It watched as a black box unfolded, displaying all the information its status held.

  Looking over its status, it instantly became dejected when it saw that it had only acquired two points of Mana from the Pixie. It was further dispirited by its Integrity instinctively knowing that if its integrity had reached zero, it would've perished in a similar way to the Pixie it killed.

  Moving to look at its abilities, it was instantly bewildered seeing abilities its instinct never told it about, except for Mana Sense and Mana Drain which it had already used before.

  It began thinking about the first listed ability, Appraisal, and started racking its mind for any information it could dig up, only for its query to be swiftly answered by a black box.

  Seeing Appraisal's description, it started appraising everything it didn't know about instinctively within its status.

  Finishing the appraisal spree, it relished the new found knowledge about its abilities and immediately set out to see the world around itself for the first time.

  It fumbled, briefly trying to activate Mana Sight, until it thought of using Mana Sense again, but this time it delved farther into the Mana surrounding it than it had using Mana Sense. This enabled it to see details about its location like the rugged stone pedestal it lay upon, and the rest of the gloomy cave which greeted its sight for the first time.

  Glancing around, it was met with round, lead-grey stone walls surrounding it from every direction, with heaps of the same rock, spread throughout the room. It also noticed some type of red things jutting out from cracks in the floor.

  Further examining its surroundings led it to discover a small arm sticking out from beneath one of the piles of rocks, making it recollect the voice it had heard that was cut off by a loud cracking and rumbling noise when it first awoke. It quickly realized that this must've been its Pixie, which got crushed by rocks falling from the ceiling before it could form the link. Drawing its sight away from the crushed Pixie, it spotted another Pixie corpse lying at the base of its pedestal, which it concluded was the one it had drained of Mana. What really caught its attention, however, was the crooked gap in the wall three meters beyond its location.

  As it began moving its sight towards the gap, its exploration was halted by searing pain flaring in its mind and the appearance of two new black boxes.

  As the pain in its mind faded away, it felt frustrated and confused at the minuscule influence range.

  The inborn memories it had told it that its influence should have been around fifty meters in radius and not the measly two and half meters it currently had.

  Thinking more about this, it grew worried because it knew that to increase its influence it would need to soak the area around itself in Mana until the area became an extension of itself.

  Just the fact it only had two points of Mana made it clear how bad its situation currently was, and it would need to spend quite a bit just to expand its influence to a more reasonable size.

  Placing the worry about its influence at the back of its mind, it focused on the second box which asked it to select a starting race. Being momentarily confused about what it meant, the Core appraised the black box which cleared its confusion.

  Reading this, it decided to appraise its first available option, excited to see what it would learn about it.

  It didn't know how smart or what, goblins even were, but it felt to be able to go from ten to thousands in days was undoubtedly impressive. Not getting ahead of itself; however, it appraised the second option, wondering whether these Trogs were going to be better than these Grobs.

  Looking at their descriptions, it felt like Trogs and Grobs were complete opposites, with Grobs being stupid and fast breeders, while Trogs were smart but slow breeders. Even the description mentioned them fighting each other. Still being unsure of its choice, it appraised its next option.

  It only glanced over the information about Goblins, finding them not worth its first pick, and moved to appraise the next option.

  Although Gnolls were more interesting than Goblins, they lived in different environments than it currently resided in, and it wasn't taking any risk choosing a race which might not perform well within its cave. It didn't discount them for when and if it ever reaches a point where it can expand beyond the cave it's currently in. That, however, could be far in the future as it couldn't even explore the rest of the cave due to its tiny area of influence over its surroundings.

  Before it could proceed to appraise the next option, it felt something enter its influence which immediately grabbed its attention. It instantly spotted the offender, a giant four-legged mass of fur moving towards the Pixie corpse. It watched as the beast snuffled at the body before deciding it was good enough, and opened its maw wide as it devoured it in a single bite. The beast chewed loudly as the sound of tiny bones snapping filled the room, its eyes scanning for more remains that might be left. It didn't take long for its sight to land on the pedestal which held a black stone with bizarre runes and diagrams covering its surface; the Core had already blanked out in terror of being eaten by this monstrous beast, which eyed it with curiosity before turning away and squeezing back through the gap leading out of the room.

