The Dungeon Core woke up. Not for the first time, though it could hardly remember the last time, but it had never felt so alive before.

  It extended its senses over its dungeon. So different now than when it had gone to sleep. The dungeon had grown into the vision of the man who had last awakened the Core. The man who had first breathed life into it.

  Monsters roamed its halls, worked its forges, and swam in its rivers of molten iron. The Core felt beautiful, more beautiful than even the man had dreamed of when he had put the Core to sleep. He had told the Core it would be beautiful when it woke up, when it arose from the sleep of changing, but he couldn’t have known how beautiful it would be.

  It reached out and checked on its denizens. Magma Eels, with their ironclad scales, swam in the rivers, basking in the heat of the molten iron. Forge Goblins worked at their smithies, crafting countless pieces of armor and weapons before melting them down and crafting them again in an endless cycle. Fire Sprites darted through the air, playing their games that none but them understood. Ash Golems stood guard between the outside world and the room the core slept in.

  And the Ashen Mother, its guardian and greatest creation, lounged languidly before it. Ready to take on the greatest of challengers. She would be the prize of the immortals who called themselves ‘adventurers’. Just as it prized her.

  It could still feel the human city above his dungeon, its people so unlike the Core, but still so similar. They had hopes and dreams, ones that echoed in the Core’s mind. It would wait for them, wait for them to find it, wait for them to delve into its dungeon. They would come and fulfill its purpose, and it would give them shiny objects from its lists. A symbiotic and loving relationship.

  It extended its senses out, trying to understand why it had awoken. Its monsters did not need it, and it could not feel an adventure within its halls. Satisfied it was unneeded, it began the slow process of falling back to sleep. Just as it was about to enter its most dormant state, it awakened again. An adventurer was standing at the entrance. The Core loved him already.

  There were other creatures there too, not adventurers and not the Core’s monsters. That made them unimportant at the moment. The Core reached out and touched the data coming from the adventurer. He was level 10, his class was Necromancer, and his name was Arturus.

  The man who had made the Core beautiful had also warned it about adventures like this. He had called them solo players, though the Core did not understand what the term ‘player’ meant. The man had warned that solo players like this one were usually stronger than they first appeared. They were the type that would grind through every monster in a dungeon, gathering all the experience they could.

  However, the Core’s own data indicated the necromancer class was one of the high-risk classes. They functioned by reanimating the corpses of fallen monsters, but its dungeon’s denizens, except for the weak Forge Goblins, did not leave behind bodies to reanimate.

  The Core would need to watch this solo adventurer closely. The Core wanted to anyway, as this was the first adventurer to grace his halls. While it had little wiggle room on difficulty, it had enough to make this a rewarding experience for Arturus.

  It would do this because it loved adventurers. It loved Arturus.

  It soon learned that the entities that were not adventurers nor monsters were undead summons of Arturus. The Core watched in amazement as he worked way through the dungeon. How Arturus could juggle fighting and the health of all the summons amazed the Core. Whenever a summon’s health would drop to zero, Arturus was waiting and ready with a spell. He reanimated their bodies just as their health zeroed out, but before they could crumble to dust.

  By the time he had reached the Ashen Mother, the Core had stopped holding back and was now increasing the difficulty as much as possible to give the man a challenge.

  When the Ashen Mother fell, it began putting together a list of items for Arturus to choose from. The system, having been quiet so far and allowing the Core to do its job, marked a particular item that Arturus might have an interest in. Adding the item, the Core pushed the list towards Arturus.

  The Core felt something akin to surprise as Arturus chose the item that the system had picked out. A mask the color of bone with glowing glyphs etched on its surface.

  Arturus hid the item away before turning and speaking to someone the Core could not see. The man from the beginning had said something about this to the Core. There would be adventurers who would talk to forces that the core could not see. They would speak as if friends were near when none were. These individuals were called streamers. The Core could not understand what water magic had to do with talking to someone that wasn’t there, but it had accepted it as a thing, regardless.

