> Henry began his morning ritual.
>
> He got up from his simple bed and entered the large washroom beside it. Twisted hands placed first his three arcane-gold rings and then his sparkle mana necklace carefully in a special alcove beside the sink.
>
> After smiling slightly at his favorite treasures, Henry turned to look at his face in the mirror his cheer fading.
>
> “Ugly’s.”
>
> Despite over 390 levels and several racial evolutions Henry could not break away from his goblin roots.
>
> Spinning his fingers around in a complicated pattern as if playing piano in the air, Henry’s silk bedrobes flew away and exposed his mottled green and pinkish grey torso – several thick scars running across his chest coming into view each telling a different story.
>
> “Still didn’t’s take. Dull’s ass stupid Henry’s. You might as well still be a hob’s.” He pointed at his reflection in the mirror and shook his head in a mocking faux sad manner.
>
> Inspection complete, Henry slid backwards gracefully – gangly form somehow not hindering the smooth and precise movements his body was able to make. As he began to move, mana flowed and filled the room choking the already incredibly thick environment in a haze of power.
>
> Two steps to the side accompanied by an almost frustrated shake of his hand began his spell. Each movement Henry took was measured, but the look of hatred he held towards his gangly body in the mirror was not.
>
> Four steps taken in less than a fraction of a second backwards left solid magical afterimages that glowed in the air even as Henry danced around them. A stabbing motion was made towards his brain heart and lungs – followed by a fluttering motion that left strings of mana in it the air connecting his body to the surroundings.
>
> It was at this moment that green pigment began to flow. Bleeding out of his skin and into pockets in the air as the arch-gob twisted and mutilated his body. First to change was the skin tone – green pigment flowing through the air as his mottled skin seemed to bleach itself into a pasty white.
>
> Then a second round of magic steadily tinted his skin to a tanned and slightly golden form.
>
> Next to change was his overall shape and form. Stubby arms extended slightly and toned muscles filled them out. The visible ribs disappeared as faint abs flexed into place and errant hairs were plucked or added in turn.
>
> The last to change was Henry’s face. His squished nose grew out and became angled – while his flat head gained perfectly chilled and very human looking curves.
>
> The voice that came out of Henry’s mouth as he finished his spell was deeper and more measured – all squeaking notes thoroughly squashed.
>
> “Let’s go kill some monster’s big boy.”
>
> …
>
> The man who exited a high-end hotel in Maven strode confidently – his gnarled staff being spun between his fingers in a lazy manner as Henry strolled towards the citie's dungeon.
>
> Henry’s birthname had been Gibob’th – one of the first things to go after he had learned the spells to transform himself into a new person. To fit into civilized society. To be accepted.
>
> Smelling a foodstall, the adventurer rapidly turned to the side – almost teleporting the last 20m – a mage buggy swerving to dodge his afterimage.
>
> “Bob! Is that sparkbeetle sauce I smell? Give me the usual with a double helping of that please. I can taste it already bro.” Henry laughed fishing in his red tunic for some chips.
>
> “Henry old boy! I always do enjoy seeing you frequent little old mee’s stall. I heard proper transcending’s don’t need to eat any’mor but you always like to prove them wrong don’tcha. And might I say, it’s nice seeing a proper high leveled adventurer like you who still knows the value of a good meal.” The half orc spoke while preparing a food-adjacent ball of meat and sauce – one stuffed into a paper bowl and accompanied by a drip of grease.
>
> “Hey man, When the food tastes this good you eat – caloric requirement or not.” Grinning Henry grabbed the offered bowl. In the same motion as collecting the "food" he tossed a dozen chips at the stall’s payment panel – 12 more than the meal was worth.
>
> As they landed, a number flashed in the air signaling the chips were genuine while aggregating their worth.
>
> “Too kind, eheh. More adventurers should learn to be free with their money like you.” The shopkeeper gushed after the goblin turned human walked away waving lazily at his back.
