While Faellen was working on drafting up some ground rulers for my, sigh, believers – since the situation wasn’t so bad yet that we had to take immediate action – and while my Dungeon Seeds and adventurers continued to safely grow down below on Lapis, I turned my attention to something Faellen said when I mentioned how long and unwieldy my status was becoming.

Ability fusion.

Apparently, it was a custom to merge your Abilities that are similar enough into one single Ability. A part of it was certainly my own issue, the status becoming unreadable (though I did reach this cluttered state earlier than most (well, if one doesn’t count the years floating in empty space)). But more importantly, the resulting Ability tended to be more powerful. Sure, on the rare occasion it had no more power than the individual Abilities use in concert, but that happened even more rarely than the power outright doubling.

Besides, there’s never been a case of the resulting power being weaker, so at most there’d be some wasted effort and nothing else.

Still, this made me wonder. If there’s such a thing as Ability fusion, is there also Ability fission? And would the resulting Abilities from splitting an Ability be weakened? Because if not, and if it exists, I can imagine an exploit where I fuse and then split the same Ability, constantly strengthening it in the process.

But anyway, back to fusion.

I had a few candidates already. Mainly, my beginning Dungeon Abilities. They were basically tailor made to work together. Then, if I threw in my Mana-Cycle Ability which also worked off of my domain, it should be really easy.

In theory, that is. Who knows how it easy it is to do in reality.

From what Faellen said, all I had to do is actively use all of the Abilities together while also focusing on them becoming one. And while my basic Dungeon Abilities were very complementary and synergistic, they were really made to be used like that.

For one, one of them was fully passive (Mana-Cycle) and another was basically passive (Sense). Another two were direct opposites of each other, one Destroying stuff and another Creating stuff. Only the last one, Control, had no issues.

And it would also be the one this whole fusion hinged on.

If I could use Control to properly control the other Abilities and make them behave, the fusion would be as easy as it was said. But that was quite a large if.

An if that I would now attempt.

The Sense Ability I already had a good handle on. While I usually just let it run in the background, I did need to see the world after all, I could focus it to discover new things, as demonstrating by when I discovered the Divine realm.

What worried me more was my Mana-Cycle. I literally never interacted with that Ability and I wasn’t even sure I could. After all, how do you affect a cycle? Without breaking and damaging it, I mean. I was here to find out.

The basics of the Ability were simple. Creatures use mana and somehow deplete it. I absorb said mana and somehow energise it and then release it back into the environment to be used again.

It all happened automatically, a natural feature of being a Dungeon Core. The only reason I had it listed as an Ability was that I had my own cycle instead of being part of a planet’s larger one with multiple Dungeons.

I tried focusing on the Ability, to see if I can do anything with it actively. Maybe bring in the depleted mana faster.

A quick test showed that that was indeed possible. Except that I wasn’t sure if it was more of an effect of the Mana-Cycle or my Control Ability. Perhaps a truer test would be seeing if I can energise the mana faster than it usually happens.

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Another test revealed that… maybe? Results are inconclusive, so it’s time to move on to other Abilities.

Create and Destroy. While at first sight they are diametrically opposite of each other, in truth they are two sides of the same coin. Without Destroy I wouldn’t be able to Create anything (excluding the System given materials).

Which begged the question, was it even necessary to Destroy the thing I want to later Create in the first place? Perhaps, through some careful Control, I could simply scan something. After all, there must be a portion like that in the Destroy Ability. Maybe if a could achieve Ability fission on Destroy I’d become Scan and Annihilate. Food for thought.

I wasn’t willing to do that though. So instead, I’d have to Control Destroy to limit how much was truly annihilated. And the bits I couldn’t save, I can just immediately recreate with Create.

Plan set, I set to doing so.

Since I couldn’t Create something to Scan-Destroy – since I already had the patterns for the things I could Create – this involved finally portalling in all the materials and creatures my Dungeon Seeds have been enjoying for so long.

The first few attempt were… less than stellar.

While I could limit the destructive forces of my Scan and was even able to re-Create the bits I couldn’t save from annihilation, the problem lay elsewhere.

The bits I re-Created were a part of my Dungeon. The rest of the creature that I was able to spare the wrath of Destroy wasn’t. I basically gave them magical mega cancer. The bits of flesh and whatnot I had to Create were still part of the poor animals, they just considered the non-Dungeon parts as enemies.

There were some gruesome deaths among my experiments.

Still, it didn’t stop me. And after some dozen attempts I figured out the solution. Although there was a small pinprick of pain for me in it, I was able to relinquish the flesh I Created to the animal, making it no longer part of my Dungeon.

Two out of four done, it was time to turn to the other Abilities. Since I was still unsure about Mana-Cycle, I turned to Sense.

The Ability was quite easy to use, perhaps I could… I’m an idiot. If I could facepalm, I would’ve done so right now. In fact, I quickly made a face and palm out of some stone just for that reason. Okay, better.

I could’ve used the Sense Ability to get a better idea of what was happening during my Scan-Destruction and mitigate the worse effects even more.

A quick demonstration later I felt even worse at not having though of this earlier. With my Sense fully focusing on what I was absorbing I was able to Destroy even less of it, and in turn feel less pain when relinquishing the bits I did have to re-Create.

Which led me back to my last Ability, Mana-Cycle. Control would hold everything together, so I only had this last one to figure out.

It was especially problematic since all of my other Abilities I was able to use in the process of pattern acquisition. Perhaps I could’ve just used the basic four Dungeon ones, but I wanted this fifth one too. I had a feeling it’s really finish the synergy I had going, I just didn’t know how quite yet.

Hmm… or perhaps, I did?

Surrendering myself to my instincts, I let the Ability and my Dungeon essence guide me.

I used Sense to focus on a small rodent from Lapis. I sensed each minute details of it that I could. Then I sent in Destroy. Guided and twisted by Control, the Ability barely did what it said on the tin. The bits that didn’t survive were quickly replaced by Create which followed in Destroy’s wake. And all the while Mana-Cycle did something.

I couldn’t quite tell what. Was it pulling the depleted mana from the animal earlier than it would have been naturally expelled? Was it pushing energised mana into the creature sooner that it would’ve normally been reabsorbed? Something else entirely?

Whatever it was, it worked and the whole process was even smoother than beforehand.

As my Abilities finished going over the rodent and the new pattern was added to my database, a System notification took centre stage.

Ability fusion:

Create (Dungeon), Destroy (Dungeon), Control (Dungeon), Sense (Dungeon), and Mana-Cycle (Dungeon) have been subsumed.

Resulting Ability: Dungeon Domain (Dungeon)

At last, my status was becoming more readable. From 13 Abilities down to just 9. What more could I accomplish now?