So as it turns out, despite having a more pleasant and sunny version of my own voice, [Appraisal] is actually surprisingly broken, but in the worst way possible. Sure, as a skill it cost me nothing at all to use, but it took me maybe all of ten minutes before I realized that it couldn't tell me half the things I wanted to know. Apparently, I had just gotten lucky the first few times I used it. I should have suspected it was going to be useless from the beginning. After all, I'm the one who decided to purchase the skill, and as both I and the weird not-me voice know, I'm an absolute and total idiot.

The hints that [Appraisal] was going to be a trash skill were right there all along, if only I had been paying attention! It couldn't even tell me what level a worm was! A worm! A tiny wriggly creature that's so weak and pathetic even I, an actual stupid rock, could kill it!

It couldn’t explain what points were about! In fact, I didn't even know how many points I wasted purchasing such a dumb skill! For all I knew it cost me a hundred of the things, and thanks to how useless it was I didn't even know how to earn them back! Why hadn't I asked more questions from the inner voice when it asked about purchasing [Appraisal]? Why did I let myself get into these situations?!

Then again, maybe I was being too hard on [Appraisal]… It was still a level one skill, after all, and I was sure after leveling up it could do a better job of explaining things and telling me about the world around me. It had handled explaining MP and HP fairly well, after all, and to be fair most of my frustrations probably had more to do with being bored and confused than with [Appraisal] itself… Though it was impossible to deny the fact that the skill was pretty terrible in its current state.

I had started out using [Appraisal] on things around me in hope I could learn a few things about the world around me while I waited for my MP to slowly refill. Of course, being underground meant that there weren’t many things that I could really choose from in the first place, so as a time-waster it was bound to get pretty boring pretty fast. All I really had to look at was dirt, roots, rocks, more dirt, and of course the occasional bug that wandered by. I thought that might be enough to keep me occupied until I could move or tunnel again, but the things [Appraisal] had to say? Well, how was I supposed to stop from getting frustrated about it?

I used [Appraisal] on some roots, and what did I get from it?

[Tree] Lvl: ???

Status: Healthy

HP: ???/???

MP: ???/???

Absolutely fantastic, right? The only thing I learned was that roots came from trees and that this set happened to be healthy. Sure, I now had a vague impression that a tree was something that grew in the dirt and had roots that sucked up nutrients and water, but that was the only thing that I had gained from using [Appraisal] on it. Were trees just something that were too high level and powerful for me to know anything about or something? So, of course, I used [Appraisal] to find out if that were the case.

Tree. A usually large, woody plant that comes in many varieties, some of which are functionally immortal.

It was a plant. A stupid plant! How could a plant of all things be too powerful for me to learn anything about it?! Disregarding, of course, that the only plant I had known about until a few seconds ago had been grass, there was no way that plants could be that strong!

Okay sure, in defense of [Appraisal] it was actually pretty cool to learn that apparently there were trees that could basically live forever, but it hadn’t explained to me what a tree really was in the end, or why [Appraisal] couldn’t tell me anything about its stats. All I was left with was a huge mystery in need of answering, so I did what I was sure any sane Dungeon Core would do: I began to spam [Appraisal] across everything in sight.

[Rock] Lvl: ???

Status: Immobile

HP: ???/???

MP: ???/???

Of course a rock of all things was immobile. If they started moving then they were probably Dungeon Cores. Right? Once again, nothing of value gained from [Appraisal] once again, so I decided to see if it even knew what a rock was.

Rock. The solid form of magma.

Well that one was actually sort of interesting. I didn’t actually know what magma was! Maybe I could learn something?

Magma. The liquid form of rock. It becomes lava when above ground.

It was kidding, right? It had to be kidding. There was just absolutely no way it could answer me like that, could it? So then, just for kicks, I used [Appraisal] on lava, even though I had a terrible suspicion about what would be said.

Lava. The liquid form of rock. When below ground it’s called magma.

Wow. How enlightening.

After that I used [Appraisal] on a few other rocks that looked different from the first, but apparently they were all just rocks. As far as [Appraisal] seemed to be concerned it didn’t matter that they were different shapes or that one had lines running through it, they were all the same thing in the eyes of [Appraisal].

