James woke up with a throbbing headache. Instinctively, he reached with his hands towards his forehead to rub over it. When he didn’t feel his hands against his forehead, he tried again, only to fail again. That’s odd, he thought to himself, until he couldn’t even feel his arms.
That’s when he noticed the blinking transparent box in front of him, the text on it still a bit fuzzy. As he tried to focus on the text on the box, the memories of the last event came flooding back to the front of his mind.
The agony he felt, as if his body was being torn to shreds. The disgusting sight of his veins throbbing blue, shining through his skin and seemingly growing larger would have made him vomit if he could. His mind reeled back from just remembering the sheer pain that went through his body and mind, the headache totally overpowering, like nothing he had ever felt before. Trying to hold onto something, anything, he focused harder on the box, and finally, the words came clear to him.
[You have died. You have been summoned to a different world as a dungeon core.]
‘Oh, ok, I’ve just been summoned as a dungeon core. Sure, got it, no problem.’
‘That explains everything…’
‘…’
‘Like hell it does!’ James screamed inwardly. He didn’t want to die! Nor be summoned as some sort of hero to a foreign world! Let alone as a dungeon! He was a human! He let out a loud groan and started to calm down slowly, realizing that freaking out wouldn’t help him one bit. ‘So I’ve been summoned’, he thought, ‘that means someone will come explain things.’
His mind immediately went to the many stories he has read, where a breathtakingly gorgeous Goddess shows up, her beauty knowing no boundaries, making every head turn in her direction, unable to do anything but stare, some even going as far as drooling. Her voice would be sultry, bewitching someone with every word she said. He’d be shy and stumble over his words, and she would giggle, cutely holding her hand in front of her mouth as she looked at him.
Of course, nothing of that actually happened. No, everything stayed eerily quiet. James his mind started to wander again, trying to come to terms with recent events.
The box with text blinked for a moment, and then disappeared, catching James his attention. He looked confused ahead of him, as confused as someone without a body can look, of course. If he could, he would have blinked a few times, and just a few moments later, another box appeared.
[Welcome, new dungeon core. Mentally saying ‘status will bring up your status screen. Other commands will work the same way.]
He carefully read over the message before it vanished, his mind starting to work, soaking in the information and comparing it to things from his past world.
‘So this world has some sort of system in place’, James thought, ‘It feels remarkably similar to some of those stories I’ve read... Ah well... Not that that really helps me.’
He kept like that for a while, not bothering to bring up the status screen just yet, his mind still too busy coping with what he had experienced so far. He would have probably continued like this for quite some time, if it weren’t for a large flashing box appearing in front of him.
[Now if the somewhat mind-challenged new dungeon core would be so kind as to think of ‘status’ and bring it up so I can do other, more interesting things, that would be very much appreciated.]
If he had eyes, they would probably have bulged out a bit as he read through the text, again and again. ‘Right right, I guess I better go to it’, he figured, and mentally thought of ‘status’. Immediately, a table opened up in front of him, seemingly hovering in front of him.
[Name: James]
[Race: Dungeon]
[Level: 1]
[Attributes:]
[Mana: 0/100]
[Status Effects:]
[Forced Summon: You have recently been summoned and had your body altered significantly to adapt to your new world. Your mana has been locked. Effects: No vision, No mana gathering. Time Remaining: 10:32]
[Active Skills:]
[Passive Skills:]
[Mana Gathering: level 1]
[Mana Manipulation: level 1]
He blinked in surprise a few times as he looked at the status screen. The race made him shiver a little. As he wandered down further, he noticed the Status Effect and let out an inward groan, yet received some hope as he saw the timer go down, the last two digits seemingly being seconds with the first two being minutes. Moving down lower, he cringed a bit as he noticed he didn’t have any active skills and only two passive skills. As he concentrated on the first passive skill, Mana Gathering, another box popped up.
[Mana Gathering: As a dungeon core, you automatically gather mana from your surroundings and the very world itself.]
Reading through the description carefully, he eventually went to the next passive skill, Mana Manipulation.
[Mana Manipulation: As a dungeon core, you continuously manipulate the surrounding, circulating it through your dungeon rooms and monsters.]
As the timer hit 00:00, the status effect disappeared, the throbbing headache lessened a lot. Keeping his eye on his mana, he saw it started to rise slowly, and with it, he started to sense things around him, including his own body, or what he felt was his own body. And instantly, he was being weirded out yet again. He didn’t have legs, nor arms. He had no eyes, nor a mouth. No, his body was a crystal. It was rather small, perhaps the size of a cat or a small dog. As the mana points increased, he could feel his crystalline body collected it from the very air. Knowledge started to appear in his mind, as if he had always known it. It was weird, gross even. He would have wrinkled his nose if he could.
