Chapter 2
Exploration
I attempt to sort through the litany of information laid out before me. Most of it is indecipherable numbers and other junk, but one key point jumps out. I keep seeing mentions of ‘Mana‘ and ‘Dungeon‘, is that what I am? If so, what am I supposed to be doing?
Me? I? Him? Her? Where? When? Why? What do I do with mana and minions?
The questions pour into my mind, and I have no answers. The sights overwhelm my mind with a mix of colors, memories, and other stimuli. But I can’t leave, can’t run away—and making it all worse, that incessant voice is back. The booming nag of “consume“ continues to hound me, like a hunter chasing its prey. The voice is eerie, and haunting with its gravelly and fragmented intonation. It just keeps repeating this one word over and over.
Thankfully, it fades into the background din of my mind enough to ignore it. Desperate for a reprieve from its influence, I turn my attention to the intake of more energy. If I want to figure out what’s happening, I need to see more of wherever in the Hells I am.
Maybe there’s some way out of this.
I try and pull in as much of the flittering light as I can. The threads of various mana swirl and sizzle as they approach my nascent core. Every wisp of magical energy is like the tiniest morsel of the best meal I’ve ever tasted, just a glimpse of a future feast as I consume it hungrily.
Each swirl of mana carries with it something more, something I can’t quite understand. Like a disgusting aftertaste, the bitter feeling grows more and more prominent. I want to get rid of it, push it away, do anything to get back that pure feeling—but it just keeps coming.
Maybe I don’t have to absorb it though, maybe I can do something with this tainted energy. A memory suddenly floods my mind as I linger on the thought. A pair of rough and dirty hands cutting away bits of rotten fruit with a shining dagger. Now, without hands or a magical knife, I can’t exactly cut the unwanted parts of my spiritual meal away. Though maybe I can do something like that. Focusing in on the flow of the sapphire-hued energy, my vision snaps to my quarry—a tiny glinting shard of tan light. With all the mental might I can muster, I try to will the two threads of light apart.
The flow of mana around the tiny cave I inhabit is weak, so trying to focus on them is taxing work. As tedious as the hair-splitting minutiae is, it seems to work. And now, the flow of bright blue threads is focused and ready for me to devour.
“Holy crap,“ I exclaim to no one other than my own thoughts. The thread of energy is so much more delectable than before, causing new emotions and thoughts to well up inside me.
I try to glance around for more energy, but my vision is still fuzzy, like I’m peering through bad glasses. As I hunt for new threads to ease my now growing hunger, something else catches my eye. The tiny flints of tan mana I had stripped away still linger around. The mist and the earthy substance are now further hindering my ability to search, but I need to press on, the gnawing hunger is still there.
Through the haze, I see my single pitiful minion and another new phenomenon is revealed. The tiny reddish worm is slithering among the mud around my core, and I follow its path. Despite moving slowly, the tiny reddish worm is heading right for the newly formed cloud of brown mana.
“Hey, worm, what are you doing?“ I try to ask my question by projecting the words into my mind—nothing.
Reluctantly, I try a new tactic. Since the mana flittering around the cave is the only thing I can easily interact with, I try to push some of it around. Maybe I can get the worm’s attention. After several minutes of doing that though, my only reward is watching the worm lazily flopping about in the dirt a bit more.
Noticing that I can interact with the mana in tiny bursts, I try a different approach. I push the puff of brown energy towards the worm, watching in amazement as it instantaneously disappears.
Wait, did it get bigger?
Trying my best to pierce the haze of my shoddy vision, I take a closer look. The piddly pinkish worm is still very small, but it’s notably longer. As I’m watching it, something interesting happens. The more this little worm wiggles, the more mana it seems to suck in. Wondering just how far I can push this, I coalesce the surrounding streams of energy into focused beams, aimed right at my floppy little buddy. Each time, it takes in both the corrupted and pure flows of power, content to just wait for more.
Sapphire flows glow brightly before being snuffed out in the greedy magical maw of my minion. The seconds tick by and each pulse engorges the worm. Instead of a tiny earthworm, it’s now approaching the size of the world’s smallest snake. Sadly for the prospects of socialization, it won’t respond—no matter how many times I shout into the ether at it, it just continues to roll around.