>
> …
>
> Flashing his adventuring permit at the dungeon entrance's scanner – purposefully moving slow enough for it to log him – Henry moved with purpose over to the skip shaft. A vast amount of mana moved around the hall brushing past Henry’s senses as it classified him as a deep delver – and opened up the shaft to level 500.
>
> “Let’s see if I can reach the bottom today shall we?”
>
> As the man dropped through a shaft his arms swirled about spinning and preparing to rip his momentum away at the slightest sign of the bottom – unlike the level 100 skip the level 500 one ended on a bed of spikes that could injure even his transient flesh.
>
> The shaft at floor 500 dropped out into a wide circular chamber a kilometer in every direction. Blood red spikes puncturing inwards from the walls providing a backlight for the “major cubes” that floated about – each rotating to face him and rushing forward like piranhas.
>
> Somewhere along the line Henry had gotten flipped upside down but he didn’t mind, finishing his spell and unleashing it on the horde around him.
>
> Hundreds of thousands of green paper-thin grass spikes poured outwards. Outwards with all the force his descent had gathered.
>
> A rush of fire met to meet the grass but was sliced through so fast it dissipated in a blast of force.
>
> Four cubes were blown apart – wobbling their brethren with the blast even as they formed barriers and shot their own spells back at him, massive meteor-like balls of rock being blown back like pebbles.
>
> “Tch. I think I’m out of practice. Why in the ever-living dull is there’s still so many lefts.” Henry said even as he began to fall – once more twisting his arms to right himself and summoning a faintly green surfboard beneath his feet in the same motion.
>
> “Guess these weeks’re going to be a grinds.” Henry spoke to his staff even as cubes closed in – a faint hiccup in his speech being angerly reacted to after the fact.
>
> Twirling his staff, the adventurer caused a wheel of rootlike green vines – grass like spokes aimed inwards – to appear behind him – a frustrated amount of force being put into the motion.
>
> As the wheel spun, Henry moved forward to meet the dungeon’s minions – the wheel appearing to gather parts of the ambient mana and collect it into its center. The adventurer flew forwards both hands flipping between 25 separate and distinct symbols before suddenly…the gathered mana was used up – rushing forward to a point in front of him with the goal of enhancing his working.
>
> The world turned green.
>
> When the light faded every single cube in the room had been consumed by a thick layer of dark green moss – appearing as if they had grown over a long time. Momentum was maintained for a moment giving the illusion that nothing had changed beside its covering... before cataclysm-class cube monsters began to fall like rain.
>
> In the distance a thick blanket of moss covered every single wall in the chamber breaking down and appearing to wither many of the spikes that pointed inwards.
>
> Over a hundred monsters typically compared as equivalent to newly ascended dragons fell to a single spell.
>
> “Tch, that spell ruins anything I could have looted from them. I went a bit overboard didn’t I old friend?” Henry spoke to his staff even as he surfed towards the exit – not even waiting for the monsters to finish falling or check if anything was salvageable.
>
> “Should have added a few extra katras to make the flash red or even gold. I like gold. Next time...” Was the last words the adventurer said before disappearing into the passage heading deeper into the earth.
>
> Henry hated that most of his magic was green. Grass mana – along with nearly any alteration he could make (moss, leaf, vine etc) always ended up reminding him of his goblin roots.
>
> After becoming a higher hob shaman Henry had gained the more general and useful kinetic mana instead of the typical dance mana to his delight. After breaking through the transient barrier and becoming an arch-gob he had gained a destruction mana to even more excitement...but neither kinetic or destruction worked well on their own – forcing him to combine them with his forest green grass mana or suffer weaker spells.
>
> Destruction moss was just a slightly darker green and kinetic combinations never seemed to color his constructs more than the occasional tinge.
>
> It was his greatest sorrow.
>
> At least killing monsters let him forget for a bit.
Excerpt obtained from the daily life of Henry.
