The governors and their guardsmen all departed.

My meeting went surprisingly well! Isn’t this supposed to be the part of a story where war is declared?

Eh, no complaints here, I’ve got riches to earn! (And spend, hehehe.)

But before I begin spreading my economic domain, I need to first expand my literal domain.

It’s fortunate that they asked what territory belonged to me, I was honestly afraid they’d try to claim the areas I’d already set my sights on. It’s certainly a reasonable expectation considering they are an empire. Perhaps they don’t spread as aggressively underground? And if so, I’d imagine they’d have a very good reason not to… Though I do have my doubts that these governors actually represent the Lyrian Empire’s best interests.

I need to do some research on property ownership. Just because they’re leaving me alone for now, doesn’t mean that will always be the case. In the future, I may have no choice but to purchase the territory occupied by my dungeon and even, and this horrifies me, pay taxes! Speaking of, I wonder how property law works considering the veritable verticality of living space resulting from the presence of extensive cave systems across the world.

I shall set that disgusting thought of taxes aside and move on. Before I begin the exciting process of acquiring and studying the new wildlife whom I know to inhabit the snaking canyon, I should improve my Dungeon’s defenses a bit.

When that mage attacked my home, many of my weaknesses were revealed; the path to my core is unhindered by impassable objects, and I’ve no way of manually triggering traps or cave-ins when a mage is actively deterring my abilities in their vicinity. The solutions to both issues are obvious in hindsight; I need to implement emergency airlocks and blockades, as well as design automatic or remotely controlled traps.

And a few last resorts never hurt.

Before I even begin the tedious process of carving out dozens of grooves for my latest series of rolling vault doors, I realize something else. My dungeon core currently lies in an obscured cubby buried in the wall of the main tunnel leading to my large disk room. The issue: A humanoid can fit through that tunnel. Now, why oh why would I make it so easy? At this point, the bedrock around my dungeon is thoroughly porous with narrow access tunnels for my legions of dungeon helpers to use when carrying out their myriad tasks. If someone could take a cross-section of my dungeon, they would find that a large percentage of my total interior volume, something on the order of ten percent, is comprised of branching dendriform passages completely inaccessible to anything larger than a mole squirrel.

Unless my assumptions of neurobiology have been rendered false in the presence of magic, sapient creatures should be incapable of fitting through such tiny openings themselves. Simply put, their large brains require a large body.

I want to make my core as inaccessible as possible, therefore, it would be prudent of me to station it in one of these tunnels.

There is just one problem…

When I move my core, the rest of my domain gets dragged along with it. When my domain is moved, the portions which formerly occupied empty space may then find themselves embedded in solid rock.

Now, interestingly, this isn’t a problem in most cases. My domain actually permeates a few meters deep into the surrounding stone walls of my dungeon. This means things like plants and doors don’t actually impede me entirely. (Though they do slightly.) However, if I translate my core at all, those portions which become embedded too deeply in stone will be destroyed. The same goes for changing the attitude of my core; even a slight rotation will shift the outer edges of my vast domain a great distance, thus removing huge areas from my control.

If I move my core just a couple of meters away, the volume of dungeon domain lost is small enough to be easily recovered. It’s at greater distances that it becomes…impractical. Expanding my domain across wide areas is a time-consuming process. I’m much better at doing so now than I used to be, but it will still take too long. If I was to make a rough estimate, I’d say that translating my core a couple of dozen meters to a suitable dungeon helper passage would destroy enough of my domain that it would take at least a month to fully reclaim all that was lost.

That’s an obvious no-go.

But of course, there’s more to it; I’ve already considered this train of thought, however, I’ve been neglecting my experiments lately.

When I first ‘reincarnated’ into this world, my abilities were never explained. Even my repeated attempts to query Mr. Normal have been fruitless. I was left with no choice but to try attempting actions I remembered from dungeon core literature in my previous life.

But what if I can do more than that? It doesn’t hurt to try! I have my suspicions that there is some sort of method to allow for the convenient movement of my core. I’ve seen the trope before.

Let the trials begin!

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I attempt to “wrap” my core with my sense.

A complete failure; I forgot that I’m unable to taste my own core…

What if I try to wrap the space surrounding my core with my sense?

Nothing.

Much like I would while operating a rune, I infuse mana into my core.

Oh, I definitely felt something there! Woohwee that is weird! It hurts a little bit, but in a mental way. To put the feeling into perspective, it “hurts” my mind. That doesn’t mean it feels like a headache as I wouldn’t really classify that as a pain of the mind, no, it stimulates the same feelings I get when performing telepathy. (But not telekinesis, that appears to be completely unrelated, despite the shared prefix.)

As far as I can tell, nothing has changed though. Still, I think I might be on to something here!

I try again.

Same result, a discomforting mental pressure, but nothing else.

Using my mana sight, I notice that my jagged and irregular red core isn’t actually storing any of the mana I’ve been infusing it with. Instead, it essentially passes through and dissipates into the environment. This actually makes some sense, from my understanding, soulstones, the material dungeon cores are comprised of, innately store vast quantities of mana yet are unable to be recharged.

