“If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.”

Thomas Szasz

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Pain lanced through me. It was even worse than before, and it was growing. I was blinded by the pain. All my awareness, all my focus compressed into pain. For a timeless instant all my thoughts, my self, was shed, and I was nothing but agony. The moment continued on and on

CRACK!

I was aware for the briefest instant as the loudest noise I had ever heard resonated through me. The pain returned and all was lost again.

CRACK!

Endless agony.

CRACK!

I was lost in a cycle of pain and thunderous shaking until suddenly everything was still.

I rested. All I could do was revel in the peace, in the sheer bliss of not feeling pain. My thoughts floated, scattered; I had not felt like this since I was human. In fact… I was coming to wakefulness. All the world gradually shifted back into focus. My aura flexed around me, its threads hummed with energy. I could feel rock, and air, and water, and living things. And when everything came fully back into focus a slew of notifications made themselves known.

Dungeon Formed

Congratulations on founding a dungeon! All your powers are greater when acting in space set aside for the dungeon. There is one exception: Humans and other humanoid sentients will greatly destabilize your ability to act directly in their proximity. Certain actions or abilities may be exempt from this restriction.

+250 AP for founding your first dungeon!

Warning! Actions Taken!

Your core was at 7% integrity and falling apart. Founding a dungeon saved you. However, due to massive trauma, additional action was required. The nature of your very existence was changed to save you from destruction.

Self awareness found...

Current Name: N/A / Exsan invalid. Exsan personal name reapplied

Self-referential name “Caden,” applied.

Menu and displays personalized for sentient.

Congratulations on being alive!

-Due to severe healing (93%), this dungeon instance cannot be removed or left until it has properly synchronized. Current synchronization: 1%. Estimated time to full synchronization: >400 days.

Wait what...? Before I could look more into exactly what the hell that meant, more pop-ups appeared.

Previous Information Now Available

Non-critical information was withheld due to life-threatening conditions, it will now appear. Future notifications will appear in a small icon to be reviewed later.

New Skill Acquired

Pain Resistance III

Damage to your core, and other effects which induce pain, are less effective on you. Note that while pain is reduced, the damage is not. This is a rare skill for a dungeon, perhaps you should talk with a therapist about your self-harm issues? Maybe you shouldn’t have this skill.

Titles Gained!

Wounded Healer III

You placed another life above your own repeatedly.

--- Normal reward incompatible with species – reward will be adapted.

You are the first dungeon variant to achieve any degree of this title.

Title changed for new species, title is now:

Dungeon Martyr III (First)

You have demonstrated compassion and self-sacrifice, repeatedly, even as your own life was placed in jeopardy. These are not characteristics inherent to a dungeon. You are something new, and the first dungeon to bear this title. Be worthy of it.

(First) +1000 Ability Points

+700 Ability Points (100,200,400)

(First) +You may use your skills around and on other life, bypassing the normal restrictions, provided you have no ill intent.

+Easier to learn and cheaper to buy healing related skills (15% Discount)

Touch of the Grave I

You have brought someone back from the brink of death. You have touched the grave and the boundary of souls.

+100 Ability Points

+Slightly easier to learn and cheaper to buy life or soul related skills (5% Discount)

Dread Salvation I

You have brought someone to the edge of death due to your actions, and then made them truly grateful to you by bringing them back. Whether by deceit or accident, you have touched on both death and life.

+150 Ability Points

+Slightly easier to learn and cheaper to buy death and life related skills (5% Discount)

+Skills and titles relating to deceit are slightly more effective (5% boost)

Seen the Infinite Void

You have been to the surface of the world under your own power. You have seen the void of the sky and felt its corrosive touch on your aura. You have seen, survived, and returned to the depths of the world.

+100 Ability Points

+Your aura is stable a tiny distance above ground, or out of cave entrances

Investment Specialist

Your first 1500 Ability Points were spent on long-term investments. This investment can be be repaid many-fold over time. Try not to waste it.

+10% Ability Point Gain from Leveling

+Hidden (Reward Deferred)

Back from the Brink I

You survived that which should have killed you. Did you learn caution or boldness?

