Darkness, nothingness, absence without thought, and then something. Flickers of something that was beyond nothing. Thought, memory, ideas swirled throughout the void giving shape and perspective to the nothingness. Memories coalesced, ideas shaped, thoughts formed, IT was, IT existed.

Incomplete, self unstable, confusion, its thoughts scattering. One idea presented itself: life, it was alive, it wanted to live. It took hold of this idea grounding itself. The ideas surrounding it coalesced but began fading. Still incomplete, must expand, must grow. Instincts that it didn’t know it possessed took over and suddenly it was more. For the first time in its life, it saw.

It pushed outward once more instinct guiding it reached out and felt itself expand. The feeling was intoxicating and it surged outward claiming the space around it. It halted, confused, it could grow no further, something was missing. Frustrated, it attempts to expand anyway and once again finds itself unable to continue. Looking inward it examines itself, it notices there is something within it that does not belong. It examines the new thing carefully, uncertainly, but then strikes out at the foreign intruder. A new idea, something it did not know before it feels the knowledge of what the new thing is... Rock ...it was a rock.

Curious, a new idea, names. Rocks were called rocks very helpful to distinguish them from itself. It examined the other rocks within itself. They were grey, textured, and tough. It congratulated itself on all the new ideas it had learned from the rock. It reached out with something that was yet a little different. It hadn't been noticed before but this… Aura ...aura was a part of it that it had been expanding. It shaped its aura in a new way, the way it had learned from the rock. It was most pleased when it made a new rock, but it wasn’t like the old one. No this was much better, it was its rock. Satisfaction swept through it, and it reached out again attacking the foreign stone and replacing it with its stone. When it finished its work it found something curious. It looked like a stone through its aura but it was the wrong color, a pure white instead of a solid grey. More than that it could tell that this not-stone was not wrong, or different like the old stone or its aura rather it just felt like itself. Curious it examined itself trying to discover its name as it had with aura and rock it was… Dungeon Core ...it was a dungeon core. Satisfaction filled the dungeon core. It was good to know what it was.

Something entered the dungeon’s aura and it looked intensely at the something trying to name it as it had before. However, the elusive something refused to be named flowing through its stone like it wasn't there. The new something also refused to be classified by any other means the young dungeon core had learned it had no color, it had no texture, it was not even physical like its beloved stone was.

The wisps of something flowed into the dungeon core as it watched curiously, although it was not of it the something didn’t annoy the dungeon in the same way the rock had. The energy flowed into the core and new ideas bloomed to life, new memories of a strange new being that was not it. The dungeon felt new strength flow through it, and it soon used its new memories to determine the proper name for the new food.

More food streamed into it and was drawn into the core a veritable flood and dizziness filled it as its core grew cracking the surrounding stone. The dungeon also found a new idea: it wanted more food. Reaching out it expanded its aura purposefully in a specific direction questing for the source of its newfound food. It found lots of foreign stones before finding something new. Quickly absorbing the new things it found that they were… Water, Air …water, and air. There was a third new thing that the dungeon had found but unlike water and air, it could not absorb this new thing.

Stumped, the core observed the new thing thrash about in the water considering what to do. It couldn’t just leave the new thing, it felt worse than anything the core had seen before, it felt like an enemy, what a wonderful new idea it had gotten from its food. The new thing suddenly stopped its thrashing in the water and the core’s attention snapped back to it as food drifted out of it. Greedily the core absorbed the new food along with the new thing in the water… Ant ...that finally stopped resisting it.

The dungeon core got several new ideas from the ant. One that was particularly interesting was death, the ant had died and that is what made the food. The core also put together several of its ideas and concluded. The ant must also have been alive like itself before it had died. The core wondered if it would get food if it died as well. Better not to try, the ant had not enjoyed dying as far as the core could tell. Oh well, the core got back to work absorbing the water and air it had found and replacing them just like it had done to the rock. Focusing the stone tried to create a new ant but was stumped. The core didn’t fully understand how it was supposed to shape its aura to form the ant. The core was disappointed by this new development but wasn’t too upset as it could tell that its aura could expand a lot more.

