It’s been a few days since I woke up as a rock. Days? Maybe less, maybe more, maybe even weeks. I have no idea how much time passes between my naps, so I’m calling that a day.

I may not remember my past life - at least I think I had a past life, with that ‘blocked memories’ thing - but I know what days are supposed to be, so until I found a way to efficiently count the time I’m gonna keep calling those ‘days’.

Anyway, during the past few days, I thought a lot about my current situation.

I’m still feeling I have memories I am blocked from remembering, but I can’t do a thing about it. So until I can, I’ll try to ignore this feeling, but I swore to myself that one day I will recall them and find out what happened to me.

Also, I think I finally know what I am. A dungeon. It is the conclusion of several days of thinking.

After I woke up from my first nap, I reopened the hall to the river. Doing so I found that I could reclaim the areas I lost when I closed the gap far more easily than claiming a new zone. My mana soaked into the ground almost instantly. After I made some experiments by closing and opening the gap multiple times to ascertain my theory, I took another nap.

On the third day, I decided to enlarge the gap a bit more and hopefully let a creature enter into my room through it, so I could study it. I’m not stupid, so I prepared a second room beneath my own chamber to trap the creature and ensure it could not harm my core. It was a success! I have managed to capture a creature!

I studied it for a few days, while trying to infuse my mana into it, but it was far harder than infusing my mana into soil or water. About three days after I began studying it, the creature started to show signs of weakness and I felt like I could almost push my mana into it. It had been bathing in mana infused water and drinking it for three days after all, which might have simplified it.

Unfortunately, the creature died during my next nap. Its death woke me up all of a sudden as I felt a powerful surge of mana enter my core. I also felt some knowledge about the animal enter my mind, when I combined it with my observations, I knew the creature was called 'fish' and that it was relatively small for a fish. Comparing its disappearing body - is it normal for a body to dissipate so fast? - to my core, I concluded that it was quite small too

I repeated the experience of opening the hole and trapping a new fish. It took more time than before and I even almost flooded my primary room - enough to decide to widen the trap beneath me. The second fish was a bit larger than the first one, it was also of a brighter color. Instead of the meek and pale brown of the first one, this one was a more vivid brown and even had a patch of black color on his back. I don’t really see the color of the fish, it is more that I can sense it. Anyway, it survived four whole days and died during the fifth. At the moment of its death, I felt many surging from its body to my core and a tiny bit of my memory unlocking itself. It seems I can regain my memories when something dies in me! I also relearned - that’s how I’m calling the fact of remembering simple knowledge - that there are multiples types of fish, but nothing else. Like the first fish, the body of the second disappeared quite fast.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The third fish was a better success in a way. It died far faster than the previous ones. Since the only thing I did differently was to actively pour a lot more mana in it, I concluded that I must have poisoned it. The fact it gave me back far less mana confirmed it. But this time I gained more knowledge instead. And I decided not to poison the creatures I would trap from now on.

It was from the third fish’s death I learned back that the energy I had been employing the whole time was called ‘mana’ and that each time my mana reserves, which was also referred as ‘mana pool’, was empty I would feel tired and weary. I understand better how the world works now. I even understood that the fish needed to eat to survive and that the fact their bodies completely disappeared in such a short time wasn’t normal.

The fourth creature I managed to trap was not a fish. Lucky me, a bit of diversity is always good. I learned it was called a ‘crab’ when it died. It was far more dangerous than a fish, as it even tried to climb out of my trap and had natural weapons in form of its claws and a natural armor in its shell. Its whole body was a deep red color.

After the crab, I decided to try two other experiments, until now I hadn’t let the water touch my core, but the knowledge I regained suggested that it wouldn’t pose a problem. So I tried it and while it really was no problem, it was still uncomfortable. I mean that having my core underwater felt weird. Not long after I felt that I was gathering mana slower than before and after I resurfaced my core and exposed it to the air again, I felt my mana gathering speed recovering, so I decided to remain as dry as possible and pushed the excess water back into the river. I had to dig a tunnel alongside the river up to the cave above it, which made a little fountain in the big cavern.

Afterwards, I began my second experiment by trying to trap two fish - or crabs, I’m not discriminating - at the same time. When the first died, I managed not to absorb its body and I saw the second fish eating the corpse. It allowed it to live a few days longer, as I had hoped.

After that, I managed to trap several fishes and two crabs at the same time. The crabs killed the fish and ate them, speeding up my mana gathering a lot. I bathed for a time in the sensation of having a lot of mana at my disposal until the amount of mana I was gaining from the fish began to drop. Then I trapped more fish and crabs.

Something else caught my interest, the crab with the higher kill count had begun to grow. They were only a bit bigger than before, but they were definitely stronger than the new ones. When I focused on them a little I found that when a crab killed a fish - or another crab, that happened thrice actually - they would gain a bit of the mana escaping the body. At first, I was jealous and decided to poison one of them, and when it died I felt a lot more mana than usual flowing into me, alongside some new knowledge. I also decided to let them gather mana for me, as long as they die in me I will regain the mana.

I learned a bit about what a dungeon is, a dangerous being able to control creatures and matter to create monsters and treasures. They lure sapient species inside them with treasures and kill them to feed on their purer mana. Looking at what I am able to do and the fact I had a core, I concluded I am a young dungeon. A month old dungeon.

Wow, a month, already, I really took my time with those experiments on fish and crabs. Well, I think a month has passed already. I counted around 30 days, so a bit more than a month, as long as my way of counting proves to be correct.

And I’m starting to starve staying here, feeding on some weak fish and restraining myself to absorb their dead body. I have plans to position myself in the cavern above and claim it as my core chamber. There may not be better prey than fish and crabs, but at least their number should be able to satiate my growing hunger for mana. As a dungeon, I’m supposed to expand by absorbing mana from people and creatures. For now, that’s fine by me.

Now I’m going to take a nap and kill all my creatures, I’ll need all the mana I can gather to move myself up there.