Chereads / The Poison Labrynth / Chapter 2 - Ch 1: Beginnings

Chapter 2 - Ch 1: Beginnings

Something strange happened to me. I never saw what happened, but I instinctly know. I'm... somehow fused with a dungeon core. My heartbeat has ceased, leaving an eerie vibration within my head. Yet I know that I won't die.

Hello. I wanted to start writing a diary or a journal. Not actually sure what the difference between those are. Anyways, I've been through a lot recently and thought that writing down what's been happening might help. Perhaps an introduction will help.

My name is Marcel Colbert. I'm twenty years old; unattractive; a scaredy-cat, especially when it comes to death; and extremely apologetic whenever I do something wrong. I'm not sure where I could fit this in this journal, but I thought it might explain some of the strange decisions that I make so the beginning it is. Not like anyone other than me reads this, but maybe people would like it if I were to make it into a book. I doubt it though. I've been stalling for too long though, so I'll start with the major beginning changes to the world then go from there.

Whenever the portals appeared, many animals disappeared. Their bodies were never found. Pigeons in particular became extinct and many others endangered. Shortly after, strange creatures started to attack nearby people. Some creatures resembled the missing animals while others looked like multiple animals at once. There were even some creatures not resembling any animals.

There are many theories about what happened to the disappearing animals, but almost everyone assumes that the animals somehow teleported to the dungeons and mutated into the monsters. After all, their corpses are gone, meaning they were either eaten by escaping monsters or the disappearing monsters never died. Theorists are still tinkering away in their thinking labs, thinking of new theories that may explain everything.

Some humans were affected in a different way. Perhaps the same phenomenon (is that how you spell it? I don't have access to the internet in this place so I hope that's right) that caused the animals to disappear caused humans to gain some sort of new power unlike anything that had existed prior.

Everyone who awakened to their new powers noticed something incredible. Their fingers and toes suddenly were able to, lack for better words, shoot out what we now call mana. The fingers and toes now have mana pathways that can use a single attribute. Some of them are earth, water, wind, and fire. These are the most well known of the elements, although there are MANY more.

Using these mana pathways, people are able to form various things. Water pathways are known to create a vapor, create thin rain clouds, or just your basic water attack. However, it is very difficult to use more than a single pathway at a time. People have trained to use more than one at once with varying degrees of success.

Fifteen years after the calamity, I am one of those humans, born a normal human and yet became something more. Like everyone else who became stronger, I too became stronger. Although, once again like many others, I could only use one finger or toe to attack at a time. I've tried training but with little success. The closest I've gotten so far is feeling the mana build up in the second pathway for about half a second. I've been told that I'm doing well, but I doubt it.

One day, after going to a friend's party and spending the majority of the time huddled up in a corner, I started to go home. I blinked and suddenly, I'm in a different place than I was. I've never drank before, so this was quite the odd experience. After a few minutes had passed, I thought that I was having a lucid dream and that I fell asleep at the party. And then immediately, I realized that I've never had a lucid dream before and knew that something was very wrong.

I started to run towards a random direction hoping that I could escape wherever I had ended up. In the back of my mind, I think I already knew that I was somehow in a dungeon, yet I didn't want to admit it. Eventually, a moss-filled wall that looked at least one hundred meters high appeared. I also noticed an additional, probably more unsettling problem. I ran for a few minutes, yet didn't feel my heartbeat in my chest.

I'm not at all fit. I am inbetween what I would consider fat and obese, so running for a few minutes would tire me out. Concerned, I lifted my hand to my chest and felt nothing other than a very strange vibration. To describe it more... interestingly, it felt like my heartbeat was that of a constant low-volume massage chair. I was very afraid of my next thought.

A dungeon core. I've felt one before, and this is almost the exact feeling I got from it, although the one within me was a bit more muffled. But why exactly was there a dungeon core within my body where my heart used to be? I had a single guess. It has to relate to how portals spawn into our world.

Portals spawn with usually a single attribute. The attribute corrensponds to the monsters within it and also the dungeon core. It has been proven that whenever a portal spawns, the first thing that happens is the dungeon core suddenly appears. This core stays in our world for approximately 1/60th of a second. Afterwards, the core summons the portal and enters its dungeon core room.

My guess was that during that very short timespan, the core appeared within me and brought me to... the not dungeon core room for some reason. There's always a fancy pedestal within a giant space that contains the core, yet I wasn't there whenever I got here.

Also, it being within me, I can immediately tell what attribute the core is. It's the exact same as my attribute:

Poison.

I'm not sure if I'll continue this series. I'm not a writer, but just wanted to try out a little bit. If a lot of people like it, I might continue it.