The Arcade Series

I walked around the town for a few minutes. I was mostly guessing where the middle of the city is, in hopes of finding the dungeon, but also following my instincts as little as they guided my steps. But as a side note, this town was a nice little place. It was practically a picture perfect and highly stereotypical fantasy town. Wood and stone buildings lined the streets, mostly around one or two stories high and usually houses with the occasional closed up store and I even passed a bustling tavern while I walked.

But, the signs of the anticipated atack were everywhere I could see. Empty homes. Boarded up windows. It was all there.

My thoughts turned sad at the sight, but I tried to clear my head as I walked. Focus is the most important thing in a fight. ‘A clouded head doth a dead man make.’ I thought, half serious but mostly relaxed as I tried to clear the tense atmosphere I could feel around me.

I could see it in the mana too. I was pretty confident that different moods caused different types of mana to be made by the locals at this point, and so I could see the signs of unrest in the mana around me.

There were almost all of the colors of mana I had seen in the air, with the town being large enough that I could easily see a kilometer of unrestricted vision without something blocking what I could see, but there was a clear disparity between the different colors.

Purple was very common, along with pale blue. I recalled the list of different mana types quickly. Darkness and shadow is what purple mana is and the pale blue is… I think it's cold? Maybe ice.

Typically people don't associate those elements with happiness so I doubt that it is produced by positive emotions.

But with the distraction of the different mana types aside, it was a very short time until I was sure I had found the right place and I stopped and looked at the landmark looking dungeon entrance before me with some apprehension.

It was rather a large building, made entirely of stone bricks with carvings and statues around a large closed stone door. It was also in the middle of a large clearing inside what looks like a town square. The entirety of its structure screamed that it was important, so I assumed it was the dungeon. The large sign above an abandoned table near the entrance that read ‘Golden Bridge Dungeon’ helped too.

I sighed with some mixed reluctance and excitement as I looked at the sight before I made my way over to the abandoned entrance quickly.

I stood in front of the door for a fraction of a second, wondering if I was doing the right thing, but my resolve hardened and I pushed against the stone door. I was surprised when the large stone door parted easily before me, it looked like it should have weighed a lot more than it did.

I inspected the door in mild confusion as to why it opened so easily, but the door was not forthcoming about anything. It just looked like an ordinary door to me. There wasn't even any mana inside the door as far as I could see. I hummed to myself for a moment, but I walked past the doorway without hesitation and into the darkness of the room, shutting the door behind me.

The second I passed through the doorway, lights flickered to light. I looked carefully around the room. It was actually pretty empty, just a stone room except for two odd things that I noticed right away. There was a stairwell carved out of the floor, leading into the earth below, and then there were the sources of light themselves. Torches line the walls around the room, with two on the entrance I just walked in through and two on every other wall.

These weren't just normal torches however as the second I looked at them, I could see a mana pattern in the base of the torches that was using red mana to form fire on the tip of the torches. I didn't inspect the torches that closely, but it is still interesting that the dungeon uses enchanted objects for lighting.

Then, I thought of something that made me pause in concern. I had just brought another dungeon core into the town dungeon. I didn't actually think about how that would work, I just forgot about how everything a dungeon does works. Dungeons have domains, and I just brought another domain into the dungeons domain.

I quickly connected my senses to my dungeon core, hurrying and prepared to instantly leave the dungeon if my dungeon core is having problems, but to my surprise nothing seems to be different.

I was curious at what was happening to the dungeon, so I quickly did a full scan of everything and even tested the dungeon core's abilities and the results were as relieving as they were confusing.

The domain seemed to be ok at first, but as I looked closer I noticed that something weird was happening. It was smaller than usual, about a tenth the normal size in fact. That by itself was a small concern, but not much to worry about. But the part I found interesting and weird was the fact that the domain was not just smaller, it was being repressed and it overlapped with another domain.

I had no idea how another domain would have felt or even how I would be able to sense it before I did, but I doubt it would have been close to what I was feeling and seeing.

Domain sensing was itself like another sense, so to try to explain exactly what it felt like through words would be like trying to explain color to a blind man, but I could feel my dungeons domain like a bubble around the core and I could also feel this dungeons domain surrounding me and my dungeon in its entirety. They didn't conflict however, it was more like they were almost overlaid on each other, but the domain started bleeding into each other the farther out from my core it was.

As for what it did to the cores abilities, as far as I could tell it didn't do a single thing besides limiting my abilities range. I could shape the stone as I pleased, I could control the mana in the environment, I could still sense the entirety of everything in the dungeons domain, nothing had changed.

It was relieving that I didn't have to go on without my dungeon core, but it was also interesting in its own right. But it's not the time for curiosity now.

I pushed my red mana into the air with my mana control and decided that I should do a practice run on my untested spells before I really started my delve.

I stepped into the long rough stone hallway quietly, but quickly entered the dungeon. Testing spells I had thought of had taken a surprisingly long time and now there were several gouges along with burn marks on the walls of the entrance room above me. But now, this is the real thing.