After I realized how useless it was to try learning about rocks I decided that maybe checking out a few bugs that I had seen moving about near the entrance to the dungeon could be somewhat entertaining.

[Ant] Lvl: 1

Status: Healthy

HP: 1/1

SP: 29/50

There were a couple of them there, and with their HP as low as it was I just couldn’t resist quickly snatching them up and eating them. They were pretty tasty little snacks, but despite that it didn’t really feel like I gained any energy from them. They certainly didn’t make me feel any less hungry, that was for sure.

Since I still had the list of information for the ants up I decided to use [Appraisal] to see if I could learn more about them.

Ant. A small insect that normally lives underground in colonies.

That was good to know, at least. If they lived underground that meant I might run into them more often, and if that were the case I would have even more free snacks. I was curious about one other thing I saw on their list as well, and since I had been dumb enough to not look at it when the badger had been in the dungeon earlier I decided that now was as good a time as any.

SP. An acronym that stands for Stamina Points. SP represents the amount of energy that can be expended before gaining the Exhausted status.

Well, that at the very least turned out to be pretty interesting information to learn. Mana seemed to work like energy for me, the way that stamina seemed to work for things like the ants and the badger. When I ran out of MP I passed out, and it seemed like when creatures who used SP ran out of stamina they became exhausted. What did the status “Exhausted” even do, actually?

Exhausted. A status that occurs when one runs of SP.

[Appraisal] you stupid waste of points, you basically just repeated yourself! I already learned that running out of SP means becoming Exhausted! You literally just said that! Can’t you at least word it slightly differently so that it feels like I’m learning something new? Hey, I’m talking to you right now, [Appraisal]! Listen to me when I’m talking to you! The least you can do is pretend to pay attention to me!

Great… Now I was yelling at a skill… A skill that obviously couldn’t talk back to me because it could only say things when I used it on something. Just how stupid was I? What was I even accomplishing by getting mad at it, other than just wasting my time? [Appraisal] was a brand new skill that I had only just gotten recently, and one that was still only at its first level. Expecting more from it than what it could give me was just plain dumb of me.

I just couldn’t help how frustrated I was feeling, that was all. I was stuck in one spot, unable to do anything but look around me, knowing absolutely nothing about anything, and all while I waited to regain enough mana to actually do something again. I seemed to be the kind of Dungeon Core that liked to be actively doing things, so it was beyond annoying that all I could do was wait.

I turned my attention inward at myself, using [Appraisal] when I did. Hopefully, I had enough MP built back up that I could do something else for a bit. If I could at least dig a little I could see if there were more things to be eaten.

Nameless [Dungeon Core] Lvl: 1

Title: None

Size: 37.040257

Points: 19

HP: 10/10

MP: 14/50

Skills:

[Mana Absorption] [Devour] [Tunneling] lvl.1 [Appraisal] lvl.1

It seemed impossible to me, but somehow [Appraisal] was still only at level one despite how much I had been using it. What did it even take to level the stupid thing up? It was such a weird and broken skill! It didn’t seem to cost me anything to use it, so I could just spam [Appraisal] on everything around me as much I wanted, but it also didn’t tell me enough about most things to really make it worth my while. [Appraisal] seemed to be at its most useful when I turned it on myself to monitor my own stats. Did it have anything to do with my specific request to my weird inner voice to give me a skill that would help me know the basics about myself?

Hey, weird not-me voice! You have anything to say for yourself? I’m going to assume your silence means I’m right!

I had regained a fair enough amount of MP while I was waiting, but it was still nowhere near as much as I had been hoping it would be. I had enough to expand my new tunnel by a bit more, of course, but as soon as I did that much I would be right back to just sitting around waiting for my mana to rebuild. Maybe the best thing to do would be to keep waiting a bit longer? If I could dig more all at once I was more likely to find something tasty to eat, right? Then again, I could take a risk and dig some more now and possibly manage the same thing…

Decisions, decisions…

On another note, it seemed as if my points had increased somehow. I still had no idea how or why, so I could only speculate on that. Did it have anything to do with the ants I had eaten? If so, why had it raised so much? There had only been three of them that had wandered in, so if I had gained one point for each ant eaten then that was too many, and it was too few if each ant gave me two points for eating it. Did I earn points as time passed, then? I didn’t have enough information to really come to a solid conclusion, and of course the inner voice remained silent on the matter.

