Billy needed almost three weeks of spying to get a clear idea of how the system worked. Durance dungeons had trouble feeding on suddenly released Essence—they were very inefficient at absorbing the energy released by Experientials’ deaths. However, they thrived on suffering and torture.

  Their modus operandi was to keep Experientials alive and feed slowly off them, even allowing them to reproduce. This ensured the dungeon would survive indefinitely, as long as it could keep its victims alive.

  Unlike the dungeons commonly found on Earth, these would not eventually starve to death as long as they played by their own rules.

  The dungeon was also reproductive, meaning it could infect other dungeons and turn them into copies of itself.

  In many ways, they were the dark counterpart of the Brotonville Train Station.

  Billy could not help but wonder whether they were just a random mutation or the work of a sadistic mind.

  An interesting aspect was that durance dungeons also seemed to feed off one another. There was a vast, central rank seven dungeon surrounded by almost thirty smaller dungeons, with one or two ranks at most. They acted as breeding pens—Billy could see groups of Experiential slaves being led away from these pens towards the central dungeon every day, guarded by those blue-skinned Overseers.

  These slaves were the lifeblood of the dungeons, and the main dungeon allowed its children only the minimum amount of Essence to survive and keep producing slaves.

  A plan began to form in his mind. He needed an enormous amount of achievement points to create his time dungeon. He would never get them inside a locked system unless he managed to overthrow these parasites and replace them with symbiotic dungeons.

  It was time for a revolution.

  For the first part of his plan, he chose the smallest and most distant dungeon, one that sent six slaves, guarded by three overseers, every five days. He waited for the guards to return, then followed them.

  The Elven Headhunter was only the equivalent of a level six Avatar. He could not take a trio of level three guards on his own, but he was supremely adapted to fighting in the jungle.

  The cyclops behaved much like off-duty soldiers, joking and laughing while they made their way back home. Billy would make sure they never reached it. He had been appalled by the casual cruelty with which they treated their prisoners.

  He followed them for most of a day, using his superior stats and his passive bonuses when outdoors.

  The trio stopped when the sun began to sink and started setting up camp. One of them left the group to relieve himself against a tree. Billy was not going to get a better chance. He approached slowly from behind and used his only Machete Fighting ability—one that Aunt Ethel would have loved.

  Behead: Double your Might stat for a single machete strike. Five-minute cooldown, which is not applied if the strike kills the victim.

  The cyclops was a head taller than Billy, but that did not save him from being swiftly and silently decapitated. His body stood still for a full five seconds, still relieving itself, and then it toppled slowly sideways. The time for subtlety was over.

  Billy charged towards the two remaining overseers, who were roasting something suspiciously resembling a human limb over the fire. He yelled a ringing war cry as he jumped on them and used Behead to bury his machete into the nearest one’s skull. He pulled it free and attacked the other, using Behead again. This one had time to draw a cleaver and try to protect himself, but the enhanced blow hit his shoulder, giving the monster a grievous wound.

  The guard switched the cleaver to his other hand and tried to attack Billy, but he used his superior stats to avoid his clumsy strikes, dodging easily, while the blood loss weakened the Overseer.

  The monster was already swaying as the Behead cooldown reset. Billy made use of it, and the guard’s head went flying off into the trees.

  Time for the Blue Room, Billy thought as he discorporated and used his Revenant power to come back as a Turalian Overseer, as the cyclops were apparently called.

  He summoned his spawn screen and read the description.

  Turalian Overseer (Mob):

  Role: Tank 3

  Feats: +10% to Strength and Dexterity when causing physical pain to others.

  Each rank in a Role costs 50 points.

  Another system. One very similar to the one used on Earth, but with Roles and Feats instead of Classes and Competencies, and stats with different names. It seemed like a more primitive, less refined version, not surprising considering he had travelled to the far past.

  Billy reflected that he would eventually have to instruct his module to express his respawn options directly in their Pantean equivalents. It would get confusing if every reality and aeon had its own version of the System.

  He would miss the Elven Headhunter, but he needed this form. Respawning as a Progressor had taught him that new shapes also carried with them knowledge of their original language.

  He needed to pass as an Overseer to pull off the stunt he planned.

  The Turalian Overseer form was big and strong, with no depth perception at all—not a surprising flaw for a cyclops. A beautiful bird flew over him, and Billy instinctively thought of the best way to pull its wings off while keeping it alive. He decided never to use this form again once it had fulfilled its purpose.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  He headed towards the village the trio had initially come from. It looked like a hellish plantation. There were no safety measures, not even fences to keep the slaves from escaping. He guessed the prisoners watched one another to avoid punishment if one escaped. These people had been thoroughly broken.

  This was a first-rank dungeon with a single boss. Taking him out would destroy it.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?” one of the overseers asked him as hostilely as possible, using a guttural, primitive language that mainly consisted of grunts.

  “The boss wants to know why you haven’t sent anyone this week,” Billy answered in the same tongue.

