《I Became The Dungeon Master》Chapter 1: A new world
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How had life come to this? Laying on the floor was Eve. A salary woman, and she had just been hit by a truck while going home from her trash job. Her vision fading in and out, not able to move, only one thing came to her mind. "Fuck."
Waking up Eve felt a sharp pain in her head. Sitting up she rubbed her temples. "Where am I?'' She asked, looking around. She could barely see though. It was almost complete darkness. The floor damp underneath her and water droplets falling around her.
"I was sure I died after getting hit by that damn truck. And this definitely isn't a hospital." Eve got up and started walking. She couldn't see very well ahead of her but she felt she was going the right way for some reason. Like she was being drawn. As she walked torches started appearing on the path. Now that she could see, she realized it was in a cave of some sort. Then she reached it, a large door, she felt whatever was drawing her was right behind that door. So she pushed it open.
Behind the door was a great white hall, it was completely empty except a large silver orb in the middle of the room. Walking she couldn't take her eyes off the orb. She walked right to it. This was the object that had been calling to her this whole time. What had led her to this room. She placed her hand on the orb without any hint of hesitation.
"Registering Dungeon Master. New Owner Confirmed. Beginning System Install. Body Reconstruction is starting." Said a robotic voice that echoed through the hall.
"What System? B-body reconstruction?" Eve had a bad feeling in her stomach, and she quickly understood why.
"AAAAAAAHHH!" Eve fell to the ground. She felt like her body had started getting ripped to shreds. Her body was deteriorating and being rebuilt at the same time. Eve couldn't handle it, no normal person would be able to, quickly she passed out from the pain.
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When Eve woke up she quickly sat up. She took a scan of her body. Her clothes had completely fallen off but she didn't have the time to worry about that. All for the fact she was completely different. She was slim and she could instantly see her figure was nicer. Her back pain that she had been suffering from that was caused by sitting at a desk too often had vanished. Standing up she felt light and that she had grown stronger too. "Just what is happening right now?" She asked herself "Wait? Hello, Goodbye, How are you doing." She kept repeating phrases to confirm it but it was true. Not only had her outer look drastically changed, her voice did too. It had become soft and elegant instead of the monotonous tone she used to have.
"This is crazy...I think I remember hearing it say installing a system too?" And right on cue a page popped up.
[System Install complete. Say Status window to see the system screen.]
"This just keeps getting even more bizarre." She said rubbing her hand with her hand.
"Status window."
"Fwoop"
There it was, the status window. It looked exactly like it would in a video game.
[Name: Eve
[Titles: Dungeon Owner, Reborn One
[Level: 1
[Race: Demon [Reconstructed]
[Hp 500/500, Mp:1000/1000, Str: 300, Dex: 250, Luck: 100]
"Demon huh, I don't think I can even be surprised anymore, but no wonder I feel so much stronger. Plus these stats are pretty loaded.What about skills?" The screen swiped over to a page titled skills.
[Dungeon Management-lv1, Heavenly Demons Sword Style-lv1, Danger Detection-Max, Presence Hider-Max, Cold Blooded-Max Cool Headed- Max]
"What overpowered sounding skills, All of them are pretty self explanatory."
[Tutorial]
[For a dungeon to be a dungeon it needs monsters. Go Hunt goblins and collect their souls of monsters to raise the strength of your new home.]
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"I guess this new life isn't gonna be easy. But on the brighter side I'm in a whole new world. One full of fantasy creatures and so much I haven't seen before and have only seen in games and read in books." Eve felt her heart thump, she was excited?
"So um, how do I get to the entrance, system?"
[As long as you choose you can instantly go to any place in your dungeon, just say go to entrance]
"Alright. Go to entrance." And in an instant it was like space was torn in front of her. Walking through it really had taken her there in an instant. Another large door was in front of her. Pushing open the door a large gust of air came through. The sight of a large grassland and trees stretched as far as she could see. But right before she stepped out she looked down.
