Chapter 2

A dungeon? What does that mean?

For a fleeting moment, Ryan’s mind screamed that this was wrong, but then the thought vanished.

“Technically, you are a dungeon core.” Erin pulled his attention back to her. “You are a soul, trapped inside of a magical gem.”

My soul is trapped?

“What was I before?”

Erin waved her hand across his ‘face’. “Not important.”

He thought it was important.

“What is important,” she said, “is that we get to work.”

“Don’t you think we’re moving a bit fast?” Ryan’s mind was spinning, and Erin wasn’t doing a good job at explaining anything.

“Fast? Fast?!” she wailed. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been stuck in this cramped diryt hole??”

He didn’t. In fact, he really didn’t have any sense of time in their hole.

“Uhm, considering I just ‘woke’ up, and have no recollection of anything before then, I’m going to say no.”

The fairy crossed her arms and wings across her chest, annoyed.

“No need to be sarcastic,” she sighed. “For your information, the Goddess of Justice sent me down here over a month ago.”

“Goddess of Justice?”

“Yes, the deity that rules over righteousness and justice in the world. The best goddess there is!”

The memory of a voice tickled across Ryan’s mind before it too was eaten by the darkness. He was getting tired of these memories being stolen away.

“She sent me down here,” Erin continued, “telling me a new dungeon was about to be born.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Though I didn’t realize you would be asleep for a month.”

“Well, you could have tried to wake me up.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing? Ugh, try to keep up.” Well, now she was just being mean.

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“I’m sorry, Erin, I really am.” He sent a small feeling of comfort through their bond, which reminded him: “Say, what is this ‘bond’ between us? What did you do?”

She flew off the ground, humming softly. It was apparent she had a lot of unspent energy. “Dungeon cores require a fairy to link with them in order to grow. The dungeon core serves as the heart of the dungeon and is responsible for creating everything within it. As a fairy, my task is to guide you, to ensure you grow at an appropriate pace, and live a long and prosperous life.”

“Seems tedious. What do you get out of it?” Ryan couldn’t believe she would willingly just help him for no reason. The world didn’t work that way. Strange. Where is this bias coming from?

“Through our bond, I can share in your power. The stronger you get, the more powerful I become as well. Once I’ve bonded to you, I can no longer draw mana from the world on my own, so I need you to help me survive.”

“What’s mana?”

Erin huffed again at his question. They really weren’t getting very far.

“Do I have to explain every little thing to you right this instant?”

“Well, isn’t that your job?”

She opened her mouth, but stopped, thinking for a second. “I mean, you’re not wrong.”

She flew over and sat back atop his head. He could tell now he was indeed in some sort of gem, with his inner light making it appear to glow white.

“How about we work out your powers as I explain some things?”

“Sounds good.”

If Erin needed Ryan to provide this ‘mana’ to survive, he should probably get some. He couldn’t help but shudder at the thought of being alone in this hole.

Oh, poor Erin.

“Mana is the very energy that runs the world. Everything contains some form of mana. You could say it is the lifeblood of existence.”

Makes perfect sense… not.

“Ambient mana exists lightly in the air,” explained Erin, “and you will use mana in every aspect of your life as a dungeon core.”

“All right, so magical energy, floating around, that I can use. Easy enough.”

Erin sent an annoyed jolt through their bond at the interruption, then continued.

“As a dungeon core, you can use your mana to spread your influence into anything you touch. By doing this, a dungeon core is able to slowly build and carve out a desirable shape, or body, for the dungeon. As you grow stronger, the amount of mana you can use, along with how quickly it returns, will increase.”

She flew over to the wall, just outside the range of his white light.

“I want you to focus on the energy within you and spread it forward to this wall.”

Ryan closed his ‘eyes’, focusing within. She was right, he could feel a strange power that seemed to stir within. Gently, he reached out to it, and it eagerly jumped towards him, like a pet happy its owner had returned. It filled him with an almost intoxicating warmth.

“Good, now extend that energy towards—”

Ryan was only half listening to her as he focused on the spot she had indicated. He urged the energy towards her, letting it go, and it leapt from him. Erin’s scream a second later brought him back to his senses.

“Ryan!” The wall Erin had been hovering beside was now a crater, the rubble and surrounding rock glowing slihgtly.

“Did I do it?” He could ‘feel’ that area now and could see everything around it as if he was in it.

“Well… you did. But you can’t just unleash random bursts of mana!”

Oops.

“You have to gently reach out with it, otherwise you risk blowing everything up around you, including me.”

Her left wing did seem to be smoking just a bit, and perhaps missing a feather or two.

“Right. Whoops. Well, now that we have that out of the way, what’s next?” He found this whole mana use thing very exciting, yet oddly draining.

“Well, now we slowly spread your influence. It’s going to take a lot of mana to get to the first level of true dungeonhood.”