It is the year 2055, half a decade since the virtual world, somewhat distastefully named Breccia, first launched in Europe.

  The game was competitive and cruel from its start, with relatively low resources in total but an enormous world map to settle in. This resulted in many factions engaging in warring, raiding, smuggling, mining, producing, and much more.

  Everyone begins their journey with a racial choice and a starting class choice, which can vary depending on their chosen racial class. You can become a great variety of races, including monstrous creatures; however, those choices can limit many of your career options later on. What's more, your race and class choice can influence your starting zone!

  For example, a thief, though capable of achieving goodness, always starts in the neutral or dark zone due to the inherently dubious nature of their class tendencies. True dark classes, such as assassins, always start in the dark zone, while true light classes, like paladins, begin in the light zone.

  The zone alignment of a player can shift over time based on their choices in the game, leading to ascension or descent within a hidden moral system. While it's often challenging to play against the inherent nature of one's class—turning a paladin to darkness or a thief to light—some players do this as a niche strategy, creating unique builds and often proving to be effective adversaries in the process.

  The majority of the player base remains aligned with light or neutrality. This is partly because these alignments are seen as more straightforward or rewarding, but also because the dark zone is inherently more dangerous. In the dark lands, every being is at each other's throat, making survival and progress far more difficult. The constant struggle for resources, territory, and power in the dark lands dissuades many players, pushing them toward the relative stability and safety of the light or neutral zones.

  The world is split into five large zones. In the south is the light zone, though originally named Lucenti. Nowadays, the entire light zone is colloquially referred to as Aurelia. Seeing as this immense citadel city's power has all other small hubs entangled in its economy, the name isn’t particularly inaccurate. The great citadel's name was settled upon after five months of the most boring and cantankerous meetings between its top guilds at the time. It houses the largest gathering of guilds, warehouses, markets, and more. It truly is a beautiful city that could take days to walk through. Indeed, many have come to love it enough to permanently settle there, pursuing a simpler craft or trading lifestyle.

  Then there are the neutral zones—or rather, zones—as there is a clear east and west division where neutral players start. The western zone is filled with great forests, hilly lands, varying coastlines, and waterways along with islands. The eastern zone is mountainous, with snowy plains, taigas, and great iced-over lakes.

  Furthermore, the neutral zones are ever-changing. Outposts and cities are built quickly but are small and often besieged by rivals, destroyed, and rebuilt elsewhere. For this reason, the neutral zones are often referred to as the eastern and western wildlands. The history of this area is barely worth keeping track of for a normal person, and only the guilds know it by way of their hired wildlands historiographers—lest they ever forget a slight that was done to them.

  As mentioned before, the wildlands are split apart. This is due to a large alpine mountain range in the middle of the world, the Breccian Divide. The weather alone in this zone is reason enough that no big settlements ever existed here, except one military outpost, costly maintained by Aurelia to keep watch for any armies or raiding groups from the north. Strong monsters roam the zone, and there is barely any scavengeable food or wood; the mountains are barren outside of what loot you can take from a monster or what you can mine from the caves. These caves, however, are said to always be infested with monsters. Most players only pass through the Divide for travel, often for smuggling or for a mining expedition.

  Lastly, of course, there is the dark zone, aptly named Umbrae, a very large and inhospitable territory often referred to simply as the Darklands. There is no big city or any such thing; only wastelands, outposts, temporary markets, small harbors, production places, and dungeons. Monsters strong enough to destroy walls roam freely, and most darklanders themselves are even worse. Instead, the dark zone has many factions that, like an army on the march, move from territory to territory, setting up black markets for curious customers one day and leaving the next to hide out from enemy raiding parties.

  What's more, the dark zone is not poor in resources for those who know how to exploit them and live to return with the rich bounty. Be it monster hunters, great miners, excellent alchemists and herbalists, and so on. When a guild has a great amount of wealth it cannot carry any longer, they hide it in myriad ways. However, seeing how burying treasure often results in lower-ranking members sneaking out at night with shovels, dungeons are used to hide treasuries most of the time. Though these dungeons exist in all the zones, in the Darklands, they are the most relied-upon method of wealth security.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  You might now think the Darklands are therefore a pushover, having no unity and little security; however, the entirety of the dark zone has a corruption status effect that worsens the longer a non-darklander stays in it. This results in light and neutral armies only making punitive expeditions and raids into the land. The result is that very few large dark guilds dominate the dark wastes like migratory tribes. When new players start in the Darklands, they are quickly conscripted by these factions as slave soldiers or killed on the spot if they don’t prove useful.

