First Steps

Right as Mary said that a new status message appeared in front of her stating the update was finished. Right as she finished reading the message it blinked away and her status board appeared.

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Name: Marigold Spotter

Dungeon Epitaph: Locked

Title: N/A

Rank: 0

Type: Coastal Deep Sea Dungeon

Template: Locked

Affinities: Storm, Deep Sea, Soul

Bonds: Neira

Mana: 100 / 100

Mana/Hour: 10

Anima: 0

Floors: N/A

Minion Type: N/A

Improvements: N/A

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The board contained both a lot and a little information at the same time as Mary looked over what was written. Some of it was self-explanatory and others not so much. For instance she knew about affinities, but as far as she knew most people could only have one, and even then usually only a lower or higher affinities.

Affinities were separated into Lower, Higher, Greater, and finally Complex. Lower ones were common elements such fire, water, or air. Higher affinities were ones such as light or darkness, lightning, and metal. Greater ones were far rare and more powerful things such as time, space, or nature. Complex affinities were not necessarily as strong as Greater ones but they were far more versatile in what they could do. They were called Complex as they generally involved a fusion of multiple lower, higher, and sometimes Greater affinities. For example, her storm affinity was a mix of water, wind, lightning and Ice affinities. Needless to say she was quite surprised seeing she not only had 3 affinities but 2 complex ones at that.

"Wow, not bad considering you haven't even taken any improvements to add new affinities. Too bad you don't have any conceptual ones though, we could have made a SUPER strong dungeon if you'd gotten one of those." Neira chimed in over Mary's shoulder as she peeked at her stats.

"Conceptual? Also, how is this possibly just 'not bad' almost no one ever has more than one affinitiy let alone so many high-level ones." Mary did her best to convey her frustration as her affinities were ones most people would kill for just to have the opportunity to obtain even a single one.

"Oh, right, I forgot you were still new to the whole dungeon thing with how well you were taking this all in stride. See, don't forget dungeons are made to siphon and redistribute mana that's growing stagnant in the node. You can only do that if you have the right affinities for it. So most dungeons tend to have multiple affinities, more commonly complex ones as the various mana types get all jumbled and tangled around as they sit in the node. Though it doesn't always mean your affinities will totally match but general it will be at least an 80% match. In terms of dungeons, you're above-average for affinities but still miles away from the most talented throughout history." Neira rambled on, gushing as she blurted out information before stopping to take a breather.

"As for conceptual affinities, those are somewhat rare even by dungeon standards but make no mistake even the weakest of them would blow any of these out of the water. Conceptual affinities deal with the very rules of the world, things like Life, Death, Speed, Luck. They take a dungeon's ability to mess with the world and how it works and essentially multiply it several fold to the point it nearly touches on the domain of the Divine. So you can imagine how big of a deal it would be if you had gotten one of those."

Mary felt a migraine coming on as Neira casually explained things that would overturn much of what is currently understood about affinities like it wasn't anything important. The worst part though was that Mary didn't even have a head tog et a migraine. "Before we get into any more common-sense ruining topics how about we move on to how I am supposed to start building my dungeon. We've wasted a lot of time already and I'm sure the readers are getting impatient.

"That's easy, imagine a fog slowly pouring out from you and filling up this cave. Continue it until every single nook and cranny is filled with the fog and then imagine claiming the space as yours." Neira explained in a rather concise manner compared to her previous bouts of information.

Mary focused on trying to imagine the sensation as Neira described it and after a bit she felt it. A kind of ephemeral feeling, she felt her awareness growing as the fog expanded and filled the cave. Once it did she imagined claiming it for herself and almost immediately felt something click within her.

Congratulations, you have claimed an area and created your first room.

Rank: 0 -> 1

Templates now available.

"Perfect, now the next step is to clean up all this crap scattered around here. Just think of collecting or eating them." Following along with Neira's instructions Mary thought back to how she hadn't gotten to eat the night before she became a dungeon and chose to imagine eating the things around her, as unappetizing as that sounded. Mentally imagining eating everything in one bite with a small pop all the rubble, dead seaweed and moss, fish bones, and such all disappeared. At the same time she suddenly had the feeling that she could recreate everything she just made.

"You probably feel like you make everything that you just absorbed right? Whenever dungeons absorb something for the first time they will learn everything that makes it up and gain the ability to make it. Normally you would get some notifications about it as well, but I took the liberty of disabling them for anything under a certain quality so you're not just bombarded by messages." Neira informed her with a smug smile on her face as she flew over to sit on the pedestal that Mary rested on.

Speaking of, now that she had claimed the cave Mary could now move her point of view all around the room or even view the room all at once. Mary was now a shining deep blue gem roughly the size of a human adult man's palm resting upon a plain sandstone pedestal roughly 1.2 meters tall.

"Your next step is to spread your influence beyond the cave. I recommend you start with doing so in a sphere at least until you either reach the surface or the sea. Whichever one is closer, then we can talk about what kind of dungeon to build and more importantly which template to choose." Neira's excitement at finally starting to build the dungeon was infectious as Mary began to try and spread her fog-like presence into the surrounding sand and stone, eager as well to see what her future may hold.