It was shiny! So shiny she made a funny swirling motion with her tail out of excitement. Not a lot of shinies was lying around and this one was so big!

So big! She even had to put in an extra effort with her right hind leg to be able to move quickly around.

Why was the shiny thing smelling of others? That was bad! She quickly corrected it by marking the shiny stone herself. She had to hide it in her home, before others noticed!

* * * *

"Stinky rats everywhere!" Talis stepped on a rat and nearly sprinkled his ankle when he stepped on something hard under the rat.

"Blazes! What is . . " His eyes shone when he kicked away the rat and saw a beautiful necklace. It was terribly dirty, but he could tell it had to be expensive.

"Cool!" He snatched it immediately, disregarding the filth.

"What are you doing?! We have to move fast, something is wrong!" His hyperactive companion turned his head to look why he had stopped.

"Yeah, yeah. Just a rat, I am coming!" Talis himself cared little for his companion's friends, honestly he kept running around with him only because he smelled money, he knew that some of his friends had tools of high value.

"I was ten times more eager than you, when I was about to join The Guardians." He looked at him disapprovingly and Talis tried to hide that he did not care at all.

Guardians of the Sleeping Little Children, of Gold Ingots or what? Silly name. Talis rolled the term around in his head, but he could not blow his cover of a zealous disciple, keeping all his doubts for himself.

"I have been looking for this moment for the whole week, but the sewers are just too distracting. The filth everywhere is disgusting." He tried to hide his attitude.

"Pull yourself together, we are about to arrive at the sanctuary." His friend rebuked him and they continued their journey through the stinking tunnels.

"What is happening?!" His friend, or rather golden goose, panicked when he saw the entrance into the supposed sanctuary wide open, without any of the warding mechanisms usually in place. He began to run, his long brown robe fluttering as he made his way into a big underground space that looked too artificial to call it a cavern.

"Quick, strengthen the walls! Reinforce the primary coil!"

"It is not working! The supports won't hold much longer!"

Talis watched the panicking men in brown robes that ran around trying to do something around a huge machinery in the middle of the hall. It consisted of many metallic parts that revolved and circled around each other in different patterns, the most prevalent motive being a circle and an elipse.

He had no idea what the thing was.

Suddenly he also came to understand that among other things they were attempting to reinforce the ceiling that was falling apart.

"Damn, I need to get out, now!"Talis rashly turned around, but it was too late, a falling piece of rock hit him hard in his head.

* * * *

Toby tried to reclaim his senses, noticing some sort of commotion around him, but he was too far from regaining his sight to precisely tell what was happening. He managed to do it only after everything went silent.

However, he saw only darkness around him.

"Irw .. " he strained himself to say a word, still feeling like a newborn baby.

"Irwen!" He struggled to voice out a name.

Toby was decimated.

It was not fair! They were two monsters that were fated to be together, why should it abruptly end like this?!

He refused to allow it!

"Irwen!" His voice was a little bit stronger, filling the darkness around him.

He was immobile with no sight, with no one to talk to and after a while he understood there was only rock and dirt around him, aside from a dead body nearby.

"Irwen, come here! I command you! You are my slave, obey your master and return to me!" A weak voice penetrated through the crevices of rocks.

"Come back! I need . . need. . " His voice broke off, returning only after a while, barely audible.

"Irwen I beg you, I need you by my side. Why won't you answer me? I will do anything to have you back, anything .. "

After a while, his voice returned with renewed intensity.

"No, you would not leave me. They took you from me! I hate them, I will destroy every single one of you! Damned be whoever caused this! I will find you and cut you into thousand pieces, rip you apart!"

Hateful voice echoed in the depths that used to be an unfinished city sewer, now turned into a ruin and a graveyard.

* * * *

Artorias stared at his finger, he willed his power into existence, but only a feeble cold breeze enveloped his hand.

"Hmm, totally broken, but not completely gone." He had long passed the stage of rage that had taken a hold of him when he had found out his undead armies were gone. His reputation of one of the powerhouses of the demon world was not just for show, he began to experiment right away to figure out what was happening with magic.

"The mana flow is definitely there and its focal point seemes to remain the same." He waved his hand and the cold air followed it.

"Even the nature of spells has not changed much." He moved the cold air away from his hand, but it quickly vanished.

"Yet the spells are completely different, with some new quality present." He waved his hand again and frowned when he failed to produce more intense cold.

"Bah! Absent rather than present in my case." It was clear to him that something vital was missing.

