I slowly came to awareness in the dark, with a mildly annoying dripping sound. I grumbled in my mind. Yeah, I knew it was to good to be true. But the powers. Mm. If I can figure out how to use them and if he wasn't lying. I then really thought about what just happened and I gave a mental shudder.

So... I thought blankly. I just saw and talked to, extremely powerful beings, one of which was (not?) killed by the other, apparently with my help, and then the one with the beard gave me 'gifts' such as immortality.

....

Yeahhhhhhh, heh. I chuckled. That would sound crazy if I didn't experience it myself. And, I'm no longer in my previous flesh and blood body. Do I still call myself Dave...? I guess so. Am I a 'he' anymore? I stopped that mental train in its tracks.

I tried to remember how I died, but all I recalled was fire and pain. What could that mean? A flash of golden light appeared and the memory vanished. My mind finally over the past events, more quickly than it should have happened no doubt, I took more than just a brief look at my surroundings.

I was in a cave... Lots of moss... A stalactite on the roof dripping water into a small puddle... No entrances... Or exits... And then I tried to look at myself and my vision bent a little and I could see... He really wasn't kidding.

I was a rock.

To be more precise, a small brown rock. Yep. The worst type of rock you could possibly be, a small brown rock. I then decided to figure out what the beard guy meant when he said he would give me gifts.

He said immortality? That's pretty easy to figure out as I'm now a rock, so I can't really age or anything. Limited omniscience... I tried to focus on the whole cave and forcefully shove into my mind everything in the cave.

It didn't work.

I tried again, but was still unsuccessful.

Again, again, again, and then it occurred to me, Why am I trying the same thing time and time again and expecting a different result? That's not a good mindset. So, I tried focusing on myself in that way (because I'm a smaller target so it should be easier), and it easily clicked. I knew about how big I was, 1 cm in diameter, the protrusions and indents, and the type of stone I was made of, which came to my surprise.

Dungeon Core? I contemplated these two words and remembered something. Am I a core of a dungeon? This would make sense considering what the giant mentioned. I read a few stories back on Earth... Am I still on Earth or am I in a different place altogether? Anyways, based on what I read I should test something... Status?

Dave Dungeon Core Lvl:0 EXP:0/1 Mana:1/1 Mana Regen.:0.01/min

Nice! That guy- god? gave me a system! A bit on the short side though. I wonder if anyone else has this? My question unanswered, I noticed the fact that my Level and EXP were crossed out. What could that mean? I was stumped. Then I looked at the Mana indicator. I'll figure it out later. Mana... I contemplated the fact that I had such a resource. Never mind, I'm gonna try and sense it at least... I 'touched' myself with my mind and immediately sensed a small pinprick of blue light deep in my stone body.

My mind went blank and instinct took over.

I coaxed it out of my body and down into the floor of the cave. I directed it to spread out and I managed to cover a 1 meter stretch of stone and moss all the way around me. I focused on the area around me covered in my Mana and knowledge flew into my mind, the stone was a type of limestone, the moss was unoriginally called 'Common Cave Moss', the drops of water I managed to cover had nothing new I didn't know about, and I actually managed to find a dead insect.

It was dead for a while, I could tell, and it was quite small, only 1 centimeter long, but I knew that it was a cockroach.

I was then shaken from my instinctual movements by that flood of information ending.

I-interesting. I thought worriedly and excitedly. It seems that my body knew what to do at least, but I don't like that loss of contro-. A golden light flashed, and my mind suddenly screeched to a halt. The light pushed my mind and the Dungeon Core's instincts together to seamlessly integrate the Dungeon Core's natural abilities with mine. I looked around in confusion. I completely forgot what I was thinking about! My gaze then landed on the cockroach. Oh yeah. That!

I wondered what to do with it, when I remembered that dungeon cores in the stories I read could break down/absorb materials and dead things to recreate them. That might be my power of Destruction! I checked my Mana, which was almost fully empty and very slowly refilling.

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Mana:~0.3/1 Mana Regen.:0.01/min

... Okay. I thought. I guess I need to wait, or. A thought occurred to me, I could try and speed it up. I focused on a 10 by 10 by 1 cm section of stone around me and thought about absorbing it. I saw something happening so I kept to it. Around 10 minutes later, I absorbed it!

