Dungeon Robotics (Book 4): Cascade

by Matthew Peed

  Mana flowed into her nearly nonstop. Lightning flared in arcs all around her body, burning her clothes off again. All I could do was watch as her body was forcibly changed. Her muscles and organs changed in a process that must have felt like being burned alive. They changed to materials and organics that were more suitable for lightning. I saw as her lungs and heart changed, her mana pool doubling at the least. It was like the world was forcing her into tier three.

  After a day, her internal makeup had changed completely. Her outer appearance started to be affected, but there was a problem. She was nearly out of mana. The ambient mana was forcing the change, but her internal mana was fueling it. Louella had long since lost consciousness, so I couldn’t ask her what she wanted me to do, and I was worried if the process stopped, she might end up in a semifinished state, or worse, die.

  Unwilling to let that happen, I rapidly changed the room. Rods emerged all around her, which I linked to my solar collectors. The amount of light they gathered was easily converted into shocking levels of electricity. I could have just created the lightning manually, but that could have led to her being changed by the dungeon as well.

  Soon, several billion volts of electricity were striking throughout the room. A swirl appeared above Louella, then all the lightning in the room was pulled into it. The changes happening to her body sped up with the influx of mana. Her skin turned a deeper blue white. Where before it was as if she looked a bit cold, now she appeared to almost have ice on her skin. Her ears twisted a bit, not like an elf’s, who have long pointed ears, but they still gained a bit of length. Her shoulder-length hair grew until it was about to the small of her back. The color stayed the same platinum white it had been after the first change.

  I suddenly felt another presence in the room. It didn’t quite feel malevolent, but I wasn’t sure that meant much. I readied myself for whatever was about to happen.

  “Finally! A body that can host me!” a voice sounded out from all around.

  “Sorry, but she is already taken,” I said out loud.

  “Puny . . . what are you?” the voice started to say when I felt it focus on me.

  “I could be asking that of you,” I retorted as I prepared several different spells.

  “Me . . . ME! I AM DUILIN! A CELESTIAL OF LIGHTNING!” the voice shouted at the top of its . . . lungs, I guess.

  “Oh, a Celestial,” I said and shifted my spells a bit. “Care to answer a few questions for me?”

  “Impudent mortal! I have a body to get used to!” Duilin shouted, then I felt his focus shift.

  “Not today!” I shouted back.

  All the spells I’d prepared while he talked went off at once. Energies of all types bombarded the area until one type, a mana version of gamma radiation, collided with something. Drawing all the spells to that point, I channeled a tremendous amount of mana in what was basically a net made out of all the conceivable types of energy I had encountered so far.

  “What! What is this?!” the voice shouted in panic.

  “My anti-Celestial spell. I have a war to fight with one of them, so I made several different kinds for multiple encounters,” I explained as the net drew tighter around the entity.

  “Please! Stop! I’ll . . . I’ll leave!” he begged, but as I’d explained to Louella before, I wasn’t going to pass up on a pawn when it attacked me first.

  “Sorry, no can do,” I said, then adjusted the frequency of the spell so it constricted a bit faster.

  “PLEASE! I’ll answer those questions!” Duilin shouted.

  I pictured a man groveling. “Oh, yes, you’ll answer those questions,” I said with an evil grin on my metal face.

  “AHHHH!” he screamed as the spell compressed him to the size of my head.

  I pulled out an intricate mithril cube with enough spell script on it to break a person’s mind if they tried to decipher it. I slid a slot up on it, then forced the ball-size Celestial into the cube and closed the latch with a satisfying click. I wouldn’t be sure it would hold until the Celestial attempted to get free, but I felt confident it would hold him until Louella was done with her change.

  With that done, I turned back to Louella. Her body was nearly done altering, the encounter with Duilin only having taken about a minute or two. The swirl above her was losing strength, so I toned down the lightning feed until the swirl vanished. I turned it off completely and ran my hand over her body to get as deep and thorough a scan as possible.

