~~???~~

I lie on the operator’s table, wincing slightly from the pressure of the blood-pressure monitor on my arm. As I close my eyes and breathe deeply, I relax, knowing I’m safe in the hands of an expert surgeon. Next thing I know, I’ll be waking up on a hospital bed, groggy but minus a silly lump of cancer.

I hear the anesthesiologist telling me to count down from ten, and I do as I’m told.

“Ten… Nine… Eight… Seven…”

I drift off into the oblivion of induced unconsciousness.

I open my eyes to… I can only describe it as an infinite void of darkness and nothingness. My brain immediately demands that I examine my surroundings and determine where I am and what’s going on. Part of me thinks maybe I’m dreaming? I can’t feel or see my body, all sense of proprioception gone, like when I’ve slept on my arm and for a moment it’s just a lump of flesh attached to my body with no ability to move on its own and no sensation traveling from it to my brain. Except this time it’s my whole body. I can’t see anything, although that could be related to the fact that I can’t feel anything. If something is preventing me from sensing my body, it could easily block my ocular nerves too. That could explain the darkness?

Before I can really process this odd situation much, a bright light appears in front of me, ruling out the blindness hypothesis. The light forms into the shape of what I can only describe as a phone. Generic touch-screen with no logos or anything. The light dims slightly, becoming a grey screen with white text.

Hello, @&$%–

Ok… that’s odd.

It, uh seems your name isn’t registering.

Um..

Welcome to the Afterlife?

Anywhoooo. You’re probably wondering how you got here. It was death. You died. Sorry about that. I’ll spare you the grissly details but basically your heart stopped on the surgery table and they couldn’t get it started again. Too bad, you were pretty young. Records say only 24. Wow. Tough break, kid.

Well, all this to say, you’ve been offered a second chance. It’s not exactly the same as the life you left. You’re not gonna be a human. But, given your personality, we think you might enjoy it.

So. What do you think?

Honestly, I stare at the odd screen for a while. I don’t know how to process this. Part of me still thinks this is some kind of dream, while a bigger part of me has to accept the reality of what’s going on. I died. A simple surgery to remove a lump of cancer and I died.

In the light made by the weird phone screen, I can tell I fully don’t have a body. It’s not just paralysis or numbness. There’s nothing. No body. Weird. “How? What is…?” Somehow, despite lacking anything resembling a mouth, I can still talk.

Oh, yeah. Should probably explain the whole concept we’re working with here.

So, I’m kinda your Guide? I’m here to help you out and explain stuff that confuses you. Main thing we’re dealing with here is the fact that you don’t know what I’m offering! We’re offering you the chance to reincarnate. Kinda. New existence and all. It’s called a Dungeon Core. You basically run a dungeon and manage its monsters and traps and all that chaos. And, yanno, protect your core. Got it?

Your other option, of course, is to just go softly into that goodnight. Even I don’t know what happens after your soul lets go.

“Yes?”

I’m still confused, but I think I can wrap my head around the basics of what the... Guide(?) is getting at. “Will I still be… well… uh, will I still be me?”

Of course! You can even customise the appearance of your avatar however you wish! So, do you wanna do it?

I consider the offer for a few long moments. I have to be honest with myself, this sounds fascinating. The opportunity to be something else? To take on a whole new form of existence? Call me an escapist, but it’s almost a dream come true. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

Okay, prepare yourself for a bit of a shift. This might feel weird. Good luck!

I don’t have to wait long for the weird feeling to happen. The first sensation that catches up is my sight. I find myself within a spherical… room? The walls seem to be made of clear glass, and the interior contains a wide, twisting ribbon running from floor to ceiling. The twist reminds me of DNA, and is split into three different colours. On the left edge of the spiral is a thick band of cyan, while the right edge is magenta. The place where the two colours meet is a thin strip of yellow. It’s almost beautiful. The ribbon emits light, so I can tell I still have no physical form. The fact that I still can’t feel my body encourages that particular idea. I’m not sure what to do, but I notice the screen is still floating in the air nearby.

