Like a wolf stalking its prey, the mangy-furred creature stayed low as it hugged the moss-covered cobblestone wall, padded paws carrying it across the muddy, decrepit floor. No motion was wasted, every step flawlessly executed in a perfect example of agility as it closed the distance towards its unsuspecting prey.

There was no chance for it. The moment the hunter’s eyes had laid upon its next meal, fate had realigned to ensure this outcome. The beast lunged, irises rolling back as its yellowed fangs sank into the pliant flesh of its next meal. Its jaws locked, red flowing down its chin as it savored this kill.

“GOOOOOOOAL,” was what I would have shouted, if I had still possessed vocal cords, “Another point for red!”

For the moment, I withdrew my mind inwards, leaving the patchy-furred rat hiding against the wall to its business as its tiny hands clutched a dripping, crimson berry, nibbling furiously on its juicy insides. I had a scoreboard to keep.

Right, right… where did I put that? Ah, right. Under Experiments/RatBerryPreferences. Of course.

Flitting through the hallucinatory windows dancing around in my head, I navigated to a small memo I’d started previously. Its contents were simple:

RED: LIME-GREEN: IIIIIIIII II

I quickly added another tick to ‘red’ before stowing the file away again, satisfied with a hard day’s work completed.

With my official duties out of the way, I glanced back at the no-doubt parasite-ridden rodent, twitching violently in between chomps. It was hypnotic, in a way. Entrancing. The sheer depth of mindless want it displayed… it almost reminded me of the time I’d found someone shooting up behind the dumpster at my old job—

My thoughts went still for a moment. Thinking of how things had been before I’d ended up like this was tough to completely avoid, but it still stung deep. I couldn’t even recall how long it had been. Weeks, at least. I hadn't had the forethought to make a tally sheet for "days passed" when I'd first arrived.

As stupid as it sounded, I almost missed that dead-end job. Didn't really miss struggling to make rent each month, though.

I missed having things to do, at least. Because here, there really wasn’t any of that. I couldn’t really move, or act on the world in any way. The most agency that I even had was to choose whether or not to watch the world unfold around me—what little of the world I had access to, anyways. A poorly-tailored hell.

Four walls that looked like they were held together more by ivy and moss than by grout, as well as about eighty percent of a roof; that was what I had to keep me company. Oh, and for about two hours each day, I also got some direct light while the sun was positioned just perfectly overhead. Almost everything else was out of my control.

I was an observer; a brain in a jar.

I didn’t have arms, legs, ears, or really anything else. I had eyes—or some rudimentary approximation of them, enough to see the basics of my surroundings and bewilder myself with the things I’d see.

Whatever this place was, I’d already affectionately come to refer to it as “my room”.

It looked like it was a building once. Maybe a small church or a town hall. We shared something in common though—a past life that would likely never return. Sunken most of the way into the patient, greedy earth, it was only a few good storms away from being reclaimed into the soil and becoming an archaeologist's lucky day in a few hundred years. There was a heavy wooden door, scrapes and gashes tearing through the glossy stain and to the bare, splintered wood beneath. This door was unemployed currently, thanks to the weight of the earth pressing in on the other side. There was a high, vaulted roof help aloft by stone beams.

And there was the last curiosity.

At the very center of the room, standing on a spiraling gnarl of wrought iron almost reminiscent of a caduceus staff sat a tiny, glimmering blue crystal.

I was pretty sure it was me.

There really wasn’t any way for me to be certain of it and the logistics of it made my nonexistent head spin, but I just had a gut feeling about it. My eyes were inlaid into the walls—my body—and the closest thing I had to a brain sat square in the center of the room.

So, since I lacked any way to act, all I had were the little strange moments to keep me sane and grounded. Like, for example, making up games to keep my mind busy. For example, one of them was tracking whether the rats nesting in the crevices beneath the roots puncturing through my walls preferred red berries or green berries. There was a grassy area up above my partially-sunken prison, and on rare occasions where things happened just right up there, a berry from one of the bushes bordering the pit would roll right in.

My furry little friends were always so quick to snatch them up if they were red. Only one of the rats bothered with the green ones, and even he seemed to only eat them begrudgingly. I was fairly sure I’d have never thought twice about rodent dietary habits in my previous life, but it was some of the best entertainment around for me now.

And all that I had to keep myself from going into a downward spiral trapped in my own head.

With the closest thing I could simulate to a bored yawn, I mentally prodded towards my mangy companion while it busied itself licking what little remained of the sugary berry viscera off of the floor. In a blink, an ethereal sheet appeared, blocking a part of my vision.

MOUSE LVL: 0 CATEGORY: Vermin SKILLS: [Scavenge]

So that hadn’t changed, at least.

When this had still been a fresh discovery for me, I had spent countless hours examining everything I could. Living things like the rats came with a fairly long block like that. Non-living things, like bricks, dirt, and the like—those had far simpler descriptions.

STONE WALL DURABILITY: Low

Examining the crystal had actually been how I’d come to recognize it as “me”.

SLIVER OF COALESCED WILL LVL: 0 CATEGORY: ELEMENTAL Nascent heart of a world-born entity, crystallized from soul energy. Exerts control over a localized area.

Maybe it was just a hunch, but that seemed like it fit how my situation felt. Plus, it shared the same pattern as living things like the rats and plants, while simultaneously doing basically nothing. So yeah, probably me.

Aside from my ability to examine things, I had my newfound mental organization. I could sort things neatly—almost actually penning things down into my own long-term memory where they’d stay, for all the good it would do.

