The Tower in the Shadows

So, here I am on a stone floor.

I looked up at the rafters and the hole I created when punching through the roof. But that would be inaccurate. My awareness extends to everything within a sphere-shaped area around me. Everything beyond it is faded monochrome and seems slightly distorted, worsening the further away it was from me to the point it was a blur at the edges of my view.

I quickly realised that I could look around. Everything within the sphere I am aware of is perfectly clear. My awareness of everything is somehow constant, even if I am not paying attention to anything in my sphere.

This new sensory information intake will take me a little time to get used to. I can move my sight around like I was looking at things with my eyes. But at the same time, I am still aware of everything else. I push up to the limit of my sphere of influence. Looking back, I see my new form.

On the ground is an inch-wide, perfectly round stone. I was not expecting this. I know I am a gem of some kind, but I cannot name it as I am jet black in colour. I mean, I am the deepest black I have ever seen. Almost to the point, I am absorbing light.

As a gamer, I realised that I would have to learn as much as possible about the mechanics of my new existence. In the corner of my "vision", I see a blinking box. Written on it was the word menu. I focused on the button, willing myself to click it.

Nothing happened.

Okay, let's try something different.

"Menu." I "spoke" in my mind as I don't have a mouth.

This started something.

++Initialising. Please stand by….++

++………………………………….++

++Welcome. Please enter your name. ++

++Warning this cannot be changed++

The box appears in the centre of my vision. I am strangely not surprised by this. My inner nerd expected something like this would happen, but blue boxes! How stereotypical can you get? I was just starting out and I already had an Isekai story trope in front of me, so this didn't bode well.

Focus! I will not be seeking a harem any time soon. Not that I would not like one, but I no longer have the required parts to enjoy one. This makes part of me sad. I am going to miss some parts of being human and having a body, but I cannot dwell on that right now.

I thought for a minute about my name. What shall I call myself? New life, new world, new me? I decided not to use my old name but my gamer handle, as I was always happy with that one.

"Bhaldor."

When I spoke the name, it resonated in me and somehow in the air around me. It was like Oda saying his name to me.

++Thank You. Your true name has been accepted. ++

Eh? True name?

Two new options appeared before me. The first said status screen and the second was a wiki. Before I dived into the wiki and the massive amount of information I would have to learn, I decided to see my status screen.

Name

Bhaldor

Essence

0%

Race

Dungeon Core

CP

100 / 0.1 phr

Level

1

Corruption

0%

Floors

1

Health

100%

Skills:

Mana Manipulation: 1 - 0%

Core Refining – 0%

Mana Sight: 1 – 0%

Perks/Restrictions:

Godless

Affintyless

Companionless

Limitless Monsters/Traps

All right. I could quickly make out the bulk of my status screen sheet from a basic surface understanding. I knew the wiki would help me understand the things I needed help understanding, which was everything. The Skills and Perks/Restrictions section had to be opened by command.

I could not help myself in the end and needed to see what I could do with my status screen.

After some experimentation, I discovered that I could access more about my skills and perks by saying, for example, skill: Mana Manipulation. This opened up another box with the skill's name and a brief explanation.

Mana Manipulation:

This skill allows the sight and manipulation of Mana. This allows the creation and use of spells. The user may use the skill to infuse Mana into living or inanimate objects to grant them magical abilities.

Okay, on the surface, there is only a little information. The number next to the skill must be my level and the percentage should show how far I am to the next level. It's all standard stuff so far. The only one I could not understand was Core Refining, as it was just a percentage. Accessing the skill only told me it was used to improve my core.

Discovering how to return to the menu screen by saying "menu" out loud. From here, I navigate to the wiki option.

This opens up a massive number of options.

I spent several minutes looking through the options list alone. I started reading the section about dungeon cores and how they expand. I steadily read through the information, thinking back to my status screen and realised that the CP option is one of the most important things I was to be aware of.

Creation Points, or CP for short, are the bedrock of everything I can and will be able to do. I have come to understand how much I suck right now, with a 0.1 regeneration per hour.

