Prologue

Blackness. That was all that surrounded him. He could see, smell, and hear nothing. For a moment, the Great Mage Arcius wondered if he was confined to the Abyss. Only for a moment though, as he quickly remembered his predicted fate. So then, he thought, this must be the ‘waiting room’ before reincarnation. I shouldn’t be here too long, after all, I took steps to ensure I retained my memory.

After Arcius finally succeeded in casting Destiny-attributed magic for the first time, he discovered his predetermined next life, and spent his remaining few centuries learning everything he could that might be of use. After all, his fate was not to reincarnate as a human, elf, or even any of the other races. Instead, his fate was to be reborn as: a Dungeon. He had even taken the risk to travel to the worlds of science, such as Earth, Nexra, and Li’Tri’Ah, where magic was notoriously unreliable at the best of times.

After waiting for what felt like a long time, although it was probably much shorter than his lack of sensory input led him to believe, there was a sudden flash of light. The next thing he knew he was standing in a room. The room was rectangular, and he was standing at one of the shorter edges. There was a simple but comfortable looking bed along the wall to his right, and a wooden desk with an intricately carved jade tablet on its surface along the wall to his left, both of which were placed at the far end of their respective walls. A window was situated on the opposing short wall between the two, and out of it, Arcius could see stars. Not like the night sky, but as if the room was in space, beyond the atmosphere. Arcius looked down at himself to see: a human body.

What. The. Fuck. He was human. Again. He put in, all of that effort, to prepare himself for being a Dungeon, and. He. Was. HUMAN! Were the Gods playing a sick joke on him? He knew he worked the magic right. Every other vision he saw in the spell came true, so why? Why did he not become a Dungeon? He wondered, Is it because of the spell I worked to retain my memories?

“Relax, boy, your vision wasn’t false.” a deep voice proclaimed from behind him.

What the F-. Arcius whirled around, but there was nothing there except a simple wooden door. “If you wish to know the answers, step through the door.” the voice spoke again. With only a moment’s hesitation, he did so, and everything went black once again. When he could see again, he found he was sitting on a wooden throne of some sort. He looked down to see that it was floating high above a sea of golden clouds. Looking around now, he noticed 15 other thrones. 14 were like his, but one, which he assumed belonged to the voice’s owner, was much larger, and seemed to be made of obsidian.

The other occupants of the wooden thrones were a mix of various races. He recognised the races of six of the other occupants: two elves (one male, one female), one dwarf (male from the size of his nose), and three beastmen (two wolves; both female, and a rat; male). The others, however, were of races he didn’t recognise. Three of the thrones held some kind of humanoid tree, which were nearly identical in appearance save for one having green leaves and the other two having brown. A sign of gender perhaps? Or maybe age? One held a kind of snake-man, which wasn’t a beastman, as they could only be mammals. It had the upper body of a human, albeit with scales and a snake head, and the lower half was all snake. Two more held humanoid slimes, one green, and one blue, with no discernible features of any kind. The final two held humanoid roaches of all things, with two pairs of arms, ending in insectoid pincers.

The obsidian throne held a man that looked like a human made of black smoke, with glowing white flames for eyes. As the other occupants stopped looking around, he spoke again. “Welcome all of you. I am the High One, Creator of the Gods. You may refer to me as CoG.” The beings, Arcius included, gave their races version of an intake of breath at that. There was an instinctive sense of Truth about the beings words, as if reality itself were being regulated to make its claim Absolute.

“You are all wondering why I have brought you here. I shall tell you. Recently, in order to prevent the death of the universe as a whole, I destroyed and rebuilt one of its segments. This is a mandatory process: by splitting the universe into segments and then destroying and rebuilding them one at a time after they ‘expire’, I prevent the universe from expanding to the point of collapse, thus ending it entirely. Having done so, I gathered you all here to begin one of the first processes of rebuilding.”

Suddenly a massive globe appeared in the middle of the circle of thrones. It was of a seemingly lifeless world, about half covered in water, with only two continents, one about half the size of the other. They were next to one another, with and expanse of water about the width of Italy from Earth between them. There were numerous islands, including a small grouping of them in the middle of the water on the other side of the planet from the continents. There were also polar ice caps about the size of those on Nexra, so maybe two thirds the size of those on Earth and Nelcrus? There were three mountain ranges on the larger continent, and one on the smaller continent, which had a volcano on one end. The larger continent also held a few volcanoes. Finally, there were some lakes and rivers on both continents, as well as two canyons on the larger one.

CoG spoke again, “This is the first world in the new segment capable of holding life. It is at one of its earlies stages of development, and currently only holds Prokaryotic Cells as in terms life. You will each now take on the role of a Dungeon God. You will create the first Dungeons on this world, and will be responsible for creating the life that it holds. Each of you will endeavour to try and produce a sentient race, of which you will be its Racial God.”

