Chương 2

-0-0-0-0-0- Uncharted Island, Unknown Ocean Night of Day 3, Week 1 -0-0-0-0-0- Leaving my core just inside the mouth of the cave was a terrible idea; I knew that. After some time observing the mana streams in the sky around the island, I could see the natural rivers it formed and the various tributaries that fed into the stream that led to my core. More concerningly, the stream was growing. Some of the dungeon fiction I'd read had dungeons as nature's terraformers, passively healing the land.

Sometimes they would refine or vomit mana into the land around them. What I seemed to be doing was the exact opposite. I was a mana drain, taking mana from the air. I was coating the inside of the cave, growing my core with it, and adding it to my ever-growing rings. Now that the process had started, I wasn't sure it could be stopped. The unaligned mana in the sky was naturally drawn to me. And I knew this drain would continue to grow, even if I kept it to the minimum level I possibly could.

There was an unstoppable momentum to it. If there are sapient beings on this planet, and if they can sense mana, they would eventually notice the streams moving towards me. Thus, I needed to build defenses. I pondered spreading across the island's surface or spreading through the ocean but eventually dismissed the ideas. I had a chance here that I'd never even thought possible. I'm going to build a Dungeon. Shifting the sand beneath my pedestal, I caused it to glide deeper into the cave.

I stopped a distance away from the back wall, a point that the sand in this cave still reached. Feeling the back of the cave, I pushed at the mana that had absorbed into the walls, willing the rock to part. With a crack, a black line formed by the ground, water rushing in as it slowly grew wider. Hmm. Not quite what I wanted. I stopped pushing, but the crack remained. I willed a tendril of mana to leave my rings and directed it to crash into the crack.

As the stone became saturated by my mana, I willed the rock to crumble. I kept an image in my head of an irregular triangular tunnel, sand enough to stand on without getting wet on the left, with a channel of water to the right. And, just as I pictured it, the cave wall crumbled into sand, which rushed past my pedestal and out into the ocean. Foot by foot, my mental image became a reality. After having carved the tunnel for a good 10 yards, I had used all the mana I'd thrown at the wall.

I directed the leftover sand into the water, letting it settle under the waves. This wasn't as long as I wanted it to be, but I stopped before I could continue. I had an idea. With renewed purpose, I directed a stream of mana into the tunnel. Some small parts carved the walls to look more natural, while the majority slammed into the back wall and drilled in, constant waves of black sand flowing back out. Within another hour, I'd formed a cavern about half the size of a football stadium.

One half was sandy, while the other was a deep-ish pool. The roof was littered with stalactites, pointing down like knives in the dark and making ripples in the almost-still water. And whoo-boy. It was dark in here. I need some thematic lighting. So I had a cave. A nice big cave. What did I want to do with it? Well, I had a plan. Unfortunately, I didn't have any glowworms, so I needed an alternative lighting source.

Strictly I didn't need light since the cave was my body, and I knew every square inch of stone like it was the back of my hand. Not that I had one. It's a metaphor, anyway. I want my new home to look nice. Was that so bad? That leads me to my next experiment with mana. To my 'vision,' individual motes of mana are specks that glow, but not in the 'light' sense. It had some strange Fluorescence that I could see easily, but normal creatures like the seagull couldn't.

Thus, I want to find a way to make visible light with my mana. Experiment one: Clumps. I formed a sconce to cradle my potential light, which looked like a hand grasping out of the wall next to my entrance. What? My pedestal was a hand, and I knew how to make hands. They were easy. Familiar. Next, I took about a golf-ball-sized clump of mana and moved it to sit within the fingers of the sconce. It did nothing but continue to be a ball of mana. Alright then. I guess I have to catalyze it somehow.

Perhaps by spinning it around incredibly quickly? No. Radiance? No, that only makes it shed mana. At a decent rate, too, so that's something to remember. Okay, back to square one. Light is caused by electrons jumping from higher to lower energy levels, which generates a photon. It's usually caused by resistance to the flow of electricity, fusion, or a sufficiently exothermic reaction, like combustion.

There might also exist a 'light mana,' but I haven't encountered 'conceptual' mana yet, only my own 'claimed' mana, 'unclaimed' mana in the air, and the Gull's mana. Speaking of which, he's fine. He's eating a fish right now. Mana-fire sounds highly hazardous, and I don't think attempting to form electricity is a good idea right now. Though fusion seems like the most dangerous option... fusing motes of mana together sounds like the easiest thing to accomplish. Let's try it, then. Experiment Two: Mana Suns.

