I felt like I should be hyperventilating. A nice panic attack would give me a way to deal with the sudden shot of surprise coursing through my mind. Not an incredibly productive way to deal with it, but it was a way for me to deal with it. As it was, I froze and stared at the message while the Gods continued their subdued celebration. I never would have thought it, but the gods appeared to be a generally calm and considered bunch, to my surprise. The mythos from the ancient stories of gods in my world was that of squabbling monsters, ungodly power packaged with a four-year-old’s anger issues and a teenager’s self-control. I was happy to see that most problems were solved with discussion and an almost statesman-like deliberation. Still, it left me feeling even further off-balance and without a frame of reference on how to deal with my newest problem.

When I’d been shanghaied into this universe, I was in a pretty horrible headspace. Ironic, considering I lacked a head at the time. I had been dumped by my long-time girlfriend, had just died after being roundly mocked on the news by a female news anchor, and my female doctor had failed to save my life. Both my magical captors had been male. Otherwise, I honestly might have gone in a pretty dark direction when dealing with women. As it was, I mocked the System only once with ‘Mr. BlueBox’ before deciding that Ms. BlueBox was a better, more mocking, term to use. It was a bit of harmless humor to keep me from losing my mind.

I wasn’t laughing now.

It was one thing to know that some faceless bureaucracy somewhere was making decisions about my life according to arbitrary rules. I had been a cubicle monkey for years. I was used to it. It was quite a different thing for that faceless bureaucracy to have power over the entire universe - beyond the abilities of even the gods - and for it to suddenly become aware enough to decide to enter into an agreement. It was a bit like discovering your neighbor owned a dangerous wild animal. Then having that animal speak up and compliment you on your work cleaning up your backyard. Sure, it was a compliment, but terrifying that it was happening at all.

With a distracted air, I watched the others. I felt like an outsider even as I knew that I could simply walk over and join in any of the conversations happening. It was like I was a boxer, punch drunk from too many blows. Instead of participating, I was distancing myself. I could feel myself doing it, knew I was doing it, knew it was a bad idea. But I couldn’t find it in myself to care. The first time I thought I had finally gotten a handle on things, that I was finally taking control and that illusion was ripped away. Yet again.

I blinked blindly and pulled up my status.

True Name: Dale - God of Space.

Race: Dungeon Core (Variant: Sapient) / Divine

Class: [God]

Level: 2

Mind: 5

Body: 1 / Not Applicable

Soul: 8 / Undefined

Skills:

[Mana Sensing]: Level 170

[Spatial Manipulation]: Level 500 (MAX)

[Will of the World]: Level 93

[Conjuration]: Level 99

[Etheric Pattern Formation]: Level 249

[Dimensional Sight]: Level 37

[Mental Magic Resistance]: Level 22

[Essence Manipulation]: Level 15

[Divine Knowledge]: Level 34

A single small page of text, something I could shove onto a business card, supposedly summed up my entire existence. Most of it didn’t even make much sense. It said I had a body of one, but it had said the same when I had only a weak dungeon core to hold my soul. Now, I had a physical form, or at least, what appeared to be a physical form. Rubbing my hands together, I tried to find any trickery in what I was feeling. I wondered if the skin I was touching was real or just some kind of divine illusion or magic trick. To all casual appearance, I was me again, slight stomach bulge and all. This was my second time with this body and arguably my third life. I wasn’t experiencing the jarring shift from one form to another any longer. I experienced a kind of odd disassociation with this calm—a general discomfort with how things had shifted around on me.

Deciding that I wasn’t comfortable at the party, surrounded by the gods, a place I wasn’t sure I fit, I decided to head home. Stepping sideways through the conceptual and back to the physical, I walked a direction where the physical wasn’t and ended up standing next to myself - my dungeon core self. Which was an entirely new form of disorientation. When I was purely a dungeon core, I had grown used to sharding other forms of myself to complete tasks. The process of having the memories reintegrate as those me’s finished their work became second nature. I hadn’t reached it yet, but I had been trending toward a hive-mind-as-one style thought process. Each me was me, and those me’s had all been me. An odd thought, but even weirder to live. Now, that trend had starkly reversed.

I was in the physical body and in the dungeon core, those other me’s were still me, but they weren’t my primary viewpoints. I always experienced both my dungeon core and my physical form. The other me’s had taken a less ‘real’ perspective. They were closer to hands with minds and a camera attached than they were a me that I thought of myself as. It was the difference between sending a drone somewhere and being there myself. I still remembered controlling the viewpoint and that me always did whatever I would have done in its place, but I didn’t feel like it was me doing it. My body and dungeon core perspectives felt more grounded, more real in some sense, even if I knew that wasn’t the case.

