As I continued to stare at the outside world, weird snippets of insight about coniferous forests, ecology, food chain, wildlife conservation and similar things kept flashing across my mind. It seems, I need to change up a few things in my thicket of trees.
I also noticed that although my entrance seemed to be covered by an invisible and transparent membrane, the pure mana filling my cavern was slowly oozing out of my huge mouth. I tried to suck back the mana that I was slowly losing. However only the green, white and blue mana floating around in the air outside seemed to be able to enter the film, but the pure mana remained stubbornly outside.
My regeneration seemed to make up the loss for a bit for now. However I did not seem to have the overabundance of Mana I imagined myself having in the beginning. Unless, I keep digging new floors and turn all the soil into mana. These tree roots are also constantly sucking away my mana. Should I try to force them out?
Warning! Breach of Contract leads to Divine Punishment accorded according to the severity of the breach…
Great, or maybe close up my cave mouth a tiny bit, after all? When I tried to turn the entrance smaller by converting mana into earth another dialog box popped up.
Warning! Walls of dungeon floors integrating the void to the world realm can not be reduced, only extended.
So basically, I am stuck? Tainted mana seems to flow into me naturally but at a much slower pace than at which I am losing Mana. So, do I need to actively start to hyperventilate continuously along with waiting for my regeneration to catch up, so as to make up for the mana that is being drained? It seems that the only thing I can do is to get big enough that the mana drain becomes negligible.
Looking around at my dungeon I felt like I should have filled it up with more things so that the Mana would have been stored in Matter and Organisms and would not have been wasted. Sigh. Should I fill up the rest of the cavern with organisms from the creation menu? But since I received my new insights, I wanted to make a complete ecosystem in my rooms and I don’t think that my current organisms are enough for that yet.
Although I am not able to leave my Dungeon, can they? Looking at my creatures which were playing around. I told one of my squirrels to go just outside the membrane. The light chestnut creature jumped to my cave entrance, all the while I observed it closely, mentally and physically. I noticed as soon as the creature stepped out of the film that my ability to read its thoughts became much fainter. Panicking, I called it back before, I totally lost connection with my creature. Despite it seeming to be a tiny bit unwilling, it listened to me and came back. The moment it stepped inside my cavern through the membrane that connection became strong once again.
So it seems like although I myself can not go out into the world, I can order my creatures to go out to do things for me? However our connection becomes very weak once they step outside, and I have a feeling that I won't be able to mentally connect with them at all outside of my viewing boundary. So, I will have to tell them to come back to me after going outside, or they have to come back through their own free will, I guess. To test whether I was right, I told the squirrel to go outside my viewing boundary of about five metres and then come back. Similar to my instinct I lost connection with my creature, after it was around six metres or so away from my Entrance membrane. However the creature followed my command and came back to me, just as I had hoped. Our mental connection also snapped into place the moment it crossed my boundary once again.
As I expected, I can send out my creatures as long as I tell them to come back to me after a while. This is great news, I can tell my creatures to get me all the stuff in the forest outside, to fill up my creation menu with new blueprints. I can still make a complete ecosystem in my cavern yet and lock up my mana in my matter and creatures along the way. Maybe I can even see the outside world by reading their memories after they come back?
Excited with my new Idea, I told all of my creatures to go out and bring me back any living seed, plant or organism they could find, along with anything that they might find as new, curious or interesting.
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The moment I started giving out my widespread command, I saw all of my creatures turn their head to look in the direction of my core. When I finished, I saw all my creatures rushing out of my entrance as if to fulfil a divine mission. A feeling of panic spiked in me, seeing them go. Wait! I shouted. Many of them came to a sliding stop, with the Owls almost crash landing to stop in time, almost all of them turned their face towards me once more, I could feel the question and curiosity radiating out from them. Half of you, from every species, come back and keep protecting my body. The rest of you can go out. Not even waiting for me to completely finish my sentence, everybody started rushing to my cave mouth once again. After the quicker half of their species crossed my cave membrane, I saw groups of foxes, ermines and squirrels return back with moist eyes and drooping heads. It was harder to read any emotions from the Owls and Hummingbirds, although I could feel the distinct sensation of disappointment from their minds.