I mostly used it to write lyrics to my favorite songs to try and keep them from fading in my head. Oh, and to record score on the various ‘games’ I was running around the place.

A wild rustling of feathers through the air caught my attention for a moment, glancing upwards to spot a swatch of black feathers fluttering into its makeshift nest so far above.

We weren’t really on the best of terms, I didn’t include the crow in many of my games. There was a mutual respect between the two of us to not bother one another.

Early on, it had fluttered down, talons wrapped around the metal stand in the center of the room, beady eyes transfixed on the shimmering blue glow of the crystal. I had watched curiously, wondering just what it had planned.

And then the pecking had started. Intent on pulling the gem from its rest, the bird had spent a number of hours trying just about everything it could to pull the stone from the ‘sword’, its beak rapping at the flawless facets of the gem, an act that had left me feeling like someone had shoved a whisk into my gray matter. Unable to remove the crystal, it kept trying and trying until by some stroke of luck, an arcing zap of energy lanced forth from the stone.

Not even enough to singe the beast’s feathers, but enough to scare it silly. Since then, it wanted nothing to do with the pit below its home. Which I didn’t mind one bit—the experience hadn’t truly hurt in the way I remembered pain being, but it had still left me rattled all the same.

Whatever it was doing up there, it was free to do it entirely without me. At least the rats didn’t pay me any mind.

Days came and went while I dutifully fulfilled my role as a magical security camera.

Even if I was certain that the only person watching the feed was still just me.

Ah, oh well.

The rats—pardon, mice, have been up to their usual business. Climbing up the roots entangled in my walls when night comes to scavenge out on the surface, then sleeping in their burrow during the day. Occasionally they’ll poke out and snoop around some while the sun is up. Typically only when there’s food to be had.

Besides that, it mostly just—

Plink.

A new sound stirred my attention from the rodent-monitoring trance I was in. I glanced around, spotting something moving on the uneven stone floor: a dark gray disk, maybe an inch in diameter, slowly spinning to a stop. At first, I didn’t have any idea what I was looking at, but the crow burst into raucous protests up above a moment later.

Its head was peeking over the edge of its nest, beak open wide and wings spread in a display of aggression, cawing again and again. Huh. Must have dropped it. Given what had happened before, it was probably too afraid to come down to get it again. Maybe the mice would take it? Finally, some actual drama was happening.

Nonplussed, I reached my mind out towards the coin, giving it a quick tap.

PEWTER COIN OWNED: 1 TITHE: 5 MP/d HELP FILE: [[WEALTH]] has been added to your Codex.

Excuse me?

That was completely new. My Codex? That had to mean…

Instinctively, I reached into my mind, like trying to dredge up old memories.

Right in the very root folder of my enhanced memory, I found it. A file that I absolutely hadn’t created. What exactly was this?

[[WEALTH]] Wealth is just as important to a [[CORE]] as it is to any other sentient, civilized creature. Your wealth is a measure of the worth of any excess goods contained within your treasure room. Any wealth in excess of the estimated value of the room itself will not be counted. Each unit of wealth will provide a small increase to your ability to generate [[MANA]]. HELP FILE: [[CORE]] has been added to your Codex. HELP FILE: [[MANA]] has been added to your Codex.

It was a strange sensation, to learn such a vital detail while somehow coming out of the experience even more confused than I had been upon going in. Still, I wasn’t about to simply ignore information, especially after being deprived of it for so long.

[[CORE]] As a core, your objective is to accumulate power by any means necessary to grow your dungeon and enhance its defenses. As your power grows, veteran adventurers will take notice of the wealth you have accumulated and may come to try and take it. If your core is destroyed, you are defeated and will cease to exist. Try to aim for a new high score! [[MANA]] Known to some as the lifeblood of the earth, mana is an ethereal substance that permeates almost everything. This energy is the firmament upon which reality exists, and as such can be manipulated to accomplish wonderful things, provided one possesses the skills and natural inclinations to do so.

The sun was setting by the time I’d stirred myself from my self-induced stupor, reading and rereading the three snippets of text I’d been provided that seemed to outline the very rules of my new existence. There were still so many questions running rampant through my head, but at the very least I understood some of it now. Money generated power. Logically, I could assume I was to use that power to try and generate more wealth… somehow. I couldn’t even imagine the method that I'd do so, considering that I was entirely immobile and lacked the ability to interact with the world in a way I could easily understand.

Hm.

Did I even want to? It had mentioned people coming to destroy my core. Nonexistence didn’t seem particularly fun. Was making myself a big target really worth it?

Turning my attention back towards the pewter coin, I tried to take a closer look at it to see if I could discern anything about it, but the limitations of my form prevented it. I could see from any point on the walls or up from the floor, but looking down onto the coin wasn’t something I could really do. At best, I could see it from a distance at any angle I felt like.

There had to be some way I could manipulate things in the world. By some fluke I’d been given a jump start with the crow dropping that coin, but that had just been sheer luck. On top of that, I wouldn’t be able to bank on lightning striking twice unless I could convince the bird to use me as a piggy bank.

Curious, I examined my core yet again, searching for clues.

SLIVER OF COALESCED WILL LVL: 0 CATEGORY: ELEMENTAL MP: 1 / 25 ( + ) Nascent heart of a world-born entity, crystallized from soul energy. Exerts control over a localized area.

Well, the addition of a counter for mana was promising. I’d just need to figure out how to utilize it, then. The presence of mana would make it pretty clear that I was to use it for magic... as soon as I figured out how to make that happen.

There weren't exactly any other guides popping up unfortunately, so I'd just have to figure it out on my own.

It wasn't as if I was in a big rush, anyways.