20 I am a stone…
I was stunned. My head was a mess and I was thrown into a complete state of disarray. I did not know where I was or how I got there. The truth is that I didn’t remember anything at all… or maybe…
I had a flashback of the moment when my life was turned upside down. I was working just like any other day… until a truck almost killed me. I managed to avoid it, but a bunch of rocks fell over me… That was the last I could remember anyway...
‘Wasn’t I buried by some rocks? Just, what exactly happened? Well… relax Peter… try to calm down a bit… First I need to figure out what's going on here. Let’s see… Where the hell am I?!’
I forced myself to calm down and analyze my surroundings to look for clues. But, as I suspected from the first time I laid eyes on this place, nothing seemed familiar to me. Neither did I have any idea why I was lying here, right in the middle of nowhere.
I was in the middle of a prairie covered in waist high grass and trees at least thirty times taller than me. Far away, I could see the peaks of a high, cloudy mountain range.
‘Which mountains are those?’
I knew the mountains near my city quite well. After all, I had spent five years of my life hiking on them and I was able to recognize them at a glance. However, I had never seen those in my life.
‘Ehm… Ok Peter, remember what I said earlier, calm the hell down!’
Not only was I in a completely unknown place, I could not find any trace of human activity in the vicinity. There were no telephone poles, electrical wirings, paved roads or even a simple dirt path. The height of the grass surrounding me also made me think that nobody was taking care of the place. It did not seem like hikers passed by on a regular basis either, since there was no sign that the grass had recently been stepped on by.
No matter how hard I tried, and I was trying with all my might, I was unable to remain calm. And being lost in a place I had never seen before was not the worst, the worst was that I could not move at all. My body just would not obey my brain. I could not feel any part of it at all.
‘Wait, don’t make a copy-paste of the first day! Of course I know where I am, in exactly the same fucking place where I have firstly awoken! ’
I opened the status to check what had changed with evolution, but everything remained the same… except for a couple of things… I didn’t need to review the section of stats, the first I saw was enough to make me cry.
Status:
Name: Peter Gravel
Kind: Magic stone | Race: Dungeon core
Level: 1 | Experience: 0/300 | Grade: 1
HP: 85/85 | MP: 210/210 | Mana well: 300/400
Classes:
- Apprentice mage: 10 | Experience: MAX
_________________________
‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! And more aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!’
‘Okay, calm down, calm down… How am I going to calm down?! I don’t want to be a damn dungeon core!’
I don’t know if it was thanks to the resistance to dementia or to the fact that in the end I didn’t even have the strength to despair that I managed to calm down.
‘Let’s analyze the situation. My body seems to remain exactly the same. Apart from my race, nothing else has changed. Not stats, not skills, nothing at all. Nor am I trapped inside a disgusting cave where the light does not reach… therefore I am not forced to live in a dungeon… right? I can continue my life as before…’
However, something should have changed with evolution. It could not be that the only change was the level… it was not logical...
‘I think I’m going to regret this… Dungeon control?’
Dungeon:
Name: -
Level: 1 | Upgrade points: 0/20000
Dungeon points: 100
Floor control:
Create entry
Create room
Monster control:
Create monster
_________________________
"I knew it…"
[Acquired Title: Dungeon master (Lvl -).]
‘I even did nothing yet!’
I ended up resigning myself. After all, it was undeniable that it caught my attention. Especially the part of creating monsters. Maybe it was the perfect opportunity to find a partner.
I selected the option “create monster”. A screen opened with a list of monsters that I could create. Surprisingly, most of them were the same ones that I had encountered inside the dungeon.
‘It seems I can only create monsters that I have fought with.’
They were all terribly expensive. With these miserable 100 points I could not create a toe of any of them. However, in the middle of all those expensive monsters I found one that only cost 10 measly points. One that made me quite nostalgic, the blue slime. It was not very clear how long I had been trapped inside that dungeon, but I think it had been about a week. It wasn’t a great amount of time, but it felt like an eternity had passed.
‘Decided! You will be the first monster to create!’
I selected it and a large personalization screen opened in front of me.
‘Seriously? It is as if I am creating a new character for a game… Although there is the default button… But no way, it is my first monster and I’m going to customize it to the end.’
I had 30 points to distribute among its statistics. After thinking about it a bit, I left it like that:
Vitality: 9
Strength: 6
Agility: 7
Intellect: 5
Magic power: 3
I could level it up by spending extra points and also raise its stats using more points… but I decided not to touch it anymore for now.
The next step was the abilities and special abilities available to it. Normal abilities weren’t very flashy, so I put them aside. As for special abilities, I did find some quite interesting.
[Inner space: Allows the monster to store objects inside regardless of mass and size. Capacity increased with level.]
‘This sounds very useful. Let’s see what else there is before taking it…. Snot whip… Snot cannon… Sticky prison…’
Most of the skills I didn't even read. With the name I already knew what they were doing. I kept ignoring one after another until my eyes fell on one in particular…
‘But how outrageous is this?!’
[Perverted slime tentacle: Allows the slime to generate tentacles of mucus above its maximum mass. These tentacles are covered by a viscous liquid capable of…]
‘There is no need to keep reading this aberration any longer…….. I’ll take it!’
I selected it without thinking twice… The next skill that caught my attention was “Mimic”. As you can already guess from the name, it was an ability that allowed the slime to take the form of an object or transform into some other creature… although it cost 35 points and only allowed to store 1 form per level, without the option to replace it… Anyway, there weren't more interesting skills to select from.
In the end, I ended up staying only with the previous three. A total of 60 points: 35 for Mimic, 15 for Inner space, and 10 for the Perverted slime tentacle. Added to the initial 10, it left me with 30 free points. I thought about spending them to level it up, but I saw an option that said “Elite”.
‘What is this elite thing?’
[An elite monster has its starting stats doubled and its growth is doubled as well. Also, unlike a common artificial monster, it is capable of leveling up by himself, but at half of the usual speed.]
‘Did you merge with the dungeon, Helpy? Well, I’ll go for this. I don’t like the idea that my first creation always stays on the same level.’
I selected the elite option and its final stats where:
Vitality: 18
Strength: 12
Agility: 14
Intellect: 10
Magic power: 6
Now, only the last step remained.
[Select the gender of the monster.]
‘Slimes have gender? Whatever, but… are you really asking me this?! Obviously feminine!’
And with this, the configuration of my first monster… No, there was something left… I had not given it a name. Apparently it was not necessary, but I would not even jokingly leave her without one… although I could not think of a decent one...
‘I was never good at thinking names… Well, since I created you after remembering that slime I ran into, I’m going to call you Limy. Yeah, that’s fine… I guess… Anyway, let’s go! Finish!’