"Hey system, how do I get clothes...."
[...]
Clothes appeared in Eve's hands, they looked the the cloth a commoner would wear in a medieval game.
"Thank you..."
With clothes on now she started walking, the cold breeze and the sun on her face felt so nice compared to inside the dungeon.
"How do I find goblins?"
[The forest, there are many animals in the forest along with monsters. Goblins are some of the main monster populace.]
"Can animals also be used to grow the strength of the dungeon or Is it solely monsters?"
[Animals can also be used to grow the strength of the dungeon. Not as a monster to defend, but as a means to strengthen monsters already defending. although the souls of regular animals are much weaker than even weak monsters souls]
As Eve walked she kept asking questions to the system until she eventually spotted a goblin. Its skin looked like vomit and its head was overly large with pointy ears. It made her feel a bit sick just seeing it. But now she needed to know how to kill it. She had no weapon and the only fighting skill she had was a sword technique. But then she remembered one of her other skills.
"Presence Hider" She took a deep breath and started walking to the goblin. "As expected of a max level skill. It’s totally unaware." She thought to herself. It didn't take long before she was behind it. Slowly putting her hands around the head of the goblin with a quick twist the goblins neck snapped in an instant. She felt surprisingly calm killing this Goblin, she didn't have even a hint of hesitation.
"These skills truly are terrifying. To think I could feel nothing after killing something. Would this be considered a blessing or a curse?"
Suddenly a white orb drifted out of the goblins corpse. As it rose it made its way closer to Eve, slowly drifting to her hand and sinking in.
"Ding"
[First ever soul collected, this is only the start of your journey. Hunt 4 more goblins to complete the tutorial quest.] . "Well then, let's finish this up as quickly as I can." Going through the forest she gradually did the same to other lone goblins. Staying away from any packs of monsters she came across while also hunting animals that she came across. Until eventually It had become nightfall.
Eve breathed out a sigh as she looked at the sky in between the blanket of leaves that were over her. "What a start to my new world life...
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- In Serial20 Chapters
Sword System Academia
2/17 NOTICE: I'm putting this on hiatus, possibly permanently. I didn't want to spam with an "update chapter", so hopefully here and in the story blurb will get enough eyeballs. There are a couple reasons for ending SSA for now. 1) I wrote the next chapter but wasn't happy with it. I've been less and less satisfied with SSA's quality the more I thought about it. Part of the reason is... 2) I am seriously thinking about trying to publish some novels to help pay the bills, since I don't have my other source of income anymore. I have never asked for anything from SSA readers, no money, not even a review or rating. SSA is written for fun to amuse myself, primarily, and I would kind of feel bad actually charging someone money for something as unserious as that. I don't think it is good enough to ask anything in return. To use an analogy from music, SSA is more like a jam session with a bunch of friends. You're just chiling and having fun playing some music. I mean, if you are Mozart or even Eminem, your jam session is good enough to sell, but for an amateur beginner like myself, haha, no. If I want to publish something, I feel like I need to go the proper route of practice and rehearsals, which might be more similar to a classical concert performance. With SSA, I work from worldbuilding notes and a loose outline, but what you are essentially getting is the first draft with lots of so-called pantsing. Pushing out a web novel like this also means it is very difficult to go back and improve things without breaking everything else downstream. I wanted to try this "jamming" approach, as it was a good way to teach me about another aspect of writing, but to move forward, I think I need to hone my "classical" techniques, which emphasize rewriting, or at least, revising outlines. 