A Dungeon’s Survival

Connie

Yeah, that's not working.

“Humph! What lifespring stone even doing?” Adraugon grumbled in response.

I'm trying to see how well this spell works on you.

“Why you no bother snakes instead?”

Oh, I have. I tested it on them first, but you have different abilities and other things going for you that they don't. I just wanted to see if that would make a difference.

“And?”

It doesn't. The spell just scales off of your base stats, so none of your modifiers are taken into account.

“So, done?”

I heaved a mental sigh before canceling my spell and conceding, Yeah, pretty much.

“Humph,” the miniature dragon harrumphed again before closing his eyes and shifting about in his pile of coins in an attempt to get comfy.

Well, I guess that means Familiar Casting is out, I noted as my perspective snapped from Adraugon's hoard back to the arena.

Despite his tone and words, I didn't actually feel any real annoyance coming from him. Still, I figured that I was better off leaving him be rather than continuing to bug the little dragon. There was nothing to gain from that, after all. My tests involving him had reached a dead end.

“Did it work?” Pee asked a moment later.

Nope, I answered, It might still be possible to manage something with Archie, but well, you know. He's still dead.

“What's next then?” Vie inquired.

Bond Familiar, I guess.

“Our queen, are you sure?”

As I'd already informed the pair, I'd been hoping to avoid this eventuality. Sadly, outside of waiting until I could summon Archie back, I didn't have too many other options, and even if I did wait for him, there was no guarantee it would make a difference anyway. Familiar Casting had already proved too stable for my needs.

I don't really have a choice. It's our best bet at this point.

“If that's so, how shall we proceed?”

Now, that's the question, isn't it?

Having ruled out Familiar Casting and, by extension, my Empower Bond spell, I was left with only a single usable ability in my toolkit. By merit of my unique circumstances, I'd come to the conclusion that my best bet at forcing an error was going to be through the use of my abilities. So far, however, that hadn't worked out.

As it stood, my Dungeon powers interacting with those of my class was the final set of conditions I'd pinned down as being able to cause errors. With that being the case, triggering one should've been trivial. I was in the perfect position to force that exact situation, and on top that, I was, at least to my own knowledge, the only Dungeon to also have a class, potentially throughout all of history. At least, that was judging by what Seven had told me.

With everything else going on with Fabian at the time, I'd struggled to internalize everything from my first meeting with a Custodian until after everything had calmed down, but that blue orb had said in no uncertain terms that gaining a class would've killed me if I hadn't originally been a mortal. That wasn't a luxury I was under the impression all that many Dungeon Cores had. Add on the fact that he'd also mentioned changing something to prevent other Dungeons from unlocking classes in the future, and it was clear my circumstances were about as far removed from the norm as they could get.

That was important because it put me firmly in uncharted territory. If no other Dungeon could've found themselves in the same position as me without dying for it, it also meant no other Dungeon would've been capable of encountering the same errors that were available to me before I could get to them. Considering the Custodians' evident ability to patch them out once found, that detail was nearly as important as my ability to encounter them in the first place.

Fortunately, things worked out to my benefit in that regard. As it stood, there was a minefield of errors just waiting for me to stumble into them. I only needed trigger one, and with the advantages I had, that should've been easy.

The key words there were, “should've been.” I had a class as a Dungeon Core, yet my capacity to force those two aspects of myself to interact with each other was proving to be severely limited. So far, I'd only found a few ways to use my Dungeon powers to affect my Heroic Summoner abilities, and the System had trouble processing exactly none of them. That left me with just one option: using my class abilities to affect my Dungeon. Sadly, most of them were incapable of that.

For obvious reasons, I wasn't willing to mess around with Contact Administrator carelessly. The last thing I needed was to break my lifeline somehow. Likewise, Protection of the Fairy Queen wasn't something I could actively trigger under my current circumstances, not that I'd have been willing to risk messing that one up had it been an option either.

As incapable as those two indispensable powers seemed to be in this situation, though, somehow it was neither of them that took the cake for uselessness. Instead, that honor went to Heroic Adaptability. As had been the case since I came to this world, not only was it unusable here; it was completely pointless to have in general. Its only purpose being to increase the growth rate of my skills wasn't exactly helpful when, even after unlocking a class, the System seemed to bar me from getting those.

That only left me with Monstrous Communion, Familiar Casting, and Bond Familiar. Worse yet, out of those three, I was already down to my last option. Monstrous Communion, the ability that allowed me to understand monsters, was largely redundant and too straightforward for me to imagine being able to trigger an error with. As for Familiar Casing, it only allowed me to cast spells through my monsters, spells of which I only had one of and that I could already use to target my monsters. I did see the potential for something tripping the System up there when paired with Archie's mind control, but since he'd already blown himself up, that possibility was out for a good few hours yet.

