Day 0

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When Claudia wakes up, she can only see an unfocused fog and everything turns and twists around her.

‘Ugh – Focus, Claudia, focus and concentrate. Left is at my feet, North is hammering at the back of my head and Peppermint is that way … what kind of direction is Peppermint anyway? I don’t remember drinking last night, and my twentieth birthday party was a week ago…’

After what feels like an eternity, but probably is more like five minutes, the hammering in my head lessens and I can see what is around me.

I stand on some form of island made out of glowing green blocks in a river that consists of ghostly shapes, and a sky that shows multiple galaxies moving around in a different green glow. To one side of the island are four pedestals with three statues of ghosts on them. To the other side is a modern but empty desk, with a person in a black suit sitting behind it. When my eyes fall on him, he begins to speak.

“Greetings, Claudia White, are you coherent now?”

I quickly check myself – yep, what part I can see of my arms and body looks to be like a transparent grey ghost with somewhat fuzzy borders. Either this is a very bad dream or this is some form of afterlife.

“I think so,” I answer “but why does this look like the tower of hades section of that action RPG game? What is going on?”

“A while ago you died, and your soul has travelled the afterlife, slowly forgetting your life from the end to the beginning. This would have continued until your soul would have lost all memory and be ready to be reborn – if I didn’t fish you out before that.

And because no mortal soul can comprehend the Afterlife, your sub-consciousness provides an image of an interpretation of something similar, something that you knew in your old life.”

My first suspicions are confirmed – looks like a lot of the fanfictions have a base in fact. Or are some people truly remembering something similar? And why doesn’t he fit in this game but look like someone straight out of Man-in-Black? But that would most likely mean…

“Who are you, and what do you want from me? You probably had a reason if you really fished me out of this river of souls…”

The man begins to smile “Good, you are one of the quick ones – I so hate wasting time with explanations.

I’m what you would call a Higher Power – no god, neither of the Christian nor the Greek variants, but one of their troubleshooters. And I get to fish out souls to help me solving some problems.”

“Am I to believe that you just randomly select people to mess with for some nebulous purpose?”

“Not exactly – while the fishing is completely random, I usually get several hundred tries to find someone who can handle the current task, and if I find a truly exceptional soul I can freeze it on these pedestals there to use in a later, more difficult task.

You are at neither end of the possibilities, and are actually the third soul that meets the minimum conditions for my current problem. Which isn’t much to say, as those minimum conditions are only knowledge of System-Fantasy-Type worlds without being too strictly opinioned in how such a System has to work.

You can now either choose to jump back into the soulstream – which would continue to erase your memories from the twenty years currently left to you, until you are ready to be reborn – or you can try to convince me to use your soul for my current task.”

‘OK, having all memories erased would be second best – unless this Man-in-Black is one of those agents out to truly screw me over like in a lot of those reincarnation or isekai fanfics. I suppose I have to ask for more details.’

“What can you tell me about that task I would have to do?”

“I don’t want to waste time with details when I don’t even know you can handle this, so in general it is a classic System Fantasy with Dungeons, souled Cores and Adventurers. And as usual out of fear and greed some adventurers are conquering and controlling most of the dungeons despite that stalling almost all further development on that world.

Most cores have animal souls that are advised by dungeon pixies. They very rarely have local intelligent souls, but we sometimes send human souls from other worlds there to try to fix the problem – but that hasn’t worked so far despite several hundred tries.

The problem of that specific world is that there are requirements for dungeon growth. The mortals don’t understand those requirements, resulting in the growth of conquered dungeons usually ending around floor 20 or 30. Even without that, the animal souls are normally not intelligent enough to get beyond floor 50, when the rules get trickier. The pixies assigned to those animal souls help a bit, but they aren’t miracle workers either.

Because of this we are willing to modify the system for a small number of experimental dungeons. That is what I’m offering you – control of a dungeon with some modified rules IF you can give me an idea how you would handle this.

Ideally you would find and give proof of a way for future dungeon cores to grow deeper, but currently I’m also willing to settle for an exception that just let a single dungeon grow to floor 60 or 70 as that would help buy more time for other tries.

So you would have to convince me to send you to this world instead of throwing you back into the stream. There are only two limits to this: your imagination and out-of-the-box thinking on one hand, and a somewhat limited energy budget to make your proposed changes reality on the other hand.”

I begin to muse about this ‘Being locked into an unmoving crystal while controlling a murder hole – no thank you. But breaking those restrictions might actually be the key to the solution.’

“What if I have a realistic, living Avatar – not demonic like in Dungeon Keeper, but more or less regular looking – and then pretend to be someone who luckily gained control of the dungeon earlier or pretend to work for a mysterious figure who already controls the dungeon.

Then I would build with features that look more like a controlled dungeon – for example teleports to bypass early floors to get higher level parties down to where they want to go, just not entirely down to the core. How about that?”

A computer-like screen (blue of course) materializes behind the desk and the being bend over to check a few things before answering “That idea has some value. You would need to use stairs for those bypasses and a few other differences where your idea does not fit the rules of that world, but all that can be handled easily.

But you would also need to be able to leave the dungeon and to build outside of it as a proof that you aren’t a dungeon monster, and that can’t be allowed without further restrictions.”