With a flex of will, I caused the mana in the ball to crush inwards, effectively creating an artificial gravity. Hmm. Not enough. I directed more mana into the ball, feeling more and more like I was making a bomb. The 'gravity' grew and grew until suddenly I felt like the mana was going to explode outwards, an internal pressure suddenly existing. I forced the mana to stay within the ball and watched as the roiling, compressed mana twisted and turned on itself. Then something clicked, and it happened.

From within the ball came a radiating pressure and an equal pull that kept the pressure in balance. In the star's center, I could see a crystal come into being, the mana-star's core analogue. Could this eventually become a mana crystal? Right now, it was a tiny ball, but I'd keep an eye on it over the next few hours /weeks to track its growth. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

From within the fingers of my Hand-Sconce, a small sun of ghostly teal light shone. The light filled the mouth of my cave, throwing shadows and creating water mosaics on the ceiling to join the moonlight. The color was strange, the same shade as my core. Was this the color of my mana? Would everything I make with mana be this color? Either way, It's bright. Incredibly bright. It might even be too bright. Like real stars, this mana star had a minimum mana/mass requirement, meaning it had a minimum possible size.

Unfortunately, I couldn't use this everywhere in my dungeon because even its smallest size was far too large to fit in the small hallways I envisioned. Thankfully it also seemed relatively stable. Its outsides rotated slowly, and that speed ramped up quickly the closer you got to the crystal at its core. It was also a fucking beacon. Sitting as it was, oversized compared to the sconce I had made for it, the light it radiated could probably be seen all the way to the horizon!

This could not stay on the outside of my dungeon. I am nowhere near ready for anyone to know I'm here. I have no traps! No Monsters! No defenses whatsoever! When attempting to move the small star, I found it incredibly easy. Then again, this was composed entirely of my own mana; I shouldn't be surprised. I directed the giant ball of mana to float through my entrance, which I had to expand slightly to get the tiny star through. I brought the sand back and shrunk the entrance back down afterward.

I formed two large hands to cradle the star on the ceiling in the middle of the cavern. The fingers cradled it like a pair of hands warmed by a fire, directing the light down and allowing the water's mosaics to fill the shadowed cave roof. So I have a cave leading into a cavern and light to fill the cavern. Now, it's time for part three! Monsters and Critters to inhabit and defend me. For this, I need my good friend Gull, the seagull.... He's sleeping...... Alright. I'll wait till morning for that.

In the meantime, let's make more caverns! -0-0-0-0-0- The Dungeon, Unknown Island, Unknown Ocean Dawn of Day 4, Week 3 -0-0-0-0-0- I... may have gotten caught up in construction fever. I now possessed around a mile of twisting, growing, and shrinking passages, with four large, spacious caverns along its length. I had also been struck by inspiration about halfway through the week and carved a small and entirely underwater set of caves for my fish to live in.

They connected to all the deepest points of the ponds in the cave system. I also had one tunnel which led to a point under the waterline, in the cliff wall next to my cave, to let fish in and out. It's been... about a week? I think that's right. Either way, the sun dawned over the calm ocean like a shimmering jewel on a velvet cushion. I assume. I can't see it since my cave faces west, but I can see morning's arrival.

I was initially going to use Gull to collect some animals for me to use, but over my week of digging, a fair number of small creatures had wandered in. They'd made themselves at home in my caverns and the water that flowed through and between them. Each organism within me gets a blast of mana, and they became extensions of my will. My new creatures include dozens of fish of various species, sand-dwelling insects, mites and flies, and a couple of tiny crabs the size of a rectangular eraser.

The fish, I don't recognize. Then again, I wasn't particularly obsessed with the ocean back on earth, so I didn't expect to recognize them. I had breeding pairs of all of them, so I moved them into small 'breeding chambers' connected to the underwater system and set them to making more of themselves. I did the same for the crabs but directed them to a half-n-half chamber, where half of the chamber's floor is above the waterline.