Artorias stood still, with his hands enveloped in cold and tried to pinpoint the moment when and where the pure mana changed and manifested the cold around his hands. Before, there was no need for anything similar, one could only use a skill and that was it.

He had no idea how he did it, but everything around him gradually kept changing into a cold sea with a small island of ice he stood upon. Suddenly, around him was a vast ocean of cold water, shocking him with its sudden emergence.

"What is that!" He gasped, blinking several time and the ocean along with the island vanished instantly. At first he thought that it had been a hallucination, but he was not one to doubt his faculties easily and tried to repeat what he had done.

Repeating the mental steps he had taken before, the image slowly returned and he again stood at that small island of ice surrounded by masses of ice cold water.He focused on mana flow and saw how raw mana seeped into this strange world, like it was submerged in it and the imaginary world changed its nature, as the mana flowed through it and a fraction of it appeared around his hand, imbued with his will.

"That's new." Artorias grumbled and began thinking of basic parameters of the mana flow.

The first factor he noticed was that only a small part of the converted mana was being manifested, most of it remaining in the imaginary world of ice and water. There, it appeared to serve only the purpose of obstructing the inflow of more mana, as the world seemed to have limits of how much cold it could hold.

He tried to shape the residual lingering cold energy that had been birthed from mana and willed it to gather at the center of the floating island of ice. After a moment, he realized that keeping the shapeless mass there would cost him a lot of continuous effort, thus he shaped it into a sword, copying the familiar weapon that hung at his side. When it successfully took shape, Artorias felt that a tremor ran through the imaginary world and the sword became more solid. He had simultaneously observed that the cold mana that had been obstructing the mana flow was no longer an obstacle, concentrated in the sword made of frost.

"Wow. . " Artorias nearly jumped with surprise when the cold aura around his hand intensified at least tenfold, but that was only one of the surprises waiting for him. When he left the strange dreamy realm and thought about how he improved the situation with the creation of the sword, he could suddenly feel a cold handle pressing against his palm.

The sword had materialized in his hand with just a thought!

He slashed with it and a wave of frost energy expanded outward, slamming into the rock in front of him, leaving a giant gash of frozen rock there.

Artorias laughed and immeditely entered his frozen world again. He tried to change the sword into a spear, but found out that the whole world was resisting any attempts to change the sword into anything else.

Thank the gods he had not created something stupid like a throne, he would have been left with the magic that could squash people with frozen thrones.

Artorias breathed out heavily, that was close.

* * * *

"Status, status, status. I need it in some form, come back you stupid system!" Toby ranted in a half-crazy state. He understood that without the original functionality, he would be probably forever unable to summon Irwen. He tried to conjure it anyhow, being desperate.

And so it came to pass that a notice board appeared in front of him.

"A-a-A... a notice board!" Toby was stunned by the sudden appearance of an ordinary notice board that was made from purple crystal, the same material that his crystalline body was made of.

Looking around him in a flash, he took note that the surface around him was made out of the same material, right now he was in the world of purple crystals, the only notable object in this creepy world was the notice board in its center. There was one word written on the top of it like a headline.

"Status."

"No way, it could not be that . ." Toby had no idea what was going on, but he was allowed to dream right?.The truth was that his subconscious associated the status concept with adventurers's notice board, where they supposedly took quests and increased their stats by completing them. It was his mind's most straightforward way to visualize what he wanted.

There was still hope!

"Right, this time my status will be perfect. No more skewed useless special abilities!" Crystalline letters began to appear, as if a hand of an unseen sculptor was engraving them onto its surface.

Status

Toby

Supreme, Dictatorial Dungeon Core of the Heavens

Strength, Agility, Stamina, Intelligence, Luck, Spirit, Armor, Defense, Mana - infinite

Abilities - Immortal Body, Thought Materialization, Timespace Manipulation, Causality Bending, Total Invulnerability Bestowal, Universal Transformation

Toby began to laugh after he had created an absolutely overpowered status for himself, he decided to remain a dungeon, because he could not define himself as human, while he was just a piece of rock right? To his dismay most of the letters began to disappear as he was clearly unable to satisfy the immense suction force that was drawing on the purple-attributed mana tak circled inside the dream-like crystalline world.

By the way, why was his mana purple? Was he a magical girl or something?!

"Fine, fine that was kind of expected." Toby had anticipated that everything would not be so easy. He was looking at the remnants of the godly status.

