A cloud of air disintegrated into mana. Said mana then travelled a fair bit of distance until it reached a stone wall, but despite that, in continued on. Only once it was fully settles within the rock did it stop, and transform into something else, merging with the stone and thus making it more.

At long last, I was done. The entirety of my spherical Core Room was enchanted, which meant that, hopefully, mana should not be able to pass through any more.

I was about to tell Faellen I had finished when the fairy itself initiated the mental connection.

“Awesome, I see that you’re done. Now, keep slowly destroying more air until you reach a comfortable pressure, while I explain,” it said to be.

So, I got to work on that. Except this time I only paid half a mind to it, more focused on what my assistant would say next. Oh, and my mastery over my Destroy Ability had increased enough by now that I could destroy air from the whole of my Core Room, as well as control the speed at which it was happening.

Anyway, Faellen’s explanation, “While you’ve been doing all this Dungeon work, I’ve also been working on something. And it wasn’t just thinking and planning for the future. No at all.

You’ve probably heard me mention it a couple of times, but what I’ve been trying to do s establish a connection to the Wyld. The faerie home, the source of our power, or the other place, as some call it. I’m not sure if I told you this before, back before the reset, but fae (not just fairies) don’t actually use or rely on the System for power.

In fact, we only have access to it due to a Deal that was made, that’s not relevant right now. What is important is that the Wyld is at least on par with the System, but unlike the System, it is an actual place. And I thought that if we could maybe flee there, then that would be one way to survive the End. Well, it was one of the reasons I was looking.

But, for us to flee there, I had to have a connection. And to have a connection, the Wyld has to actually exist. I couldn’t be sure it isn’t facing the same problem with the End as your usual reality. Sadly, no matter how hard I tried, I never managed to quite reach it. And yes, the lack of mana or any other energy didn’t help, but it should have been possible either way.

I was scared that my home may be gone as well.

That is, until you happened upon a Truth. I know that doesn’t tell you much, but believe me when I say it was a miracle.

Truths, while not unique to, are heavily interconnected with the Wyld, so when you said yours it resonated with it. Which obviously wouldn’t happen if the Wyld was gone.

Unfortunately, that by itself is still not enough. Which is why we’re now going to make a mana cycle in your Dungeon. With your Truth, the amplification of mana, as well as my own inherent connection to it, we should be able to reach the Wyld. And survive.”

All of that was quite a lot of information for me, but one thing stuck out to me, “But how will that even help? I thought Dungeons were immobile?”

“Not entirely. If you were anywhere else, like most Dungeons, you’d be moving. Technically. A planet is a moving thing, after all.”

“Alright, but what then? Do we just stay in the Wyld forever?” I pressed on, still unsure of this plan.

“No, not unless you stupid Aspect combination has some other stupid properties. Maybe you could stay a tiny bit longer with your Truth, but nobody can actually live there permanently,” was the worrying answer to my worries.

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“So what then?” I still couldn’t believe that the plan I thought was supposed to be the end of my worries was so poorly thought out.

“We’ll figure something out,” assured Faellen. Despite that, I couldn’t help but be not at all assured.

Be that how it may be, I didn’t have much of plan either. I had no plan, in fact, so I shouldn’t complain about the quality of this one. Better hope it works out after all.

The air density continued to lessen all this while, and by the end of our conversation it had reached a point where I’m comfortable saying nobody would be crushed. My fairy assistant seemed to agree.

And the mana, oh boy the mana. It was beautiful, just utterly entrancing. The way it swirled about, occasionally bouncing off of the walls… I could watch it for hours. But we didn’t have hours.

Well, probably. I didn’t actually know how much time we had, as the Level-Up had knocked me out and apparently, a lot of time could pass during it.

The next thing Faellen asked of me was to make a couple monsters. Apparently, I needed something to ‘deplete’ the ambient mana, so that I could then take it in and refresh it, like Dungeons are supposed to. We truly are the plants of mana.

I got to work with making more constructs.

It was only halfway through the making of the first one that Faellen deigned to inform me that that was unnecessary. Why nobody bothered to tell me that once I have monster in my Create database I can create it directly, I don’t know. But it worked so I wouldn’t complain.

To my surprise, Create still didn’t use up any mana and instead threw up the same old message of Ignore That activating. Upon questioning Faellen, I found out that Dungeons use the ‘depleted’ mana. That is also how they refresh it. Sounds stupid, after all how can you refresh something depleted by using it more, but what do I know.

After I’d reached about a dozen of my crude constructs, I felt a shift in the ambient mana. In hindsight, it had been happening even before then, but some kind of balance must have been struck. Before my very eyes I saw the mana set into motion, all by itself, and suddenly I understood what the mana cycle was.

The freshly created mana from my destruction of matter entered the many crude constructs, power their enchantments. From there it exited them, something about the mana changed even if at first sight it would appear the exact same. Then, surprisingly enough, it was sucked into my Core, without me even having to do anything.

I tried making a block of Dungeon Stone, and the difference was immediately obvious. The mana I had absorbed just before exited me, already ‘replenished’, and coalesced into the block of stone.

And I understood I wasn’t replenishing the mana at all. In fact, it wasn’t depleted either. The reverse was true.

Something about other creatures tainted the mana. And when the mana then passed through me, the ‘taint’ got stuck and remained behind. And… yes, I can sense it already. The ‘taint’ would grow my crystal core, or in other words, level me up.

This did beg the question, would I have to constantly use some Ability to expel my absorbed mana? The answer revealed itself not even a minute later and thankfully, it was no.

Once some kind of internal reservoir filled up, I started releasing the mana automatically. Still cleansing it though, just not holding onto it.

“Ahhh,” my fairy assistant took a deep breath, “now this is what I was missing.”

And apparently, it wasn’t the only one missing this, as I soon got a System notification.