While she was studying the information given to her, her mana was constantly dispersing in her surroundings. Looking out the windows, she could slowly observe matter taking shape in her perception of the outside world. Centimeter by centimeter she could observe the atomic bonds becoming visible to her as each particle started to fill up with additional dimensional energy to strengthen its atomic bonds, down to the makeup of the subatomic particles themselves.
Unlike previously, when she was limited to a range of barely a couple of centimeters outside her core, she could feel her influence spreading as farther away materials started to soak up primal mana, what she decided to call her pure chaotic form of mana, and ever so slightly structured it through the passage through them.
At first the affected area roughly resembled a sphere around her core. Each earth and air particle that started to absorb dimensional energies represented a small addition to her spatial awareness around her core. Passing the previous border, she soon felt the overwhelming sensation of having to be aware of everything at the same time. Erasing a subroutine from her mind, she used this processing power to start building a 3D representation of her domain in the holotank in the center of the command area she built earlier.
Greater area later on, would force me to dedicate even more processing power to keep the map as a live representation of my surroundings. She quickly realized, but for now, it would have to suffice.
While interesting, simply observing the earth and air around her would bring her no benefit. Neither would it help with returning humanity to its technological prowess, nor would it increase her energy input as non-living materials would have only minimal energy output she could reabsorb.
The previously present static and moving strands of energy however could not be found anymore after the opening of the tap. What she did find however, were leftover materials left by said energy sources. She soon mapped out empty casks of drained looking worms and other critters usually living inside the earth. Next to the drained casks in her immediate surroundings, she soon started to find bits and pieces of the same type of critters once her area started to expand a bit more.
Oops… I think those strings of energies were the structured mana every living thing gives off. Those dried looking things must be from when I tried to open my tap. They must have not been able to handle such a sudden increase in primordial mana… Better be careful in the future!
Though looking at what looks like exploded pieces of worms and bugs further away they did not seem to have fared much better. What was almost too much energy for me must have been definitely too much for them. Though now that the tap is under control again, and flowing in a much more reduced amount, they should be fine to return soon.
Only once she could handle a lot more processing power could she start to increase the size of the rift and thus higher energy output. Were she able to directly siphon off energy for her use as should be the case, the maximum output would have been reached within a day. The way it looks now though, it seems I will be reliant on other entities for my energy income.
For her Influence to spread further, the pressure of the higher density mana close to her core had to reach high enough levels to start pressing it outwards through whatever materials are present. Building channels, or even better, hallways would help to guide her energy in a desired direction and dissipate it into further areas. Air could carry the bound mana a lot more easily than bound matter would, as they were free to move about at will. Hallways would also stop the problem of oversaturation of solid matter to occur.
Once at the surface air would help dissipate any extra mana into space from the atmosphere and keep the energy concentrations on the surface in an equilibrium the environment could handle. To help the dissipation of mana from her core she would have to build an exit to the surface at one point or the other if none existed already.
Just one problem though… she remarked dryly, my processing power is not nearly enough yet to start dissipating bonds yet, at least not yet in a matter which would control the resulting energy explosion. So how the hell am I supposed to dig my way to other areas?
Before she could actually start to get too worried about this issue though, the first of one of the sources of the moving strands poked its head into her area of influence. At first it seemed to remain the same amount and type as she received before opening her tap, however only mere moments later she could start observing a difference.
As it started to absorb her mana, its output started to increase accordingly. And all of it in precious structured form, ready for her to re-absorb. Additionally, like with the non-living materials, she could start sensing the composition of the organism, now exchanging mana with her core, new energy coursing through every cell, every atom in its small body.
Her Primordial mana spread in its body, strengthening the individual cells and giving off a strongly reduced amount of structured mana. The longer she observed this individual, the more details about its organic makeup she could determine. It seemed to be a simple earthworm.
Yes! Lucky! She happily exclaimed at finally receiving her first contribution to being able to support a higher energy computational power.
Over the next 24 hours, as measured by her core, more and more small beings and dwellers of the deep earth started to etch closer to her. With each source, her ability to support higher functions increased, and her area of influence spread a little further. Still unable to dig her own tunnels she was mostly keeping an eye on the levels of saturation in the minerals directly around her.
My core did seem to have survived atmospheric entry. So even should they blow up I believe I should be fine. Though my structural integrity might be compromised a bit and who knows where she might get the required solari to fix her structural damage. Better not let it get to that. She idly reminded herself while waiting for her mana input to reach a high enough levels for her to dedicate the required processing power to dissolving materials safely without blowing herself up.
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Luckily the threshold for dissolving bonds is a lot lower than the one for the reverse, constructing matter out of energy. Assembling atomic structures from pure energy requires orders of magnitude more processing power than simply returning matter back into its primal energy form, that she was meant to handle in the first place.
***
12 Days later she finally crossed the required threshold for her to unlock enough processing power to start building the first mana conduits. During this time more than 10’000 small bugs, worms and fungi started to live and grow within her influence. Every one of them represented in her hologram in the middle of the room.
Just Keeping the hologram running she had to dedicate another whole subroutine of her mind to tracking her surroundings. She even started seeing the static strands of energy again after spreading another couple of meters of influence. They seemed to be some sort of fungus growing within the earth.