Status

Toby

Dungeon Core

Mana - Infinite

"Well, that is a good start, . . just mana is infinite by default in this universe, thank you for reminding me." He snorted ironically and thought about what he needed to do next. There was apparently some energy, currency, mana or balance that he was unable to break and he had to provide more of the stuff if he made the abilities more powerful. It was nothing new, just the plain old law of conservation of energy, just the kinds of energy were clearly different.

"No, that would be too silly." Toby had an idea, but it seemed too far fetched for the fantasy setting he was in. It would surely not work.

He thought for another minute.

"Just fuck this! Let's do an ordinary on-line shop interface." Toby began to craft a blatant sacrilege that every gaming and manga fan would have killed him for and after a few minutes the notice board looked a bit different.

Status

Toby

Dungeon Core

Mana - Infinite

Special Attributes -

Passive Abilities -

Active Abilities -

[Select Category]

[Select Item To Buy]

[Select Currency] ; [ - Item Cost - ]

[Method of Payment]

[ - Add to Cart - ]

"Cool, that looks nice." It looked practical, but the first hurdle was in sight.

"Hey, is there somewhere a html console where I can program this thing or. .. ah."

Toby was even able to convey in some magical way to the smart notice board that some of those should be buttons and some drop-down lists. On second thought, it was not surprising as this world was probably kind of inside him and he should be able to influence it with just a thought.

Toby tried it out selecting something sensible.

[Active Abilities]

[Select Item To Buy]

[Air] ; [ - Item Cost - ]

[Cash On Delivery]

[ - Add to Cart - ]

Well, it was not that sensible, but he had still his dreams! At this point he had noticed a fatal flaw of his system.

" I screwed it! This way I will not be able to see the future options that have prerequisites!" He tried to rectify his error, but to his great disappointment, the notice board could not be undone. He could only continue to finish what he had started.

"No! I should have added the undo button!" He complained, tempted to really add it to his off-line noticeboard shop. However, he remembered that the previous system's ability to show him the future options was useless anyway, because a name of a skill often provided no clue about its use.

"Now, the moment of truth comes." Toby mind-clicked on the [Select Item To Buy] drop-down list to see what he was able to buy.

And there was. .. nothing.

"What?! This is a scam!" Toby's brain froze. No, there had to be a reason, the universe could not be so cruel. After a while of desperate fiddling with the board, Toby saw the light at the end of the tunnel, when he unselected the [Air] option and left it blank. At that moment an uncountable number of items appeared, when he clicked the list again.

{Double Kick]

{Spinning Double Kick]

{Flying Kick]

{Viper Kick]

{Shadow Kick]

{Shattering Kick]

{Tripple Fyling Kick]

{Leg Strengthening]

...

..

.

Clearly hand-to-hand combat abilities were listed first, exactly what he had no interest in. Toby scrolled down, but the list was too overwhelmingly long.

"Right, this system appears to be without any safety measures for idiots like me." Toby wanted to smile, but that smile would have frozen into an ugly grin even if he had had a face, becuase that meant that the system would allow him to buy something completely useless like a [Double Kick]. Toby decided to create a [Preview] and [Details] buttons for the selected items and hoped the lovely pair of buttons would really do what he needed of them. Next a more detailed system of selection would be nice and . . .

Toby suddenly stopped his train of happy thoughts, when he noticed one important thing.

"Where is my puru pura magical girls's juice?!" Observing the world around him, Toby noticed that the crystalline-attributed purple mana inside of his inner world had probably a fixed volume and the amount that he had used to construct and tweaked the notice board had not replenished, but was bound in the notice board.

No, it had been replenished, but the new mana seemed to be reluctant to obey his will, it clearly could not be used to construct anything like the notice board he had created. He could see only a tiny traces of the obedient mana for the lack of a better term, Was it a good idea to waste all of it on the additional features of his status board?

In the end he decided to add only one final crucial feature, his abilities-shop had achieved completion, at least for now.

[Select Category]

[Select Item To Buy] Item Description: []

[Select Currency] ; [ - Item Cost - ]

[Method of Payment]

[ - Add to Cart - ]

"Finally it is time to use it, but air can buy shit even here, no matter how many possibilities there are." Toby grieved over his yet another failure to sneak in a little exploit into his system. When he clicked [Select Currency] again, he could see everything he could buy the abilities with, it was probably smarter than to try to fill it with his own innovations like [Air].