Material learned! Stone - Limestone

And it refilled all of my Mana pool! ... And then some. I was wracked with pain, like when you eat till you are too full, except several times worse. I checked my Mana.

Mana:~9.8/1.1

Oh... I couldn't do anything about the Mana as I was in too much pain, so I sat there in silent agony for a good 10 to 20 minutes until the pain disappeared entirely.

Mana:~6/3

Ok. I thought. Well, that's one way of expanding it. I noticed that my Mana capacity expanded after being filled with more Mana than it could hold, but twice as much Mana was expended than the amount the maximum capacity was raised.

Mana Regen.:~0.03/min

I guess that means that the Mana regen is 1% max Mana per minute. I waited for my Mana to equalise at 4, and then I recalled that it said Material Learned, so I tried to create a little 1X1X1 cm cube of stone. It took a bit more than 10 seconds for the pattern to stabilise, and it popped into existence for only 2 Mana!

Yes! The power of Creation at my fingertips! Never mind that I don't have a proper body let alone fingertips. Anyways, time to take a look at that cockroach! I thought excitedly. But then, if a little bit of stone gives me that much Mana, then a cockroach might give a similar amount, I realised. So then, I decided to spend half of my remaining Mana on expanding my territory and managed to cover all of the cave floor. My Mana nearly empty now, I focused on the cockroach. 5 minutes later, I absorbed it.

Creature Pattern Learned! Insect - Cockroach

I looked at my Mana, which was now slightly more than 1.5 and tried to create it. Ten seconds and 1 Mana later, it appeared! The power of Life! It just stood there. Doing nothing... So, I decided to command it to protect me by patrolling the area.

It slowly crawled off to circle my core. I thought. Okay, I should probably cover this whole cave with my territory, just so I don't get any surprises. I focused on the cube I created and absorbed it to gain 1 Mana, only after 10 seconds. Is this because I created it? I wondered. Or is it because I 'Learned' this material? So I decided to focus on a 1cm cube section of the floor and focused on it.

I managed to absorb it after 9 seconds. Interesting... I internally smiled. I absorbed another cube of the same size, 8 seconds, then another, 7 seconds, created a cube, 6 seconds, absorbed it, 5 seconds, created one, 4.5 seconds, absorbed it, 4, created one, 3.5, absorbed it, 3.4, and continued creating and absorbing cubes of stone, sometimes taking some from the floor of the cave.

After perhaps half an hour of doing so, it just became not worth it, the time had been reduced to slightly less than a second, and the decrease in time became fractions of a millisecond. Just as I stopped, I realised the destruction I had wrought upon the cave. Square holes, everywhere at random, cracks in the walls, from structural integrity being compromised, and my little minion, frantically wiggling around in a hole, somehow having gotten stuck there.

Oh, poor thing. I thought while removing stone around it to free it. It crawled out, and immediately fell into another hole and got stuck. I... should probably fix this. I winced and started to remove stone to flatten the cave floor so it would return to how it was except 1 cm lower. I used the extra Mana to cover the entire cave in my territory including the air (which I had finally remembered to do), fix it, create 99 more cockroaches, and expand my Mana capacity slowly, but painlessly. My Mana now looked like this:

Mana:~1000/1000 Mana Regen.:~10/min

What can I say, I like round numbers! But actually, this is massive growth. From 4 to 1000 is a big difference! And now, I regenerate 10 times my entire Mana pool when I arrived, every minute! And that is without me even trying! I continued looking at the screen and mentally smiling. But I couldn't help but think, If I managed to grow this fast, even as a Dungeon Core, then how powerful are other beings that have lived with this system for years?

After maybe a minute of staring at it, I dismissed it from my vision. I focused on everything in my cave, wondering what to do now. I then spotted something that I probably should've absorbed. Moss! I absorbed half of what was in the cave, learning how to create it. I was shocked at the amount of Mana in the moss!

Mana:~1010/1000

Ten?! I thought incredulously. Only ten Mana for that much moss?! From now on, I'll just absorb stone for Mana unless there is something that changes my mind. I looked around, seeing if there is anything else I can absorb. 5 minutes later, and only a single dead fly later, I decided.

Right! I'm going to build an actual dungeon now instead of having my view restricted to this small cave! (And so I won't die so quickly when I get attacked.)