Whenever two bugs fought with each other, their energy input and accordingly output increased for the duration of the combat, probably something to do with the way the stress of combat could help the body withstand higher levels of mana in addition to increasing the body’s metabolism.
If one killed another, the energy given off was truly astounding. All the energy accumulated by said being during its lifetime and stored within the body would be freed upon death. While most energy is used for processes in the body, some would always be stored within the body itself. This energy could, upon death, be reabsorbed by her core to use as a one-time boost. Though while this energy remained bound to a living organism it remained out of reach, despite all the efforts she tried to exert to the contrary.
So, If I want to increase my processing power in order to start to rebuild I need to start cultivating a truly huge amount of beasts around my core, seeing as over 10’000 organisms in my current influence only allowed for a measly 10 subroutines to run simultaneously. Or I have to start teaching humanity to rebuild from scratch, progressing through the technology tree as time went on to provide me with the required material. At least it seems I don’t have to worry about dying of old age anymore.
With higher processing power she was finally able to split her mind another 9 times, bringing her attention to 11 separate partitions, plus the dungeon map again. Dedicating all of her 10 subroutines to solely handling bond energy would be required for her to start building around her area of influence. Combining her 10 sub-minds into one sub-consciousness dedicated to handling the assimilation of bonding energy was surprisingly easy though.
Immediately she felt a profound understanding of the earth and materials around her and could understand the simplicity of manipulating the energies bonding the materials to her will. In order to be able to create inorganic materials such as stones or metals however, she would need more processing power by a factor of about 100, so around 1000 subroutines, solely dedicated to creating matter.
And the more complicated the atomic structure of the matter to create was, the more processing power they took, with the compressed matter, reinforced by dimensional energy required for most of the advanced technology of the Terran Federation, taking so much processing power to be nearly unreachable unless she had at least several continents worth of beings in her influence.
At the most basic stage she would still be limited to simple atomic lattice structures. Each level would each require a factor 100 of processing power more than the previous one. So around 100’000 for manipulation of existing inorganic matter, without going through the wholly inefficient process of dissolving and creating matter to make alterations. An astonishing 10’000’000 subroutines were needed to create organic matter such as plants and animals, or even their products, due to the complex interactions required between both micro and macro structures of cells.
Even though the materials themselves were not too complicated to create, they had to be assembled in just the perfect way. No one wants a blob of wood that crumbles upon the slightest touch due to the cells not being created properly.
Lucky for her, she was housed in a superdreadnaught core, which could support such high processing powers, once she had enough mana available to her. Were she in a smaller core, say of a screening unit, such as a destroyer or cruiser, she might have been limited to inorganic matter, without the chance of ever producing more advanced materials.
Well then! Let’s start working!
She made her way over to the hologram to start planning out her layout. Keeping in mind she could only remove, neither add nor move around but only dissolve, it limited her options quite severely. Her current explored space told her she was situated underneath some loose dirt inside some sort of subterranean cavern.
However, it seemed it was still closed off with no discernible entrance or exit anywhere visible. The only beings that seemed to be able to inhabit this small cavern were some sort of fungi and the small bugs and worms she noticed earlier.
If she ever wanted to be able to contact the humans above ground, she would need an accessible exit for them to get to her. The warning of the other cores she dismissed as being the irreconcilable logic of flawed AI programming, hoping she would find a way to communicate with the humans once they found her.
Another bonus of an accessible entrance would be for other, bigger beasts to have a way to enter her influence and thus increasing her energy input by a huge margin instantly. She learned from the information package that the other cores usually built breeding areas separate from their main defensive arrangements where they somehow accelerated the growth of new beasts that they then enticed to their corridors to fight off intruders.
Alright! Let’s start building!
On the wall right next to her she started the process of dissolving a square corridor of about 2 meters width and height, careful to dissolve the earth in a way which would keep most of the firmer portions in the walls and ceilings intact as well as arching her construction to aid in the load bearing properties of her tunnel.
She needn’t have bothered to be as careful, as she soon learned, as the additional reinforcement induced by her primal mana of the matter directly in contact with the saturated air in her cavern, reinforced the dirt and rocks around the edges of the corridor enough to bear a lot more weight than what she was used to from conventional architecture.
It was slow going at first but the increase in energy influx from the dissolving matter temporarily allowed her to bring a lot more subroutines online to help her dissolve matter at a much more accelerated rate and thus increasing her digging speed.
After only a couple more hours of this the ceiling of the end of her corridor finally did collapse even with the reinforced matter packed on the walls. At first, she was shocked and afraid to have made some kind of error, but she soon discovered that she simply reached so close to the surface that the ceiling just got too thin even for reinforced dirt to remain intact.
Finishing her entryway, she now had a small cave entrance which led in a straight corridor down directly to her core, which she uncovered to be easily detectable. As a final act she decided to aggrandize herself with the Symbol of the Terran Navy carved just above the entryway to help direct any prospective explorers her way, while hopefully scaring off any potential dangers.
Now all that was left to do was wait for her discovery and she could finally set to the task of rebuilding humanity and be able to reawaken the might of the Terran Federation. Though she would like to get some revenge for all the friends and family she lost in the long drawn out war against the merciless Ourchos, she would be happy with just helping out in any way she could.