Construction workers make this look much easier than it is, to make a proper stream you can't just dig out dirt. You have to scoop some out to put along the edge while compacting it together as tightly as possible to cause as minimum loss of the water in the stream as possible.
Fortunately he lives down hill to the water so gravity is on his side, he doesn't even want to think about what he would have to do in order to get the stream to his cave if he lived uphill.
Although a three minute walk doesn't sound far, when you have to build and compact a trench from one side to the next it turns from a stroll to a weighted run. However he couldn't help but feel some pride as he continued on, this is what he was doing and making with his own two hands rather than being given it to him like he has always had.
Digging and digging he could actively see the progress of the stream he was building, as 5 hours passed he began to feel very hungry. Realizing he hadn't ate before sleeping and then performing heavy labor for hours on end, although cultivation lowers ones bodily needs for a period of time one still needs continuous nutrients to have most optimal use of internal energy.
Sitting down to eat he feels happy and content with his current situation, he loved his siblings but having to constantly take care of them and be the responsible one had caused mass amounts of stress. But here the only thing he had to worry about was himself and his needs, although it was lonely it was a freeing in a way he had never experienced before. No rules, expectations, or constant anxiety from whether or not someone had done there homework or cultivated that afternoon.
He thinks many of the people forget he is only ten years old, although highly matured due to his home life he is still a child who should be looked after not looking after others.
Finishing eating he returns back to what he was doing and continues to carve a stream out of the rocky soil underneath him. After another 2 hours his stream is completed, curving out of the water cave, down the cavern and into his cave until it stops on the right side of the cave in the empty area where he has dug a 20ft by 20ft pond to hold excess water while also having enough room around it to potentially expand if need be.
Going up to the small pond he waits for water to arrive so as to see if it worked properly, although it may take an hour or two for water to reach the pond due to ground absorption. Once the ground reaches saturation level it will begin to work as intended.
While waiting he decides to once more begin cultivating, however part way through he can't help but feel frustrated so much work for such little outcome. The more experience he gets the more he relieves how insane it is to try blocking absorption points as although he has sealed the biggest ones first, it has simply helped him sense how many more smaller ones there are. 'There has to be a faster and more efficient way to do this rather than one by one.'
So he began to experiment, first can he use his energy to block the holes temporary, no.
Can he increase his speed of circulating energy without rapidly increasing the amount of corruption, no.
One by one he marked off attempts, spending the other 2 hours to experiment only to come out with nothing. Feeling depressed he got up went to the pond and scooped out some of the little water that had arrived to water the plant once more, while subconsciously still circulating energy as he poured out water he felt a sudden increase in energy intake and froze.
Realizing he was still circulating his energy he stopped and looked around to see if anything could have cause a sudden change. Although the increase was so small it would usually written of as an energy spike, but in a dungeon with consistent energy there shouldn't be one.
Once more sitting down he began cultivating and although he had never realized it due to how subtle it was there was a small energy increase than before. He had originally chalked the increase of speed at closing a absorption point as because of getting accustomed to the action it should still have taken longer than one attempt to have such a drastic change. That meant only one thing, the energy of the dungeon was increasing, only in small increments but still increasing which meant there would be potential for more dangerous monsters to appear.
Realizing this he began to contemplate before freezing once more at a sudden thought 'why did he feel the difference so distinctly by the garden?' Like with the farm which usually only had one tunnel appear a year suddenly had a second one appear within 2 months of the previous one, the increase in energy he felt also happened at the garden where he grew plants.
Maybe the tunnel appeared in the growing bed area not by accident but because a sudden increase in energy spike occurred while the energy in the area was still active. It also explains why the tunnels have appeared less and less in less populated but well up kept areas, because everything produced energy and when it grew some would be released.
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Normally it would go unnoticed due to them being partially outside but in an enclosed tight space with no exits there is no where for the energy to go but build up here.
He also had another thought, can he use this to speed up the absorption blocking. Theoretically if he circulates the energy while tending the plants the speed he can cultivate at will drastically increase as the energy he has access to will be non stagnant and still densely packed together.
He will only know when he tries later when he has to water the plants again.
