Taking a good look over my dungeon once again, I feel like something's slightly off, but can't quite put my finger on it. Oh well, it's not like I need to work it out right now.
More importantly, I noticed the Mantises and Spiders I had spawned were getting riled up, looking out of the Entrance the little distance I could, I saw why that had been. There were a few rabbits and mice sniffing around near the entrance. It had been a while, but I thought Beetle had told me it would take a few months before small mammals got attracted to my dungeon.
"Hey! Yttrium! why are there already small mammals near my dungeon? I thought it'd take a few months." [What do you mean? It's been 3 months since you started the dungeon, just look at the outside expansion.]
Looking at the outside space, I realized she was right, I could see a full meter out of my dungeon. I wondered where the time had gone, but soon stopped that line of thought as the mouse entered my dungeon.
It looked around and sniffed a bit, as one of my venomous spiders approached on the ceiling. The mouse somehow noticed it though, and within moments it had closed it's teeth on the spider's abdomen, and I saw maybe 20 different mana leaks formed almost instantly. Remembering that for later, I watched as the spider managed to catch the leg of the mouse in it's jaws and pump large amounts of venom into it's body. Within moments the mouse froze up, losing mobility, before, shortly afterwards, it stopped breathing as well. Sadly, it seemed my spider was dying as well though.
about half a minute later, the rabbit came inside as well, although my spider was now completely dead. My armoured beetles wouldn't be able to do much damage to a rabbit, but my Mantis was approaching already. Once the rabbit spotted the Mantis it seemed slightly scared, and retreated a little, before the Mantis' scythes scooped the rabbit by the behind, and from the side, before lifting it into the large Mantis' arms, locked into place. Next, the squeezing of the scythes against it's limbs started to cut into the rabbit. I noticed why the original Mantis had so many little bumps on it's limbs, but I had removed them for my Monster because I thought it was unnecessary. The Rabbit was slipping a little, and the Mantis had to adjust it's grip. It started chewing on the Rabbit, and I noticed a few mana leaks in it, which I would fix later.
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"Hey, my spider died, do I need to spend mana each time it dies to make a new one? I admit it'll get cheaper when I fix flaws, but that seems rather costly." [It is admittedly an option, but there are alternatives, for one breeding, if you give your monsters genders they can reproduce, giving you new monsters to use after their maturation period, or by forming a Monster's Memory inside of a spatial singularity, it can passively summon Monsters after given intervals. Although each singularity can only form one Monster at a time, and takes a time based on the mana pumped into the singularity to regenerate. Plus, singularities don't regenerate when invaders are on a floor. You can however still change the Memory after installation, making it more efficient, and the better the model inside one, the faster it can generate them.]
But, where is the energy for the creature's creation coming from? Surely it doesn't just come from nowhere? [No, silly, that's what the singularity is for. We use the singularity to pull in Anti-Mana equivalent to that needed for the creature's creation. This does mean if somehow the singularity ruptured it would wipe out your ambient and regenerated mana until it cancels out, kind of like a Loan-Shark, except the money is Mana, and the bashing your head in is Anti-Mana.]
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Anti-Mana? Would that have similar properties to Mana? This brings me some ideas.
Perhaps Hallway-Beta will be more interesting than I expected.
Some Experiments are in order.
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Eventually, I built a singularity for each of my Monsters, currently I had 10 Spider singularities, 5 Mantis singularities, 3 Beetles and 3 Woodlice. My remaining creatures I didn't know if I wanted to make so permanent yet, so I left it for now. Xenon gas? Does Anti-Mana do the same as Mana? [Well, not everything, but most things can be done with both. For instance, Anti-Mana can form singularities as well, although these singularities would absorb Mana, release Anti-Mana on command, and are essentially the opposite form of spatial disruption. Mana can grow things, whilst Anti-Mana in the same setup would shrink them. Mana makes things hold their shape, and Anti-Mana disrupts the shape.]
So, filling a normal creature's environment with Mana would make them harder to kill, and Anti-Mana would make them easier? [In a sense, yes, but you shouldn't try and do that, Mana and Anti-Mana cancel out violently, if a creature strengthened with mana contacted Anti-Mana it'd release enough energy to break through some really hard stuff, depends on the quantity how hard, and the environment and stuff.]
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Perfect, a test subject.
Let this Rabbit try my new defences out.
Oh, it died to a Mantis.