More testing is required. This time I infuse a lot of mana into my core.

…

Well alrighty then, I blacked out. It’s been months since that last happened. I clearly remember (No surprise there.) it happened previously when I’d used up all of my mana at once trying to modify a fungus gnat.

And if that wasn’t enough, my mind is on fire! It’s like a hangover, but so much worse. I can barely focus on anything. This is the first real pain I’ve experienced since I died while using the toilet…

Still, I need to know how long I was out. Pushing through the pain, I turn my gaze topside to observe the sun’s position.

Bad idea.

Yup, this is a hangover alright… I’ll sit this one out.

…

Three hours later and the discomfort has subsided. Faster than a “normal” hangover.

Now that I can think more clearly, I ponder over my…experimental observations. Heh.

A hangover is a purely biological effect, therefore whatever I’d just experienced was somehow connected to the mechanism which drives the inner workings of whatever medium my consciousness occupies. I’d infused mana into my core specifically, the implication?

At the very least, my core is my brain. I say it that way because it may serve other functions as well. More testing is needed.

More testing is always needed.

I know, I know, there’s nothing surprising about that! Still, until now, I’ve been unable to just assume my mind was located in my core. For all I knew, it could have been tied with my domain. That would certainly explain the gradual improvements in my abilities, such as multitasking, cutting, merging, modifying, expanding, etc. After all, my expansion has been unceasing.

Indeed, even now, I can’t fully rule out that possibility. In fact, other conceivable culprits could be mana regeneration and/or capacity! I should set up a few controls in the future. Perhaps I can establish a set of units to quantify mana-related things?

I digress, my mind is somehow in an inert rock, and I don’t know how long I was passed out for.

This world’s (Or should I say, “Melk’s.”) moon is almost up, just as blurry and unsettlingly featureless as always. To verify that I wasn’t gone for multiple days, I must contact an active observer.

Predictably, Wes is in his sparse study managing his ledgers. Perfect.

“Hey Wes, it’s Ike. Sorry for the late visit, I just needed to ask you something really quick.”

“Good evening Ike, what do you need?”

“Approximately how long ago was our meeting?”

The merchant paused and placed his hand on his beard before he said, “Around fifteen hours ago, why do you ask?”

“I can’t tell you yet, but soon. I need to go, thanks!”

I cut off the mental link. Have I grown addicted to lying? I’d better watch myself; this is both a dangerous and self-perpetuating habit to set…

Onwards! I’ve got more ideas to test! Every setback only reveals more information! Every success and failure is just another brushstroke on the full picture!

What if I wrap my sense around empty air? Attempting…

Well, it tastes like air, but that’s about all I notice.

Perform telekinesis on air?

Huzzah! A gust of wind! While I can see that being extremely useful in other ways, but it doesn’t help me with my current dilemma.

Infuse air with mana?

Switching on my mana sight, I see something expected, yet profound all the same.

I have created a temporary mana concentration gradient. I wonder how far I can take this.

This time, I expend significantly more mental effort on concentrating an even greater quantity of mana in a likewise smaller area. Just as I’m about to pass out for the second time today, I halt and observe the results.

The air is thick with mana under my mage sight. Although not decompressing at the rapid rate you’d expect of compressed gas, the mana is still dispersing relatively quickly. Clearly, its rate of dispersal is in part dependent on the concentration gradient.

And that tidbit is weighty, it reveals one of the, no doubt numerous, ways in which mana interacts with other mana. The more I learn about its behavior, the more similarities I draw between mana and physical particles. Even so, it expresses anomalous characteristics.

What happens if I try to confine mana at a high concentration?

Turning my focus to the wall of the chamber I’ve been experimenting in, I clear away some of the clingy vegetation and excavate a narrow, one-centimeter-wide, tunnel. I make it one meter long and set aside a portion of the debris to serve as a tight-fitting plug.

At the end of the tunnel, I hollow out a spherical cavity with a five-centimeter diameter. For now, this will be good enough for a rough mana containment chamber.

As I’d done previously, I concentrate mana inside the spherical chamber. As I’m unable to easily move mana through a solid barrier, I add the rhyolite plug only after I’ve finished pumping the mana inside, making sure to merge it with the tunnel’s walls in order to form an airtight seal.

Because the stone plug isn’t thick enough to impede my domain, I’m able to place my point of view inside the now-isolated cavity. Though it is worth noting, it isn’t as easy to pull off with an obstruction in place.

“Switching on” my mana sight, I observe the mana trapped within. Indeed, it has remained confined, however to my surprise, I notice a slow trickle of mana escaping. Taking a closer look, I see that it is somehow passing through solid stone, albeit slowly.

At this point I’m tempted to try confining it with different materials to identify a trend in mana permeability, however, I’ll have plenty of time for that later. I need a breakthrough right now, so I must to stay on track.