"As the saying goes, 'Running away from your problems is only running away from the solution.' Unless you're escaping from a horde of fire-drakes of course."
~Famous words of an adventurer who escaped from a mob of baby dragons, only to get eaten by their mother
Carving out the experimentation room was nerve-racking. It had to be deep below the surface, so it was close to the many-legged serpent. Close enough for me to be reminded of its terrifying presence and extensive body.
I shuddered in fear and quickly finished making enough space for what I had planned. First, I layered the room in iron I had found in a search of my territory and added enough Mana to make it as strong as it could be without exploding. Then, I quickly hollowed out a tunnel from the boss room to the experiment room. And after that, I ordered the now-rock-skinned buffalo to-.
What?
I looked again just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. The hungry guy actually had skin of stone. And as I shifted my gaze closer, I could see most of him was made of stone.
Neat. I commented before ordering him to go to the experiment room. I had bigger concerns, and worrying about one of my creatures transforming was far from the biggest.
I closed up the tunnel with strengthened iron and focused on his whole body. Almost everything had changed. What had once been flesh was now Mana-infused rock. The Mana crystal though, looked the same as before, except it now pumped Mana from the air into the body of the buffalo to make it stronger.
On a hunch, I added some of my own Mana to his core and it quickly started pushing it through his entire body, only glowing slightly more from the effort. He froze in place too, stuck in the action of glancing about, trying to find something to eat. Seemingly with no problems, I added more of my Mana. Then more, and more, and more, until. It began to compress.
I helped it out, and at the end, the buffalo glowed with blue light and unfroze. His head continued moving and eyes returned to roaming the room. I decided to create an iron boulder for him, because, well, I thought it might interest him more than just stone.
He mooed joyfully and trundled up to the iron and took a big bite from it. And from what I could see, he was chewing on it like it was chewing gum. He swallowed it and parts of his head started changing.
Specifically his horns and teeth. They shifted from their grey colouring into grey colouring. A different type of grey of course. Iron grey. They glinted in the purple light of the buffalo's eyes.
Purple? I thought in confusion. Nevermind. I took a look at his Mana. It was as thick as mine, which naturally meant it was Tier 2. So I guess that means that even with the previous addition of a core, he was still in Tier 1, just at the end of it. Huh. My thoughts got off track, but I still remembered what to do next.
Hit that wall as hard as you can! I commanded the now (hopefully) even more powerful buffalo.
He quickly swallowed the chunk of iron in his mouth and looked down sadly at the now 50% smaller iron ball. But he listened and rammed into the wall with his horns that got empowered by a fierce red aura concentrating on their tips.
His horns pierced through half of the Mana-infused iron (So, half a metre) and dented most of the wall on that side. He removed his horns from the wall with much difficulty and walked back to his lunch.
Sooo. I thought. That was a bit underwhelming.
But it wasn't. The whole iron layering in the room was infused with 150 whole Tier 2 Mana points. That meant 150 million Tier 1 and 150 billion regular Mana points.
And, the buffalo was given only 10 Tier 2 Mana points, so... he did quite good in my opinion.
But will this be enough?
That was the question on my mind. My buffalo, while exceedingly powerful from its recent upgrades, was only Tier 2, and the bird that was causing problems was probably Tier 3. Tier 3 was nothing in the face of the serpent that was above Tier 10, but it still was quite a danger to me.
And so I decided to pump all the Mana I got from my passive regeneration into my best chance of defeating it. Hungry Buffalo. (A temporary nickname)
This time, when I did so, he didn't freeze. He merely slowed down. I never thought that I would find a slowed down buffalo amusing, but I now did.
~~(8 1/3 hours later)~~
After what I felt was approximately a third of a day, (though I lost track a bit as I managed to witness a slowed down fart which for some reason made me hysterical in this stressful situation) I cut down the flow of Mana. Why? His body stopped absorbing it. I took a look at the Mana inside him and knew why.
1000 Tier 2 Mana. Huh. Just this amount is enough to make him reach Tier 3. Though I should have known already, as when I upgraded him to Tier 2 he only compressed 1000 Tier 1 Mana.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Sooo. I guess I'm OP then. I chuckled at my use of a gaming term which actually applied to me in real life. I'm guessing this is real at least. But I stopped my thoughts there as my attention went to helping my minion Ascend.
~~~~
I mentally smiled as my creature unfroze and revealed the changes. First of them was his surprise. His teeth shore right through the iron in his mouth and clacked together. He mooed in confusion and tried to bite down again, to no avail. Now, the previously chewing-gum like metal was as easy to chew through as paper. If you have triangular Mana-infused metal teeth as the buffalo now had.
