
This is something that I have been putting off for a while. As much as I have always wanted to put my story into writing, there was always one reason or another for me to put it off for some other time. Whether it was – no, I shouldn’t mention any of my distractions. Those would be spoilers.
I suppose the main reason for not having told this story sooner is not a spoiler, though.
To be honest with you, I have never been sure of how I should tell this. Should I be honest and upfront about everything? Should I only tell you what information I knew at the time, or sprinkle in knowledge during earlier scenes that I did not learn until later events? Should I be truthful about how idiotic I was and how many mistakes I made, or should I make myself sound as awesome and perfect as I would like to believe that I am? After all, there is nobody who could tell you that what you are reading is wrong… unless you talk to somebody else who was there, I guess.
I’ll make them all read this later so that they don’t expose accidentally contradict anything that I tell here.
Aside from that, I have decided to—as much as this may hurt my pride at times—give you my story in as much detail as I can remember. This means that I will be telling you all of the embarrassing, awkward details. You will get to read of my failures, my mistakes, my stupid thoughts and lack of knowledge, and you will most likely judge me very hard for all of them. Just go easy on me and remember that I was just a rock up until the beginning of my story. It’s not like a rock is going to know everything right after it gains sentience.
As for my purpose in telling this story – well, that is simple.
I want to be remembered.
Don’t we all?
There may not be many alive at the moment who don’t know who I am, but they are not immortal and neither am I. I think. I’m actually not quite sure whether I can obtain immortality or not.
Still working on that.
Anyways, my point is that because none of us are immortal (yet), I want to tell my story here so that future generations may be told of it. I want my name, my women, my accomplishments – I want my legend to be remembered.
Yes, I am a man of selfish desires. Some have even called me a narcissist. In fact… many have called me a narcissist.
Including myself.
After all, would somebody who isn’t a narcissist be telling an entire story about themselves from the moment they achieved sentience to the time that they – well, to now? Actually, now that I think about it, it may be hard to give this story an ending. It would not surprise me if something comes up and takes me away from telling this for a few months only to give me several more books’ worth of content to tell. Perhaps I will be writing this until the day I die?
Who knows.
But for now, let us begin the story. As much as I may love rambling, I would rather not lose your interest before the prologue of the story even begins!
Therefore, let us move onto the prologue.
Hmm. Maybe I should have read more since I don’t know how to smoothly transition into this next part.
Ah well.
Once upon a time (stories are supposed to start like this, right?), there was a great, fearsome dragon. This dragon’s home was a vicious, savage island off the coast of the world’s largest continent. At the center of the island was – is, the world’s largest volcano. Should I say “was” or “is” when referring to something that is still there/alive while writing in past-tense? This writing thing may be a bit more complicated than I thought. I’ll have to have that girl teach me some more later to improve my technique.
Oh. I probably shouldn’t interrupt the story with my confusion. Alright, sorry about that.
Where were we?
Right. Giant volcano in the middle of a giant island next to a giant continent. Oh, and a giant dragon called this giant volcano her giant home.
Within this volcano were many monsters, minerals, dangers, and naturally, a whole lot of lava. No, wait… it’s magma when it’s still inside. I think. You would think that I would be an expert on all things volcano-related by now.
Shit. I’m doing it again. Apologies.
And no, I’m not going to edit this out. Not a single word I ever write will be worth deleting nor changing.
Narcissist, remember?
Anyways, one such mineral inside of this volcano was a small rock. That’s right. A rock. It was not a special rock by any means. It was about the size of a human’s fist, red and orange, kind of rough around the edges, and one side of it was smooth. Exciting, right? This rock was something that any normal being would likely not even notice when walking through the volcano’s tunnels. There were thousands of similar rocks spread throughout the tunnels. But, while it may not have been anything more than an ordinary rock for the millions of years that it had it existed, it would soon become a very special rock.
That’s right. It would become me.