The area around me is my aura. Within my aura, I can manipulate and control everything. I can create and destroy at will as long as I have the CP to fuel what I want to do. Absorbing things breaks them down, netting some CP and other resources. I have a hundred points with terrible regen. As my level increases, so will my point limit and regeneration.

Okay, I need to level fast!

In this world, they don't have experience points but essence. You level up once you accrue enough essence through quests, killing monsters or specific actions. That would be the case if I were anything but a dungeon core. To gain essence, I must kill and absorb anything that enters my dungeon for the moment within the one-meter range of my aura.

The information about the expansion includes a warning. If I chose, I could kill everything to gain power quickly, but there is always a "but." If I take this route, I would be considered a danger that the locals will need to deal with and I could find my core and dungeon destroyed.

This makes sense to me. From all the novels I have read and shows, I have watched, a dungeon that takes this route is quickly eliminated. As my task is to eliminate the void essence and corruption that comes with it from this world, I need to play the long game. Most importantly, I don't want my soul destroyed!

The section on this explains a lot. I am passively absorbing the void essence naturally. If left to build up in things, it will cause them to become corrupted and spread their corruption. The greater my level, the faster and more I will process. This was when I discovered the first "I am fucked issue". I will attract void essence and those corrupted by it to me!

Need defenders fast!

I reviewed the section explaining how to increase my aura size using my creation points and decided to try it out.

Looking around the room beyond my aura, I note a figure sitting on a chair. As this figure has not moved since I arrived, I do not think they are alive and might be a statue.

I focus on the edge of my aura and follow the instructions in the wiki to use my CP points and expand my aura.

It took several attempts, but I eventually started pushing my aura out. The expanse in all directions from 1 meter out to 3 meters. The number of CP points I have decreased as I expanded my aura.

I decided to stop here and take stock. Expanding my aura is more taxing somehow than I thought it could be. As I grew, I became aware of everything in my aura's expanded sphere of influence as soon as it entered, which I found to be more than I expected. I lost 3 CP just growing this amount. It was not as bad as I feared on reflection, as it would recover over time.

I know everything new in my aura as soon as it enters. There is a table and chair with a dead man sitting on it. It looks like he died quite some time ago. The body is nothing but bone with a few wisps of hair, but his armour is well preserved. I find a void below the room I am in. There is an underground section of this building. I will need to explore this, too. I look over the section in my wiki on absorbing material and begin.

Time to feed the core!

As I start absorbing, I force myself to stop. The impulse to absorb everything is like no hunger I have ever experienced. I want it all, and I want it now! The intensity and force of it are shocking. Controlling the desire takes me several minutes of using my willpower to suppress it. Okay, that was surprising.

In the end, I started to absorb some things, but only some. I forced myself to be more targeted, leaving the furniture behind for the moment. My CP ticked up a little from the materials I had absorbed.

Materials Absorbed:

Roof Tile (Clay)

Roof strut fragment (Wood)

Human remains (Bone)

Cythian Short Sword (Quality-Good, Durability-25/25 Notes- +2 Damage, Iron)

Cythian Leather Armour Set (Quality-Good, Durability-25/25 Notes- -2 Damage, Leather)

Cythian Copper Coin x4 (Copper)

Cythian Silver Coin x1 (Silver)

Wine Bottle (Quality – Good, Poisoned)

Tin Plate (Tin)

Letter (Vellum)

I had begun with the fragments, then moved to the body and the table. The list grows as I absorb the body and things around it, giving me more questions. Did this man kill himself, or was he murdered?

I focus on the letter on the list. As I do, the written content appears in my mind.

To whoever finds this.

Let it be known that this is the last testament of Sectarum Vladis Drussic of the 14th Iron Legion, 8th Cohort, 5th Century, leader of the 3rd Line of the Cythian Empire.

Mid-summer day 3466 imperial year.

Today is my last day. For twenty years, I have held my post at this tower. My Linemen are dead or deserted. I sent word to my local Centaurium of the present condition of my command, but I am still waiting for a reply. That was five years ago.

