Chrysalis

I can't wait to see my status when this evolution is done. It's going to be craaaaazy. I'm already getting a headache just thinking about having to upgrade all of these new glands. So many!

But it'll be worth it, I may have gone on a bit of a shopping spree, but the utility I've gained is immense, not to mention by all around beefier stats. My size is possibly going to double, perhaps even more than that after this. I'm gonna start pushing Tiny around once I'm done. Gweheheheh.

Alright then. Time to confirm everything and drain this dangerously overloaded core. Just being free of this pain is enough for me to eagerly finish up with the menu and welcome the deep embrace of torpor. As it has in the past, the lassitude begins to fall over me immediately, my vision fading to black and sensation falling blessedly away. Ah, no more pain, no more sensation of a physical body at all!

Wait a second. I remember this sensation.

My mind continued to sink, falling deeper in on itself as if I were circling a cosmic drain to the centre of the world.

Here we go again. Off to chat with Gandalf.

Being my second ride on the … whatever this was … I let myself go and tried to enjoy it without the sense of vertigo kicking in. I have to say, it isn't easy to enjoy a disembodied experience since there isn't really any actual sensation but rather a vague dizzying sense of movement. Without any ability to perceive my environment and without any real sense of distance, I found myself feeling vaguely bored as I waited for the ride to be over.

[Well I do apologise if you find the trip dull. There isn't really any other way to bring you to me.]

Ah, the gruff voice of the Grey One himself. It's seriously uncanny how much they sound alike. Is this some form of cosmic accident?

Yes, well. It is what it is I suppose. How've you been, Gandalf?

A deep chuckle resounded around my free floating mind.

[This name you have for me is amusing. You continue to insist on using it?]

It's not as if I know your real name now, is it?

[And if I told you my real name would you change your way of speaking?]

No.

[…]

…

expect to see you here so soon after the last time. I suppose your circumstances can be somewhat

what's going on

shouldn't be that surprising, surely. Everything touched by the system is within my grasp. It's only natural I could track the progress of so many monsters as they

We could get some help out of you? It doesn't seem entirely fair. How are they controlling all those monsters anyway? Isn't that

monsters have that authority. It's all

Right….

made to push your core that hard at your current level of evolution. Your core should have cracked and you should have been killed. That's how the system

say?

after

at surviving when I shouldn't. You said the system was designed,

you're going to ask

tried to roll my eyes but then realised I don't have a body, or eyes that

updates,

brought me down here just to talk at me? A

I was able to talk to someone like you. As I mentioned before, those that I've brought into the Dungeon

a pause before

Like that Garralosh for

stopped me

was an

can't say if the timeline was close to yours. Temporal vectors tend to get very fuzzy with this sort of summoning. But yes, she was like you. Unleashed on the Dungeon, alone and had to rely on her wits and savagery to survive. She's been here for hundreds of years now. She did

that someone would make desperate choices when thrown into a murder pit and forced to fight

[Are you being sarcastic?]

Not at all.

[she was much like you, rose up quickly. But in terms of

how? By creating

creating such a successful species. She made her own

of the Croca-Beasts, almost as if they were insulting in some