Awesome! I now had actual monsters! Now what?
I also had a shit ton of mana, so maybe I should start with that.
First of all, what could mana do? When I first became a core, I didn’t notice that expanding my vision cost mana, but apparently it did. So what else was I missing? Was I doing anything else that required mana, and didn’t realize it?
I gave some simple commands to my new trolls while keeping a very close eye on my mana. Commands did not require mana. Good. What about doing my little light trick, where my core glowed? Oh, yes actually. Though that amount of mana could be recovered by overfeeding my fish, so it wasn’t like it was really that bad. What about gaining new minions? I had one of my trolls catch a loose guppy and hold it up to my core. No, gaining a new minion didn’t cost mana.
Nor did mana drop or rise over time, as I also found out. It took a while for my troll to catch that fish.
Since besides expanding my territory, I didn’t really have many other abilities to experiment with at the moment, I decided to do something else then. I was too careless in the lower cave, I should be more cautious this time around. While technically my minions' lives didn’t matter to me, they were the only things protecting me, so I didn’t want to needlessly risk them either. I wanted more territory, but I wasn’t willing to risk finding another enemy core again. At least not without some contingencies.
I couldn’t explore myself, I needed minions to do that. As evidenced with Courier, my minions still had their own intelligence and memories, so while I couldn’t really get concise reports back from scouting missions, I could at least ask them some questions. Questions like, is there daylight over there? Does that path lead to a dungeon? Does this path have monsters in it? That kind of thing.
Unfortunately, my current number of useful personnel wasn’t exactly large. Dumb and Dumber, as I’d been thinking of them, just sat next to each other and drooled all over the place. I almost wanted them to clean themselves in the pond, but I also kinda didn’t want to dirty the water. It looked so pretty!
With my mind suddenly on aesthetics, I took a look around the room. It was just so cluttered. To say nothing of the dead body just laying there! It was about time I cleaned things up. Got myself organized.
I wanted the trolls to ‘dispose’ of the body eventually, but for now, I’d have them clear out the clutter. Take all the loose rocks over to the one corner of my room that wasn’t underwater or had a door next to it. I would have the crabs help, but they couldn’t exactly move anything much bigger than a pebble at a time. Briefly, I wondered if I could make a broom. But then I realized that would require sticks and leaves or whatever, and all I had were rocks.
Since I was focusing on aesthetics, I decided to attempt a new experiment. Namely, I wanted to see if I could control the layout of my dungeon. Turn the walls into bricks, add traps and puzzles, that sort of thing. Traps and puzzles weren’t necessarily pragmatic, especially with my life on the line, but if I had to min/max my way through life as a dungeon core, I would rather die.
I focused on the wall where I sat at first, just since that was closest to my core. My avatar stood on the water of the pond and stared at it, pondering what to do. The little crevice my core was in was… alright, I supposed. It’s a hole in the wall, hard to make it anything more. Maybe I should introduce some texture!
I flung my arms out wide. Make it pretty!
As expected, nothing happened.
Alright, fine then. Let’s just… I don’t know, open this part up a little more. My avatar pretended to push up on the roof of my little hole in the wall.
And the stone moved.
No way!
It drained my mana a noticeable amount, but nothing much. I hardly cared, because that meant I really could decorate a little! I wouldn’t have to suffer in boredom! Oh man, so many things to do then! Ok, first, I’d turn my alcove into a proper shrine dedicated to me. It’ll have a little pedestal in the middle, with a spiral staircase for my crabs to go up and down! There’s going to be some brickworks in the wall, the floor will be flat, at least as a base, and then maybe I could-
“Hey!” Shouted a female voice. “Stay behind the shield!”
My avatar’s head snapped in the direction of the voice. Obviously it came from one of the exits, but I took extra care to mentally note which one it was. There were people? Here!? I had guests!!
“Relax!” A male voice responded. “They’re just thausens! They’re practically harmless!”
What the hell is a thausen?
Actually no, forget that! I had guests! Actual guests! Would they be human? Elves? Oh man, I hoped they were elves! No! Bad dungeon! Bad Lucid! Focus! You’re new to this world. You need to play by its rules. Ok, from what I knew about fantasy worlds, they’d have some sort of status thingy, right? It would make sense, when I wanted to know how much mana I had earlier, a number had popped up in my head. Maybe it worked the same for humans, or maybe they had a different system. The one I was most familiar with was one that had all the information about the individual. Name, age, gender, race, their stats, and probably a mana bar to help show how much mana they had left.
