Ava was sitting in a cave that was shaped like a deformed half-sphere, gently illuminated by a rough, fist-sized gem that glowed a soft yellow, held by the thickest stalagmite within the cave.

As Ava's eyes adjusted to the dimness, she surveyed her surroundings. Notably, there was the entrance and a small pool of water that had formed below a dripping stalactite.

Approaching the pool, Ava looked into the puddle to see her reflection. Her face was a nearly blank slate, bar her eyes, which mirrored the same black as her nails.

Basic facial features could be made out, such as a bump where her nose was and impressions where her cheekbones are.

A thought crossed her mind, “How am I breathing?”. She didn’t have any nostrils nor a mouth. All of a sudden, now she thought about it, she couldn’t breathe now she tried doing it manually.

She tried different things. Imagining opening her mouth, trying to take a deep breath, trying to trick herself into yawning. Nothing worked.

Panic began to well up within her. Yet, her skill intervened, stomping the feeling down like a bug.

In desperation, Ava resorted to more extreme methods as darkness threatened to take her a third time, and she was not setting a pattern.

Ava positioned one of her fingernails where her mouth should be and prepared herself.

She pushed as hard as she could, immediate survival taking precedence over any damage she would inflict.

Pain shot through her, forcing her to withdraw her fingernail from the wound, causing it to leak black blood, but still, she still couldn’t breath.

Clawing at her throat, the panic now put up a fight against her skill, and she found herself mentally gasping for help.

Just as she felt on the brink of unconsciousness, a crack began to form on her face, just below where her ear should have been. Acting on instinct, she dug her nails into it and pulled, widening it to a jagged gap that, oddly enough, didn't bleed despite its size compared to the slit she had created.

Finally, a rush of air filled her lungs, and Ava revelled in the sensation, collapsed on the ground for a few moments, cherishing her newfound ability to breathe despite the staleness of her location.

In the relief, she wondered what the difference was between the hole she made versus the one that opened on its own.

“Both are just holes in my face” She thought, angry that she literally stabbed her face for no apparent reason.

A chime rang out and a black square with gold trimming appeared next to her core. She walked over and started reading.

[system maintenance complete - please enjoy]

[Hello, Ava, and welcome. We saw you were in a dangerous situation, so we used one of your acquired gifts to embed the instincts and knowledge required to control your body, though you should have had these already. Simply focus on what you need to know.

We apologize for the delayed assistance, but for matters of this magnitude, a council had to convene before intervening.

We took the gift that would have given you a system tutorial, massively expediting the process of acclimating to the world and providing assistance with the initial steps of controlling the dungeon, instead altering it as mentioned above.

Your request for assistance served as your consent, and in that regard, you can consider yourself fortunate.

We attached some useful insights about how to use your dungeon into your instincts and also your system, classifying it as ‘essential for later survival’ so our intervention wouldn’t cause your death later, rendering this whole ordeal useless.

In reality, it is an apology for stepping out of line and altering a gift, though we hope you understand]

[Signing off, System HR]

After reading it several times, she finally processed the message. Anger built as she realized something.

“YOU TUXEDO WEARING BASTARD”. She shouted, hoping he would hear.

The thing that had sent her here had given her a body she had no idea how to use, almost causing her death by not giving her the instincts to use said body.

If not for the help from the system management, she would have met him again, this time with the willingness to waste as much time as she needed to feel better.

After cursing the man out for a few minutes to blow off some steam, she sighed, knowing her outburst was useless.

“System” she sighed, and the familiae blue box appeared in her vision.

She never understood what the protagonists of her stories meant when they said it was weird gaining the system.

Having something stick to the center of your vision, no matter how hard she moved her eyes and head, would take some getting used to.

[Name: Ava Rose

Race: Shapeshifter / Dungeon Core

Dungeon mana - 100/100

Mana recharge rate - 5 per hour

[Abilities]

[Shapeshift]

[Memorise Soul]

[Store Forms]

[Create Material]

[Material Manipulation]

[Assimilation]

[Levels]

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[Level 1]

[Monsters]

[Normal]

[Special]

[Boss]

[Grant Title]

[Learn]

[Rooms]

[Environment]

[Templates]

[Accessories]

[Materials]

[Effects]

[Special]

[Traits]

[Gift] - [Dungeon Soul Sight] - applies the [Memories Soul] skill on any non-dungeon entity inside the dungeon.

[Gift] - [Strong Will] - strengthens your will

Ava skimmed through her system and nodded.

She knew what most of the skills did just based on the name or from stories, but some of them required her to look into them. And it was nice that it told her two of her gifts. Convenient, really.

Looking at [Memorize Soul], more information popped up.

[Memorize Soul - racial ability - A shapeshifter will subconsciously analyze and remember a soul of those it kills or remains near for long enough. After memorizing a certain amount of the soul, it is able to replicate the entity's profile. This profile is stored in [Store Forms]]

She then examined the other skill, [Store Form].

