Darkness…

…

They were falling down into the darkness…

…

The darkness was all ‘he?’ could … see, this wasn’t the normal kind of darkness he was used to? It was… indescribable… it was… unknown…

…

he felt scared... alone... yet he tries to push on or move with no effect whatsoever...

...

‘Where am I?’ he tried saying but nothing comes out of his mouth? And there were no sounds…

…

There was nothing, no stars, no shapes, no light… nothing…

…

As he studies his surroundings, he tries to move around yet again, he feels nothing, he cannot move his body? What body? He remembers that he has a body yet here he has none…

…

‘alright then… this seems like a SNAFU? Situation… what can I remember leading up to this point…’ he struggled to even question himself mentally. The answer was quite simply… almost nothing. Nothing at all, not his name, no one he knew, not his home country, nothing about the world at all except for things which are common knowledge or things based around in science or the laws of the universe. It was kind of depressing for him to realize that as he himself only know that he was a he, his knowledge on the work he did but not for which country or company, the language he spoke but not the nation(s) that it is spoken in, the lessons about family, kindness, comradery, etc… BUT NOT WHO TAUGHT HIM!

…

There was some kind of blocker on his memories…

…

He was getting angry at that point…

…

He was getting really pissed at that point…

…

It was also getting exhausting to think… to remember… to stay awake…

…

So… he slept…

…

And he slept…

…

Never… expecting to… wake… up……

…

……

………

Suddenly, he woke up when he felt something change around him and opened his eyes to see a new alien landscape in front of him. Instead of the endless black void with no light, he was now in a perfectly 10x10x10ft cube of perfectly smooth stone made of what seems to be granite? “what in the…” he asked out loud before pausing as he realized he hadn’t normally spoken with a mouth but mentally projected those same words all around him. He realized that while his actual field of vision stayed the same, he is aware of every particle, every molecule in said 10x10x10ft of stone including a floating blue orb with a 1cm radius in the direct center of the room which he has now realized that It is in fact his new body.

‘okay, this is weird’ he thought as he surveyed his surroundings, this left him with about three possibilities he thought: A: he’s probably died somehow and now his soul or whatever is now in that big crystal orb thingy which is now his new body which seems... like the most likely outcome; B: he’s in a coma of some kind and this is all just a weird lucent dream of his which does not seem likely; Finally C: some ASSHOLE stuck him into some kind of virtual reality device and wiped most of his memories which also seem unlikely but still a possibility but for now he went with the most likely option and the one he currently prefers: Death and Reincarnation.

‘hmm… let me start thinking again here, so I died… probably… somewhere either back in my universe or a few seconds to millennia in this universe as I’m pretty sure that’s how these things work... let me try something that may or may not work very quickly…’ he thought about as he turned to say one word in particular “STATUS!” he unnecessarily screamed as a transparent blue screen floated in front of the crystal orb and the place where he is actually looking through confirming his suspicion:

Status:

Name: None

Species: Dungeon Core

Gender: None

Age: 3-minutes old

Stats:

Strength - 10

Perception - 10

Endurance - 10

Dexterity - 10

Intelligence - 29

Wisdom - 19

Charisma - 9

Creativity - 32

Destiny - 11

Mysticism - 12

Karma - 15

Willpower – 47

Traits: None

Skills: None

Abilities: None

Classes: None

Patterns: None

Proficiencies: None

Creatures: None

…

‘what the?... why did I… think of that… this makes option C more plausible…’ he thought as he read through the strange list in front of him… there was only one question in his mind that he wanted to be answered ‘what’s a dungeon core?’ he rhetorically asked himself in his mind and as soon as he asked that a different blue screen appeared to give him the answer.

A dungeon is a living being placed by the gods whose purpose is to take in mana for purification in order to heal the injured world after the last calamity a few millennia ago.

“HOLY SH-” he accidentally screamed out loud and almost cursed before pulling back, he was honestly surprised about getting an answer at all and it seems like some weird being or machine is giving him with such a genderless, emotionless voice that he suspected it to be some kind of machine that grants him answers so he asked again this time mentally projecting his thoughts “what are you?”

…

No answer whatsoever…

‘seems like it doesn’t, can’t or won’t answer all of my questions… I think I should go take a look at my status bar and… ask any questions later’ he thought as he pulled his status back again this time with just a thought ‘status’

Status:

Name: None

Species: Dungeon Core

Gender: None

Age: 4-minutes old

Stats:

Strength - 10

Perception - 10

Endurance - 10

Dexterity - 10

Intelligence - 29

Wisdom - 19

Charisma - 9

Creativity - 32

Destiny - 11

Mysticism - 12

Karma - 15

Willpower - 47

Traits: None

Skills: None

Abilities: None

Classes: None

Patterns: None

Proficiencies: None

Creatures: None

This time as he pulled his status up, he focuses on some of his stats a bit in order to get a feel for what they all do:

Strength: is a measure of how physically strong a being is, affects things such as how much weight a being can lift, the power behind a blow or even athletic abilities like running or swimming. As a dungeon, strength is the measure of how powerful your domain is, the general hardness of your materials used in regular constructions and the speed of digging out space.