+100 Ability Points

+All skills are easier to learn while you are in personal danger. (10% increased experience)

Your status has changed!

Status

Dungeon Name: None

Name 1: Caden

Name 2: Exsan

Species Type: Dungeon Core

Subspecies: Twin Souled

Level: 3

Crystal Integrity: 100% - Undamaged

Status Effects: Current synchronization: 1% (>400 days)

Available Mana - Caden: 4/50

Available Mana - Exsan: 4/50

Passive Mana Generation: 63/Day

Next level: Costs 60 Mana

Subsections Available: 1

Ability Points: 2225

Skills: Directed Mana Absorption II

Limited Omniscience (Dungeon)

Soul Mana II

Dungeon Aura Expansion II

Manipulate Earth II

Learning II

Enhanced Aura Perception II

Ambient Mana Manipulation II

Meditation II

Interdimensional Repository II

Aura Mobility II

Destructive Assimilation II

Matter Fabrication II

Found Dungeon

Pain Resistance III

Titles: (Shared)

First of its Kind

Skill Evolution

Mana Specialist I

Escape Artist IV (Deception)

Dungeon Martyr III (First)

Touch of the Grave I

Seen the Infinite Void

Investment Specialist

Back from the Brink I

Titles: (Caden)

Reborn Soul

Titles: (Exsan)

Immortal Soul

What was I supposed to think? This… this was just too much to take in all at once. Ugh, I almost died again. There was some comfort in knowing that life after death existed. I had existed as just a soul for a little while before I was yanked and placed in a body here. Honestly I still had no idea what the real afterlife was supposed to be like. Unless this was a normal afterlife. How strange would the universe be if this was perfectly normal experience. My mind went blank for a minute. Yeah, I am not even sure what kind of cosmology I would need to imagine to make that work. I suppose that it was possible that everyone went through something like this. Everyone started out their first life then it just... never ended. They would be reborn and then just continue on, over and over again. Maybe not.

Why was I thinking about this again? Oh right, I nearly died again. I now had an answer for my old philosophy professor about how to get me interested in philosophical arguments. All I needed was a near death experience.

That and have other major philosophic questions I wanted to avoid. Like, what the hell does it mean that I am a twin soul with Exsan? My other half had just been impulses, but it had half the mana now. And I was going to need some of that mana to level up.

Well it was time to actually start cataloging changes. My crystal, my core, had gone through a drastic change. First was the most obvious. I was larger. Not just a little larger, either. I was… well it was hard to tell exactly. Five or six feet tall I would guess. If I had to guess I would say that was caused by forming the dungeon.

The other obvious change was more ominous. I was a different shape and color, ah... colors. I looked a lot more like a natural crystal now. A diamond shape where one end was elongated. Much of it looked perfectly natural, but other parts had a glassy sheen that I had seen before on pieces of obsidian. It was the look of a crystal that had sheared due to pressure. I was guessing that was because of the extreme damage I had taken.

My core now also contained different bands of color that bled into each other. A deep ruby red at the top, like I had been before I merged with Exsan. The more familiar purple that I had been until recently. And finally an obsidian black like the original dungeon core.

Unfortunately, I suspected that this was a very clear representation that my core was no longer a single integrated whole.

Oh, yeah, couldn’t forget that I was hanging in midair too. Wonder how that worked?

As I was musing a thought came into my mind.

I? What? Who?​

Well this feels familiar. Looks like I can have deja-vu as a disembodied crystal, yay for knowledge. These were most definitely not my thoughts. Nor could I call them thoughts exactly, either. I was feeling concepts. Oh, and on a positive note, I was not feeling any impulses or instincts.

This was not a hidden instinct manifesting through me. There was clear feeling of connection, but it was a connection. A knowledge that it was something other.

I felt at the shape of the connection. I think… I think I can send a thought down this.

Exsan?

There was no response. I tried to send feelings, proto-words like had been sent to me. There was no response.

Right, okay. So that feeling in my head had become a little more… individualistic. That wasn’t a problem, right? I laughed to myself and my internal laughter might have started to sound a little hysterical. Just a bit. I mean, I was just sharing… everything, with a dungeon that had seemed psychopathic. What could possibly go wrong?

