Literature / The Discarded, Half-Eaten Apple Core New Life

WELCOME TO THE SYSTEM.
You have been chosen to fight against the Infernali. For the sake of your world, we hope you succeed.
ERROR. Species not cataloged in the database.
We ask what are you?

When demonic beings burst out from another dimension to consume all life on Earth, an alien race grants the defenders the System, allowing them to level up and fight back.

However, being killed in the first few seconds and having your soul sucked out, like our protagonist, may introduce delays. And having that soul accidentally land in a piece of fruit wasn't in anyone's plans. Fortunately, the System is all about growth and adaptation!

The Discarded, Half-Eaten Apple Core New Life is a post-apocalyptic Dungeon Core LitRPG, written for the Royal Road January 2023 community writing contest, but never actually entered.

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You learned how to Replicate these tropes!

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: By using magically reinforced dungeon walls as a material, it's possible to make swords that are immensely long and yet extremely thin. They're specifically compared to monofilament blades, and a forest of them works well as an Anti-Cavalry tactic against dragons.
• The Ageless: Dungeons can be killed, but won't die of old age. Which is just as well when being given centuries-long quests.
• Anti-Grinding: Experience gain drops sharply with each level, until a given monster type no longer grants XP at all. The effect can be somewhat mitigated by killing monsters in batches, which will grant the experience rewards for the whole batch before applying any resulting level-up penalties.
• Apocalypse How:
  • The initial invasion triggers a Class 2, as the Infernali slaughter most of humanity and destroy infrastructure, and the magic of the System makes computing technology stop working. The protagonist emerges decades later to find that there are just scattered pockets of survivors struggling to feed themselves.
  • The Armagellykull escalates to Class 4, cracking open the North American continent to trigger worldwide seismic upheaval that covers most of the world in lava and ash clouds.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: When asked whether the System classes are like RPG classes, the class selection assistant agrees that, "Our emissary, Gygax, did a wonderful job of preparing you for the Infernali invasion."
• Bizarre Beverage Use: When the Dungeon's evolutionary bonuses are so potent that Marshall needs a drink, the Dungeon makes him a swimming pool full of Scotch. An Olympic-size pool, complete with lanes and trampolines.
  Other Guardians noticed the giant glass bottle and went to knock on Marshall's door. I guess the pool party is a go. Hope they all bathe before diving in. Doubt it, though.
• Crystalline Creature: When the System reaches the protagonist, his half-eaten self is crystallised, preventing any further decay. Unfortunately it also makes him quite interesting to adventurers.
• Discard and Draw: Everyone has a limited number of subclass slots available, determined by the rarity of their main class, so reaching the upper tiers of power involves giving up classes to select better ones. Most of the benefits of the class are lost, and there's an experience penalty on the replacement, but it's often still worthwhile. In particular, if someone has enough achievements, they might qualify for rarer main classes, boosting their capabilities across the board.
• A Dungeon Is You: The System is baffled by the protagonist's species, and goes looking up "apple" and "core" in dictionaries until it finds meanings it can work with, so he ends up as a Dungeon Core (Apple Electronics).
• Extreme Omnivore: Dungeons can consume any material around them and use it as a resource to construct things. Although it wasn't the best idea to start doing that while in an unstable pile of garbage.
  Hours later, everything that tasted or smelled funny was gone. Then I realized the mistake I made. The landfill matter shifted and fell as objects literally disappeared. The rats scuttled, and the worms and maggots wriggled. Most of the creatures who couldn't escape were crushed as the castle of cards (actually garbage) crushed everything.
  Myself included.
• Game-Breaker: In-Universe. When the Dungeon starts experimenting with Primordial Transmutation, which allows him to create mana crystals at a lower cost than their value, he quickly concludes that it's powerful enough to completely unbalance the System.
  I was wrong. This isn't incredible OP, it is "get you banned from the game server for duping" kind of broken. Literally a cheat. When those stupid Isekai protagonists talk about cheats, they have no idea what they were talking about.
  System, if you want to take this thing back, do it now.
• I Need A Drink: Marshall needs fortification after learning about the amazing evolutionary options that the Dungeon is getting. Upon having a bottle of Scotch replicated, he chugs it.
