There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.

- Benjamin Franklin

==Caden==

I walked through the grasses of the meadow, the bare stone of my feet crushing the grass underfoot. The smell of fresh grass perfumed the air, mixing with the light scent of flowers on the wind. Those same flowers shifted in and out of view, the tall grasses blowing in the wind and obscuring the small dots of color amid the green.

Small animals ran through the grass. Small mammals, lizards, insects, and small creatures I had no categorization for. What exactly was I supposed to call a plate-mouse? It wasn’t exactly a mammal or an insect. And there seemed to be a whole group of animals like that. And, other, equally strange combinations were among my new enormous list of animals.

Still, the world around me felt alive. And so did I. It didn’t matter that I was made of stone. I felt alive in a way that I simply hadn’t using the natural senses of a core. I knew that I was biased. I could feel and experience earthquakes, and the ripples of gravity. I could feel the flowing of mana and the pressure of countless tons of rock pressing down. Even knowing that, it didn’t matter. I had been born a human, and I had lived that way for many years. I hadn’t lived as a dungeon core for a year; hell, I didn’t think it had even been two months yet.

However, now I could feel like myself again.

I wasn’t going to be fooling anyone else, of course. The stone was rather obvious, but even without that people with special senses would notice. Zidaun wouldn’t be able to tell directly, if he didn’t know me already, since I now had a proper mana barrier for my avatar. However, I was too heavy, and he would be able to feel that. And stone would not feel like flesh to the vibration sense of the other team. Who knew what other exotic senses were available to the delvers who would be coming? No, I would never be able to conceal myself like this.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to, either. I wasn’t actually unhappy to be a core, now that I could talk with a few people. As long as I could manage that, I was happy enough.

There were other benefits to having a body. Metallurgy II had been giving me trouble. It had given me an instinctive knowledge of forging metals. I had been having trouble accessing and using that knowledge properly. As soon as I tried forging with a body, that awkwardness went away. A hammer felt natural in my hand, and forming an anvil in the right shape was an easy effort of imagination. It was obvious that this skill was actually meant for a person. I hadn’t gotten anything special for being the first dungeon to get the skill, so it was obvious that other dungeons had gained it, but it wasn’t optimized for us. The odds were good that most dungeons simply used whatever was brought inside them.

And that fit what I already knew. Exsan only started to gain curiosity after being exposed to me and my own knowledge. It was entirely possible that curiosity was not a common trait for dungeons. I could even understand why. Dungeons were supposed to sit and exist for long periods of time without doing much. Boredom was curiosities natural companion, even as it acted as its antithesis. I might be a dungeon now, but I was never going to be content just sitting and growing passively. I would keep learning and expanding my knowledge.

A flicker of a notification distracted me.

Your skill Manipulate Metal II (Metal) has leveled to Manipulate Metal III (Metal)!

It was the third such message I had received so far over the course of the night. It was the first skill that leveled up due to background processes, though, and not because I was pushing them to try and level them up.

My other shards had been busy. They still were for that matter.

Having gained a new sense that let me determine when I was close to leveling skills had pushed me to work harder on them. It gave me something definite to work towards, which was always appreciated.

The other two skills that had leveled, so far, were Matter Fabrication and Interdimensional Repository, both of which has also reached level three.

Honestly, I probably didn’t even need to focus on them, since I used both of the skills all the time, but practicing with focused intent felt good. And I thought my intentions might actually make a difference. Certainly my skills had leveled up faster when I was trying to see how I could stretch them.

It was interesting practice to create items as quickly as possible midair and then pull them into my inventory while they were falling. So far, momentum was not conserved when an object was put into storage, but I wondered if that might be able to change eventually. So far, no luck.

I couldn’t create an object with momentum, either, but I wouldn’t have known without trying. It wasn’t like I knew what the limits actually were. And the limits changed and grew as I leveled.

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

My attention returns to the stone of my body.

I didn’t feel like my avatar was going to level up soon, but it was one of the skills that I could use to potentially gain new skills. Besides, I simply liked using it.

I had been trying to adjust how my body was put together.

Human bodies were not homogeneous, but the stone of my body had started out that way. I kept tripping and falling, the weight distribution of my body distinctly different from what I was used to. I could create an exact copy of my own body, externally, but the solid stone felt wrong. This was hardly much of a surprise. I had been walking for more than two decades, and while my body had substantially shifted over that time, all those changes had been gradual.

