Chương 26: Side Story 4: A Global Dungeon

In the crushing depths of the ocean, far out of sight of the sun above, a foreign mana rolled over the rocky floor, subtly changing it. From all directions it came, in a rapidly shrinking noose. The point it encircled was nothing special. Scattered nearby were the bones of the monstrous, nigh unimaginable creatures that had once dwelt in the deep, but at this point was naught but bare rock. If there was one thing special about it, it was simply its position; directly opposite Erryn's birthplace.

Erryn flexed her mana one final time, forging the last of the ocean floor into a part of herself. She had long since claimed the only large continent of the planet, and now she had claimed the oceans too. The entire surface of the world was a part of her body. It had taken time, but she was patient. Besides, there had been much to learn while she expanded. She had needed knowledge for the second phase of her plan, and now it could finally begin.

Mana gathered and coalesced, and that point—that boring, sterile rock—suddenly became far more. The rock cracked, and from it a meadow grew. Complex life. The first of it the world had seen outside of the ark for near a century. The stands of the plant waved in the slow current, far below the reach of the sun, desperately trying to filter non-existent nutrients from the sea. They would exist soon.

A fish, brown, wrinkled and bloated, darted out of the meadow, toothy maw snapping shut around a cloud of smaller life, none of which would have been visible to the naked eye even had the ocean's bottom been bathed in light. The grass lengthened, and more fish burst from it in a cloud. Other, stranger creatures spread their alien senses, taking stock of the nascent world in which they'd found themselves. Erryn's core brightened, the self-proclaimed mother giving her equivalent of a smile.

The people of the ark had been thorough, but even they hadn't visited the great chasms of the world-spanning seas. It didn't matter. She had learnt how their technology worked, and had taken bones and fossils and from them rebuilt all that had been lost. Sure, she had needed to, well, guess in places. It wasn't as if things had been perfectly preserved. Simpler life, that responsible for rot and decay, had survived the end, and over the decades and centuries had robbed the world even of dead flesh.

But Erryn was fairly sure she had the shapes right. Maybe not the colours, but this far under the seas, who would ever know? Back on the continent, what had previously been a sterile, brown and grey wasteland had turned into a sea of green. Grasses, bushes and trees sprouted everywhere, watered by heavy rains as the weather systems of the planet reasserted themselves.

It was already obvious that Erryn's placement had been optimistic; as the weather stabilised, it had become apparent that the rainfall in many areas wasn't sufficient to sustain the life Erryn had planted. That didn't matter, either. Things would flourish where they flourished, die off where they didn't, and Erryn would work with what was left. Rather, Erryn's thoughts were on the sea of green. As the wind blew through an eastern forest, the canopy rippled as if in waves.

Sunlight sparkled off the unsullied emerald leaves. An emerald sea. Wordplay. The slime to which she had foolishly granted a core would be proud. One of the members of the ark project—an elf by the name of Shawadrina—had waxed poetic about the forests. In her case, it was more about the sounds made by the wind as it blew through the branches, but there had been a cursory visual description in there too, and now that Erryn could see the sight for herself, she could understand the love the elves had for the trees.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. For the most part, this forest was thriving. It could be their new home. Erryn selected a patch in the greenest section, where the growth was strongest, and planted a new type of tree. A Lehibe. A tree of magic, capable of drawing mana from the earth and growing to impossible heights. The elves of old had learnt to direct their growth, applying mana pressure here or there to form overhangs, pathways and internal spaces.

They had built their homes directly into the trees. How much easier it was for Erryn, who could control all the mana of the world. First the one, then another, and soon there was a copse of them. In the midst of the Emerald Sea, the new home of the elves. The first seeds of what became the ark were planted by a human living on the border of a forest, communicating with an elf within.

In honour of that memory, Erryn looked to the western part of the forest, where the leaves had less colour and the greens had become muddied with browns as the thirsty trees failed to thrive. She selected a glade to be the home of the humans. Perfectly circular, tinted brown by drought, with tall coniferous walls, it had the appearance of a nest. The Emerald Nest, then, to pair with the Emerald Sea. Of course, the humans would need homes, too.

Stretching a bad joke further than she should have, she unashamedly made the name literal by constructing dwelling places out of emerald. And so it continued. Erryn built dwelling places for all the old races. To the south, where the greenery she'd planted had withered almost instantly in the dry volcanic ash, the demons would take back their territory of old. With no need to farm or hunt, the arid, desolate landscape was no disadvantage to them. To the west, where the landscape was flat, the centaurs.

The dwarfs could take back one of their former great cities, near the new Emerald Sea. To the north, landscape as vertical as the centaurs' was horizontal could be home to the winged races, and in the bay to its east, the mer. Of course, it would be long before any of these locations could be populated. With the haphazard placement of plants and animals, it would take time for the ecosystems of the continent to find their balance. Still, Erryn had much to occupy herself with while she waited.

Expanding her knowledge of the technology of the ark and the System they had built. Exploring pass-times like digging out the deepest dungeon she possibly could. She even began assimilating below the surface, finding new remains as she went. Open caves containing homes of dwarfs and dead dungeons. Ancient settlements, long since buried by the shifting soils. A village of beastkin, the conditions of the skeletons suggesting violent deaths.

They seemed to have made a final stand around a central statue, skeletons of women and children backed up against it, surrounded by a ring of men. A few human skeletons were mixed in, making the perpetrators of the massacre obvious. The dungeon core flickered as anger flooded Erryn once more. How many more examples of the depravities of the old worlds would she find? She took the statue and planted it in the middle of the Emerald Nest. The new beastkin would live there too, together with humans.

Side by side, working together, at peace. She only wished she could summon up the souls of the dead murderers to rub it in their faces. And so time passed. Her experimental dungeon exploded. Her slime developed what Erryn charitably described as personality issues. Emerald turned out to be a poor building material, on top of being mildly poisonous.

But despite all that, the ecosystem bloomed, and almost half a millennium after the kingdom of Soutso ended all complex life on the planet, the time had finally come for the intelligent races to open their eyes once more. The settlements she'd built so long ago had been kept in good repair, but she gave them another once over regardless, cleaning, repairing and stocking them with food and clothing.

And then, expending great effort, the mana of the continent collapsed, spinning like a whirlpool around seven distinct locations. Sucked up hungrily by all seven, the mana coalesced and was forged into something more. All over the world, those who were born of mana opened their eyes, seeing the world for the first time. And Erryn spoke.

"Greetings, my children, the firstborn of this new world. May you find happiness within it and live your lives in peace."