I drifted in and out of awareness, the world around me felt hazy and unreal. Broken and distorted memories bled into my mind, but I wasn’t conscious enough to review them.

I was in that state for quite some time, I wasn’t sure how long, every second felt like an eternity. I didn’t know when it happened nor why it did but I was finally lucid enough to think, then the hazy world changed. 

Suddenly the world snapped into place and clarity came rushing in and I looked around, confused about where I was. Darkness was the first thing that greeted me, I blinked, then again, but it refused to go away.

Panic began well up within me, I tried moving an arm and felt nothing, I tried forcefully opening my eyes, and still, nothing happened. Okay, what the heck!? What is happening to me? Did I have too much to drink? I hoped this was a strange dream or  some realistic nightmare but it felt all too real.

I tried recalling how I ended up here but was met with a splitting headache. It was as if I had a wicked hangover that was juiced up on  steroids, I gave up the first time it hit me.

The darkness around me suddenly parted as a lone mote of light popped into existence even  though I had no eyes I still could see it, which was odd. I squinted mentally and the light suddenly became a lot more detailed, it was in the shape of a human, a female human by the looks of it.

The longer I looked at the woman of light the more detailed her image grew.

She held what looked to be a sword in her left and a shield in her right, dressed in what looked to be medieval knight armor. I wasn’t too sure but it sure as hell looked like it. Even though I had no idea how my vision transformed into this I instinctively knew it wasn’t normal but I had no clue why my mind thought it was abnormal. 

Her lips moved, and I somehow understood her words despite it being completely alien to me.

“Strange, did the dungeon reader malfunction? It said there was a dungeon here but where is the core?”

A dungeon? Was that what I was? The woman moved and her shield disappeared in a puff of light and a box-shaped device filled with light was withdrawn from her side. She walked around and pointed it at random sections of wherever this was. When she was done, she walked up to the edge of the darkness and put the device directly on it.

As she did, I jolted mentally as I felt something cold touch me, what the heck? How was that even possible? Wasn’t I supposed to be a dungeon?

……

It turns out, I am a dungeon. Not your typical one though, I had no core. How that was possible I had no idea but I was still a dungeon, the woman had left after conducting her business, along with the only source of light.

I felt a pang of loneliness as she left but it was quickly washed away. I didn’t even know her, though I missed human interaction. This strange new form wasn’t made for a human, and I’m pretty sure it's messing with my very human mind. So far, though, it hasn’t been anything drastic so it’ll be fine, right?

So, I was a dungeon, but not your typical one. I had no core, which was a boon? I still wasn’t sure if I’m being honest, at least I didn’t have to worry about being shattered or dominated. I wasn’t sure if not having a core prevented the last one though, assuming people did that here.

 I began to experiment a little, my fuzzy memories didn’t help much but they did say dungeons had total awareness of their surroundings and they usually had access to an energy type they used to manipulate the world around them.

The woman oozing light was a pretty obvious indicator that some energy shenanigans were going on but I was so preoccupied with my thoughts and observing her that I hardly had the time to look at the light around her in more detail.

As if the gods were looking down on me, a small bead of light wandered into my line of sight, I zoomed in and saw that It was a rat. The rat wasn’t glowing as bright as the woman but it still had the strange light in it.

I peered closer, and the light flared for a moment before going dormant.

 Woah, what was that? I retracted my gaze and realized that the rat had stopped moving and was looking around curiously as if it had sensed me nosing around.

Okay, that was interesting. I had no idea the simple act of looking could agitate the light, was it alive or something? The idea didn’t seem too far-fetched, considering that I was a coreless dungeon now, on a different planet, likely in a different universe too.

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The rat eventually found itself near the edge of darkness, aka where my sight ended. I watched it closely, but not too intensely as I didn’t want its light to freak out again. It mulled around there for a while until it suddenly went to sleep and leaned against the darkness as if it were solid.

Information began to flow into me instantly, and I could suddenly feel the rat’s warm body, its fur, and hear the sound of its blood rushing underneath.

Woah, that was freaky. And cool too, I remember reading about something like this, dungeons could sense everything about the creatures within their domain, down to the most minute detail. It usually only applied to claimed or made creatures though, was this different here?

They could also create creatures from patterns, patterns they got from killing said creature. Could I do that? I mean, technically I wasn’t fully a dungeon but technically I am! There wasn’t a reason not to try so I tried willing the rat’s light to flow into me and nothing happened.

Which I honestly expected, there was no way it could be that easy. Not one to give up, I focused on the sensations flowing into me and imagined a large hole there that pulled in only the light and watched in fascination as the light rushed into the darkness and illuminated it.

It was as if someone suddenly flipped on a switch. The darkness washed away, replaced by a blob of softly glowing light that somehow illuminated my entire vision. The world came into view with crisp clarity, it was like I just upgraded my vision with HD cameras.

