The world of deities can be divided in two separate parts. Major divines ruling over the dimension, with lesser deities below them. It is believed that the lesser deities are actually ascended people of their dimension, having reached the divinity on their own. Even so, the lesser deities are considered of being vastly inferior in power to the major divines, as during the countless millennia many of the lesser deities have died battling each other, while none of the major divines has fallen. Major divines have not deigned to meddle with these battles, unless deities personally act directly against mortals, upon when they directly kill the offender. It is believed from multiple accounts throughout history, that the deities are not allowed to directly act against mortals without risking serious consequences.

- Excerpt from a research paper of an unknown student of theological history

Unknown mountain range, Faran’s Dungeon

Finishing our greetings, Elan gave a small cough in his fist to gather my attention. “Pardon me for asking, but as you are obviously in the beginning stages of dungeon, how did you manage to summon me here from a warded cage?”.

Looking at Trendal, he was currently humming to himself while feigning being more interested in cleaning his nails with a dagger than Elan’s question. He had also gotten rid of his snacks and drinks. I feel that he’s just trying to show off how easy it is for him to use his soul domain while I can’t even access mine yet. Of course I tried that early on, but all of my mana wasn’t even able to enter the damn space, being blocked by a dense barrier. Conveniently taking his feigned disinterest and silence as a tacit approval to speak about him, I turned my attention to Elan.

Taking a moment to register my ridiculous sounding words, Elan’s eyelid started twitching furiously as he frowned.

“I’d rather not get lied to right at the start of this partnership. Explain this whole matter with more in depth, as in where is this deity, and who it might be?”, Elan’s voice had a touch of anger in it, and I noticed Trendal grinning at me with schadenfreude.

I sighed mentally about how much trouble associating with this God of Darkness is going to give me.

Elan’s expression grew more discontent while my explanation went on, and as he was about to open his mouth, he got interrupted by indignant the deity in question appearing behind him.

“Hey! No need to tarnish my reputation among mortals any more than it already is! What’s wrong with breathers here and there when I have some downtime from my godly duties? I even brought you the candidates to pick from!”, Said the smirking Trendal, standing behind Elan while leaking some of his divine power, causing him to tremble while his eyes tried to bulge out of his skull. Noticing the state of my newly gained partner, the now familiar shit-eating grin seemed to split Trendal’s face from ear to ear as he obviously got amused by Elan’s reaction.

“See! Now he got terrified because you gave him some weird ideas about me! As this concludes our deal, I’m off as you two get to know each other. See you soon!”, giving a wave of goodbye, Trendal vanished in the shadows.

Watching poor Elan for a moment, I decided to say something to snap him out of stupor.

With a start Elan forcibly calmed himself down, but apparently he was still shaken as he floated erratically up and down. Muttering something under his breath, Elan finally seemed calm enough as he cleared his throat while steadying his floating. “My apologies for doubting you earlier, but claiming that a no less than a god was helping a newborn dungeon sounded preposterous. But now I see how you’d have fully formed personality with the help of the divine...”

I immediately stop his horrible misconception about me with an indignant tone,

Ah, Elan’s eyelid is twitching again furiously. Thinking about this, I should probably give him a rundown about the events leading to his summoning.

* * *

I was watching Elan as he sat on the floor with a slightly haggard and dejected look upon his face. “Allow me to straighten this out Mr. Faran.”, Elan said with a defeated sigh. Is it me or has he suddenly become more respectful while addressing me?

“Originally human, you deviced an unheard method of transferring your soul to a massive mana core, becoming a first dungeon core in your dimension?”.

With a mental puff of my imaginary chest, I replied proudly. “That’s right.”

“As a first of your kind, you were in middle of being promoted to a godhood, while causing a planetwide catastrophe when… a prude hermaphrodite of a god came to you.”, Elan voiced a small prayer for his transgressions against the said god. “That god then proceeded to deceive you, stopping your ascension and throwing you to the void, all the while stealing your knowledge of the runes you used the magic within your original dimension. All in order to prevent the changes to the dimension so he doesn’t lose his powers.”

“That indeed happened. And by the wretched, damp crevice of thrice damned imp stuffed in his nostrils, I’ll eventually pay him back with a massive interest.” Elan shuddered to the image I painted to him before continuing.

“In the void, God of Darkness, Trendal coincidentally found you, woke you up, and explained the situation to you as he took an interest to you. You then proceeded to vow vengeance against a god as a newborn dungeon core, struck a deal with the Lord Trendal, getting thrown down on Peltas from the orbit as a result. Some time later he then helped you to find a contractee, me being the misguided being accepting that role.”, upon reaching this point, Elan promptly covered his face with both hands, fell on his back on the floor and let out a despairing sigh.

