Chapter 12 - Goals and How (Not) to Set Them (Patreon)

When the final Orc finally staggered his way out of my dungeon, I unceremoniously removed the entrance to a point hanging above the poison waterfall I found weeks before. I couldn’t close off my dungeon entirely, but I wasn’t eager to deal with challengers at the moment either. I needed to figure out what my plans were now that things had changed. So far, I had been letting things hit me as they came and answering my new instincts as they demanded action; and they did demand action. Finishing off the debt to the archmage-dragon had been a long-term plan. It didn’t feel like a priority item to handle, but it was only after the debt had been fulfilled that I could feel the incessant pressure in the back of my mind ease off.

Initially, I was going to expand that floor bit by bit over time. There was no need to expose myself like I did, no need to create a spectacle. But, my new instincts also seemed to want that as well. If I was performing a miracle, I wanted people to know it was me doing it. It wasn’t mind-control. I could work around it - and would in the future - but the desire to be acknowledged was still there. Annoying, but not insurmountable. The feelings of patient watchfulness from the dungeon were a valuable counter to the need for pageantry and acknowledgment from my divine side.

By now, I was an expert in discovering new instincts and impulses. Maybe not in countering them, but it was rather obvious something was going on once you noticed. I’d had plenty of practice by now: Human to a dungeon, dungeon to a dungeon-divine hybrid. If I somehow managed to make the full leap to divinity, I’m sure I would notice yet another change. That is, if I even decide to change entirely into a deity.

When I first passed the weird waterfall of death on my journey to the desert, I hadn’t given it much thought. At most, it was just odd compared to the world I was used to, just a single point of interest among a literal world of weirdness. Now, I idly eyed the field of death that surrounded the waters while trying to put my thoughts in order. 

Jumping straight to changing my hybrid status seemed a bit premature. Not to mention, I had no clue how to do it. I probably would have to extract whatever part of my soul was contained inside my soul-gem. I’d had stray plans to try to create a golem or creature to inhabit before but no real clue how to manage the transference. Hence, my efforts to get all those stacks of books and rolls of scrolls. In the entire history of this world and all of its magic, I doubted that no one had been able to body hop before. It couldn’t be easy or an everyday thing. If it had been, then wealthy nobles would be doing it left and right, and it would be well known. But maybe, a single, skilled wizard? Probably. The ‘Book of Immortals’ from the Arch-mage listed a few examples of this kind of immortality. All with horrific or evil side effects - I would bet that a safer or less morally questionable version was harder to manage.

Stepping from the Hall of the Gods into my vestibule, I then dipped a finger into the water contaminated with deathly energies. Only after my finger was wet did I consider how that could have gone wrong. I knew I was safe. I could just feel it. But it was still idiotic to just play with the concentrated death magic liquid simply because I was trying to distract myself. Despite the stupidity, I was still curious about the substance. Pulling from my vestibule a newly created flask, I filled it and tossed it back into my halls. I was surprised to realize that I could make a facsimile, but it wouldn’t be nearly as strong as the original. It didn’t radiate a field of death, but I wouldn’t want to drink or even touch it if I was human. It wouldn’t be instantly lethal but still unpleasant.

The narrow creek gently flowed over smoothly worn rocks while I followed it upstream. Around a bend, I stepped over a large boulder to find a small pond, the water bubbling from a small spring. I doubted the stone plateau with a bubbling brook at its central point was natural, but whatever the water source, it came from deep below the earth and beyond my senses. With a shrug, I pulled off my shoes, leaned back on the bank of the little pond, and dipped my toes in the cool water as I stared at the passing clouds.

What did I want? What were my plans?

I wanted to explore the world, and that hadn’t changed. I had few other natural needs. I didn’t need food or water or even shelter. I felt an urge to watch mortals - and how easy it had become already to think of them that way left me cringing a bit - but it was more an idle interest. I was a relatively weak divinity since I lacked followers, but I was also primarily self-defined because of it. It would be one thing if I needed them to survive, but being a Primary god offered me a trickle of essence that was more than enough for mere survival. I wouldn’t be throwing around miracles, but I didn’t need to either! I had magic for most of my needs and a nearly endless supply of it. A further checkmark on the ‘remain a hybrid’ side.

