Almost a whole month had passed since she first opened up the corridor to the surface. She expected to have had some contact by now, but no intelligent being has shown up so far. Her Cavern now had a second corridor on the other side of her first corridor leading to the surface. At the end of that corridor she had another cavern followed by a second exit to the surface on the other side. What surprised her the most, was that several animals that normally wouldn’t be found dead underground seemed quite happy to return to her dark caverns every night to rest or simply stay a while.
At the moment she had a whole herd of deers and several rabbit borrows in her second cavern right after the second exit that kept coming and going, but seemed overall quite happy to rest every night in her cavern, providing her with an astounding increase in structured mana she could absorb compared to the measle trickle she still got from all the bugs. Just the herd of 6 deers and one stag with the 2 rabbit borrows seemed to equal the same amount of income as all 20k smaller critters in her domain.
As far as her illustration in the holotank went, she decided to forgo the representation of all the smaller insects, as they started to take up a disproportionately large amount of processing power for the income they provided.
She currently had her 2 caverns and 2 exits displayed with small holograms of each animal represented in a live feed as they moved around, with only a single partition required to keep it running, as long as she didn’t try to add too complex representation of her surroundings down to the atomic level. She focused on the one representation of an animal in her core room itself, that surprised her by more or less constantly settling in her cavern.
The medium sized bobcat that settled in her main cavern seemed to greedily absorb a large amount of the mana she was giving off, returning enough mana to herself to supply the operation of almost a third of her subroutines all by itself. At first it changed caverns several times to hunt some rabbits, and she was afraid the close proximity to a predator would scare off her other inhabitants. This seemed to be the case at first, however they nonetheless seemed to be drawn to her energy again and again and kept returning to the caverns.
The more of her energy the bobcat directly absorbed the better understanding she gained of both its mind and body, interacting with the energies on a subatomic level she had never experienced before. After a while she even got the sense that she could slightly influence its drives and desires, though direct control of its mind didn’t seem possible, and she got the sense that the more advanced a mind was, the more difficult this influence became.
After the bobcat had absorbed her energy for about half a month she was finally able to influence its instincts enough that she could give him the sense that the other cavern contained danger and stop it from hunting any of her other inhabitants, at least within her caverns. This forced it to once again start leaving her caverns to hunt, however always returning to sleep in a corner right next to her core.
She strongly tried to influence it that the core was something it had to protect at all costs, though so far there was not much danger coming her way yet.
***
Kharl and Ford were hacking their way through the wilderness that made up the border between the human plains and the wastelands of the orcish tribes. They were tracking an orc slave that was spotted fleeing into the wilderness. The two were not part of any official organization, but a pair of independent hunters and part time adventurers for hire to the highest bidder, hunting everything from hard to access herbs to escaped slaves or monsters.
At the moment their current employer was the kingdom of Athor, who hired them to capture and bring back the orc slave alive for interrogation purposes, to find out how he managed to escape. Normally they wouldn’t have accept such a long drawn out mission but they owed a large amount of money to some scary people back home and the kingdom of Athor paid well.
The wilderness was dangerous, but they had the experience to match and not be taken by surprise. They were both Stage 3 physical users and as such had no need to fear any beasts, with only the evolved monsters able to pose any real threat to them.
As long as a beast hadn’t absorbed a lot more energy than what is normally available from the ambient mana, their usual claws and weapons just couldn’t penetrate their actively reinforced skin. They were tracking the orc for 2 days now and were getting closer, though from the tracks it seemed it was not much slower than they themselves. As a manual labor slave, it must have at least reached Stage 2 Physical itself, though without any of the combat training that usually went with such a cultivation stage.
Kharl who was currently ahead of them was hacking through an especially dense section of underbrush when an inordinately dense wall of primordial mana passed them by, both refreshing and shocking them both to their core. Kharl stopped in his action and turned around to look at Ford behind him.
“Did you feel that?”
“Hell yeah, that felt amazing! What was that!”
“I think I heard about this phenomenon from another adventurer long ago. That was a blast front of pure primordial mana! Do you know what that means?”
“Primordial mana? But only dungeons… you don’t mean..?”
