Prologue - A God’s Troublesome Creations

Prologue - A God’s Troublesome Creations

Once upon a time a god created a universe, as gods are wont to do. The god created fauna and flora and added mana to the world. Not everything got mana - in fact most things didn't - but what did, excelled.

The god made some of the creatures sapient, and - while none of these had mana - they excelled as well. The sapient species excelled so well that they quickly claimed the top of the food chain.

Each time the god created new life they used up a bit of their power. As a god they had a lot of power, of course, and they saw no reason not to use it. A god had to have a world, and good worlds contained life.

For a while the god was satisfied with the world and its 8 sapient species. But 7 of the sapient species slowly grew bored of their luxurious life as a top predator and began to grow greedy for more. To not just be among the best, but the best instead. And as the sapient species had placed themselves firmly on the top of the food chain, the only way to gain more dominance was to dominate another sapient species.

6 sapient species turned to the 8th species - the only species that didn't desire to dominate others simply for the sake of it - and began to kill and capture any they found. A couple of centuries later, only 7 sapient species remained.

The 7th species wanted more dominance as well, but found it easier to pick on a race rather than an entire species. The 7th species had 7 races and one disliked fights and conflicts more than the others, which made it an easy target for bullying and abuse. After half a millenia, only 6 races remained.

The god had watched it happen but gave their creations the benefit of a doubt, hoping they would learn their lesson and cease to fight on their own accord. But when the remaining sapients simply went to look for someone else to dominate after they had caused an entire species and an entire race to go extinct, the god had had enough.

The god wanted to punish the greedy and power hungry - as those types had led the fights against the extinct species and race - but spare the helpful and kind. Not everyone had participated in the slaughter, but few had tried to stop it. And rarely had an attempt ended well.

So, the god decided to create Dungeon Cores, giving them the mission of luring the greedy into their dangerous depths with promises of riches. Then the god gave sapients the ability to earn Skills, Achievements and Abilities. They could now earn experience by leveling up their Skills or - as an incentive to the violent and power hungry to enter Dungeons - killing creatures in Dungeons. When one had enough experience they would level up and gain two points to their 6 main Ability Scores.

Why 6? The god gave each of the 6 sapient species, which had turned against the 8th, a natural affinity with one of the main Ability Scores. They did the same to the 6 remaining races of the 7th sapient species.L1tLagoon witnessed the first publication of this chapter on Ñøv€l--B1n.

The 7th Ability Score was then made to represent the fallen species and race and to help prevent their fate from befalling on another. The god didn’t want the sapients of their world to make their every action based on their creator’s wishes - the god would have descended to The Surface World if that had been their desire - and so the god made the 7th Ability Score a hidden one.

Not that the Ability Score was truly hidden. It simply meant sapients wouldn’t automatically be informed when their Score changed, like they were with the other Ability Scores. Yet the right Skill or Ability could still inform a sapient of what they wanted to know.

One such imperfect thing was the Dungeon Cores, for despite their mission to rid the world of evil they sought to kill all that entered their Dungeons, whether they be good or bad. The god tried to remedy this by giving Dungeon Cores their own system with Achievements and Abilities suited to them. They linked the tier up of Cores to the number of bad sapients they had killed, hoping this would make the Dungeon Cores start to focus on their mission.

The god even allowed Dungeon Cores to see their Personal Status without having a Skill or Ability to allow them to do so and to ask the system for general information, neither of which the sapient version of the System allowed. Sapients had parents to turn to for general information, where Dungeon Cores couldn’t even leave their dimension.

Sapients could only see their own Personal Status the day they became an adult, unless they got a Skill or Ability to let them see it again. Letting every sapient see their Personal Status at any time would be too draining for the god. Instead sapients would be informed of what Ability Scores had been raised each level up, so they could keep track of it if they wished. Whether or not a sapient knew their own Strength Score wouldn't change what it was, after all.

But even with all that, no Dungeon Core ever reacted to their new system.

Finally, the god realized what had gone wrong with the Dungeon Cores. They were not sapient or even semi-sapient and thus they had no thought, no concept of right or wrong or their mission in life.

Only instincts.

But now the god was mostly out of power and needed to rest to regain it.

And when gods need rest, it takes millenia for them to truly recover.

Besides, it was mostly the greedy, violent and power hungry sapients, who died in Dungeons anyway. Surely, the god could rest a while.

When resting the god didn’t truly sleep, but simply became less aware of what happened in their world.

And thus, less able to act on anything.

Though now lower in number, the greedy, violent and power hungry sapients never truly ceased to exist. They came up with new ways for getting their way and with the god now resting and thus less aware, they often got away with it too.

One thing the god did notice, was when the soul of a sapient fused with a brand new Dungeon Core. The god saw that it was good and gave the new Core what blessings the weakened, resting god could.