  As stated before, all zones contain dungeons. These dungeons serve as strongholds, treasuries, and hideouts, often jealously guarded by those who claim them. While slaying all the monsters of a dungeon is a feat in itself, ownership is not granted by simply defeating a set number of monsters, clearing levels, or defeating a boss—it is won through the effort of seizing the main control room directly. Once conquered, the dungeon is often sold off to a willing guild or a vying Dungeon Master, as the raiding warriors usually lack the capacity to maintain such a complex stronghold with their skillsets.

  Upon claiming a dungeon, the new Dungeon Master is bestowed with a unique magical ability: the power to teleport back to their main dungeon room after a short magical process once per day. This ability serves both as a mark of their status and a vital tool, allowing them to instantly return and defend their domain whenever it is under attack.

  The role of a Dungeon Master is not for the faint of heart. The costs of fortifying and maintaining a dungeon are immense, requiring not only great wealth but also a deep understanding of fortification construction, monster ecology, defensive strategy, and much more, depending on the chosen dungeon style. Dungeon Masters are more than just combat tacticians; they are craftsmen, engineers, monster tamers, and strategists, relying on their specialized knowledge and resources to protect their strongholds.

  In Breccia, where power and wealth are constant pursuits, the path of the Dungeon Master is less common but highly respected. It is a rare profession, with only a handful of true masters in all the zones. These Dungeon Masters form a close-knit, though competitive, community, each guarding their secrets and techniques closely. Some focus solely on defending their guild’s treasures, often known as treasurers, while others relish the challenge of creating elaborate traps and defenses for those bold enough to venture into their domain, earning them the title of trappers.

  And that brings us to me: Techneadore. As a dark-aligned cyborg lord and Dungeon Master for the Unholy Alliance, I oversee a single, formidable dungeon—a stronghold meticulously crafted to challenge and overwhelm any who dare enter. My role extends beyond mere treasurer; I am the architect of this labyrinthine fortress, where I employ an array of traps and defenses to turn raiders into my victims.

  My dungeon is a testament to my craft. While I use various methods to ensure the end of those who enter—whether through poison, pitfalls, or more direct confrontations—my true expertise lies in oversight and gunnery. Turrets, overseeing cameras and drones, and mechanical contraptions form the backbone of my defenses, allowing me to secure my domain with deadly efficiency. The schadenfreude of watching even the most seasoned parties falter against my carefully laid strategies is what drives me the most.

  My build is that of a cyborg lord. In Breccia, there are various archetypes for those who specialize in controlling mobs and setting traps. One of the most notable is the Lich necromancer. Liches command legions of the undead, reanimating fallen enemies—both human and monstrous—and summoning dark entities from beyond. They wield potent magic, using their control over the dead to bolster their defenses and unleash devastating sorcery.

  The cyborg race, in contrast, is often associated with ranged and agile combat. Many cyborgs choose builds that transform them into powerful artillery units or nimble assassins. My own path began with the android sentinel class. This build allowed me to act as a quartermaster and trapper, equipped with the unique "remote arsenal" ability. With it, I could deploy and command an array of drones, cameras, and firearms from a distance. While this made me less effective in direct combat, it suited my role as a perimeter guard for black markets and caravans, where my skills in surveillance and defense were invaluable.

  After many years I ascended to the class of cyborg lord. This new class not only enhances my physical capabilities but also grants me the power to directly take control of and utilize the complex mechanisms within my dungeon. I can now orchestrate traps and ambushes with unparalleled precision, all while remaining safely behind my defensive lines and in my control room.

  My alignment with the Unholy Alliance was a strategic understanding between both parties, providing me with the resources necessary to fortify and manage my dungeon effectively. In return, as their Dungeon Master, I safeguard their interests and treasures within my stronghold.

  Today is a particularly significant day. The Unholy Alliance's Fixers guild has send out a runner, who alerted me to a large army trekking towards my dungeon, intent on conquering it.