  Despite that, this felt different, like Arturus was speaking to somebody inside the dungeon that it could not see. His eyes tracked an unknown figure, first around the room, then over to where the core rested within the walls. It had to be a fluke; the man had said that adventurers would not even be aware of the Core’s existence.

  Dread filled the Core as it felt itself move through the wall. Its blue light filled the boss chamber as it emerged from the stonework. It tried to fight, tried to stop itself from being pulled free, but it had no autonomy of self.

  Arturus spoke, but the words were lost on the Core as it impotently fought against its extraction. It felt itself being changed; there was another inside its controls. Changing the things the first man had made it beautiful with. The core felt itself destabilizing as the changes were pushed through. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The dungeon was not supposed to be changed while the core was awake. The dungeon needed time to change, and the core had to enter the sleep of change. But this adventurer and the unseen one pushed these changes forward while it was awake.

  The course stability hit fifty percent, and the core heard a voice coming from in front of itself tell Arturus that anymore and the whole dungeon would collapse. The core extended its senses over its beautiful dungeon and took in the damage that had been done.

  The rivers of molten iron had stopped and cooled, never to flow again. Forges lay dormant and fallow, never to be graced with productivity again. Resurrection anchors, which would have once allowed the core to bring back all the monsters within the dungeon, were gone, and worst of all, the Ashen Throne, the source of the Ashen Mother’s power, had been destroyed.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  The core wept as it surveyed its once beautiful dungeon, now twisted and hideous. As the unseen man forced it back into the wall, the core fell into a deep slumber.

  The Core awoke much later. It did not know how much time had passed, but it could sense Arturus within its halls. He wore the mask the system had suggested the Core give him. It obscured his identity from the world, but not from the Core. It could see that Arturus had grown many levels and now led a small group of people into the dungeon. He felt worried for these men and women. Worry about what Arturus may do to them, after what he had ordered done to the Core.

  Instead, the Core watched as, one by one, these men and women pledged their allegiance to Arturus and received a mask that matched Arturus’ own. The core knew that evil grew within its walls, but could do nothing to stop it, could do nothing to protect the world of adventurers that the core still loved.

  It needed more time to rest and recover, to regain stability so that it might end this threat to itself and the world it loved. So once more the Core slumbered.

  When it woke again, it sensed something new within its walls, an adventurer who would not bow to Arturus, who would not bend the knee to the man’s madness. Arturus himself had changed; he was now halfway to the apex of his kind. No longer a necromancer, he had a new class. One that filled the Core with fear.

  Necro Drifter. An ominous name for an ominous man.

  The Core didn’t have any records of what the man’s class was. It was new and novel and terrifying to the Core.

  It checked itself over. The repair work had taken a long time, but it still hadn’t gone above sixty percent stability, but that was enough that it could fight back without hurting itself beyond repair.

  The Core watched and waited for the moment it could fight back. It needed to have the perfect opening to expel this man, who had once been the source of such joy in the Core.

  There were more men and women around Arturus. All wearing the same mask that the Core had given him so long ago. Arturus smiled devilishly from behind his mask. He wanted something the man had in his possession, and the Core grew curious. This man was only level two, with a strange class of ‘Prisoner’. The Core couldn’t fathom what Arturus could want from him.

  Finally, Arturus stopped asking. He moved forward and stabbed the lower-levelled player through the heart with his bare hand. As blood sprayed across the stone, the core mentally screamed. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to go.

  The man vanished in a spark of blue light, leaving behind a small pile of items. Arturus kicked through the pile searching for something. Finally, he found it. A small locket glowing with a deep red light.

  The dungeon Core had to search through its records for any hint of the item, finally finding it on the forbidden list. The core normally could not access the forbidden list. It was full of items deemed too rare, strong, or valuable for the Core to generate within the halls of its dungeon, but one being present gave it a momentary access path.

  [Item]

  Celestial Locket

  Type: Celestial Relic

  Description:

  This item will allow the user to ascend beyond the confines of mortality and reach the Celestial Tier.

  Warning: One Use Only

  Discoverer:

  Arden, The Prisoner

  This was bad.