At least, your insect siblings are grateful towards me, and not excitedly rushing to leave me. I scolded them, half amused and half annoyed. What do they mean by this, do they think I did not realise they are looking down on their new home. However, after scolding the others and then looking down on my insects, I saw that they were also rushing towards the entrance, just that their pace was so slow that they had only covered ten metres so far. The insects were too simple minded to realise that I was scolding the others for their benefit and kept rushing towards the entrance to fulfil my command. Sigh. Although, Insects did not seem to understand proper speech and thought, they still understood what I wanted from them instinctively, which was my standing command in this case. Forget it.
Since I wanted to set up an ecosystem, I had to wait for my creatures to come back to me with their finds to see what exactly I had to work with. However, since I couldn’t possibly sit here idly, just waiting for them to come back, I decided to do something productive.
Since I could not make any living organisms yet, as I still wanted to wait to see what my creatures would bring me, I decided to do everything else first and then wait for them. I tried to get an objective view of my cavern, to think of what I could change, to make it better. Pictures of my limited view on the outside world, and the landscape I saw from the Void before I entered underground flashed across my mind. Should I make my cavern resemble the outside world? Yes, Organisms will think they are still in the outside world and I can trick them to enter my mouth unaware and eat them. I only had a glimpse, but the outside landscape is a mountainous coniferous forest. I can’t exactly build mountains in my cavern, should I make some rocky hills? But I will have to increase the height of the cavern once again for this, especially if I want to plant trees on the hills. But I am already losing too much mana as it is, so I can not increase the size of my cavern mouth.
After thinking for a while I decided to make the centre of my cavern deeper, with slopes towards my corridor and entrance, for easier access for my creatures without having to enlarge my entrance. Now the problem was just my thicket of trees, which I had already planted with pine trees. At last, I decided to leave it as it is and just deepen its surroundings, turning it into somewhat of a hill. Having a fixed Idea of what to do, I started with a slight slope downward from my corridor wall towards the centre.
Right when my slope was around five metres deeper than the previous floor level. I felt a disturbance at my entrance. A huge greyish brown cat, double the size of one of my foxes, and with black tufts at the tips of its ears entered my cavern. Lynx. My mind supplied even as I froze in shock for a moment. The feeling of betrayal and anger towards the system flooded me, even as my thoughts started to race at a faster pace. Given the height of the trees, why did I keep assuming that my creatures are huge? Am I really that tiny and insignificant?
The Lynx seemed to look around for a moment and then as if it knew exactly where to find me, its head turned straight towards the corridor to my room. Stop it!!! I shouted. Even as it started sprinting straight towards me. I was as if all hell broke loose, my creations scrambled towards the lynx trying to block its path, even as the big cat was gaining speed. Five Foxes and Ermines surrounded it halfway across the cavern. The Owls started diving and trying to scratch the Big cat, while the land critters tried to distract and work together to inflict whatever damage they could. Although the effort was good, I could see that my newly born critters did not seem to have any advantage against the experienced predator. Two of my foxes and four of the ermine were already sporting wounds of various depths.
Lead it to the Trees. I told them even as I tried to direct the critters in any manner possible. The first fatality was a hummingbird, which dive bombed into the creature's mouth to save a fox from a bite to its throat. The death toll continues to rise mostly among the fragile humming birds and squirrels, however by the time the fight reached the thicket, even three ermines and a fox died with one more being at death's door. The Owls were the only ones without any wounds, as the most injury they seemed to sport, being the loss of feathers. Once the Lynx reached the copse of pines the purple sleepers started releasing hallucogenic pollen disregarding friend or foe, which was a bad idea as the pollen seemed to affect the smaller dungeon creatures faster than the lynx. Just when my creatures started getting confused, with their already minuscule fighting power falling further, and I was about certain that I was going to die today, one of my blood sucking vines finally reacted and suddenly started constricting the lynx. Go kill it before it breaks free!!! I shouted, worried for how long the vines could hold the mature predator. And my worries were definitely not unfounded, as the animal was struggling with all its might. My already confused critters heard my command and started attacking with all their might. Though the attacks would have been more effective, if they could attack the Lynx instead of each other, the trees, dirt and flowers. Finally by a stroke of luck, one of my foxes managed to tear out its throat, decisively killing it. A flood of foreign memories and tainted mana rushed into me even as a blue divine box popped up.
Congratulations! You have received new blueprint : Lynx