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Before that, though, the dragon who called the volcano her home had to almost lose her life.
Like all dragons, not that I have known many, she was greedy. She loved gold, powerful relics, virgins – the whole deal. Unfortunately for her, her greed blinded her to the ambush that awaited her during one of her hunts for treasure.
The nations of man successfully trapped her and unleashed their heroes upon her. It was hard for them to damage her, but they succeeded in piercing her scales, damaging her very soul with powerful magic, and they even resorted to biological weapons to inflict diseases upon her. They figured that if they could not kill her before she broke free from the trap, then they would subject her to diseases that could slowly kill her over time.
It was the best possible plan that they could come up with for defeating her. They managed to pull it off perfectly, too.
Alas, she was able to escape before they could kill her, but not without coming dangerously close to losing her life.
And so, she returned to her volcanic home.
In the center of the volcano’s caldera was a large, rock platform surrounded by lava just barely large enough for her to curl up onto and rest. She cried and groaned from pain, occasionally roaring out about how she would someday get revenge, before eventually succumbing to sleep.
The tunnel that I was eternally sitting in was exposed to her resting spot. At the time, I was as unintelligent as any rock, so I didn’t perceive anything that was happening. I had no idea what life was, I had no idea what a dragon was, and I had no idea what existing was. I didn’t even know what was was.
Thanks to the powerful aether that escaped from the dragon’s exposed wounds, though, I was able to know what was was. Then I became conscious of existence. I still didn’t know what life or dragons were, but I became aware of more than just nothingness.
I was, in the most basic sense, alive. Probably no more alive than a blade of grass, but I was alive.
Then, over the course of absorbing the dragon’s aether for nearly a hundred years, I became smart.
Please keep in mind that when I say I became “smart,” I mean I became smart for a rock. One plus one was still too intense for me, but I knew what numbers were. Well, not really. That’s just an example of what I mean by “smart,” though. It would still be some time before I learned what numbers were.
Another couple hundred of years later and two important events happened: one, the dragon whose aether I was somehow leeching from her became encased in obsidian, stopping the flow of aether into my rocky body; and two, I evolved. Yes. Me, a simple rock in a volcano, evolved into what would be the first of my many forms.
I became a dungeon core.
Honestly, I had no idea what that meant and stayed sitting around in the tunnel for another few years.
Then, after much very simple thinking (but mostly sleeping – yes, rocks sleep), I finally decided to “interact” with that strange thing I could see in front of me.
Ah, right. Yes, I was able to see. Having absorbed so much of that dragon’s aether gave me the ability to see everything around me with perfect vision. Anyways, “in front” of me was what I can only describe as a window. It was a rectangular shape with text on it that looked something like…
Don’t judge me for my drawing skills. I swear that it was only like a window and that there wasn’t much to it.
Evolution Complete: Basic Dungeon Core (Mahogany Obsidian)
[Accept]
|
There. It looked like that.
Anyways, by “interact” with it, I mean that I focused on various parts of it. I focused my “sight” on each word, the corners, the space between the letters, the air around the mysteriously-floating window, and then I finally had the wonderful idea of focusing my attention on “Accept.”
The simple act of focusing my sight on a single, small word was the beginning of my many, many legends.
Well, technically, the dragon getting hurt was the beginning. Or… depending on how you want to look at it, the beginning of everything was the start to my legend seeing as how I wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for existence itself existing.
Let’s just put it this way: accepting my evolutionary window, which was there for several years waiting for me to accept it, was the beginning of my life as a proper dungeon core.
This kind of narration is new to me, I really enjoy reading it, it sounds super fun and I hope the events happening will be as exiting as the narration, because I got really hooked to the story about a rock which got counciousness. :D
You go author. To me, style isn't important. Plot is, and additional non-plot related, non informative extra word, is also welcome.
Then again, I rather read what goes through the rocks mind than to read a wall of text about common people praising a certain young master over and over again.