I started deflating a little.

If I didn’t see it in front of my eyes right now, I wouldn’t have believed it. Earlier proud and proper Elan was nowhere to be seen, as he rolled around on the floor, groaning and still covering his face with his hands. I started seeing why Trendal liked to harass others for shit and giggles. Getting to see this kind of reactions seemed to be quite funny.

NO! Bad thoughts! I will not let that slacking weirdo of a god to corrupt me so easily to his ways! I mentally vowed to myself.

Deciding to let Elan do whatever he needed to do in order calm himself down, I went back to meditating in order to grow my mana capacity.

* * *

Awakening from my meditation, first thing I noticed was Elan had already regained his composure and tidied himself back to normal. Disturbing part however, was how he leaned in with his nose almost plastered to my core, and kept staring at me with an extreme interest. Deciding to ignore his behaviour for now, I stopped accumulating the mana.

With a start, Elan straightened his back as he regained his passive expression, greeting me. “Ah, you have awakened. May I ask what were you doing?”.

I asked with confusion as his eyes gained a weird shine for a moment.

“Most intriguing. I assume this is the method from your dimension? It reminds me how higher ranked dungeons with a personality gather mana, yet this seems to be slightly more effective. Normally young dungeons don’t actively try to gather more after being full, rather they keep using it for expanding to reach surface as fast as they can out of instinct.”, Elan commented with a thoughtful face, slowly stroking his goatee with one hand behind his back.

I stated with pride, until remembering my current situation, finishing with a dejected tone.

Elan had listened my explanation while nodding to himself. “I see. That mana heart sound like a monster core, which can be found within creatures surpassing normal animals as they can cast magic. On Peltas, spells are not casted with runes, rather there are two ways to divide between monsters and humanoids.”. Elan started pacing in the air, hands clasped behind his back.

“Now, the difference between the two are that monsters, such as I, utilize their cores when casting magic. We use mana from our cores by following instincts we’re born with, or we can try to improve our spells throughout our lives. Monsters control the surrounding mana by melding it with our mana from the core, or infuse our bodies with it through a special method. The way I meld with shadows to become intangible is a skill I was born with, and I use darkness element to infuse my body with it.”. As Elan kept explaining this new system of magic, I forgot my dejected feelings and focused my attention to him.

“As for sentients without core, they manipulate mana outside their bodies through the use of soul energy. They might untap this potential as they go through “Awakening” ritual upon reaching the age of 13, or sometimes by surviving a near-death experience. Some have vast soul energies, capable of becoming magi. They control mana with incantations formed from words of power, otherwise known as runic language. More experienced magi can omit the words completely from simple spells, while shortening incantations from more advanced ones. What I understand, is that words of power help to mold the mana to form a spell from it, thus learning to do it directly leads to a faster casting and more controlled spells.”.

As Elan kept explaining, I grew more incredulous. What was that slipshod method? Same spells could obviously be vary greatly between casters, unlike with the rune magic I was familiar with. It focused upon creative uses of runic arrays, resulting in plethora of spells, limited only by your understanding of the runes and arrays.

At this point Elan turned to face me. “Now the second type of sentient lacks the vast amount of soul energy to control a lot of mana, and are the most common variety. They lack the control and energy to form spells, deciding to forgo it completely as they only draw the mana in their bodies, slowly refining themselves with mana. Magi also do this, yet to a lesser degree as they focus upon their spellcasting. Depending on method of training and element of the mana, they can keep reinforcing their bodies to an almost ridiculous degree compared to a normal humans. They usually become soldiers in service of others, or adventurers and mercenaries. They also have researched some unique methods to use mana within their bodies, mimicking the natural abilities that monsters can do innately. Such as bursts of speed, or partially melding with elements for various techniques.”

Wondering how I would deal with a bunch of doped superhumans with my still quite pathetic dungeon, I decided to forgo this train of thought until it became more relevant. I had more important things to focus upon for now.

Elan returned to his pacing and continued his explanation. “Runes are used with inscription as a means to give permanent effects upon something, such as a staffs for a mage increasing a flow of mana, or a shield with increased hardness. While these “arrays” you spoke sound fascinating concept, inscriptions are formed from a chain of words of power that specify the effect upon item. These words of power are similar to the runes as a single letter is a word in itself, yet the form is different. Albeit I must confess, my knowledge about inscription is very limited.”