“That’s exactly what I mean! A new dungeon was just born! And we were lucky enough to still feel the front passing through us before it dissipated enough to be only noticeable by specialized devices.”
“You think the orc scum felt that too?”
“I’m sure he did, and if it’s a newborn dungeon you can be sure he will detour to it to claim it for its tribes. We could shave of months off of the chase by making our way directly to the epicenter and cut him off there.”
“Risky, if he doesn’t detour, though even if we miss him, we could be the discoverers of a new dungeon, which is worth it in it by itself.”
“Let’s do it then.”
“Let’s go.”
Kharl and Ford diverted from the snaking track of the scout and turned slightly to their left and started to make their way to the place they felt the explosion of primordial mana occurring from.
***
It took them just over a month to finally make their way to the area they felt the pulse originating from, almost at the exact center of the wilderness between the human plains and orcish wilderness, however at the most northern border almost within the inaccessible Worldspine mountains. They had to climb several ridges to get here that would have been almost impossible to cross for anyone below their stage 3 cultivation, and if they hadn’t finally reached the valley of origin, they would have had to turn around themselves very soon.
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Towards the end they were able to catch the tracks of the orc they were chasing earlier again, though they seemed to have caught up a lot to their previous distance, as it seemed he was a lot slower in crossing the obstacles in this region.
Following their mana sense, they soon made their way to a large entrance in the ground. They both readied their internal mana to help reinforce their muscles and readied their weapons before following the tracks of the orc to the entry point of what could only be the newly born dungeon.
Ford stopped Kharl from entering, while pointing to the archway above them. There seemed to be carved some kind of symbol above it, but none of them could decipher the meaning behind it. Not seeing any obvious traps or mana flowing through the script they decided it must simply be decorative and set to follow their quarry into the dungeon.
After only a short corridor they arrived at a cavern. Their gazes were immediately drawn to the huge boulder that seemed to have dropped from the ceiling, lying just there inside the entrance at the first cavern. A low growl however pulled their astonished gaze away from the sprung trap and to the other corner of the cavern, where they saw a severely wounded bobcat crouching over the mangled body of their prey. The orc seemed to have put up a good fight, but in the end was not up to the sharp reinforced claws of a bobcat that must have soaked up primordial mana for some time now.
“Shit” Kharl cursed as he took in the sight of the mangled body, their mission was for the retrieval of the slave alive, and with it dead, they would not be getting paid for their efforts. Working together the injured beast was no match for them, it’s claws only managing to slightly scratch their skin, not managing to penetrate in any significant manner before itself succumbing to their blades.
“Well I guess we can write off getting paid now” Ford commented angrily pointing to the mangled remains. Looking at the cavern around themselves with annoyance he tried to think of something else.
“What do we do now? We’ve banked on this mission to pay off some of the debt.”
“I know. Let’s have a look around, maybe this dungeon already produced some treasures.”
Their eyes returned to the cavern and the both of them started exploring the rest of the dungeon, corridor by the corridor to the second cavern. Though when they followed the exit of the second cavern they just arrived back at the surface. It seemed all this dungeon had to offer was some rabbits and the deers they saw run out of the second cavern when they entered.
“There is nothing of worth here at all! Not even any ore or other kind of metals! And raising a dungeon to the levels that it can start generating enough valuable materials takes time we don’t have” Kharl exclaimed angrily. “We need the money now, not in 5 years!”
“You know the core itself could always fetch a nice price on the black market if it remains intact” Ford floated an almost sacrilegious suggestion. Though they both didn’t see any other choice in the end. Resolved they both turned their eyes to spot in the corner of the cavern where they could feel the primordial mana emanating from with a pained expression on their face. Harvesting a core was seen as taboo by almost all the more advanced civilizations on Eorhild.
It might provide a huge powerboost to whatever intended to use the core, however unless you knew exactly what you were doing, whole cities could go mad from the mana given off by the core.
Having silently agreed to Fords suggestion Kharl started to warm up to the idea and a slight expression of greed crossed their face as he reached out his hand to the spot of dirt where the precious diamond must be buried.
***
Alison was shocked when out of nowhere one of the hideous Ourchos entered her domain instead of a human as she somehow expected. She did remember the information package telling her that depending on her location it might be either humans or Ourchos that could discover her, but she hadn’t really thought about it, being sure she would be discovered by humans.