Okay, kiddo. Welcome to the First Light Dungeon. This particular area is your Core. When you need to be alone with yourself or just need time to process something, this is where you’ll go.

You can leave the Core and explore your surroundings a bit!

Once the idea is suggested, I can feel the possibility. The Core is my quiet place of contemplation, where I can go to get away from everything that might be happening out there. Out there is where the action happens though, and we gotta love a bit of action! I push myself beyond the boundaries of the Core and my perception changes. I now find my perspective placed a little bit above the core, about head height to be honest.

Around me is a room, I guess? It’s more like a cave. The walls are made of uneven soil with a few roots hanging from the ceiling. There’s a shadow off to one side that I can only assume is a tunnel. And, one more thing, there are a bunch of little floating… specs? They’re everywhere, little white dots floating in the air like dust caught in a sunbeam. They’re just floating around in the air. I squint at them, then glance back at the very helpful guide. As predicted, it has an answer ready for me.

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This is Mana. It’s what allows a dungeon to be a dungeon. And that’s what you are. A dungeon core. With mana, you can build yourself. Dig deeper. You can create challenges for Adventurers to face, as well as give them rewards for their efforts.

It takes a bit of effort to start, but in a moment you’ll start to passively intake Mana. It’s not as much as having Adventurers will give you, but it’s just enough to get you started and ready for them to come visit!

Just will the Mana to come in and it should happen. Overall that’s a pretty good tip for anything in your new life. Intent is everything. If you desire something to happen, just will it into existence and, if you have enough Mana to do it, it’ll happen.

For now, we’ve supplied you with this handy interface, but as you grow to understand the system better, you’ll be able to shape your world without needing it as much.

All I have to do is desire something to make it happen. I imagine the Mana flowing into the core, feeding and filling it. I put effort into my imagination.

There’s a long wait of a few moments, then the random float of Mana all around the room begins to coalesce, the tiny motes of Mana flowing towards the Core as I directed them to do. They seem to swirl around like a whirlpool, and when they touch the Core… my Core, they are sucked into it like it’s a black hole. Immediately, I feel something new. And I know what it is. The Mana I’m absorbing… it’s possibility incarnate. It’s potential. I see a world of options in front of me. A world of things I can do with more of this energy.

One last thing before we let you explore a little more. Bit of a glitch in the whole situation. There’s more than one of you for some reason. Not sure how that happened, but we’re going to have to give you an Avatar right away. Normally it takes a dozen floors to get to this point but… uh. Well, prepare yourself.

I try to prepare myself, but there’s no way to prepare for the sensation that happens a few moments later. It’s like having pins and needles. I go from being able to feel nothing to feeling a buzz of sensation that spreads from what could be my heart to all of my extremities. As the pins and needles spread, I spread. I see my body building itself from the air around me. First my torso and head, then my arms and legs. It’s very uncomfortable.

But then it’s over. And I have a body. It feels young. Shorter than I’m used to being. The phone floats over and lands in my hand, a solid shape I can clutch onto.

There are two major things I notice. Firstly, I’ve got an outfit! I’m wearing really comfortable sneakers with ankle socks, pants that only go halfway down my shins (and are full of useful pockets), a polo shirt with a bowtie, and a casual jacket (which also has pockets!) to top it all off. I don’t know what my face looks like, but feeling with my hands reveals a pair of glasses along with a familiar-feeling nose and chin, so I assume I look fairly similar to what I looked like in life. Plus I still have glasses. Now that I notice that I can also see their thin rims framing my vision just slightly, and feel the gentle weight on my nose and ears. One change is that my cheeks feel… less round? They have a little more definition, I guess. My hair is new. It’s short. Almost shaved on the sides and bottom, with a transition to the top of my head, where the hair is about three cm long at my best guess. I touch my ears and note with a smile that they still stick out like radar dishes.

The second, more noteworthy thing is that I am Cyan. My skin. My clothes. Everything is slightly different shades of that greenish blue. Just like the little coloured bit of the marble. The core.

“Who are you?”

