[Tree] Lvl. 28

HP: 1500/1500

Status: Healthy

[Small Rock] Lvl. ??

HP: ???/???

MP: ???/???

Status: Immobile

[Spider] Lvl. 1

HP: 15/15

SP: 17/20

Status: Healthy

Oh, a spider had wandered in! I stretched my tendrils towards it and made an attempt at eating it, but apparently its HP was too high because all I got was one of its tiny hairs before it scuttled from my tunnel looking put off. That was disappointing. I’d wanted to see if I would get more points from eating it… Now that it was gone I was even more annoyed at myself. Maybe if it had stayed and hung out I could have fed off of its presence the way I had fed off of the badger’s.

Speaking of the badger, she hadn’t come back yet, and I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel about that. Should I be relieved? Annoyed? Worried? I was certainly feeling something, that much was for sure. It was a kind of something I couldn’t just ignore, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

While I had been waiting on her I’d decided to start using [Appraisal] on pretty much everything currently inside the tunnel, just to see if it would ever level up. It didn’t seem to be costing me anything to use it, which was good, but a bit confusing in a way. [Tunneling] definitely used up mana to use, after all, and Mana Absorption seemed to be some passive sort of ability, so it made sense that it didn’t use anything for it to just sort of exist there and do its thing, but what was the deal with [Appraisal]? If it didn’t cost me anything to use it, then what was the point in leveling it up?

With nothing else to do while I waited for enough energy to wedge myself into my new root hammock, I’d just laid around and come up with all sorts of theories on what levels meant to those two abilities. So far I had two leading theories, and [Appraisal] was breaking both of them.

Theory number one: Leveling an ability would make the ability more effective. How did [Appraisal] break that? Well, if leveling up made an ability stronger than before, then just how much stronger could [Appraisal] get? Wasn’t it already telling me pretty much everything I needed to know?

Theory number two: Leveling an ability used less mana. How did [Appraisal] break that? If leveling up reduced the cost of using the ability, then what the heck was going on with [Appraisal]? As far as I could tell I could just point it at everything in sight and use it as many times as I wanted and it would just keep using up absolutely nothing to do so.

What was going on with this broken ability?! Hey, appraisal! You can’t just make up all your own rules! How am I supposed to figure out this whole Dungeon Core thing if you just do what you want?! I seem to be the kind of Core who likes rules, and you seem to be the kind of skill that breaks them! I don’t think we’re going to be getting along!

I huffed, feeling stupid at myself for trying to argue with a skill. Clearly I didn’t take well to doing nothing if the fact I had been carrying on like an idiot was any indication.

Thankfully, before I could lose whatever passed for my mind, the badger came back.

I could feel her the moment she stepped into my tunnel, a sudden warmth and heat that sparked along my tendrils. It was an oddly comforting sensation, at least now that I had decided she was welcome and not any sort of threat. Any sort of tension I felt melted away, and I relaxed as much as I could while I waited for mana absorption to do its thing.

She seemed to be going back to her digging with a renewed sort of vigor, which was oddly ticklish in a strange sort of way. I could feel her thick claws tearing through the dirt rapidly, which just let me stretch out all the more in my home. The expression on her face seemed to be sort of determined, as if she had a goal in mind.

If only I knew what she was thinking…

I waited a moment, silently hoping that my subconscious voice would chime in with a way to read her mind, but it didn’t. I huffed again. Apparently reading minds wasn’t something I would be able to do. Now what was I supposed to do? Just lay here and let this badger do all the work for me without any idea of why she was doing it? I wasn’t a lazy kind of Core! I wanted to do something!

At least she had come back so I could test out my theory on SP and MP working sort of similarly to each other, at least in my case. I focused on her sharply, letting her black and white stripes consume every aspect of my vision until something clicked.

[Badger] Lvl. 3

HP: 144/150

SP: 183/200

Status: Pregnant

Huh, that was interesting. While she had been gone her HP had gone down, but her SP had gone up. That was kind of weird, what had caused that? Getting into a fight might explain her HP lowering, since that was her health, but what had caused the SP to go up?

I narrowed my gaze on her SP to find out what it was before I started trying to run theories on the cause.

Short for Stamina Points. Creatures that can move use up stamina to do so. Eating and sleeping helps to fill this back up.

Oh, that made sense then! She must have gone hunting for something earlier then! Apparently it had put up a bit of a fight since her health had gone down, but my badger friend didn’t seem to be too injured… If I looked more closely at her I could see that she had some fur missing in a couple small clumps along her arms and sides, but there didn’t seem to be anything other than a light scratch or two underneath.

