ALEXiThymiA: Chapter 71: A Dungeon's True Purpose

Chapter 71

A Dungeon’s True Purpose

Quest Complete: The Dungeon's Purpose. You have found the true purpose for this dungeon. Rewards: ERROR...

That was the message that flashed in Alexa’s mind.

During this time, Alexa first felt, then saw the fabric of reality around her begin to dissolve.

System Diagnostics: Running.

Conflict found: User has gained reward for completing dungeon trials that would result in a permanent class being rewarded. User is also locked in false programming quest line “Trials of Ascension:” currently on step 4 of 10. “Trials of Ascension” is designed to reward user with unique class. ERROR Found:  Underlining classes of “Trials of Ascension” set to D tier maximum. User already has A tier class.   ERROR Found: User needs to complete “Trials of Ascension,” but “Trials of Ascension” can only be completed on external dimensional server. Conclusion: User must go to external dimensional server.   ERROR Found: External Dimensional server cannot be connected to for another 0 Days, 5 Hours, 18 Minutes, 17 Seconds… while universal realignment is once again achieved.   Processing.

The entire thing seemed odd to Alexa, though reading through the errors it helped explain what she was seeing before her. Looking ahead, she could see images for three different worlds that were overlapping each other.

Looking at the images, it was clear that one of the three images was Earth. To be more precise it was an image of what the campus would look like from the perspective of the dungeon. The second was the odd world that this dungeon was mainly connected to. The third image, well it looked to be a world not unlike the worlds that hosted the “Trials of Ascension” that Alexa had gone to previously.

On an impulse, she reached out with her hand. The second her fingers contacted the images; she saw that the images all began to ripple under her touch.

Odder still was the way the different errors seemed to be displayed to her mind in a format that was at once understandable and alien all at once. It took her a moment to realize that everything she was seeing was in the Precursor language, a system of vastly intricate runes that reminded her of her power word Hope.

Looking at the interconnected logic patterns, she realized what the cause of the problem was. There were overlapping logic commands. There was a baseline system, then an extra system that had been placed on top of the first layer, each with conflicting logic patterns.

While Alexa could understand the problem, she didn’t quite know what to do about the problem. Worse, she didn’t know if she could do anything about what she was seeing.

However just as she was trying to understand the lines of complex runes before her, the dungeon spoke to her. At least, what she thought of as the dungeon spoke to her.

Moderator: Are you here to help resolve conflict? Yes, or No?

Trying to move away from the prompt, she found that the message followed her eyesight, regardless of where she looked. While she wanted to leave, to stop before she broke something, her quizzical nature made her at least look at what was happening before her. A strange sense of foreboding filled her, as she knew she needed to tread carefully. For whatever reason, the dungeon saw her as a Moderator of sorts. Idly she wondered if this had to do with her Hands and Eyes of the Architect ability she stole from the dragons.

Still all her personal thoughts and concerns were secondary when compared to what she could learn now.

“Yes.” Alexa spoke the word that was more of a concept of power within her mind.

Woosh.

Just speaking the word of power into existence was a huge drain on her internal reserves of energy. Just as when she spoke the word of Hope, she felt a sudden drop in blood pressure as the world began to slightly spin in her peripheral vision. Still, this was a process she was getting more and more used to by now. Within only a few seconds she felt her mind regain its ability to focus for a second. Then she continued.

Warning Candidate: Alexa Thyme is attempting to solve errors related to candidate Alexa Thyme. Conflict of interest detected.

That was an odd fact to identify, though looking at it, Alexa couldn’t help but find that it was a valid concern. Somehow this system was aware enough to identify her as both a candidate with problems, and a moderator trying to solve the problems. Looking at it from the system’s perspective, she could see how this was a concern.

Can you be unbiased when it comes to solving logic problems related to Alexa Thyme? Yes, or No?

Once again, Alexa was given the option to say yes or no. Alexa paused, seriously trying to contemplate this problem. By now her energy high from stealing energies from the Summoned Aspects was well over, meaning that Alexa was in her logical mind. Realizing that she was not going to be influenced by emotions, she felt assured by her answer of “Yes.”

Warning: You have chosen to proceed as Moderator, while still undergoing candidacy trials. Your actions taken will be judged by external sources. If your actions are found to be in conflict, your status as both Candidate, and Moderator will be terminated. Do you understand? Yes, or No?

Once again, Alexa paused as she thought about the ramifications of what she was doing. Had her emotional mind been in charge at the moment, she would have recused herself immediately. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Alexa was not in her emotional mind and had no such thoughts of being biased. At least, she felt she could view the problems at hand and react without being influenced by her personal desire for improvement. In fact at the moment, she was more curious about what it meant to be considered a Moderator than anything. The status of Moderator was far more important than what possible gains could be provided by the completion of this random quest she uncovered.

While the quest did go a long way in identifying likely reasons for dungeons to exist at all. The fact that she was being recognized as a Maintainer and all the instruction manuals seemed to be written in the Precursor language, went even further towards explaining a few concepts that had plagued philosophers for nearly a century. Still, right now all she had was wild speculation to go on. Speculation that she really wanted to know the answers to, if only to satiate her own curiosity.