We didn’t usually think of walking as a skill, but that was because we tended to master it before we started to consciously think about such things. If you broke your leg or had to go through physical therapy, suddenly you started to think about it again, but even then, you would generally remaster the skill and then let it fade into the background.

All my instincts, all my skills with my body were still intact. I could move my hands and use my index finger to touch my nose or anywhere else on my body. I didn’t need to think about it. I still unconsciously breathed, the air flowing into and out of my lungs. And then when I tried to walk my instincts and trained habit disagreed with physics.

Physics won.

I would have said physics always won, in my old life, but I wasn’t as sure of that now as I was then.

Still, in consideration to the fact that walking was generally all about physics, and I wasn’t using a magical solution. I was trying to get my body closer to agreement with my instincts.

My solution had been to make most of the stone in my body porous. I had left solid ‘bones’ of stone in all the proper places, my pattern for humans guiding that knowledge easily enough. That had helped substantially. After than I started to alter the density of the stone in various places, trying to imitated the increased density of muscles, the lower density of fat, and the various changes in density caused by all the internal organs.

It wasn’t a perfect solution, because my body of stone was simply heavier than a body of primarily water. Yes, I could make my entire body as porous as pumice and I might get down to something resembling the right weight, but then my body would not be very strong.

Still, it was close enough to feel much better. I was still tripping every now and then, but it was diminishing as I got used to it.

I was self aware enough to admit that the primary reason I was working on my avatar was comfort. Now that I had a proper avatar, I might be able to gain new skills that we centered around having a human body. I had even sparred a little with some monsters.

For all that my avatar was human, the monsters in the dungeon ignored me unless I ordered them to attack me. I could even go up to a monster and punch it, and it wouldn’t attack me. That made sense, I supposed. The monsters still recognized me as a friendly entity, even as an avatar. Still, a few commands and they would do their best to break apart my stony flesh.

I wasn’t very good at fighting. I had been getting some decent use out of my beginners tower. I hadn’t gained any skills yet, I wasn’t even certain if it was possible. Still, I had practiced both some hand to hand and with a sword.

The sword was much better than my previous creations. Getting some proper experience in with metallurgy let me know what aspects of the steel were actually important. The individual grains in the steel were small and tight, the carbon content a little higher than it was for the knife I had found. I had formed bands of alternating material within the sword.

Unfortunately, the sword was better than I was. My movements were awkward, and I had the sword glance off of the exoskeleton of the creature I was fighting far too many times. I was also glad I had a complete copy of the sword template. I may have hit the floor with the sword a time or ten.

Still, I didn’t get tired. My muscles were mere stone simulacrum of the real thing. I didn’t sweat, and I didn’t need to deal with fatigue. The sword never became too heavy for my hands. Indeed, all the negatives that had made me avoid exercise in my last life were gone. This body was absurdly strong. A few of the times I had hit the floor with my sword it was because I had chopped straight through the monster and then hit the floor.

None of the monsters I had faced so far could really damage me, either. Stone was a bit more than they could handle. Still, it was only practice.

It was a shame that I couldn’t have multiple copies of my avatar running. I had tried, but only a single shard could use it at a time.

I still had another shard running metallurgy right now. I had received some hints how to make a sword properly from scratch. I had set aside the ore it had picked out and a bunch of green leaves to burn as I made the steel. I was pretty sure the leaves were supposed to add carbon. I had perfectly good coal I could use, but it considered that an inferior choice. Since I honestly knew nothing about forging, I wasn’t going to try and gainsay my new instincts.

And they were instincts, and that bothered me a little. I knew some of what I was supposed to do, but I didn’t know why. Why those leaves and not the leaves from a different plant? Why green leaves instead of dried out? The ore that was picked out had a high iron and carbon content, but I had other ores with a similar level. Those ones had been less suitable and I didn’t know why. And that bothered me.

I wasn’t going to just to everything that my skill told me. I was also planning to do the things it told me were wrong, or less effective. I was sure the skill was right, I was sure there were good reasons to do what it told me, but I wanted to know those reasons.

I worked on my various skills through the night, pushing them up.

Aura Mobility was the next skill to level, also leveling up to level three. No doubt it had been close to leveling ever since Exsan and I had our little spat. It was quickly followed by Living Creation III (Life) and Appraise III, but neither gained much additional functionality.

Soon enough it was morning.