Dungeon at the End of the Universe

Time began to pass once more. Second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour. Days, weeks, even months and years flew by like it was nothing. And yet, just like last time, for everything within the Dungeon things went by much faster.

Things followed the usual course. Stars formed, then planets, and on one of those planets life evolved. But we already know all about Lapis and the Sipalians, so I’ll spare you the details.

One day, once the civilization on Lapis was advanced enough, they spotted a new star appear in the sky. And yet, it grew. They quickly figured it was no star at all. It was something coming right at them. But it was no meteor, nor a comet.

Not knowing what it is, yet all the more interested in it, they named the mysterious dot of light in the sky the Light.

But once more, I’m repeating myself. This has all already happened once before. Let’s just skip over how the Light is actually the Dungeon moon, how said moon magically cancelled all of its momentum so that it didn’t crash into the planet, and what unrest this awakened in the Sipalians.

Because there’s something much more important than a second look at some featherless bipeds’ reactions to the arcane. What’s much more interesting is what had been happening inside the Dungeon moon all this time.

“We’re finally here again,” I spoke to Faellen.

Again, it had been a long period of simple waiting and preparation. This time, however, we were perhaps even more ready. In no small part thank to our unfortunate stowaways.

In the end, we decided to go with a mix of options for how to deal with them. Basically, we told them the truth. More or less.

I don’t really want to get into it, but things happened, years passed, and suddenly there were more than just three Sipalians in my Dungeon. Not exactly the best outcome, but I could deal with it.

I did, after some careful consideration, decide not to give this new generation access to the System. At least not just yet.

And then there was one last development. It could be fortunate or unfortunate, depending on how one sees things, but overall it was a mixed blessing.

With guidance from Faellen’s inherited knowledge and a lot of assistance from extreme quantities of mana we figured out a way for the three original Sipalians to survive until we reached a point in time where their home exists again.

That was the fortunate part. As much as I’m becoming a being of godly power, I don’t feel it’s right to kidnap someone from their life completely. For a little while, sure, I don’t mind. But for someone’s whole life? Absolutely not.

So, we shifted time.

For the first time (well, second if you count the active activation of Endless End) I messed with time on purpose. Now I truly had no defence against the time criminal accusations.

Anyway, the accelerated time resulting from my stupid Aspect combination was not constant. I already knew this after Faellen told me that we were going through time slightly slower once we reached Lapis. Turns out, this un-constant-ness doesn’t extend to only the rate at which we travel.

In short, we managed to shift a large portion of the acceleration onto the three Sipalians. I still kept some of it for us, after all we didn’t want to spend thousands of years floating in space. But with the three of them in a small room with the time acceleration focused on them in such a small space? For them it likely took at most a few days.

The unfortunate part of figuring out how to shift the time acceleration and preserve the three Sipalians was those they left behind. I suppose it’s not exactly unlikely what happened, but it still feels wrong.

The families of the three adventurers formed a cult. No, that’s too harsh a word. They began worshipping me. Something about how I took their ancestors for a divine mission and that they’ll come back when the time is right and they’ll need them most.

Worst part is that now that we’ve reached out destination I really would be releasing the three, so my, uh, worshippers will feel justified. They’ll probably think something along the lines of, how else could our ancestors have survived this long if not by divine intervention.

But what can one do. Every time I tried to send Faellen to correct them, they just treated it as a divine messenger and descended further into zealotry.

That’s all unimportant now though, because we had a plan. A different one than before, which basically simply boiled down to get adventurers and spread the System.

We would still be doing that, but also more. For one, I knew what to do with the planet and mana. This time, I wouldn’t dilly-dally and start spreading my mini-Dungeons as soon as possible.

Faellen, on the other hand, will once again take charge of the adventurers. It also started managing the, sorry I really can’t think of a better name of it than cult. While we weren’t able to disabuse them of the notion that I was divine, we could at least somewhat shift their focus.

They’d be an ‘npc village’ to guide along any Sipalians we transport from Lapis. That should allow us to get more than parties of three at once.

And lastly, both of use would be focusing on the skies. We had to know exactly when that asshole Zemis arrives, so that we can take care of them. Without that deity, there won’t be a divine palace to teleport over those time cops, not anyone to even alert them of out presence.

Besides, I also had some… other plans for this deity. Something that’d make it much more useful.