Arcius burned to ask this question, but was beaten to it by the female elf, “Sire, the most sentient races I have ever heard of existing even on the oldest worlds is seven. Is 15 not an overly large number?”

CoG nodded at this, almost seemingly pleased that someone had asked, “That is true. Although you will all possess the goal of bringing forth a sentient race, naturally you will not all be able to do so. Sentient races are tricky things to produce, being incredibly complicated and resource costly, regardless of how you develop your Dungeon. It doesn’t matter if you use science or magic, it still takes a much grander amount of resources to make them. Those who fail to produce sentient races will become other Gods within this new world, and the most promising races from all Dungeons, sentient and non-sentient, will be duplicated and spread to the other worlds inside this segment of reality upon their formation.

Bear in mind that you will also be competing with one another at times. You may team up, if you so wish, or face off against one another. The only thing I will forbid in this regard, is outright destruction of your opponents. Instead, when you come into conflict, you will lay out the terms of victory and defeat, and accept them upon winning or losing. Should the condition of your defeat be your Dungeon’s dissolution, you will be transported to a random location on the world that is not overly near another Dungeon, and shall start anew.

You will now all look upon the world and decide your staring locations. You shall be given the option to choose in order rotating clockwise starting at the serpentoid after me.” That was the snake-man, and Arcius was located eight beings after him. “You will be given up to an hour to choose upon being asked. If you should desire more time to choose, then say so, and you will be temporarily skipped until the end. At that time, you will choose, regardless of your desires. To look into the world, merely concentrate on the globe. You are all viewing different iterations of it, so one being moving it will have no effect on the view of the others.”

One of the tree-men with brown leaves chose now to speak, with a voice so deep, it rivalled CoG’s, “Sir CoG, may I ask why I have retained my memories?” With a start, Arcius realized that none of them had lost their memories. His remaining was expected, after the effort he put into developing a countermeasure to the memory loss, but there was no way the others had used the same method. So how were their memories still present?

CoG spoke, “That is because I chose to let you keep your memories, as they can be useful to a Dungeon God, at least at the later ages.” Arcius couldn’t help but groan internally. All that time and effort, he thought, all that research into creating a spell to let me keep my memories, and it was all for naught!

CoG chuckled suddenly, and looked at him, “No, human, your efforts were not for naught. In fact, it was the ingenuity you demonstrated in creating your memory retention spell that led me to choose you as a Dungeon God. For the record, your spell would have worked near perfectly, except it would have made spawn as a Dungeon in the Abyss.” Now that was a terrifying thought. The Abyss, was an existence of Unreality, and would have obliterated him in mere moments, trapping his soul forever within, without any hope of future reincarnation.

“Now then, all of you, begin to choose.” CoG spoke one last time, before turning to the serpentoid.

Without another moment’s hesitation, Arcius dived into observing the world, anxious to find a good starting point. He didn’t possess the greatest amount of geology knowledge having focused mainly on Physics, Chemistry, and Biology during his time in the worlds of science. However, some of the information he had gained in those areas led him to knowledge of geology that was pertinent, and he was quite thankful of that now.

Looking at the globe of the worlds, Arcius began to mentally list the things he would need for an ideal start location. First, he had learnt that the first life forms on worlds where life developed alone tended to come from the oceans, as it was easier for the first forms of complex life to develop there, other than some plants. In order to maximise his efforts to build, he needed somewhere in the oceans then. That discounted nearly half the world immediately.

Next, he needed some kind of geothermal hotspot, probably near a fault line, but at such a position that he was unlikely to have his Dungeon torn a sunder by earthquakes and mountain formations in the future. He needed this so he could use some of his enchantments to maintain a decent temperature in his Dungeon to try and bring his lifeforms into being faster.

Just from these two requirements, he’d narrowed his options down to five areas already: an underwater valley in the ocean between the two continents, an underwater volcano just to the south of the smaller continent, another underwater volcano to the east of the larger continent, a geyser of some sort in the ocean on the opposing side of the two continents just south of the pole, and an area in the islands opposite the continents. He was able to use the mana concentration to narrow his choices further, as geyser and eastern volcano were both at background levels.

Looking over the globe again, he noticed that four areas had already been claimed for Dungeons, marked clearly on the globe. The serpentoid had claimed one of the two canyons on the larger continent, which was the area with the highest mana concentration on the planet. A roach-man had claimed the volcano at the end of the mountain range on the smaller continent, which had the second-highest concentration of mana. The next two choices were made by the wolves, and had little to do with mana concentration. Instead, they had picked two islands, one next to the other, located just to the south of the smaller continent. Either they were planning on aligning, right from the start, or they had a serious bone to pick with one another that would be coming to blows shortly.

Thinking about it, Arcius realised it would be in his best interest to start away from as many of the others as possible. He hadn’t really been one for people in his past life, and was not exactly skilled in politics, for want of a better way of putting it. Being close to the others would mean having to deal with such matters, and that was something he didn’t want. Looking over his choices again, while one of the tree-men chose the northernmost mountain range on the larger continent, Arcius decided to go for the islands on the other side.

