A Large, Empty Room

After getting dissected and messed with in many ways that humans should not be, Melanoche and Carnachias sent me on my way to Ruyanei. My vision faded, although that only consisted of the two gods fading, as the rest of my surroundings were just a black void.

When my consciousness returned, I was inside some sort of dirt room. I didn't see it, as I didn't have eyes, rather, I absorbed the material surrounding my form, then digested and identified it. I don't know how I knew what dirt tasted like, but it was the first idea that popped into my mind.

Now that the question of where I was had been resolved, the next question was moving my body to a different place.

If I concentrated, I could vaguely feel the nerves around my body, which formed a sphere at the center of my body, followed by many tentacles extruding outwards. I attempted to move them, but it was quite difficult to even move only one of them, having not been used to tentacles as limbs. Moving enough to adjust my entire mass would take a while.

Suddenly, a foreign voice resounded in my head.

"Injection of retrieved data commencing."

A moment of silence, with me wondering what had just happened, then the moment after my head exploded in pain, as if someone had taken a baseball bat and smashed it. I instinctively massaged my head, still wincing even after the pain left.

Wait. I massaged my head? I concentrated on my body again, and was surprised to feel that I could easily move around any part of it now, and in any contortionist ways that I wanted. How had this happened? And what was that voice?

"I apologize for my late introduction." The voice sounded as if it was being dragged over coals-very gravelly, but with a singe of heat behind it. "I am your second core. I noticed our incapability to move when we arrived in this world, and therefore set out to understand the concept as quickly as possible for our convenience."

I thought for a moment in stunned silence. I then gave myself a mental note to never piss this guy off.

After witnessing that incredible display, I started to feel motivated to do something myself. My second core had just preformed miracles in front of me, and here I was, just sitting around. I started to scope out the room around me, pausing whenever I hit a wall. Meanwhile, I talked with my second core/personality to pass the time.

"So what are you capable of doing? You certainly seem to be able to think much faster than I can, and as you showed me earlier, you can transmit what you know to me. Is there anything else I should know?"

"Well, if we concentrate together, then we would be capable of simultaneous control of your body. Normally, I do not have control over our bodily functions."

"You don't? But then how did you learn the basic and advanced courses on how my body works?"

"My specialty is running projected simulations based on given data. I ran simulations of assumed movement based upon bodily structure until I determined that I had found all avenues of movement, then translated the data into electrical impulses that would run along the nervous system."

"So you're a supercomputer of some kind. Goodness, that makes a lot of things just kind of trivial now." This secondary core was proving to be much more helpful than I would have originally thought. "But are you sure that there's no downsides of any sort?"

"There are some flaws within the system, yes. Firstly, attempting the act of combining our conciousness into one would take a large amount of energy, much more than what you currently have. Secondly, although I can make accurate conclusions based upon data I receive, the extent to which my conclusions may be correct directly correlates to how much knowledge I have on the subject."

"Hmmmm...." So we couldn't let him help control my body yet, which meant I couldn't preform multiple actions at once at the moment, and if my secondary core didn't have any information on what I wanted to know, he couldn't give me a guaranteed correct answer.

"By the way, what to you want to be named? I can't keep calling you secondary core forever."

"If you need a name to call me by, then Altheas shall serve such a purpose well."

"Altheas? Any particular reason for that name?"

"I determined that it would be one of the most pleasurable names for you to call me by."

After we talked for a bit longer, I finally finished exploring the dungeon. From what Altheas could tell, it was a 50x50m (164x164 ft) cube, with a large arch-shaped opening on one side. However, in the center of the cube was a pathway of stairs that led to a substance I couldn't identify, because I couldn't absorb it. It was a hard material, like a stone of some sort, shaped into a floating sphere. Other than that, there was nothing else. My guess was that it was the core of the dungeon, given that the condition to gain a dungeon without the help of the goddesses was to absorb 10 of them. So this probably regulated the dungeon, and kept it functioning. So having this directly in the open made for a not very fortified dungeon. But, I had an idea to make it at least a little bit harder to get to.

"Altheas, do you know where my minions are? I should have a few that the dungeon made."

