To accomplish his first goal, Gorm started to read the description for everything on the status menu. With the new information, his understanding of his situation improved.

He was a dungeon core now, a being that absorbed the mana in its vicinity to use as fuel for its growth. It not only used the mana for itself, but it also purified and enriched it. This better mana would then disperse through its entrance and fill the surroundings. It was like a gigantic, living mana purifier.

As a dungeon Gorm had to build rooms and floors with various traps and monsters to protect itself from everything and everyone that wanted to harm him. To encourage letting him live in peace he could give out precious resources. Because although a dungeon core was useful for mages, if a dungeon could produce enough other useful things it would be more beneficial to let a dungeon live then to kill and rob its core.

His high mana regeneration was something Gorm found quite extraordinary. It seemed impossible that it was normal that he could fill his entire mana pool four and a half hours. And he was right. The network of tubes was in actuality a gigantic formation that helped him gather mana faster. The downside of this was that unless he could outgrow its usage, the formation would limit his regeneration. This could become a problem relatively soon because unlike simply creating a floor, his mana pool would grow with each new room, tunnel or plant and unlike normal dungeons, his regeneration couldn’t be improved by simply having more living, non-monster beings in his dungeon.

But what interested Gorm the most wasn’t the information about being a dungeon, but the ecosystem he earned and his new race. He had called the Endless Wilderness his home for most of his life, so he naturally felt elated that he had something that connected him to it. After getting all the information in regards to him being a dungeon and his purpose sorted out, he opened the information of the Endless Wilderness ecosystem.

Ecosystem Endless Wilderness:

The Endless Wilderness ecosystem is the upgraded version of the Magic Forest ecosystem, which is the upgrade of the Mystic Forest ecosystem.

Due to having a room with an active, functioning ecosystem that is simulating a magic forest you gained the ecosystem Mystic Forest.

The System detected a deep connection to the Endless Wilderness in the dungeon core, after comparing its knowledge about the Endless Wilderness with the Mystic Forest ecosystem, strong similarities were detected.

The Mystic Forest ecosystem first got upgraded to Magical Forest and then to Endless Wilderness ecosystem.

+ additional 50% mana regeneration in rooms with this ecosystem active

+ 25% faster growth and higher birthrate for every non-monster living being everywhere

+ 150% defense to all trees in the entire dungeon

- 75% mana cost to all plants that are included in the ecosystem, anywhere

- 50% mana cost to all non-monster lifeforms, included in the ecosystem, anywhere

- 25% mana cost to all monsters, included in the ecosystem, anywhere

Endless Wilderness ecosystem is your standard ecosystem. Meaning that every new room will automatically be an Endless Wilderness ecosystem with no additional cost. That is unless you specifically want to use another one.

You can’t use any monsters, animals, plants or things that are unnatural.

This setting is not changeable.

Gorm was shocked that his connection to his former home could influence the system. The effects looked good. Or at least he hoped that they were good. Even though he couldn’t use anything unnatural it didn’t bother him, in fact, he welcomed it. When he was still roaming the forests he always destroyed everything even remotely unnatural. Wasn’t the reason he was in this situation that he wanted to cleanse the forest of some foul abomination?

The next thing he wanted to know, was what the deal with his new race was.

Dungeon Core Oak:

Due to fusing a dungeon core with a magical oak tree the new race Dungeon Core Oak was formed. This kind of dungeon core can’t have any top-tier affinity except for nature. In return, the affinity gets amplified.

You are the one and only dungeon core with this race in existence.

+ plants grow faster

+ animals breed faster

+ an aura of life will be emitted by your dungeon

+ without advanced mana sense it’s impossible to distinguish your body from a normal oak

The information raised more questions than it answered. How did he fuse with the core, why did the formation get activated after he transferred his soul and how did he become a dungeon in the first place?

Gorm had no answers, for now.

