Chapter Seventeen

Winterfang, tangentially located behind Pa Pa Jiang’s restaurant, New York City, Day 74

  A week after his last conversation with Three, where they had talked to the spirits, Winterfang was bored. Three was still unconscious. He could sense his master was okay through the contract bond, which alleviated his worries, but still didn’t really give him anything to do. With Three’s help he had managed to develop his channeling by a large margin, but without further assistance, he wasn’t able to make much real progress, and only made one innovation.

  Without any real goals other than to not disappoint Three, Winterfang had spent the intervening time sleeping, channeling mana from the dungeon to sustain himself, practicing moving about the alley training ground Three had made for him, and experimenting and practicing with channeling structures, which he primarily did through speech practice, since he still made the occasional mistake.

  One time, as he tried to climb the makeshift fire escape, maneuvering through the scant few feet of room available to him, it collapsed under his weight instead, dropping him ten feet and stabbing his paws with stone shards. As a way to avoid having to use them in the future, he spent two days of practice trying to wedge his way up the walls, only somehow stumble onto a new channeling structure when he tried circulating mana around his paws and up his legs. He didn’t quite understand it, and it was more complex than just what he had been doing, but it allowed him to walk up walls and bypass the fire escapes, though it was pricy in terms of mana.

  He tried some other things, but nothing else really seemed to generate more channeling constructs while he was tinkering with it, so that had been the real extent of his progress, just a little improvement in his skill with channeling, and a new construct he could use to climb walls. However, with that ability, he quickly grew tired of the imitation alleyway and wedged his way through the tight entryway and into the main dungeon, which had much larger rooms than the space of the alley and allowed him to move about and climb more freely.

  At first, he thought about exploring and getting to know the dungeon some more, but it was almost a surprise how surprised he was at its straightforward simplicity. He had already seen it after all, but it was just a series of corridors and large rooms. Somehow, Winterfang thought that there should have been something more. It became less boring once he made it to the first few rooms of the second floor, which were part of a defunct maze, and then the first floor, which not only had a maze but traps as well. After he tripped into a concealed spike pit by accident in the first floor, he tried using his wall-walking when he thought there was another one, and didn’t fall through the floor. As an experiment, he then tried putting his paw on where he thought the trap was, and it quickly fell through the thin sheet of rock, Interesting, that will be useful, he noted to himself.

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  When he did make it to the entrance, which was as far as he could go, unable to fit through the tunnel that Three had created, he was stunned to discover some rats and bugs, mostly roaches, in the first room. These were the first creatures Winterfang had seen in a month, and much to his surprise since he thought nothing would get near the dungeon due to the toxic stench outside. At first, his presence caused all of the creatures to scurry away in fear, but he was too interested in them, so he settled down to watch them while channeling in mana from the dungeon, and they eventually got used to him and resumed their activities.

  One thing he noticed, was how the creatures didn’t seem to take the dungeon well, surprisingly, those that ventured further into the dungeon tended to collapse after a few rooms and die, with the rats able to venture further than the bugs, so most of them just grouped up in the entrance room, but then they couldn’t eat, so the rats would go outside in twos or threes a few times a day, coming back with scraps of trash and refuse to help feed the rest, with the bugs feeding off of the refuse and leavings. It was unfortunate, if any of them could channel mana they wouldn’t have to bother eating in this mana rich environment. Wait a minute, what If I try channeling into the creatures like Three did to me? He thought, pondering his own initial arrival to the dungeon.

  To start, he found a nearby cockroach, and tried to channel mana into it much like he channeled mana into that fragment of dungeon core as part of the contract, it took him a few tries to properly gather and direct the mana at the roach, but once he did, the resulting explosion of bug guts was not impressive in the way he had expected, or in any way successful except as some sort of attack, not what he was looking for at all. Startled, all the creatures in the room scurried to the far corners of the room in fear and refused to come closer.

  He retreated to the second room so he wouldn’t disturb them too much, and shortly after he left they returned to their normal cycle of activity, though after a few days a few creatures dared to venture into the second room, and finally approached him after another day. He continued to attempt to channel mana into the roaches over the coming days, each time trying to regulate, stabilize, and decrease the amount of mana he gave them, though at first the end results didn’t change much. In between attempts he would channel mana to help him refill his reserves, which seemed to be getting easier over time though he wasn’t certain, and when the bugs came near him again he would repeat his efforts.

  Over the following month, he gradually managed to go from exploding bugs, to seizing bugs, to bugs that just quietly died when he channeled mana into them, until finally, when he channeled mana into one of the roaches, it didn’t die! Excited, he continued to channel mana as an experiment, only to find that, now that a stable link was established, his pool was depleting rapidly as the roach quickly began to shed, swell slightly, regrow its exoskeleton, and repeat over and over again, growing to twice its original size and leaving his mana pool exhausted after just an hour.

  Happy, Winterfang was about to let the roach go about whatever its business was as proof of his success, until ‘but what if he leaves? Three doesn’t want to reveal us!’ Crossed his mind, and panicked, he crushed it under his paw with enough force to create a dull thud noise and scare the inhabitants of the entrance room. Satisfied that he can do it, he once again began to channel mana from the dungeon to recover his pool. Yeah, this is definitely easier than yesterday… he thought, wondering why that was.