“Mana capacity is mostly provided by the strength of the soul, while infusing your body also adds to it for a small amount. Casting magic drains the energies of their soul, eventually causing magus to faint in case he pushes it too far. In some rarer cases, they push themselves beyond the limits of their soul energy reserves, exhausting said energies completely, as they fall into a coma. Death, or permanently crippling your energies, is a very real consequence of this kind of a reckless action. Mana already within their bodies is but a small amount compared to what they can control with spells, but using up that mana causes severe exhaustion to the body.

, I finished with forlorn feelings.

Elan gave me a smile filled with schadenfreude and puffed up his chest. “It may indeed feel such, as I have had my utmost displeasure to recently experience you uprooting my common sense and beliefs about the dignity of a major divinity.”.

With a displeased huff I asked something that had been on my mind since I met Elan.

Elan’s expression turned to a one with self-deprecation as he answered, “Why else than as an attempt to preserve some of my pride. During the beginning of my forced servitude I was always forced to stay quiet, sit still and such when not needed. Instead of staying there with a constantly forlorn expression and sulking in the corners, I started dressing and acting like this. It was how I could annoy those around me the most, when they were expecting me act like a lowly slave they sought to make me as. Unlike those other broken things they had captured, I was not eager to please them.”. He fell into a thought for a moment before shaking his head.

“Anyways, as I acted like this for almost two centuries, it has become a habit already and I feel most at ease by doing this. You could say it became my natural disposition. How about you, Faran. How did you became to act like an obnoxious jerk, ignoring proper conduct more often than not?”, Elan finished with a smirk.

Groaning, I wondered how I seem to get stuck with this kind people.

Elan stared me for a moment, before promptly ignoring my answer as he floated to the side with a shrug. The nerve of him! I thought while feeling indignant.

, I asked from Elan.

Floating back to me with a sigh, Elan gave me a basic advice for now. “First of all, you need to expand your domain and create a maze of different rooms, as you expand towards the surface. As for the direction, I think the tunnel you originally started is heading there. It is a part of the instinct of the dungeon cores to open a way to the surface first and foremost.”.

“You know when you’ve reached the surface when your domain reaches the outside air, as it will dissipate. Dungeon Domains remain only while underground, breaking apart when reaching the surface. Your first goal should be reaching the surface and creating a small hole as an entrance. Dungeon mana itself can lure fauna of all kinds, and I can help you to collect flora from the vicinity. As of now, your core is still pitifully small, and the events you went through with the god in your dimension, might be a direct cause of your weak instincts. As you grow in power and gain enough knowledge, you start innately knowing what to do as a dungeon. At least that’s how I see it as the older and more powerful the dungeon, the more complex the methods they use.”.

As there was of no use for Elan to keep explaining more advanced methods for the time being, I focused on starting to properly build my dungeon for now. Yet I still decided to forgo the common method of “normal” dungeons, as I had never cared about following the norm. Otherwise I would still have my human body, or be dead in some ditch of my old world. At least I still have my old body, even if it is a bearded pile of bloody mush floating within my soul domain.

* * *

I have focused most of time for expansion of the dungeon and my domain for the last 2 months. As I grew in size, the amount of raw mana coming my way also increased slightly, while most of it is still used to sustain my domain. Not enough for warranting a sudden boost in power, but enough to support my increasing usage of mana. My center now fills half of my core, and my capacity is over ten times the original. I have noticed that my domain breaks down some of the raw mana before it reaches me, supporting itself without me paying any attention to it. I have advanced my domain for almost 300 meters to one direction, and now only a meter thick stone wall is between me and the outside. Instead of creating traditional square rooms and nice hallways with a smooth floors, I opted for a more natural looking caves with a height varying between six to ten meters depending on the cave. Of course the cave floors were uneven to hinder proper footing.

During my expansion, I noticed how the stone within my domain was slowly being reinforced by my mana. According to Elan, this is the reason why most dungeon walls are notoriously hard, if not downright impossible to break down without mana. Breaking them down becomes even more harder if I make the material as dense as possible.

“I must say I’m impressed by your tenacity for preparing. Also these caves with natural obstacles slow down the advance of adventurers while simultaneously giving your future creatures multiple places to hide.”, Elan said while flying through the massive system of caves for one last time before I open my dungeon to the outside world. Most of the caves have a variety of stalagmites and stalactites combined with uneven ground, while overhangs protrude from the walls. Connecting tunnels between the caves are wide enough for two men to walk side to side, with occasional stalactite hanging low enough to force them to duck out of the way. I’m growing giddy with excitement as I can already imagine the atmosphere in my dungeon with ever changing terrain full of flickering shadows, grinding the nerves of intruders while checking for hiding monsters.