Because he couldn’t find any answers in the near future, he concentrated on his immediate problems like the only thing left to investigate; the lone intruder. Gorm concentrated on his still expanded perception and what he now knew was his body. The oak tree was something like his brain, but his actual body was the mountain with everything in it.

Scanning his core room, that was what he learned his former prison was called, and overall the tubes without finding anything unusual, Gorm started to scan his forest. He called the gigantic room in the middle of his entire dungeon his forest because it reminded him of his former home and was actually his.

After scanning over it a few times, he only found two anomalies. The first one was a huge, old tree and the second one was an area of about two meters where his perception couldn’t reach. He could still see what there was but he couldn’t scan the area like everything else in his dungeon. Gorm decided to investigate the first anomaly first while keeping an eye on the second. Shifting the bulk of his concentration from the entire forest to only the old tree, he started to investigate.

The most obvious difference between this tree and normal trees was that it gave of may stronger mana signatures. And although the signatures were much stronger than normal they still felt like they were part of him like everything else in the forest. Probing deeper and deeper he discovered a similar bubble like when his perception first entered his forest. But this time it felt fragile and he had the feeling that he would never forgive himself if he tried to burst it.

Gorm decided that he would push as gently as possible, he didn’t want to hurt it. Suddenly he felt that the bubble had disappeared. Gorm was in panic. Had he destroyed it? But he couldn’t push with less force.

‘Hello?’ said a little voice in his head.

Gorm winced ‘Who is there?’

‘It’s me, you woke me up.’ said the same voice again, it sounded feminine. But he couldn’t tell clearly. So he asked it.

‘Who are you? Where are you?’ he really did wonder how someone could speak in his head.

‘I’m here.’ he could hear the same voice again. There still was no one around, but just as he wanted to ask again he saw a little girl step out of the giant tree.

She looked like she was five years old and wore a dress made of leaves. Her hair was brown, her skin and eyes were both green. The skin light and the eyes dark green.

Gorm had seen someone like her before, so he could easily identify her as a dryad. He never had seen a dryad that looked this young but the rest of her appearance matched. Together with the fact that she stepped out of a tree, he was sure that he was right.

‘Hello little dryad. Why can you talk right into my mind?’ he asked.

‘Every dryad can do that, it’s normal.’ the little dryad answered. ‘And I’m not a little dryad! I’m only small because my tree is an Elder Ash, I’m already 7000 years old.’

That made sense, from his few encounters with dryads, he knew that a dryad aged with her tree. They couldn’t leave their tree until their mental age reached maturity. The only problem with them was, that they almost never were serious. Or at least he never met a dryad that could be serious for more than ten minutes. To his luck, they slept most of the time.

‘I apologize! How did you end up here? I know that dryads can’t occur naturally underground.’

‘My mother put me here so that I can mature in peace. Because my tree is an Elder Ash I need a lot of time for that. Oh, thanks for infusing your mana into me for 500 years. Without you I would still need to sleep for another 1000 years till I could leave my tree.’ the dryad was visibly happy about this fact.

‘Your mother? I always thought dryads were birthed by nature.’ Gorm was a bit confused.

‘Why shouldn’t we have mothers? We are not like nature spirits… Oh, you are a dungeon, right?’ Could you please name me? My mother told me, that if a dryad gets named by a dungeon it can grow faster. That is the reason I allowed you to integrate me into your dungeon.’ the dryad had a hopeful look in her eyes. It seemed like she really wanted to be grown up fast.

Gorm thought that there was probably more to this than the dryad explained. But he still decided to grant her wish, after all, she was the only person he could talk to. Not that he needed someone to talk to, he had spent up to a century without uttering a single word, it was that Gorm felt with the dryad. She was older than him but still looked like a little girl. Wasn’t it just a simple name? Granting this wish was an easy decision for him.

‘Ok, how do you want your name to be?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know, you can choose. I’ll tell you if I like it or not.’

‘How about Melia?’ Gorm asked.