  Calming itself down, as it watched the beast leaving the room it quickly appraised this creature which had given it its first taste of pure terror.

  Reading over its description, it felt afraid at this beast's power. It determined its fear was justified when it saw the bear's rating, as none of the selectable races had a higher beginning rating than it, except for the Mana Leeches.

  Feeling more hurried than before, it returned to appraising the next option on the race list.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The Kobolds interested it, leading it to appraise the Drake bloodline with intriguing results.

  Its description and rating left it amazed and saddened that it couldn't acquire this creature to deal with the menace likely living beyond the gap in its room. Kobolds still held its primary interest for now as it moved to appraise the next option.

  Orcs interested it mainly because they seem like they could deal with the Bear, but its confidence wasn't too high for them regardless. It was curious to see what the brown-skins had to offer and quickly appraised them.

  It wasn't very impressed with the brown-skins because it didn't know how strong humans were, just that goblins can easily cause problems for them, Trogs nearly had the same intelligence, and Gnolls tended to avoid them. It swiftly discarded Orcs from its mind and proceeded to appraise the next option.

  Mana Leeches! It held great optimism towards them for being able to acquire Mana for it, but felt they might be too easily killed due to their small size. It placed Mana Leeches high in the possible selection list just for their ability to acquire Mana.

  Looking at the list so far, It placed Mana Leeches first in its mind, followed by Kobolds, then Grobs for their swarming capabilities, the rest didn't really interest it beyond Gnolls for their coordination in combat. Moving on, the core decided to appraise Demons next.

  Finding little information, it appraised the four starting demons for more details.

  Seeing Imps and Fiends appear in the same box felt bizarre to it, but it disregarded it and continued scanning the rest of the Demons.

  It was slightly interested in Satyrs for their physical strength. However, it wasn't even sure whether they could fit within its cave without being hunched over the entire time. As for Succubi, they were outright overlooked by it for being useless in the current situation.

  As it progressed onto its next appraisal, it heard roaring reverberate through the gap, and sounds of a battle taking place, causing the entire cave to quake.

  It grew worried the room might collapse, but its worrying didn't last long as the fighting rapidly ended, leaving the cave once again shrouded in its usual silence.

  After being reminded of the fact the Bear still lived within the cave, it moved to appraise its next option, glad that it was almost through all of them.

  Feeling irritated at whatever created this useless description, it tried appraising the skeleton, zombie, and ghoul, but got even less information than the box already gave, so it appraised the only other intriguing thing mentioned in the box.

  The sight of its appraisal being blocked shocked it solely because it had no idea appraisal could be felt and prevented! Hoping it didn't anger whoever Aruba is, it moved on to its final option.

  It hoped the Wisp's description wasn't as useless as the Undead one.

  The fact that wisps could use basic spells made it curious as to what those were, and whether they were strong enough to kill the Bear. It didn't hold much hope, however, as it being listed as frail made it likely to be supremely effortless to slay.

  Seeing all the options, it reflected over its most likely choices, being Mana Leeches, Kobolds, and Grobs. The other choices were thought provoking, but in the end, they weren't useful in its current situation. It finally settled on the Mana Leeches, in large part due to the fact they could get the Mana it desperately needed as there was little to no Mana in the air, making near impossible for it to absorb anything from its surroundings.

  "Yes."

  After finalizing its choice, more black boxes spread out before it, making it wonder when they were going to leave it alone.

  Watching as the final box faded away, it decided to look over its status once again before throwing itself at fixing the current situation.

  The sight of its integrity recovering by one point made its spirit rise, helping it feel ready to tackle its predicament.