The Dungeon of Earth

It was a sweltering Canadian summer day. Already reaching 30 degrees by 9 am.

And Nellie could definitely feel it.

The uninsulated cottage that her grandparents left her in their will did little to stave off the oncoming heat.

Sigh, thought Nellie as she sipped her milk. It’s going to be a scorcher.

The tiny one-bedroom, one-bath cottage was situated on a large, primarily unpopulated lake, which was a nice relief to Nellie. She had spent the past four years working on a degree in history with a minor in geography. She found it surprisingly pleasant to be surrounded by the lap of the waves and the sound of nature that encased her.

Nellie only had the most basic internet and no TV. It was pretty isolated, and maybe not so bright for a single female to live alone in such a place, but she liked it.

Looking out onto the lake, she felt the pull of what must be cool waters.

After quickly placing her mug and plate in the sink, she rushed into her bedroom. She promptly donned a bikini, grabbed one of her new National Geographic magazines and a towel, and walked down the mulched path toward the lake.

Nellie dropped her items half-hazardly on a patio chair and began wading into the water.

The cold water sent welcomed chills up her spine, and she went deeper and deeper. Once the water went up to her waist, she took a deep breath, submerged, and swam out into the water.

With a gasp, she breached the water and looked around. While she only made it a few metres out, it was deep enough that she couldn’t stand.

After ensuring no boats were around, she closed her eyes and floated on her back.

Slowly, she was gently rocked back and forth by the waves as the hot beams of the sun warmed her front while the coldness of the water embraced her back.

Nellie stayed like this for a while, and just as she was about to swim back to shore, a powerful boom rattled around her.

Within seconds, the sound shattered her eardrums, and the gush of tsunami-like wind threw her through the water onto the rocky part of the shore. With a horrid crunch and rapidly approaching pain, Nellie was thrown hard into the rocks.

Moaning in pain, she slowly blinked, revealing blurred eyes before falling unconscious.

As she fell into the depths of her mind, the world began to change.

With it, a floating blue screen appeared to every sentient, and some non-sentient, living beings.

Congratulations Planet Earth 4.74532.12!

After billions of years, enough mana has condensed within the universe to allow the System to activate.

In three seconds, the application of the System and subsequent changes will occur.

Three

Two

One

As soon as the blue screen, well, the System, finished counting down, the System began rapidly changing the planet.

Within seconds, everything was different. From the continents to the flora and fauna to even the civilizations that had conquered and controlled the planet.

The System changed everything, but it allowed some things to stay the same.

****************************

Unknown Place, Unknown Time

****************************

As Nellie began to regain consciousness, she was met with a world that was utterly different, a reality that defied all her previous experiences.

Murkily, Nellie realized that she was floating. Not in a lake or a body of water, for no coolness or warmth was touching her skin.

Steadily, she took a deep breath, but she hadn’t realized she needed it. Subconscious awareness began spreading through her senses. Even with her eyes closed, she could still tell that she wasn’t in the lake or near any environment that she was aware of.

With a bit of force, Nellie managed to force her eyelids to open.

A sharp intake of breath showed her a startling realization.

A weird mixture of dark gray stone with flecks of brown and red and this dark, deep blue, transparent solid material appeared before her.

Not even before her, it was pressed solidly against her, with no gaps between her and the materials.

Within a couple of seconds, Nellie realized why.

Her entire body was incorporeal. Not on the physical plane, but she could still perceive herself.

Am I a ghost? Pondered Nellie as she examined herself.

She had all the ghost traits. A translucent body, a white knee-length dress that Nellie would most definitely consider ghost-like. While not really ghost-like, she noticed a series of tiny sparks circulating right where her heart was supposed to be when she looked down at her chest.

While not ghost-like, it reminded her of photos of nebulas she would see in national geographic magazines. At least that’s what it looked like, or at least it was similar enough that it drew similarities to a nebula as soon as Nellie saw it.

It was strange, really. Not something solid but made of a series of differently coloured circling tiny sparks. The majority of the sparks were a deep violet colour, with a few sparks that circulated only on the outer part of the pathway, which are dark green and light blue.

The sparks all circulated counterclockwise and created a mostly spherical shape. The closer to the centre of the circulation, the more dense the sparks got.

In the very centre of her core was a deep cluster of the little violet sparks. Close enough together to make a small two-centimetre sphere but apart enough that Nellie could see the spaces between the sparks.

At the very edge of the sparks circulating around the densely packed violet sparks, a few light blue and dark green sparks circulated around it.

Hugh, wonder why there’s different colours?

Before she could even think about the different colours within her nebula core, Nellie watched as a little string made up of the violet sparks began to separate from the rotation within her nebula.

But before she could even ponder what this meant, something new appeared before her.

A blue screen.

A big fat blue screen, somewhat transparent, and had words written all over it.

What am I? Thought Nellie sarcastically. A LitRPG character?

As Nellie bemoaned the fact that something she only barely knew about was something she was now seeing, the blue screen, which she was currently ignoring buzzed and vibrated at her in order to get her attention.

All sentient beings are deployed in the tutorial.

A flash of confusion hit her as she began to process those words.

—-

Oh, you got to be fucking kidding me. Bemoaned Nellie.

Why, oh, why did it have to be this? Nellie grew in frustration, anger, and resignation as she ranted in her mind.

While Nellie knew a bit about this from her ex-boyfriend, who was very into the genre, she only had some fundamental knowledge.

Meanwhile, Nellie desperately hoped that this wasn’t a tutorial and that a gaming system of some kind didn’t just abduct her and take over the Earth or something like that. But with donning horror, it seemed that she was proven right to some degree.

And she most definitely wasn’t in some tutorial.

Globe alterations will begin in:

Three

Two

One

As soon as the second blue screen finished its countdown, the still-rotating globe began to rapidly change.

Lines of glowing red emerged in the earth’s crust as the globe rapidly expanded to twice its size. Continents split, merged, and grew apart, along with new masses of the earth’s crust pushing out of the oceans.

As the growth slowed, the earth was left similar to what it once was, but very different. Some of the continents had some of the similar outlines, but others were very different.

Mountain ranges rose and fell, lakes emerged, deserts and forests shrunk and grew across large swaths of land. Volcanoes pushed through cracks along islands, and mountain chains emerged. Large swaths of ice grew and retracted, becoming essentially large floating islands.

Not even the oceans were spared.

The average ocean depth grew to 10 kilometres. Still, the visibility in the waters increased further than before, as if the sun could penetrate further than it could once before. Ocean trenches grew more numerous, and oceanic environments became more numerous.

The changes were astronomical, and Nellie stared at the changing globe with awe and fear.

Once the globe seemed to settle into the changes, she continued to watch the newly changed globe continue its rotation.

For what seemed like hours, but no true passage of time could be taken in the darkness, Nellie watched and waited for something else to happen.

Isn’t it supposed to show or teach me something if this is the tutorial?

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear, as the saying goes. It was true in this case.

As soon as she questioned if this was a tutorial, another blue screen appeared.

Welcome being, to the System.

Your atoms and energy have rapidly changed during the activation of the System within your planet. As such, you have been selected as one of the few beings to transition into your new System life as a dungeon core.

Oh, you gotta be kidding me. Why did it have to be a dungeon core! Couldn’t it have been something cool like an elf or becoming a mage!

It finally hit after reading the message and having a little freak out about becoming a dungeon core. She must have died during the blast, and the System decided to recycle her into a dungeon core?