“NAILED IT”

“Achieved dragonblooded by absorbing the blood of a dragon, Pluripotent cells, psychometabolism, dragonblooded and ki cultivator subsumed into sidereal quintessence, blood, ki, magic, psionics, spirit and aether affinity have been subsumed into basic sidereal affinity, elementalism has evolved into cosmic elemental manipulation, aether blast has evolved into sidereal blast, all conversion skills have been subsumed and transformed into cycle of sidereal essence feat, all healing skills have been subsumed into poincarre restoration skill

Cultivator, Combat master, Prognosticator and Lord of chaos skills have been subsumed into the James skill

You have conquered the dungeon

You have evolved from Human into Sidereal Plasma

You have gained control of the dungeon

Selecting Dungeon as base

First base achieved

Please select a class based on what skills you have gained before level 5

Class: Sidereal lord selected

Level up x20”

What the hell?

When I woke up… I was still a stain on the roof. The snakes headless corpse was laying there underneath me, while “I” was plastered to the roof. Xana was kneeling in the corner, and she actually seemed to be crying. Rock was… staring at me? He actually raised up his arm and waved. I guess we’re both dead so that makes sense.

“Neither of you died, I was able to use what I learned from the pluripotent cell ability to allow you to survive being liquified. Of course, this ended in a cascade of changes, combining with several other feats to actually evolve you. This evolution allowed you to take over the dungeon. This allowed me to set the dungeon as a base, which made it no longer count as a dungeon, which allowed you to choose a class, something that is normally done at 5th level. I hope you don’t mind that I chose for you, since I picked the most powerful class I could.

Rock is just really hard to kill without killing you…”

… I have several questions…

I asked James to show me how I looked right now, looking at my new stat window.

Name: Aether Cael Species: sidereal plasma Class: sidereal lord Level: 40

SE: 22720/22720 [SQE*level*4] (143/hour) [SQE+1]

SQE: 142 Unused stat points: 200 SQE Status effects: Skills: fire immunity 1, pain resistance 4, radiation resistance 8, mana bolt 1, poincare restoration 1, ki boost 10, autokinesis 10, cosmic elemental manipulation 1, illusory stealth 5, sidereal blast, hidden presence 1, runic enchanting 3, blood manipulation 4, mana shield 1, aura shield 3, James 1, Feats:Basic regeneration, monster hunter, friend of trasgu, vampire, kissed by the faerie princess, reality programmer, sidereal quintessence, basic sidereal affinity, cycle of sidereal essence, first base Feat points: 22

I asked James to show me what I looked like, and after the mental equivalent of removing the bandages, I was surprised how… beautiful I was…

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t beautiful like a woman was beautiful, or how a piece of art was beautiful, but how the Milky Way in the night sky was beautiful. I looked like a blob of pure darkness, covered in a kaleidoscopic nebula of prismatic stars, where all of the colors of the rainbow contrasted and faded into one another.

Then I noticed the unused stat points. All of my preexisting stats fused into SQE, which meant sidereal quintessence. This meant that every stat point I have collected so far was concentrated within that stat, and now I had more than all of my previous stats combined unused…

“The Sidereal Lord class has several perks, including 10 stats per level. Of course you only have one stat so it shows only as 10 sidereal quintessence, which amplifies all your abilities and gives you more sidereal essence, or SE. It also gives a few more interesting skills that I can point out, like cosmic elemental manipulation. That one is the upgraded version of elementalism, allowing you to actually control the elements passively, while even being capable of creating them. You also got a skill called sidereal expansion that was absorbed by me, which passively gives you a single stat point every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds, or just every sidereal day”

Ok, so all of my stats collapsed together the way strength, intelligence and constitution did to form PPC, and now I have a metric ton of stat points to spend… anything else?

I spent all of my stat points immediately

“Oh, those were still the less powerful boosts you got. You also got the ability to earn the sidereal division skill and the sidereal construct skill, though those were absorbed my lord of chaos, A.K.A. me. The strongest skill you got, has to be poincare restoration. Its main benefit is being able to heal any damage at a cost of 1 SE to one point of HP, no matter what. Point of note, when I say no matter what, I mean that as long as it at some time existed, you can heal it, up to and including reviving the dead”

Ok, that could come in useful, since being able to bring even just allies back from the dead is supposed to be an end game thing. Of course, the division skills also seem very interesting, mind explaining more james?

“Of course. With sidereal division, you can split yourself apart to create avatars of yourself. At your current level, you can only create one avatar, who will obtain 1 tenth the stat total of the main body. These avatars can take practically any general form, for example if you picked a human form it would look like you human body di-”

James didn't even get to finish his sentence before my new body formed. Falling down to the ground, combat master allowed me to land on my feet almost effortlessly. I’ll admit the new body wasn't entirely human, my hair and eyes having points of color hidden in the black, and I was cloaked in a rob with the same texture as the main body coming out of my shoulders.