Innearth was having a pretty normal day planning out each of his nightmare floors when he started to feel slightly strange. It took a moment to locate the source – in one of his 10 entrances to the town above him, a group of bodyguard-like men stood around a tired-looking woman. The men looked less like adventurers and more like thumbs while the woman had a single batwing and frizzled blue-grey hair that sparked occasionally. The men had their arms crossed while staring deeper into Innearth’s caves while the woman crawled along the ground “doing magic”.
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She drew first two parallel lines containing periodic little notches using a sort of spoon and then repeatedly wrote the same block of text in the center of her lines.
The combination of rudimentary but specialized enchanting and runessmithing the woman was performing wasn’t what felt strange – no what had gained Innearth’s attention was the ropelike line of water that flowed behind her, floating a few centimeters above the channel.
Innearth couldn’t make out what the rope was – while looking at it he was certain the line of water contained more mana than anything he had ever seen in his entire life.
After bringing the “pipe” 10m into the passageway, the woman stopped. She took out her script pen once more and wrote a second scrawling passage beside her line – this time in an incredibly shocking manner.
The words she wrote were in dungeon script. Not exactly – they were badly misspelled and most of the letters were off as if traced by a child – but they were definitely the same language that Innearth’s system was written in.
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| Ple𝔢se toőʞ oцr bυяdens ḟṛoɯ us. Ǥaia we ароlоБіэѕ. Tḧäṅk Бѻↁ cʌve |.
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The form was butchered and they had done something to a lot of the letters Innearth didn’t even think was possible! But the meaning was clear.
This strange woman is dumping some mess into me?
As the woman and her bodyguards left, the end of the channel started to warp from the strain of the magic behind it. The air at the end appeared to bend before like a blown gasket it burst – a wave of incredibly dense liquid pouring out like a fan onto and then into the ground.
Immediately the stone floor of Innearth’s entranceway/tutorial floor began to warp.
Water flowed into and out of stone – light and sound and smell and hopes and dreams and raw power and madness bursting forth in exchange.
Innearth immediately became annoyed.
What are the sapients doing? I didn't sign up for this!
Trying to control the mana as it embedded itself into the surroundings was essentially impossible – instead, Innearth focused on damage recovery. This tutorial section was cut off from the rest of his dungeon – only being connected through several dungeon flesh crystal circuits.
Digging a pit helped a bit – especially because after the initial rush, the mana pollution became a trickle.
Innearth focused on making sure nothing could spill out of his entrance – all his instincts working towards preventing the mana pollution from being pumped out of his tutorial floor and into the surroundings.
As he worked a blinking panel appeared.
Racial quest: You have been "gifted" the business end of a mana sewer. Sapients am I right?
Goal: Your task is to incorporate this little problem into your makeup and find a more permanent solution to the collection and disposal of mana.
Reward: Experience, floors, levels, a sense of pride and accomplishment.
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Innearth: Hey uh...guys?
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Abe: Yeaasssirr.
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Innearth: Any of you got a Racial quest for a mana sewer.
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Fated Eternal Design: Ohhhhhboy. My little apprentice Innearth is all grown up.
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ZeMadDoctor: Yeah. Just dump that pollution into the void. I can send you a portal. It’s a good way of dealing with it.
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Amy: What! Doc, are you serious? Have you really not asked anyone for advice about this yet?
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ZeMadDoctor:...no. Didn't see anything on the market. Figured I had to come up with my own solution. Did so. System said quest was complete. Moving on.
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Amy: ...okay first off Innearth. Doc has fixed the problem in a safe way. But – and here's a big but – he hasn't gotten any benefit from it.
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Fated Eternal Design: Amy is right – Listen! Figuring out a place to store all that mana pollution is a pain…but it can increase your regeneration if you deal with it right – how do you think I’m keeping up with all the adventurers in my dungeon killing all my monsters? Just make a reservoir at the very bottom of your dungeon and pack it all in. You can also do a thing where you make walls out of two outer sections and then sort of sandwich in the pollution between them. That’s a good place to store it – bonus is it makes the walls even harder to break.