Oh shit, what would I do if they were adventurers? Too late to consider that I supposed, they arrived.
“Just because they’re harm-”
They both burst into my vision at the same time. A female swordsman with a wooden shield, and a male archer. Both human. They halted just inside my domain. My avatar quickly joined them, looking out into my dungeon.
Be ready! I acted, getting into a fighter's stance. There might be traps anywhere! First, let’s get a spot of the place! Then, we can decide on our best course of action!
Neither of the humans seemed all that interested in moving past my entrance. Which was fine, really, I didn’t really want to fight them. If anything, I hoped they stuck around! We could be friends!
And they could also be a source of information for me, but I wouldn’t tell them that.
“Owyn?” The girl asked, looking around my room.
Ah! Your name is Owyn! Nice to meet you sir, my name is Lucid! And what’s your name dear lady?
The girl didn’t talk to me. “Owyn, can you see this too?”
“Owyn Erlander.” The boy said. “Nineteen years. Male. Hu- uh, human. Uh, S-T-R, and-”
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Ah, you’re reading your stats. I’m curious to know how high your-
“Owyn!” The girl shouted, surprising me. She leapt ahead of us, guarding us.
I quickly hid behind her shield. What! What? What happened?
I hadn’t given my monsters any orders. Dumb and Dumber were just standing there, in the middle of hauling rocks to the corner. I could tell them to get back to work, but I think this poor girl was spooked enough. Probably better for my denizens to just relax. Maybe that would help my new human guests?
“Uh…” The girl shuffled uncomfortably.
“Abby, turn off your light.”
Abby. I nodded. I held out my hand to shake. Pleased to meet you!
“What!?”
Well you don’t have to be rude about it.
“Just do it.” Owyn seemed to be judging his hand.
Which kind of brought my attention to something new. They had lights on? Since when? I could see perfectly- oooooh. I had dark vision. Or dungeon vision, most likely. I could probably see perfectly well within my domain, but that meant I couldn’t see anything outside of it at all. Hence the dark veil behind Owyn.
Something happened then. Like… like a presence faded somewhat. I couldn’t quite place it, so I turned to the only sense I didn’t know off the back of my hand yet. Mana. As I watched, my mana seemed to be slowly increasing? How?
“The… thing isn’t creating light.” Owyn stated, flipping his hand over.
Your status? Of course not. It doesn’t exist. Wait, isn’t this your world? Shouldn’t you know this? Oh, I know! This must be your first adventure! That must be why your armor looks so well worn! They’re hand-me-downs, right?
Suddenly, my mana increase accelerated. Abby and Owyn were properly looking around the dungeon again. I noticed that whenever Abby looked somewhere, it was either where Owyn was looking, or where her shield was pointing. Having noticed that, I looked at the shield, seeing some rather interesting black voided specks off the center of the shield. Like the veil blocking my vision outside my domain. Looking up at Owyn, I noticed a similar, larger void within a little metal dish on his helmet. Somehow, those voids were their sources of light. Interesting. And when they were using them, I gained mana? Well, more mana. If I had to guess- and dream/dungeon logic was sort of hinting at this revelation -beings with mana in them passively fed me mana just by existing within my domain.
Did my denizens do the same? Well, not now obviously, but before I claimed them?
“Mimic crabs,” Owyn said, having noticed my crabs peering at them from the pond shore. “You can tell by the… ‘crown’ they seem to have when they’re eating something.”
Only one of my little crabs had said crown up at the moment, and that was the one that was eating Courier. Speaking of which, mimic crabs was an awesome name! That must mean that Dumb and Dumber weren’t trolls, but thausens instead. Whatever those were.
It wasn’t fair that Dumb and Dumber had names, but my awesome mimic crabs didn’t. You shall henceforth be named Mimi and Rab!
Didn’t want to stretch my brain searching for appropriate names when I had adventurers in my dungeon.
“They’re not fighting us Owyn.” Abby seemed upset by that.
“They’re not.” Owyn nodded subtly. He began walking towards the crabs. In his hand, he held a void thing on a necklace. Apparently he was using it too, since I was gaining more mana from it.
Oh! Silly me! I’m a dungeon! Of course I should be the one to give out quests! Forgive me for the wait, dear adventurers. Please! If you can, I would very much wish for you to come greet me in person! If you touch my core, I might be able to talk to you!