Name: Aether Cael (avatar) Species: sidereal plasma Class: sidereal lord Level: 40

SE: 5472/5472 [SQE*level*4/10] (35/hour) [SQE+1]

SQE: 34.2 Unused stat points: Status effects: Skills: fire immunity 1, pain resistance 4, radiation resistance 8, mana bolt 1, poincare restoration 1, ki boost 10, autokinesis 10, cosmic elemental manipulation 1, illusory stealth 5, sidereal blast 1, hidden presence 1, runic enchanting 3, blood manipulation 4, mana shield 1, aura shield 3, James 4, Feats:Basic regeneration, monster hunter, friend of trasgu, vampire, kissed by the faerie princess, reality programmer, sidereal quintessence, basic sidereal affinity, cycle of sidereal essence, first base Feat points: 25

“Your skills will be shared between yourself and your avatars, though skills like ki boost now use SE instead of KI for example. Sidereal constructs, on the other hand, are much more akin to golems, forming a small body with 1 SQE for every 1000 SE spent on it, with the option to give it specific skills which influence its shape and abilities. For example…”

Around this time Xana finally noticed me standing there, and I felt 50 thousand units of sidereal essence leave the main body and infuse Rock.

“WHAT HAPPENED? I THOUGHT YOU DIED! WHY DID YOU DO SOMETHING SO INSANELY STUPID!?”

Good to know Xana cared.

“Just leveled up a few times, slayed a dragon, took over a castle, evolved into a different species, the usual”

“DONT SAY SHIT LIKE THAT SO CASUALLY!!!”

Good to see that nothing has changed…

“Golem [Rock] has been repaired and upgraded, James skill leveled up, poincare restoration leveled up. Poincare can now be used to increase regeneration rate when focused on.”

Rock got up from the rubble, now the size of a toddler. Instead of stone, he was made of a strange, angular black gemstone.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me I need to take rock out to the rest of the dungeon, communicate what happened to the goblins, maybe clear out a few monsters, etc… oh, and also I need to scout our new base out to see what we can do with it, now that is reconnected to the real world.”

You mean it wasn't connected before?

“Well, yes and no. on one hand, you could always step in and out of the dungeon by the dungeon entrance, but besides that it was practically impossible to get in. the space and time of the dungeon was very different to the space and time outside, causing dungeons like this one to experience extreme time dilation”

Time dilation? How long have I been in here?

“From the outside, it's only been a couple days”

NICE! Thanks James!!

And so I ran out back to the real world, not hearing what James said as I left.

“Poor boy, doesn't know what happened while he wasn't looking”

I quickly made it to the gate, James helping me by showing me the way now that I owned the place. Now while he worked on the castle itself I could go… out and… explore…

It was ruins… smoke was rising from several destroyed buildings, power lines fell over across the road. I thought I saw a person, shambling about, maybe they knew what happened?

I immediately bounded over using Ki boost, now spending 1 unit of SE every 10 seconds. I reached the person in half that time, to see that the other side of their body was rotted away…

A zombie… I finally get out and the first person I see is a zombie… this can't be real, I must still be in the dungeon, right?

Right?

RIGHT!?

(connection to reality established)

Oh god…

All of that was real…

It wasn't a game…

I could have died…

“But you didn't”

You knew?

“Only as long as you did”

And since when did I know?

“Since you first woke up, and fought that dragonfly”

So all of that was permanent, the almoravids, the goblins, the nephilim…

“Well, kindof. They are dungeon spawned monsters, more like copies than the real deal. The longer they stick around the more real they become, for example the goblins and Xana would slowly become more individualistic and fleshed out. Some, like milesio and Xana, would be faster than others”

Does not change the fact that the world went to shit…

“Are you going to do something about it?”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you going to do something about the world going to shit? Or are you going to break down like a little bitch?”

“It's the apocalypse, and I’m only… one guy”

“You were about to say human weren't you? That you're only human? Well guess what, you aren't, and you aren't just one guy either, or did you already forget about your ability to split into several bodies at once? Or the fact that you spawned into a dungeon, and then you took it down? That would normally kill anyone who wasn't a combat trained professional, and even then they wouldn't be able to learn so many skills fast enough to take over the dungeon and make a safe haven”

Heh, I guess I really don't have any excuses do I?

I looked at the zombie one last time. It seemed to notice me and was rushing towards me, the ends of his fingers deformed into pointed needles, his jaw full of bloody serrated teeth.

“And I guess that sitting around crying won't do anything”

And the zombie was suddenly caught in a rainbow conflagration, burning it to ashes.

“Thanks James, I needed that”

Of course as soon as I turned around a Jeep rounded the corner, people with guns on the roof.

One of them stepped out of the car, machete in hand. He had dark bronze skin, and a square goatee that was already going white, but the machete in his hand was gleaming.

“Qué haces aquí afuera, chamaquito? Tienes un lugar donde quedarte?” (what are you doing out here young man, have a place to stay)

“A si, yo me estoy quedando en la universidad, O al menos lo que queda de ella” (ah yes, I am staying at the university, at least whats left of it)

The old man seemed disappointed, as if he was hoping that nobody else already claimed this area…

“Estaba esperando tratar de vivir independientes, pero si los que te mandan a ti aya son justos, podemos trabajar con ellos” (we wanted to try to live independently, but if the people who are in charge of you are fair, we can work with them)

“Ah excelente! Pues entonces solo entra a el área, O, y no mates a los duendecillos” (ah, excelent, just enter the area, oh, and dont kill the goblins)

And so, telling James that a few settlers were coming over, I sent them on their merry way.