“Yes.” Alexa said, and again she felt the all too familiar drain of energy being drained from her, but now it felt like the system, or maybe the dungeon, was helping to share the load of that energy cost. For rather than Alexa having to come up with all of the energy, she found that most of her focus was just on forming the ambient energy of the dungeon into a form that would answer the question. In fact, once she made her first confirmation as a Moderator, the dungeon began giving her excess energy to shape as needed. Only now did she see the way the energy went to her after she spoke. The whole thing was odd, but made sense in a way. If she was here to solve a problem, the last thing she needed was to run out of energy before the problem was solved.

With that, Alexa began reading through the different layers of problems that existed. After reading through the initial warnings she had received, she found the root cause of the problem stemmed from the dungeon’s automatic reward.

Looking at the dungeon, interface, it was clear that a lot of tampering had already taken place to the initial baseline infrastructure. That was why, previously when she entered these dungeons she never saw the glowing spots to strike while attacking a Summoned Aspect, as that functionality had been disabled. Seeing it, Alexa tried to turn the programming back on, but was met with a message.

Warning: You do not have the appropriate level of authority needed to make this change. Seek an Administrator or above’s approval to make this change.

Seeing the message, Alexa realized a few things. First, her new skills gained were really powerful as they let her see, or maybe imagine would be a better word. These new skills allowed her to imagine what the dungeon was trying to teach her.

Realizing she couldn’t make the change so that everyone could see the tutorial aspect of the dungeon, she continued in her investigation of the problems at hand.

From what she could tell, there was one root cause error that then caused two additional cascading errors to occur. The root error was that she had unlocked a Class.

Hidden Quest Reward: Title: Dungeon Runner I, Skill Crystal (Greater): Unarmed Combat. (Optional): Class: Warrior (Common), Combatant (Common), Monk (Uncommon).

As it turned out, there were three rewards for completing the dungeon in the correct way. The first was a Title, the second was a greater skill crystal. While the third option was the option to unlock one of three classes. Seeing the classes, none of which were appealing to her. But there were a few mechanics that had been put in place to prevent the class from being activated.

Apparently, if a hidden quest was triggered that would result in her unlocking a class, someone with administrative level access forced the candidate to go to an external server where they would be forced onto the next stage of the “Trials of Ascension.” Also, it turned out that a Candidate is what Alexa’s official status was when she entered a dungeon.

Normally the process of earning a quest reward and triggering her next stage of the “Trials of Ascension” would be seamless, but there was a lot of feedback as the energy needed to make a universal bridge from this dungeon to the external server was depleted. Alexa figured this likely had something to do with the Integration from last night, and a quick look at the logs and a bit of math on Alexa’s part showed that the breach occurred roughly when Alexa found the three armies preparing for battle. Then only after Alexa and the contents of the macro-dungeon, that is what such a battlefield is called, a macro-dungeon, were expelled, did the dungeon begin to slowly regain energy to reestablish a partial connection to the external server.

There was so much information going on, and each piece seemed to imply something deeper and more profound. From reading through the logs and seeing the overlapping changes, it was clear that first dungeons were a form of semi-sentient magical space programming that could manifest dimensional rifts in space, linking one place, with a possible second location in space. Second, it was also clear, or at least implied that the monsters that appeared in dungeons, even the external server dungeon that were used to host the “Trials of Ascension” were all fictional scenarios designed to get one to bond themselves to one of three choices. There were dragons, who apparently came later, but had magic and abilities that made it so they could more easily integrate with the magic utilized by dungeons. While administrators apparently tried to bar dragons from accessing the system, they were not entirely successful in their removal, thus the random variable for dragons to appear. She also saw that the number changed drastically, and that one in a million was just flavor texts to get more people to choose Red tier difficulty dungeons, the actual chance was closer to one in a hundred.

The third thing Alexa realized was that if she had done this test tomorrow, or in a little over five hours, well closer to four by this point, she would have been sent to the next stage of her “Trials of Ascension” without receiving any of her quest rewards. As it turns out, she had something similar to a super lock on her class status right now, and it would only be removed once she completed her “Trials of Ascension.” Also, it should be noted that she would only be offered a Tier D class after the trials, regardless of how well she did in said trials. That was a fourth note of contention, her current class was listed as Tier A, but the highest she was allowed to get from the trials would be Epic, which she could then evolve to Legendary if she slaughtered a level 1 dragon.

That was the odd part about the second system, at least that was what Alexa considered the second set of instructions that seemed to overwrite the first baseline code of the dungeons. The oddity of the second system wasn’t easily noticeable, until she realized that every part of it was already written out.

Looking ahead, Alexa saw that each of the stages of the trials were original hidden quests that were stolen, and built upon. Looking back she found that in her bloodlust, Alexa missed the true prize of the first stage of her trials. The first prize was supposed to be a Strategy gem that let her organize the side she joined into an elite fighting force. Then on the second stage, the tower, she could have actually found focal points around the battlefield that would help make her choice that much more powerful. She felt a little better, knowing that she found the true purpose of the third stage.

