I wake with a start. My head pops up and I clumsily push up off the ground with my arms.

… Oh my God! I have a head! I have arms! O sweet baby Jesus thank you. As I sit up, I realize that I have stubby yellow arms and legs with two fingers and two toes respectively. Clumsy as hell, but they’re there. And it looks like I’m made of cheese! Cheesy humanoid existence, here I come! I’m basically a cheesy gingerbread man. As I look up I see a transformed, not so Fat Dave.

“You stupid pebble you almost got us both killed!” Dave screams at me. I notice that Dave seems to have lost a bunch of weight since I passed out. His cheeks look sunken in and his body emaciated. He also looks way bigger, until I look to my right and see my core “body” next to me in a small depression in the ground. It turns out Dave isn’t smaller, its just my perspective that has changed.

“Of all the irresponsible things, that might have been the least convenient thing you could have done at this point. You weren’t ready for that yet.”

I tilt my cheesy noggin in confusion, “what happened?”

“You screwed the pooch, that’s what happened. Look kid, that exhausted the hell out of me. You overdrew on your mana consumption and shut down until you were able to absorb enough ambient mana to form your avatar. You may be a font of magic, but you’re still little! What that means, is that you had to draw from me as well, and since we fairies gain sustenance from mana, well, as you can see it took a lot out of me. We spent about a week here draining the area. The good news is you expanded your sphere of influence. The bad news is I’m gonna have to lay down for a while. Before I pass out though, I will pass on what I can. I the meantime, get bigger, get some defense. You have people headed this way that you’re going to need to prepare for. I can’t guide you when I’m passed out, but keep looking around in your status and get some creatures. Looks like this'll be ground zero for the culinary throw down of the century, ya hear?”

“What?? Uh, no? how am I suppo—"

“That’s all I got. Good luck kid. Try not to get us killed.”

Without further ado, Fat Dave places his nasty wrinkled hand on my core and I feel an infusion of something into my core. Instinctively, I know I just got a whole lot more information to parse through. With that, Dave lay down next to my core, curls up into a ball, and promptly starts snoring.

… Welp. Sounds like I might have done something wrong. Might have to take this a bit more seriously.

Okay. It looks like I finally have a body, but I can somehow also see all around my core. Looks like I can now see everything in a sphere around me about 100 meters out. I also have the ability to look through my humanoid cheese body eyes. Dave made it clear I need to get stronger and prepare for some kind of contest. Dungeons also seem like something people might seek out to attack and destroy. So, I probably need to get stronger, somehow.

Alright Jack, you can do this. If I were a dungeon with a cheese core and a humanoid body, what would I do? I’d create a checklist. Step one, expand the area my core can see. Step two, create a dungeon and a labyrinth maze to prevent others from getting to me. Step three. Create cheesirifc buddies to help defend and experiment with that cheesy goodness. Step four. Enjoy the cheese. Might have to put the cheese enjoyment on the backburner. Yeah, I doubt that’ll happen too.

Based on the information Dave somehow pushed into me, I can absorb ambient mana that is within the sphere of influence of my core. I can also absorb raw materials and any dead creatures within my influence. I can also passively absorb mana from any creature with my influence. It looks like my core will just get bigger over time as I absorb mana and create more floors and buddies. Dave wasn’t sure how that would happen, given that there’s never been a cheese dungeon and he’s never been around a mana font before. Apparently, I can also level up my little avatar by fighting and gaining skills there. How that works I’m still not sure.

Alright, down to business. I think back to the feeling of release from before I passed out. That outrageously cathartic moment when I thought I had passed the most satisfying gas of my life. I need to expand my field of vision and to do that, I needed to push. At this point, I can feel the room I’m in, which is roughly a half dome, with a spherical ceiling about 10 feet above me. Not just that, but I can sense the dirt and rocks around me. I can’t exactly identify what I am looking at just yet, but I know I needed to start carving out a corridor… but first, I need to check out his status.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

More than anything I needed helpers. I had my little avatar. I also had the ability to dig through walls using mana. Unfortunately, the process is still rather slow. Plus, the rock was is real difficult to dig through. As a result, I realized I am going to have to figure out alternative ways of doing this. And that meant tools. Tools and helpers.

Fat Dave might have scared the shit out of me just a little bit, but that was no excuse.

There’s no way I’m letting some lame walls get me down,” I thought. “I’m going to find a way to make some sick buddies and I’m gonna eat the crap out of some cheese. Now what do I do.” As I go through my menu, I realize I should probably choose my new homies. I have options!

