--Bre—

Brea had been working hard on her Herbalism studies and was mixing a new bowel of special herb when the Master returned. Master Jane looked down at Brea's work and said, "In all my years, I have not seen such a poor product quality. It looks mostly composed of weeds!" "But Master, this grass is exceptional. Look closer!" The Master bent closer and pulled a magnifying glass from her pocket. 'Oh my!" she exclaimed. "Where did you find this? This strain of weed is so rare I mistook it!" Brea smiled giddily. "I have been growing some in secret from a seed I bought last year. I wanted it to be a surprise!" Brea eyed the pot. "Look at the grass! It even has new shoots coming up! I could develop its growth even further with your knowledge!"

Master Marry Jane had not seen Spirit Weed for a long time. This type of grass was so rare that it was nothing short of a minor miracle that her apprentice had come across it. The fact that she had adequately cultivated its beginning growth was a testament to her solid understanding of basic herbalism best practices!

Spirit Weed was precious because it could benefit SOUL growth. However, the Master knew how it could also be used for another purpose. Properly processed SOUL weed could temporarily put someone in a trance-like state where connecting to a principality would become possible even without the minimum spirit +10 SOUL stat!

The temporary spiritual connection formed by Spirit weed was often used by witch doctors or other tribal types to ask for miracles or favors from a principality. The practice was also used by priests burning Spirit weed as incense to connect with "God" to ask for favors. While individuals thought they were praying to "God," what was actually happening was forming a connection to the principality of the region. The principality could entertain prayers from mortals and decide to manipulate events in favor of said mortals in exchange for that individual giving up part of their SOUL.

Of course, almost all the higher-level information relating to the SOUL was tightly controlled by a SOUL community or faction members. However, Master Mary Jane was a member of the local SOUL faction, and she smiled softly at what having access to her own source of Spirit Weed could mean.

If the Master could help Brea raise the upcoming shoots properly, she could expand their growth and provide a sizable contribution to the local SOUL FACTION as a whole. She would gain immense standing with the principality. This was the opportunity her Herbalism business needed to set itself apart from the rest!

-Brian-

I giggled to myself while thinking about what Mike was saying about the possibility of building a dungeon. Yes, oh, yes. I would grow like a weed right under these snotty-nosed SOUL beings, and then I would spank them properly for interfering with me. It was pretty disgusting how they were apparently manipulating everyone to generate SOUL TAX and fighting over different accumulating energy methods. The implications were quite staggering. Could every war or large-scale conflict be traced back to SOUL beings manipulating things? I licked my lips. This was going to take some clever thinking on how to show these noobs who is boss.

-Armageddon-

The Armageddon had been listening to the conversation between Brian and Mike and was ecstatic at the thought of portending to be a GODLIKE dungeon. He could finally get a chance to ambush people properly! He had enjoyed sneaking around and ambushing monsters with M.R. Tentacles, but the Strange had ruined that when he teleported the starfighter into a magma chamber and effectively stranded the machine. He used a satellite to look at the Strange. It was sitting on a tree branch and strategically dropping shits on a pair of sleeping wolves type monsters below. He giggled. Yes, oh yes, this was going to be epic! He used his "Get Hacked" ability to begin editing his stat screen. He also prepared a unique quest for the Strange.

Armageddon (An ancient GODLIKE dungeon)

Category

Description

Skill

Ancient Dungeon (Previously undiscovered)

WARNING This dungeon has Strange followers

Put your hands up and back away slowly!

Dungeon Core

Eats Manna and SOUL to grow

If you die, your power will be absorbed by the core.

Known rewards for a successful delve

Gold, Manna stones, random artifacts

Pays loot on levels 5,10, and 15.

The Armageddon needed to work with Brian to build the dungeon's layout, but he issued the quest to the Strange anyway. It wouldn't take long to burn some tunnels out with his ship lasers and get stuff set up!

A Strange Quest

Description

Goal

Payment

The Ancient Dungeon Armageddon will pay you additional meat for your services harassing dungeon divers on what will be levels 10-15 of the dungeon.

Defend the dungeon on levels 10-15 from invaders. Don't die in the process!

Shits and giggles, New chew toy, Juicy Meat

There was also another benefit of this whole dungeon thing. The Armageddon would be able to analyze more about how the science of this world worked by monitoring dungeon delvers' skills and aggressive beasts' abilities. Hopefully, with enough time, his processors could repurpose the nanites to rebuild the world's core so they could escape this junk heap.

-Brian-

I squatted next to Mike on the grass. "I thought about it real quick, and I like your idea! I'm going to turn my comm on speaker so you can hear the Armageddon. Let's design this thing and start building!" Mike's eyes widened, "You thought about it that fast?" I smiled at him, "well, you could say I have had a few upgrades to my body. It allows me to think faster about some things." I turned on the comm. "Testing testing. This is the Armageddon." "Yes, we can hear you," I replied.

