Suddenly questioning who it was he was following the requests of, and why he felt almost compulsed to do so, Steven tried to open his eyes.
[That's not how that works, silly. You don't have eyes anymore, try to feel the mana inside you, and pulse it out, paying attention to the mana that you send out of your body, just like if it was inside it.]
Again, Steven felt a compulsion to do as the voice said, but he did understand his prior attempts at opening his eyes had failed, and decided to follow the compulsion. By looking, or well, feeling deep inside of himself, he felt, well, maybe something? There was some kind of feeling reminiscent of the flow of a river, but far slower, could that be his mana? It seemed simply to spiral endlessly in a simple spiral on the vertical axis of his orb form. Speaking of his form, as mentioned in his status, he could see, well feel a big chunk of the orb had been chipped, maybe a hundredth of the orb in height, and a fiftieth in length.
........
Steven decided to try pulsing his mana out like the voice had told him to. In one big pulse, Steven felt a searing pain from the chip, evidently he must have done it wrong, as the chip seemed smoother, probably worse than before.
With some careful practice, Steven soon managed to pulse the mana out safely, by adjusting the exit of the river to be opposite the crack, and soon could once more, see? Actually, this sense seemed different from those he had had as a human. He received a complex signal, which through what seemed like an inbuilt process in the core got converted into an understanding of the surrounding world, toughness, strength, reactivity, flow rate, acid, etc. resistances, all of this data was noticeable if he thought about it, he could also simply see the shapes, or add colours, or sounds, and more, maybe mana receptivity, in summary, it was a sense which he could use for practically anything, and what's more, he could already tell that detail was improving as he used more mana, although considering his limited regeneration, for now he merely flooded what he now found was a small square room with the core in the middle, a floating fairy beside it, and a thin but long crack leading to the outside through which Steven could tell all of his generated mana was coming from, it may actually be more accurate to say collected mana than generated, as it just seemed to flow in from the slit, as opposed to the generation using any air or anything.
[Great! Now, it might be time to start expanding, the mana released by your perception will start leaking outside over time, and those who encounter it will be able to track it to here, and they will, as mana is a great resource for the living as well as the inanimate.]
Steven panicked a little, "Invaders will already be able to find me? I'm not even close to ready!" [Don't worry too much, it takes a few months to spread a meter out of the dungeon, and larger creatures need greater mana density to sense anything at all.] With that Steven had evidently relaxed. "So, you, the one speaking to me, you're the fairy floating next to me?" [Yes, yes I am, but it's insensitive to say it in that way, it implies I am the only relevant fairy to be floating next to you, where in fact there are hundreds you just can't see.] "So, what am I meant to call you?" [I don't really mind, so long as it isn't as I said earlier, or Mercy.]
"Right, so ummmm, Kitty, what do I do next?" The fairy seemed bemused at the name, [If that's the best you can do, I don't think I want you naming the bosses. Anyway, next is expansion as I said, to do so, you pump the perception mana into the walls a little, and once you have, you use the mana now inside the walls to move them.] Steven started to quieten down, in concentration as he attempted to move the mana as she had instructed.
It took a while, but soon he had gotten the mana into the rock walls, "So, Bismuth, what's the next step?" [You are certainly not getting better with naming, but the next step is to will the mana with the walls to move.] "I know, I know, but what do I do with the stuff, you can't really expand a hole by relocating it." The fairy seemed to light up, [Ah, yes, this is a fun one, you know how you can make mana more dense right?] Steven slowly responded, "Yeah? I think you told me that before?" [Well, by moving the material alongside mana, you can increase material density as well, making it tougher, heavier, and harder to chip or bend.] Using this new knowledge, Steven experimented with a small layer of wall on the opposite side of the crack, moving it to evenly coat the rest of the walls he had. Interestingly, by doing this, the perceptual mana in the walls could no longer leave, but he could use this to determine how dense each part of the wall was.
Repeating the process, but now with actual goals, Steven moved the material for a 1 by 2 meter opening on the left wall, should you view the room from the crack, near the end of the room, and he made it a whole 3 meters before opening into another room of 4 by 4 meters by 3 meters tall, just as the core room was. At this point, the fairy started to speak up again. [Now, you just need to relocate your core to the new room, and then continue to expand slowly. To move yourself, you need to take your perceptual mana, and concentrate a lot beneath the core. Then, when it's dense enough, by moving the cloud of mana, you can push yourself in the direction you want.]
Steven decided to start attempting it, and learnt to push himself slowly, after a while, eventually reaching the centre of the second room. Now, the fairy started once more, [Next, we need to build defences so invaders can't immediately find the core room. To start, you can start making a spiked pit trap in the hallway or something, and I'll grab a lot of resources from outside for you to use, or turn into monsters.]
Having heard the instructions, although reluctant, Steven was ready to build his first pit trap. He knew how to remove, well kind of, material, and add material to the appropriate places, and he could even make fragile material by removing density, but leaving a little there. As such, although reluctant, for his own safety he would need to build them, and as dangerous as possible.
Steven's first trap was in the hallway to the core room, as he didn't want to kill those who simply entered his dungeon, only those who really wanted to take his core for themselves. As such, in order to ensure the trespassers were aware they had reached the end, at the start of the hallway they would be able to see the core already, knowing it was the end. That was already accomplished by the positioning of the centre of the room in relation to the core. Then, seeing the core, if they entered the hallway, any weight over 300 kilograms in the hallway would cause it to fracture, and the pit he was digging would soon be 8 meters deep onto 2 meter spikes, with their bases at 10 meters, and approximately half a meter circumference at the lowest point.
