Mary continued expanding herself past the filled room while trying to come up with a way of excavating the soil inside. After testing a couple of ideas, she finally found a feasible solution. Instead of expanding the mana on her inside walls to reclaim the soil, she would draw it to reinforce the walls. In the beginning, it was almost impossible, just like forming small hands with her mana and then dragging the soil back into the wall. However, as she grew used to the task, the soil inside the room was dragged faster.

It still took quite some time, but the room was finally emptied. Nonetheless, the dragged soil made the walls thicker and more robust than in the previous room. Moreover, the mana flow through these thicker walls remained unchanged. Overall, Mary estimated that she could be seven to ten times faster by using this strategy. Hence, she started expanding her rooms by outlining the room with mana, then drawing the inside soil into the walls.

At some point, Mary decided to excavate through tunnels, and then expand them into rooms as she saw fit. Of course, the reach of the tunnel would depend on its width since her mana became weaker as she pushed further away from the rooms. Thus, the tunneling continued in four directions, including toward the surface, until she stumbled on something fantastic; a water reservoir.

The reservoir was flowing through a cave that she tunneled into. Sadly, she couldn’t touch it because her mana would disintegrate in contact with water. Still, she decided to circle and tunnel around this underground stream. The task took all of her attention, so she paused the other tunnels.

Soon, Mary was faced with an impasse. She couldn’t keep tunneling around the stream without a wider structure in that direction, but to do so, she would need to change her general direction. The water didn’t seem like a good reason to modify her path, which would delay her plans to reach the surface. However, something was drawing Mary to follow the stream.

Following her instincts, Mary created a few rooms in the direction of the stream and resumed the tunneling. It was so long before she found it. There was a branched energy vein crossing the stream, but this one was different from hers, it was more unstable and vigorous. She tried to touch it, but it repelled her. Somehow, she knew that this vein wouldn’t accept her, and if she wanted to draw energy from it, she would have to subdue it.

Unfortunately, Mary wasn’t strong that far from her rooms. Yet, she wasn’t ready to give up on the chance of having another vein, so she focused entirely on creating rooms toward the new vein. It took some time to get there, but once she did, Mary launched an all-in attack.

Drawing heavily on the first vein, which was probably kilometers away from the battle, Mary reinforced the walls facing the new vein until she couldn’t. Then, she direct all mana she could muster into the vein, trying to grab it and yank it for herself. The struggle took a lot of time, more than she had spent to get to the vein, but she didn’t give up. Eventually, the vein stopped blocking her, and she started drawing from it instead.

It was strange, the mana felt loose and difficult to hold to. Suddenly, she realized why. It was water mana, from a water vein, while what she knew as ‘mana’, was actually earth mana. That’s why it didn’t want to accept her; she was trying to get water with earth.

Earth mana was easy and stable, but difficult to move, while this new mana was the opposite, it was difficult to hold but she could move it with ease. However, she couldn’t think of a use for the water mana, in fact, the mana would start ‘dissolving’ as soon as it left the vein. Just like trying to move water with your hands, it spills through the fingers until there’s nothing left. Unless…

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After connecting to the water vein, Mary also developed a water mana sense. With some focus, she could feel the lingering mana in the stream she was following before. It was obvious now, she could move water mana through the water in the same way she was moving earth mana through the walls. The only difference was that water itself would be absorbed into the ground, so the water mana would eventually disappear, but if she kept it flowing, the loss would be acceptable.

Mary tested several ideas and came up with the optimal way of using the water mana. First, she tunneled into the stream and created another water flow that would take the water through her rooms and then back to the stream. With this, she could easily move water mana through her stream and rooms.

Soon, she discovered a huge benefit of having water mana. Instead of tunneling solely with earth mana, Mary could use water and water mana to widen the tunnels. Hence, her efficiency in tunneling skyrocketed to four or five times faster. As she worked with two different mana, it became easier to discern which would be more efficient for every work. For instance, instead of flowing the water through a water channel in her rooms, it was better to create a ‘pipe’ below the rooms. This way, the water would flow faster and she would lose less mana.

Unfortunately, when it came to tunneling upwards, the water mana became less efficient. Nevertheless, Mary wouldn’t stop there. She drew more water mana from the vein, strengthened the piping below her room, and even created a few reservoirs along the way. Therefore, she managed to support her tunneling upwards in periodic water bursts and finally break through the surface.

However, there was little she could do with only a small tunnel, so she continued creating rooms and moving toward the surface. To avoid a gravity battle, she would build a reservoir and a few rooms at each level before going upwards in a ramp. Fortunately, a simple push of water mana would have the same effect as a pump, so Mary only had to add stronger mana impulses at each ramp to guarantee a constant flow.

Time passed fast until Mary finally built five levels up to the surface. Yet, she wasn’t done. A hole in the ground that led to a ‘dungeon’ wouldn’t be enough for her. So, she drew from the nearby soil and built two rooms above the ground. It was strange to have a room with a door to the outside. Even though her other rooms also had passages between them, it was still inside her, while this room had one leading to the outside. Mary could even ‘feel’ the breeze sweeping from outside.

Anyway, now it looked like a proper dungeon entrance. Only then did she realize that this entrance would invite others to enter. Despite not being officially a dungeon, Mary never considered what she was. It didn’t seem like she would spawn monsters, but that wasn’t a guarantee that others would treat her friendly. Did she even want contact with people?

Until now, she was acting by instinct both expanding her existence and going after new veins and the surface, but that couldn’t be the only goal in life, could it? Maybe she could contact people. Maybe they could help each other. Maybe she could even accomplish her kingdom-building dream…

** **

Raikka and Sandor braved the cold wind of late autumn to search for edible roots and nuts close to the forest of cooper pines on the central plains. The siblings had yet to come of age, but they could more or less be considered adults. There was nothing to be done; their village was struggling to survive, so they could only emancipate their youngsters to form new families soon.

The girl had been against it, but her brother insisted on coming this far. Winter would soon reach the plains, and then there would be nothing to collect. Aside from the ruthless climate, low-ranked beasts also roamed through the plains, so both siblings carried spears. They might not be able to slay one, but they would at least chase it way.

“Sandor, we should return… It will be dark in just a few hours.” She tried to hide it, but the quivering in her voice revealed that she was cold.

“C’mon, at least we need to get a few more mushrooms… There should be some good things closer to the forest.” His only option was to comfort her.

“What is… that?” Raikka was pointing to a small earth building that appeared not far from them.