With only three mana remaining after my latest upgrade, I'm in a bit of a pickle.

I could either wait for more mana to be passively collected or I could go dig out another tunnel and maybe even another room. Seeing as I really hate waiting, I'm stuck with digging. Since I'm supposed to be a proper dungeon, I might as well look like one, with multiple rooms and different paths leading to those rooms.

This raises a question though. What is considered to be a proper dungeon? what's its purpose?

These sound like perfect questions to ask my companion.

"hey WIKi, mind if I bother you again with some more questions?"

"I don't mind at all master, go ahead and ask them. I will try to answer them to the best of my ability"

"I appreciate that, WIKI. Things definitely would be a lot harder without you. My question is two-fold. Firstly, I wonder what a dungeon is according to this world and secondly, what its purpose is?"

"Oh, master, such deep and philosophical questions. I hope master will be satisfied with the answers for it is not a simple matter. As master might be aware, the very essence of a dungeon's being is its dungeon core. You might compare it to the brain of an organism while the rest of the dungeon, its corridors and its rooms, can be considered to be the physical body. Due to the nature of a dungeon, dungeons are uniquely well suited for manipulating and generating mana.

Because a dungeon needs to permeate and infuse a freshly dug room or corridor with mana, makes it so that the entirety of a dungeon is richer in mana than other places. This makes a dungeon an ideal place for people and other beings to get stronger. Along with the fact that your minions will respawn and that they are a good source of resources, makes it so that dungeons are quite liked and in most cases even protected. After all, a dungeon core can be considered to be a mana battery of some sorts.

There are some that would pay a lot of money for a dungeon core, no matter what level it is. Either to fuel their spells with or to craft it into some sort of powerful or even legendary weapon.

Now, as far as your purpose is, there's a slight difference between your purpose and that of a regular dungeon.

A dungeon's purpose is mostly to exist and to grow, although some would reason that their purpose also is to make others stronger and to give them loot. Your purpose, master, would most likely be somewhere along those lines, although, I assume you can mostly do whatever you want as long as you don't stray too far away from the general purpose of a dungeon."

"this is..., a lot to take in. Anyway, thanks WIKI."

So, what do I want my purpose in this life to be? What are my goals? Man, this is something I can't handle right now.

Let's go with short-term to midterm goals for now.

Short term goals: expand my dungeon so my core is safer. To do this, I will need to expand, maybe eventually go down a few floors. I will need to populate the floors with various monsters, preferably with a wide variety of creatures to make things more interesting.

Midterm goals: Science and/or magical experimentation? create a body for myself?

These definitely look doable. And to start with the short-term goal, I need to dig. Hurrah!

With a basic idea in my head about how I want my first floor to look like, I get to it.

First of all, I set about creating two corridors that curve out a bit before coming back together. It's my intention to create another room in which they will converge.

I'm about done with the first of the corridors when WIKI gives me the mental equivalent of an air raid alarm.

"So sorry master, but I needed a way to get your attention, something has happened in the core room that requires your attention!" WIKI not quite screams with anxiety.

I shift my attention back towards my core room to see what has gotten WIKI's panties in such a twist.

Puzzled, I scan my room but so far, I don't see anything different really.

There are my leopards just taking a nap. A small mound of snow has formed underneath the hole in the ceiling.

The fact that my leopards are taking a nap is assurance enough for me that there are no intruders that try to destroy of kidnap me. Sooooo..., what made WIKI react like that?

Wait a minute though, I haven't been digging long enough for a file of snow to be formed. And shouldn't the pile of snow be automatically absorbed and converted to mana?

With my curiosity piqued, I take a look at the mound of snow. At first look, I don't see anything weird about the pile.

It is only with a closer look that I see a couple of toes sticking out of the snow.

Slightly panicking, I turn my awareness to my two leopards and order them to dig out whoever is underneath all of that snow. In very short order, a slender and poorly dressed woman is revealed. The moment she's free of the snow, she starts to severely shiver while she looks around with haunted and frantic eyes. Her eyes slowly close as her consciousness fades. I cast another look around, looking for anything that might keep her warm.

My sight falls upon my leopards again. With another mental command, I order them to lie close to the unconscious woman, in the hope that they can keep her warm.

With the immediate threat of dying from exposure taken care of, I can turn my attention to other things.

Such as looking for a way to make her a bit more comfortable, either by getting her something to wear or by somehow raising the temperature of the room. The easiest way would be to start a fire but seeing as I'm lacking anything to burn right now, this option is off the table for now.

"WIKI, how would I go about using mana as a spell of some sorts? I need some way to start and fuel a fire or a way to heat up things without using combustibles since I don't have any to my disposal."

"Well, master, a spell is just a spellcaster's way to summon and manipulate mana. Due to the unique nature of a dungeon, you can manipulate the mana freely, without the need for silly things like chants, dances or sacrifices. Just picture whatever you want to do and gather the necessary mana for it. Although might I suggest you find an alternative to just creating a mana fueled fire? It will use your mana at a ridiculous rate."

An alternative way to create heat huh?

Since I have no idea how conventional magic would handle that, I will need to fall back upon good old science.

After all, what is heat? How is heat created? What gives off heat?

If I want to heat her up, I will need to create something that gives off heat.

Back in the olden days, well, the earth olden days, they would heat up rocks, put them in a pan and put them underneath the blankets if it got really cold. Seeing as that rocks have an excellent heat retention and that they slowly give away their heat, should mean that they will do fine with keeping her warm.

So, I gather up some of the mana I got from digging and visualise and conjure up a couple of rocks. I make sure to smooth them and give them an egg shape so there are no rough edges.

I then focus on one of them and use the tiniest amount of mana to try to make its atoms start vibrating a bit faster.

With just the tiny bit of mana used, the ambient temperature of the rock goes up by a few degrees Celsius.

With my first proper use of magic an astounding success, I set about heating up all of the rocks that I created.

I make sure to make them quite hot but not hot enough to actually burn her. When they are all heated up, I surround her with them and even put some of them on top of her and underneath whatever little amount of clothes she has to make sure they don't fall off if she happens to move.

With her being out of danger from dying of hypothermia, I can now focus on the weird circumstances in which she arrived in.

What would a young woman like her be doing in these mountains? And with barely any clothes on even? From the looks on her, she's not some magical race with a immunity to cold or something like that.

I take a closer look at her. She has long black hair that looks quite badly kept and greasy. Her wrists and ankles are lined with scuff marks and look raw even in some places, as if she was bound for quite a while and tried to escape.

I can only assume she was a prisoner somewhere and escaped, only to fall into the hole in my ceiling.

The only way to verify my assumptions is to ask her when she wakes up.

Hopefully, she doesn't take too long though.