Unfortunately, that just left me with Bond Familiar. Technically, it was my best option anyway. It'd already proven to be error-prone, after all, and I was all but certain that I could eke out an error with it. The problem wasn't that. Instead, the reasons I wanted to avoid going down that route were issues of morality and logistics.

While I did have an open slot for a familiar, for every one that I bound, the level cap of the others decreased. If I messed something up while trying to push the ability in unintended ways, I ran the real risk of permanently weakening Prism, Noctis, and Loot. Worse was the risk I ran on any monster I did decide to experiment with, though.

Bond Familiar, similarly to awakening a monster, also granted sentience. Immediately upon taking that detail into consideration, a single risk became apparent. If I screwed up somehow, there was every chance I'd end up granting a monster sentience before permanently getting it killed, which wasn't a prospect I felt good about.

Is it even worth it? the doubts crept in.

If the cost was too high, I couldn't help but to wonder about the point in all of this. There was no guarantee the Custodians would help me even if I found this error. I could still back out, find another way, one with less risks involved. I had plans in the works to deal with the bear eventually. Going forward was a gamble, and I knew I was bad at gambling, a fact that all those wondrous poker nights I'd come to cherish and miss had driven home.

“If you don't want to do it, can't we just figure something else out?” Pee offered upon feeling my reluctance.

“No,” Vie immediately objected to her sister's proposal, “If this is what our queen believes is best, she should move forward with the plan. Sometimes a pawn must be sacrificed to protect a king, or in this case, a queen.”

Ha, I couldn't help but to chuckle at the pair.

I could feel the pair's concern for me. Even with how starkly their ways of showing it contrasted with each other's. The way their resolve and compassion flowed through our bond left no doubt; they sought only to comfort and support me as we moved forward, no matter where that took us. They were so distinctly different but also the same. I wouldn't have had it any other way, and seeing that reminded me of what it was all for.

I love you two, I told them, pushing as much of my emotions as I could through our bond to reinforce my words.

“We love you too, mother!” Pee instantly replied, an intense warmth following her words back.

“We are at your service, our queen!” Vie answered in a less straightforward way, but her emotions assured me she felt the same way as her sister.

It was strange. Looking back, as much as I resented the Fairy Council for the way they'd kidnapped me, treated me, and forced me into a perpetual struggle for my life, I also felt grateful to them. I wasn't about to go sucking up to them or anything, but deep down, I was glad I'd ended up here. As fucked up as my everyday life could be, all it took was one look at my two scaly daughters to know it was all worthwhile. The two of them, Archie, and even Adraugon, they filled a void in my heart that'd existed since far before I found myself in this world.

Bandits, Berserkers, alchemists, and bears aside, it was moments like these, the bits and pieces of downtime that I could spend with my loved ones, that made me realize how hollow I'd been before all of this. I'd practically thrown my life away after the accident. I'd built up walls to keep others out, the fear of losing them too weighing heavier on me than I could handle. Now, though, I could see just how devoid of purpose that had left me.

No. I'd already known it, even back then. It was just so hard to pick myself back up that I'd never been able to. I'd never had a reason to, but now, that had changed. Life as a Dungeon Core had been hard and an adjustment, sure, and yes, I could've lived without the constant threats to my life. As odd of an existence as it had been, though, it was my existence now, and I wasn't about to let this one slip through my fingers too just because I was too weak to do anything else.

No, in that moment, I resolved myself. As I basked in the warm mental embrace of my cherished family, I decided something then and there. I was going to do whatever it took to grow strong enough that the precious moments like these wouldn't be scarce reprieves from everything else. The games of poker and chess I missed dearly would cease to be luxuries I couldn't afford. They'd go back to being a staple of this life, and I wouldn't let something outside of my control tear it all away from me this time.

A face came to mind, smiling. It was Mel's. Had she not pushed me out of that truck's direct path way back then, I'd likely have ended up the same way she did instead of only losing my legs. For the longest time, I'd wondered if that would've been better, easier. Now, though, I could see.

It was her strength in that inescapable situation that'd bought at least one of us a second chance, one I'd wasted away. I was done letting that be the case. Whatever the risks, whatever the costs, I was going to turn things around and become so powerful that the world could send whatever it wanted our way; it wouldn't matter.

I was no longer going to just let life pass me by, either out of fear of forming new bonds or of losing the ones I already had. I was going to keep accumulating alternate routes to power and uncovering the secrets of the System until I had the strength I needed to make the most of this second chance–no, third chance–I'd been given. I was going to turn things around for us, and all of that started with triggering that next error.

Okay, I said after a long few moments, let's do this.