Blackness. No sensory input whatsoever.

One might even think I'm dead. Which I know I'm not, the goddess said to me I was granted a second chance at life.

Or am I actually dead? Did she lie to me? After all, who would trust a goddess?

Maybe I should steer away from thoughts like that.

I must assume I'm alive in some way.

After all, isn't there a saying that says, I think therefore I am?

Soooooo, since I can think about being alive or not, therefore, I must be alive.

With that settled, I can focus on other things. Like not being able to feel, see, hear, smell or taste something.

Am I even a dungeon yet? What is a dungeon even? Are they the same as dungeons in games and fantasy novel back on earth? Instanced spaces that somehow defy all dimensional laws? A complex of massive underground corridors with just the entrance giving away that there's a dungeon in the first place? Am I a place in a pocket dimension that is only reachable by going thru a portal?

Looks like the first thing on my to-do list will be something that the greatest philosophers of earth never quite managed to do. Figuring out what someone or something is. I need to ask the question: What am I? And hope I can find an answer. Preferably in a reasonable time period as well. I have no interest to spend my entire life, like most philosophers did, on pondering on this question.

So, What am I? How will I try to answer this?

I will need to figure out how to feel stuff, how to sense everything that is to be sensed.

Clearing my mind, I reach out with all of the senses I had in my previous life.

Nothing.

That's... inconvenient.

Maybe I'm not trying hard enough? This time, I just focus on one sense at a time.

First of all, sight. As far as I can tell, I have no eyes. No eyes, no sight.

Smell? as far as I can tell, I don't have a nose. So no smelling then.

Taste? Again, as far as I can tell, I have no tongue. I'm not even sure if I even have a mouth.

That rules taste out as well.

That leaves sound and touch.

Since it feels like I have no ears, it is safe to assume I can rule out sound as well.

All that is left now is touch. This should be doable, right?

I mean, if I have some kind of body, I should be able to feel anything.

With all the focus I can muster, I try to feel anything.

And lo and behold. I can actually feel something.

It feels as if my body, whatever it is, is surrounded by something on all sides except for my top.

Making use of this sense, I conclude that my body is in fact somewhat roundish, with some shaved off facets.

The closest example I can come up with is a football (the regular, non-American kind). Ugh, never liked sports, maybe I should pick a better example? How about a buckyball?

That sounds better, after all, it is more sciency. Even though a buckyball looks a bit like a football, it is, in fact, a molecule made off a bunch of carbon atoms.

Now that I have at least one sense to rely on, I can't help but wonder. Is there another sense? After all, She said magic is real here. Does that mean I can feel mana? Or use it to substitute my other senses?

All I can do is give it a shot and see what comes from it.

I clear my mind again and reach out, but this time, I use my mind to reach out.

At first, I don't feel anything.

But as I keep trying, I become aware of a fuzzy feeling in the corners of my mind.

Is this mana? I try to use my mind to manipulate the fuzzy feeling. I grasp at the fuzziness and attempt to bring it closer.

It is slow going at first, but as time passes, I manage to get it closer and closer. When I get the feeling it is close enough, I use my mind to 'jump' on it and try to bend it to my will.

As the mana comes under my control, I try to shape it. seeing as I only managed to grasp a tiny amount of mana so far, I decide to send it out as a ping, the same way as with sonar.

Surprisingly enough, the mana does what I want and even so much more.

Shorty after I send out the ping, the mana actually returns.

And it brings information with it!

It allows me to 'feel' my surroundings, it lets me see how I look and even tells me what's around me.

Apparently, I'm a gem of some sorts the size of an adult's fist. I get the feeling I'm roughly cut as well but that's beside the point. My earlier analysis seems to be correct, I am in fact buckyball/football shaped.

According to the mana, I'm at the bottom of a shaft and surrounded by rock on all sides.

That's what I'm talking about, finally some useful information.

This answers my earlier question of what I am. I'm a fancy rock.

Lovely.

I'm supposed to be a dungeon. How do I go from being a fancy rock to a dungeon?

Maybe I, the rock, is like the seed out of which you grow a crystal. A tiny kernel that grows out to a dazzling and colourful crystal. If I follow this analogy, grows a dungeon out of a gem/fancy rock then?

I can give it a shot I guess.

So I have the kernel, me, what can I use as the feedstock to grow?

I am surrounded by rock, can I somehow shape this to grow?

After all, most dungeons in the games I played were made out for gloomy stone corridors and chambers.

I push all of the mana that I collected outside of my body this time. Once it is there, I try to use it like a jackhammer in the hope I can chisel away the stone around me.

Alas, the mana just doesn't do anything.

Next, I try to permeate the rock around me with mana. Surprisingly enough, the rock soaks up the mana like a sponge, leaving me without mana again.

I lose it a bit. I tried so hard to get that mana, and now that freaking rock just took it all.

In anger, I try to forcefully reclaim my mana by grasping the mana that I can now feel lingering in the rock.

WIth a vicious and anger fueled pull, I wrench the mana from the rocks.

As my mana starts to flow back into me, I get another surprise.

The amount of mana I'm getting back is greater than the amount of mana I sent out.

Baffled, I sent out another pulse of mana to see what changed.

When the pulse returns, I'm surprised.

The mana infused rock is no more. I'm currently sitting in an open space that extends up to 2 centimetres around me.

Was that how far the mana managed to infuse the rock?

And what happened to the rock? I can sense no debris around me.

Did I turn the rock into pure mana? Can I absorb things by infusing them and then reabsorbing my used mana?

And what kind of rock was it even and would I gain a different amount of mana if I were to absorb a different kind of rock?

As soon as I think this last question, knowledge just pops up. Somehow, I know for certain that the rock around me is diorite and that this particular diorite is bluish-grey with the occasional green specks. I even seem to know what the molecular composition is. I even get the feeling that if I were to invest some of my mana, that I would be able to make some diorite out thin air. Magic!

Excited that I made some progress, I start spreading my mana again, infusing it in the diorite around me.

Same as last time, I pull the mana back towards me to reclaim it.

Even more mana flows back into me this time.

It seems that the more mana I invest, the more I gain, which is logical I suppose.

I repeat this cycle until I have hollowed out a space around me that's 3 metres wide, 3 metres deep and 3 metres high.

My body is currently sitting on top of a small pillar that I created by guiding the mana in a specific shape to only remove what I wanted to remove. Basically, I'm sculpting but instead of using a chisel, I use mana instead.

At this point, I gained so much mana, I'm basically bursting at my seams. I feel so energetic and pumped up, I could go super Saiyan at any point.

It is at this point that I receive another pop-up.

Congratulations on your achievement.

You created your very first room as a dungeon.

The mana you gained by doing this will be enough to raise you to the next level of dungeon.

To help you in this endeavour, you are granted a dungeon companion.

Based on your past experiences you gain the companion:

WIKI: A magical and sophont compendium with an endless amount of pages that knows all there is to know about dungeons.

His knowledge will expand whenever you gain a new level. Also, whatever you learn as a dungeon gets written down onto his pages.

Guard him well young dungeon. After all, knowledge is power.