Status

Jack Cheese

Race: Dungeon Core Hybrid Soul

Floors: 1

Mana: N/A

Specialization: Cheese Magic

Skills: Induce Lesser Frustration, Cheese Avatar

Creatures: Unchosen

Titles: Reborn, Cheeseborn, Cheesefont, Showman, Cheese Savant, Lesser Insanity

Okay. Select creatures.

CHOOSE YOUR CREATURES (Note: You may pick 2 choices and may re-choose an option 1 time. Must be re-chosen within 1 hour of the choice): Cheese Goblins, Cheese Orcs, Cheese Kobolds, Cheese Gnolls. Cheese Gnomes, Cheese Chollos, Cheese Snakes, Cheese Wizes

So basically I have Choblins, Chorcs, Cholds, Cholls, Chomes, Chollos, Chakes, and Chizes (whatever those means). I’m pretty sure Chollos don’t belong on that list? That seems offensive? Is that even a fantasy trope? Also, are these all just a bunch of cheesy golems? Or are they creatures that just happened to be made of cheese? Maybe they have special abilities? Aight well, looks like I get a mulligan, so let’s go for the risky option. Here goes nothing. Select Cheese Chollo!

Immediately, a yellow light zaps out of my core onto the floor in front and coalesces into a small squat humanoid figure. As it solidifies, both my metaphorical and cheese golem jaw drop. Standing in front of me is a squat male human figure about 2 feet tall. Instead of the simple gingerbread man look I have going, it looks like the creature is wearing baggy pants and an America Football jersey with the number 29 written on it. Its got a low hanging gold chain that goes down to his stomach. He has a bald head with black sunglasses and a mustache/goatee combo. For some reason he also has watches on both arms. Oddly enough, all of these accessories seem to be part of the creature itself, rather than simply something it’s wearing. As I gape at the creature it looks around the area and then takes a look at my core and nods his head.

“Yeah, I can work wit dis.” He says as he starts lifting his arms up and down as if dancing to a beat only he hears, “Yo maing, want me to help you lean like a chollo bro? I’ll lean my ass up into this floh to get this dungeon goin yo. Elbows up, side to side baby, let’s do this!”

NOPE NOPE NOPE. Just no. Not gonna do that. Way too many things wrong with this. Mulligan! Status, undo. Re-choose. Whatever, get rid of this!

Are you sure you’d like to re-choose? You may only do this one time.

“Oh Come on, maing! Just lookin’ for some highness maing! Don’t get rid of m-!”

“YES, confirm!” With a flash of light and a disappointed expression, the creature crumbles onto the floor and promptly dissolves.

Okay, so that was exactly what I thought it would be. That’s… terrifying. Well, you live and you learn I guess. Hopefully, we can avoid offensive stereotypes going forward. What a mess that was. How was that even relevant? There’s no way any of that exists in this crazy world, right? It seems like some of these choices can change based on what’s going on in my head, so I’ll have to keep that in mind moving forward.

It looks like that initial creation process took it out of me, so I’ll have to wait a bit to regenerate that. It seems I absorbed a bit back when I got rid of the creature but looks like I’ll still have to wait a to get more helpers. The ambient mana isn’t really giving me much and apparently, I’m not quite the infinite mana battery I thought I’d be just yet, so I’ll have to start chewing away at the walls to get more. I reach out again with my senses at the wall and envision myself digging. Sure enough, as I slowly chip away at the wall I can feel my mana replenishing slowly as the dirt disappears. I realize I’m in this for the long haul and go into a sort of auto-pilot mode. Instead of creating more helpers, I might as well create a playground in the meantime.

Over the next several hours I dig away at the dark rock and dirt surrounding me and eventually create a short hallway and another room, this one a square room about 15 meters in each direction. I can now tell that the rock around me is some kind of volcanic rock. I also realize that consuming the rocks and dirt around me “feeds” me and I can tell my core is slowly getting bigger and bigger. Not sure how, but I can tell that soon enough I’ll be big enough to start acting like a true source of mana big enough to support any needs I might have. It’s a weird thing to realize since I have no idea how I know it, but there you have it. Now that I’ve created my first room, time to do some experimenting! Not sure what option I’m going to choose next, but I’m hoping it doesn’t turn out as poorly as the last one. It’s been a weird weird day, but thankfully, I’m finally moving forward and things are looking up!