A Dungeon's Job

Congratulations, You have bonded with Dungeon Fairy Neira!

Dungeon abilities will now begin syncing, this process will take a few minutes.

May the Gods bless thy path.

After accepting the bond with Neira a new message popped up in front of Mary. Staring at it for a few moments she eventually tore her gaze away from the screen she never thought she would see in her life. Everyone knew about status screens and jobs but not many actually had access to them. Generally only adventurers, nobles, and large-scale merchants had access to them. One would undergo a special ceremony in a temple to receive a blessing that would allow them to achieve inhuman power and abilities. Most people didn't undergo this for 2 reasons. The first reason was that most simply didn't have a reason to do it. After all, being able to produce 5 year's worth of harvest once sounds like a nice thing but when the only methods to get strong enough to have that kind of ability is doing hard and impressive work such as brewing a legendary potion or hunting strong monsters it kind of defeats the purpose when just doing either of those would earn far more money than the large harvest. The second reason, and honestly the bigger reason, is that most people simply don't have the money saved up for it. Considering it has the ability to make you inhumanly strong, massively wealthy, and at higher levels even extend one's lifespan the ceremony naturally has an equally high price tag.

One receives different levels of blessing depending on the level of ceremony they undergo. The blessing aside from giving one access to status can also bestow powerful abilities and even grant different rates of growth. However the latter two can also be achieved through other means aside from the ceremony once one has awakened their status. Regardless, even the most basic ceremony costs 2 silver Mild which for the average person is almost 10 years of savings. For some reference the entire world uses a measurement of money called Mild created by the God of Commerce, Travel, and Technology, Bothras. From lowest to highest the denominations are Stone, Iron, Copper, Silver, Gold, Diamond, Dragon, and Holy Mild. Each level of mild is worth 10 of the previous level, so 10 Stone Mild are worth 1 Iron Mild. While it fluctuates a bit depending on the location the average family of 5 spends roughly 1 copper mild a year on necessities and earns roughly 3 copper mild a year. As such while the common populace know about the potential benefits of the ceremony most simply don't see it as justifying the effort, cost, or danger.

"Alright I've accepted bond what do we do now? Also for the record, I'm Marigold Spotter, or well I was since I'm assuming I probably had to die for something like this to happen, but you can just call me Mary." Mary asked while looking at the anxious fairy as she came back from her internal monologue, it had been a while since she did that wonder what brought it on?

"Glad you asked Mary and unfortunately you would be right about that. But it's alright, once you get to higher levels you can make an avatar that's even better than your old body. That's beside the point, getting back to the main topic at hand though. Congratulations, you have been chosen through lottery by the Divine ones themselves to be part of a new generation of Dungeon Cores. Your job will be to grow your dungeon into a powerful and alluring danger zone full of treasure and death to aid the world itself." Neira positively gushed as a sparkle appeared in her eyes talking about this....dungeon.

"How exactly does Me being a murder trap help the world?" Mary failed to see the correlation between the two things.

"Oh! See there are these things called mana veins throughout the world that regulate and transport mana all over with some being big and some small. Sometimes a whole bunch of these flow really close together and after a natural disaster like an earthquake they end up merging into a giant Mana Node. Now these can be good and bad, think of them like the difference between a clean, flowing, freshwater lake and a murky, stagnant, swamp. Now the swamp-like areas can get really bad and nasty spawning all kinds of monsters and what-naught to combat this the Gods created dungeons. Dungeons are kind of like drainage canals in that they drain the excess mana from the node and help it flow back into the world in doing so. The bigger and more intense the dungeon, the better it can siphon and direct mana flow." Neira continued to prattle on, the words spilling from her mouth without stopping to the point that her face was starting to turn red as she did so.

"Alright, alright! Stop and breathe for a second before you pass out, we have plenty of time for you to explain all this to me, ok? Now, I understand all that about the nodes and all that but again, what does that have to do with me needing to be a death trap?" If all she needed to do was siphon and distribute mana she didn't understand why she needed to become what sounded like the equivalent to a Venus Fly Trap.

"Well that's because you need anima to grow. Mana can only be used to make temporary constructs as most things made with mana using magic will disappear soon after. Things made earth and ice magic stick around because you're manipulating the dust or water in the air and ground to stick together and harden rather than making it out of nothing. So one has to use anima, the building block of life together with mana to expand and improve your dungeon. As for what that has to do with being a killing machine basically, well..... the only way for a non-Divine being, even one as powerful as a dungeon to obtain anima is by...taking it from another living creature." Neira's voice got quieter towards the end and he looked down towards the ground as her hands clenched defensively like she was preparing to defend herself from Mary's expected outburst. After several long moments however, the outburst never came and Neira glanced back up at Mary.

"...Thats quite honestly a lot to unpack to the point I'm not even sure where to start with it all. Yet I do understand there's no real going back from all of this and that it's a job that needs doing regardless of how I might feel about it. So while I'm still not happy about being killed in my sleep and dumped in some random cave, my folks didn't raise some whiney brat who kicks up a fuss just because the jobs hard and dirty. So, as callous and sociopathic as it may seem my only real response at the moment is that it looks like we've got a lot of murdering to do. Now the question is, where do we begin?"