> Q; What would you say is a must know for any adventurer?
>
> A; Don't try to take the core.
>
> Q; What do you mean?
>
> A; You see, there are a lot of adventurers that want the bounty on a dungeon core. But they don't realize that dungeon cores are alive, that they don't want to die, and that they don't play fair like when you just adventure inside for a bit of gold or something.
>
> Q; Really, is it actually that much more dangerous when you do that?
>
> A; Yes, you know that one forest dungeon that spread up to the surface, the one with a lot of alchemy materials?
>
> Q; Oh that one, it was called 'Thiari's verdant paradise', right?
>
> A; Yes, it's quite popular now, but back when it was just discovered, about a month after it if I remember correctly. A silver party went inside in an attempt to get that fat paycheck, me included, and everyone except me died a horrifying death.
>
> Q; How did they die?
>
> A; In a way I won't tell you, now get lost you damn paparazzi!
-Exerpt from an interview with an annonymous diamond rank adventurer.
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A slime bounced against the wall of Falc's cube, it didn't die or have a seizure, but it couldn't see.
It didn't have a sense of direction, or touch, or smell, or hearing. It didn't even know there was something outside of a black senseless void, and it couldn't go insane because of it, because it couldn't think!
Falc had to find a way to make it not garbage, so the core started to brainstorm.
First; 'How about twice the muscles?'
Though Falc first made the fatal mistake of randomly putting the muscles everywhere, and another seizure occured.
But after that, it regained some sense, and realized that the slime was straight up too stupid to not seizure if given the chance. So Falc instead just set the muscles up in duos with the one design where the slime could jump around properly.
Now, did it work? No, no it didn't. It ripped itself apart, not being elastic or hardy enough to bear the power of two little muscles.
Second idea; Two weaves!
In simple terms, Falc wanted to make another weave after the first weave was finished, to create a 'Double weave' as they called it.
So Falc quickly repeated the thing he had done so many times; Make the water, make a ball, weave it together- But then, instead of making the muscles, he started to try and make another weave inside the water ball. Not put the two weaves together to make a 'Weave+', but put a weave 'Above' the previous weave. Might not make sense as the weave is three dimensional and covers the entire semi-floating liquid ball, so it shouldn't be possible to put it above the weave while also being within the constraints of the in-progress slime.
But magic is magic, just think of it as Falc layering it on the basis of the 4th dimension.
'Shit!' Falc failed in holding the water in place as keeping both the weave and the water stable while making another weave was too hard on his inexperienced mind, making him lose all of the invested mana.
A few more repeats of this made Falc walk another path, actually do a 'Weave+', which wasn't exceptionally difficult, but it took a lot of focus and time compared to a normal slime. But since Falc had no way to tell the time, it didn't matter much to the core.
To be honest 'Weave+' wasn't that much better than the orginal in weaving potential, Falc could make it even better.
So Falc did, but it wasn't enough.
So Falc did it again, but there was room for improvement.
...
Ten tries later and 9 recycles later, Falc had reached his practical limit. He could technically make it even better but that would take far to much effort for the effect he foretold. He hadn't even breached the surface yet like how his instincts desired, nor had he gained anything too powerful. He at least wanted something that could actually, you know, see.
So Falc quickly registered his 'Weave+ slime' schematic for later reference and to at least have a way to compare their new version to the old, though mostly because the core didn't want to admit it had basically wasted its time making a weak monster less of a weakling by a miniscule margin.
And as such, Falc went to the last and final idea while leaving the weave+ slime to do its thing with the original. The idea? Make the weave with a new type of mana; Fire mana! Basically, his instinctual impulses are telling him that instead of using mana with an aspect to make said aspect a reality like with the water, he could impose the aspect apon the mana to give the mana that element!
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
So what would happen if he used said aspected mana to make the weave?
Well, I'll tell you what would happen if he tried that; Repeated failure.
After many tries and finally a successful weave appeared, the water which was held in place instantly became steam, making a mess which Falc had to clean up with way too much effort on his part.
'So, full weave doesn't work, so... Half fire mana, half normal mana?'
This time the fire mana disrupted the unprotected unattributed mana and then created some steam.
'Reinforce the mana? Let's first make a few strands of aspectless mana and try to make them more powerful.'
The first idea to make the mana stronger was; Pure force of will. That obviously failed since after the creature was made, it was pretty hard to keep control over the mana strands.
Second; Pack more mana into it. It made great progress, made it far stronger actually, but since more mana meant more space per strand and also more mana cost... so they would have to use drastic measures...
Falc would mix Idea 1 to concentrate and then forcefully stablize the mana strands created with idea 2!
And miraculously, in one of the first test strands, after releasing it from force of will state, the strand kept its stablized shape, though it did take double the mana compared to the original strand.
But the thing was, this 'Big thread' was actually forced into the size of a normal strand of mana. Falc didn't know why, but after focusing real hard on a strand of mana, forcing it to be smaller, it became smaller.
Now, If we do this with each thread within the weave of a slime, a perfectly balanced slime appears. A new variant, one that Falc registered their new creation as 'Thread+ slime'.