The dungeon was happy as it could be expanding down tunnel after tunnel. Rock was great and all but air made expanding so much easier. It kept finding ants throughout the tunnels as well. They seemed to have a really hard time staying alive as all the ones the core had found were either thrashing around in pools of water or already dead. At least the core didn’t have their problem of spontaneously dying in the water. It had started playing around with its rock and figured out something entirely new and thrilling all on its own. Apparently, water flows downhill, and someone, the core was innocent it could have been anyone, had accidentally destroyed some rather critically placed walls and flooded its core.

It was quite scared at first expecting its last moments to be unpleasant if the memories it had gathered were anything to go by. Forchentally for the core it seemed immune to the destructive power of the water. Maybe ants were just defective. Speaking of ants, the core had finally figured out how to make them. It was so much more complicated than making stone but it was finally ready to try it out.

Focusing intently on its understanding of ants, the core delicately shaped and molded its mana into proper form. The core preened to itself, mana was the other discovery it had made, at the revolutionary finding that was its aura the core had found out that it was using something besides its aura to create and dissolve things, mana. Mana was great, the core could make anything out of it, so long as it understood whatever it was it was trying to make, even ants but ants were hard. Refocusing on the task at hand the core poured out a huge amount of its mana into the Ummm... Template ...template of the ant.

The core watched in awe as the ant coalesced out of pure mana. It was perfect, antenna twitching, six legs, and it even had two beady little eyes. Personally, the core thought eyes were very silly, why couldn’t the ant just use its aura? The core also felt a new sensation after creating the ant, it wouldn’t have known what it was if not for the memories of the various ants he had gained, tiredness. The core had never felt tired before, but the ant had taken far more mana to produce than anything else it had ever created so maybe that was the reason?

Dismissing the unimportant thought the core got back to observing its ant, and the ant did absolutely nothing. Sure it ran around a little bit, but that quickly bored the core, and it decided that one ant was more than enough for now. Before returning its attention to expanding its aura the core gave a very important instruction to its ant, stay away from water. It wouldn’t do to have its only ant be killed from carelessness.

The core continued to expand throughout the many tunnels slowly claiming the underground world for its own. It had been looking through its collection of memories and apparently, these tunnels were the home/nest of the ants. It didn’t matter to the core, but it was mildly impressive to discover that the ants had built sprawling tunnels all on their own. The ant must be more capable than it thought, looking back at its ant which was still wandering around, maybe it's ant was just defective.

The core began to find fewer and fewer ants as it expanded along with less and less water. It wouldn’t have minded the development as he had complete templates for both water and ants, but without these two elements, he would not get any more food. The core wondered if it could get its ant to die. Would that give it food? The core decided that this line of thought deserved additional investigation, but before it could begin its experiments the core felt a new ant enter its aura.

The core excitedly waited for its next meal and waited and waited. The ant was not dying, what was going on here? The core took a closer look at the ant and soon determined the problem, the ant was not in their water. This meant no dead ant and no food for the core. Stumped, the core thought furiously, trying to find a way to kill the ant, but it drew a blank. The water had never failed it before and none of the memories it had were particularly helpful either.

The ant trundled and skittered along through the core’s tunnels, it reminded the core of its ant. The core’s attention swung sharply to its ant, who was pacing around much like its foreign brother. That's what these ants must be for, the core brilliantly reasoned. It could use them to get other ants into the water.

Sending forth its brave champion the core instructed its ant to bash the intruder into the water. The ant bravely charged through the tunnels until it reached the invader, and gave the interloper a crushing headbutt. Which did nothing. The core was flummoxed, the valiant charge of its defender had barely even bugged the other ant much less gotten it into the water. Its thoughts were interrupted as the foreign ant bit down on the core’s ant, lifting it fractionally into the air. The core quickly grabbed onto the concept and ordered its ant to copy the intruder.

The two ants staggered back and forth across the tunnel each trying to overpower the other. They came perilously close to the edge of the water on a few occasions before continuing their struggle. This caused the core to have a stroke of brilliance, when the two ants neared the water again the core gave a quick command to its champion. With a mighty leap, both ants toppled into the water. Success.

The core watched in satisfaction as both ants flailed around in the water, it was only a matter of time now. To the core’s delight, it discovered it could indeed get food from the death of its creatures but it was far less than an intruder. The core happily began to create another ant, reasoning that if it found more of these out of water ants, it would need more creatures to deal with them. It could also use them as a backup food source which was another big plus for the core.