  Louella had broken through to tier three, and of the tier threes I had examined in my aura, she was the most powerful. Even compared to Valamar, who I’d transformed a while ago. She would have been the better when comparing just their bodies. Of course, Valamar had much more combat experience than her. With Louella in a stable condition, I sent Malaki back to Ezal to explain the situation. I wanted to keep her there for now, until she woke up and we had a decent look through the changes done to her.

  ~~~

  A week passed before Louella regained consciousness. Ezal was able to keep the town calm by explaining that the lord was sick, and that she was recovering in her manor. It turned out the common cold was un-curable no matter which planet you went to. A person actively gave out more mana in their aura when they woke up, so I knew she’d regained consciousness when I felt a spike from the station.

  I set down the cube, and a voice called out, “Wait! Don’t leave me here. I can only see the wall. At least turn it toward the window!” Duilin begged from inside the cube. After a week, I was pleased that the cube was holding him just fine. With him as my only test subject, it was hard to know if it was foolproof, but Celestials didn’t fall from the sky every day.

  I thought over our last question spree and decided he deserved a bit of a reward. I turned the cube so that the window was in view of the little port on its surface. I tapped the cube’s top once, then said, “I’ll be back in a bit. We’ll continue then.” As I walked out, I ordered a maid to keep the room in order.

  Duilin groaned audibly from the cube, and I started to shift it back toward the wall. He practically screamed, then said, “Of course! Whatever makes you happy!”

  I gave him a sinister grin, then shifted it back. I left the prison cell and made my way over to the medical bay.

  Louella was standing and looking around the room for something. I immediately realized what it was when she covered herself up as I walked inside. I created a completely heat resistant outfit for her and held it out. As she took it, I said, “If you don’t want people to see you naked, then stop burning your clothes off.”

  She gave me a sour look but quickly dressed. In a gesture of good faith, I turned my back to her. When she was done, I turned back around. While most people might not care about clothes, I felt Louella wore them well. It was an armored dress, which would have been the best way to describe it.

  I scripted it so that a minor barrier would be generated whenever she channeled mana into the clothes. Considering her body was now constantly putting off mana, I felt they would have been a good draw for the excess. I could clearly see it being a problem for a person to constantly put off that much mana on a regular basis.

  “Not. Funny. Thank you, though. These clothes feel amazing,” Louella said as she moved around a bit.

  “No problem. Please wait a bit before you level up again. I will have trouble keeping up,” I replied with a mocking grin.

  “I would prefer not to have to go through that again,” she groaned.

  With a laugh I said, “I bet. Would you like to meet the Celestial that tried to take your body for a ride?”

  “What, now?” she asked, surprised.

  “You heard me, a Celestial tried to take your body for a ride. Apparently you were compatible with him,” I said with a chuckle.

  Louella gave me a creeped-out expression and shuddered a bit. Though, it looked more like she was vibrating when she did. She made to move toward me and nearly shot across the room. I looked at her curiously. I hadn’t sensed her actively use he
r mana as most cultivators did when they wanted to move quicker.

  “Whatever happened to my body is nothing short of amazing. I can say that with assurance. However, it will take getting used to. My movements, my mind . . . everything feels like it’s moving in slow motion around me,” Louella explained.

  It made sense, the nervous system was basically electricity, so if her body conducted better, then she could respond faster. The same for her brain; she was literally processing information faster.

  I moved next to her and placed my hand on her head to do a scan now that she was awake. Sure enough, her neural pathways were firing at nearly ten times their normal speed. I also noticed that she couldn’t maintain it for too long or her body would start to have a negative reaction. Likely, this was something she was supposed to unlock gradually. I adjusted the script on the dress to absorb more mana, then, when it was passive, funneled the excess mana into the dungeon. Personally, I was pretty impressed with the amount she was putting off by herself.

  After explaining my actions to her, I nodded when she accepted the verdict. Then she said her head had already started to hurt. I did make it so that if she needed the edge in a fight, she could deactivate the script on command to have access to the excess mana as well as the increased thought processes. I also set it to slowly reduce the amount the script was absorbing so that she could adjust to it gradually.

  We walked to the prison cell, Louella enjoying the design of the station along with the view. When I’d fallen to the planet, I’d figured that it was roughly twice the size of Earth, but my guess had been off, way off. Just from the section I was able to see from the station, I could calculate that the planet was nearly four times the size of Earth. When considering reasons why the gravity wasn’t crushing the inhabitants, I could only attest that magic was involved.

  It wasn’t far to the prison cell. I had, of course, installed teleport arrays throughout the station, so a quick password let us into the section. When we got to the room, Duilin was singing in another language, one that even my dungeon ability had a hard time translating. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was a bad singer or because the language had no proper translation.

  “Duilin, I’m back,” I called once I entered the room.

  “Mr. Regan, if you’ll wait a moment, I only have ten more verses left in my song,” Duilin said.

  “You have plenty of time to sing later,” I retorted, then gestured to Louella. “Louella, this is Duilin, an old soul that was a bit of a mad scientist roughly four thousand years ago and has been trapped in limbo since he tried to make a new way to reincarnate himself without starting from scratch, mainly by stealing someone else’s body.”

  “Excuse me?!” Duilin shouted, ignoring my introduction. “The song of Teriso the Conqueror can never be sung in less than one sitting. Even invading armies are required to wait until its completion,” he said, offended.

  “Wait. An old soul?” Louella asked.

  “Sorry, I don’t know a Teriso, so it’ll have to wait,” I said coldly, then turned back to Louella. “Yup, a Celestial that tried to bite off more than he could chew.”