I look around cautiously, I have no idea what might be here and no clue what to expect. The long hallway I was in was unlike the entrance room in almost every way, which was slightly surprising. The hallway looked more like a cave if I was being honest, just more skinny and smaller then most caves I had been in. There were a few oddities immediately obvious to me though.

For starters, there were no torches. That itself wasn't that odd, but what made it odd was the fact that the hallway was perfectly illuminated without any other source of light visible.

As for the second weird thing I noticed, it was that this hallway was completely uniform. Every five feet or so, there was a clear repeat in the walls with a break in it. It was like these walls were copied and pasted beside each other but the pattern wasn't completely repeatable. Maybe this dungeon just didn't really know what it was doing to make it look natural?

I sent a few different mana particles into the air to float around me protectively. No point in sending them out after there is a threat if I can just do it now after all. Not that an ambush is very likely. Something would have to be invisible to both mana sight and my actual eyes to be able to pass undetected in this hallway.

I walked briskly down deeper into the dungeon, never stopping scanning my surroundings. If there is something I have learned in hell, it is that you never let your attention wander when you are in unfamiliar territory that you know is likely to have something nasty in it.

After thirty seconds of just walking down the corridor with nothing attacking me, I started wondering if this was actually a dungeon, but I kept going on.

Eventually I made it to the end of the hallway and I did not like what it looked like. At the end of the hallway, it just opened up into a large cavernous room full of stalactites and loose rocks, some just barely half my size. All in all, the perfect ambush point.

I debated with myself about what I should do, before I remembered a spell I had tested that would probably be useful in this situation and I started sending out white mana in front of me in the shape of a cylinder.

“Air shield.” I commanded, forcing my will onto the white air mana particles I had arranged in front of the entrance, causing a shift in the air around and between them and simultaneously causing the mana to start breaking down.

I stepped out from the cover of the entrance and instantly reared back out of instinct as I saw a black ball of fur fling itself at me from the left of the entrance hallway, but I stood back up straight when I remembered and saw the effects of my spell first hand.

Just as soon as the small thing leaped at me, it was intercepted and repelled back with a smack by a nearly invisible shield of air that stood strong around the entrance. The idea of the spell itself was a rather simple one, but in practice it was rather difficult to get what I wanted just right. The final version that I had made was close enough that I stopped my testing with it, as it was strong enough to take a firm punch from me, as well as sending some of the energy of the punch back like it was elastic instead of just tanking all the energy needlessly. As far as I could tell it did its job well.

I looked at the mess of fur that had tried to attack me, and I identified it after a second of looking at it. It was a rat. A big rat, being twelve inches long as far as I could tell, but a relatively normal rat.

Then a screen popped up over the rats head, quite different from the normal blue screen however, as this one was mostly transparent with only a few outlined glowing words. “Juvenile Dire Rat, Level 1”

It was a surprise, but I recovered quickly when the rat started coming back to see if it could try to get a piece of me. I was not too concerned about what it could do at this point, having already been repelled by my shield that still had enough mana for another minute at least, as the fact that it was a juvenile along with level one.

No reason not to try to end this quickly though. I moved a ball of red mana from beside me to infront of me in a second then I cast my second spell that I had practiced. “FIREBALL!” I shouted with glee, as I infused my intent into the fire mana, causing it to disintegrate very quickly, fueling a ball of condensed fire in its absence that I proceeded to shoot at the quick rat.

Only, there was something I had not taken into account for. My air shield. The second the fireball had hit the air shield, it went right through, but it also caught the air shield itself on fire, causing a wall of flame to erupt before my eyes and making me get seared with the heat of the instant flame.

While it was a huge shock seeing the air in front of me transform into a wall of flame instantly, it burnt out almost as quickly with the balls of air mana disintegrating almost as soon as the fire touched them.

Besides my lack of forethought however, the fireball spell worked as intended and shot the rat, engulfing it in flame and sending it back once more. It died soon after. “Well… That was unexpected.” I commented to myself, still shocked at what had happened.

I sighed to myself after that. “I think that I am more rusty than I thought.” I said, wincing at myself. “Well… that's not quite right.” I corrected myself, “I have only been a mage a few days. Really this should be considered great progress in learning magic!” I laughed to myself, before wondering if I might be going about fighting in this world all wrong. I have had a few years of daily fighting experience in non-magic combat in the underworld, maybe I should just stick to what I know instead of trying to learn magic in a few weeks compared to what mages in this world have done in a lifetime.

Pop! A system screen appeared in the air in front of me, distracting me from my thoughts and causing me to look up at the unexpected system message. “Eight experience points gained from death of ‘Juvenile Dire Rat, Level 1.’” The system told me, causing me to smile to myself. Experience was good. And by experience I do mean both the metaphysical and system types.

“I guess that while I am here now, I might as well get in some practice with magic. It's not like having more experience with magic is a bad thing. Plus, I am sure that I am getting at least a level up out of this delve.” I analyzed carefully, then grinned to myself widely as I looked out at the cave of monsters. “On with the hunt!” I told myself and laughed as I started walking into the cave.