Selas eyes slowly opened, finding herself still directly next to the gem she knew now was a dungeon core, and also her new home. A trace of happiness fluttered across her mind, startling her, as this was not her own. It was an alien feeling, having an emotion that is decidedly not your own, and it took her but a second to realize the source, that small gem directly in front of her.

“Hello?” She both said aloud and thought.

Again, a quick flash of concept, confusion this time, before a voice sounded “Hello?”

Unsure of whether the being was answering her, or copying her, she spoke once more.

“How are you?”

This time, however, it was unmistakably a response, though not quite what she expected.

Beginning with a concept of almost childlike glee, she found herself smiling at the strength and purity of the emotion, and then the voice sounded again. “I am… Aby?”

Aby? What did that mean? Was it the name of the core, or was it something else. Even the words seemed unpracticed and foreign to the being, coming across as someone just learning sentences, putting words to feelings.

“Your name is Aby,” came the uncertain question.

“Aby, I make it my name; Sela, you make it your name.”

Along with this statement came that infectious joy, and a large burst of pride.

“Aby… Good name,” she said with a smile, to be met with the core, with Aby and its raw emotions once more.

“Yes.”

After that she felt the attention of Aby wane some, how she knew this was beyond her, and so she turned her attention to herself and her new changes. Inspecting her hair, her tail, and her fins, she was shocked by the changes, never having seen a Nereid or even an Oceanid with such rich colors. Then she began to ponder over her name, her true name. “Sela, of the Abyssal Reef,” she murmured, only to feel something strange, a feeling of recognition, of acknowledgement, and pride, that seemed to stem from the very waters around her, and the walls around that, like the world itself approved of the name. Which, in a way, it did.

Next, she inspected the memories she seemed to have gotten during her change, memories standard to every dungeon fae. Once that thought flitted through her mind, it was like all that knowledge was dumped onto her at once, and her mind reeled for it. Aby even noticed, its attention whipping back to Sela just as fast. A feeling of concern was relayed, another strange feeling, as to Sela it felt much more like Aby was concerned over property than partnership. After a moment however, she collected her thoughts and Abys attention waned once more, turning back to the little project it was working on, which was apparently, trying to spawn a Kobold, and answering the question forced onto Sela: What’s your starting race? Unfortunately, this brought about a much larger question: Why?

So, turning back to the little gem, Sela put on her best mentoring face, and asked.

“Why did you choose kobolds as your starter?”

Only to be immediately met with confusion and pride.

“Earned title, random, title is good?”

“So you randomly selected and wound up with kobolds…” She muttered, a little upset. While her newfound knowledge of many things dungeon said kobolds were a good choice due to the dragons’ blood running through them, they were quite a bit worse, considering this dungeon was, in fact, underwater. Somewhere that kobolds, and really any starting race would struggle with on account of “lungs”.

“Aby, why do you keep spawning kobolds, they will keep drowning as long as they’re underwater.”

“Drown?”

And there was the crux of the issue, something Sela would need to include in the talk she was preparing to have with Aby anyways.

~~~~~~~~

Aby was confused, something that it had experienced before, yes, but not like this. Aby had just started to really feel smart, and then Sela had started talking. She had talked a lot, teaching new things that it couldn’t eat or read Sela to learn, and this confused it. Aby had learned a lot, yes, but why couldn’t it eat to learn, or read Sela. For example, Aby learned that kobolds can’t survive without air, but Aby had only encountered air before it opened to the world, and there was so much less mana; that was what its food was, mana; in the air than the water that Aby couldn’t puzzle together just why they needed it. Sela had told it that there was less mana in water most of the time, and that Aby was in something called a mana reef, a place renowned for the coral that produced seemingly endless amounts of mana.

When Aby told Sela about it having “perpetual mana” Sela also got confused. She kept saying that the piece of aquamarine shouldn’t have more than a thousand mana, and that it should have cracked into pieces as soon as it touched the mana charged water, and not gotten access to a renewable source of limitless energy by making some feedback loop. When Aby asked if this was good, all Sela could say was that she wasn’t sure, and to try not to use too much or it could explode. Next, they talked about how it could make another floor and make the first floor have some air on it, when they ran into the next roadblock.

Aby swiftly got to work digging another floor, the end of its cave being brought downwards and then taking a sharp turn perpendicularly to the downward shaft. However, when it tried to lower the water level, the pressure from the water above started pushing down the cave, threatening to collapse. The cause, as Sela put it, clay and sand make for very poor structure no matter how compacted Aby made it. Unfortunately, Aby had no access to anything better, until Sela asked to know if Aby had any other coral it could spawn other than fan coral. When Aby mentioned the brain coral, Sela had it grow them along the entirety of the walls and ceiling, then lower the water to kill it.

Thankfully, once this was accomplished, Aby now had a new material called limestone, one much sturdier and able to bear the weight of the water above the cave once the water level was lowered. This was accomplished by making the entrance from the surface a shaft that went straight down for about four meters, with an opening at the bottom meter, then the cave itself rise a meter or two above that. This allowed for a rather straight cave system with water up to a meter high throughout, with another downward shaft at the other end which led to a new floor. The second floor had a lower ceiling, less air, and deeper water, leading to Abys current last floor, one completely submerged. All three floors were made of limestone, and had coral growing on any areas submerged.

While Aby was growing its cave system, it had spawned a total of three kobolds, two females and a male, each standing at one meter and thirty centimeters. With no weapons to speak of save for their clawed hands, and struggling to stay above water at times, these kobolds were thoroughly out of their element. However, they adapted quick, and even managed to slay two invaders into Abys domain.

You can now spawn “Common Reef Seahorse”

You can now spawn “Common Reef Moray”

Unfortunately, they were too slow to catch one fish, something Sela called a “snapper” but Aby had no way of knowing if this was the proper name. It also learned that when its caves were invaded, it could change its floors some, though the closer the floor was to the invaded floor, the harder and slower these changes were. Sela also said they take more mana, but Aby could neither confirm nor deny this. After its first expansion, the first three floors were now populated with a handful of those “Common Reef Seahorses”, and the third floor now has a pair of reef morays. The kobolds have also taken to something Aby now knows as sparring, in a bid to both acclimate to the watery environment, and also to establish dominance.

Interestingly, while dead bodies and any gore produced by them is decomposed into mana, if the creature is still alive the blood and anything else produced remains as well. Aby learned this after watching one of the kobolds managing to inflict a rather deep wound onto another, the blood clouding the waters around their makeshift ring, and startling one seahorse who was rudely interrupted as it ate, though it scurried away before it got caught in the crossfire.

Overall, Aby was satisfied for the moment, regardless of the strange new way of learning by being told, it now felt much safer, and now had a desire to experiment, as Sela called it, on some new critters.