Years after the incident of Mary’s failed birth as dungeon core, her scattered soul pieces still hadn’t faded, going against the laws of the spirit dimension. Inexplicably, the soul fragments, which should have lost identity, continued to move slowly toward the magic vein. Somehow, when they reached the leyline, the fragments gathered again forming a strangely loose soul.
‘Am I alive?’ The being formerly known as Mary thought.
As her conscience and perception returned, ‘Mary’ found herself tied to the branched magic vein. Unconsciously, she was draining energy from the line, which might have been the only thing keeping her alive. Before, when she was ‘talking’ if God, she felt like Mary more than ever as if all her mortal costume had been shredded revealing her true self. Then, when choosing her spawning point, even with human memories, she felt like a dungeon core, whatever that meant. However, now, she didn’t feel like anything. Her being was formed by a loose invisible energy that was being dissolved into the world. Even though her thoughts were sluggish and uncoordinated, she refused to just disappear.
After finally achieving the impossible, Mary wasn’t ready to lose everything. Though she had lost the instincts of a dungeon core, she had gazed enough into them. Hopefully, whatever power the core used to transform the rough raw energy into something useful still remained within her. Thus, she gathered all of her self-strength and drained the energy line vigorously, willing all that absorbed power into the only thing she could think of, a room.
Suddenly, Mary’s perspective changed. Dozens of sensations assaulted her ‘mind’ as she tried to keep herself together. After some time, which could have been either minutes or years, parts of those sensations condensed into something she could perceive as ‘sight’. The sight was too unfocused and broad, making her dizzy. So, she pushed those sensations away again and gathered her mind to think of a solution. If the sensations worked as signals that could be further interpreted as sight, she had to filter them and only leave behind a friendlier view.
After a lot of trying, she narrowed the three-dimensional 360 degrees view to something similar to what she had been used to when human. The sight still seemed awkwardly accurate when compared to human sight, but that could be an advantage when mastered. Next, she strived to select and work on other sensations. Using sight as a reference, Mary soon got a physical perception of self into working; it was the closest she could get to touch.
For all accounts, the former human and dungeon core was now a room. If her perception was to be trusted, the extremities of her body were formed by a thin layer of the walls, floor, and ceiling, and the room itself was her insides. The thought was disturbing, but oddly comforting considering that she had been a formless disappearing being some time ago. A room was much sturdier.
On that note, Mary started to think how much sturdier she really was; her ‘walls’ felt especially thin. The former human began to panic until she remembered her potential power. ‘Right, I should be capable of modifying myself with the leyline power’, then she focused on draining more energy from the line. It appears that her ‘automatic operation’ would only drain enough to sustain her existence, which was comforting but far from enough to pay for her ambitions.
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Unfortunately, her conjectures were right on the spot. When draining the energy, even consciously, there was a limit to her absorption rate, which should be related to her current strength and the vein’s capacity. Therefore, to increase it she would need to grow and connect to more branched lines. Soon, the reason why she would only absorb a small amount of energy by default became obvious. The absorbed energy had to be converted and used in something, she couldn’t store the rough energy. Maybe with some kind of battery, she would, but that was a matter for later. For now, she knew exactly how to use the energy.
Mary drained as much energy as she could to add to her walls, becoming bulkier with every passing moment. The fear of disappearing had left a deep wound on her soul, a kind of existential desperation that she hadn’t experienced even in death. Only when the feeling of fragility finally eased, she was comfortable enough to explore the power. Her first idea was to try to expand the room.
Although her perspective made it look like a big ballroom, the size of the stones on the ground revealed that her body should be closer to a square meter. Willing her walls to become thicker had been easy, but expanding had not. First, she tried to stretch as if extending her arm towards something past the wall, but it didn’t work. Bloating the room and pushing the walls, also didn’t work. The conclusion was that expansion wasn’t a question of force, maybe it required some finesse.
Focusing on what she could do, Mary tried to understand how she was reinforcing the walls. Long story short, after fiddling with other suppressed sensations, she discovered another important perception, which she called mana sense. The rough energy that was being absorbed would transform into flowing ‘mana’ within her walls. Mana was her blood!
Reinforcing the walls had been easy because she was just ‘bleeding’ mana into the surrounding earth and binding it to herself. If she could control the ‘internal’ mana, she would probably control her expansion too. To test it out, Mary focused on reinforcing a singular wall until it became three times the previous thickness, then she tried to move the mana out of the wall but on the internal side. Slowly, the mana retreated from a layer of soil leaving the unbound earth behind. It took a few moments for that layer to crumble, extending the room by a couple of fingers.
Mary celebrated the discovery with a mind shout. Regardless of being impractical and slow, it proved she could grow. Next, she repeated the process in all directions, absorbing an external layer just to destroy an internal one. She only stopped after doubling in size. The process was really too slow, but it had earned her a confirmation and a skill. With training, she could now reinforce non-stop without wasting concentration on the task, and the increased size had improved the rate of energy absorption. Now, she had to find a better way to expand.
Fortunately, her skills progressed fast enough to be noticeable. Using her ‘mana control’, Mary willed her internal mana to tunnel forth instead of reinforcing the entire wall. As expected, the mana traveled faster up to a point where it became too far to control. Then, she controlled it to turn back through a different path, forming a rectangle. When the flowing mana finally connected to her wall, she experienced a strange feeling but no growth.
Even so, Mary was relieved. After all, the new ‘room’ was only a rectangle and still lacked connections for the floor and ceiling. So, without further ado, she controlled the internal mana to form the missing parts of the enclosed room area. When the room was finally surrounded by the flowing mana the feeling of growth also came.
‘Argh…’ Mary grunted mentally. While her first expansion had been comfortable, this one was as painful as stretching her bones forcefully.
The pain diminished as she grew used to the new size. Unsurprisingly, she didn’t have a sight of the new room, probably because it was still filled with earth. Now, she was only missing some excavation skills.