The greatest betrayal was that even mana was not on the list, so he just selected [Rock] to try out what would remain in the abilities selection list after selecting [Dungeon Active Abilities] - something that he had overlooked the first time around. With this option, only dungeon related abilities should be displayed, the fact that had saved him another button, thus a bit of his already scarce magical juice, because looking through all unfiltered abilities would take him one thousand years.

[Earth Elemental Critter]

[Tiny Rock Snake]

[Rock Spiderling]

[Small Rock Snake]

[Earth Elemental]

[Rock Golem]

[Rock Snake]

[Rock Spider]

[Greater Earth Elemental]

[Old Rock Spider]

[Greater Rock Snake]

[Greater Golem]

[Lesser Rock Dragon]

[Rock Hydra]

[Rock Dragon]

[Colossus]

Toby browsed a few to get a more detailed picture.

[Earth Elemental Critter] Item Description: [ A weak elemental creature capable of minor earth magic; cost: 20 mana 0,1 rock/ 2 mana ]

[Earth Elemental] Item Description: [ An elemental creature capable of earth magic; cost: 200 mana 1 rock/ 20 mana ]

[Greater Earth Elemental] Item Description: [ A strong elemental creature capable of advanced earth magic; cost: 2000 mana 10 rock/ 200 mana ]

[Rock Dragon] Item Description: [ A peak elemental creature capable of advanced earth magic, excells in defense; cost: 60000 mana 140 rock/ 2000 mana ]

"This is lackluster, I need to get a feel for it." Toby bought [Earth Elemental Critter] and fell to the tiny hole that appeared and was obviously the cost he had paid for the ability. He noticed quite some mana disappeared from his inner world, but it was the lazy, disobedient kind that replanished shortly.

He had not stopped there and bought [Earth Elemental], falling into a hole that had been created, but when he tried to buy [Greater Earth Elemental], the shop interface told him that he had not enough mana.

What was that crap? He had infinite mana!

Thinking about it for a while, almost all of his mana had disappeared when he bought the previous elemental, Toby guessed that the limiting factor was how much mana his inner world could hold.

"Whatever." He summoned the critter and payed close attention to his mana pool. There was a spike when he summoned the creature and then a small portion of mana kept draining away, but it was being replenished as fast as it was flowing away. Summoning more critters, Toby found out that the first cost in the description was for the act of buying the ability and for its use. The second number was the cost to maintain the ability.

His head was spinning from all the new possibilities.

"End of games, I need to summon her." Toby released all the critters and changed [Select Currency] to the most probable one [Souls].

Looking at the dead body near him, there should be some still flying around right?

* * * *

Critical structural damage detected.

Warning! Field generation systems down. Initiating reboot.

Reboot Failed. Initiating system-wide self reconstruction sequence.

In a cramped space full of rock and dirt a faint blue light began to shine. Blue symbols came to light on a metallic structure that moved on its own after uncountable years. A sphere flickering with eerie blue light began to hover one meter above the ground, crushing any rock or debris in its way. Fine mechanical parts and lights were moving on its surface with incredible speed along with the metallic rings that rotated with the sphere in their center. The blue light fell on the surface of the cavity with a few bodies and a small purple rock with black chain attached lying in the corner, but the light died down quickly, as the sphere ceased activity staying to hover above the ground with its light fading out.

Self-reconstruction finished. Initiating reboot.

Field generation systems on-line. Ward integrity at 100%

All parameters nominal.

* * * *

In a dark void of space a giant spherical monstrosity moved with great speed towards a region of space that looked like covered with a transparent, thin veil. The mechanical marvel was nearing the veil that flickered right when the object was about to crash into it and vanished, as if all of it was a part of some grand play. However, it took only seconds before the veil materialized again, right when the spherical galactic fortress was passing through where the veil had been. The seemingly thin veil intewoven instantly with the sphere, making its way through its center. The half of the sphere already inside the warded region continued its journey while its other half stopped instantly where it was, dividing the planet-sized spaceship into two halfs. Like in a grand silent play, the half of the galactic fortress still behind the veil flattened against the veil with no sound, turning into a flat disk of metal.

"Troublesome, but it will do." Thin lips partly white and partly black moved, revealing black teeth in a sinister smile, while the person was watching the damage reports flowing like a stream in front of her.

Hull integrity at 14%. Flight deck 1,2,3,6,7,8 lost. Estimated time to repair mid-range missile systems 2:14:21:12. Short range missile systems operational. Stategic weapons not operational, missing resources for repairs. interceptor aircraft at 40%, two space cruisers operational, one . . .

Here they come, a forces of The Collective have finally breached the ward.