[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Role Initialization Commenced
I woke up to this strange message that seemed to encircle the entirety of my awareness. What kind of crap was this?
Role Initialization Commenced?
The fuck was I? Some game?
As if to respond to this thought, another notification swam into the surface. Swam, because it did not appear in front of my eyes or inside my head... I had no eyes, for fuck sake!
I had no fucking head either.
What was I?
What the fuck was happening to me?
Still, the notification had taken central stage, and I had no choice but to focus on it.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Role Initiated
Welcome, player.
You have been reincarnated as a dungeon core.
Your sole responsibility is to protect, grow, and develop the dungeon.
As a dungeon core, if you are captured by adventurers, your existence will be deleted.
I stared at the words as if I was a character inside one of those freaking RPG games. Which, come to think of it, was exactly what the notification meant.
Except I wasn't a character.
I was a frigging dungeon!
Of course I knew dungeons. If I remembered nothing else in my prior existence before becoming this, I knew of things called RPGs. I knew dungeon games... I knew about adventurers taking quest to clear dungeons and build reputation and stats... But that was when I sat in front of a maxed out setup playing video games for twitch streams with 2 viewers.
This however was...
What exactly was this?
And why the fuck would someone make me a dungeon?
Whoever assigned characters had to be a sadist, i mean Why couldn't they make me even an F rank adventurer if it's a good laugh they hoped for?
As if answering this in mockery, another notification swam in.
[SYSTEM STATUS]
Dangeon Rank: F rank
Core Integrity: 10/100
Dungeon Energy: 0
[ALERT]
Your core integrity is beneath the safe zone.
Please upgrade your core protection.
Another alert followed.
[ALERT]
Dungeon Energy is at minimum.
Please farm more energy to be able to develop and protect the dungeon from intruders
I didn't know what to say. That is, even if I could say it, I had no fucking mouth, I had no human body.
My entire existence felt strange, because it was.
Still, fresh panic began to rise within me As I began to internally digest the astounding concept of what the notifications insinuated.
if I was indeed a dungeon and an F rank one, then my core, which was actually me, was unprotected.That wasn't something a dungeon would want Right?
That meant even an F rank adventurer could easily walk in and steal the crystal and I could absolutely do nothing about it.
Adventurers would use me to enhance their stats and level up.
But on the other hand, it would kill me.
I knew too well not to assume that the word deletion was anything fancy. It was a kind of second death. As sure as the first one had been.
Unless you were willing to say I was living through one fucking nightmare, which I was willing to wager my nuts I wasn't.
To be precise, I had no nuts, since I was already a stony dungeon. But you catch my drift....
Now, with this concept thrown in my face, I began to realize that despite the fact that I missed human senses and anatomy, things that would let me see, feel, and move, I wasn't entirely helpless.
For example, I could feel the stony edges of what was supposed to be my body. I could feel the damp air inside, the decaying soil beneath it, some ancient water trapped within its crevices...my crevices.
The crystal... Rather me, well... I was submerged beneath a pool of dark water, masked by dust that had mixed with flood currents.
I saw myself shine and twinkle, although my light hardly passed through the surface of the murky water.
I was safe for now.
But only for now.
If somebody came near here, no matter how low ranked of an adventurer they were, they would most likely check the pool, just to be sure.
And if I knew anything about adventurers and their quests, some of them had magical ways of sensing treasures.
And in every sense and perception, I was one.
So really, just sitting beneath a dirty pool wasn't protection enough.
One thought surfaced inside my awareness.
I needed energy.
Not because of the notifications and alerts, but because now I could feel it, how weak I was, how exposed I was.
And although acceptance hadn't fully come, I realized I was already fighting for a second survival before I had even understood how exactly I had ended up here.
There simply wasn't enough time for that, how I got here wouldnt matter if I got my self destroyed on arrival.
My goal was clear.
Protect myself first.
Contemplate my predicament later.
Once again, as if reading my mind, though I wasn't sure I even had one, another notification surfaced.
[SYSTEM INFORMATION]
There are several ways of farming energy.
Fear multiplication
Every instance of fear earns +2 energy stones
Pain inflicting +5 energy stones
Intruder injury
Minor wounds earn +8 energy stones
Deep wounds +10 energy stones
Intruder deaths
Reward for intruder deaths vary based on the victims rank
F rank is the minimum and earns +20 energy stones
Rewards for sss rank is still uknown.
I gobbled up this info with intense focus.
So all I had to do was scare the shit out of adventurers, harm them, or kill them.
That sounded exactly like RPGs.
But it was also exactly what adventurers did to monsters inside dungeons.
Only now, I was seated on the receiving end of things.
I was the dungeon... Those monsters would be mine.
For a second, the entire idea was scary. But just beneath it, there was a tremor of excitement.
I was going to give them a taste of their own medicine.
A sudden shift in the air alerted me of life nearby.
At the mouth of the mine, there was some kind of commotion.
I extended my awareness to its limits, which reached just the breeze outside the cave.
"You moron! You can't be serious," a feminine voice called. "Not here You fool. Can't you find somewhere better? This place could be a dungeon,"
a louder male voice followed.
"A dungeon? Are you mad? Everyone knows this village has no dungeon. Just some abandoned mine."
"still I don't like it" the female voice persisted
"I can't wait any longer. And if you don't walk in, I might have to take you right there."
"All right, all right," the woman said clearly giving in. "But at least check it first."
A surge of excitement enclosed around me on hearing that.
My first customers.
Please.
Please.
Just enter.
Just take one step inside.
the man gave a frustrated sigh before poking his head in.
Oh, thank heavens.
Now everything, stay still... I commanded the mine, though I was too weak to enforce it.
I didn't want anything confirming the woman's suspicion or triggering fear inside the man. Not yet.
I needed both of them inside.
Suddenly, I felt a hunger that in my entire existence, human or otherwise, I had never encountered.
It was greed. Thirst. Desperation.
Something too primal to fully explain.
Only one thing rang inside my awareness.
I needed energy.
From the sound of things, these two weren't adventurers. The man was just looking for a place to fuck the lady...why they would choose me was beyond me... It was almost insulting, but this was my reality now, I just had to make the best from it.
The man smiled as he returned. "Happy now? There's nothing here. This place is dead as fuck."
"All right," the woman said, as the man suddenly grabbed her arm and pulled her inside. "But make it quick."
"Don't fucking tell me how quick I'll be, woman. I'll get my coins' worth."
Thank the heavens... I sighed... Or the mine equivalent of it.
they are inside me.