The Dungeon of Earth

The biggest thing that Nellie found within the new Outside territory was a naturally formed cave that was completely empty.

It was jagged, rough, and creviced enough to appear completely natural, about 70 centimetres long, 40 centimetres wide, and 35 centimetres tall at the longest, widest, and tallest points. Which Nellie didn’t really expect and kind of expected at the same time.

Truthfully, she didn’t really know what she was expecting. But seeing that natural way, the mixture of ice and rock formed to confine this space in the shape of a rocky and non-symmetrical kidney bean.

Very natural looking. Like a caver opened up, swallowed her, and closed back up again.

The System must have made even more extreme changes than the changing of continents. Nervously muttered Nellie as she began to think of everything that could have changed.

This was just more proof that everything was changed, not just herself and the Inside, but everything on, in, and probably around Earth changed like it.

The cave was completely empty of anything in her direct sight, but she could feel the buzz and the hum of what she could only assume were microorganisms.

Huh… I wonder why I knew that. Contemplated Nellie.

That knowledge flowed to her like something she had long forgotten, but what could she do? It made complete sense. Everything in the world had microorganisms on, in, or around it, so why would the System change Earth to be any different?

But it was strange. Nellie knew the microscopic organisms were there, but she couldn’t really feel or see them. It was only the slight vibration within the Outside territory that the thought flowed to her and made her realize that they were there. However, there was none in the Inside. It was like the cube removed all the microscopic organisms that would usually be there. Or at least when the System made her into a dungeon core, it didn’t add the microscopic organisms.

Nellie wanted to explore this deeply, but there were greater vibrations throughout the Outside that she wished to discover before she even thought of doing any experimentation of any sort.

She scoured every inch of her territory to find the slightly louder vibrations.

As Nellie scoured, she found three much smaller caves. The biggest is only ten centimetres high, with the widest part being around 11 centimetres. One of them even had a one-centimetre layer of water lying stagnant at the bottom of it. While some empty spaces were hidden within crevices or stone, they weren’t big enough for Nellie to consider them caves.

The dark blue ice and reddish-brown flecked dark grey stone mainly stayed the same as she studied all directions of the territory.

When Nellie began to study the upper portion of her territory, that was when things got interesting.

At the four-metre mark, at the top of her territory, the terrain started to change.

The reddish-brown flecked grey stone slowly became taken over by a dark grey and very grainy soil with thick and dense streaks of dark brown soil, and it had a dense, watery quality to it.

Within that soil and the few empty spaces made by and around the ice were microorganisms.

The microorganisms were humming to her, but a few spots hummed even more than the others.

The first was this tiny plant, just barely visible to her. It was half a millimetre long and 0.3 millimetre wide, with little grey-brown string and tiny hairs surrounding it. She found it at the very top edge of her territory, and while it was in her territory, Nellie knew that it wasn’t really hers. It was within a small, hidden little crevice under one of the chunks of ice. Just a centimetre tall and wide and only 5 centimetres long.

But it wasn’t hers yet.

No. It was living within her territory, but it wasn’t wholly hers.

Not truly. Not yet.

So Nellie did what she had done to make the territory hers. She broke off one of her purple sparks circulating strings, wrapped and looped them around her fingers, and connected them back into her nebula core.

Gently, she placed her hands around the little grey-brown string of unknown plant species and began to circulate the purple sparks through her hands.

Very quickly, the circulating purple sparks immersed the little grey-brown string of unknown plant, and it became entirely hers.

Aaaahhhh. Moaned out Nellie.

Just like when she began expanding, fully adding the little plant to her domain, to her territory, fulfilled a need that had been buzzing under her skin unnoticed. Until now.

And as much as she wanted to play around with the plant, name it, get to know it, the more significant humming sounds of bigger organisms around her territory were calling to her.

The next one that Nellie found was in one of the tiny crevices that had only about 9 millimetres of water in it, one so small that she couldn’t even call it a cave, and it was vibrating the greatest.

What she found surprised her.

There were a bunch of these tiny plants that just grew throughout the water.

The plants were tiny circles, about only a millimetre or two in width, with half a millimetre wide stems and roots that did not hook onto anything, just floated in the water. It was a pale green colour and seemed to just aimlessly drift throughout the available water.

The circular parts of the plant were ribboned and seemed to be the buoyant part of the plant. The cave was only 3 centimetres long, 2 centimetres wide, and half a centimetre tall. Still, the plants covered all of the available space on top of the water.

With cupped hands wrapped in purple sparked strings, Nellie submersed enough of her sparks into the plants to make them theirs.

As soon as she felt the plants become entirely hers, she began looking for the other large humming spots.

Out of all the more significant humming microorganisms or organism spots throughout her territory, she found two and couldn’t wait to see the rest.

And off she went to find the rest of them.

The next occurrence of humming was a small collection of 0.3 millimetres long, cylindrical dark grey eggs. They were buried in one of the looser soil sections, with only four eggs.

But unlike with the plants that she found, the eggs called to her in a different way. The eggs were attractive, especially to her instincts.

With delicate hands, she cupped the four eggs and embedded her sparks into them until they became entirely hers.

Nellie scoured the rest of her territory, but could not find any more clusters that hummed.

But she was happy with that.

The three organisms, two plants and one set of eggs of so far undetermined animals, calmed a set of instincts she could feel deep within her core.

But those instincts continued to nudge her to do something.

As Nellie sat in her Outer territory, just observing all that she had and pondering what else she needed to do, she had a thought.

What if I move some things?

It was a simple question, one that she would not have hesitated to even think about if she had her human body, but now she was a dungeon core, and that changed everything.

Instinctually, without even really realizing it, Nellie began to reach out to one of the small crevices above in the more dirt-abundant section of her territory. It was only 2 centimetres long, 1 centimetre wide, and 3 centimetres tall, and was immediately surrounded by the dark grey grainy soil. With no forethought whatsoever, she lightly touched the dirt walls and pushed.

The softest part of the wall slowly began to curve at her touch. With a bit more force, every part of the soil that her hand touched was forced back.

Oh boy, smirked Nellie.

And without another thought, she got to work.

Nellie figured out quite quickly how to grow the cave. There were two ways that she figured out how to do this. The first is to push and compact the soil of walls with force, and the second is to literally scoop out the soil.

While compacting the walls made them stronger and more robust, they were not all that effective in growing the size of the crevice.

So she dug.

Scoop by scoop, Nellie dug outwards. Scooping out the walls and discarding the loose soil in the empty space, she was able to increase the length of the crevice to 12 centimetres, making it into a cave. However, it came at a cost. As she displaced soil and increased the cave’s size, small cracks began to form along the ceiling of the cave. But it was an easy fix. All it needed was for Nellie to scoop up the discarded dirt and compress it into the ceiling. It was pretty easy, and it allowed her to continue to dig.

Nellie managed to make it to 50 centimetres before she hit some of the ice.

Wrapping her hands on the exposed ice, she yanked at it. But unlike her easy movement and manipulation of the surrounding soil, the ice refused to budge. No matter what she tried to do, it didn’t work. Trying to push, pull, and dig into the ice did nothing to move it. But that didn’t really matter to her at the moment.

Eh, I’ll figure it out later, thought Nellie as she began slowly digging downwards. She figured out how to shift, compact, and move the soil, so she knew that she’d be able to figure it out later.