Since then, travellers have yet to travel along the Shadow Way River. The last who took my message spoke of increasing chaos within the empire. Even 300 years later, we are still being cursed by Adrill's Folly.

I am now at such an age that I can no longer maintain the building and grow the required supplies each year. So, I have elected to end my life. I have poisoned my last bottle of wine and will have a glass with my last meal. I do this to save myself the indignities of death by cold or starvation this winter.

I hope that my legion or empire will one day return to this place, until that day.

Glory to the Empire.

Sectarum Vladis Drussic.

Well, that explains some things. But it also leaves me with more questions. I look through my wiki for references to the Cythian Empire. I need more context.

Reading my wiki, I found out some exciting things about this empire.

The Cythian Empire was the former dominant empire on this continent. It sounded similar to the Roman Empire in many respects, especially in its military organisation. Human controlled but began declining after "Adrill's Folly". There was no mention of what that was. As I read, I came to several realisations.

This world was massive compared to Earth. I already knew this, but still, if Oda's wiki is to be believed, it is one hundred times larger! It clearly states that there are many more races in this world, but it is focused on my local region.

I am presently residing in a Cythian Empire Watch Tower. The empire used these towers to monitor dangerous areas and offer safe havens for travellers. This tower is located in a series of valleys called Shadow Falls beside the river Shadow Way. They get this name because the mountains around here cast long shadows over the area. The Shadow Way is the only safe way through the mountains in this part of the continent and is not just one but a series of interconnected rivers. It also turns out that the continent is the same land mass as roughly Russia, Africa, Europe and North America combined!

Okay. This helps, but not for my short-term survival.

I go back into the wiki and my aura expansion section. I go over it again, even as I clearly remember it. There is a link to another area that I am going to check out. I found the link at the bottom and it reads.

Aura Reveal.

Accessing it, I started to panic as I read it.

It turns out that when my aura leaves this building, it will generate a large essence burst that will be detected for hundreds of miles by those who are sensitive to such things pointing to my location.

Several dungeon core books used this as a means to show adventurers that the dungeon was open. But that was after they had traps or monsters to defend themselves. I do not!

As long as I do not expand beyond the building's walls while on the surface, I will not trigger this event. The problem is that I am expanding in a sphere.

I need to think.

I absorb everything but the stone floor, replacing a little of my CP already expended. Then, I continued to expand my aura. I am near the back of my room, allowing some additional space to grow. I encountered more chairs and a cupboard with a small chest.

I get the metal, good old bronze, from absorbing it. I get to add that to my list of resources.

It takes some more of my CP to almost reach the walls, so I decided to hoard the rest for now. I spent the night waiting to regenerate my CP, using this time to think/brood and finish reading my wiki. I read through everything in a few hours.

Boredom is becoming an issue because guess what? I do not sleep anymore! I have plenty of time to kill.

By mid-morning, I have enough points to expand on again. I push up to the wall closest to me. I fall short by choice and wait to regenerate my CP, the little I had used. I need to start thinking about defences.

I think back to the room as it was when I arrived. I reached and passed through the wall at the tower's base during my expansion. When I fell, I could remember the building and knew the tower was the centre with four sections like a cross.

I had absorbed the door that led into the tower base. It was a medieval-style doorway with a narrow opening and a thick door. It was designed for defence and as a choke point into the tower. There is a lock on the other side.

The room was barren as far as my aura showed me nothing was present.

"Time to get creative, Bhaldor."

I had spent the night studying, and it now paid off. I recreated the chairs, table and door I had absorbed. I need to present the look of an empty/abandoned building to lure anyone who enters with a false sense of security.

I placed a new small chest inside a new cupboard I had created. They all looked identical to the ones I had absorbed, apart from the missing layer of dust.

This exhausted my CP. Expanding my aura was cheaper by far. As night was once more approaching, I went back to thinking. Thanks to my improved memory, I remembered something.

"Who the hell am I talking to in my head?"

I pondered this for the rest of the night, but I could not find an answer to this question. I had been doing it all day, almost as if it were second nature, telling my actions like a story.

"Bloody hell! I am doing it again!"