Unlike the other locations, there wasn’t some obvious geological formation, such as a volcano or a valley, at the islands, instead, there was a point where the crust was oddly thin, allowing greater amounts of heat through. The islands themselves, looked as though they were formed from previous incidents where magma had burst through the crust, leading to the islands as they appear now. Each island, seemingly as a result, had a somewhat low mountain at its centre, with a few looking like long extinct volcanoes. Arcius chose a point underwater located almost directly in the centre of the various islands.

One definitive advantage he would find here, would be that he now has more time to prepare his Dungeon before using his enchantments to control the magma. He may even be able to exert greater control over how it will form his future island for whatever spawns in his Dungeon. In theory, he could even bring about a new continent, although he had decided against that early on upon knowing the true circumstance of his rebirth, as this could lead to some of the others allying against him, out of fear of what he might do, and out of greed for the new land. No, better to settle for an island or two instead.

Satisfied with his decision, Arcius now sat back, and observed the three remaining beings before he could make his choice. It didn’t take too long for them to do so. The dwarf had chosen the second canyon on the larger continent, one that was riddles with caves. The rat had chosen the centre of the largest flatlands on the smaller continent. Then, another tree-man chose, this time selecting the eastern shore of the southernmost lake of the larger continent.

Now it was Arcius’ turn. He swiftly spoke, “I choose are underwater in the middle of the islands opposite the continents.” Some of the other looked confused by this, although the dwarf did not seem surprised, and the tree-men looked… well he didn’t really know what they thought of his choice. Their faces seemed to be incapable of expressing emotion. CoG, however, just nodded, and assigned him that location.

All he had to do now, was wait for the others to finish choosing their locations. These went by faster, likely because they had already had plenty of time to choose. The green slime chose an island relatively far off the western coast of the smaller continent. Next, the female elf chose the northernmost volcano on the smaller continent, followed by the blue slime picking a point on the easternmost coast of the larger continent. Then, the remaining roach-man chose the westernmost volcano on the larger continent. The green-leaved tree-man selected an island in the middle of the lake on the smaller continent. Finally, the male elf chose a point between two unclaimed volcanoes in the north of the larger continent.

With this, all of the selections had been made, and the globe vanished. CoG spoke once again, “When we are done, you will return to your rooms. To do so, merely leave your thrones. This room shall be off limits except for meetings. Meetings will occur every million years to begin with, and more regularly at later stages of development, in order for everyone to be provided with an overview for the development of the world. Any other meetings will be called into session by myself should I feel the need to do so. Do not make me need to do so.”

Everyone got that message: there would be no need for additional meetings unless one of the beings present messed something up. “Other than those meetings, I also require reports sent once every millennium on any significant happenings within your Dungeons. To do so, simply place your hand on top of the carved jade tablet on your room’s desk, and think ‘Report’. You will then be able to compile and send said report. To alter your Dungeon, do the same, but think ‘Dungeon’ instead.

Other than that, you will be able to leave your room and make use of the various recreational activities available here. Don’t worry about finding yourself here by mistake. Your doors only lead here when a meeting has been called. One last detail, you will each find, upon your return to your rooms, a helper. They will be there to guide you through the process of managing a Dungeon. Now then, you may leave.” With that, CoG vanished.

Swiftly, so too did the rest of the beings, Arcius included. Upon returning, he looked around to find his helper, only to see: nothing. No helper, or change to his room. Suddenly, he heard a throat being cleared behind him, and whirled around to see CoG leaning against his door. Arcius spoke, “Uh, CoG sir, what is going on?”

The smoke making up CoG’s face almost seemed to form a smile for a second before he spoke, “I thought you’d be the first to notice my statement giving permission to call me CoG rather than sir. Now then, I have not given you a helper, can you guess why?”

Arcius pondered this for a few seconds, before replying, “I’m guessing it’s because of my research.”

“Correct on the first try.” CoG confirmed, “You are the first Dungeon God to have been even partially aware of their fate prior to death. As a result, you did extensive research into many subjects, ranging from the basics of running a dungeon, to the most intricate mysteries of life. As a result of your extensive studies, you are actually more knowledgeable about Dungeons now than even my best helpers.

Because of this, I’ve decided that you will be a trial run, of sorts. I am going to observe you more closely than the others, to see how you, someone who came prepared instead of being thrust into this role, fare against the others, who were indeed thrust into this role. Depending on how you do, I may even apply your circumstances to future Dungeon Gods on future worlds. No pressure, and good luck.” With that, CoG vanished again.

Sighing, Arcius decided to get started. After all, even without CoG latest info, he had a lot to do to get ready. He sat down on the rather comfortable chair at his desk, placed his hand on the tablet – which he now saw held a carving of a massive tree growing out of the new world, as though it were a seed – and thought ‘Dungeon’. Everything suddenly faded away.