Dungeon Day 70 - Continues

  The memories began when the shards found themselves in the zone. Unlike the one in the lake, which had arrived ahead of its fellows, these ones simply appeared in the zone as if placed there. Something that Dan, of course, now knew was correct. More importantly, not only had they been placed in the zone, but they had been placed within the three big tents of the green-skinned army camp.

  At that point, each shard was not D ranked yet, and their powers were not enough to overcome the minds of the High D rank Commanders. However, each commander could definitely feel the power coming off each of their shards, and they believed that the shards would give them an advantage in controlling the entirety of the green army.

  So, the game between the commanders began. They attempted to influence the captains or the members of the other groups to switch sides and join them, promising that they had power that was unknown to the other commanders. The funny part, at least to Dan, was that each commander was making the same promise and counteracting the other by influencing their own forces.

  Eventually, seeing that words weren't doing the trick, they began attempting to commit assassinations, but that didn't go very well either. It was much harder to assassinate somebody when the place was full of their minions, who could then stop your attempt. The most interesting part was that those who attempted the assassinations weren't heavily punished and were simply reprimanded. Dan believed that had something to do with preserving their numbers since D rankers weren't the easiest to find in the situation they had found themselves in.

  As time passed, each commander wasn't making any progress. And in their hubris and greed, they were still plotting and planning a way to use the shard they had been given.

  The first of the commanders to fall to a shard was the goblin commander. This commander was the primary caster of the army and had used his casters to formulate a ritual to siphon the magic of the shard. The problem with that particular plan was that they willingly accepted the energy of the shard and thus its influence on their minds and souls. Once that happened, it was game over, and the shard quickly took hold of them.

  Once the shard had one High D Ranker and four Low D Rank magic users under its command, it wasn't long before the goblin rogues also fell, and so did the rest of the goblins.

  Dan knew that as soon as one of the High D Rankers fell, the rest of them would fall one by one. However, how they would fall was a mystery that Dan was looking forward to. And what he found out truly gave him a pleasant surprise. Instead of using magic that would obviously point at them as the attackers, the goblins, and thus the shard, took another route. They decided to slip something into the food of their victims to make them fall asleep. They had initially wanted to target the hobgoblins but found their lot too disciplined and too well-quartered for them to easily sneak into their camp and perform the deed that had been fine since the orcs were much less disciplined.

  It didn't take long for the goblins to slip in their drug, and soon enough, a wave of orc snoring went through the camp. The best part was that the hobgoblins didn't care and blamed the event on the orc’s undisciplined selves.

  With most of the orcs asleep, the goblins easily made their way across the camp, only to find that the orc commander wasn’t fully asleep and was more drowsy than anything. Still, the commander didn’t put up much of a fight, and they put him to sleep with a few sleep spells. From there, the goblin shard quickly absorbed the orc shard with help from its casters. Then, strengthened by the absorption, it promptly took hold of the unconscious orc commander.

  Once the second commander was under control, taking the last shard was much easier. This time around, they used the same plan but slightly altered. They now had the numbers and were easily able to cast a wide range spell that put all the common hobgoblins to sleep.

  From there, a battle devolved, but once again, their numbers prevailed, and they quickly incapacitated all the ranked hobgoblins. Afterwards, and with some more assistance, the shard absorbed the last piece and officially became Low D Rank. Sadly, for it, that's where the problem really began.

  Unlike Dan, who had the backing of the World Crystal and thus was mentally reinforced to some extent, the shard wasn't as lucky. Dan could handle Drax even though he was a much higher rank than himself. That was only possible because the connection went through the World Crystal, and it managed to keep the dragonkin in check. However, the shard didn't have any such backing, and not only was it a Low D Rank handling 26 other Low D Rank minds against their will, but it also had two High D Rankers struggling against it. The most important part of the whole thing was that Dan was also using his Dungeon God Connection ability making it impossible for his minions to truly revolt. Meanwhile, the shard had taken over their minds or souls, which was completely different than having them agree to work under it. The difference wasn’t large, but it was there, which was what mattered.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Things worsened as the shard kept gaining control over the remaining green skins. Dan wasn't sure why it did it, though he had a few guesses. Either way, the problem kept scaling as the shard kept taking over the minds of the green skins. Each green skin added its rebellious nature to the fight, and unbeknownst to the shard, their energies were starting to affect it as it was affecting them.

