The goddess looks up from the report on her desk, a baffled expression on her face. Sitting across from her is a young man, early twenties, with disheveled brown hair and the bluest eyes she has ever seen. “It says here that you died… choking on a pretzel.”

“Correction, five, in fact.”

“I’m sorry?”

The young man raises his hand, palm out. “If we’re being technically correct here, I choked on five pretzels. I was running an experiment, you see, on whether the gustatory system is volumetric.”

“I… have no idea what you just said.”

The man proceeds to raise a finger, as if positing a hypothesis. “If eating one pretzel is delicious, will eating five pretzels be five times as delicious? Or are there diminishing returns, making it less so? Or perhaps a combinatorial effect, making it more so? Curious, that in this day and age, we still don’t know, right?”

“Ha… sure,” the goddess replies slowly, thinking to herself, Why do I always get stuck with the weird ones? She shakes her head, remembering that she still has a job to do. Turning to the man, she continues, “In any case, you’re taking your death rather well. Usually there’s more… crying or angst or such.”

The man shrugs. “If I’m dead, I’m dead. There’s no logic to getting emotional over something I can’t change, right?”

“Right…,” the goddess says, and while what the man points out does make sense, still, she found humans were rarely ever so logical in practice, again demonstrating the man’s unusual personality. She has to once more force herself to continue, “So anyways, you had a chance to look at the brochure, right? Have you decided what you’d like to be reincarnated as? A hero? A demon lord? Just let me know, and we can get the paperwork started.”

The young man nods. “I’d like to go with dungeon, please.”

“Right, adventurer then.”

“No, I mean I’d like to be the dungeon. There’s an option called dungeon core, right?”

The goddess pauses, trying to remember if such a thing had existed. Certainly, no one in recent memory had chosen it. She sighs internally, again wondering why the man before her can’t have just been a normal fellow. Isn’t the obvious choice “hero”? That’s literally what 90% of people pick, while the edgier ones go with “demon lord”. So what is all this dungeon core business?

She looks back to the man, giving him a forced smile. “Ah, interesting choice. I’ll have to consult the manual to see if that’s a valid-”

“Page 1337. ‘A soul may be reincarnated as a dungeon core. In this state, he/she will exist as a dungeon, managing the resources, living and otherwise, of the domain-’. I can go on, if you’d like.”

“You… memorized the entire manual?” the goddess asks incredulously.

“I have photographic memory. I just have to see something once, and I’ll know it forever.”

“...But you died choking on a pretzel,” the goddess remarks.

“Well, it was never documented anywhere that swallowing five pretzels at once could kill you,” the man counters.

Isn’t that just common sense??? the goddess thinks to herself. How can someone be so intelligent, and yet so stupid at the same time?

“So… am I good to go?” the man asks.

His voice breaks the goddess out of her thoughts. She sighs. “Sure, sure. Dungeon core. Whatever you want.”

She reaches for her quill, filling out the form with the new information. “Done. Enjoy your reincarnation,” she says. As soon as the ink dries, the man’s body begins to glow as orbs of chromatic light swirl around him. Then, a second later, and he’s gone, leaving only an empty chair behind.

The goddess begins to clean up her desk, her appointments done for the day. As she’s doing so, a coworker approaches her, a fellow god.

Seeing her tired expression, he asks, “Rough day?”

The goddess rolls her eyes, holding out the young man’s report. The god takes it, scans it quickly, then raises an eyebrow.

He says, “Franklin Steiner… Dungeon Core? Is that even a valid choice?”

“Page 1337 in the manual, apparently. Sigh. Why do I always get the weird ones? I hope nothing bad comes of it...”

The god laughs. “He’s just a human. What’s the worst that can happen?”

****

Franklin opens his eyes, finding himself in a dark cavern. He uses his hands to feel his body, noting that it is rather solid and very much alive.

Is this... my avatar? It feels… human. Have I really been reincarnated as a dungeon core? he wonders silently. Well, there’s one way to find out. According to the manual, if I use…

“[System],” he says aloud, his voice echoing off the walls of the cave. There is a short delay, during which Franklin holds his breath, his heart thumping fast, but then, a prompt appears, like one of those augmented reality glasses, with text floating in the air before his eyes, tracking and moving as he turns his head, reading:

Welcome, Franklin Steiner. How can I help you today?

Below the prompt, several choices appear:

1. Stats

2. Summon

3. Craft

4. Transmute

5. More Options

It is the fourth of these that draws his attention, for it is the primary reason he had chosen dungeon core over something like “hero”.

“[Transmute].”

A submenu appears, and as Franklin reads the choices, a wide grin snakes its way onto his face. He lets out a hearty laugh, which again echoes in the yet-to-be-furnished empty cave.

“Oh, this is gonna be a hoot!”