He whimpered in disappointment as he no longer had the satisfaction of chewing. He looked around the room with pleading eyes, begging for chewable food while eying the iron walls as if to judge if they were for the taking. I laughed and produced a huge ball of Mana-toughened iron in front of him. He bellowed in joy and rushed to it, quickly taking as much metal as he could into his mouth and chewing it blissfully.
Heh. I chuckled and as I was considering ordering him to leave to fight the bird now, something happened to him again. The Mana-infused iron that he chewed on seeped through his rock-body and into his bones with the direction of his Mana crystal. After a minute or two, all his bones were shining in newfound resilience. Which only I could see as my vision was inside of the buffalo.
Okay. I said in finality. He is ready.
~~('Hungry Buffalo')~~
I trundled up, out of the food-covered room. Sadly, I had to leave my snack behind, but, there was something more important I had to do. KILL THE BIRD. As Master put it.
~~~~
And so, after a long walk, I reached my room. There were still boulders scattered around and my ears drooped as I remembered the old times. When I was just a simple buffalo. Nothing much different about me. And now! I had metal teeth! So I could eat better tasting metals! I drooled a bit unconsciously as I remembered my recent snack and its flavour-packed yumminess.
An order from Master quickly sent me off to the Outside instead of standing around. I got why he commanded me to do so, but, the food. Mmm.
I exited Master's dungeon and looked around. A bare field in front, containing only dirt and gaping holes in the ground. A forest further ahead, full of lush green trees. And even further, there was a triangular-shaped structure that had lots of tiny figures moving on, and inside it.
Small animals appeared in front of me and I stared at them in bewilderment. Thousands upon thousands of the little striped beasts stood on their hind legs.
They rapidly spread out into the world.
~~~~
Hmmm?
After a moderately long period of time, the meerkats that I could see shouted into the air. I could hear them everywhere. Most of them were in the field, but there were some in the forest and even behind me. I turned around, but the sounds did not come from the dungeon, but from behind the mountains and on the mountains themselves.
An enraged squawk could be heard as a purple-feathered flying creature spiralled to the ground next to me.
A command from Master had me backing away a bit and charging my attack.
As soon as it landed, I rushed towards it and stabbed it with my horns, barely giving time to blink.
Fight Scene(Gore)
It cried out in pain and fear as its bones crunched and its left wing got disfigured.
It jumped up, trying to escape, but I bit down onto its leg and pulled it back down. Blood sprayed everywhere as the limb was pulled off and the bird went faint at the blood loss. I trod up to its neck and set my hoof on its chest. I glared down at it and its eyes widened in fear. I ripped out its neck.
Its shrieks instead became gurgles and it died underneath me.
I bellowed in victory on top of the bird, and panted in exhaustion as the rapidfire full-strength attacks really took it out of me.
I stepped down from the corpse and it slowly started to disappear, added to Master's power.
I received a message from Master about my performance.
I grinned, my bloodstained teeth making for a horrific sight.
~~(Dave)~~
Good job! I complimented him. You destroyed it!
He smiled in happiness and I checked my Mana, wondering why I was not in pain even with having absorbed just the tail.
T2 Mana:~56.9k/56.9k
What? I was very confused. It was converted to my Max Mana instantly. I checked with the system why that was. Oh. It told me that any killed being, when absorbed, would add its Mana to my Max Mana instantly, as (previously)living beings have 'compatible' Mana with mine.
Yesss. I hissed in joy as I realised that I had a viable path for gaining power quickly. I aborbed the whole body and checked my status.
Dave Dungeon Core T2
Lvl:12
EXP:14/300 T2 Mana:~707.2k/707.2k T2 Mana Regen.:~7.1/min
I stared at it in realisation. Wait a minute. If 1000 Tier 2 Mana is used to create a Tier 3 creature, and it has a Tier 3 Mana. Doesn't that mean I can infinitely spawn and consume my mobs to get to theoretically Tier Infinity?!
But, where does the other 999 thousand Mana come from?
The system promptly shoved two words into my head.
The Administrator. What?
It refused to give any more detail.
Right. I shifted my focus away from that and towards my mobs, but not before making a mental note to myself to try out the infinite Mana 'glitch'.
Hm. I'm going to be leaving. I can't possibly bring all of them.
I looked at my Tier 3 stone creature. Just... Gary then. I had come to this name by shortening 'Hungry' to 'Gry' then adding a vowel to make 'Gary.'
I gave my last order to all my other minions. Be free! Do whatever you want! Just don't bother, harm, or otherwise, plot, against me. You couldn't be too careful after all.
They all scattered. The meerkats, the buffaloes, the cockroaches. Even the pink bird that was hidden in a dark corner of the dungeon.
Then I mentally smiled at Gary.
Time to escape.