Both humans flinched slightly, their eyes darting to some point in space. Thankfully, Abby actually told me what she read!
“Quest: Touch the dungeon core.”
Owyn nodded.
Well that wasn’t exactly what I said, but it gets the idea across. Cool! I can create quests!
“What’s going on?” Abby asked.
“I don’t know.” Owyn muttered. I had my avatar walk beside him.
What do you mean you don’t know? I’m a dungeon, this is a quest. Surely it can’t be that complicated, right? Weren’t you taught this by whoever gave you your armor? Or are dungeons just that rare? Maybe I was lucky, or perhaps unlucky, to meet another dungeon deeper in the caves. Ah well, these guys are on their first dungeon dive, it makes sense not to know everything!
Abby began walking as well, though her path diverged from Owyn’s. “I think… I think I should go get the core.”
‘Get’ is an interesting choice of words. I thought to myself. Am I missing something? Oh man, I should probably be as nice as I can to these guys, I really don’t want to make a bad first impression. Uhhhh, Mimi and Rab! Find some rocks! Let’s play tic tac toe with Owyn! We’ll be colors, he’ll be blacks and grays! Fish! Abby is coming to talk to me! Make her welcome! Give her a royal welcome! Stand to either side of the red carpet! Go!
Abby stood at the ponds edge, soaking her boots. She looked nervous at the extravagant treatment before her. Oh who was I kidding, she looked downright intimidated. Maybe I made a wrong move there. Still, I didn’t want to startle her, so I commanded the fish to remain where they were.
“Owyn?” Abby asked.
“The crabs are doing something.” Owyn said, right before trying to cheat. Or maybe he just didn’t know the rules. Still, I had Mimi throw his rock back at him so he could try again.
Abby collected herself with a few deep breaths. “This is what being an adventurer is. Treading into the unknown.”
Yeah! There you go! Look at our little adventurer, off on her first quest!
Abby slogged through the knee deep water before coming face to orb with my core. She hesitated there, looking behind her. Everything was as it was before. Owyn still didn’t know what to do with his rock, so he just sat there, studying my mimic crabs.
She looked far too nervous.
And then I remembered why she would be.
Anything and everything I’d come into contact with I’d either killed outright or enslaved. Sure, the people of this world might forget to mention the status plate or quests or whatever to new adventurers, since to them it would just seem obvious, but dungeon cores themselves were dangerous. So when she said she was going to ‘get’ the core, what she meant was…
Oh no. No. No! This is fine! I just have to be quiet. Peaceful. I won’t say a word! As soon as she touches my core, her quest will be complete. That’s it!
Her hand touched my core.
A rush of emotions filled me. Apprehension. Nervousness, fear, but above it all, bravery. I didn’t know the first thing about this girl, but in this exact moment I knew everything I needed to know. She was an adventurer, through and through. And she deserved a proper reward.
“Congratulations.” Owyn read. The quest complete.
Oh shit! Rewards!
Now I started panicking! I didn’t have a reward ready! I didn’t want to just give out exp or whatever, that was lame. This was their first quest! First dungeon! Hell, this was the first person to clear my dungeon! A reward needed to be special!
You need to leave. I realized. No! Wait! Not forever! You need to come back! I just need some time! I need time to make a reward! Just go away! Uh, come back tomorrow maybe! I’ll have your reward then! And I’ll have this place cleaned up! I promise! Just go home and rest. You did a good job! Now shoo, shoo!
“Abby!” Oywn shouted, fear riddling the cry.
Abby snatched her hand back from my core.
“Abby, I can hear the core from here, come on!” Owyn was standing now, reaching out over the water for Abby. “We need to go!”
Abby didn’t hesitate now. She pushed off the wall, running practically over the water in the effort to return to Owyn. Owyn hardly slowed down for her, fully sprinting out the door, leaving my domain mere seconds later.
I hovered in the air a bit, watching them leave. My eyes tracked down to the tic tac toe game. There was only one colorful rock on the board.
Well, that went well, wouldn’t you say? I asked my crabs.
They raised their claws and swayed back and forth. A happy little dance.
Exactly! Dumb and Dumber! We have work to do! Go to the next room over and bring me back the largest rock you can carry! I have an idea!
In the meantime, I think it was high time I used some mana!