Standing in front of my pedestal and dungeon core, my body standing directly in the rush of mana, I crouched down to stare at my crystalline form. My physical eyes were seeing nothing but a stone, polished and well faceted. [Mana Sensing] was sandblasted by a deluge of raw mana, the intensity, and chaos like staring into the heart of a sun. But it was my [Dimensional Sight] which told the real story. I could feel [Mana Sensing] and [Dimensional Sight] dinging away with skill increases in the back of my mind. Still, I ignored the improvements while I stared in slack-jawed fascination.

In my core’s center, space was overlapped with a tunnel that stretched in multiple directions and pinned down with divine Essence. I had only once managed to overlap two different spaces over each other. When I had been desperately trying to trap and trick the miners/military deserters, I had overlapped part of my dungeon with a ledge overhang on the surface. I made the spaces overlap so that crossing under the overhang would essentially mean they were both inside my dungeon and on the surface at the same time. The wormhole through the center of my gem was a similar trick, amplified a billion times over.

Throughout my gem, where my dungeon core senses could not perceive, was a partially overlapped space from another universe. The trick was better even than my overlapping spaces trick - these spaces overlapped and had directionality. You could only exit the overlapped dimensions from this side but never enter it. All directions pointed outward. This universe’s space overlapped that other universe’s space, and it pointed inward! It was the perfect one-way valve. Nothing physical could enter or exit, but mana was always passing from that universe to this one. The gem acted as a physical anchor for the Essence that held my soul and the wormholes. Worse, I knew my soul wasn’t in the stone itself. It was tucked away through an infinitely long third overlapping space. It stretched through the same odd conceptual dimension that occupied no physical room within the gem but was clearly there.

My head didn’t hurt, but I would guess that was only because of my new form’s divine nature.

Despite what I had said to the other Gods, once I agreed to the New Compact, I had every incentive to find an escape - at least eventually. Studying how this dimension mana valve functioned looked like the perfect first step. It was the only example of cross-universal dimensional-fuckery that I was aware of, and it even came with the bonus of operating through divine Essence instead of mana. Now I just needed a project to experiment on.

I was reminded that one of my other me’s had to create silver, gold, and platinum trials because the orcs were blasting through my challenges. Though, they were getting back in line after each victory still, which slowed their progress. It was odd that the orcs were so well-behaved and organized. I still caught myself thinking of them as primitive, but it was clear they weren’t as primitive as they appeared from the outside. In truth, their symbiotic partner was the answer. They could live comfortably in conditions that would kill almost any other humanoid, which meant they were far less dependent on tools and materials. Literally, they really only needed a container to hold water and a place to shelter their weapons. Everything else was simply a convenience.

While my dungeon would be the perfect place to experiment, another shard of me was already taking steps to expand my dungeon using my mana. My second option was my little bubble world crossroads that I had encased in my dungeon with more spatial manipulation. Even though it would be the perfect place to play (it was my own personal playground, after all), I was still trying to avoid thinking about Ms. BlueBox and even my own dungeon nature. I wanted something totally disconnected from those things. It was avoidance, pure and plain. But I was going to indulge in it, figure out how Essence and dimensional games worked together, and then come back refreshed to handle the other…things.

I was a tad embarrassed that my divine body had been pacing and gesturing as I was thinking, even muttering to itself at times. Worse, I noticed it with my dungeon senses and decided to just ignore it. Stopping the pacing, I took a deep breath. I faced the possibility head-on that I might be experiencing some kind of dissociation or mental breakdown. Happily, my divine instincts informed me that I wasn’t crazy or evil. But then, if you are mad, you likely will tell yourself you aren’t crazy, and if you have to do a gut check to confirm things like that, it isn’t a good sign. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I let myself breathe calmly in the middle of the room. The surges of mana were blowing around me as the air continuously rushed past to be consumed and converted to other things. It was odd that I considered the hurricane-like mana stream and rushing air, the noise, and bluster, to be a familiar calming feeling. Still, I just let it rock me gently as I centered myself.

Eventually, I calmed my inner gibbering enough to notice the light niggling my divine instincts kept prodding me with. I still owed the dragon lady a bit more spatial manipulation - not much, but some - and I might as well use it as an excuse to experiment. I was running away from my problems and all the complications. I knew it. I was still doing it anyway. I was hoping this was more side effects from suddenly becoming a god/dungeon hybrid. If not, then I needed the distraction and time away from my issues anyway.