James mentally took a deep breath as he started to analyze this newly acquired knowledge. Apparently, this passive skill, Mana Gathering, allowed him to gather mana from the world continuously, though it felt as if he simply gathered it from the air around his crystal body. He knew that if he increased his dungeon level, the speed at which he would draw mana from the world would increase as well. Yet, Mana Gathering wasn’t only limited to that, it would draw mana from sources within his dungeon. He didn’t know what these sources were, though.
Mana Manipulation, however, was just as the skill description had said. He could feel how he subconsciously let the mana flow throughout his entire crystalline body. He could feel more and more mana seeping into him, and finally, it started to flow out of the mana and into the room.
That’s when he regained his vision. Though it wasn’t the ability to see as he was used to as a human. He could freely move his... conscious... throughout the entire room, as small as it was. He estimated it to be a mere 1m in length, 1m in width and 1m in height. He turned his sight to himself, and watched his new body, a white crystal with a faint blue glow to it. As more mana gathered inside of his crystal form, the blue glow started to become brighter.
His mana began to fill the room completely, seeping into the walls. When his mana reached 95 points, a slight craving started to nag at him. He wanted to expand. A larger room. Multiple rooms. Most of all, he wanted to be connected to the surface.
This sudden craving took him off-guard. Why did he feel this way? Why did it feel so important? Another weird thing was that he knew where to expand to and how to do this. He could use his mana, move it into the wall and then break it down. Yet his former knowledge stopped him. If he were a dungeon, that meant there would be adventurers. If said adventurers were to find him, they might destroy him. He loathed the idea of living as a dungeon core, yet he didn’t want to die again either. He mentally took a deep breath and calmed himself down. ‘Right’, he thought to himself, ‘this world is weird. There’s magic, dungeons, some sort of gaming system. Perhaps there’s a way out of this existence.’ He resolved himself, and, figuring he needed more information, he let the craving take over. Without having to put his mind to it, the mana that had seeped into the room started to break down the walls, creating a slightly larger room. He could feel a slight drain on his mana, and went to look at his status screen. His mana points were stuck at 97. Sometimes, the points would go down by 1 and then go up by 1 again. It seemed that the process of expanding the room took roughly as much mana as his passive mana gathering skill created for him.
[New Passive Skill Unlocked: Expansion]
[Expansion: You can let your mana break down walls to expand your domain]
Knowledge again flooded into his brain, this time about the ‘Expansion’ skill. Apparently, he could gain skills by doing certain actions, which would then make those easier. As the room grew larger, James noticed that it took longer and longer to expand, as there was more to break down. Once the room reached 2 by 2 by 2 meters, he decided to dig a small, very small tunnel in the general direction of the surface. Right ahead of his dungeon core.
His mana immediately set to work and started digging a tunnel. He could feel how his dungeon grew bigger, as his mana seemed to seep into the parts he dug out. His mana gathering increased somewhat, but just enough so that it could influence the new regions he conquered.
Slowly, the hallway became longer and he was quite proud of his work, though he didn’t really do anything, and only a mere 30cm had been dug out. He moved his conscious forth into the hallway and stared at the progress.
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And waited...
And waited some more...
And some more...
He groaned in frustration. ‘My god, this is boring!’, he thought, and wanted nothing more to either speed it up or find something to do. Anything other than watching a wall slowly crumble away. As much fun as it was at first, looking at a wall really, really isn’t all that spectacular. Really, it felt like he was watching another one of the idle games he was playing, where you simply wait until the next action is available to you. He mentally shook his head. No, he wouldn’t settle to that, there had to be a way to improve things.
Focusing his mind, he started to concentrate on how the mana in the wall slowly broke it down. Every bit of dirt and rock was slowly dissolved by the mana, and simply seemed to vanish. Making use of his passive Expansion skill, he followed the process step by step. First, mana would flow into the rock and dirt, becoming part of it, and in turn, making it part of his dungeon. Now that he focused on it, he could actually feel it become part of his domain slowly, and how the mana was actually used up to completely break down the piece of dirt or rock, and evaporate it into nothingness.
‘Let the mana flow into it, let it become part of it, and then break the piece down. Got it’, he repeated to himself, before trying it out. He put his mind to the task, and felt for the mana, willing it into the dirt. Surprisingly, nothing happened. Nothing at all. He couldn’t even let his mana flow a tiny millimeter. He cursed at himself, several times, before realizing a stupid mistake he made. Just like a program, he had to follow a path, an algorithm, step by step. Before breaking down the wall and expanding his dungeon, he had to learn how to actually manipulate mana.