Mike grabbed a twig, and we started drawing in the dirt like some Neanderthals. He started commenting on the drawings: "You see, we will need to have several dungeon levels in order to facilitate a realistic dungeon experience. The main issue will be digging the tunnels and rooms, airflow, and structural integrity. We will also need traps such as pitfalls, murder holes, spring blades, etc... We can place the MANNA and SOUL accumulator runes in the ceiling and disguise them as power for minimal lighting. This will make it harder for adventures to notice the runes and keep the dungeon lit enough to see.

Additionally, if we make the ceilings high, it will be harder for the runes to be discovered, and it will help prevent them from being unintentionally damaged by stray spells. The fastest way to line all the tunnels will be to mass-produce rune inscribed bricks and then cement them in a cut-out groove in the ceilings. Rune bricks will make it easy to connect everything and expand to the size we need with time. As you can see, this is a tone of work for just the two of us to do. The digging alone would take us years. Do you have anything that could help?"

I smiled and spoke, "Yo Armageddon. What do you have that we can use to help construct this huge building project?" The Armageddon was silent for a moment before he replied, "Well, I do have a limited number of nanites that could be used to help build the necessary machines. However, these nanites do not self-replicate, so they can only be used for one thing at a time. I did use some of them as mechanical tentacles for M.R. Tentacles. I can also create digger drones and utility drones and use them to make some elaborate traps. I could probably build the small 15-level dungeon design you just talked about in a day. However, the inscription of runes into those bricks is not something I can help with. That will be the limiting factor on how fast we can build this thing. I can, however, create a machine that will produce bricks and lay them.

Mike spoke up, "I have the correct spirit levels to make runes for the array. We won't need much to get started. However, expanding the dungeon to the size where the arrays can gather a huge amount of MANNA and SOUL will take a lot of time. There is also the matter of where to pipe the MANNA and SOUL." "Oh, that won't be a problem," I replied. "We can start with a small room after level 15 like you originally described, but eventually, if we can figure out how to mass-produce runes, we could pipe all the energy directly into the Armageddon who is at the planet's core. You see, he is actually a spacecraft. His armor is so dense that nothing can penetrate it. If we pipe all the power inside him, it will appear that the dungeon core is consuming it, just like you said a natural dungeon would. If we keep piping it, it will probably become highly compressed, enough that we can meditate and get our fill quickly".

Mike nodded his head in agreement. "Your right. SOUL and MANNA densities are higher in dungeons because the core draws all that ambient power into a small place. It is naturally compressed. It sounds like your spacecraft, as you called it, could function as a bottle to hold all the power. If there is no leakage, anyone who meditates in such a place could achieve many stat levels very quickly." I spoke, "Yeah, we should conduct some research at some point and see if we can get a method to automate rune inscriptions onto the bricks. It would take far too long for a single person to inscribe enough runes to reach all the way to the core of the planet." Mike nodded his head in agreement. "It probably is possible to automate the creation of runes. I would have to get access to the imperial records on spirit runes though" I grinned. Creeping into libraries was something I enjoyed. It sounded like another adventure! "Anyway, let's get the Armageddon started. We can pipe the SOUL and MANNA power to a small room just past level 15 for now." Just as I was finishing my sentence, a sound filled the tunnel behind us. Mike and I both looked with wide eyes as a tracked podium-like stand rolled out.

Armageddon spoke, "Oh, I was a bit ahead of you with calculating the dungeon stuff. Check this out. This podium is an interface that will allow you to send orders to the nanites directly. Want a trap or a new tunnel? It's not a problem. Type a command, push a button, and bam, I'll deploy some machines to solve the problem!"

I used IDENTIFY on the podium:

Dungeon Core Interface

This unique interface allows the dungeon master to control the structure of the dungeon

Ability

Description

Build tunnel

Builds a tunnel with all necessary supports, ventilation, and groove for a rune brick

Build room

Builds a room with all necessary supports, ventilation, and a groove for a rune brick

Build pit trap

Builds a motion-sensitive pit trap with retracting floor

Build Murder hole

Builds a motion-activated murder hole (Flame jet or rock fall)

Build blade spinner

Chop chop

Deploy Strange

Strange things will happen 1x use per day.

Deploy bricklayer

Will lay bricks. Additional research is necessary to inscribe runes.

A dungeon core interface was exactly what we needed! I motioned to Mike. "Check this out, man; we can micromanage everything from here without all the bullshitting or drawing in the dirt!" Mike used his IDENTIFY skill, "Wow, this is fantastic. Let's get started right away!" I agreed and gave Armageddon the order to begin construction.

Now there was the other matter to attend to. I tapped on Mike's shoulder-grabbing his attention back from starting on the rune inscription project. "Tell me about this Imperial Library!"