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Amy: The materials it produces and lower density stuff getting warped gets dangerous so I recommend against using it in a monster...but you can use it like fertilizer and plant a bunch of grass and trees and...okay those plants are pretty twisted and strange as well…but you can use them as traps or decorations. Oh! And even though the plants are kind of twisted you can usually use them to make some items and it's safe.
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Abe: ...what's this about a mana sewer? I'm feeling left out of some secret here
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Fated Eternal Design: When a group of sapients like you verrry much. A city forms or is grown right up against you. Then that city clean’s up the worst of their pollution then hand it off to you.
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Abe: …Not sure I like your tone Bose. Nothing you said sounds wrong…but I feel like you’re making fun of me.
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Innearth: Yeah, initial feelings not great. Sure she was polite about it...but the sapients are just treating us as dumps.
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ZeMadDoctor: Hey Amy, I saw you mentioned "recycling" the mana by passing it through plants? I didn't just go straight to dumping all the waste you know. My first few experiments were all “trying to make monsters out of it” but...they were always some of the worst madness type creatures I could make. Noticed they were basically demons but less susceptible to my kinetic cages and stopped. Can you send me some of that plant info? I've always thought plants were useless, but I'm intrigued.
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Brutality Queen: I don't have a mana sewer but I did get a Racial quest to clean up a mana well. Basically a section of forest filled with massive amounts of mana. Sky's Above expanding up onto the surface to deal with that was nerve wracking but I’m strong.
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Innearth: Yeah I built a lighthouse on the surface once. No biggie.
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Brutality Queen: Respect.
Brutality Queen: Anyways. Doc. A lot of those materials were…uh, "madness" related – but not all of them. The ones that were super madness related let me make monsters that attacked my normal monsters in unique ways and they gave me quite a bit of experience. I ascended 6 squirts from that haul. The dead monster flesh also made some good items even though it was from a madness monster as well.
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ZeMadDoctor: ...I feel simpleminded. Recycle madness monsters made from sewer output. Got it. I'm going to make a gauntlet and grind them up against demons.
ZeMadDoctor: If they made non magic related items. Do you think recycling the flesh multiple times will remove the madness taint?
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Innearth: Might as well try it huh? Tell us what you found out as always. I’m going get started guys. Responses will get shorted ait?
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As his friends discussed their solutions to madness materials, Innearth worked on dealing with his pollution runoff.
Environmental mana was incredibly hard to move about – especially in the air. If it bound to solids you could pick up the polluted area and move it – but the mana itself didn’t lend well to being shifted.
The sapients were dealing with this problem by somehow sucking the environmental into water (to make it easier to transport) and then pumping that water out of the town. Water was less effective than solids with mana moving through and getting left behind…but it was much easier to transport.
In many ways having lots of mana – even environmental mana that you either couldn't use or that was hard to use – was a good thing.
The problem with the pollution was the madness factor. As a rule Innearth knew from combining mana types in the dungeon material spell – opposite mana types made madness. Fire and Water, Mental and Kinetic. Those were the fundamental opposites Innearth dealt with. He vaguely knew that other races centered around elements differently… and he knew there must be opposites to the combined and altered mana types – but hadn't come across them yet.
I’m starting to suspect other mana types might become madness tainted after combining 3-4 times…or a different species combining them would make madness soup.
Essentially, I think mixing 100 different mana types together means quite a few of them clash in some fundamental way and that made madness...friction? They don’t mix well.
Innearth took his friends' advice to heart and even as he dug a giant shaft to dump the liquid down, his mind began figuring out how to deal with it in a useful way.
A lot of his friends’ solutions were interesting and deserved some experiment time but knowing why it was unusable – or hard to use – was what sparked the solution for Innearth.
The corrupted crystals.
Specifically, the part of these crystals that Innearth focused on was the second-generation crystals. He focused on them because of their ability to extract only the mana types that have been used to create them from the environment. It was strangely coincidental that he had gained them right before a perfect use for them appeared.