He again gathered himself, and this time watched how the mana flowed from one place to the other. How it circulated within his crystal core. How it moved within the walls of his dungeon. Drawing from the knowledge he gained through the mana manipulation skill, he started looking at more detail to the flowing mana and felt how it was a part of him. Through his passive mana manipulation skill, he was able to move it subconsciously, as if you were breathing, or had to relief yourself.
He focused on the tiniest particle of mana inside of his core, and slowly tried to move it as if it were part of him. He could feel the mana particle respond to him, feel how it trembled and gradually started to move. Sweat would have dripped off his crystal body if that had been possible from how James concentrated. The little particle of mana started to move from one side to the other, at a very slow pace. As he learned from the process, he started to understand the mana manipulation skill more, and what it offered him.
For what seemed like hours, he moved the mana particle back and forth, making it gradually move faster and more smoothly. He added more and more mana particles as he practiced, and started mimicking what his passive skill did, moving the controlled flow of mana out of his crystal body and into the room, flowing it around.
He was pleasantly surprised as another box popped up in front of him, seemingly hovering in front of his vision.
[New Active Skill Unlocked: Mana Manipulation]
[Mana Manipulation: Control your own magic energy, move it around with just a thought.]
Once he gained the skill, knowledge flowed into his mind again, giving him some new insights at how to actually control it, the stream of mana flowing somewhat more smoothly and swiftly than before.
Alright, now for the expanding, he thought, as he directed the magic energy into the wall. As it came into contact with the solid dirt and rock, it became a bit harder to move the magic energy forth, but not impossibly so. Steadily, the magic energy seeped into the wall and he could feel his territory increasing again and felt even more directly that it became a part of him.
The next part, however, took quite some time. The mana had gone into the wall, had seeped into a piece of dirt, yet he couldn’t let the mana break it down. He didn’t give up, however, and over the next few hours, he studied how the other particles naturally broke down the wall to form the hallway. Trying again and again, he was met by failure, until finally, a very tiny piece of dirt started to crumble and vanished. He could feel his territory grow just a speck larger. Repeating the procedure, he started to direct the magic energy more, and part of the wall, embedded with his mana, started to slowly crumble, disappearing.
Another satisfying box appeared in front of him as a result of his hard mental labor.
[New Active Skill Unlocked: Expansion]
[Expansion: Actively direct your mana to grow your dungeon larger and break apart solid structures.]
Just like before, knowledge once again became available to him, his mind soaking it up. He started to direct more and more mana, helping his passive skill with his active skill to create a hallway to the surface. He could feel himself come closer and closer to the surface.
As he continued the mental task, his head started to throb again. As he looked back to his crystal body, he could see that it had lost a lot of its blue shimmer. Bringing up his status screen, he noticed that a lot of his magic points had dwindled down. He was actually all the way down to 18 points out of a 100.
He immediately realized his mistake. While his mana gathering skill could compensate for his passive ability to expand his domain, it wouldn’t be able to cope with the mana demand of him actively digging a hallway.
As he tried to focus on how he gathered mana from the world, he wasn’t able to, his throbbing headache stopping him.
He wanted to get rid of this headache. It was annoying, painful and stopped him from progressing. He quickly stopped the passive expansion to let his mana points fill up again.
And now, he was again doing nothing. His thoughts quickly started to wander. Would he ever be able to get out of here? Was it really worth it to try to reach out, to try and gather more information? He gave himself a mental slap, shaking him out of his thoughts, as they would have only led him into a vicious circle.
To keep himself busy, he brought his status screen up again and looked through it.
[Name: James]
[Race: Dungeon]
[Level: 1]
[Attributes:]
[Mana: 22/100]
[Status Effects:]
[Active Skills:]
[Mana Manipulation: level 1]
[Expansion]
[Passive Skills:]
[Mana Gathering: level 1]
[Mana Manipulation: level 1]
[Expansion: level 1]
Eventually, his mana had recovered and his headache had receded, leaving him with a completely fresh mind. Rather than continuing to dig, he used his passive skill to do the expanding and put his mind onto analyzing the Mana gathering skill. He hit a wall, though. He could follow how the particles were drawn into his body, and then distributed around. But they seemed to simply appear. As if they were granted to him by the world.
Deciding to throw caution to the wind and trying something random, he took hold of the particles as they appeared, and dragged them inside of his body at a faster speed than his Mana Gathering skill did. Though limited by the speed and amount of which he could move magic energy around, it was a significant increase. It seemed that the particles continued to appear, and it did speed up the process quite some bit. Soon, his mana capacity was filled, his crystal body shining a bright blue.