Minion Upgraded!
Level 0 Pitiful Worm becomes Level 1 Lesser Water Worm
So I guess blue mana is water-infused?
In that instant, the fleeting flashes of my path to this little pebble in the dirt I now inhabit floods back. Of course, a swamp would have tons of water mana floating about.
A bevy of other notifications floods my sight as I try to parse all that just happened.
Among the many updates and changes, I notice a couple of important details: one says I'm now a Tier 1 Dungeon, and another has a lot of numbers and stats that I don't want to deal with right now because I don't understand most of it.
Instead of focusing my limited energy on that stuff, I want to experiment on my wormy little friend some more. The flow of blue magic is notably diminished now. It seems I’ve sapped a lot of the latent energy in my direct surroundings, so I look for more.
But with no view of my surroundings or understanding of what exactly is happening to me, I can’t glean much more. Being trapped in a dirty little hole in the ground will do that to you.
Let’s do something about that, shall we?
Since I can affect the living things around me, rocks should be no problem, I surmise. I pick a direction and start pushing. Through the haze of my vision, I try to push more focus and power toward the edges of the tiny cave I’m currently in. I pick a direction and start pulsing mana in that direction.
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The haziness recedes as I focus what little mana I can accrue upwards. With my vision clearer, I can see a bit more of the surrounding cave. It’s strange, there are no light sources down here, but I can see just fine within the cone of my magical sight. The mana acts like a focusing lens of sorts, with bright flashes of light revealing bits of my surroundings—like a knife cutting away the darkness.
Quickly, I reveal a problem. I’m surrounded by rocks. With no direct path to the surface, I have only one option: carving a new one.
I shape and focus the tendril of blue force into something akin to a spear, and ram it upwards, hoping to cut away a bit of the rock. The dull rocks don’t respond at first, but with repeated blows, cracks form and expand. Tiny slivers of grey and black stone fall away, allowing me to continue. With just a few minutes of focused work, I’ve worked upwards a fair distance, creating a taller ceiling for myself.
As I worked on expanding my rocky domain, the variety of my surroundings became clear. There’s a lot more than rocks and dirt down here. Content with the vertical size of my cave, I set about carving some other spaces for myself, even if just to explore a bit.
One thing I notice is that it wasn’t just blue Water Mana down here, various swirls of unknown energy formed whirlpools under my sight. Each one would form and then disappear, seemingly sucked to another location by some force or lifeform. It seems I’m not the only one competing for energy down here. As I explore, I gorge myself on latent energy as I find it, but it’s far more sparse than I was expecting.
I follow the path of one mana stream, a green one this time, and find a tiny grouping of blue-capped mushrooms in a rocky alcove. As I cast my vision towards it, a new notification window popped up.
Item
Name
Spotted Watershroom
A basic mushroom that grows in dark, damp places. While its mana content is low, but it’s not entirely useless.
Rarity
Non-Magical
Grade
Material, Tier 1
Affinity
—
Effect
??
Hey, I wonder if I can do something with this.
Twisting a tendril of energy towards the tiny blue mushroom, I feed a bit of power to it and wait for a reaction. And oh boy, did I get one. A melodious burst of feedback swells in the back of my mind, like a joyous song. The song grows louder as I push more magic into the flora, and it looks as though the mushroom itself is getting bigger. Much to my surprise, another node pops from the colony out of nowhere, materializing and swelling to full size as I sustain it.
Excitedly, I speed back over to my minion, wondering just what I could do with this new revelation. If I could make new mushrooms, perhaps I could do the same with other things. I spent my time over the next few minutes trying different combinations of mana in attempting to clone my slithery little friend.
My visualizations are the key to how things form when it comes to mana. But it isn’t just that, my emotional state matters too—the more panicked I am, the more likely failure or mistakes become. In my initial hurry, I accidentally created quite a horrifying mess of things. I somehow managed to create something that was a fusion of mushroom and worm.
The puttering and jerky movements of its body would send shivers through any person, and I couldn't help but feel unsettled. I decide to try deleting that and start over. Luckily, it’s easy enough to get rid of the abomination by sapping its mana to the point of non-existence.