I stared at my list of stats, feeling more and more annoyed the longer I looked at numbers that made absolutely no sense to me at all. How did I even earn points? Why was I regaining MP so slowly? What did size have to do with anything at all?

Before I could continue my downward spiral into fury and madness, a very familiar tingling warmth shot along the walls of the dungeon until it reached my core, causing me to close [Appraisal] out as I focused my attention back on the entrance.

There she was! The badger was coming back!

I wasn’t excited or happy to see her in the least bit, of course! I was just looking forward to having something to do to pass the time other than using [Appraisal] on random things, that was all! With the badger back I could at the very least amuse myself by watching it move about, plus I seemed to feel more full when it was around. Did that mean I regained MP faster? I wasn’t sure, but I did know it helped with my foul mood a bit.

The badger entered the dungeon slowly, one shuffling step after another, and I instantly knew that something was wrong.

The badger I had seen earlier had been large, yes, but it was only her thick layer of fur that had brushed against the walls of the dungeon. This badger was bigger even than that, as it was the muscle beneath the fur that was rubbing against the dungeon walls. It could still move easily enough, but I realized suddenly that the tunnel had to have been dug out by this particular badger, because the tunnel’s dimensions seemed to fit its body exactly. On top of the difference in size, this one wasn’t the same shade of gray, instead being more of a brownish tone.

It should have been obvious enough from the fact that the first badger had the pregnant status, but apparently there were two of them. I did the only thing that made sense to me at the time: I used [Appraisal] on the new badger.

[Badger] Lvl: 1

Status: Healthy

HP: 190/200

SP: 232/250

Despite the slight difference in size this new badger seemed to be the same level as the first one, though it had more HP and SP as well, which was a bit odd to me. What even were levels, actually? I was also level one of course, but I assumed that was because I hadn’t exactly been active very long. Shouldn’t there be a difference in level if there was such a difference in stats?

Since I had the list open and it actually showed a level existing this time, I decided to take advantage of the situation and use [Appraisal] to see if it could teach me something I didn’t already know.

Level. A number that is often tied to experience, which only raises after entering a dungeon.

That was a bit weird… I didn’t really understand what [Appraisal] was trying to say at all. Things could only level up after having been inside a dungeon? What did the number have to do with experience? I was left with far more questions than answers once again.

Experience. Something that accumulates through repeated actions over time.

Once again [Appraisal] proved itself to be absolutely useless! Because my life would just be far too easy if I could get a full answer!

Moving on from the annoyance that was my attempts at understanding the world around me, I turned my focus back onto the new badger and what it was doing. While I had been playing around with my most useless of skills it had trudged along to the back of the tunnel, which it was now proceeding to widen. Having something else dig around in the dungeon walls still felt pretty weird to me, but at the same time it was pretty fascinating to watch.

When I used [Tunneling] it all felt so automatic, the tendrils that were attached to my core moved on their own and I only really needed to decide the direction, but the badger had full control of what it was doing. Every single swipe was deliberate and precise, falling exactly where it meant them to, scooping dirt back between its legs before it kicked the pile even further out behind it.

The dirt was accumulating pretty quickly, actually, and before I could even really think about what I was doing I found myself eating the loose dirt. It didn’t cost me any mana to just eat dirt, and it was starting to make a mess in my tunnels, so it really only made sense that I do some clean-up, right? It wasn’t like I was doing it just to help the badger out, it was only because I didn’t like the look of the mess, and if there happened to be a few bugs or worms in the dirt as I ate then that was just even more incentive to clean.

So while the badger dug and expanded out the end of the tunnel for whatever reason, I continued to clean up the dirt behind it, happily stuffing myself with the free food. I got to eat whatever it was that seemed to come off of the badgers in the first place and all the things in the soil as well, while enjoying the benefits of having my dungeon expand. It was a win-win-win! How could you beat something that fortuitous?