[New Active Skill Unlocked: Mana Gathering]
[Mana Gathering: You can draw power from the world and your surroundings.]
Quickly, he set to work, and divided his attention between gathering mana himself and expanding the hallway. He wasn’t able to expand as fast as he was before, without gathering mana himself, but he didn’t bump into any headaches and was able to continue working. For several hours straight, he continued to dig, dig and dig. More and more dirt and rock broke away and vanished, the hallway already being several meters long.
He could barely contain his excitement to reach the surface. Being cooped up in a room in front of a laptop was one thing, but being inside a cave like this, without any shred of light, started to get to him. The unnatural craving to have his dungeon connected to the surface probably didn’t help either.
As he grew closer to the surface, he decided to become somewhat more cautious and started to make the hallway smaller. Gradually, the height and width decreased, only large enough for a small animal, such as a rabbit, to be able to move through. Just as he felt the hole was roughly the right size, he had another small idea and started to make a small turn, moving alongside the surface for a while before heading back straight for the surface. Making it this way, he figured, adventurers wouldn’t be able to peer into the hole and see it opening up to reveal a larger hallway deeper inside.
Finally, he could feel his mana reach the outside world, and the last thin layer of dirt and stone started to crumble away, tiny beams of sunlight moving into the little hole he created.
The moment the opening to the surface was as large as the hole he made, his vision was momentarily blinded, a large message box hovering in front of him.
[Congratulations! You have leveled up, you are now a level 2 Dungeon.]
He stared at the screen for a moment, before he felt a little headache forming. Looking back at his crystalline body, he could see it grew just a little bit larger, and that his mana was starting to gather somewhat faster. Just a moment later he was practically flooded with message boxes, all indicating that he had grown as a dungeon.
[Your mana pool has increased from 100 to 200]
[Passive: Mana Gathering has increased to level 2]
[Passive: Mana Manipulation has increased to level 2]
[Passive: Expansion has increased to level 2]
[You have new active skills: Assimilation, Create, Summon Monster]
He stared with wide eyes at all the message boxes, and, as they disappeared, quickly brought up his status screen.
[Name: James]
[Race: Dungeon]
[Level: 2]
[Attributes:]
[Mana: 121/200]
[Status Effects:]
[Active Skills:]
[Mana Manipulation: level 1]
[Expansion: level 1]
[Mana Gathering: level 1]
[Assimilation]
[Create]
[Summon Monster]
[Passive Skills:]
[Mana Gathering: level 2]
[Mana Manipulation: level 2]
[Expansion: level 2]
‘Hmmm, that’s odd’, he thought, as he looked over the skills. Some of them had levels, whereas others didn’t.
He could quickly grasp the effects of the new levels of his passive skills and his level-up. The mana that seemed to appear from the world was thicker and denser, giving more magic energy. The passive gathering was a lot quicker than before and actually gathering it more quickly than his active skill. As he looked around the room, he could see that the mana was denser in his room and in the walls. The flow of mana was far smoother and quicker and he could tell his knowledge was more in depth. He would have to explore this though, as he wasn’t used to the knowledge simply appearing inside of his mind.
Leaving the passive expansion skill aside, for now, James went to look over each new active skill.
[Assimilation]
[You are able to absorb objects. Absorbing objects will eventually lead to the knowledge of how said objects are made with mana.]
Well, that was quite the short explanation. He figured it probably had something to do with when he broke down the walls.
[Create]
[You are able to create any object as long as you have the required mana and knowledge.]
Oh, that’s pretty neat. So if he assimilated enough objects, he would be able to recreate them. He could probably use this to pretty up his dungeon a bit and give it a nicer look. Perhaps make it a bit more cozy and comfortable to live in. though it does depend on how the system, or whatever it was that governed this, defined objects. Is dirt an object? Is a plant an object? Would he be able to even absorb humans or monsters?
He mentally shrugged and went on to the last skill.
[Summon Monster]
As he was about to read through the message boxes that popped up, he felt a throbbing pain and looked away from the boxes. He brought up his status screen and noticed his mana plunging rapidly. James started panicking and looked around. That’s when he noticed the mana flowing out of his crystal body and gathering next to it. Mana continued to be forcefully pulled out of his body, his mind starting to go numb from his headache. He could just make out a small body forming in the sphere of blue mana.
A small box popped up in front of him
[Companion gained: dungeon fairy]
He looked over at his status screen and noticed he had roughly twenty mana points left, and still going down. His vision started to become darker, and eventually faded as his mana trickled down to 10. Finally, as the sphere of mana started to dissipate to reveal a body, he fell unconscious, his mind receding back into the crystal body to let his mana recover.