Logan opened his eyes to a stone cavern washed in pale pink light.

The sight took a second to register.

What?

He scrambled to his feet.

Where am I?

He spun in a circle, adrenaline erasing his fatigue in an instant, faster than if he’d been woken with a bucket of cold water.

Something felt wrong. He felt too high up, the ground too far down, and his limbs felt, somehow, disproportionate. Foreign. Like this wasn’t his body. But the thought took second-place importance to the location he’d woken in.

Am I … underground? The room was clearly a cavern. Stalactites, stalagmites, stone walls, and an arched roof. It would even be called nondescript, if not for what lay at the center.

A pedestal sprouted from the ground, nestling in its stone-claw grip a pink glass orb, the source of the illumination coating the walls. In the object’s depths swirled ribbons of darker red, drifting and snapping lazily, like slow-motion banners. 

What the hell is going on? 

Logan stood frozen to the spot, then he took a second slow survey of the room, tense despite that he didn’t seem to be in danger. There didn’t even seem a way to leave, or a way to enter. How did I get here? He meant that in a few senses of the question. Both the literal—the practical—of him not seeing any apparent entrances, but also because, last Logan remembered, he’d gone to bed in his own room, not underground, in a cavern hosting a crystalline pink orb.

Is it pulsing? The illumination seemed to be coming in waves. It hadn’t been doing that when he’d woken. And it was picking up pace. Shit, is it building to something? It definitely had the feeling of ‘building up’.

[ Character integration complete. ]

[ 

Logan Tonekirk
Lv. 1 Incubus / Demon
====
Stats
====
STR: 6
INT: 4
AGI: 4
MAG: 3
====
Skills
====
[Interface: Core], [Inspect]

[ 

Logan startled, swiping his hand in front of his face. The words were overlaid across his vision, and had appeared suddenly, without warning. Understanding came quickly—he stopped batting at the overlay, seeing that it was following wherever his head turned. It had been an instinctive reaction.

He stopped and read the words.

It did little to help his confusion.

Go away, he thought, and surprisingly, the text did.

Level? Stats and skills? Incubus, demon?

Was he hallucinating? That would be the reasonable assumption. But his abrupt awakening, the dousing of adrenaline into his veins, dispelled the thought. This was too real to be a dream. Though he did pinch himself to be sure; it stung, and nothing changed.

The action did, however, mean he looked down at his arm, and hand.

Even with the lack of lighting, and the pink illumination tinting his skin, he could tell the body wasn’t his. His skin was a dark, vibrant red, and his fingernails sharpened to black points. He looked down at his legs and torso. Now that his attention had been drawn away from the pink orb, the extent of the changes had made themselves apparent. 

How tall am I? He’d put on at least a foot, maybe more. Enough for it to be apparent in an instant; the ground was further down than it should be. And his limbs were disproportionate, too; his shoulders wider, his arms and legs longer, and, running a hand underneath the plain white shirt he’d woken in, against a flat, bumpy stomach, he found that his body fat had been cleanly erased, with muscle replacing it.

He wished there was a mirror, because he wanted to see what his face looked like. He took the second best option. His fingers traced his nose, mouth, ears—pointier than they should be—and up to his hair, through thick, short locks. His hand bumped into something, and, stomach sinking, his fingers traced up a smooth, curled protrusion.

Horns. I have horns. 

What had he expected? ‘Demon’ didn’t leave much up to interpretation. And the red skin with sharp black fingernails, either.

Okay. Okay. Calm down. Let’s think this over. 

Panicking helped nobody, and him least of all. So I’ve woken up underground, in a cavern with no entrances or exits, and I’ve been transformed into a demonic creature. Not that big of a deal. Whatever. Tuesdays, right?

Figure out what’s going on.

He suspended his disbelief, the part of his brain that said, wait, you aren’t taking this seriously, are you? 

He had two skills. [Inspect] and [Interface: Core]. How did he use them?

Use [Inspect], he thought, focusing on the glass orb—the only object of interest in the room.

[ A dungeon core. ]

A dungeon core. Right. Obviously.

Which left him only one other action to take. He wasn’t swimming in options.

He hesitantly approached the pedestal. The pulsing had died down after his status had appeared, but it still amplified and dimmed in a consistent rhythm.

Closer up, the slow-motion snapping of ribbons was even more entrancing. Mesmerizing, he thought. He raised his hand, then froze before his finger made contact. Is that a smart idea?

Well. Like he said, not swimming in options. He was trapped down here, with no one and nothing besides the orb.

He traced a finger across the smooth surface, and nothing happened. That’s … good, I guess? 

He used [Interface: Core], channeling his attention on the orb in front of him.

[

Core of Eros
Mana: 3/400
Tier: 0

[

Nothing else.

That was underwhelming.

He stepped back.

Turned in a circle. 

What now?

An empty cavern answered him.

Guess I’ll need to figure it out. Mana, and tier. What did that mean? What happened when ‘mana’ reached 400, the implied maximum? Where had the 3 come from? Did it gather passively?

He checked.

[

Core of Eros
Mana: 4/400
Tier: 0

[

It did. Just standing around meant the core was gathering mana. 

But that didn’t mean anything, still. Would it advance a tier when it gained full mana? There was no way for him to know. And at this pace, it would be, Logan didn’t know, an hour, until it filled up. Longer, shorter, who knew—but thereabout. A while.

Logan circled around the cavern, confirming for certain there were no entrances or exits. Smooth stone, the whole way through. He walked back and checked on the core.

[

Core of Eros
Mana: 6/400
Tier: 0

[

He sat down and put his face in his hands. Okay, Logan. Let’s reason this out. First, he was in a world not far dissimilar from a video game—he’d noticed that as soon as the overlay had appeared, of course, but had avoided thinking too closely about it. But now, having no way forward or out, he needed to. 

So. A dungeon core. How would a dungeon core gain mana? 

Fighting adventurers, maybe killing them, if Logan went by video game logic. He wrinkled his nose; he wouldn’t be letting this thing kill anyone, if that turned out to be true. Worst case scenario, he’d let it fight, and only if he needed to.

How else would it gain mana? Was there a way to make it gather faster, passively? Logan thought about it, then guessed, maybe the larger the dungeon is, the more passive mana it produces? But that thought wasn’t helpful, because how could he possibly ‘expand’ the dungeon? He hardly had an excavator with him, or sticks of dynamite.

He paused. Then again, I’m in a fantasy world. Who knew? Maybe he had super strength. Seeing how the alternative was sitting around, might as well try the idea out.

He stood and walked to the cavern wall, then scraped the stone with his finger nails.

His eyes widened. The tough material dislodged with ease, his nails scraping loudly in the silent room. He used his thumb to flick the rocks that had embedded beneath his fingernails, then looked back up at the gouge-marks. 

He tried again, but this time, with his fingers instead of nails. They sunk into the wall like it was soft putty, and Logan scooped out an entire handful of stone. 

Woah, he thought. 

Was it super strength, or something he could do because he was—presumably—related to this core? He could [Interface] with it; they were intertwined, his gut told him.

He looked at the clump of rock in his hand, then had another idea.

He walked over and pressed the stone into the dungeon core. It sank into the glass, dissolving, and soon his hand was empty. It eats material. It had been another strange idea—one that had come mostly by instinct.

[

Core of Eros
Mana: 14/400
Tier: 0

[

It had gained mana from the rock.

Logan guessed he’d discovered his first short-term goal.