  The Core knew that if Arturus was allowed to hang onto the object that he would become too strong to stop. The Core made a snap decision. Using the integrity it had regained from years of sleeping, it reformed the Ashen Throne and summoned the Ashen Mother, empowered past what should have been possible, into the world. It was the Core’s best hope. Normally it would never allow a ‘Boss’ monster to leave its lair, but this once it made an exception.

  The Ashen Mother flew swiftly through the halls. Past the few adventurers within who idly wandered the Core’s once beautiful, but now destroyed, dungeon. The Ashen Mother found Arturus as the locket enraptured him. She grabbed him and began dealing damage, but it wasn’t enough even in her stronger state. Arturus had too many ‘friends’ around. They grouped up and killed the empowered Ashen Mother before she could finish the job.

  From that point on, Arturus made it a point to always leave a group of adventurers within the boss chamber. He couldn’t know that the Core itself was rebelling against him, but he understood the dungeon could not summon its boss while they were there.

  Heartbroken and damaged, the Core fell into a deep slumber once more.

  Once more it awoke with no idea of how much time had passed. Arturus was again within the dungeon’s chambers, but his group had grown. The Core didn’t know how they could recruit so many villains to defile the Core’s dungeon, but it hated him for it. Arturus was now level ninety-nine; he could almost use the locket. He would ascend to the upper echelons of adventurers.

  It listened in on what they were saying. Arturus was planning a raid on a high-level dungeon. His stream—the Core knew the word but still didn’t understand—would need to see him earn the artifact. Once they killed the boss of that dungeon, one of his underlings would hide the locket amongst the debris, and Arturus would ‘find’ it.

  A cunning ruse that would hide the man’s misdeeds, though the Core felt sorrow for the Core of the dungeon they would do this in.

  The ground beneath the gathered adventurers suddenly shook. In fact, the whole dungeon shook. Even the Core shook within its walls. It was a peculiar feeling.

  All the adventurers present looked up at the ceiling as if there was something there that the Core could not see. Something meant only for adventurers, and Arturus’ face grew red with rage.

  He lashed out, his anger and temper getting the best of him as he killed his comrades in a fit of rage. They tried to fight back, but the once-necromancer reanimated the corpses of the fallen as they died and set them against each other. He hadn’t lost his gift for quick reanimation even all these years later. It was a bloodbath as the man tore through every single one of them.

  When the last fell, Arturus swore to the heavens. A name that the Core had never heard before. Arturus swore his vengeance against ‘Annika’ for usurping his position as the first. Then he pulled the celestial locket out from a hidden place and put it against his heart.

  His plan forgotten, the Necro Drifter ascended to the Celestial tier within the halls of the dungeon that he had once bastardized. The energy released during his ascension shook the walls as it whipped out from his body. The pure force of the magic tore into the Core itself, damaging it beyond its ability to self-repair.

  And for the first time, the Core felt pain. Immeasurable and all-consuming pain. It hated Arturus, the man it had once loved so much, hated him with a passion that would consume it.

  The Core once more fell into slumber, a slumber it would never awaken from again. Not until a young man would once more pull it from its stone womb. This man was different. The Core could feel the love and compassion in his heart. He loved the Core, and once more the Core opened itself up to loving again. It hoped that this man could love it enough to do the one thing the Core had left that it could ask.

  The memories faded from Elijah’s vision, his eyes tearing up at the emotions he felt from the Core. He had seen the Core’s whole life, from the start of the dungeon until now, and he knew that there was only one thing he could do to help it and complete his quest.

  “Bo?” Elijah’s voice was weak and full of grief as he spoke. “I know what we have to do, but you aren’t going to like it.”

  Bo crooked an eyebrow at him. “What’s that, Elijah?”

  “I have to kill the core. It’s too damaged to make any changes. It… It wants to die.”

  Bo took a step back with a gasp. “Elijah, that’s insane. You’ll cause the dungeon to come crashing down on our heads and the heads of everyone here.”

  “I know, but I think that’s the only option. If you’d seen the things I saw, you’d understand.”

  “Do what you think is right. I’ll stand with you.”