Stupid! She scolded herself for her lack of acceptance of her current situation. At least she was somewhat prepared with a last resort trap built right in front of her buried core.
The Ourchos also seemed to be dressed in rags instead of the advanced battle armor she was used to seeing from her memories. As soon as it entered the cavern, she could feel the rage eating away at her muted feelings, seeing the butchers of all she ever knew immediately brought the memories of loss and anger to the forefront of her thoughts.
She inadvertently started to flood the mind of the bobcat resting in the corner with her rising rage, causing it to focus on the Ourchos’ back preparing to attack.
Seeing the butchers of her friends and family turn in the direction of her core, as if it could tell exactly where it was hidden, caused her to finally snap and trigger the only trap she managed to construct so far. Loosing the last bonds holding the boulder in the ceiling it started to drop towards the body below.
The Ourchos however seemed to hear something and reacted with a speed she was not prepared for. It jumped back and managed to avoid getting crushed by a hair’s width. His jump to avoid her trap however, brought him right into the sights of the bobcat cowering in the other corner of her cavern. It immediately used this chance to pounce on its victims back trying to find purchase for its claws and teeth, defending her core with all it had.
The Ourchos, even without battle armor, seemed not helpless at all, as the claws seemed a lot less effective than what she remembered of them being capable of against unprotected flesh. It flashed a knife and started stabbing the bobcat on its back trying to shake it off before it did enough damage to kill the escaped slave.
In the end the surprise attack of the bobcat won out and the Ourchos died underneath the onslaught of the enraged bobcat, releasing such a huge amount of structured mana she was temporarily unaware of anything else around her, completely overwhelmed with the task of absorbing the huge amount released.
Only once she managed to finish absorbing the amount released, she turned her attention back to the cavern, suddenly feeling elated when she discovered 2 humans standing in her cavern over the defeated corpse of her bobcat glaring angrily around her cavern. It seemed the bobcat was still in enraged mode and she hadn’t stopped it from attacking the humans. Maybe they are mad at being attacked by a dungeon deliminated as Terran Navy?
-Hello! Welcome to my Dungeon! I will help you train and rediscover a lot of what you have lost! With your help we can star…-
She trailed off her explanation when the 2 humans just ignored her and didn’t seem to be able to hear her at all, turning away from her, wandering toward the second of her two caverns.
-HELLO!- she mentally screamed at them, but no matter which energy modulations or communications protocols she used they did not seem to be able to hear her. Getting more and more frustrated she tried everything she could think of, even trying to influence their minds as she had done with the bobcat. But there seemed to be a barrier around their skin that stopped any influence from changing anything within their bodies or minds.
When they finally did return to her core room, they were talking angrily among themselves, though it was far from the Terran standard she was used to, sounding unfamiliar to anything she recognized.
When they both finally turned towards where she was buried, she recoiled from the expression she saw on their faces. This was not an expression of someone who had her best interests in their mind.
They, like the ourchos before them, seemed to know exactly where she was hiding. When one of them finally reached out to remove the thin layer of dirt above her, she first held out hope it was an effort to communicate with her, though when he lifted her up and stuffed her in a bag this hope was quickly shattered.
Realizing the horrible mistake of letting them get so close to her core, she immediately tried to collapse the ceiling on top of her whole dungeon as a last-ditch effort to save herself. But the two humans apparently knew what would happen if they acted against the core, and with a speed she wouldn’t have believed possible without seeing it herself, managed to just escape her domain before being crushed to death.
She immediately noticed when they left her domain, as her energy absorption reduced back to nothing in a moment and her energy levels started dropping again in free fall. She had to immediately reduce her processing power and dimension tap back to the bare minimum, and still her thoughts seemed sluggish and her view again reduced to the bare few centimeters around her core.
She raged and screamed and pushed against her limits but no matter what she tried, her limits remained the same and all she could do was finally collapse in her bed in her virtual corner and cry herself to unconsciousness due to energy depletion.
The only active subroutine being a minimal process required to keep the dimension tap running at its lowest setting. It’s not fair! She thought to herself just before darkness took her.