When Gorm first regained conciseness only ten years had passed. He was still in the room that trapped him for over a century. The only difference he could find was that the carvings on the walls were glowing in a soft green. He further discovered that the oak tree, that was now him, encased the formerly suspended Mana Crystal. It was as if it was now a part of him.

  Before he had time to come to terms with his new situation, he suddenly felt a gigantic force draining his mana. He tried to fight back but he only managed to slow the draining. His only option now was to absorb enough mana to offset the draining.

  Thus Gorms years as a mana battery started, or at least that was how he felt. At any point in this time, he was trying to overcome the equilibrium, just to always fail. With no time to find out why or how this was happening, because he had to always concentrate on not slipping up, he didn’t notice the changes that happened around him.

  Due to the constant absorbing and releasing of mana his body, the oak, was becoming wider and lusher. It now seemed too big to fit into the room.

  The other, more important change was that the holes started to give off dim light.

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  As the years flew by light in the holes grew brighter and brighter. One fateful day roughly 500 years after Gorm first woke up again, he felt the drain slowing down.

  ‘It’s stopping? Finally, I thought I was going insane!’ For the first time in, what he felt were ages, he could think about something except absorbing mana.

  ‘It’s finally over!’ Gorm sensed that no mana was drained anymore. It was as if a weight had been taken from his shoulders. Like he could breathe again after staying underwater for too long.

  Now he only wanted to find out what all this mana draining was all about. The first thing Gorm could think of as a reason was that transferring his soul into a tree needed a lot of mana. After checking his body, he couldn’t find any abnormalities that would explain the drainage. Shifting his perception to the outside, he discovered light blue rectangles floating in his vision.

  Gorm knew what a dungeon was, but he couldn’t make sense of those floating rectangles.

  After reading through them repeatedly he assumed that the mana drainage had something to do with the floor creation. He also figured out that this wasn’t a normal process.

  The reason for his 500 years of torture had to lie in the room he was in. But that was still no explanation for the 46 new floors. Most probably it was the holes, that was the only reasonable thing Gorm could think of. Now he had to find out how.

  Gorm tried expanding his perception beyond his prison room and it was surprisingly easy as if he was reclaiming something he never knew he had but always was part of him. While keeping expanding he investigated where the holes were leading.

  It was like he had a map in his mind, he could see everything his, still expanding, perception touched. The holes were the entrances of a network of branching thin tubes, which were like blood vessels in the mountain.

  A few minutes of nonstop expanding perception it covered the entirety of the mountain with the exception of a gigantic cavity right in the middle of the mountain and over his current position. It wasn’t like before that he could expand without any effort. No, he had to support the expansion with mana.

  Gorm felt like he was pushing against a bubble, he had the feeling that if he could get it to burst something good would happen. So he kept pushing with all his might. When he nearly exhausted all his mana, it suddenly gave in.

  Gorm felt dizzy, he could perceive that everything in the large cave was a part of him. But he couldn’t understand how that was possible. It shouldn’t be possible, at least when he applied any knowledge he had.

  And then there were these floating rectangles. He felt a new one appear when burst the bubble.

  The older rectangles had been quite helpful, despite the fact that he couldn’t fully understand them, so he read the new one carefully. It described what just happened quite accurately.

  He still didn’t know what to do with these dungeon option selections. Where should he redeem them?

  Gorm was stunned. ‘Are these boxes alive?’

  After waiting for an answer for a few minutes without anything happening, he made the decision to view his status. Not out of interest, no, to prove that he wasn’t imagining things.

  ‘Status’ he thought.

  The system got his name right but was about it. Gorm was close to 4000 years old, and had a major affinity with earth and nature was only a minor one.

  But he could still explain them, maybe it had been 500 years since he fused this the oak tree. This fusion could have strengthened his nature affinity. Nature was a top-tier affinity, made up of wood, water, earth, light, and air. Light, on the other hand, was a mixture of fire and air. In addition, everyone with a major nature affinity had a minor affinity with life and death.

  This could explain where his earth affinity went because as soon as someone gained an affinity higher than the seven basic element ones, one couldn’t use them individually anymore. Unless they weren’t included in the higher tier affinity. And one person couldn’t have more than one major affinity. That was what made the nature affinity so special, it was composed out of every element except darkness. Because it always came with a minor affinity for life and death, which both where a combination of every element except for darkness and light respectively. Gorm now could control every element.

  The rest of the floating window needed a bit more explanation. Accordingly, Gorm concentrated on the things he wanted to know more about.

  ‘So those points are like money?’ Gorm had never used money, all his transactions were trades of things of roughly equal value. But he didn’t think of this as an issue. He only hoped he could easily distinguish between what’s a good and what’s a bad deal.

  Gorm made the decision that he would first try to understand the system and then build the first floor, before using his DPs.

  He hoped he would unlock some useful abilities and later specialties.