Avery could work with this. So what if she was stuck in what turned out to have been a dungeon core that was hemorrhaging mana, which probably was what interacted with the spell to use her soul as a power supply in place of whatever it had previously. So what if a slime had done the most basic part of the tutorial over the course of two hours while she wasted time being stuck outside of the small tunnel she had chosen to do her experiment in? She was a wizard, and wizards figured things out.

There was an obvious first step for that, and it was to think ‘status’.

Dungeon Statistics

Age 2 Weight 7723

Structure Points 258/258 Mana Points 2491/8500 Structure Regeneration 0 Mana Regeneration -163

Power 8 Intelligence 15 Finesse 12 Wisdom 8 Hardness 15 Charisma 6

Menu Options

Build Spawn Demolish Map

Watch the mana statistic…

Mana Points 2491/8500

Mana Points 2490/8500

Mana Points 2489/8500

That wasn't as bad as she thought. It looked like the base unit these dungeon cores used in their interfaces were set up using hours. The good part of that was she had time to figure out a plan. About fifteen hours worth, it looked like. The bad part was that if the return on investment for what she assumed was dungeon size was low enough that one mana per hour was enough to get through the tutorial, she’d need to do a lot of work to get things rolling.

Augh, if there was a help option or some sort of way to scroll back to previously seen text, she could get a handle on how much the... Hold on. Avery thought 'Map', and was projected into an image of a small tunnel with a rounded chamber at the end of it, fully lit with perfect clarity. Focusing more toward her body, she found that the botany book had fallen off to the side slightly. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be a function to remotely open and flip through the pages. That was one possibility down.

Thinking about it, Avery supposed that a dungeon that was just starting out probably didn't have the raw mana of a soul to draw on to go through its creation phase, and tutorial apparently. It generally took far more than a couple hours for one of the things to show indicators of activity. In fact, as far as Avery knew there had never been a dungeon recorded this small. Usually they were found in abandoned mines, enormous natural caves, or hidden chambers of the planet with environments hostile to life. That slime had popped far more easily than even the typically weak members of its species usually had. Avery's inference from that was the creature using its own soul's inherent power to do what came naturally to it, and devour everything around it. When it was returned to its physical form, the energy it had expended didn't return with it, having been invested in the changes to the structure of this... Dungeon. Also lost into the void, because there was a sizable chunk of negative regeneration.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Experimenting was the key to gaining more information. Avery thought 'Spawn', as it seemed the least self-explanatory of the options available to her.

Spawning Options

You have not yet demolished any creature remains to spawn!

Progress! Now she knew why that wouldn't work. Next up was 'Demolish'. Apparently that synergized nicely with the map, as Avery wasn't blindly flailing toward anything around her as she estimated the slime had during its brief tenure being trapped inside this gem. Between where her body had gotten before the spell's duration had expired and the base of her dungeon, a moist stretch of slime spread slightly toward the enterance to the cave. With the idea of demolition held in her mind, Avery could see the entirety of the splotch being 'selected' by the core's magic. A box of text popped in front of the liquid.

Lesser Slime defeated. Demolishing remains will generate 25 mana, continue?

Yes No

Clearly yes was the correct choice. Avery had to offset that drain somehow. That was almost ten minutes worth of mana in one slime. If she could draw up the multitudes from the river into this cave, then somehow manage to get them to kill each other, she would be able to delay the complete obliteration of her soul indefinitely. More than that, it would allow for spawning.

Spawning Options

Lesser Slime 50

Oh this was complete bull.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

The Mage of Magic, mighty and mystical master of most things, had gotten a few streets past the scene of its triumph. Loud noises were starting to come from that general area, so it was inclined to move rather rapidly away. For some reason, despite how much larger the creatures were than a fourteen kilogram lizard, they seemed to care quite a bit about this relatively negligible amount of edible material.

There was a large stone building to the left, and the Mage of Magic was getting closer to the river that flowed down from the rock pillars up north down through the forest, winding around until it passed through this town. On its way in, the Kobold had steadily ignored the growing plants on either side of the path, though it would guess that the ones nearer the water needed less effort to keep alive. It wasn't exactly a farmer though. Like the common house cat, a dangerous creature that could easily slaughter an unprepared village, much less a single kobold, the Mage of Magic was carnivorous.

Whoever designed this town was terrible at it, if they were intending for larger creatures to be able to make their way through it. A horse sized creature would have maybe three safe paths through the buildings and stalls to where the Mage had managed to get itself, with one wide open triangular space against the giant stone building, which seemed to have been built parallel to the river as it bent while the rest of the buildings just fit themselves into any available spot of land. The corner the kobold slank around had maybe five feet of clearance between the stone wall and two other buildings coming in at differing angles to make as inconvenient a space as possible.

Footfalls were approaching the Mage and the bridge it found itself in front of. Unlike those of the large townspeople around it, the Mage of Magic could hear metal from those steps. That meant guards, or worse. Adventurers. Before they could catch up enough to do anything about it, the kobold opened its bag and started shoving meat into its maw. In order to use its magical might, it needed to have its hands free, and there was no way it was just going to ignore all those tasty calories. Too many kobolds were willing to let their gains slip right through their claws, in the Mage's opinion. There was risk involved in making sure that what one obtained was retained, but retreat was the kobold way when with a purpose. That purpose was to come out with more from the encounter than they would get by staying in it, and that purpose was denied when the cowardly kobold ditched the loot to lighten the load.

Unfortunately for the Mage of Magic, taking care of the loot slowed it down enough for the adventurers to spot the lizard eating a bunch of chicken on a bridge.