I singled out a particularly large specimen in my first cavern and told him to stay put. It was time for another experiment. I had a tiny crab, but it needed to be bigger if I wanted it to be worth anything as a defender. As it was now, it couldn't even cut a pinky toe off. So, I focused on my crab and got to work. First, I just pushed mana into him to see what would happen. Much like with my own core, I quickly reached a point where the crab's magical nervous system, its 'magic circuits,' felt 'full.'

But nothing else happened. It was now a particularly mana-charged crab. So, I pushed my intent into the mana. Grow. Get Bigger. Immediately, the mana started being absorbed by the crab's flesh. The crab began to stagger, suddenly disoriented. Over the next hour, the crab grew. From the size of an eraser to a palm with fingers splayed. Alright, I now had a bigger crab. Nice to know that I could make animals bigger with mana. It still wasn't big enough yet, though. What next... Hmm. Perhaps mana cores?

They're generally a staple of fantasy literature and are often the determiner of monsterdom. Once again, I flooded his system with mana. The crab's male, by the way. I won't name it until I know it won't explode into gore. Now it's time for some speculation. In theory, animals exist in the wild with some mutated and warped by natural mana, much like my crab; unnaturally large for its species.

Animals accumulated this mana naturally by eating smaller organisms and their mana; I had observed this with Gull eating some fish. Once the mana in them reached some nebulous point, something had to happen. I didn't give the crab a chance to naturally do what it would have by forcing the mana in him to make him grow. So, this time, I poured in mana until I could add no more and left it like that. I withdrew from the crab's mind and mana and waited, watching.

After a couple of hours of saturation and some exploration of my dungeon, testing its new size, the crab fell unconscious on the beach of the second cavern. (Sized identically to the first, third, and fourth caverns.) I watched, entirely focused and fascinated, as the mana condensed down into a solid crystal in the middle of the crab, next to his tiny heart. His new Monster Core. Soon after, the newly created monster woke and moved on with his life, with a few differences.

He now passively absorbed mana from the air, much as I did. I assume this was 'mana regeneration.' He now also moved with focused purpose, as opposed to before, where he seemed to have just been wandering. He made his way through the entire dungeon until he found himself in my core room, a small chamber behind the final cavern, an arena-like space I intended to be the boss room. After looking up at me for a minute, he bowed. It was, undeniably, a bow.

The crab spread his claws, leaned forward, and lifted his back half higher off the sand. Well... I have to make you into a true monster with dedication like that. I reached into his head and sent him a pleased feeling. I quickly diverted a stream of mana off my ever-thicker rings, which now looked more like a black hole's accretion disk than Saturn's rings. The crab clacked his claws, and I got a vague sense of joy back through our connection when the mana reached him.

The mana was quickly absorbed into his core, which began giving off its own internal glow. Along with the mana, I sent the mental image of a giant crab. One claw was enlarged into a shield, and the other elongated and sharpened, yet both still usable as claws. Its shell was littered with spikes and pits, thick and rugged. The armor on its legs extended to cover the joints but still allowed quite a bit of movement and a high degree of agility.

Thinner, but no less impressive, armor on its underside; to cover that potential weakness. The color of its shell was also altered, a splotchy dark grey to match the cavern walls. I felt awe from the small crustacean, then an impressive resolve. It took most of my stored mana, but the crab grew just as I had envisioned over the next two hours. His claws adjusted, and his armor thickened as planned. His shell, already a greyish brown, shifted to match the grey stone of the walls.

The most significant change, of course, was his size. The whole time, he was growing. He grew from the size of a splayed palm to the size of a dog, then a small pony. I cautioned him from growing larger at the moment, as he would be unable to leave my core room if he were any larger. He sent back a feeling of agreement, tinged with a small amount of disappointment, and his growth halted. I hereby name you Sebastian, the Crab Knight. You are to be the boss of the first floor. I declared to the no-longer-small crab.

He seemed pleased with his new name and left my core room, returning to the arena cavern. The sharpened tips of his legs made a satisfying thunk as he walked. Sebastian settled against one wall and took some time to half-bury himself in the sand. To my surprise, he made a rather convincing rock. I quickly modified his arena and the other three caverns to have similarly shaped rocks. With the success of Sebastian, I decided to make the crabs the main monster of this floor. After all, the other two had bred already.

It might take a week or two, but I'm sure mana can speed up the process. -0-0-0-0-0- © Max Porteous, 2021