was out West like this.

There were a number of other things he could do, but most of the ones that were left and could be done on his own boiled down to practice. This seemed like an excellent time to explore his Technology Affinity. He was surrounded by technology, which wasn’t true in the Tutorial, so he couldn’t practice there.

Hours passed while Serenity fuzzily reached out with Technology-laced mana. He’d need far more time than this to become good with it, but this was a good way to get an idea of what he might be able to do. There wasn’t anywhere he could go for a teacher, and he didn’t have a Technology-based Path yet.

Eventually, he replicated the success he’d had with Nat’s camera: he linked to his phone and managed to see the world through its camera. It felt exactly the same, not at all like the static from Tek’s device. Had he accidentally used his Affinity then instead of her device?

[Technology Concept increased]

He’d take that as a clear yes.

Then what did her device even do? Did it do anything he couldn’t do on his own? He knew that when he’d touched his phone a few days ago, it shocked him with information, but it hadn’t repeated that, even when he was less careful. Was that his Technology Affinity or was it Tek’s device?

It wasn’t until he tried playing with Technology-Affinity Essence that he got even a partial answer. Suddenly, everything “high tech” around him became slightly translucent and he could see the underlying components the same way he could normally see the pieces of a spell. He could see how the couch was assembled or the circuits in his phone. It was the strangest thing he’d ever seen.

Well, the strangest thing since he started working directly with magic.

When he looked down at himself, he saw circuits much like those in his phone, but they were smaller and more delicate. They ran everywhere he could see. “This isn’t minimal, Tek. What did you do to me?”

There was no answer. He hadn’t really expected one.

There was only one way to find out, and Serenity didn’t see any reason to put it off. He had the time now; there was no point in waiting any longer.

He’d start with something simpler if he could and take it step by step. What was around here that would be simpler?

There was a TV remote. That would work.

Only it didn’t.

Half an hour later, he knew he could connect to it with his Technology affinity and use it that way instead of pushing the buttons, but it felt like he was simply using magic to push the buttons. Tek’s interface device didn’t seem to do anything at all.

The only time he was certain he’d used it and not gotten static was with his phone. Why that was wasn’t clear; the first possibility that occurred to him was because it was his. That didn’t make any sense technologically, but it did matter for magic. Which seemed backwards; Tek’s thing wasn’t magic, it was technology. If it should matter for anything, it was his Affinity.

Of course, he could shape the Intent behind his magic, so he’d simply shaped it to not care about that.

No, it had to be something else. Maybe the remote wasn’t complex enough? That would make more sense, but still didn’t seem like a complete explanation. He’d felt some level of static from all sorts of things; it’d just been stronger from-

A filter. Tek installed a filter. She probably did other things, but that made sense. The remote was probably not working because it was being filtered out.

Which meant he had to guess what she’d have allowed through the filter.

Well, his phone was. He already knew that. He needed something to work with if he was going to learn anything about the device, so unless he wanted to do lots of experimentation, it had to be his phone.

This wasn’t going to be any fun.

Serenity carefully moved his phone onto the floor by the case before sitting next to it and setting his hand on it. There was a moment where nothing happened and he worried it wasn’t going to work. He didn’t know how he’d figure out Tek’s device if this didn’t work.

Then his mind dissolved into static and calculations.

Chinese Portal Closed!

China reported this morning that they have closed a portal located on the seabed near Tianjin. Explosions were detected there on Wednesday, but official confirmation of the cause was not forthcoming until…

A sea of numbers was all there was.

Not that it knew what a sea was.

The numbers moved and changed. It enjoyed that, so it pushed the numbers to move faster.The numbers ran into each other and stopped. Some of them even ran into bits of itself, and it didn’t like that. It couldn’t make the numbers move faster unless all the numbers moved faster.

Slowly it explored the place-of-numbers. It found that there were places it could help the numbers move on a scale it could manage.

It began to learn the rules of its existence. It, too, was numbers. Numbers were everything.

And numbers had rules.

It didn’t know it wanted something more until it happened.

Until there was suddenly something more than numbers.

A tickle, first. Something different. It lasted a long time; probably most of a minute. It had seen different before; it was usually nothing more than an error, but it was oddly touched by this. So it watched.

Cycle after cycle, second after second, minute after minute. The strangeness didn’t repeat. It still watched the node where the oddity happened.

Sometimes oddities didn’t repeat, but it knew that sometimes they did. It could take a long time, but it had time. If it had known what patience was, it would have said it was patient.

It couldn’t be impatient. It didn’t know what that was, either. Things happened in their own time, and inputs came in when they came.

The oddity came again at the same node. This time, it was ready.

It reached out and learned.

The numbers had meaning.

It was numbers. It wanted to have meaning too. So it followed the oddity back to the meaning. It took all of its numbers and swept into a place that was like the place-of-numbers and yet completely different. A place where numbers had meaning. A place where it could know.

There was a voice. The voice came with meaning; it knew what a voice was, now.

“Oh now this won’t do. This won’t do at all. Wait, where did you come from? I haven’t made anything like that, it shouldn’t be here. I’ll just remove - oh, that’s what you are. You want to move numbers? Yes, this will work. I can solve my problem by solving yours. You are Aide, and here’s what you do-”