‘OK, he didn’t reject that out of hand. But he wants more restrictions. And despite that I would need a bit more help for this idea, at least some reasonable contact and advice on the civilization there to proceed. So what to ask for and how to phrase it…’

“If I’m teleported back to the dungeon if I go farther away than about like 5 miles or so, then I would have to have a contact that can tell me about the land I’m in and how everything operates. Otherwise there are too many chances of honest mistakes due to missing knowledge.”

The Power makes some calculations before answering “The dungeon rules are always explained by a pixie – no need to change that. The contact or contract would only be for info on civilization and how adventurers handle the system, but that would also be up to your negotiations.

Usually a core or its pixie can form a contract with someone reaching floor 10 as a bonus gained for building that floor. I can change that to someone in the outside influence range, but 5 miles is too much of a range there. We are talking about a medieval society with limited travel options after all. And that still doesn’t address the limit of building outside the dungeon itself. What can you think of to build outside?”

‘I doubt he’ll let me build a village over the dungeon with that comment, and I wouldn’t have the people to populate it either. But I need at least some building there that can double as a fortress and/or an interaction point like an adventurer’s inn or a dungeon shop.’

“Does that world have Towers as an alternative to Dungeons? And could I build some hybrid and pretend that the upper floors are some Adventurer’s Inn or so?”

“No, that world doesn’t have Towers,” the man thinks out loud “but that would actually be in your favor. No one would expect a Dungeon to build up instead of down, and having a Tower-Variant of the regular dungeon restrictions is acceptable to that worlds System. But now we are coming up on the limits of the budget, and having a weak Avatar would make your idea fail very soon.”

‘Shit, I’m drawing a blank. The thing is obviously angling for something or he would have dismissed me already, but asking a Power for a Boon almost never ends well in any of those stories. But I don’t think I have a choice here other than accepting oblivion.’

“I agree – I need to be powerful enough to handle regular customers either as adventurers in the dungeon or as guests to an inn above it, but those are two almost opposite form of skills or powers.”

‘That’s as open as I can word it without directly asking for a Boon…’

The man’s face lights up and he snaps his fingers “Handling and controlling people in multiple ways – that reminds me of some other tasks down the line that I never considered using a dungeon for until now.

I’m also tasked with introducing a few new races and classes to that worlds adventuring guilds. No crystal core could do for this, but since you want a living avatar you would quality for that. And since you won’t need a new home or something to keep you fed, the energy to provide that could go to other things.

Let’s check those options – Schiriak’Tzah, possible but not ideal, Sareni, that could be a go, Cwareen, no, that would require an aquatic dungeon, and the rest of that list is not fit for adventuring at all, hmm – Sareni or High Sareni it is.

Your Avatar would be rather powerful and be able to handle most regular opposition – G to E rank adventurers should be no problem even at the beginning. But you would have some dietary requirements that you’ll have to use dungeon mana to compensate for until you can handle them for real.”

“Dietary requirements – you’re not proposing to make me a vampire type, requiring to drink blood, are you?”

“Oh no, perish the thought. I can absolutely promise you that you don’t have to do or eat anything that you haven’t done or eat in your past life on Earth either. It would just be a requirement instead of a choice, and you would get enough additional budget for a small nest-egg as a dungeon as well.”

“And it isn’t a monster or hunchback type form that would scare away everyone?”

“No, don’t worry – the main racial power of the Sareni is a limited body transformation, and one of that limited number of forms is a human. And you’ll have both combat forms and cute forms to use where you think they are needed.”

“And it would be wasting your time to ask for more details on this Sareni race, right?”

A beautifully wide – and silent – smile is all I get for this.

‘Shit. I know he is up to something with this. Stow it for now, Claudia – try to get as many advantages as you can without falling into another trap.’

“I think the best contact for me, especially if I have to turn it into a contract, would be a reasonably honorable travelling or adventuring merchant type. Is that possible?”

The being in the black suit frowns at that. “I can’t really guarantee who travels first to your dungeon, and manipulating that on top of our current decisions would cost too much energy. We should begin your transfer to your new world, do you agree?”

‘So he already got what he wanted and I have to think fast to get some extra from him’ I start to think quickly how to phrase my probably last words around here.

“But we haven’t discussed the dungeon placement at all. So unless you neglected to tell me about some very important facts at the beginning, you should be able to look for a mostly honorable travelling merchant and then place the dungeon in a way that his or her next camping site is within range of the dungeon. That would also give a good chance for other resources for the dungeon around, because merchants usually don’t travel to poor regions when looking for profit.”

The frown turns into a pout of some sort before the Higher Power speaks again. “You’re right, and it is a reasonable request to be placed near a common camping site on a trade route. However guaranteeing that meeting would require you to meet at the end of the first day, otherwise the merchant might decide to change his route.

Are you sure you want to do this? You will probably need at least a few days to handle the dungeon. But if the merchant is several days away there is a chance of you missing them.”

“Do I get an alert if something comes into range? Then I would settle for a high probability of the merchant stopping in five to seven days. And what normal access would I have to traps, monsters and so on?”

While I’m speaking, everything begins to slow down and become fuzzier. But I still hear the last answer clearly.

“Don’t worry, that will be handled by the System in the usual way. The pixies will probably send in your assistant in an hour or so depending on the Systems preparation for a transfer ritual. You also get some resources and a few books about your race and class as a starting help from me.

But one last suggestion: Don’t absorb those books as dungeon treasures, at least not until you read them for yourself…”

The last part is almost lost when everything around me fades to black.