Dungeon Novel: Chapter Twenty-Five

Both Unbound and Elvinia were overjoyed, the only sigil he currently had, Purge Undead was extremely powerful. The more mana he had to push into the sigil the stronger it got and as a Dungeon Unbound had vast amounts of mana, far more than any sentient race could hope to wield.

He said to Elvinia to speak to the guests to see how much the sigil helped them in their battles with the Undead. The fact that the sigil was useful even to the sentient races with their own smaller mana pools meant there was another way of using them.

The sigil he gained from the necromancers was inscribed upon a small amethyst pendant handing off a small scrap of leather. No, upon further investigation there were two sigils, one being so small and intertwined with the larger it was almost imperceptible even to his Dungeon senses.

Elvinia let out an excited gasp once she saw them inscribed larger upon a small rock before she hurriedly spoke to Unbound.

“These are affinity sigils.” The words sharpened Unbound’s attention to a point.

“An affinity sigil.”

“Yes. Yes. They are beyond rare for someone to know. Like how an affinity gem is formed from concentrations of affinity mana, affinity sigils are formed in areas with pure expressions of the affinity. Here is the affinity sigil for communication and mind. Nowhere near as rare as an earthen sigil they are common and uncommon respectively, but they are otherwise extraordinary.”

“What do they mean? And what do they do?” Unbound questioned, his interest peaked.

“Well, they mean mind and communication. They are linked to the idea of a mind and communication intimately. The shape and how they manipulate mana is completely down to the carving, but it is imbued with the IDEA, not the form. The only reason I could recognize them is due to the feeling they give off.”

“And what can they do?” Unbound repeated, slightly concerned for his fairy with how she was rambling on about them.

“Anything. The only limits upon them are that they must be linked to the affinity and that they must fit within the realms of reality. You want to communicate to someone two worlds away, use two connected sigils. Want to shatter a mind, draw a mind sigil with the intention of destruction.”

That was terrifying. The ability to rewrite reality with a small carving and enough mana to activate it was especially terrifying to Unbound. He had thought that only other Dungeons had that ability to change reality like he could, knowing that sentient races could do so by using a symbol was scary.

“They are hard to use, however.” Unbound’s attention snapped back to Elvinia once she started speaking again. “And even more so for the mortal races, until they get a sufficiently high level, they wouldn’t be able to comprehend the symbol. And even then, they would not be able to understand many, any project that uses more than three tends to have several of their enchanters working together.”

“You say that they can do almost anything. Could there be a remote way to kill me?” It had been one of Unbound’s first thoughts. Anything that could harm him from afar was a serious weakness because all his defenses were based around someone trying to attack his core.

“It is possible, though unlikely?” Elvinia said with a contemplative look upon her face. “It would require some specialized sigils and serious amounts of mana due to trying to break through all of your own mana which would passively defend you. However, you could just as easily create a sigil confluence in which to resist it.”

Alarm, concern, fear, and relief warred in Unbound’s mind. The urge to gather all of the sigils he could burst from his Dungeon instincts, the desire to protect himself immensely. He had to resist claiming more territory outside his Dungeon in search of the other affinity sigils.

Another question had sprung to mind.

“What is the difference between an affinity sigil and an enchantment sigil, like the Purge Undead?” He asked his fairy, there was a clear difference in how she had treated the two types.

“Enchantment sigils are static.” She explained in return. “They don’t change ever, a permanent, universal language of magic in the system with small symbols to denote different things and brought together as one thing. Affinity sigils change and evolve with someone’s understanding of the meaning behind it. A master of an idea behind an affinity sigil could rewrite the same one in millions of different ways. And as a Dungeon, you absorbed the person’s understanding behind who made the sigil.”

That felt write to Unbound, as a Dungeon he was to collect above all, Knowledge. He would collect everything he came into contact with and reuse and repurpose it to suit his own purposes. The amount a Dungeon would collect across their immortal lives would cause envy from the biggest of hoarders.

He did not however feel that he knew loads about the sigils. In fact, he didn’t feel as though he knew anything about the affinities at all. He communicated this to Elvinia, and she nodded knowingly.

“No, you wouldn’t. Because they are a higher grade of sigil the knowledge will not sink in immediately but the creator’s own comprehension about the sigil will slowly sink in over a number of days. Another fact we don’t know why it happens. Only that it does.”

With a mental note of acknowledgment, he left the sigils alone as he went to another thing that the necromancers had gifted to him with their deaths. The shop points and all he could buy with them.