My second life as a dungeon

When I woke up I didn’t recognise my surroundings, at first I was too groggy from exhaustion to react but as I slowly woke up I started to panic as I didn’t see any of my brothers or sisters around me. The panic was made worse when I looked down at my body to find that it didn’t look anything like it should have, even after the evolution. I didn’t know what to do so I just did what my instincts told me to do.

That was to find the nearest corner and hide in it. Luckily the room I was in was small and had plenty of hiding spaces. Now that I was able to see the whole room and see that I wasn’t in any danger I started to calm down letting the adrenaline leave my body. At the same time a new set of memories rushed into my head as I started to remember who I was before I saw that strange screen.

My name was Liz, I had been reincarnated as a dungeon and I was in love with a runaway I found called Val. As these three facts went through my head I stopped being a random kobold that had just defeated a wyvern and became Liz the reincarnated dungeon that had just succeeded her first evolution trial. Although I felt like the trial had changed me in some ways that would probably stay with me for a very long time.

This realisation worried me greatly because if just a single trial could affect me so deeply then who would I be after a dozen trials, or hundreds. Before I could think about it too much I realised that I had gone a full week without seeing Val and missed her so I got out of the corner I was hiding in and went to go find her. It was easy as she was in the garden practising her magic as she almost always was.

As soon as I closed the door she stopped what she was doing and turned to face me before greeting me ‘Oh, hey. Where have you been? When I woke up yesterday you were gone and I couldn’t find you anywhere.’ Hearing that I had been gone for only a day to her surprised me but before I could think about the ramifications of that I had to explain myself.

‘Oh, um, sorry.’ I started, a bit embarrassed of my short-sightedness. ‘I was in a trial to evolve my kobolds and didn’t think about how long it might take. I should have told you what I was doing.’

‘Oh its fine.’ Val said, calming me down. ‘I hadn’t started panicking yet as I know how you can get absorbed into your projects. Admittedly if you had been gone for another day I would have so it’s good you returned when you did. Anyway, how did it go? It must have been quite a long trial if you were gone for a full day.’

‘Oh, it was quite long. Strange too, it started with me waking up as a kobold with no memory of my past…’ Over the next hour I told Val all about the trial and other than having to go back to clarify a few things I think I did a good job. At the end Val asked me what the new monsters were like which made me realise that in my panic I never got around to looking at the new pattern and had four screens waiting for me. 

As I looked through the changes I was pleased with the results. I had expected they would gain fifteen extra attribute points thanks to going from an E-tier monster to a D-tier one. That by itself plus being able to use them at higher levels would have barely made the trial worth doing but they had each gained two skills. All of them gained fire resistance which made them slightly harder to kill in certain scenarios but the main thing I was excited about were the unique skills they had all got.

The warriors got [Dragon’s heart] which had two main effects, firstly if any kobold within 10 metres were under the effect of any mental spell, like paralysis or frightened, then the warrior could activate this ability to give them a higher chance of breaking out of it. The second effect would temporarily boost all the affected kobold’s speed letting them attack twice in a short period of time.

Next the archers got [Disabling shot] which let them spend a chunk of mana to make their next shot cripple their enemy for the rest of the fight unless someone healed them. It wasn’t obviously powerful like the warrior’s new ability but it fit the kobold’s way of fighting perfectly and if it was done at the right time then it could alter the course of the whole fight.

Finally the druids got [Empower Spell] which doubled the strength of the druid’s next spell. It was exactly the same as what I had in the trial so I already knew how powerful it could be. Unfortunately it had such a long cooldown that it most likely could only be used once every fight. 

I explained all of this to Val while she continued to practise her magic. Eventually I ran out of stuff to talk about so I just sat there and watched her for a while. It was strange, in my previous life I had met a lot of people that I lost contact with over the years for multiple reasons but even after not seeing them for years I never missed them as I had missed Val after only a single week.

Eventually Val grew tired so we went back inside so that Val could read one of her books, meanwhile I had a few questions about the trial so I spent the rest of the day answering them. The first question was why were the kobolds sapient, as far as I had been told the way that mana forms into monsters makes it so that they are completely ruled by their instincts to hunt other creatures to absorb their mana and get stronger. 

The answer was quite simple, the trial was a simulation of a different dimension where monsters weren’t created from mana and so were capable of sapience. Even then having my consciousness forced into the kobold drastically changed how it functioned which is why I was confused when seeing my sister be eaten caused me to react so strongly. 

My next question was why I lost all my memories and had them replaced by fake ones. This one was a little more nuanced but it essentially boiled down to some trials would be too easy if you had access to all of your knowledge so they would be locked. For example I wasted a full day before even accepting the trial and then I spent most of it learning how to cast spells when I already know how to.

During my research I found that these sorts of trials were extremely rare so hopefully I wouldn’t have to go through that again any time soon. My final question was why had only a single day passed when I was in the trial for a full week. Again the answer was quite simple, because some trials can take an extremely long time the gods decided to make it so that the trials would exist in a realm where time travelled faster by a factor of seven.

With my questions answered I went to sleep but while I was in the shower I thought I noticed some scales growing in patches around my body. But by the time I realised what I had seen and looked back all the patches had gone, only skin or fur in its place. I chalked it up to being tired and just went to sleep like normal.

The next morning I decided to do the next two evolution trials but this time I left a note in the kitchen telling Val what I was doing. The first trial I wanted to do was to evolve the slime as I felt like that would be easier and shorter than the goblin trial. As I had done before I told the system open evolution trial for Slimes which opened the same notification as before and after paying the 10k DP I entered my next trial. 

This time instead of fainting and losing all my memories I was just transported into the trial as I felt my body transform into a standard slime. At first I thought the trial arena didn’t have any light in it but I quickly realised that as I was a slime I didn’t have any eyes and instead saw things through the mana around me. Since I wasn’t used to sensing mana everything around me appeared black but before I could work on figuring out my new sense a notification popped up in front of me that I could still read somehow.

As I read the trial I felt apprehension as I hadn’t expected to have to go through eleven full fights and having to fight five slimes at the same time sounded incredibly hard even if I did have the level advantage. I was especially worried about the tier two magic slimes as I had no idea how to cast spells using any of those elements.

I didn’t have too long to worry about it though as the slimes were going to be spawned soon, in the few seconds I had I quickly looked through my statsheet so that I had a better idea of what I was doing.

It was exactly as I expected it to be, my strength and health were astronomical but all the other stats suffered for it, luckily I didn’t have any skills that required mana so it didn’t matter if my mind stats were so low. The only complaint I had was the dexterity was so low, especially since my plan would make it pivotal, hopefully my high level would make it so that that didn’t matter too much.

Either way I would find out soon if my plan would work or not as I sensed the other slimes being spawned in around me so I mentally prepared myself for the fight to come.