Pov Dungeon Core

  I think this is what shock feels like. His last words still echoed in my mind. There are many trying to understand what happened, asking me questions. Many had gathered around the lake to see if they could help Vix, but none of them could bring him out of his sleep that was consuming his soul. At least now I know it was because of his talent that it was happening.

  I tried to help him, so he could give me the memories he wanted as quickly as possible hoping there would still be something left of him, but I failed him in every way. If I was a diamond rank, I think I could've helped him, but I wasn’t. I did get his pattern, but it wasn't him any longer. It was an empty shell that used to be Vix.

  I announced to everyone that he was gone and slowly started to absorb him. I didn’t have any traditions like adventurers had for sending off their family and loved ones, and I actually don’t think I want one.

  There was a part of me that perhaps thought that maybe I should keep at least his shell intact, but without him actively working and using his skills, that shell would not be able to stop the terrifying beam I saw in his memories.

  When he was gone completely, I didn’t like the emptiness left behind in the lake, so I started to make the most exact replica of him sleeping I could out of dungeon stone. My minds worked in unison to do this, halting nearly every other task I had. Even then, this statue of Vix took a while to complete as I was making the most faithful recreation of him that I could.

  When it was finally finished, I didn’t start working on the things I left unfinished. It was time to take some time to reflect. One of the projects I was basically finished with was making the gateways appear as mirrors. That seemed to be one of the last pieces that would cause my downfall, along with everyone else reliant on me.

  I have not yet told anyone what had happened exactly, only that we got crucial information without which we would have certainly fallen. The problem was what to do with this information. From what I could tell, we were winning the fight up above, and while I didn’t get a lot of information about what was happening down below, it was clear that diamond-ranked dungeons controlled by this world’s powers coordinated their attacks, crushed the defenses I had, and ended up delivering the killing blow.

  There aren’t many creatures who even indirectly have experienced their death, but the memories I got seemed so real. What horrors would I feel right now if I had my own memories of that event instead of a single mind being’s? It seems that I have been too indecisive, but I should have known better. There are plenty of examples I’ve witnessed myself of what happens when you try to hold back.

  Back in the day, I remember when I was disappointed because there were already so many adventurers that their uniqueness disappeared—the same with creatures. When you simply have enough of something, even people start to act the same and have the same reactions to the same stimulus. It was what pushed me in the beginning to make new worlds and different kinds of dungeon rooms, but the bigger I got, the less uniqueness I saw.

  All of that changed when I saw an event happen almost exactly the same way once again, with so many variables so unbelievably the same. After that, I didn’t mind losing that uniqueness, and while I still chase it almost constantly, I have come to learn the amazingness of witnessing almost the exact same events in different places and at different times. In some ways, it’s even better than witnessing something new.

  So many times, I have seen a person who should have won a fight lose it just because they were holding back, even just a little. Was it because they truly didn’t want to kill the opposing party? Perhaps they saw that one of their opponents looked awfully similar to one of their siblings, and they held back just a bit. In the end, it doesn’t matter what the cause was. The result was the same—they lost because they didn’t go all out. They weren’t aggressive enough, and I have made the same mistake.

  Stolen story; please report.

  If it wasn’t for Vix, I would have ended. And while, from his own understanding, his talent didn’t give an exact premonition of what was going to happen in the future—it was just a possible future that could happen—the result was still the same in the end. It showed me my weakness. It’s not only my life at stake but everyone who relies on me, and I can’t do this if I don’t go all out.

  It took me some time to finally come to a proper decision, but the days I spent going over the memories I got, my own memories of past events and the results of their choices, made it clear in what direction I must go.

  No longer will I try to hold back anything. We must go all out. No more half-measures. No more holding back my strongest weapons. If I must come to an end, they won’t even understand the meaning of despair. They will come to learn why they should have never tried to control me or end me. They will understand what it means to be afraid.

  Most of my projects lay forgotten as I started to work on truly awful things. I did not want to do this. It disgusted me; it horrified me. Yet all of me was focused on it so I wouldn’t make any mistakes, so I would think about every scenario, and so that I would eliminate any possibility of this not working.

  Perhaps a younger me would have made a mistake, interpreted aggression as going to war immediately, and pumped out as many monsters as I could to destroy any trace of the forces outside. But no, I was now wise enough to understand that aggression didn’t always mean doing everything immediately. No, in this context, aggression meant doing everything you can to make sure that you win, no matter what.

  Slowly, I started to expand my territory downwards. If those dungeons were going to send their monsters toward me, they were not going to find an easy path. I made a maze out of my territory.

  The monsters that would come could not leave dungeon territory. They would weaken when they entered mine, but they would survive. So, because of that, I left large areas unclaimed, which would cause them to need to go around. My creatures, however, could survive there. That meant it was time to start designing forts that could attack any monsters that would have to go around them.

  For the first time in a while, I communicated with my creatures, more specifically the ants. They now understood the danger that could come from down below and the advantages we had. There was no doubt in my mind that they would be better at designing the fortresses that would be responsible for damaging anything that tried to invade me and reach my core.

  Slowly, I also started to expand my territory on the surface. It was time we turned that into a fortress as well. There were enchantments and possible artifacts that could be made to disrupt those dungeon-melting spells before they even got to me, but it would mean those defenses needed to be manned. That meant we needed dominion over the surface.

  It would take a lot, but I had so much mana stored up. We would take no real losses to take the surface—I will just flood it with endless amounts of platinum-ranked monsters, so many that even the diamond ranks would grow tired. And of course, when they’re tired, they would be easy pickings for our true elites.

  Now I communicated with everyone else about the plans that I had so they could also start inputting their ideas. There was no doubt in my mind, and soon everyone else reached the same conclusion: if we took the surface, we would be in a constant battle. There was one chance that we could stop it from happening, but from what I saw in the memories, perhaps even that would be too much to hope for.

  Still, I didn’t think they would know they were wrong before the end. For the first time, I started to tinker with the undead small pattern. It was terrifying enough as it was now, but it was too slow and too weak. If I was going to announce its existence, I was sure they could find a way to counter it. No, it was time to make it truly terrifying. I hesitated just a bit, but I now know what it meant if I didn’t act, so I started to change it.

  When this small pattern started to multiply in the outside world, in just a few days it would be completely unbound to me. It would need quicker multiplication, it would need to spread further, and it would need to be a lot stronger. Now, I wasn’t certain it could ever affect diamond ranks, but I was certain I could make it so that no platinum rank would ever keep their memories and would just be turned into unthinking undead.

  It took me nearly a month, almost concentrating everything I had on this horrifying pattern, but it was finally done. It will end, I was certain of it—the outside world in just months, perhaps at maximum a year. The current small pattern in the undead world had, a while ago, figured out how to survive underwater and propagate there, so not even the underwater world was safe from this small yet terrifying existence.

  It occurs to me now that this was the first planet killer I made. Of course, I would hope that it would be the only one, that I would never make another, but I think that would be a fool’s hope. As I continued to grow stronger, eventually my creatures would do that for me.

  It was time to give them the last offer of peace, but even that would just be to show my true strength, to show what would happen to them all if they didn’t leave me alone. They would witness what would happen to their world, and hopefully, I would make it clear to them that if I were to release this, they would be forever stuck in this undead world until even their long lives ran out.