The moment the remains of my latest creation pop out of this world, something snaps in me. With a flash, repressed memories come screaming out of the ether, dominating my conscious thoughts. A diminutive old man lies cold on the floor in a darkened room. A man with blonde hair and a maniacal expression stands over him, blade in his hand. The wooden floor is flooded in equal measure with blood and candlelight. I see events through his eyes. His panic and fear are my own.
Determined, the man turns his chilly gaze away from the sallow corpse. His beady eyes search around the room, glowing blue with a glimmer of magic. Sweat soaked his fat face, and he reeked with a stench I can almost taste.
After what feels like an eternity, shaking hands find their quarry. A nondescript wooden box inlaid with golden bands and simple runes. Cradled inside the box is the murderer’s prize, glittering gems of untold beauty, all thrumming with latent magic. As the memory ends, pudgy hands pocket a few of the gems and shut the box.
Snapped back to the present, the memory fades just as rapidly as it came, and I’m back to trying to expand my retinue of beastly minions.
Next, I try to focus more than one mana type into the effort to clone my Water Worm. That too fails, as it simply causes the clone to immediately burst into a pile of unidentifiable goo. I do learn one helpful tidbit, as I’m able to watch the mana I used in the attempt diffuse around my cave. But aside from being to reabsorb it, I can’t divine any sort of insight from the process.
Perhaps there’s something I’m missing.
Emboldened, I search around by tracing the various flows of magic around my newly enlarged cave. The surroundings fall away into the fog of my limited vision as I focus in hard on the task at hand. As I trace a slither of blue mana around the cave, the thread seems to go on forever. I chase it even through the rock walls, passing my vision through them with surprising ease.
Deeper in the wall, I find where the thread ends. There’s a much bigger mote of light buried in the rock. The area around it is dark to my vision, devoid of mana. The tiny mote of light grows brighter as I close in on my prize. Unlike the lazy clouds floating about, this concentration of mana is almost like staring directly at a campfire.
The concentration effect that the tiny stone exhibits piques my interest right away. The smog of magic in the cave would be much easier to manage if I could squirrel them away into these gems for later.
Hitting on a seemingly good idea, I attempt to copy the stone. But first, I have to expend a bit of power excavating the original from its rocky tomb. A few minutes later, a small jagged piece of sapphire falls to the rough-hewn floor of my steadily growing home. I take a cue from my efforts in finding the stone itself and try to peer inside.
Maybe understanding the structure will help me copy it. It’s extraordinarily difficult, but I can see bits and pieces of the underlying mineral. What I see when I focus on it blows me away, proverbially, of course.
There are so many layers and lines within the mineral that I can’t even begin to count them all. Each minuscule layer catches my sight like refracting light, adding to the light show I see as I dig deeper. Throughout the various facets of the gemstone, tiny cracks and flaws are also there.
Maybe if I leave those out, I can make a higher-quality gem?
As I exert my will over the tiny bead of a gemstone, I attempt to copy its form. Being a simple rock, it’s much easier. I peer into the lattice of magical strands that make up its underlying form and begin to work on recreating them. Layer by layer, line by line, I push tiny slivers of blue mana together in alternating sequences. After what feels like hours, I’m greeted by a new notification, indicating success.
Item Gained!
Name
Imperfect Sapphire Focus
A basic magical gemstone created by the layering of mana and natural material. This particular focus is infused with Water Mana and allows for the creation of more complex magical items using it.
Rarity
Magical
Grade
Material, Tier 1
Affinity
Water
Effect
??
A swell of pride explodes in the back of my mind, though before I can continue my work, everything shifts. An anxious feeling blooms in the back of my thoughts, quickly taking over. The moment feels so bizarre. Without a body, it makes things pretty weird already, but this feels strangely new. An emptiness follows right behind the initial feeling of accomplishment, forcing my attention inward. Everything else in my currently limited state falls away, and then there’s that gnawing hunger again. I feel like I’ve been sucked into a total void, with nothing but my confusion and desperation for company.
But no, there’s something else here. That hunger that keeps pulling on my awareness like a rope around my proverbial neck shifts into a burning need. With it comes something much more sinister.
“Wake up, little dungeon… “ thunders the ghoulish voice once again, just as terrifying as before. Desperately, I try to will it away, but it resists being shoved into the background this time. And now there’s something else floating in the mists of my minuscule cave.