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Babel: The Ancient Dungeon
Pitter-Patter of tiny paws

Pitter-Patter of tiny paws

The first thing it saw was a world bathed in black and white and scents of tastes that it cannot recognised nor say what they should be. The first emotion it ever felt was the sense of unpleasantness. It narrow its senses to narrow down the scent of unpleasantness.

A lump of meat was the source. In a world of black and white, the lump was dyed in dark red florescent colour enveloping it like vapour. A creature, similar to the lump of meat but still different and enveloped in whitish vapour was beside it, giving out a squealing howl. Yet no unpleasant feeling arouse against that creature.

The air felt suffocating to it. The unpleasant vapour of dark red colour was poisoning the air. It felt anger. It recognised danger. It knew that the vapour thing was dangerous. And the answer to such danger was to eliminate it.

In its anger, It sent a wave of his own force directed at the lump of meat. Suddenly the whole dome was draped in green light. It will it's power to eliminate the dangerous element but not to harm the others.

However, it was too young, weak and experience. It had released most of its mana. With that, darkness once again came over it.

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The light in the dome dimmed. The bright white light turned to a dim green light. The newborn dungeon core had gone asleep as it had unknowingly released most of its tiny reserve of mana to eliminate the miasma that was coming from the mad rat corpse. Several changes occured in the tiny dome as the last mana burst was changing the structure of the dome and the creatures inside it.

The wall of the dome began to hardened, from sand to sandstones, as if the entire domed depression was carved out of a single slab of a block of sandstone. However, the two holes were not healed but left as it was. The domed depression had been claimed as its first territory by the newborn core unconsciously with the mana burst. But it was not the only thing that the mana burst had taken effects on.

Six creatures were squealing in pain, their whole body twitching. The mana from the core had taken effects on them. The effect was too harsh on them.

Arav mouse were ordinary creatures. Their bodies had prana not mana coursing through. The sudden injection of mana was too much for them, especially for the male mouse, who was already on the verge of death as they were not used to them.

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The one having it the easiest were the juveniles as they were born recently, during the first mana burst and since their nesting burrow was near the dome where the core was, their prana was already on the verge of refining into mana. Moreover, the second mana burst had also made the effect more bearable for them.

The wounds on the adults began to healed. All the mice began to grow. Their furs became more sleek, their iris became darker and shinier and the muscles tigtened and bulged at the same time.

In a short time, the adult mice had become larger than the mad rat, twice their original size so did the juveniles. The wounds on the adults mice had healed completely leaving only scars except for the eye of the male mouse, which had been dug out by the mad rat during their fight in the dome. Yet they were not like the mad rat that had attacked them. Their eyes shined with a newfound intelligence and a great hunger.

With a mad rush, all of them gathered around at the corpses of the mad rat. Without any ceremony (they were still animals after all with a newfound but low intelligence), they began to wolf down the corpse of the mad rat.

The corpse disappeared in a short moment of time. Only after their appetite were satisfied, the mice felt the presence of the orb. They felt a strange attraction to it. A sense of affinity and belonging. Like they should obey and protect it. These were things that all creatures claimed by a dungeon core felt towards it. A Supreme master. A God of Monster.

The juveniles were the first to move towards the orb, surrounding the orb and squatting around it on each four side like a loyal hound around its master. The orb were giving out a comforting and warm feelings. Like any wild litter, they unconsciously moved towards warm spot and fell asleep, tired for they had quite a tiring and hectic day for such of their age.

Seeing their litter relaxed, the pair of male and female mice, the father and mother began to relaxed as well but they did not feel asleep. Instead they got to work.

Since the hole was too high and the walls were too hard for them to gnaw and scratch through, the two of them began to gnaw at the hole that was previously being work upon by the mother mouse.

The stone wall of the dome was two inches deep but the hole that the mother had already scratched out was already more than five inches. They scratch and gnaw, turn by turn, widening and elongating the width and length of the hole, making a pile of sand inside the dome until they completely disappeared from the dome.

The mother was the first to return. It had a straws on its mouth. It laid the straw in a part of the dome, far from the hole and the centre. She went back and forth, again and again, with materials to make nests like straw, dry leaves, furs and feathers.

After the umpteenth times, she has made a nest, large enough to shelter all of them and taking a quarter of the dome. With a gentle squeak, she woke her sleeping litter up.

She, along with her children put the orb in the middle of the nest by rolling it to the nest with their tiny paws and snouts. Once the orb was shoved in the middle of the nest, all of them cuddle around the orb and went fast asleep again.

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