"When you first awoke inside of the dungeon, a minion was created, however, you did not notice it because your body absorbed it."

"Wait, so I killed my first minion?"

"No, no, you didn't kill it, your body stored it instead. I believe you should be able to call it out with a command."

Minions? I sent out a vague thought, wondering if it would work. To my surprise, it did, and the minion started sliding out of the sphere that made up the center of my body. Telepathy was a pleasant bonus to have.

The minion did not fully detatch from my body, leaving a thin tentacle connecting the two of us. What...Task...Do? It's knowledge of speech seemed to be small and broken, but having it capable of it at all was surprising.

"Wait here for a moment." I detached from my minion, and spent a minute opening up the portal to my pocket dimension. A few minutes after that, and I could confirm that it was basically a copy of the dungeon, minus the pedestal-it was just an empty, featureless room. I came back out of the portal, and reconnected to the minion, who was still faithfully waiting where I left him.

Given its hesitancy when speaking, it would probably be better to communicate in pictures rather than words. I tried my best to conjure an image of the minion moving the dirt from the pedestal into the portal. Luckily, it seemed to get the idea. It didn't respond, but immediately got to work on its task. Of course, simply removing the stairs to the core wouldn't be enough to protect it in a world of superhuman abilities, but it would stop those who weren't at that level, and slow those who were.

Now, with that underway, there wasn't much left to do in the dungeon. Outside exploration was the next step. While I highly doubted that the goddesses I had met would send me to a hostile area, but overconfidence was always an excellent way to get killed. Luckily, the assassin class gave me their exclusive invisibility/camouflage skill, which I activated.

Secondly, if I wanted to do effective reconnaissance, then I needed to be able to see. I hadn't gone into my human form yet, because I wasn't sure about whether someone would attack me or not. However, if they had taken this long to attack me, then they were either non-existent or scared out of their minds. So I also cast the polymorphing spell.

After having just gotten used to movement as a chimeric creature, it took me a moment to remember how to open my eyes. Then a few moments more for standing up and balancing. Now that I had sight again, I looked around the dungeon. My minion looked exactly similar to what I had felt like earlier, but on a smaller scale. The dungeon core (or what I assumed was the core) was a seamless neon sphere, faintly glowing red, menacingly floating in the air. Looking down, I could see I was on the taller side, with a decent amount of muscle, but it wasn't as though I had trained extensively.

I turned towards the door, seeing a shaft of light bursting through, causing me to blink for a few seconds as my eyes adjusted. Then I walked through, and out into the open, involuntarily making me squint and cry at such bright exposure. Once my vision faded away from being a blank, white, slate, I looked around at the environment.

It seemed like I was in a forest, and pretty deep too, considering the height of the trees and peaceful silence all around. I was in a clearing, and got to see a light blue sky above the canopy, illuminating the scene with a warm radiance. But I was not here to enjoy the scenery.

Despite being so tall, the trees had quite a few branches that hung close to the ground. I grabbed onto one, and swung myself up to the next one, scraping my hands on the rough surface. It didn't hurt much, but it was a reminder that I was essentially powerless in this form. After about fifteen more minutes of climbing, weaving between the very dense branches, I reached the top.

However, most of what I could see from the tree was not much different than what I could see from the ground. It was mostly just an unbroken expanse of trees. The only main feature I could make out was a lake far out in one direction, and what seemed like a settlement of some sort next to it. It seemed about a days travel away, at least in my human form. In my chimera form, it would probably take 1/3 to 1/4 of that, but I would be detected much more easily.

I wonder if flight would eventually be possible? In a world of so many supernatural powers, it would seem like a convenience such as flight should be readily available. It would allow for much easier travel, and, if I ever evolved into a smaller form, could be used as a specialized stealth of its own. But as I continue thinking on that, one errant thought keeps bouncing around in my head...

Author here-hello and thank you for taking your time to read my chapters. I apologize if it feels like I take too long to write these, as I only write when I have spare time, these are the first chapters I have written, and I have too many projects for 1 sane person to keep juggling. If you want to, feel free to branch off of any of my storylines and make your own-I would love to see what you can create from my idea. Once again, thank you all, and I hope you have a great time with me as I continue this story!