Perception: is the measure of a being’s physical awareness of all five physical senses: smell, touch, taste, sight and hearing which help them spot things like a trap or an ambush. As a dungeon, perception affect your abilities to observe things inside your dungeon and the higher the perception, the better your awareness.

Endurance: is the measure of a creature’s general toughness and constitution and affects things such as their general healthiness, their ability to shrug of damage, the speed at which they heal, the lengths they can run, etc…. As a dungeon, this affects how tough your core is to physical attacks whilst also affecting your ability to do tasks at long periods of time.

Dexterity: is the measure of a creature’s general ability of coordination of their body parts, how fast they can react, their ability to multitask, etc…. As a dungeon, this affects the pin point accuracy of your additions, the coordination of your internal mana and the ability for you to multitask.

Intelligence: is the measure of a being’s ability to learn, adapt, overcome and affect things such as learning speed, calculation, mathemathical problems, etc…. As a dungeon this will affect your ability to learn new things, the extent of your memories, etc…

Wisdom: is the ability to know what is the best thing to do at a given moment generally increasing as you age and gain knowledge. As a dungeon… this ability will… it is exactly the same as the above descriptions says

Charisma: is the measure of a being’s ability to communicate, gain insight, social stamina, etc…. As a dungeon, the higher this stat is, the more loyal your creature’s are and their ability to understand your commands.

Creativity: is the ability create, think of fantastical things, imagine, etc…. As a dungeon this will also be exactly the same as the regular description but will allow the dungeon to create more unusual traps, creatures, etc….

Destiny: I the manifestation of a being’s ability to learn whilst is also the measure of their potential and their ability to hold more traditional magic. As a dungeon this will dictate your potential, learning ability, etc….

Mysticism: is one’s own ability of access to many, their spirits and their hidden mystical talents. As a dungeon, this will affect your ability to learn magic, create magical objects and creatures and other such mystical based things.

Karma: is the ability to form connections but is also thought to be the result of one own actions increasing with good deeds and decreasing with the opposite or is the form of currency for spirits… many debate on it’s true meaning. As a dungeon, this affect your ability to connect with anything in general but most importantly your creatures, it also is a bargaining chip for spiritual beings and will affect the actions of your creatures somewhat.

Willpower: is the willingness to do action, the determination to continue on, the motivation to never give up, etc…. As a dungeon, this affect both your spiritual and mental health and also affect both yours and your creature’s motivation to do anything.

…

‘okay, so I know what the stats do no at least, why is my first for stats straight tens while my others are erratically spaced… probably because the first four are physical stats based on my current body whilst the nest eight are mental or spiritual stats which follows my soul to… whatever a dungeon core is…’ he thought before feeling something off, he checked his stats again before finding out that both his intelligence and wisdom has increased by 1 point each.

‘oh neat, seems like I can increase my stats by just doing stuff with them… let’s check some other stuff first before I go into that and also, what is mana?’ he mentally asking.

Mana is the invisible force that governs most of the known universe, it is everywhere yet is nowhere at the same time, it is used in mystical arts around the world. Millennials ago, the world’s mana was corrupted by a cataclysmic event resulting in the extinction of many living beings alongside the beings who caused it which are still currently unknown.

‘so I can do magic and stuff if I can get high enough mysticism… also seems like some apocalyptic event occurred thousands of years ago as well… let’s not dwell on that and let me ask about why I have no skills, abilities or traits?’

This is because anything you can do is already instinctual and cannot be improved any further. For example, a bipedal creature will not get the skill for walking since they already walk while you will not get the skill for materializing stone from mana or creating traps or creatures from thin air.

‘interesting… and what’s the difference between the three?’ he asked

Traits are passive and are active at all times or can be activated at any time depending on the user’s mood; Skills are active and need to be activated; Abilities are passive but only during certain situations.

‘alright then, what are the other four then? And what do they do?’

Patterns are for creatures you are able to create using your power, creatures show what noticeable/rare/unusual/irregular/strong/…/special creatures that you may have. Proficiencies measure the amount of skill you possess in any given way ranging from Novice to Amateur to Trained to Proficient to Journeyman to Veteran to Expert to Master and eventually… Legend. Classes are special occupations that summarize what a person can do or their way in life, only creatures in species considered as Sapient can wield classes which provides bonuses in a given profession.

‘that’s a lot of information…’ he thought before asking ‘hey, what is it exactly that I do?’

As a dungeon core you build a dungeon starting from a first floor before moving on to the next floor.

‘okay but how?’

In order to build a dungeon, you must use your abilities that you were gifted to.

‘…but how?’

You are a dungeon core… you instinctively know how to use your abilities.