I forced myself to calm down. Not like I could actually do anything about this, right? Even if this was the point where I would be yelling at a horror movie that the protagonist was an idiot. I… just needed to do what I could. For now I was going to act like nothing was wrong. I would deal with Exsan if he became an issue. Or if I actually found a method to influence the situation.

Okay, well, time to grasp the situation. First, the positive, I had saved someone's life. Even if I got a reward that practically told me I had been responsible in the first place. Eh… it was possible I got that reward simply because I felt responsible. I am not sure who I was trying to fool, because it definitely wasn’t myself.

Regardless, I saved someone. And even gained some nice titles in the process. To be fair, with the memories of that pain… I am not sure I could save them again. Not knowing what it would cost. It was done though, and I would have a much easier job healing people in the future due to my new title.

And the title about the surface… Honestly that sucked. I didn’t need sunlight, air, or the normal requirements of a human, but I did crave light. I wanted to experience more in the open air. I had imagined dungeon sections with a vast forest filled with rivers and meadows. I had specifically headed more toward the surface in the sewers so that I could get the materials to build that type of environment. Well… it said a tiny distance in the title. Huh, maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal. A tiny distance to a dungeon could be a hundred feet. I wouldn’t have the tallest trees at that height, but it would be enough to have a forest. Sadly it could be just an inch though.

Right, getting ahead of myself again.

Healed. Check.

Not in any danger that I can sense. Check.

Okay, I was going to stop for a moment and actually look at where I was. I had a few questions after all. Like where the hell I was.

I calmed myself and opened myself to my senses.

They were much vaster than they had been before. The area of the dungeon was… large. Much greater than everything I had held before. I simply could not hold all of it in my mind at the same time. I think that was why it was so easy to tune it all out.

Well, we start with the center.

The center is me. My core floats in the air where all the countless threads of my aura converged. They had changed too. I had far more threads in my aura, and the main threads were stronger. When I focused my aura sight the world almost seemed clogged with the fog of my own aura. It was dense and omnipresent, especially around me.

Below me was water. It was deep and dark and slowly flowed down and deeper into the earth. Water was everywhere around me. As my senses continued to expand outward I could feel it. Mostly it traveled in caverns that water had carved over ages, but in other places I felt it squeeze through porous layers of stone until hitting impenetrable rock and clay. Then it would pool or seep out elsewhere. Water dripped off stalactites. All through my aura I could feel the flow of water. It was dribbles here, a stream flowing there, waterfalls, and ancient slow rivers. There it carved away at the stone dissolving it with endless patience. And elsewhere it deposited what it had stolen, layer upon layer, age by age, it formed the stone with the immeasurably slow construction of nature.

And what nature had not given through water, was given by fire.

Far beneath, in a few locations at the edge of where I could reach, I felt water bubbling up due to immense heat and pressure. A few places it even reached the rest of the cave system, leading into hot springs, or exploding into steam.

Hmm. Should I still call them geysers if they expel underground?

Other places the water mixed with sediment into constantly burbling mud, and other places there was no water at all. There super-heated gas formed sulfurous yellow fumaroles.

Above me, there was another obvious clue as to the nature of the place I found myself in. The natural layers of stone changed into another type. I could feel basalt and obsidian. I could not say how much there was for sure, but my aura already extended into several hundred feet deep. I could feel the tension and structure of different layers deposited at different times, which were riddled with lava tubes and various minerals.

It was clear that I was near a volcano. And from all the hot springs and such, it was clearly at least semi-active. This seemed to be a good thing. Everywhere, emerging with the water and air that was forced up from far below, came mana. I could feel mana everywhere; it was just part of the environment, but the water and gas emerged practically glowing with it.

All of this was wonderful to me. It was beauty, nature, and power, but the life was what really mattered. Everywhere that I looked I could find life. Life in the water, life on the stone, and tons of it swarming around the rich nutrients brought by the geothermal areas. Huh, it looked like my dungeon had extremophiles.

I wasn’t really sure how to start a dungeon properly, but I believed that this was a perfect place to start from.