Tasha awoke from her slumber, sensing something had changed.
The red gem above the magic pool now radiated a dazzling, mesmerizing glow, utterly unlike its former self. Upon closer inspection, the cracks and embedded debris had vanished. The garnet's surface appeared polished by the finest craftsman, smooth as a mirror. The dungeon's core rotated slowly before her, like a miniature planet.
But it didn't feel any bigger, Tasha thought.
"Awake? You're finally awake!" Victor's voice crackled with hysteria. "Do you know what you've done? Oh, you know! You're fucking the dungeon itself!"
Tasha felt inexplicably guilty for a moment, almost convinced she'd slept through half a century. She scanned the dungeon's interior and the ground visible from the watchtower. Everything was calm, and the people inside hadn't aged much since she'd fallen asleep.
"You drained the core's power to ignite the remnants of this place's natural will..." Victor rattled off a string of technical terms Tasha couldn't understand. "You literally set off a 'here I am' fireworks display in the sky! Not just druids—any kinfolk with even a fraction more affinity for nature than orcs could spot you from eight hundred miles away. Any human priest among them..."
"The Abyss and the Celestial Realm are both isolated, and humans clearly won't associate with outsiders," Tasha reminded him.
"So you think you're safe now?" Victor fumed. "Let me put it this way: any mage with decent insight can trace the source of this magic surge. A summoner who's made a pact with a nature creature could deduce the presence of a Heart of Nature from its familiar's movements. An experienced alchemist need only activate their compass. And a Grand Sage—the kind of high-level scholar every major nation sponsors—could even infer there's a crippled dungeon down here! "Well done, master! Just wait for the armies marching to subjugate you to arrive at your doorstep!"
"Worrying won't help now," Tasha said. "Besides panicking and shouting, do you have any useful suggestions?"
"I'm not panicking!" Victor insisted. "I'm just emphasizing the gravity of the situation!"
Tasha gave no clear response.
While Victor was ranting, she had questioned the Artisan Dwarf and the Amazon. Neither had heard of Mages, Summoners, Alchemists, or Sages. When she inquired about "powerful humans," the Artisan Dwarf mentioned pistols and other weapons, while the Amazon warrior dismissively stated humans couldn't compare to them in fair one-on-one combat. Even if their knowledge was limited and their information inaccurate, one thing remained certain: the professions Victor spoke of—the diverse adventurers Tasha had glimpsed in her dreams—were no longer part of humanity's conventional forces.
Things hadn't reached the worst-case scenario yet. Tasha wasn't prepared to "set off fireworks," but if this was the dungeon's response to her goal, she accepted the risk.
Tasha wanted to see the scenes from her dreams once more.
She wanted to preserve those beings—good or evil, beautiful or ugly, powerful or fragile—to capture the fleeting, multicolored meteors streaking across the river of history. She thought of stamp albums filled with sold-out issues, museums housing countless specimens of extinct species, botanical gardens nurturing plants from every corner of the globe... She wanted to build such a place—a realm where diverse intelligent beings could coexist, where different civilizations would thrive and flourish.
Clarity filled Tasha's mind. The haze that had lingered upon waking now lifted.
Like a nearsighted person putting on glasses for the first time, like hands wiping mist from a windowpane, Tasha distinctly felt the transformation within her. Her mind grew sharper and more agile. The segment managing the dungeon seemed to transform into some kind of intelligent system, effortlessly quantifying magical energy, calculating income and expenditure, and simulating consumption. She had been capable of some of this before, but now it felt like upgrading an old XP computer to the latest Alienware model. Deriving solutions required no effort whatsoever, and running multiple systems simultaneously was no problem. Within the dungeon, she possessed not only omniscient vision but also the mental capacity to analyze this "omniscience."
She swiftly organized existing intelligence, categorizing Contract Holder cards and dungeon structures. This consolidated information crystallized into Tashan's own character sheet.
Ruined Dungeon - Tashan
Attributes: Severed Abyssal Bond - Some powerful force severed your connection to the Abyss. Though the dungeon's core originates from the Abyss, you do not belong to it. / Affinity with Nature - The Keeper of the Heart of Nature contracted with you. The will of nature once cast a glance your way. Character Cards Owned: Clever Goblin Ah Huang, Dungeon Book Victor, Half-Blooded Werewolf Marion, Oak Guardian Contracted Factions: Artisan Dwarves, Amazons
Structures: Kitchen, Dwelling, Watchtower, Forge-Workshop, Graveyard, Training Ground, Herb Garden Skills: [Dungeon Master], [Suspicious Salesman], [Mana Healing], [Full Moon - Wild Call], [Heart of Nature (Fake)] [Workers' Strength][Reserve Elite Warriors] Among these skills, [Suspicious Salesman], [Full Moon - Wild Call], and [Reserve Elite Warriors] retain their original effects unchanged. The others feature new content.
[Dungeon Master]:Your omniscience within the dungeon ensures sound city planning and soil detection prevent the construction of structurally unsound buildings. You can move any object within the dungeon, though the mana cost scales with the item's mass—extremely inefficient and costly. Always delegate this task to minions whenever possible.
[Mana Healing]:Mana can only repair creatures of the Abyss. Entities from the Material Plane seeking such healing? Sell your soul to the dungeon.
[Heart of Nature (Pseudo)]: An aura of nature surrounds you—amplified by your core power, it shines like a beacon to certain groups.
[Workers Have Power]: Knowledge is power! Your strength remains largely stuck in the age of cold steel, though you grasp a smattering of arcane cannon lore.
The card's contents seemed straightforward, ultimately just a compilation of past information. As for truly new details... Tasha shifted her gaze to a corner of the card, spotting something entirely unfamiliar.