  That was the problem of controlling humanoids at such a level without the proper strength to block their influence. A connection, for the most part, was a two-way street, and unless you could block the incoming traffic, you would eventually find yourself at its mercy. Thus, the problem impacting the shard and its connection with the green skins became deeper. Then, finally, the dam broke, and as a result, along with the addition of a nudge from Mother Infinity, the transformation happened.

  Once transformed, the minds of the commanding goblins were mixed with the shards, and the less powerful goblins were put under complete control of the abomination. Their minds took a while to heal and properly fuse together, and even then, though there was one central entity controlling everything, the three commanders and the remnant's thoughts of the shards whispered at the new entity's consciousness. It wasn't enough to truly cause it distress, but Dan experienced it, and he was certainly glad not to be under the constant stress.

  From there on, the rest was history. The new monster was created, the event came to be, the army marched, and Dan's fight came to an end. However, Dan knew that wasn’t the end of it as he had yet to experience the shard’s memories of his past.

  Sure enough, as things went black with the death of the monstrosity through Dan’s combined attack of acorns and poison, the first memories began trickling in.

  Many things made aberrations different from most entities in the cosmos. The most important of these things was their Mana Conversion ability. It allowed aberrations to convert Chaos Mana into the ambient Arcane Mana that could be found in worlds. Without this ability, aberrations would be incredibly limited and unable to easily travel across the Astral. Instead, they would be bound much like the rest of the cosmos was, since without Arcane Mana to form a shield against the ever-consuming Chaos Mana, all creatures would be sucked dry and, sooner or later, perish without magic. And like all aberration abilities, this ability to convert mana came from their Heart Crystal.

  Dan, who had been transformed into an aberration, had one of these crystals, and like his brethren, he used it to travel across the cosmos.

  His first memories were after he had left Earth. He was still in the same solar system, having decided to visit the planets he had always heard about and seen many pictures of but never imagined he could visit. The interplanetary trip took some time and was only possible due to his ability to convert Chaos Mana and propel himself across space with his telekinetic magic while still protecting himself from danger.

  He had first visited Mars and left Venus and Mercury for another time, fearing what would happen if he got too close to the sun.

  Considering Dan had been a C ranked entity at the time, it took him a hell of a long time to visit the planets. However, since he needed to find other aberrations to consume and was leaving the solar system anyway, he didn’t mind. After all, he was now ageless.

  It had helped that the rift he had taken back on present Earth had left him somewhere back in time when magical civilizations were starting. Meaning he had plenty of time to power up and eventually come to stop the Eldritch God from destroying the planet.

  One thing that did suck about the entire thing was that he was alone. Thankfully, his new mental abilities were up to the task, and he didn’t go entirely insane.

  As Dan consumed all this new information, reality struck him. How lucky had he been when the rift only took him back in time and in the same area? It made Dan wonder whether that had been some intricate play by Earth’s World Crystal or just pure luck.

  The memories continued as the Dan from back then traveled past the local solar system, making his way deeper into the unknown. Sadly, there wasn’t much else to see. The burn was slow yet ever-going. Space was really empty, at least when traveling at such slow speeds. Years passed as Dan made his way through reality. The only good thing about the lost time was that Dan could slowly grow in power thanks to one of his abilities.

  Chaos Mana: You can produce a trickle of Chaos Mana attuned to your being. You may consume this Chaos Mana to slowly increase in power, therefore not having to consume Heart Crystals.

  The ability was one he got from the blessing the Earth’s World Crystal had given him in the form of heartburn, which had then caused him to pass out. The ability did exactly what it said, and Dan knew it was shared with all the other shards in the shattered zones. Sadly, it no longer worked like that for Dan, and it just let him transform the Chaos Mana into Arcane Mana, which gave him his daily mana regen.

  Dan also had another ability given by Earth’s World Crystal, which had been useful in his aberration journey but had also been altered by this whole dungeon nonsense.

  World Crystal Blessing - You have the ability to understand, speak, and write most languages. Additionally, through the pact made with the World Crystal, you gain access to the Crystal Dungeon System, which will help you with many different dungeon tasks.

  The first sentence was the boon his old ability gave him, with the rest being the modification made by the new World Crystal he had made the deal with.