I am ashamed to say, I became hysterical for a short period of time and wallowed in my misery afterwards, contemplating the philosophy of my Life. But after a short bout of confusion and fear that lasted around three hours, I realised that I could either hide underground without any movements for all eternity and hope that nobody digs up my still fragile core. Or, be vulnerable for a short period of time and quickly stabilise and grow the Void passage, and rank up my Core DEF.

Since, I already realised long ago that I might be a little Genius… Giggle … Hence it would be a waste to hide myself away. So I might as well as reluctantly, become the best dungeon in this World realm, I decided to myself. (Cue Baby laughter)

So, to build a floor I first have to build a room by converting all the matter around me to Mana? I brought the knowledge of building a floor to the forefront of my mind.

Matter - Mana Conversion

Ability of the Core to convert Matter to Mana and vice versa.

Creation and Design:

A Dungeon Core can create and design the layout of the dungeon. It can determine the placement of rooms, corridors, traps, and treasures to challenge and entertain sentient world organisms.

Reminder: With the increase in the number of floors, the void passage becomes larger and stronger and the Anchor point (Dungeon Core) becomes more stable and difficult to remove.

I started seeping my Mana outward into the surrounding soil. After a while, I had seeped my Mana into the surrounding evenly into a sphere. I decided on a radius of five metres with my core at its centre, because my inherent knowledge told me that the height should be a minimum of three metres, and being the overachiever that I am, it must be at least triple the minimum standard. When all the Mana in my core had seeped out into the surrounding soil, I started converting the soil into Mana. The process of converting soil into Mana seemed much more difficult than just seeping the soil with my mana.

The soil closest to my body started turning into brown and silver mana and rushed towards me. Uhhh!!.. I felt slightly bloated for a second. Do you know the feeling of drinking too much water at once, and the fluid getting stuck around your chest area going neither up nor down. Yeah that is what I felt right now for a moment. Okay, slower the next time I thought to myself. After a while, tasty food-mana entered my core in a rush.

By the time I converted one third of the surrounding area into Earth mana and absorbed it, my Mana pool was already full again. I started releasing the excess mana into the empty spherical room around me and continued converting the rest of the soil. Suddenly on a whim I tried pushing the excess mana into the unconverted soil, I realised that this made converting the soil into Mana faster. Excited, I started pushing more and more mana into the soil.

“Congratulations! New action performed, you have created Magical Soil.”

Huh? Interesting! Along with the message came the knowledge of how to create magical soil from pure mana. Upon focusing on the word magical Soil, I learnt this was a type of soil which accelerates plant growth and was often used for magical and demonic rituals. What happens if I imbue more Mana into it? However, I found that after a threshold I could not imbue any more mana into the Soil.

Can I form other magical materials by injecting mana? I saw the tips of the roots of the tree I fell in through poking out above me. I tried Injecting mana into them, however except for sucking up all the Mana I injected into it, nothing happened. When I bottomed out all the mana in my mana pool, I gave up trying to turn the roots magical. I again started converting the rest of the soil into mana till I had a spherical room of five metre radius with roots sticking out from the top and me floating in the centre.

Okay, since the room is ready I should now make a monster to protect myself. Open Creation Menu.

Selection Menu: Dungeon Monster

Reminder: All potential sentient races not under a Divine being’s active protection are eligible for selection.

Gulkonda Fauna/Animals (Common)

Goblins (Common)

Orcs (uncommon)

Trolls (uncommon)

Kobolds (uncommon)

Slimes (uncommon)

Elementals (Rare)

Soul creature (Rare)

Constructs (Rare)

Golems (Rare)

Demonic/Abyssal creatures (Rare)

Undead (uncommon)

Angelic/ Heavenly creatures (Rare)

Plant monsters (uncommon)

ERROR…

Upon further inspection abnormally large amount of data pertaining Gulkonda Fauna/Animals (common) has been found in knowledge repertoire.

All other races have become invalid for selection criteria…

Dungeon Monster starter race, Gulkonda Fauna/Animals (common): Automatically Selected.

Further races can be unlocked through achievements or obtaining the specific race blueprint from Gulkonda World realm.

ERROR…

Loss of Free Will detected in the Selection process.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Compensating loss of free will: Equivalent Exchange In progress…

Unlocking all classes of Gulkonda flora (common).

Unlocking all classes of Gulkonda fungi (common).

Selection: Complete

Do you know the feeling of being invited to an all you can eat Buffet and being told you can only eat the one chocolate chip cookie that you already had in your hand? Well that was the feeling I was feeling, when I was told all the races had become invalid before I could even get a proper look at all the other races I could have selected.

And I totally did not trust this compensation. I had a nagging feeling that since the fauna was already in my KR then the knowledge of these flora and fungi was also already in my KR. And this system was trying to pull one over me by making use of my ignorance.

I wanted to start wailing again, however my mind told me that it would bring me nothing. So after I took a moment to calm down my rising anger, I tried opening the creation menu again.

Creation Menu

Further organisms become available upon creating more floors/Blueprints/Mutation/Evolution.