…

‘*sigh*, guess I’ll have to experiment to get the results I want, I wonder what I can do…’

He decided that the first thing he should do is to try to create something as he suspect that is one thing he could do and after a few ‘minutes’ (*cough* an hour *cough*) of trying and pestering the… thingy, he managed to create a 1cm cube of granite. The answer was to just… imagine it, imagine an invisible energy swirling around the room get manipulated into a perfect 1cm cube of pure granite…

‘huh… that was surprisingly simple once I know how to do it… still makes no sense though… also got another point of INT for that… I feel like I’m being mocked… either way I think I should practice a bit before doing more complicated things’

He experimented with many different things after that from building many more cubes to cubes from different types of stone though only basic types to trying to do many different things at once which raised his DEX by a point and by experimenting for a long time doing things without resting also gain a point of END which seems to help a bit along with the other points.

Finally, after an hour of self-experiments, he decides to try digging in a direction but finds that after an inch that digging became exponentially harder to do so he asks out loud “why is it so hard to remove matter whilst I can just simply create things from thin air?” in which a reply came.

It is because you did not expand your influence which will claim territory for your domain in which you have free will to reign in instead of slogging it out at a slow rate.

‘ok, ok some useful information that isn’t brief this time… let me try pushing the invisible mana I have…’

As he does so, he felt like his body just grew an extra limb as he pushed on his mana to go through the stone where he was pushing and he then starts pushing mana everywhere but soon realizes that a lot of it is wasted and most of the claimed areas starts to be unclaimed unless he probably does it which he managed to do after many more minutes not before feeling a bit mentally exhausted but he did gain a point in END, STR, WILL and surprisingly MYS from all of that which he suspected comes from influencing mana of any kind.

‘it feels like my stats are improving rapidly… why is that?’

It is because you are still an infant dungeon in the process of still developing a first floor

‘okay, why does that matter?’

Younger creatures gain experience easier depending on when they start learning, as a dungeon you fully mature once you reach 5 floors and get your first major boss.

‘nice, another lore dump that isn’t short and gave me other information as well… what are bosses?’ he mentally asked another question.

Bosses are stronger creatures in your dungeon, they are usually situated at the end of a floor preventing those too weak to advance, you get one boss per floor, one major boss every five floors, one raid boss every twenty floors and this also does not include the roaming bosses or mini bosses.

…

“okay… so I build a gauntlet… of dangerous creatures… with rewards… with a boss at the end of each floor… this sounds like a video game? ... did i just remember that? Never mind, guess this is my life now” he accidentally said out loud before deciding ‘let’s go back to digging, I don’t know who I was in my previous life but since I reincarnated, I might as well make the most of it and have some fun and if I never actually died then I might get some good memories from this joint or at least a weird dream to share with others’ mentally thinking to himself before getting back to digging which actually increased his WIS by one again.

However, when he started digging in a direction he somehow knew was west… he suddenly created an opening which rushed air in and trapped mana out… very little mana considering his size and that he used a lot of it already but after a moment of shock he regained his bearings and realized that he broke into a cave of some kind looking from the edge of his territory.

“what the fuck? I spread my influence out, shouldn’t I see stuff like this?” he remarked loudly whilst sending a question.

Spreading influence around does not mean you would get easy reconnaissance on anything you might come across until your perception increased in level down the line.

Speaking of, his perception just increased by one as well but he ignored that before berating “why didn’t you tell me that?”

Simple, you did not ask, also it is instinctual that dungeon chose and create a starting creature before expanding via digging.

“ugh…” he sighed loudly before getting back to thinking ‘I guess I really should’ve thought of that… it’s my bad then, no point in blaming things on others, that won’t get you far in life if I remember a quote from one of my… friend… correctly…’ “HOLY SHIT, I REMEMBER SOMETHING” he then proceeds to exclaimed happily and loudly.

It was exciting for him whom remembered absolutely nothing but the most basic of things in his previous life yet knowing that it was still there just out of reach, out of sight, inaccessible to himself so the thought of having memories related to an advice from a friend significantly boosted his morale to the point of celebrating as someone who probably never dealt with the frustration of memory loss before this point.

As he was cheering about remembering something about his past life, something further along the cave noticed something, it was an extremely weak mana pulse to them but still… it could mean a lot of things and wild the phrase ‘curiosity killed the Felianade’ does exist, or in this case the phrase ‘curiosity causes problems for the tatzelwurm’, they really want to see what’s up with it since it’s seems to be better than catching a flying kanid or fight that thing in the other room or watching the storm pass or try their luck eating a weird mushroom whether glowing green or blue or not.

The glowing crystal orb and this new creature will not realize this but this will be a moment which will end… good? Bad? Eh… who knows….

Also he gained another WIS for knowing not to blame others for one’s own mistake and one point of INT and DES for remembering something from his past which was great for him... hopefully.

Meanwhile…

A small little grass serpent was also captivated by the slight shockwave of mana… eh it fell asleep again, can’t be bothered right now…