"THE VOID is boundless and full of creatures from your darkest nightmares. Yet, people want to explore it. Why they want to? Probably promises of power and such from those beings. But even if they contract with one of these entities, they often lose their souls or have to sacrifice many others in the process. This is where cults originate..."

~Excerpt from Chapter 11 of 'Places You Should Never Go'

As Gary and I slipped through by the skin of our-, no, his teeth, we saw THE VOID. And THE VOID saw us back.

THE VOID's many eyes locked onto us and a seeping hiss echoed throughout my mind.

"Protected of the Madnessssss." A cluster of large green eyes bobbed to and fro.

"Another one?" "How many of hissss experimentssss-?" "Will thisss one die like the re-" Many wheezing voices emanated from the gatherings of eyeballs.

"ENOUGH." The first one commanded and they all fell silent.

"I have told you many timessssss. We will ssssssend thissssss one on itssssss way just like the resssssst."

The being then focused on me with its millions of creepy eyes.

"Now, you musssssst g-." It stopped suddenly and its eyes swiveled around.

"Nightblade shadowssssss!" It screamed in terror, its eyes bloodshot as the darkness came alive and started slicing and ripping and clawing all the many-eyed beings to pieces.

It then remembered me and its eyes dilated in realisation.

"Go." It ordered after an eye moved in front of me and its pupil widened to cover the whole eye, only to become transparent and show an empty cave.

I found my will to order Gary to run.

And he did so.

~~~~

I found myself in a cave, strapped onto Gary and I groaned.

I think I had a really weird dream. I thought to myself.

Gary grunted and nodded his head as I unintentionally communicated with him. Did you have the one with the eyes?

He nodded furiously in affirmation.

Then it might not have been a dream after all. I mused.

But before any more thinking, checking my surroundings came first.

But all I saw was a cave quite similar to my previous one. Not connected to anything, moss on the walls, and stalagmites and stalactites clinging to the floor and roof.

There was a difference though.

The moss was glowing.

So, I immediately absorbed a small amount of my armor to flood my territory into the room to create an iron pedestal, infused with Mana of course, and then ordered Gary to grab hold of me with his teeth. I quickly absorbed the rest of my shell and commanded him to place me on the pedestal which I controlled to grab hold of me so I was in no danger of falling.

All of this took a long time. Half an hour at minimum, which grated on me.

And then, and only then, did I absorb a small patch of the moss (that luckily only took a couple of seconds) to see what it was since there was no observable danger.

Material Learned! Plant - Luminous Cave Moss

So, just like normal cave moss, except it's glowing.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

After I did that, a notification came to me.

Warning! Add entrance or else core destruction in ~2.3B Years!

Um, what? I questioned the system, looking for answers.

Oh. Some system functions were not working inside the... prison. And this function is that Mana Regeneration will not work while there is no entrance, and Mana is consumed at a rate of 1 per second.

I chuckled to myself at the weirdness of it as I could literally survive for billions of years on my Mana alone with no regeneration, and that's not counting the fact that I could potentially live forever if I had access to my Mana Regen.

A thought occurred to me. If it is consumed at a rate of 1 per second, then how do newborn dungeon cores who just have a single point of Mana survive? I asked the system this and it said that usually, dungeon cores are born on the surface and dig their way down.

Hm. I muttered, thinking of the fact that I was born in a cave, and I decided to expand my territory up to the surface... but my Mana was much slower than I thought it would be. Barely a centimetre per second. I asked the system and it said that it was one of its functions.

Frustrated, I narrowed the territory expansion to a centimetre wide cylinder, and the expansion sped up quite quickly.

Five seconds later, and my Mana bounced off of an invisible barrier right before it could expand into the air on the surface.

Another one?!

I expanded my territory over the surface as much as I could, and took a look from the highest point my territory reached.

I'm on an island?!

I stared out at the light blue waves crashing against the sandy shore of the circular island I was on, and another island, also a circle, which was bigger than mine.

And I'm not even on the biggest?!

But, I also saw a beach surrounding the water in a smooth oval.

And I'm in a lake?!

This was awfully weird to me. I had never seen such a phenomenon. It seemed unnatural and man-made. But, this was still nowhere the strangest thing I saw in this life. But, I was instantly suspicious of something.

Grass, you aren't going to transform into a giant animal and attempt to kill me, are you?

I absorbed some grass, and aside from the usual swaying in the wind, nothing happened. Phew. So, I settled down, hollowed a thin centimetre wide hole up to the surface which returned my Mana Regeneration, and focused on expanding my territory.

~~(7 hours and 13 minutes later)~~

Phew! I was done. With my island at least. From the lakebed level, to the top of the island, I had covered all of it in my territory.

What to do now? I asked myself.

Oh yeah! I remembered. Infinite Mana!

And so began the experiment that would change the univ-. Nah. Just kidding.

I created an experiment room quite like the one I had before, lined with iron and as deep into my territory as I could place it. Unfortunately, it was only one and a half kilometres deep, which still seemed quite deep for a lake. I spawned a meerkat in and forced Mana into it. It quickly started forming a Mana crystal.

After it finished doing that with my help, I shoved in more Mana to get it to Tier 2.

The Mana core of the meerkat processed the Mana and made the meerkat Ascend. I added more Mana and after the Mana circulated for a bit, it got to Tier 3.

Now, I absorbed it... And just got back the amount I spent on it.

Well. I commented in amusement and annoyance. It makes sense for there not to be an easy and quick way to get stronger. Then I wondered. If this is one of the system's functions, then it maybe could have worked when I was back where I was.

I sighed and with a push from dungeon instincts that were suddenly stronger than before, I started to create my dungeon.

...Which would take significantly longer than before, probably due to some more 'system functions'

System limitations more like. I grumbled as I excavated my first hallway, slipping into the groove of absorption.

~~(~1 day later)~~

I couldn't take this painfully slow digging any more.

At least I dug out the first hallway and a room.

Now I'm reminded of when I was just born. I thought in frustration. Except, I cannot speed up after absorbing enough rock.

I looked at the room, which was an even 50 by 50 by 10 metres in width, length, and height respectively. Quite disappointing in comparison to my previous speed.

My dungeon instincts directed me to something that would be useful while releasing the annoyance of digging.

Traps.

Yet, I knew something that I should do first.

Consider my direction in this life.

So, I considered. I suppose one thing I should always do is Survive. I thought some more and came to something else that I didn't do well in my past life. Another thing should be to Live Life to th- Grow Powerful. I deliberated about what my other main goals should be, and I realised another one. And also, I should Live Li- BE M̶͎̤͊̋E̴̤̿R̷̳͚͊̚C̵̨̞̔Ĭ̴̻Ľ̴̮̱E̶̻̙̐̅S̶̯̆S̷̯̏.

I gave a mental nod at figuring out what direction my life would be going and succumbed to the desire to create traps.

I did not need to do so, as to excavate another room, I didn't necessarily need to absorb it all by myself. I could have just let Gary do it. After all, he liked eating rocks. But no. I would later realise this, and curse myself. But by the time that happened, I would have other things to shout obscenities at.

Adventurers.