[Store Form - racial ability - magically stores the copy of a soul. High enough proficiency allows for combinations and alterations to be made]

Ava whistled in appreciation. She appreciated the fact that both skills seemed to function automatically, as memorizing stuff really wasn’t her strong suit, especially with how easy it was for her to get distracted.

Then the fact that it was then magically stored, removing the need to remember it herself was just icing on the cake.

Noticing that her shapeshifter abilities needed other living things to use, she decided to give her dungeon skills a go. Walking over to one of the man stalagmites in her cave, she tried to manipulate it. The result was it was turned to powder.

Considering she was trying to make it grow, she failed.

Ava guessed it was because she caused all the particles in the thing to ‘move’ outwards, causing it to just fall apart.

With that understanding, she attempted to generate earth to fill the gaps that formed by expanding the rock. It exploded.

Over the next few hours, Ava experimented with the skill to get a hold of it. she destroyed, deformed or liquified dozens of stalagmites, when she suddenly couldn’t do anything. Her magic wouldn't respond.

She opened her system to check for anything when she saw a glaringly obvious cause.

[Dungeon mana - 0/100]

She had run out of mana. ‘Just as I was getting the hang of it too’, she sulked.

Looking around at the stalagmite graveyard she made, Ava thought it was probably for the better that she took a break, especially with how tired she realized she was.

“Just warn me about that next time” she said, not expecting much of an answer. Ava just didn’t like the way her magic just abruptly stopped working without an explanation.

Sitting against the stalagmite that contained her core, she decided that now was a good time to explore the other options in the system.

Apart from the ability branch, she never really looked at the other options, getting distracted with her rock genocide.

“Let’s see…. [Uncollapse All]” she said, causing the menu to turn to a blur of characters for a few seconds. Every option, along with its description, definition of unknown words, and a generated model opened up.

The menu reminded her of those ridiculously long scrolls in cartoons before it compacted itself, with a scroll bar on the side.

“Uhhh…. [Collapse Descriptions]” she tried. The menu now had a far more orderly appearance.

[Levels]

[Level 1]

Monsters: 0/15

Special monster: 0/1

Traps: 0/3

Chests: 0/1

Challenges: 0/1

Safe Zones: 0/1

Rooms: 0/5

“Yay!” She cheered, feeling like she was getting somewhere. After hours of trying with little progress, even this small win felt like a reward.

Ava looked over the menu with a nod. She liked these versions of the system, with set limits rather than a ‘good luck getting through my first floor’ attitude.

The only issue she could think of was that this isn’t a story and having these limits put her in quite a bit of danger.

After all, while she didn’t really like every monster being a raid boss in stories, it sure beat being dead in real life.

The [Monster] tab contained the expected. The monsters she could spawn, give equipment and assign drops too. The [Title] tab was interesting as it allowed her to assign titles to monsters to improve or change their proficiency.

If she gave a goblin the [Smith] title, it would gain the equipment and proficiency of a basic smith, allowing it to equip other monsters at no cost to her.

She would need some form of smith station and need to pay a steep initial cost, but she thought it would pay for itself after a while.

[Rooms] assisted her with creating her dungeon. If she doesn’t feel like manually creating a room, the system has basic environments for the levels - like mine shaft or volcano - then has pre-made templates that fit into those environments.

This comes with the condition of needing access to all the materials and a massive uptick in cost than what it would take to do it manually.

[Effects] ment she could add status effects or conditions to a room, like ‘smoke screen’ which obscured the vision of intruders.

Ava had nothing better to do, so she spent the next few hours reading through all the monster and room descriptions, creating ideas for synergies between monsters, how to effectively place rooms and so on, when she received an alert from her system.

[Intruder - numbers: 1]

With this message, Ava felt an unnatural spike in aggression that she could only hold back thanks to [Strong will]. It really has been showing its worth already.

Then another alert.

[Intruder - numbers: 2]

Another burst of aggression, but this one she was more prepared for. Calming her nerves, Ava looked at her mana, resting at 22 after the last few hours of rest.

“So this it's time for the required ‘dungeon saviour’ cliché”. Despite her annoyed tone, Ava was nervous. After all, this cliché usually had someone running away from bandits or slavers or something.

Despite knowing they’re bad people, Ava still didn’t want to kill a person, no matter what her instincts were telling her to do.

Needing to know what was going on, Ava closed her eyes and relaxed, following her installed instincts. Allowing her mind to spread, her vision moved throughout the dungeon.

When she found the intruders, she was looking at an exhausted little girl half way through her tunnel and a bear at a cave entrance. The bear must have been 10 feet long, 16 feet if it stood on its hind legs.

"God damn" Ava muttered, wondering how she was meant to deal with this behemoth of a thing. It's not like she had any prep-time, so Ava decided to wing it.

“Alright. Game time” Ava smiled, the only saving grace in this situation was that she wouldn’t have to fight a person to the death.

Though, it's not like a multi-ton bear was any better.