There are many mysteries in this world. From the occasional appearances of new continents to the environments that could have only come from imagination. But there is a species of beings that are continuously puzzling and adapting, and they are dungeon cores.

Dungeon cores are beings that are one of the things that are consistent throughout the continents. No one knows how they are created or when, but they are either passive or instantly deadly and have a great variety of environments, creatures, monsters, plants, materials, etcetera. It depends on the dungeon. But one thing that is common to them is that they have a core, they continuously grow (unless destroyed and or enslaved), and they are stationary. There are few exceptions to these rules, one of which is an ever-moving dungeon located within the many oceans and seas.

It has yet to be discovered how this dungeon came to be. Some of the leading theories of this age are that its core was stolen but then dropped on the ice or that it was part of some ice sheet on a continent that broke off and fell into the ocean. But no one really knows the truth as it is the most evasive of the known dungeons. It has been seen throughout many waterways, though no one has been able to track it so far. And it contains the surprising aspects that most unique dungeons have.

~~~ An excerpt from a students essay on dungeons and the outliers

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On the easternmost part of an unnamed continent lay a cold, desolate place where one could only spot life if they looked hard. This place, an ice sheet spanning around 150 square kilometres, was located at the continent's coldest, most eastern point. While few animals, plants, and monsters make their home on and within the ice. But something more important lived within the ice sheet. Well, not that it was not alive per say, but more like it was hibernating.

The ice sheet, which once spanned close to 300 square kilometres, had lost half of its land mass through the warming of the continent and chunks of ice falling into the ocean. As pieces of the ice sheet shrunk and broke off, the thing that hibernated within the ice became closer and closer to being exposed to the world.

The ice at the very edge of the sheet facing the ocean began to creak and moan, and before long, the sharp sound of cracking pierced the silent air. Very quickly, large chunks of ice started to separate and fall off the sheet into the ocean with big bangs.

While this was not normally something to take notice of, as this happened with almost every continent that had ice sheets, one of those chunks of ice held the important, hibernating thing.

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As all of the ice fell into the ocean and started floating away with the current, a being began to wake within one of the smaller-sized chunks of ice that survived the fall.

The piece of ice that survived the drop turned into a floating iceberg, and within that iceberg was what appeared to be a small stone. This small stone was about one centimetre by one centimetre and had a combination of different hues of violet, green, and blue covering the stone. But the small stone was not a small stone, and as the iceberg settled into the rhythm of the currents with the armada of other icebergs, mana, the colour of light gold started to swirl within and around the stone.

As the golden mana started swirling around the stone, as it swirled and swirled, the being within the stone began awakening. As the being awakened and the mana was swirling, the image of a transparent small human child started to come into existence, curled up around the stone.

As time went on and the iceberg floated along, the child's image became more solid. The child, who once looked like a transparent ghost, now looked like a living being, a child, well more like one under an eternal sleeping curse.

When the child looked like a real human child and the mana swirling was the strongest it had been since it started, its eyelids started to flutter.

Without any indication, the child suddenly opened its eyes and took their first breath.

With that, what once had the appearance of a stone with a child was curled around it became an awakened dungeon core.

Though not as young as a baby, the young child stayed curled up around the stone for ages.

Though the stone was surrounded entirely by the ice, it did not bother the young child. It was like the child was the spirit and the stone. But that was dungeon cores for you. The stone itself, well, not really a stone, was more of a gem that is filled with mana that is the connection that physically connects the world with the spirit of the dungeon core. This spirit, the child, was the intelligence behind its dungeon; it is the one that makes the decisions. The connection between the gem and the child is represented by the child's eyes, like someone carved eye shapes of the same gem and placed them into their eye sockets. It is one of the things that completely separates a human from this child. There are no irises, no corneas, and no pupils. Just eyes that look like they were carved from the gem that connect them to the world.

The child remained curled around the gem, breathing and blinking but not moving, but it still did something. It took control of the mana strings present at its birth and started pushing them away from it and its gem.

As the mana strings creeped out, slowly but surely, they started to cover and penetrate every inch of the iceberg.

Once the strings started flowing, circling, and continuing to swirl around the iceberg, even without it having to push and force it to, the child began to slowly move its limbs. It was like someone who was in a coma or sleeping curse trying to start moving once they had awakened.

The child kept on twitching their limbs for a couple of minutes before they were able to start moving them. Slowly but surely, the child was able to shakily maneuver their arms to push themselves into a sitting position.

Once the child was sitting up, they started to turn their head to look around at the space. As they stared at the place they were born, where it was awakened, it started to move their face muscles in a way they had never done before.

They started to smile at this area, and with this awakening came their first thought.

My home.