Prologue: Birth (Patreon)

Hello once more, everyone! I am so, so sorry I haven't been around much these past few weeks, I was and am preparing for finals, and I am nervous. Very nervous. Normally, I wouldn't be able to write like that, but today I just kind of had to do something, and I'd been talking a lot on discord about the nature of dungeons in this story and wanted to write about that. In the end, I wound up rewriting the prologue, or writing a replacement prologue I guess, that actually gives detail. Let me know what you think, I do hope it isn't too convoluted!
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Hynix Archipelago, a name that’s been around far longer than any face that lives there and a name that, at this time, wouldn’t even be dreamed of for generations to come. A sprawling mass of islands, large and small, that forms a loose chain, hundreds of miles away from the nearest continent. In the center of this slowly curving island chain and spilling out through the gaps between islands into the wide ocean around, sits a Mana Reef, and one touch of the waters shows just how apt the name is.

With the seas around this island chain positively soaking in mana, it was hardly uncommon to find just about anything. Wandering elemental spirits and eidolons would wander out of the very Heart of the Reef sometimes, as would their larger, stronger cousins. True elementals, animated golems, wandering storms, even newly born Fae, and these were only the Spiritborn. Other things happened around the Reef, too, when nature decided to play with mana, or animals grew into power, and despite the waters of Hynix being immensely dangerous, they were even more profitable. Common were the tales and stories of treasures simply washing up on shore, of creatures with the power to grant wishes and end kingdoms with ease, of luck and chance causing people to luck into that power themselves.

One story, however, was never told. It all started on a small island, distant from its geological siblings and even further removed from the Reef it guards. Little more than a sandbar, the waves lapped at its barren shores and slowly worked on reclaiming the forgotten isle. But, not before bringing a pair of gifts.

The first was a rough, uncut and impure gemstone, a chunk of aquamarine little different than a small rock. It washed ashore one day, little more than luck and circumstance carrying the mineral a very, very long way from where it formed and leaving it nestled in the soft sand, inert and waiting to be buried once more.

The second gift was different, although equally unlikely. At the base of the sandbar, underwater and hidden away was something else. Mana, taken and compressed seemingly for no reason, into a solid form. No larger than a grain of sand at first, the tiny blue crystal was lucky to find itself anchored into an errant growth of mana coral, and from there it was able to drink up its hosts natural emissions, slowly growing thanks to a glut of pure water mana.

If this were the end of it, there would be no interest here. Someone would find a naturally formed elemental crystal, and make a fortune, and somebody else would go home with a much smaller sum thanks to an uncut piece of beryl. But things did not end here. The elemental crystal’s steady and slow growth, and the aquamarine’s own inevitable burial were both suddenly changed. 

Now, no one is around to say what exactly happened to that tiny island, and in fact nobody could even say the island existed at all, since whatever it was that happened destroyed not only the island, but completely terraformed a chunk of the archipelago around it too. Perhaps it was an angry storm, or a vicious fight between two powerful existences, or maybe just one such being playing around in their boredom, but whatever happened had sent what was once a small sandbar scattered throughout a small section of the reef, also uprooting both the crystal’s coral and the aquamarine’s beach.

In the end, both of the blue crystals had settled back onto the ocean floor, and through some stroke of luck were hardly millimeters apart. Once more, time passed. The aquamarine stayed dreadfully inanimate, rocking ever so slightly in time to the current, but the water crystal seemed to grow with a goal in mind. Slowly, like a plant’s root delicately searching for a place to take hold, the ethereal crystal stretched towards the mineral, and eventually, the two met. The chunk of solid mana held firm after that, its own power bleeding into the aquamarine freely, but kept contained by its own sea-blue walls. 

After that, things, yet again, settled down. Such is the nature of geology, even that little bit of progress took enough time for generations to come and to go, and as more still came and went the water gem grew to encase the natural one, slowly packing more and more of its own ethereal power into the aquamarine and forcing out any of the unnecessary impurities through it.

The gem grew, glacially but steadily, as it was buried under a thin layer of sand, greedily sucking up every scrap of water mana to grow larger as all elemental crystals do, but this very action finally managed to attract the attention of something alive. As alive as anybody could consider an Undine, anyways.

Once more, through luck and coincidence, a little water spirit, born through truly immense amounts of mana simply congealing into something resembling a soul, was carried by the whims of the sea to this lonely corner of the Reef. And this Undine was dying. There simply wasn’t enough mana here to keep it alive, and the very, very basic instincts that were ingrained into the mana it was made of told it that it needed to find more, and fast.

Which is why, when it found a mass of water crystal simply hidden beneath the sands, the little creature was as close to happy as it could possibly be, and carried itself over to it, and into it. A crystal like that was an enormous boon, it was vaguely aware that it should drain it dry and might even be able to reach the next stage in its life thanks to it. Only, when the little construct of mana jumped into the lump of crystal, it found itself dragged to the very center of it. 

At first, it had no issue with this, the center was even more rich in mana, in exactly the stuff that it needed to survive and to thrive. But then, the gem started to grow thin, and yet it was unable to escape. It could tell there was still more on the outside, an elemental crystal that yet grew, but it was stuck in a cage of beryl it could not escape from. It had no way of knowing that, of course, nor that any common gemstone like that was able to channel and store magic much better than mundane materials. No, it didn’t know that because it was a being created by magic that it had no way of forcing its way out of the crystal, it simply wasn’t strong enough to.

But despite not knowing why it was trapped and unable to leave, nor able to devour the rest of the mana surrounding its prison, it wasn’t much upset either. Part of it was that it simply was not intelligent enough to be upset, but even more important was the fact that it was still being fed. It may not have been quite happy needing to ration its food like this instead of just eating it all, but the fact that it was consuming meant it had no reason to look for more in the first place. It was surviving, and that was really all a spirit like an Undine could ‘ask’ for.

And, as the shell around its prison grew steadily larger, so too did its food become steadily more nourishing. It was content, it was happy, it was inert and unthinking, but it was growing. It grew, and grew, and outlived generations untold as it simply sat and embraced the life of a mineral, until one day, it had a realization. It may sound lackluster, but that very realization was the fact that it could realize things at all, and that itself was monumental to the once undine, turned water crystal and aquamarine hybrid, because it meant that now it was no longer any of those things that it once was. It was something better than the sum of its parts, now. 

But,it was also confusing. Very confusing, in fact, and after its young mind was aware that it could think, it started thinking about what that meant. Over time, it was finally able to think something resembling a coherent concept.

“what”

And that is when this story comes to an end, and a new one begins.

Hello, little dungeon core, and welcome to the world!