Unfortunately, the purposes of the fourth stages and beyond were denied to her as she had not attempted them. Seeing that, Alexa felt this was likely for the best. So far, she was one for three, but she felt a little better knowing that she had found something that was supposed to be hidden. Something that adversaries went a long way in trying to hide from her and others.

With her curiosity satiated, at least for the moment, she went about solving her own personal problems. If she just waited the problem would auto resolve itself, and she would be sent to the external server to start her fourth stage of her “Trials of Ascension.” But she wanted a little faster resolution, so focusing on her quest rewards, she focused on the third section, the one that would let her achieve a Class. Then with a finger she struck through the line of text.

(Optional): Class: Warrior (Common), Combatant (Common), Monk (Uncommon). (Removed).

With that, her quest prompt appeared before her.

Hidden Quest Complete: The Dungeon’s Purpose. You have found the true purpose for this dungeon. Reward: Title: Dungeon Runner I, Skill Crystal (Greater): Unarmed Combat.

Then she was met by a number of system messages.

Error Resolved.   Error Resolved.   Error Resolved.

Alexa thought that was going to be the end of everything, as the world around her that had looked like it was fracturing apart suddenly came back to one focused image. She was now firmly back in the lands of the dungeon. Looking around, she wondered where exactly this was supposed to be. From her brief time looking through the diagnostics of the system, she knew that this was supposed to be a modified representation of a habitable planet somewhere in the universe.

Just thinking about that concept, Alexa found her respect for the dungeons growing, as they seemed to be truly impossible beings made real. Alexa didn’t know who exactly the Precursors were, but she felt they had truly been impressive. Forming a way of creating universal travel that would take seconds, once connections were finally established to distant habitable worlds. Of course, looking at the original coding, and the way it had been hijacked by people not really knowing what they were doing. Or at least people who didn’t have as much nuances as the original Precursors, Alexa couldn’t help but pity the former space faring race. The fact that the Precursors weren’t around, while others who could use and manipulate the system were, spoke to the likely conclusion of such an intelligent and curious race. Curiosity did kill the cat after all.

Just as Alexa was going down that mental line of thinking, she was met with another system message.

Congratulations: Hidden Maintainer Quest Completed. You successfully completed a trial of integrity and succeeded. You were asked to fix an Error involving your own candidacy and succeeded. Reward: You gain an additional rank to your Maintainer Rank: raised from Baroness to Viscount.

Rank: Viscount: +30% All Attributes, Skills, Psychic Powers, Magic Aptitudes, and Fast Travel Times.

Seeing the rewards, she could tell that once again someone had come about and crudely changed the names of the Maintainer Ranks, changing them from Administrator and the like to that of Duke, Marquees, Earl, Viscount, Baron, etc. Each rank seemed to come along with more abilities and privileges.

Oddly enough, while the names might have been changed, it was clear the underlying functionality of the different ranks still remained the same.

Alexa was nearly lost in her own trail of thoughts about what all this meant, when her eyes caught and re-read the final new bonus granted to her for her Viscount status. Seeing the words, she wondered what exactly were Fast Travel Times?

After a few seconds of thinking, she assumed that Fast Travel Times likely had something to do with travel that was made possible by dungeons, but not much more. There were so many questions that came to mind from that, especially after realizing everything that she now knew about these dungeons and their original purpose. They were both training rooms, and trans-dimensional bridges that linked planets in a vast network of interconnected tunnels. Realizing this, Alexa felt her mind going wild with the implications.

As Alexa found herself wondering about what would happen next, she was met with yet another system message.

Candidate has reached the true purpose of this dungeon. Please take your rewards and let the next candidate try.   Note: You can still use this dungeon to connect you to your “Trials of Ascension,” but all other functionality provided by this dungeon is no longer available to you.

With that, Alexa saw a glowing yellow-orange crystal appear on a pedestal before her. Then she noticed a new Title appear.

Title: Dungeon Runner (I): You have completed your first dungeon, as such you gain a 1% bonus to all your attributes.

The title itself wasn’t that impressive, but she knew that with a numerical numbering system after the first one that she could logically improve the efficacy of the Title.

Additionally, the final prize was on a pedestal, a skill crystal that all but radiated power. Picking it up, Alexa knew that this crystal was unlike anything she had ever seen before in her life.

Her hands trembled just from holding onto the extremely powerful crystal.

Munch.

Before she could even consider what to do with the crystal, her body automatically reacted to the powerful crystal, instantly infusing it with a thread of her power.

Then as soon as a connection was made, she saw the final system message appear in her mind, before her mind came alive with emotions, long enough for her to experience the surge of energy into her body.

Skill Unlocked: Unarmed Combat (Tier II): 150%.

Then her mind went black, as she found herself dropping to the ground as her mind tried to grasp the concepts that were being forced into her mind. 

Her last words before everything went completely dark, "I know Kung Fu."