The Core was hit with a brief moment of existential crisis upon learning that he had no genitalia. So what should he called himself as? His subsconcious answered the question.
"Ozymandias. My name is Ozymandias."
The core had no mouth but his words echoed in the dome. It was a voice created by mana. A vocal intent.
The mice were startled. The Father began to frolicked around, looking for the source until his vision landed on the core.
By this time, the core had the fundamental knowledge about mana and certain other things. It was an innate knowledge that belong to every dungeon core.
The core knew that his creature were panicking due to his sudden voice. He assured them by enveloping them with his mana, which conveyed his voice to them but unheard by the outside world.
"Do not be afraid."
The mice were confused at the voice that entered their mind. Squeaks and screeches. The voice of the core came in that form. Due to their heightened intelligence, they understood and soon calmed down.
For the first time, Ozymandias saw his dungeon. He felt his ambient mana in the air, walls and the mice. His mana was seeping into the walls.
His vision land on the hole that was up in the roof of the dome. He felt uneasy. It felt dangerous. A logical voice told him that invaders could enter the dome easily through that.
He wanted to block it but didn't knew how. That was when he noticed the mound of sand by the entrance.
Tendrils of mana shot forward from the core and towards the mound of sand, a dozen to be exact. Each tendrils scoop small amount of sand from the mound and switch the direction of their path towards the roof. Then disaster.
Instead of remaining in the hole, the sands fell down as soon as the tendrils put them in the hole. The voice told the core that it was due to gravity.
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The core scoop the dirt again and put them in the hole. Once again he failed. The voice told him a solution.
Acting upon the voice's advice, Ozymandias merged all the tendrils into one. At the end, the tendrils became a five appendages figure protruding to a circular plane. It was something the one called a hand, model after industrial robots, which in turned was created in the likeness of human.
Ozymandias found it to be more comfortable. With his new hand, he scoop out the sand from the mound, nearly half of it and brought it to the hole. But still it didn't work and fell to the ground. The voice spoke again.
Ozymandias splitted the hand into two, making two smaller hands. With both his hands, he packed the sands and send some mana to make it more compact. It took a long time and some errors until he was able to make a block of round ball of sand, infused with his mana.
He fused the two hands back into one and push the ball into the hole. It didn't fit but this time, he was smarter. He used his mana to shave off the edges until the hole was filled. He held the filling with his hand, not letting it fall down. He pushed his mana, hardening the filling and stick with the roof wall.
Ozymandias filled a tug at his core. His vision shifted at the disturbance. In the middle of his body, there was a glowing greenish circular plane. It was getting smaller. This was his mana core, which was getting smaller every second.
Ozymandias realised that he was spending too much mana on a single work when he didn't had enough. The hole was fixed but there was no source to gather mana from. Like everything else, a dungeon core took prana from the world and refined the prana into mana. The only thing different for a dungeon core was that once prana is sucked in by a dungeon core, it automatically turns into prana.
Where are prana found? Prana are found everywhere. In the air, soil, water, sunlight, plants and organisms. Living things possess the most prana in the world. Prana was the source of energy in the world. This was innate dungeon core knowledge. There was another form above prana and mana, Aether but Ozymandias had little knowledge about it.
The only prana in the room was in the mice and the mound of dirt. Dots of prana was also coming from the entrance. The core knew that taking the prana from the mice was not a good choice. Creature of their level cannot survive on mana alone.
He sucked the prana from the mound of sand and the prana from the air. The sand diminished into a quarter of its former size. The prana dots turned into mana dots once they entered his core and merged with his mana core. Yet his depleted mana core was still not full.
A dozen prana dot turned into a single mana dot and vice-versa. He could only gather around a thousand dots of prana and had only made eighty-six mana which was not even one-fourth of his mana hold in his mana core. He had spend larger amount of mana on fixing the hole. He needed a better and bigger source of prana.
As if it knew what it was going on, Father mouse entered the dome. It had brought in a dead creature. It was a large scorpion and was full of prana. His mate and litter were asleep.
Saliva drip from the dungeon core, metaphorically at the sight of the rich source of prana. Ozymandias was about to send a mana voice to Father mouse wanting to have the scorpion for himself. But before he could do that, the mouse put it down in front of him. The mouse did not speak but Ozymandias realised that the food was for him.
"Thank You."
He sucked the prana from the corpse. A large number of prana entered and turned into mana. In an instant, more than half his mana core was filled. Meanwhile the scorpion corpse turned into a dry husk.
Grateful for the meal, Ozymandias look upon the mouse and said:
"Your tribute had been a great sustenance. You are a hunter unlike any others. Weak but resilient, small yet strong. I name you Nimrod, The Great Hunter."
That was a wrong move. When a dungeon name it's creature, its mana acts upon the creature to make the creature more powerful as worthy of the name. Meaning, mana from Ozymandias goes to Nimrod.
The last thing Ozymandias saw before darkness was Nimrod glowing green.