Museum Core Chapter 90:  Leveling Up!!!

3 months later

Jaclyn groaned internally, cursing the her of five minutes ago for not just flying over here. Because while there were plenty of shit jobs, there were also shit jobs. The kind everyone hated … but just because running away would have been understandable didn’t give her a free pass to abuse her power and run the other way.

But ultimately, it wasn’t like they were escorting a transport full of livestock through the jungle for the fun of it. Daedalus had said he needed things he could upgrade “basic” creatures with, and since the government had an encampment outside his door, he couldn’t use jungle critters for that.

So, after several fights with animal rights groups, they’d started driving the occasional truck full of cows into the transformation area, only to realize that doing so attracted the few remaining predators in the zone, necessitating an escort. And when she’d checked in at the boundry checkpoint at just the wrong time …well, it had ended with her sitting on top of the damn truck, mentally cursing herself, the driver, and her sense of smell as she suffered in silence.

Enhanced senses weren’t supposed to make you more vulnerable to sensory effects, and certainly didn’t leave you as susceptible as they would have, had they been acquired “naturally” via evolution, but being able to smell better did make some things more noticeable, and others were only noticeable because of them in the first place.

One of her rare nights off had been ruined by this, when she’d smelled a damn dead body in a dumpster and had to abandon her friends for several hours while she dealt with that.

Seriously, she should have been mad at the murderer about the murder, but she’d found herself far more upset about the ruined evening than anything else. The better her senses, the more she noticed. The more she noticed, the higher the likelihood that she’d “stumble across” something she had to deal with.

But eventually, the stench-mobile reached the museum and the small town that had been built in front of it, the animals were herded in through a specialized entrance that didn’t let them back out, and then marched in through the main door … but before she could do anything, she could feel the air around her tremble.

***

Holy. Fucking. Finally.

C-Rank. It was already late February, barely eight months left on the clock, but not just he but his delvers as well were finally at a point where they could start taking action and expect to properly achieve something with regards to their goals.

The “progress bar” had been inching upwards bit by bit for weeks, nearing the top, but it taken to so long that to be entirely honest, Thomas hadn’t been paying full attention to it, instead doing a whole lot of other stuff and rapidly forgetting about how close he was to leveling.

And then, suddenly, his entire field of view was covered in notifications.

Dungeon Core (Museum Subtype), you have reached C-Rank and gained an extra slot for both champions and subcores, as well as unlocked the ability to recreate sapient species.

In addition, you have unlocked full, complete, human-level cognition and emotional intelligence … error … already obtained …

…

If you weren’t a transformed human, you would have gained your current level of mentality at this point.

View detailed explanation?

Y/N

Once again, he’d already known all that, courtesy of Elias, but he’d looked anyway, just in case there’d been something the fairy hadn’t been aware of for one reason or the other. As it turned out, there wasn’t, things were as predicted.

This was where dungeons normally unlocked their conscience and, more importantly, where he’d be able to use the various patterns he had for intelligent races … all three of them. The lizardman from the very beginning, the dragon, and, of course, the human pattern.

But when he waved away the explanation, another window popped up.

Name: Thomas Stettin

Species: Dungeon Core (Museum Subtype)

C-Rank (0% progression to B-Rank, see ability list?)

Mana: 2,129/2,500 -> 5,000

Creature Patterns: 391 (2,723 unused, see list?)

Command Limit: 1,498 -> 3,000

Material Patterns: 10,623 - 200,000, depending on definition (see list?)

Champions: 3/4 (Cheshire, Dexter, Jan)

Subcores: 1/2

Educational Exhibit Requirement: Met

Note: you have significant unused domain potential

Yep, he hadn’t checked that for a very long time, mostly because he’d started out doing everything by feel since the system had been glitched out at the time.

Though apparently, at some point, the system had started being satisfied with how “educational” his dungeon was, at least when it wasn’t putting the delvers into mortal danger.

Perhaps a separate dungeon focused purely on information would be fun to set up too …

Well, there was that note; he certainly had the space.

And the plan for his new sub core was also already in place, so he summoned and had Jan grab it, then sent the monkey off towards the place the Thames had been before it had been filled with dirt.

As far as he’d been told, that had caused massive flooding to the west of the transformation zone, but now, the water was ever so slowly working its way through the reinforced channel that led through the city and would likely, eventually, reconnect with the ocean, but that would only happen a long time from now, if he left it to happen naturally.

However, now that he’d given the order and shelved the “actual museum” plan for later, there was something he’d been looking forward to since forever.

Getting a human body.

More than enough people had died in his depths for him to get the pattern, but simply using a random other person’s body felt … well, it felt deeply wrong, so he spent a couple of minutes “customizing” the appearance into something more “handsome.”

Blonde, muscular, smooth-skinned, blue-eyed, and square-jawed … don’t forget the clothing …

After a couple more minutes, the body was finally there, sitting upon a slab of marble he’d forged just for the occasion.

Elias was already there, excitedly fluttering around the whole affair, waiting.

And then, Thomas took control of the sleeping body.

There was a brief second of pause as he made the connection, and suddenly, a remote connection to his core aside, he was back in human skin again.

Air slowly brushing over skin that was neither covered in fur or scales, eyes that finally saw in the same spectrum he was used to, not even his core had matched that so precisely, ears that heard what they were supposed to hear, a nose that didn’t endlessly alert him to nearby predators, or prey, as it were … just normal, all in all.