It was around this time that I realized I could see normally, gone was the omnipresent darkness, and what replaced it was my HD vision and I realized I was a cave, well, the walls of a cave but you get the idea. The cave was really small, only a measly five meters in length, and was barely large enough to fit a car.

After realizing that I was a cave, I turned my vision back to the rat and realized that it had died. Well, that was unexpected, I only half expected it to die, since I’ve read a few dungeon novels where the animals did survive, most of the time anyway.

It was very unfortunate, but ultimately I moved on and tried to experiment some more. I willed the blob of light that had now diffused into my walls equally to shift back into the rat with the intent of learning more about it.

I felt the light dim a little and some of it winked out of existence and the rat’s body disappeared in a burst of colorless light and suddenly I knew how to make a rat from the most fundamental level.

Woah! Freaky! The rush of intricate and comprehensive knowledge was unexpected and I was shocked at how detailed the sudden dump of knowledge was. I didn’t expect that to happen, I expected something to happen but not this. 

I peered back at the light that was spread across my walls thinly, forming a thin network of radiant light. It had dimmed a little which made sense, work required energy after all. 

I wanted to test my capabilities though, even if it did cost something as long as it wasn’t too high I wouldn’t mind. I located the packet of information and data within my mind and…well, I wasn’t sure what I did. I just followed my dungeon instincts and mentally grabbed a tiny strand of the light from the network and mixed it with the information while looking at a specific spot I wanted the rat to manifest.

Reality shifted, light and raw data melded into one and a rat was born, looking exactly like the one who I unexpectedly killed.

As soon as it was formed a beam of light shot out of its head and fused with the network of light within the cave walls and I intuitively knew that I could control the rat and modify it as I pleased, at the cost of some soul essence, as I dubbed the light.

Curious about how that would work, I willed the rat’s color to change from black to bright red and watched in awe as a tiny bit of soul essence vanished and the fur of the rat rippled, dropped to the ground and bright hair rapidly grew to replace it.

Next, I willed it to grow a bit larger and the same process repeated itself, and while the cost was a bit higher, I still had plenty of soul essence to spare. The rat was now 16 inches tall, before it was 6.

Giddy with excitement, I willed the rat’s claws to be a little tougher and hair a little harder before making another one, making it female this time, and sent them to a corner to reproduce. After what felt like an hour, 16 more rats were born, just like their parents and they all shared a connection with me.

With a bit of soul essence, they rapidly grew to their new size. This was so awesome! Being a dungeon rocked! However I soon ran into a problem, the rats were hungry, and I didn’t have anything to feed them!

I was tempted to send one outside, however something deep in my walls told me that I’d instantly lose the creature if I did, which was a bummer. As I contemplated how to fix my current dilemma a thought suddenly struck me. If I could change them how I liked, couldn't I make them eat soul essence and not need food?

With a flex of my will a bit more of my soul essence was depleted, and all the rats began eating through their connection, drawing in such a small amount that it would make no difference even if I had a million rats.

Problem solved, I moved on to trying my next idea. Dungeons always had a way to get more of the energy they used, how would I go about this? Soul essence, as its name suggested, came from the soul. And since I had taken the only real soul in my dungeon and ate it I had no real way of producing more soul essence.

That would become an issue, how was I supposed to continue my experiments if I had no energy and went blind again? That was a future I wasn’t looking forward to and I needed a way to fix that, and fast too.

Souls are what I needed, but how would I get them?

As soon as I thought about that question a lizard wandered in, specifically, a small anole lizard. Its soul shone dimly to my sight, but it was still a soul, one that I wanted. The lizard moved without a care in the world, oblivious to my rats watching its every move.

I didn’t know why it decided to wander into my cave like that but a win is a win in my book. So when it walked in and reached the middle of the cave I had my rats attack, before the lizard knew what was going on it was ripped to shreds.

Information about its genetic makeup rushed into me and I now knew how to make one. I put that off for later though and focused on its floating soul, with a thought, a tendril of soul essence detached from the soul essence network and moved down to grasp the soul.

I wanted to consume it and turn the soul into more soul essence but I held off on that urge and instead split it into 18 small points of light that I stuffed into the heads of my rats, they jerked alive and shook. The soul settled in and their eyes gained a hue of life.

Experiment success!

I felt a small bit of soul essence flowing into me as they moved about, eating, shitting, and breeding. Time passed and after what felt like three hours my rat population had exploded, growing to the staggering number of 50. A steady stream of soul essence was constantly being fed into me by the souls of the rat population.

But I had to halt their rapid growth, my cave couldn’t sustain any more rats without stacking them on each other and that would be messy, it was already messy as is. During this time I discovered how to claim the surrounding cave, all I had to do was push out a bit of soul essence and control it to flow into the object I wanted to claim and it would be mine if I repeated this enough.

I managed to claim the entirety of the cave this way and was preparing to move to matter shaping when the sounds of metal boots resounded within my cave and a familiar ball of light moved in.