• Magical Girl: The "Magical Dungeon Gunslinger" class was really intended for human use, but somehow the System has adapted it for a Dungeon. He actually gets a lot of mileage out of it, because unlike a human, he has enough mana to remain constantly transformed, and as a bonus, it changes his half-eaten core into an intact one. He does, however, manage to creep out his mascot.
  Larry: Purin, Kurin, Kuririn!
• Mistaken for an Imposter: The System rejects the protagonist's claim to be an apple, and looks for another answer, because he doesn't match the database description of apples; he's sentient, not round (being half eaten), and his skin is brown instead of white.
  Garfield: Let's see what color your skin would be after staying in the landfill for this long. Also, that was mildly racist.
• Punny Name: The protagonist settles on introducing himself to people as "Garfield Babbage", derived from his initial start in "a field of garbage".
• Required Secondary Powers: The initial design of the "Bubblegum Shock Trap" is effective at killing rats, but it has to be significantly reengineered to stop it from exploding when it goes off; isolating the trigger and delivery plates from each other, thickening the wires to withstand the current, etc.
  I created the first one and tried it.
  BOOM!
  It generated an electromagnetic pulse, then blew up the capacitors through feedback. I was missing something. I needed... Oh, boy. How I miss not paying attention to physics in high school.
• Reincarnated as a Non-Humanoid: The protagonist goes from average human guy, is killed by aliens and finds his soul attached to the remains of a discarded eaten fruit and then is taken by The System and turned into a Dungeon Core.
• Revenge: The Dungeon recognises quite early that the aliens who gave the System are pushing him toward options for regrowing and reconstructing the Earth, but he's only interested in killing the demons who did this to him. Rather than a sub-class like "Revival Botanist" or "Biome Reconstructor", he chooses "Architect of Destruction".
  Who cares about saving the world or replanting a forest, when soul-sucking demons were on the loose. We are at war, baby! Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and all that jazz, then rebuild the ecosystem.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: The first monsters that invade the Dungeon are mutated rats a foot tall and two feet long. He later encounters another variety covered in pustules, which eat the contents for a temporary strength boost when injured.
• Running Gag: Every time the Dungeon creates something new, the System invites him to name it, but their speech-to-text gets it wrong, typically resulting in a Failed Attempt at Drama, such as the "Ragnarok" Powered Armour becoming "Ranger Ork." The dungeon tried to skip naming himself and ended up being called "Skip May Neming."
  I finished the design and Replicated some prototypes using the teenagers' measurements. I named the power armor "Gilgamesh".
  > For creating level 140 Power Armor "Grilled Tex-Mex" you earned 4 Experience Points.
• Shout-Out: All over the place, from the System apparently having knowledge of pre-apocalypse memes, to chapter titles like "All that the Landfill touches is your Domain!"
• The Sleepless: Dungeon cores made out of crystallised apples don't sleep at all.
  I had no idea how I could sleep at night with all those heinous crimes. Not sleeping helped a lot, by the way. Dungeons were awake 24-7 and plants knew not what sleep meant. One usually needed a brain to sleep.
• Take Over the World: Since dungeons can expand by claiming territory, the protagonist's first priority list contemplates how far he can go.
  1 - Better rodent defenses.
  2 - Expand
  3 - Find more electronics.
  4 - World Domination (perhaps)?
• Time Skip: Upon being half eaten and discarded, the apple is left in landfill for approximately sixty years. Fortunately, lacking a human brain, he doesn't Go Mad from the Isolation, he just meditates until he inadvertently draws the attention of the System.
  I was one with the appleness. With the coreness. I was an apple core. And life in the landfill wasn't so bad. I had no wants except the imperative to germinate. Grow. That unfulfilled desire filled me. Bound me to reality.
• Trap Master: The Dungeon's initial class traits include bonuses to creating puzzles and traps, while losing the ability to spawn monsters. His first attempt at fighting off invaders is basically an electrified mousetrap, with a high-voltage discharge when stepped on.
• Weapons That Suck: When the rats start avoiding his traps, the Dungeon just seals them in with a stone wall and sucks the air out of the tunnel.
  > For killing level 4 Giant Rat, you earned 195 Exp. You gained 2 Dungeon Mana.
  [...] 17 similar notifications were suppressed.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: The first thing Garfield knew about the demonic invasion was that he was being devoured.
  I had no special talents and got by in an 8 to 6 job that I thought sucked my soul out until I found what it felt to have the soul sucked out of my body for real. It doesn't compare. Getting blasted by my manager is like a mother's caress compared to getting blasted by a demon.

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