Feeling anxious due to the new possibility he decided to make sure to water every 2 hours from this point forward. Although with energy in the area he doesn't need to give the plants to much attention or continuous watering you can do so to increase quality of what you grow. So deciding this he sat down right beside the plants and began thinking of how to optimize this new information .
In theory the best way would be to grow a massive garden and practice but he had neither the tools nor time to do something like that as there is no telling what the backlash of increasing energy inside a dungeon could do.
So he could only go with the alternative, grow only what he can absorb so as to prevent future problems in the dungeon. This mean seeing how much and how often he needs to practice in order to absorb the amount of energy the plants are currently releasing, while keeping his corruption low.
Feeling antsy he gets up, grabs his knife and begins to practice the martial art forms taught by the government, going through each form as slowly as possible so as to make sure no mistake occurs. There is no teacher here to fix his form if wrong so all he can do is try to let his muscle memory take the lead and fix any hiccups he spots.
Again and again he goes from one form to the next using the dagger so as to get accustomed to wielding it. Like that he spends two hours as productive as one can be trapped in a cave.
Feeling giddy he goes to the small pond, gets water, and begins circulating his energy while pushing up against an absorption area. Slowly so as not to mess up he begins to water the crops, and like last time a small increase in energy intake and circulation occurred and what's more is rather than increase the corruption intake it decreased it instead.
After only an hour after watering the fields he had successfully closed another absorption point with only a quarter of the amount of corruption he was getting previously entering his energy veins.
With this he could close one absorption point every 2 hours and as time goes on the amount of time it takes will only decrease. Now all he had left to do was water the plants, eat rations and cultivate while sleeping every few days in-between.
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1 month later
As time passed bit by bit he advanced himself practicing martial arts when he had nothing left to do. From only 3 absorption points closed to 355 closed he had made rapid progress in closing since his discovery with the garden, he had also begun to keep count of how often he spots slimes when he checks outside the cave every 5 hours.
He can feel that the amount of absorption point left are only a handful, but the frequency of him seeing slimes has increased dramatically from only one every other day to 3 times a day as of now, and the battery in his comm is getting low. You can recharge the comm using cores but the frequency of cores in slimes are only around one in a hundred.
Meaning if he wants to continue using the watch to keep time he needs to get at least one low grade monster core and even then it will only last me a week extra. This means starting from now on whenever he sees a slime alone he has to hunt it, If only for the sake of knowing how long he been here.
Suddenly a plop noise is heard and I grab a pot with water in it so as to do what is needed to get me a core, it will also let me begin regulating the amount of slimes in the area. Approaching the slime I walk straight up to it and directly splash the water on it.
Watching as it disintegrates hoping to get lucky, unfortunately his luck has always been average and no core was dropped. Despite his need for a core he won't go to far so as to prevent getting surround by slimes and being unable to fight or defend against them. Returning back to my cave I begin to cultivate once more.
Again and again for the next 12 hours he kills slimes when they appear and cultivate when he can water the crops until on the last cultivation session he felt a drastic change occur, 361, that's how many absorption points are in the human body.
He felt heavy and stuffed, like someone had suddenly put a 50"pd heavy blanket on top of him with no warning. Breathing in and out he begins to meditate and scan his body's state, just barely did he manage to complete his blocking of absorption holes without completely blocking his energy veins. Feeling around he began to expunge all the energy currently in his body, he can feel his muscles and bones absorbing some of the expunged energy but to his surprise the ones absorbing the most energy where the plants nearby.
Currently to busy to study why he continued sitting there when no energy was left he felt exhausted, sore and like he was going to collapse but he ignored his body and continued to study himself.
But the longer he sat the more tired he became without any energy showing up after nearly an hour he could not hold on any longer and finally collapsed in exhaustion.
Waking up he felt energized and full, like he had taken a hot bath, sitting up from were he had collapsed he began to study himself and realized he now was full of energy. Looking at the time on the watch he froze, 15 hours, he had been out for 15 hours after collapsing.
Shaking out his body and stretching he began to contemplate why it is his body only filled up after he fell asleep. But nothing would come to mind, so all he can do is hunt the slimes and perform the experiment once more. As long as he did it enough times he would realize why it happened eventually and be able to optimize it once he did.