After I had scared off the spider I was a little hesitant to do it, but all the same I carefully stretched out my tendrils until I could swipe the blood and loose fur off of her cuts in order to eat it. Fortunately, the badger seemed too preoccupied with digging out what seemed to be a large room to notice me snacking off of her. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem as if that little bit of blood and fur did anything to help build up my points, though my mana did tick up slightly.

What was it about that worm that had upped my points earlier? What about the badger had done it while I was napping? It was driving me nuts! I had to know!

How was I expected to have the patience to just lay here and do absolutely nothing while I waited for the answers to just come to me? I wanted to know, and I wanted to know now! It was so frustrating I wanted to use the little bit of mana I had gained to flail my core about until it made me feel better about this entire situation!

[Room Building] automatically gained.

What was what now?

[Room Building]. Automatically gained.

If I had a mouth like the badger did, it would probably be scowling just as hard as hers was. How did I go and automatically gain some kind of skill? What sense did that even make? And just what exactly was [Room Building] supposed to be?

[Room Building]. A skill that builds rooms.

Without meaning to, I had appraised the skill by focusing on the words my inner mind had spoken and displayed across my vision, but somehow it felt a lot more like I had somehow back sassed myself. What kind of explanation was that? Next it would say that [Tunneling] was a skill that tunneled and [Mana Absorption] was a skill to absorb mana!

I couldn’t resist, I had to check.

[Tunneling]. A skill that digs tunnels.

[Mana Absorption]. A passive skill that absorbs mana from nearby surroundings.

What kind of broken, stupid, skill was [Appraisal] supposed to be?! That didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know based on the names of the skills to begin with!

[Appraisal]. A skill that gives information on things seen.

No one asked you, [Appraisal]! Go back to being broken in all the wrong ways!

It was such a stupid skill, I could hardly stand it! How many points was I born with? How many had it cost me to gain this ridiculous thing? Had I just wasted a bunch of points on some dumb thing that basically just told me things I should have known to begin with? It wasn’t my fault I was just a baby Dungeon Core! How else was I supposed to learn? Why hadn’t I come automatically with this stupid, useless, broken skill?!

The badger huffed, and I huffed with her.

She seemed to be done digging out her little room, which was surprisingly large given how big she was. It was large enough that I could basically fit another three badgers into it, and that wasn’t counting her. Did she even need a room that large to sleep in and have her babies?

I wondered if [Appraisal] would tell me more about badgers…

Badgers. A mammal that eats just about anything and lives in setts. They mate for life.

Wait, did that mean that she had a husband around somewhere? Where had he been? Or had something happened to him? I wasn’t exactly looking forward to having two badgers living in my dungeon, but since I had made an exception for the first one it seemed like I would have to let it slide.

I absolutely was not looking forward to having the extra food and company. There was no way I was feeling soft about the idea of raising a badger family in my walls. No way, no how. That was just creepy!

The badger, who I guess could be Mama Badger now or whatever, not that I cared enough to name her, seemed satisfied enough with her room and turned to make her way out of the tunnel. This time she didn’t even seem to be that surprised at the lack of loose dirt. I had been gobbling it up the entire time she had been digging, of course, but she seemed to have no problem with it this time alone.

As she neared the entrance she stopped, and to my utter shock she looked right toward where my core had been before and where my new side tunnel was now. I felt a shiver run through me as she leaned forward, sniffling and snuffling at the small crevice I had snuck away into.

Then she stuck out her tongue and slurped up a larva.

I wasn’t sure how long I laid there trying to process what had just happened, but by the time I had come back to myself, the badger had left the tunnel and ventured out into the world, leaving me alone again with my own thoughts.

Now that she was gone again, I wanted to see what [Room Building] could really do, at least on a small scale. Mama Badger had helped me to gain the skill, at no cost of my own, so it only seemed right that I use it to help her out a little. As nice as her room was, I felt like it could be smoothed out a lot more.

Actually, the whole tunnel she had been digging could do with a little bit of smoothing out. It was all a lot rougher, and rounder, than my little offshoot. There was still quite a bit of loose dirt lying about. It didn’t look like it would eat up too much of my mana to just straighten things up a bit.

I stretched out my tendrils along the walls, floor, and ceiling making up the tunnel and its connected room, and I stretched out my skills. Things quickly clicked into place, The floor of the tunnel becoming flat and smooth, hard packed earth that wouldn’t so easily get messed up again. The walls straightened as well, following the example of the floor as they hardened up. I left the ceiling rounded, but it became hardened as well, which would help with keeping the tunnel from collapsing later.

A wave of fatigue hit me, but all the same I was satisfied with myself for cleaning things up. I made a quick check of my mana, which had dipped back down to two again after my redecorating, but I could deal with that consequence.

This wasn’t just Mama Badger’s home, after all. It was my home too, and I deserved to have it looking nice and clean.