Most of what I’ve learned from my information horde so far has been interesting as an overview of the world but less helpful in gathering power. Not that gathering power was some kind of overarching goal, but I’m not going to ignore it either. I doubt the gods would have been as eager to use me as a pawn before if I had my current power. I would have rated as a rook or a bishop, maybe a knight, but not as a lowly pawn.

Snorting at my silliness, I stared at my toes as I wiggled them in the cool water.

I’m still making progress. I’ve got other me’s working away, creating a large book with a rough index of the different subjects available on the racks and racks of scrolls along with the mountain of books. It wasn’t perfect, but it was moving forward. The collections of manuscripts and the equivalent of magical doodles and sticky notes were slowly being rewritten and sorted, broken up into subjects and areas of study, cross sorted by author and region, and a hundred other things of interest. Give me a few years of focus, and I’d have something like Wikipedia for magic. Until then, I had made an effort to watch for any interesting spells. Most have been overly complex for my skill level, esoterics that I couldn’t care less about, or honestly worthless to me.

I don’t need a spell to drain an apprentice of their stamina to clean my lab without effort. I don’t have a lab or an apprentice, and even if I did, I would make it in my dungeon and just consume any mess and recreate the room when I wanted it cleaned.

So…magic. It’s a work in progress but showing a clear way forward. I’ve been studying the ‘textbooks’ for the classes as well, and they are a step above the rest of the pile I traded for, but still not perfect. They’re closer to guides to the in-class lectures than actual textbooks. I never knew how well-structured my school books were and how great I had it with my education until now. That was saying something, considering how shit the education system was in my hometown. Here, it was all apprenticeships, word of mouth, ‘labs’ where you did the grunt work for your Master with the hope that you would learn from it, and so on. 

I couldn’t help but think this was intentional. The smart, the lucky, and the well-connected would be able to handle it while everyone else would fail. No, more than fail. The risk of death was greatly amplified the way things were. Most of these textbooks didn’t list the dangers until later and seldom give basic safety guidelines. It was like handing out nuclear-powered chainsaws to teenagers. Limbs were going to drop.

Skipping a rock on top of the small pond and through the delightful tinkling sounds of the bubbling water, I leaned forward onto my knees and sighed.

I knew part of the reason I was feeling this way. Why I was so uninterested in working through long-term plans. I was basically safe. It had been the driving force for my earlier efforts, but now I was safe. At least, for the time being. I couldn’t really feel the danger from Sandra. Her threat didn’t seem real to me, even though I knew it was. I knew I had to work to reach another world. But it was a muted thing. Just as I didn’t have the physical urges that would have me seeking food, water, or even air to breathe, I also didn’t feel any real need to progress or act. I could suddenly understand why some of the gods had drifted out of existence, distracted by some other interest or pastime until they faded from the world.

Grabbing a handful of sand and rocks, I chucked them into the water before kicking the water from my feet, then stood with shoes in hand. Stepping into my vestibule, I stretched my arms behind me despite the lack of tightness I would have expected from a human body.

“Right. The goals don’t change even if I lack motivation,” I say to the echoing hall of marble.

It was odd, wandering through my halls and seeing it from the perspective of a challenger. Walking through the infinitely thin crack in the wall that housed the hallway to the lower levels. Pushing past the veil of dimensional weirdness that looped my stairway. Each defense was an odd sensation that was possible to navigate by a mortal, but without divine senses, basically impregnable. None of the traps or monsters bothered me. Each trap was disabled then re-engaged as I strode by. I had the armored ogres salute with their engine block-sized metal hammers with a bit of whimsy.

Instead of visiting my core, I turned down a different hallway. I stepped into the room containing the bubble world of my network. Mile after mile of my little world, and all contained in a pillar of twisted space I could grasp with my hand. Then again, the entire twisting monstrosity of my dungeon was held in a tiny ball of compressed stone hidden directly under the entrance of one of the network doors. Like Russian nesting dolls, twists and turns and expanded space hid within further twists.

But despite the way I tortured space, it was still directly connected. Even as I stared at the mutilated and spindled expanse of space, I couldn’t seem to find a way to disconnect the pieces and create an actual bubble world and escape. They were less like escape boats and more like train tunnels. No matter how the tunnels twisted and turned, they were still just tunnels. The only exception was the few spaces that I had layered on top of each other with one-way directionality. I couldn’t yet see how that would help me disconnect one from the other, but it was worth a try. After all, my dungeon core used a similar one-way spatial behavior, so it was likely a key.