“Thomas” sat up. He was “normal” again, had access to approximately a million different things that he’d have loved to “play around” with in a more normal body, from weapons to the cutest critters ever, and yet …

“What’s wrong?” Elias asked, having noticed his hesitation.

Thomas sighed. “Have you ever wanted something, imagined it a hundred times, in a hundred different ways, practically dreamed of it, and when you finally get it …”

“Damn,” Elias commented. “How ba- …”

The fairy cut himself off.

“It’s …” Thomas took a deep breath, a real one, this time, before continuing. “It’s just not the same.”

It was like returning home after having been elsewhere so long that that other place at least partially became “home,” when your old place remained familiar yet simultaneously lacked that intimate embrace that only your true “home” could have, with the jarring nature of the change making it all the more painful …

Because it wasn’t just a matter of no longer being used to the old “normal.”

It was one of having gained an entirely new idea of what was he was supposed to be sensing, how his surroundings were supposed to be feeling, of … of his entire fucking world having been fundamentally shifted and he hadn’t even realized until just now …

How many more times would he wind up spinning out over random stuff that he simply happened to come across? Bloody effing hell …

Thomas withdrew his presence from what was supposed to be the greatest boon of C-Rank and unsummoned it, mood ruined.

After several minutes of coming up with increasingly “creative” cusswords, he’d finally calmed down enough to focus his attention elsewhere.

“I’m guessing you won’t be using humans in the dungeon either?” Elias asked.

“I wouldn’t have in the first place,” Thomas replied. “It’d be weird, and even if it hadn’t been that way for me, how long do you think it would have taken the people outside to get a bee in their bonnet about it?”

Elias, of course, took the entirely wrong thing away from that and instead asked, “Is it just me, or are you becoming British?”

Thomas sighed. “Maybe. They do have fun sayings.”

But none of that was the point, nor was it quite the distraction he felt he needed.

After taking a couple of seconds to make sure he wasn’t just doing the Dungeon equivalent of “retail therapy” and spending his domain potential in stupid ways purely for a temporary happiness boost, he expanded it into every direction save directly forward, towards the BPA camp that was always full of people that would then endlessly disrupt his domain while giving him precisely zero benefit.

He’d just gained plenty of new area to build on, and ground to dig into, and now was immediately going to start using it.

First, he raised a wall around and glass dome above an area he’d later turn into an arena of some kind when he had the time, but for now, it’d just be a placeholder out back that would also remind him of the fact that he had, in fact, had that plan, helping him stick with it.

And then, then … he wondered where’d be the best place to put the museum. It needed to be accessible, without getting in the way, nicely placed, and so on …

In the end, Thomas decided to raise a large building on either side of the camp, simultaneously providing a bulwark against potential attackers, then slapped a whole bunch of large empty rooms into the left one and added a “laboratory facilities” sign above the entrance. He figured letting scientists play around with dungeon-provided materials should also empower him based on its “educational value,” but didn’t expand on it any, it had simply been a whim.

Instead, he focused on his other project, the museum. It was identical to the future laboratories, a hundred meters long, twenty-fie meters wide, and two stories tall, with a wall separating each of the floors lengthwise and a staircase in the middle as well as on each ends, creating two round tours that could be walked, one on each floor, with plenty of shortcuts and ways to change floors as well. This made it simultaneously easy to navigate while also creating natural paths to walk while seeing everything.

And now … hm, what should he put in there?

He thought about it for a bit before coming to a conclusion that should have been clear from the start. Magic and dungeons.

Separating the top floor into eight distinct areas, each with its own color of paint, was a matter of moments, and putting in exhibits for each of the transformation areas didn’t take much longer. After all, he didn’t have much for any area that wasn’t, you know, the jungle.

But information like the local system should still be appreciated by potential visitors, as should some of the other stuff, like information on the local apex predators, assuming he had them.

And the bottom floor would be a narcissistic palace of self-aggrandizement … because what else did you call it when someone made a one-thousand-two-hundred-and-fifty square meter museum about themselves?

Thomas sniggered, though there was still an important question at hand: just what did he want to reveal, and what could he reveal without potentially endangering himself? Revealing all the powers and capabilities of all his creatures and champions might be suitable for a museum, but at the same time, it would also leave him fairly “exposed,” all things considered.

What would be both interesting, and harmless?

Well, the first thing that came to mind were the countless pictures he’d taken with the cameras that the BPA just may come to regret letting him have, because he’d caught several people in rather embarrassing poses, such as the Deputy Director mid-slip in Dexter’s boss room, just as her feet were flying out from under her.

Or Henderson trying to clamber back out of the water of the entrance hall. He hadn’t even been knocked in there by something, after all, that room was a safe space, he’d just tripped and then tried to play it off as though it had been nothing.

He put a “highlight reel” in one corner of the ground floor.

Then, he decided to add an exhibit showing the “normal” version of his dungeon creatures, his various dinosaurs and big cats, and so on.

And Cheshire’s representative, a saber-tooth tiger, got a place of honor. He knew he shouldn’t play favorites, yet that did little to change the fact that he had one.

He just kept going from there, also putting in a small exhibit about the rules of dungeon creation as per Elias, such as the “no currency” rule and so on.

It was fun.

Yet even though he was almost completely done with the museum, he stopped short of finishing it … because Jan had finally reached his destination.