A few weeks were spent setting up the shaft to his lowest floors, making a high mana concentration shaft to prevent the pollution from leaking, and then dealing with some of the side effects the pooling pollution had made.
Natural monsters had begun appearing as if from thin air – some were easy to spot the reason for, worms and other bugs in the soil – or birds and rodents from outside the entrance – had gotten too close to the pool and warped into arcane beasts. Other monsters seemed to spring from thin air – strange bulbs or elementals manifesting in the incredibly dense atmosphere.
Despite the problems however, the shaft was completed relatively quickly and Innearth began safely collecting the pollution in his lowest floor.
He watched in slight shock as his regen shot upwards to nearly double what it had been before that point – accompanying several floor splits in a row.
His experience – which had already been shooting up quickly with all the adventurers – positively flew upwards as he gained at least 4 levels in a month-long period. He was level 77 by age 4 and not slowing down his growth.
After he finished the shaft Innearth set about using the corrupted crystals to process the pollution.
First off, Innearth had to make several "pure" versions of the crystals – the closer to being a single element, the better it was for his purposes.
Multiple weeks were spent inspecting elements by: cleaning rooms with corrupted crystals that dropped the environmental mana really low, pumping them full of his own elements to aspect them, letting them settle into environmental mana, and then saving those states in different crystals – one by one…by one.
Innearth then spent several months setting up a sort of filtration system for the pollution – with opposite crystals ripping opposing elements from the runoff at each area. Water was ripped from it in one branch – creating a soup of hundreds of elements minus water.
Further down the line, a new split had Earth ripped from it – creating everything but Water and Earth.
A separate stream did something similar ripping Fire and then Air etc.
Theoretically every element removed made the thick mess "safer" and Innearth’s grand plan was to distill the soup down into something completely safe.
As he continued to set these paths up, they started to feel almost like a spell. The way each split happened reminded him of his dungeon flesh…they felt like a part of him and it was almost as if his influence helped the process along.
His instincts wanted this to happen. The mana responded. In many ways, it was an incredibly concentrated and effective version of what having different biomes in his floors did. Environmental mana from outside came down in his dungeon and slowly dropped to lower floors constantly. It then pooled in different areas based on the mana that already existed there and some of it mutated to match the floors' themes instead of continuing on. Darkness flavors liked to stop falling around his maze or deprivation floor. Anything crystal related stopped dead in his crystal caverns. This filtration system was a super charged version of that more natural process.
The streams of liquid were split like the roots of a tree and shaped into a series of “beds”. These beds were essentially flat square boxes filled with corrupted crystals that drained slowly into each other in a cascading manner heading downwards and refining themselves more and more.
Sadly, Innearth found even by removing absolutely every element he could from the stream, enough of them were left behind to remain “madness tainted”. The original grand plan was a bust, but the filtration system was not.
Somehow more than just removing a single element his whole setup directed the soup to compartmentalize itself more – each of the “ends” of the system had a different “soup” after passing through the beds in different orders.
And as time went on those end results almost appeared to be losing their madness as they continued. It hadn’t happened yet, but it was almost as if the filtration system was responding to his goal and, over time growing stronger.
Two main solutions came about from it immediately, however.
One – he had a steady stream of various second and third-generation corrupted crystals that could be made into either items or monsters. That wasn’t a small thing.
And two – the crystals could be placed about his dungeon and then “absorbed” to output a huge concentrated mess of a single aspect into parts of his dungeon. It was annoying but the amount that was released could not be scoffed at. Those bursts increased his biomes growth by years’ worth of refinement – and Innearth could use them to force certain rooms or whole floors to gain that aspect.
Finally, while Innearth couldn’t make a refined “safe” output, the final trickle of mana was much less reactive than the original mess and technically “safer” to store.
To finish his recycling, he decided to start fertilizing his whimsy floor with the liquid –letting the grass and trees warp further in interesting (if more dangerous) ways. A harvester monster was made to collect arcane materials and bring them to his dwarves to complete the recycling cycle.
...
Time passed.