Now that was a new way to start a novel, its interesting. Keep up the good work little rock!
Thank you for the chapter and the treat! (^_^)/
Essa narração parece o livro "memórias quase póstumas de Machado de Assis", só falta ele falar que é um autor fantasma.
Don't listen to Nae Sayers. I do agree, and no offense, that it seems a little unpolished. However, I wouldn't call this narration style bad. Contrary to popular opinion there is often several uses to pulling the user OUT of the story a bit. To let them inflect or process some info i.e.
If you kept polishing it, and yourself, I could see this becoming a signature aspect of a successful author. One that changes story to story as the personality of the character narrating changes. It will definitely be hard to master, but I definitely wouldn't write it off as hopeless/bad like some are.
Humans had the capability of injuring a powerful dragon and engagin in biowarefare hundreds or thousands of years ago they better be some damn advanced humans now
Well, biowarfare isnt all THAT impressive, if you count shamanistic curses to bring diseases upon your enemies. But killing a dragon, sure, but we dont really know how hard it actually was to hurt it at that point in time.
I had to skim past the first half of the chapter because it was like listening to someone just blabber on and on. The second half shows potential though; I hope to see more of that.
*crosses fingers while clicking [Next >>]*
The premise is great, but the writing style is... hard to stomach. I already don't like First Person POV in the first place, and this one was just like twisting my innards around. I don't really care if it's for setting the MC's character and personality or whatever, meta or not, what's not a good read is not a good read. It was most interesting when there were actual things being narrated, but the fact that this is all just blatantly a retelling really takes away the immersion. Basically, I don't know where the reader's perspective is, if that thing actually exists. My mind's telling me that I should put myself as someone who is listening to an old grandpa retelling his life, but the thing is I wouldn't want to listen to someone very flippant in doing it. That's the thing, these things shouldn't even be considered normally when reading novels, but the writing style makes it jarring to read. It's making it hard for me to invest in the story when it already feels very nonconsequential right from the start. What if it gets into action and there's too much detail put into it? Is he going to describe how he swung his sword left and right and how the enemy was finally defeated after paragraphs and paragraphs of retelling how the fight went? Just the thought alone that all of it is just a retelling and it's nothing that important kinda takes away the immersion, as much I hate to say that word.
The best I can put this novel at is it's something experimental, obviously, but too bad it just didn't fit my taste. I'm not gonna pretend I know anything about writing though, so this is all just a lousy reader's opinion.
You make plenty of good points. Typically, this story breaks a ton of rules when it comes to narration style, and it being written as, basically, an autobiography of a fictional character, that's something that scares a lot of people off. Pretty much the only complaint it got over on RR before bringing it here was the narration style. People either hate it or love it, and if you don't love it, then it wouldn't be an enjoyable story to continue reading. Some people love it and have said it's one of the most unique styles they've ever read, other people have said it's the worst and dumbest style that they've ever read = P. There is a pretty big split when it comes to the narration style.
I m not style-based. So i can understand what its about. For me its good narration with interesting plot, i mean what the heck with the world when rock be alive.
I liked the style. It didn't distract me that much. Now, if the style stays the same in a heavy action scene, then there would be a problem.
@Ace_Arriande Well, I just so happen to be one of the people who loves it.
Please author, DO NOT listen to this idiot. His opinion is wrong.
@Bean Ummm... I’m pretty sure you’re not talking about my comment, but just in case, can you clarify? Your comment ended up right after mine.
@FireflyFanatic yeah sorry, I'm an idiot. Not your comment, the one above. Apologies.
@Bean Heh, no worries.
@Bean Maybe you mean my comment?
@Mint Correct I did. I like the writing style for the same reason you dislike it. It fits my taste.
@Bean Just because you like it and I don't like it doesn't make me an idiot tho.
@Mint to be fair it was said in jest. That was also sort of the point. I said your opinion was wrong. An opinion can't be wrong. Should have been a clue that I wasn't serious.