........
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Finally, the fairy returned, [I brought some samples for you to absorb, there's 15 plants, a leaf, some water, and a few bugs. Only the bugs are still alive, so you can take the easy way with them.] The fairy threw everything on the floor, and stomped on a number of bugs that crawled or flew from the pile. [I think I missed a few, but you should have a bunch in your memory now.] I decided to check for myself now.
{Status}
Identity: Steven Race: Dungeon Core Health: Mildly Chipped Safety: 0 floors Mana: 20 Mana Generation:
1/year
Skills: {3}
Mana Forming Use mana to form matter and beings. Memory Understand and maintain understanding of things. By observing them, or absorbing the energy of their deaths. Mana conversion Transform any mana into your own, regardless of attribute, also allows free conversion to any known attributes.
Memory:
{17}
Name: Level: Stick Insect (Heteropteryx dilatata) 1 Fly (Tabanus Sulcifrons) 1 Praying Mantis (Mantis Religiosa) 1 Woodlouse (grouped) 1 Spiders (grouped) 1 Termites (grouped) 1 Beetles (grouped) 1 ... 1
Having read his new memory list, Steven had a few questions for the fairy. "So, Mantis, what does the triple dot mean, and why does it say grouped in some of my memory list entries?" [First off, still horrible at naming, did you just pick the most name sounding of the categorization fragments? Secondly, triple dots imply you have too many Memory entries to list them all easily, if you try and look for the ones you want you'll find them, but it helps keep the menu from becoming unreadable, same thing happens if you get more than 8 skills, a requirement for the triple dots is that the memory entries are all the same level, if that is impossible to enforce, the list becomes a range. Then, lastly, the grouped caption means that 2 or more species are known to you, and you can now mix and match properties of the different subcategories, so long as you choose to. Oh yeah, additionally, you can't expect any more mantis types or stick insects, there's only 1 local species, whilst mana helped adaptation grow stronger, those species just never got to this part of the world, so you'll have to wait to group all insects, with 32 species before you can get different models of that.]
Happy with the diverse list of insects, Steven was ready to learn about the plants until they became Memories too. The fairy explained the process, [In order to build a memory for something that cannot die, or that is already dead, you essentially need to form as precise a replica of the real thing with mana alone. Then, in order to improve the model, you can do the same as for any other memories.]
Starting by making a simple sheet of mana in the air, Steven decided to replicate the tree bark the fairy had brought. He started by curving it right, and then colouring it the right shades of brown. Then, he made the interlocking flaky skin on one side, and the smooth, fibrous other side. Checking his memory list again, it had been added as a level 1 Memory.
Repeating the process for all the plants, and the water, Steven eventually finished making replicas. Next, the fairy started talking again, [First of all, as I know you'll want to know, levelling up your models will make them more accurate, and cheaper to produce with mana. To do so, you need to study it in novel situations, for instance, bark when being torn apart. It can be done most efficiently with the real material, but can be, less efficiently, done with only the model by paying attention to where the model is leaking mana in these situations, as those are flaws the real material would lack. This manner of levelling your model will not always lead to the same exact material response as the real thing, but usually does, the difference is usually most noticeable with certain medicinal herbs which are drastically altered by the chosen method to resolve mana leaks. Anyway, on a more important matter, it's time to make your first monsters. Monsters are essentially any memory that you bring forth merely with mana which is intended to harm intruders. Their minds are instinctually encoded to follow your orders, as well as passively attack any invaders however they can, with your orders being prioritized before that should invaders be absent, and after that should invaders be in close proximity, and known to them. In order to make them better at hurting things, you can simply modify the models however you wish. There are limits to anything in the model's variation, depending on how many species are in the definition.]
To try it out, Steven decided to summon a Mantis Religiosa. Seeing it form before him, Steven decided it was the scariest looking insect he currently had access to, besides to those with phobias perhaps, the spiders. trying again, Steven tried to modify the summon. First, size, he inflated the size of the creature, and saw a growing mana leak from different points on it's carapace I finally noticed the first model flap it's wings to move away from the creature, evidently not very effectively, as it was undefined gender, holding a status between male and female, leaving it's wings just about strong enough to lift it up. Now finally realizing the creature had wings, I decided to make them inordinately bigger, and stronger so that the now 2 meter tall Mantis would be able to fly freely. Admittedly I was going to make a largely 2 dimensional dungeon, but knowing these Monsters would be able to fly excited me, I wanted tall ceilings, with large open spaces and hives to have flying creatures live and fly in. If I kept the floors flat, I would feel very sad for these Mantises I was growing quite fond of.
........
Some time later, I had finished preparing more Monsters, I made very armoured, naturally large Beetles and Woodlice, with Termites being given functioning reproductive systems, and stronger fangs, but being made smaller. Horseflies I made able to suck more blood by using an expanding sac, and made them even more resilient, with spiders for now only made into one type which was quite well camouflaged in the dungeon so far, and was quite big, with no silk production capabilities, but an increased potency venom, now strong enough to kill rabbit sized mammals, and paralyze most bigger things.