3) While I intend to try to make $$$, my actual current goal is to "get gud". I've spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the self-publishing industry, and I'm pretty sure I can make some money by using short-term strategies with my current amateur skill level. But I've seen too many authors come and go/burnout, and really, the only way that I think I can enjoy writing and still make money on a long-term basis is to become a better writer. And the next step for me, which I haven't done much before, is to spend more time on rewriting and outlines. That is pretty much antithetical to the way SSA is developing. I've always been kind of 20/80 plotting/pantsing, but I want to spend a lot more time outlining before I even start writing. SSA jam sessions don't really fit my goal anymore. If you're curious about what's next, read on... Among other regrets, I regret not finishing SSA. It's the first story I've dropped, but then again, it's the first web novel I've attempted, so I suppose that's not a surprise. I don't think traditional web novel formats suit me that well. The whole SSA story I had loosely planned (beyond a first book or major arc) is way too large as well. Big story = good for neverending webnovel with Patreons, bad for penniless and fickle writer like me. I am currently outlining a complete trilogy to another story in great detail. I want the story to end concisely, and I also want the chance to really spend a lot of time on the full outline to spot pacing problems, character issues, lost themes, and so on. I'll still share this story on RR. What I intend to do is finish book 1, flash-publish the whole thing here for a few weeks, then publish on the big Zon. Repeat for books 2 and 3. The upcoming story will be about crafting heroes. The backdrop is an isekai-like setting, where elves will summon humans to their world as heroes, but the whole hero crafting business is still in its infancy. The elven mage researchers are figuring out how to imbue heroes with power, while the heroes are trying to figure out how to use the powers that they gain. Humans are the best hero templates because they are blank and have no intrinsic magic. Or at least that what the elves thought. The human MC has his own secrets... There will be some similarities with litrpgs, but I would call it more a progression fantasy or gamelit story. For example, the stats are very low, at least initially. Say we have a stat called Str. Going from Str = 1 to Str = 2 is a huge deal. Also, going from Dex = 0 to Dex = 1 is an even bigger deal. I guess you could call it a "low-stat litrpg", haha. Also, the heroes won't be gaining stats simply by killing things or leveling up. You can't increase stats arbitrarily, either. There will be rules to how stats can increase, and how they work with each other. The elven mages will be figuring out these rules in order to craft stronger and stronger heroes. Some inspiration will be from cultivation magic systems, but there won't be overt cultivation, at least for now. A theme I really want to explore is the idea of interactions. That includes things like hero crafter vs hero, tactics vs strategy, skill synergies, racial interactions (dwarves, elves, etc), and son. Yeah, so hero crafting. I'm super excited about this project and venturing into publishing. If you want to check out the upcoming story, you can follow my RR author profile to see when it drops here. Finally... THANK YOU TO EVERYONE! I'm very sorry that SSA is stopping, but I hope at least some of you will find the next story at least as enjoyable, if not more. Thanks to all the readers who gave SSA a shot. Big hug or solid fistbump to all of you, whichever you prefer! I hope this message is not a downer but an upper, because I am psyched!! -purlcray -------------- BLURB: Talen, youngest Master of the Koroi, makes his way to the Empire's capital to salvage his clan's fate. But the bustling city has few opportunities for the traditionalist. For the old sword clans are fading. With the rise of alchemy, gold can purchase strength that ordinarily took years of training to cultivate. Sword artists, once rare and accomplished, are quickly growing in number, especially among the wealthy noble class. Even with such alchemy, though, no one has advanced to the rank of Grandmaster in countless years. Talen's true dream is to walk the path of a sword artist to the very end while fulfilling his clan duties. And then the Swordgeists return, fabled founders of all sword arts, gods who had touched the world long ago and vanished. These myths turned into reality warn of a coming threat. Alongside this warning, they issue an invitation to the Sword System Academy, a path to power beyond the mortal realm. But first, they will hold an entrance exam... Story notes:Sword System Academia blends elements of western and asian fantasy such as xianxia and litrpg. I took parts from different genres I enjoyed and twisted them into my own creation. There will be an explicit system, both of the litrpg kind and the hard(ish) magic kind, but it is embedded within an academic structure that will develop over the course of the story. This is my attempt to design a unique type of system, the System Academia.
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