Title: Keeper
Tasha couldn't decipher this Abyssal term. Translating it as "Keeper" in English felt more fitting, though it carried too many interpretations. Custodian, keeper, guardian, overseer, master...
"I'd say it's 'nanny,'" Victor remarked darkly in his native Abyssal. "Given how you've been lavishing unnecessary excess kindness on creatures of the earth."
"Clearly, a whole lot of other things exist between world-ending destruction and excess kindness," Tasha replied disinterestedly. Her gaze drifted below the title, and her heart suddenly began to race.
[Keeper], Title Effect: Extract subordinate elements to form a physical body.
Form a physical body?
Without hesitation, Tasha activated the title effect. The dungeon core spun like a whipped top, accelerating rapidly.
The blue liquid in the magic pool swirled too, soon forming a vortex. The sparse magic within the dungeon spun, converging toward the center. Countless invisible "threads" connected to Tasha, like an invisible tornado. In that moment, Tasha's consciousness swept across the entire dungeon.
...
Groups of artisan dwarves hammered at the wreckage of the magic cannon. Its power source had long been absorbed by Tashan, and its intricate internal mechanisms were beyond repair. Yet the skilled craftsmen still managed to restore its outward form. Scrap metal salvaged from the wreckage gradually took shape under their diligent hands. Soon, it would likely regain its former peculiar appearance.
...
A brown-haired girl named Atlant sat beside her mother's bed, her seat next to her father. She was the youngest among the Amazon warriors, the one who had complained to Marion before the war about being restricted to using a shortbow. Her arm hung in a sling around her neck, her uninjured hand clasping her mother's. The gravely wounded warrior remained unconscious, still wrestling with death.
"Would you like something to eat?" her father asked.
Atlantis remained silent until her father gave up on an answer. Hesitating, he said, "Your mother never truly thought you weren't worthy of being a warrior. She just worried about you too much, just like me... We've always been proud of you."
His daughter still didn't move. He sighed silently, rose as he always did, and walked toward the door. Before closing the door, he heard Atlantis whisper, "I love you too."...
On the training grounds, Dora released another arrow. She'd been here too long. Sweat dripped from her nose and chin as the ache and exhaustion grew heavier, finally affecting her aim. The final arrow missed the bullseye. Dora let out a frustrated growl, flung her bow aside, drew her sword, and began hacking wildly at the training dummy.
Someone approached from behind, kicking the sword from her grasp. "Find an opponent who can strike back," the Amazon Queen said, glancing at Dora before drawing another longsword from the rack.
Dora gasped for breath, retrieved her sword from the ground, and charged at the queen, teeth clenched.
Exhaustion slowed the warrior's movements, and the queen was the strongest among the Amazons. The outcome was clear. The fight ended swiftly with Dora's defeat. She gritted her teeth and charged again, a second time, a third, a fourth, until the queen pinned her sword to the ground with her foot, preventing her from rising with it. "Is this what you wanted?" the Amazon Queen's voice rang out, harsh and unforgiving. "To destroy yourself like this, to repay the sisters who died fighting for our survival?"
"No...!" Dora roared, her voice choking. "It's my fault... it's my fault they—"
"It was them!" the queen cut her off. "It was those humans who attacked the Amazons! Those vile creatures slaughtered the weak! They set the trap and then raised their blades against us! Dora, will you bide your time and wait for vengeance, or continue wallowing here in self-pity, a useless coward?"
She tossed her sword back onto the rack, the golden headdress atop her head glinting in the candlelight. Dora knelt half-bent, her shoulders trembling slightly. Suddenly, light footsteps echoed from beyond the training ground. A dwarf peered inside, then, upon seeing them, beamed and trotted in.
"Good evening, Your Majesty, and you too, my lady!" he exclaimed cheerfully, thrusting a large pillow into Dora's arms, oblivious to the tense atmosphere. "They say you haven't slept in your room these past few days. I get it! Take this! It's a duck-down pillow I made myself—the best pillow in the entire dungeon. Tucker's pillows are ten thousand times better than the ones in the rooms! Ah, don't worry, Your Majesty! I'm still working on pillows for everyone else. Forgive me—I could've started earlier, but we never know what kind of people will move in next. Pillows need to be custom-made to fit the head's size. Making one without seeing the bed's owner? That's not how a good craftsman works!"
He rattled on endlessly about pillow care (like airing them out and how to keep them fluffy by beating them), then strode out, thoroughly satisfied. The Amazon Queen lifted the corners of her mouth almost imperceptibly, glanced at Dora, and left the training ground too.
Dora stood frozen, clutching the pillow, unable to move for a moment. It was incredibly soft. She licked the blood from her lips and began to feel drowsy.
...
Marion was on the ground.
By the time she saw this, Tasha's body was complete. A fragment of consciousness had been poured into it—a sensation akin to a ghost, yet entirely different. Her feet touched the ground, and she felt gravity for the first time in ages. She raised her hand and clenched it, feeling the sharp nails digging into her palm. This was a female body, as tall as she had been before, only healthier and stronger.
No, there was another difference.
Within the mirror-like shell at the dungeon's core, Tasha saw her own pale reflection. Where a human face should have been, there was a bony skull—not even human, but the skull of some beast.
"Canceling the head as a vital point? The chance of getting that undead talent from the extracted elements is less than one percent. You only have skeleton soldiers!" Victor said enviously. "You're one lucky bastard."
"..."
Tasha sighed deeply at the makeshift mirror, tapping her bony skull—it felt neither painful nor itchy. She shook her head, grabbed a random piece of clothing, and walked toward Marion on the ground.