The voice knocks me out of my self reflection. I look up and meet the eyes of… a girl. She’s dressed very similarly to me, but with a feminine spin. Her socks are higher. She has a loose skirt that goes halfway past her knees, and her top is made of thinner, lighter material. It’s a blouse, not a polo like mine. Instead of a jacket she’s got a little cardigan, with those really comfortable giant pockets. Looking at her face feels like looking in a mirror. A young, round face with a nose of average size and radar-dish ears. No glasses though, I realise with a note of jealousy. She has a couple of little freckles, but not enough to describe her as ’freckled’. Her hair is long, tied up in twin braids. One braid falls in front of a shoulder, the other behind. And just like I’m fully cyan, she’s fully magenta. Except her eyes. Her eyes are cyan.

Ok. The guide warned me about this, but I’m still confused. “Uh… I dunno man. Just me? How about you?”

She seems conflicted for a moment, but shrugs. “I’m not sure. For one thing, I don’t seem to remember my name.”

I remember how the Guide didn’t seem to be able to say my name earlier, but I still search for the memory. I can’t… I can’t access it. “Me neither…”

Sorry for the delay! And sorry about the name thing. Something went wrong with it. You can name yourselves, I guess. Normally the Dungeon and the Avatar would share a name but these are unusual circumstances.

“They want us to choose names for ourselves,” the girl says, tilting her head slightly. “How are we supposed to choose our own names?”

Something about the idea resonates with me. The option to choose instead of having a name thrust upon you by an uncaring universe (or more specifically, parents) feels incredible. I know I’ve gone through this process before, but I can’t remember the name I chose. Or the name I had before. That’s probably part of the whole ‘something went wrong’ situation the Guide mentioned. “Uh… Hmm. I feel like I’ve done this before.”

“Do you have any ideas?” the girl looks pretty flabbergasted, and although I’ve never been the best at reading emotions, I feel like it’s never been a question for her.

I consider the question and the problem. I look at her. Bright magenta all over. I look down at my hands. Vibrant cyan. “Uh, how about Cyan and Magenta? Maggie for short, If you like.”

She shrugs. “I suppose it works? Cyan is a bit of an odd choice. Maggie doesn’t feel too different from a regular name, although it does sound a little old-timey. Why those names?”

“Uh, cause our skin and clothes and hair are all cyan and magenta?”

She looks at her hands, and I can almost see the gears turning. Maybe colour theory isn’t something she’s experienced in. “I thought we were blue and pink.”

“Eh… kinda? Cyan and magenta are pretty specific colours that could fit within the larger ranges of blue and pink, respectively. Along with yellow, they make up the additive primary colours. It’s light. Which, in hindsight, kinda explains the name the Guide gave me for our Dungeon. First Light.”

The name is also because your entrance faces due East and gets a very good view of the sunrise!

“Well, I cannot imagine any better names, so I suppose Magenta it is. I guess it’s better than Pink.” She laughs, putting a hand on her hip and smiling. I’m glad she liked the idea cause I didn’t have any back-up ideas.

Awesome. Now that you’re both settled, I guess it’s time to familiarise yourself with the System and get ready for your first visitors! Oh, one last thing. As a baby dungeon, you gain access to one Aspect of Magic for free!

You got…

(Drumroll please)

Light!

“I think our Guide is having a little too much fun.” Maggie comments, raising an eyebrow inquisitively in a way that reminds me of Spock. Hah.

“Ah, let them have a little fun. Who knows, they could be locked inside a tiny box with no way of emoting or expressing themselves beyond this sad excuse for communication,” I joke, leaning up against a wall. My phone seems to wiggle slightly in my hand, as if offended by the joke.

Seriously, early access to Light is really helpful. Trust me, my enthusiasm is warranted. Imagine a world where you didn’t get Light. Your dungeon would be dark and dangerous and hard to navigate. Unless you got Fire.

Anyways. The system is yours to explore. Don’t be afraid to ask for help with anything you need, I’m happy to help.

“Okay. So… now what?”