Scribbling out another failed idea, I palm my forehead and lightly smack my cheeks to wake myself up. I needed to fix this invention! The deadline is tomorrow and the solution to my error still eluded me. While I could turn in one of my dozens of side projects, I knew I was on the brink of something wondrous. If I could win this competition then surely he would take me on as an apprentice! That is the key to my future, I refused to accept anything less. Nothing else gave me the same thrill as tinkering with a new project and the only way I could continue to get my fix would be to make it my career.

Slamming my fist down, the whole desk rattled. Suddenly something heavy thunked me on the head. Ouch! An old metal gadget bounced off my head and landed in front of me. Rubbing my head, I looked down. What project was this from again? Wait, of course! If I use this I can...

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Shortly after I absorbed the worm’s life energy I passed out. I’m not sure if the energy overload finally hit me or if the realization of my nature did me in. I still cannot believe that I am a dungeon, but all the facts lineup and living in denial anymore will do nothing for me. Because I am now a dungeon. Evil. The bane of the world, exterminator of nearly all the sentient races in just years after their arrival.

Will I turn into a bloodthirsty monster, bent on nothing but feasting on more life energy? Did all dungeons start out like me or am I somehow different? I definitely seem to be a pathetic dungeon at that. I mean, what kind of dungeon nearly dies from absorbing a worm’s life energy? At the same time, the pleasure I felt absorbing a mere worm’s energy was addicting. Well, before I got too full at least. What would consuming a human do to me? While the majority of me is repulsed by the idea, a small portion yearned to taste the death of a sentient race.

Coming back to myself, I remember my odd dream. Some of the details are already blurry, but it felt familiar. The whole time I felt a strong sense of deja vu. While the dream was certainly confusing, I am glad for the interruption of my spiraling thoughts.

Drawing myself out of my reflections, I observed my domain. During my rest the worm started to decompose, the corpse gave off quite a stench. Wanting to try using my new energy, I focused on the air in my domain. I sensed the new chemicals in the air, the source of the new not-so-pleasant fragrance. Yet no matter how I tried to interact with them they refused to move.

Why can I not affect the air around me? Dungeons are supposed to be able to create vast labyrinths overnight, moving mountains of dirt. But somehow I cannot move air. When I try to reach out, I simply have nothing to reach out with. No matter how much I imagine moving, without limbs I am not going to accomplish anything.

Thinking back on when I pushed out the excess energy, I tried gathering some of the energy still stored within myself. When I pushed it outward I was finally able to interact with the world! Pushing the energy around felt unusual though, like trying to manipulate a blob when I expected to have an arm and hands. So with a little more concentration I managed to form that blob of energy into an invisible floating hand that I could manipulate with ease. From there I scooped up some of the noxious air and pushed it down the tunnel created by the worm. And nothing happened. Turns out a hand is not the best for moving air. Furthermore, I noticed a slight drain on the energy in my hand when I moved the air.

Trying again, this time I formed the energy into the blades of a fan and pointed them at the tunnel entrance. As I rotated the blades the air flowed out the tunnel, success! Once I was satisfied with my now clean air I practiced shaping my energy in different forms. While the sensation disturbed me slightly, I knew that after I got accustomed the utility would be limitless.

During my experiments I discovered that not only could I form any shape of limb, but I could form it in any area of my domain. Additionally, I could turn off the interactivity so that I did not waste energy moving the air when I did not mean to.

Finally, I was able to touch again! Using my power I am able to create a sense of touch by analyzing the material I touch with my power. I don’t know how long I sat alone with my thoughts before the worm came and freed me. A hundred cycles? Ten thousand cycles? Over and over I had felt the permafrost freeze the soil around me and thaw again. Long ago I lost track of the seasons passing. For ages I was in a haze, time whirling by. Which I am grateful for, without a dormant state to retreat into I would have gone insane.

Who cares about past woes now? I can move!

Shaping two hands, I picked up a fistful of dirt and formed it into a ball. Then I practiced juggling. At first I was terrible at catching the dirtball. Eventually, I could juggle one like a professional, then two and three at the same time. After simultaneously juggling twelve dirtballs I began to grow bored though, the challenge had diminished.

At least until I got the idea to create another set of hands. Controlling four limbs simultaneously was far more difficult, and I wasn’t even juggling yet!

Slowly but surely I grew accustomed to manipulating four limbs at once. I practiced forming different hand signs before changing my limbs into various objects. Through my experimentation I would the most ease with human-like hands, otherwise my control greatly depended on the complexity of the created limb. One such easy to control limb was essentially two cylinders connected by a hinge similar to an elbow. The only way I could move this limb was back and forth on the hinge joint. However, when I made a similarly sized limb that ideally should move like a tentacle, all I barely managed to randomly jerk.