Gulkonda fauna/Animals (common)

Trout

Squirrel

Ermine

Northern Hawk Owl

Snow flea

Mosquito

Red Fox

Hummingbird

Black Ant

Gulkonda Flora (common)

Moss

Fireweed

Pine tree

Gulkonda Fungi (common)

Lichen

Bracket Fungi

That’s it? A tree, mosquitos, moss and fleas are what I get for giving up all the other races!!! My anger could no longer be stopped, the surrounding mana started becoming heavy and fluctuating along with my rising emotions.

The fluctuating mana loosened a heavy rock from my ceiling. I snapped out of my anger when the rock crashed down merely a few feet away from me. The sudden fright I felt reminded me that I am still a vulnerable newborn who could have just died. One day I am going to make this damn cheating system pay, but first I have to reinforce this ceiling.

Since pumping more mana did not seem to do anything previously, I tried compressing the ceiling. After compressing the magical soil to the maximum limit I could. Lo and behold another message box popped up.

“Congratulations! New action performed, you have created Dungeon Stone.”

With the knowledge of how to directly create Dungeon Stone, I started paving the whole sphere in dungeon stone. Phew finally save…. I thought to myself, when the only things I could see were Dungeon stone and roots.

Now back to the creation menu. Looking back at the abilities screen I tried creating a black Ants first.

Spawn and Control Monsters:

The Dungeon Core can spawn and control various types of monsters within the dungeon. These monsters might vary in strength, abilities, and behaviour to challenge and capture sentient world organisms.

Monsters Bodies are created with pure mana, elemental inclinations can be added to the body with the use of tainted mana. Monsters are given life using Essence.

After pouring in Mana into the blueprint provided to make a body, I poured in a bit of Essence to provide it with life. The first organism I tried to create came to life.

I viewed the Ant from all angles, while I sensed its consciousness with my mind. I realised that I could view what it was thinking, which is not much, through a slight spiritual connection we seemed to share. There wasn't very much in its brain except, find food…build nest… revere powerful one, which was me by the way. Hmm am I a… Powerful one? Higher being ? God maybe? (cue baby laughter)

I would have continued to build upon my delusions of grandeur if I had not suddenly remembered how that damn system cheated me not even half an hour ago.

Sigh. Let me experiment on another few ants and then move on to other Animals. Since I felt fond of my first little critter who revered me… giggle… I decided to make another one to experiment on. Since I can mutate the animals, I should be able to make changes to the critter. I contemplated while viewing the new Ant from three hundred sixty degrees. I decided to use my go to method for everything, and tried pumping mana into its abdomen. Splat. My Second Ant died a tragic death, a few seconds after its birth.

So, do not add mana to a living creature? Then how does it mutate? I think I read something about tainted mana previously? Taking out the blueprint once again, I added a bit of the most abundant earth mana during the creation process. Looking carefully at my new Ant, it did not seem to have any major difference from its predecessors except being a bit brown. Observing a bit longer, I noticed that it seemed a bit heavier and seemed to move slower, but that does not seem to be a mutation either.

Since adding tainted mana brought about some minor changes does adding extra mana bring about mutation? Leaving my brown ant to revere me with its predecessor. I started making my third Ant. This time instead of just directly pumping mana into the blueprint I focused on what the mana was doing while I was pumping it into the blueprint. When I saw that my Mana was constructing the abdomen, I pumped in a bit of extra Mana into this part. And to my surprise it seemed to work. The new Ant was a bit bigger with a larger abdomen.

Minor Mutation successful. Black Ant (worker) mutated to Black Ant (Collector)

Yesss… I can mutate my animals now. Wait and see stupid system, I will mutate all my animals and make hundreds of different kinds. Let's see how you can restrict me then… I thought, full of glee.

After rounding up my ants to an even ten, all with different mutated body parts such as head, incisors, Antenna, legs etc. I decided to move on to my next animal. I decided to make an Owl next. An animal that could fly according to my knowledge. After pumping out mana and essence into the blueprint, a beautiful creature with soft brown feathers mottled in white spots and big round yellow eyes came to life. I was amazed to realise how huge the creature was, a full forty five centimetres! The creature was easily four times the size of my core body. With such strong protectors I did not even need to mutate the creature.

I am sorry system, I misjudged you. I did not know you selected such huge and strong protectors for me. I will be a good Core from now on and never be angry at you. I should not have judged the mind of a gentleman with the heart of a villain.

Since, my inherent knowledge told me that an Ermine and Fox were around the same size as my first protector. I decided, I might as well have a protector of each species and then finish my floor with peace of mind. Deciding to move directly to action, I first brought up the blueprint of an Ermine and poured mana and Essense into it giving special focus to its claws and jaws. A cute weasel-like creature around thirty centimetres long, with a golden brown fur coat, a white belly and a long tail with a black tuft at its end appeared in my vision. A bit smaller than my protector Owl but will do. Next up, Mr. Red Fox. A long snouted almond eyed, red Fox around sixty centimetres long was created with white socks and a white tip on its tail. I had added a bit of Earth mana into its creation, making it a bit on the browner side. Again, I did not see any other changes. I felt there was something I was missing in the process of adding elemental mana. Ah, something for Later.

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With the misconception that an Ermine, a Fox and an Owl were humongous guardians similar to dinosaurs, about which our Core has no memory yet. Our Baby Core set off on the path of opening its first floor and conquering the world, leaving your author lost for words.