Still… Now that there were two badgers I needed a way to differentiate them, didn’t I? The first one had been pregnant so I supposed that I could just call her Mama Badger, and if I assumed that this one was the one who had gotten her pregnant then I could call him Papa Badger. Was I even sure that was the case? No, of course not. For all I knew this was another female badger, just not one that was pregnant, but it wasn’t like it was a permanent title or anything. If it turned out I was wrong later then I could just adjust the naming scheme. Easy as that.

Watching Papa Badger dig had me desperately wanting to get back to work myself, but at the same time I didn’t want to do so until I was at least back to half full on my MP. If running out of MP meant that I passed out, then I needed to make sure I had enough to avoid that situation, especially since I was completely defenseless when I was unconscious. Sure, Papa Badger was digging out a round little area at the end of the current tunnel right now, but what if while I was asleep he decided to start digging this way? He could step on me and kill me in an instant, and I would never know what had happened to me.

As much as I hated waiting it was better to just do that. I could entertain myself in the meantime by watching the badger for a bit longer.

He seemed awfully determined, beady little eyes squinted as he focused his full attention on his work. After a short time he paused to look back behind him, likely expecting to see a pile of dirt that he would need to shuffle further out of the tunnel, but when he saw absolutely nothing but a perfectly clean floor it seemed to startle him.

Papa Badger turned completely around, lowering his nose towards the floor as he proceeded to take big huffing whiffs of the air. I wasn’t sure what he was sniffing for or if he could smell the invisible tendrils that radiated off my core and wove throughout the walls of the tunnels, but he didn’t seem to really react to anything.

I watched with interest as the badger walked up the tunnel a little way, pausing at the tangle of roots where my core had once been lodged. A wave of cold rushed through my body as it struck me that he was looking for where I was, and then several other things clicked into place rapidly.

If Papa Badger was the one who had initially widened the tunnel out, not Mama Badger, then he had to have been the one who had moved my main body from the ground to behind the roots. Of course he would know that I had been there!

Papa Badger leaned towards the hole, my anxiety growing by the second, and he began to snuffle and snort as he apparently searched for me. I was gone from there, of course, but after a brief moment he simply gave a huff and turned back to the area he was digging out.

Was he satisfied with what he had found? Annoyed? Did he even notice that I was missing, or had I misunderstood what he was doing? I wished that I knew what was going on inside his head…

I said that I wished I knew what was going on inside his head!

Okay, so apparently I couldn’t count on my inner voice to offer up a new skill that would enable me to do just that, so I would have to keep watching him and speculating on what was going on.

How smart were badgers, even? Did they know what dungeons were? Did they know that I was a Dungeon Core? Had they moved in knowing what I was, hoping that if they showed me mercy and didn’t crush me that I would do the same for them? What benefit was it for them to even live in a dungeon? I was so weak and pathetic, not to mention probably the stupidest Dungeon Core in existence, so what could they possibly hope to gain from keeping me around?

Maybe they wanted me to help expand the tunnels so they would have more space to live? Or maybe they wanted me to do exactly what I had been doing so far by cleaning up after them? I was getting a good amount out of the deal in the form of free food, so it wasn’t the worst living arrangement… Yet it still didn’t feel right. It felt like I was missing something about the situation.

[Room Building] automatically acquired.

Excuse me, Inner Voice, I was having a tiny crisis there for a moment. What was it you just said?

[Room Building]. The skill has been automatically acquired.

Huh… Okay.

I shifted my focus from the badger himself to what he was doing. Had he been digging out a room? Apparently so! Apparently a larger space at the end of a tunnel is called a room, and because he dug one out I got the skill for free. It was a lot like when I had been digging with my tendrils before I had [Tunneling]. That was pretty cool, actually. The badgers doing things in the dungeon could help me gain skills? That felt downright cheaty, and I loved it!

He looked pretty happy with the little room he had dug out as well, and giving what I could only interpret as a pretty proud sounding huff, Papa Badger turned around in his wider space and began to make his way out of the dungeon.

Good job, Papa Badger! I’m super proud of you! It took you a lot longer to dig out the space than it might have taken me, but you did it all by yourself with your own two paws!

Hey, I’m allowed to act this way right now. He did give me a new skill by doing this after all, so congratulating him is basically the same as congratulating myself! I’m definitely not doing this because I actually think it’s pretty cool that he could do all of that manually.

And now that the badgers are away? It’s time for the Dungeon Core to play.