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Furthermore, more than four limbs caused me to lose nearly all control. Something about my mind rejected the concept, like it was meant to have four limbs.

As I pondered how I might be able to manipulate five limbs I noticed an extremely disturbing fact. I am almost out of energy! In my bliss of moving again I forgot how much energy moving dirt costs!

If I run out of energy I’ll be paralyzed again. I cannot let that happen.

Deciding expanding towards the surface is my best hope, I flung my energy down the worm tunnel. As my domain expanded I closely monitored my remaining energy. When I felt nearly empty I stopped. Now the air at the edge of my domain was fresher. Hopefully, that means the surface is close. Carefully, to conserve energy, I moved the now rotting worm carcass to the edge of my domain.

Then I waited.

And waited.

Unable to resist anymore, I blew a little of the worm’s stench farther down the worm tunnel and out of my domain.

Despair began to creep into the back of my mind. I swear that I will never let my freedom come this close to destruction again. I will survive. No, I will thrive!

My second chance came in the form of an ant. A lone soldier on a quest for food to feed his colony. He marched right to the corpse of the worm. Although his life energy beckoned me, I did not crush the ant to steal his energy.

Instead, I watched him collect worm meat and march back to his colony with news of a feast. Sure enough, my patience paid off. Soon ants swarmed the worm carcass. Working together they deconstructed the body.

While they worked I ate. Once enough swarmed the worm I began crushing a few ants at a time. At first, I tried to simply crush them between two pebbles. Except when I got close enough my limbs simply disappeared. Eventually, I was able to get around this issue by throwing pebbles from a distance. Still, I was disturbed that I could not manifest any limb within a certain distance of the ants. That complicated my plans.

Regardless, the worms came to eat, and I feasted as well. Each ant gave a fraction of what the worm released, but there were so many. Every death gave me another rush of pleasure. Yesss. This feeling, this fullness. I need to experience this constantly.

As I grew full, I left the majority of the ants alive. I expanded my domain to follow the ants back to their colony. Finally, my senses reached the surface of the world. For a moment I simply basked. I couldn’t see much, but I noticed the sunlight streaming into my domain and a breeze undulating gently. Following the stream of ants, I explored the grass and other plant matter that they trekked over.

The further I expanded though, the more energy was demanded. Much sooner than I wanted, increasing my domain simply took too much energy to continue. Trying to reach further felt like pushing against an elastic wall.

Stumped, I considered if I should kill all the ants before they escape my reach. Am I cursed to be restricted to this little corner of dirt? Dungeons are supposed to be vast and mighty labyrinths of death!

In frustration, I sent out a burst of energy centered on my gem. This spread my domain in a sphere. Surprisingly, my domain flowed outward for nearly no energy at all. The ground below and to the sides of my gem seemed to almost welcome me. Curious, I continued pushing out in a sphere. Periodically I stopped to feed on ants. Slowly the ground returned to normal. I could still enlarge my domain, but it took the regular amount of energy again.

At this point I think I knew what caused these effects. To test my theory I tried to follow the ant’s trail back to their colony again. Sure enough, I no longer felt like I was pushing against an elastic barrier. Apparently I cannot expand too far in any one direction without consequences.

Now able to follow the ants fully I traced them back to the colony. The results shocked me. What a colony! Their tunnels were immensely elaborate. With the entire colony inside my domain, I saw the map looked like a warped, miniature underground tree. I had no idea how they navigated the mess. Even with being able to see the whole colony at once in my domain I struggled to determine a path between any two points. Walking down such a tunnel would be extremely disorienting.

When I found the queen I saw she towered over her subjects. Although I don’t know who ruled who. After watching the queen for a while I noticed she acted little more than a broodmare. The worker ants fed her and disposed of her waste, whereas she laid eggs almost continuously.

Turning my focus away from the queen, I began picking off a few excess ants. Every time I did so I made sure to expand my domain in a sphere. Soon I came across a large beetle. I disposed of it with my classic pebble launching technique but I noticed that I needed to launch it significantly farther away from the beetle than from the ants. There seems to be some sort of rule about how close I can manipulate the environment next to a living creature. Well, except plant life, I wondered why that occurs?

The energy released by the beetle surpassed even the worm but this time I was prepared. Immediately I transferred the energy to my domain. Even with maintaining a sphere shape, the size increase of my domain has really started to slow down. Doubling my radius meant that I increased the volume of my domain by eight times! I am going to need a lot of energy if I want to keep growing…

As I came across other insects I would kill them off to fuel me. Then I blew their scents to nearby ants or dragged the corpses to the colony. Soon I had the full colony working overtime. I noticed as food grew overabundant the queen somehow managed to pump out more eggs.

Good...multiply, grow, die, feed me!