During my downtime with creating dungeon, I have asked Elan for more information about this world and other random tidbits. One of the weirder differences is with the time. Instead of week, they have tendays. A month is four tendays, and a year has 320 days. However, the year on Peltas is slightly longer, as a day is 28 hours long. The day and night are not equal in length, as night only lasts for ten hours due to the two suns. This concept took me awhile to wrap my head around, as I was used to equal days and nights and one sun. Even the dawn and evening are ridiculously prolonged, each lasting for three hours.

Elan started going through our plans after arriving to the soon to be entrance, while I was following him with my focus near him. We found out that he can now sense exactly where my focus is, when it is close enough to an area near him in my “spirit mode”, as I’ve started calling it out of convenience. At least he has no trouble of knowing when I’m within hearing distance of his normal voice. While I can keep overall focus on my whole domain, I will miss all the details, such as hearing voices or such, unless I focus into a smaller area. We could also communicate mentally within my domain, yet Elan prefers speaking normally out of habit when there are no intruders nearby.

“Now, remember to create small enough hole to keep larger animal outside the dungeon for now. It takes too long to influence them with your mana and to take them over as you’re now, while they scare away all of the smaller ones. I will go and gather variety of flora and small insects you can absorb to start growing within the caves.”, Elan reminded me again as he had done so multiple times for last few days. With a mental sigh, I gathered mana to form a hole of half a meter wide to the wall.

I wanted to do this with some flair, as I was brimming with mana, so I packed more of my mana to the wall along the pathway I was creating. Elan gave an exasperated sigh and hid behind a smaller stalagmite close to the soon-to-be door. First I vaporized a thin circle almost through the wall so I don’t accidentally crack the wall wide open. I could feel mental grin forming, as I had thought to test this method when I started playing around with my mana, while expanding the caves. As I compressed more and more mana from my pool to a part of the stone cylinder closest to me, I felt the structure of the stone start to break down from excess mana. I released all of my control over the compressed mana, causing a muffled bang along with a blast of stone powder. Blast of mana spread the dust all over the cave and I watched how it glittered in the sunlight coming through the newly opened circular hole.

“I hope you enjoyed yourself by wasting most of your mana for a puff of powder, Faran.”, Elan frowned and floated next to the hole in his shadow-form as the stone dust just floated through him. Quickly peeking outside, Elan took some distance from the sunlight.

“Looks like the night is still few hours away, I’d rather wait for the night as keeping up the shadow-form in the sun drains me mana disgustingly fast”, Elan stated matter-of-factly before changing his tone to a more snarky one. “Oh, and congratulations Faran. The stone you tried to blow up has been splattered as a small cone of dust in front of the hole.”, he finished with a snort.

Elan had grown increasingly sarcastic as he noticed how I occasionally spend mana for nothing else than my own amusement with no concrete results to show from it. I ignore his complaints as I started figuratively running on walls from boredom during last half a month, as I kept finishing the cave system. Not to mention my instincts started to wake up as I didn’t head straight to the surface, instead stopping right before it. Those same instincts wanted me to enlarge the hole I made to a properly sized entrance. I also noticed I could control the surface area infused with my mana on the outside as normal, reinforcing and reforming it. Huh, looks like I can make proper doorway for my dungeon later on.

As I now had a pathway to the outside, I felt a shift within my domain. Motes of raw mana were now rising faster through the ground, increasing my passive mana regeneration speed by half. I assume that when I open larger entrance, instead of a small hole, the speed should be faster. I still couldn’t expand downwards too much, because the density of mana within my caves wasn’t enough for it. I assume I need to advance as a dungeon by creating my monsters dungeon flora, so mana within my domain grows more dense.

Turning my attention to the sunlight streaming through the hole, I felt excited as I could finally start doing what I’m supposed to do as a dungeon core, instead of a glorified miner. Finally I could relieve myself from that mind numbing boredom of playing with stone, that I’ve recently subjected myself into. Sculpting caves is fun for only so long before coming increasingly tedious.

Looking to Elan who had flown atop a hangout to take a nap, my excitement deflated just like the result of my mana blast.

Bah, it’s only a few more hours of waiting after two months of doing the same thing over and over. Nothing special. I thought to myself as I tried to keep my excitement in check.

I failed in convincing myself, and I started focusing on Elan in order to pressure him to move out earlier. I don’t care whether he really fell asleep or not, pressure is pressure! He can sense it anyways!