  “So much dishonor! However, I will shoulder it for you, Great Regan!” Duilin said, keeping to his own conversation. He paused for a moment, then added, “By the way, what mountain are we on?”

  “Mountain?” I asked, confused.

  “Yes, mountain. I know these stars but not from this angle. So tell me, what mountain are we on?” he asked again.

  I picked up the cube and pointed it down while I made the ground transparent. The planet in all its glory appeared before us. “Sorry, my friend. No mountains,” I said with a chuckle.

  “Sweet fates, are we in the heavens?! Have the Arcarins returned?” he asked excitedly.

  “Arcarins?” I asked back. Every time I talked to him, I tended to get a good amount of information. It was a good thing he seemed to like to talk.

  “They left Murgin an epoch ago. They had levels of magic that could destroy entire countries. Thankfully, they were an inquisitive race and never sought to use their power for gain—you know, past the usual stuff.”

  “Ok, so who were the demon race?” I asked, hoping to get an answer for once.

  “Why . . . another planet of course,” he said with an evil grin in the little window.

  Chapter 11

  Louella

  “Why . . . another planet, of course,” the Celestial Duilin replied to Regan.

  “Wait . . . so it isn’t a hell or another realm like Celestial?” I asked, as the academy had taught us about this, or at least what they thought was right.

  Duilin burst out laughing. He laughed so hard that he paused for a moment to breathe, which I didn’t understand, as he didn’t have a physical body. After a good minute or two, Regan finally tapped the cube, which quickly made Duilin stop. “My apologies, little girl. No, it is another planet in what my friend here would call the solar system. Celestia is another realm,” he said. Then his face took on a wicked look. “And there is a Hell.”

  “Explain,” Regan said, making it obvious that his entire attention was on Duilin.

  “Where to begin?” Duilin said, tapping his chin. “Ah! When the world was created, however that happened, life soon took hold. With the sprouting of the World Tree, life gained intelligence. We went from being beasts to thinking beings. We created towns, cities, countries, we eventually reached for the stars . . .”

  I could picture him waving his arms like a storyteller on the street as he talked.

  “They reached back. I’m not sure the exact timeframe, could be an eon, could be less, this all happened long ago. We were on the brink of destruction. Then, as the mages like to tell, a star fell when we were almost wiped out. Thus, mana was born.”

  I had to sit down to take in what I was hearing, while Regan just stood there tapping his chin. My sped-up thoughts allowed me to keep up and piece together the information as it was given to me, but that didn’t mean I accepted it yet. The story of the birth of magic is well known. The Mages Guild had shown it a few months before.

  They, however, started our history at that point. There was nothing mentioned of before the star fell. Just how much more history had Murgin seen that was being covered up or hidden away? I glanced at Regan. With him looking, we might actually find out. I quickly refocused on Duilin.

  “The races rallied, drove the invaders back! Then, another race attacked. They came from portals this time, right on the surface of the planet. They also sought the star but were driven back by my brethren, who had reached another plane of existence. Of course, even we couldn’t abandon our selfish ways and are currently at war with ourselves. Then the event happened, the Sundering.” Duilin’s voice gained a hint of sadness.

  “The Sundering?” I asked for the room.

  “When Arin stole the Flame for Lelune, the mana of the world started to become depleted. Oh, it would have lasted another eon or so, but eventually it would have been gone. By then the World Spirit that came into being from the Flame’s falling would most likely have died, and with it, the planet,” Duilin explained, pacing the interior of his cube. I guessed it was bigger on the inside than it looked.

  “How can you be sure?” Regan asked suddenly.

  “Ah, well this is all best guess from our most brilliant minds in Celestia. I can only tell you what happened with confidence of knowledge from over three or four millennia ago, not what will happen in the future,” Duilin said, nodding at Regan’s question.

  “How are you sure they are from another planet in this solar system?” Regan asked.

  “An interrogation was done on a captured enemy. The records were clear. They used the word ‘solai,’ which our researchers were confident meant the same solar system.”

  Regan snapped his fingers, and a moment later the station shuddered. He grinned. “Well, if there really is more life in this solar system, I’ll find it,” he said as he pointed up.

  A ship, a very large s
hip, was floating in the . . . space above us. I wasn’t sure if “sky” was the correct word to use. This ship was unlike anything I had ever seen before. The rear of it glowed, and several large rings surrounded the rear section. It narrowed slightly in the center, then widened again in the front, eventually splitting into two large sections of their own. There were so many things that I couldn’t understand that I just stared at it.

  A moment later a magic circle appeared on the ground in front of us. An automaton that reminded me of Regan materialized from it. He looked like the naval captains I’d seen a few times when I’d visited the port as a younger woman. He wore a long cape and had multiple eyes set in his head. In his hand, he gripped a sphere of some kind.

  “Klumabus, I want you and your crew to investigate the planets, starting with the moons. Maintain radio silence unless necessary. This is a recon mission, so use stealth when near the planets. Your ship should be able to get you to the nearest planet within two months,” Regan ordered.

  I admired his ability to act as soon as he became aware of information that could threaten him.

  “Aye, sir!” a deep, slightly sinister voice replied to Regan. His orb lit up like a star chart. He gave Regan a salute, then vanished in another magic circle.

  Regan looked up, so I quickly did as well. A ring of what looked like mana formed behind the ship. As it started to accelerate, the outer hull rippled and it faded from sight. Even the light from the mana in the back vanished. I quickly lost sight of it completely. It was no more than a dot after a few seconds. Regan gestured with his hand, and the ceiling above us returned to normal gray metal.

  “Now, where were we?” Regan asked when he looked back at Duilin’s cube and me.

  Duilin’s face was pressed against the window on the cube. “What are you?!” he shouted. “What was that?!” he added, making wild gestures toward the ceiling. I couldn’t say I blamed him.

  “Something I was going to use in the war, but have to repurpose,” Regan said, a little upset.