  “What are you talking about? We sent six slaves almost four days ago,” answered the overseer, no longer sounding so sure of himself.

  “Are you the one with whom I must talk about this?” Billy asked sweetly.

  “No, of course not,” the brute answered. “I will take you to Vulgo.” All bullies were the same. At the end of the day, they only cared for their own survival.

  The overseer took him through the plantation. It took Billy only one hundred yards to wish he had come back as a Blind Swordsman. There was pain, fear, and wanton cruelty anywhere he looked. He would wipe away this stain from the planet, even if it were the last thing he did.

  They eventually reached a large tent that served as a tribal palace.

  Inside, Vulgo, a larger Overseer with red skin, rested upon a throne made of human bones.

  “What does Talan wish of us? We have met our obligations faithfully.” The leader tried to play tough, but Billy noticed he was clearly afraid. Who was this Talan, to be feared by such monsters?

  “A message, one that I can only say in private to you and your best warriors.”

  “They are all present here,” Vulgo said, proudly signalling the dozen overseers around the room.

  “Send the slaves away, then,” Billy asked.

  The boss looked surprised. “And then what? Does Talan want the furniture out of my tent, too?” These people considered their prisoners no better than objects. It did not matter what they heard.

  “Is that the answer you want me to deliver to Talan?” Billy asked.

  “No,” Vulgo said hurriedly. He grunted, and all the slaves ran out of the tent as if it had been set on fire.

  “Tell us the message, now,” Vulgo ordered.

  “Come closer, all of you,” Billy answered.

  They did, with suspicion in their eyes. No one wanted to be the first to say no.

  “What is the bloody message?” asked Vulgo, finally losing his temper.

  “Boom!” said Billy. And so it was.

  Billy felt the dungeon collapse around him, even from the Blue Room. He activated his Heart of Darkness power to seize its escaping Essence and use it to build a new dungeon with himself as the Core.

  He kept the Inverted, Hatchery, and Reproductive tags. He would not have to pay for them, as they were already part of the Essence freed during the explosion.

  He substituted the Durance Tag with the Symbiotic one. As a Motif, he chose Freedom is a fire that needs a spark. That one would work. The dungeon was named Turandal’s Stronghold.

  He spent all his remaining achievement points. It would be only a rank-one dungeon, but the more he spent, the more his Core form and power would align with his goals.

  Finally, he also used the reincarnation trick he had used to respawn as the Alchemical Master of the Secret Mountain.

  Using a form stored in the Akashic Library was always safe, but both Heart of Darkness and Bad Boy carried the risk that the new form would take over his identity when he first assumed it.

  He wrote: The Liberator had a dream in which hidden memories from a previous life awakened in his consciousness… and then copied and pasted the whole self-biography he had written the first time he had used the Heart of Darkness power in the Core description section.

  He felt the whole dungeon disintegrate around him, only to come back in a very different form. Gone was the sinister plantation; in its place was a military camp surrounded by ramparts. The slaves huddled in the middle of the camp, embracing each other and fearing the worst. This was a huge change, and, in their experience, life constantly got worse each time it changed.

  The door to the barracks opened, pouring scores of warriors. His mobs. They were identical in appearance to the brutalized humanoid slaves, but they were proud and filled with confidence. They wore light leather armor and carried spears, slings, and arrows.

  They raised their weapons and began shouting his name: Turandal! Turandal!

  Billy gazed at his reflection in the polished surface of a nearby shield. He had taken on the appearance of the slaves, a race predominantly humanoid but distinguished by their lack of a nose, longer-than-human arms, and a yellowish tint to their skin.

  He wore armour, a spear, and a shield, and carried himself with dignity and grace. He was a hero out of legend to these people. Not only a hero, but a liberator.

  Turandal the Liberator (Core):

  Roles: Tank 5, Leader 5

  Feats: Hero of the People: +1 to each stat for each Turalian slave that fights with you, up to triple your normal stats

  Inspire Courage: Each Turalian with fear in his heart who sees Turandal stand up for him has a 1% chance per second to conquer his fear. This will double his stats for the rest of the fight, but never above those of Turandal’s own.

  Core of the Dungeon: You will gain Achievement Points as your dungeon gains essence.

  Conqueror and Liberator: Any dungeon you destroy will be rebuilt as a copy of the dungeon that spawned you.

  Tithe: Any dungeon you create will pay a 10% Essence Tithe to the dungeon that spawned you.

  Each rank in a Role costs 50 points.

  He saw his warriors shatter the manacles that shackled the slaves as they shouted his name. The slaves looked around in fear at everything happening around them. Then one of the elders pointed at him and whispered his name to another.

  The elder stood up and began to shout his name. One by one, all the slaves stood up as fear left their eyes and hope began to shine in them.

  “Rest today, and recover,” he shouted as he brandished his spear. “Tomorrow we begin taking back our world.”

  His name kept echoing through the jungle as his people began to stand up, slaves no more.

  A promised hero had come out of legend to help them, and nothing could stop them now.