But then h- I'm just going to refer to Falc as a guy since constantly saying 'They' feels weird- But then he realized that if he mixed 'Weave+' with 'Thread+' as he was planning, he'd have to call it 'Weave+ Thread+ slime', and that was no good. So he changed a few things; 'Weave+ slime' became 'Variant A slime' and 'Thread+ slime' became 'Variant B slime'. Proper nomenclature would make his life easier if he were to walk the path of creature perfection.
And then with a mix of the two variants, he created; The mystical, the ultimate, 'Variant AB slime'! 'MHAUAHAHAH! It still can't see. But seriously, it has a noticable difference between the original and itself.' What was noticable was the stability of its form, though it was still gelatenous, it wasn’t all goopy.
Improvement of any kind really cheered Falc up, he had this little voice in the back of his head saying that he couldn't do shit, and he better just accept his fate. But this showed that if he just kept at it, he'd make something great. But then a thought loomed over him 'Why didn't I try another aspect outside of fire?'
Now, I here am a reporter of science, and shall now tell thee what happened with the other three elements;
Water; The slime, instead of bouncing properly, collapsed, becoming a weird semi-puddle.
Earth; The slime become more solid, and brittle. When the slime tried to jump, chunks just broke off.
Wind; The water dispersed everywhere over the floor, the wind had no restrictive effect at all.
Now, the mix of variant B and the elements faired no better. But then there was another idea 'What if the extra element was a double weave?'
'Well, it may work, but I can't do it even with aspectless mana... Wait-'
Falc quickly forced a thread+ out and then a normal strand, and felt which one took more of his mental energy to maintain 'The normal strand, even if by an extremely miniscule amount.' Falc was extremely confused how that could be, since there was actually more mana in thread+ but took less focus to have not fall apart.
'Just to make sure...' Falc made a strand of mana with the same amount of mana as thread+, but didn't put it through the forge of will. Just to quickly check if it wasn't because of more mana = less maintance. Which it wasn't, it took approximately twice as much focus compared to the normal thread.
Falc mentally shifted his eyes, and waited until his mana pool was full, then he discharged all of it at once and created a enourmous thread. Which he forced down into a more concentrated form, just slightly smaller. But then he tried again, lowering the amount of space it required slightly.
In about three times the time it took to refill all his mana, Falc had concentrated the string to the point it was about twice as big as the original thread.
'Hmm, it seems a 'Supreme thread' takes less than a normal thread,' At this point each 'Forging', as Falc had came to call it, did almost nothing 'But this strand, it's too thick to make a proper weave out of.'
But then an idea hit him; why not just forge normal threads into miniscule proportions and then make an extremely intracate weave?
Falc first got to testing the forging effects on a single strand, he quickly found forging mana had deminishing effect. So first he did it with a single forging per thread just to make a proof of concept, but it still took a lot of time to properly weave them together with such small threads. He made quite a few mistakes here and there, but luckily the other forged strands didn't completely collapse at the slightest decrease in support.
'I decree your kind to be; Variant C!'
Falc couldn't help but be proud of himself, from a single slime to multiple variants that surpassed the original.
Schematics Common >Slime<
-Slime (5 MP)
-Varient A slime (6 MP)
-Varient B slime (8 MP)
-Varient AB slime (9 MP)
-Varient C slime (15 MP)
'Wait a minute, how am I able to make a monster costing more than my maximum mana?' Falc started to recall his previous experience after looking at the recorded cost of a variant C slime 'It took so long to make, the extra mana needed to finish it had already regenerated.'
Falc nodded to himself for a moment, and then went on to phase 2; double forged slime, Variant C+ slime!
But there wasn't enough space for him, his little underground room/cube being full of various slime varients, it seemed that one had actually been killed by another, indicated by the ooze on the floor. Falc sighed mentally and cleaned up the, probably a, slime corpse and quickly glanced at his creations.
He was going to just go back to what he was doing, but done high enough that none of the slimes would bother him by jumping into the floating variant-water ball, but then he noticed something 'What are those little slivers in the normal slime?'
After some intrusive inspection, Falc saw that mana was being absorbed by the slime to create something.
First idea that came to mind; Force a bunch of mana into the slime. Which suprisingly did not work, and another slime bit the dust. But Falc wasn't too depressed, he could make another one, and he quickly did, at a pace that suprised Falc. At first it took 2 MP to regen before a slime was brought into the world, but now it took a single MP.
'That's interesting and all, but I want my space.' Falc made 1 by 1 by 1 (1^3) cube opening on the northen face of the 4^3 cube he was laying in, then he excavated another two cubes down, which became the entrance to the top of another 3^3 cubic room. Then he just waited, as he watched, after a bit of time, the Variant AB slime fell down the 2 meter long chute, and then hopped again to enter it's new domain.
Not happy to sit on his laurels and just wait for the slimes to leave, Falc took some mana, and pushed the slimes down the hole 'Have a nice life!'
PS; He had already put the new room into his domain, he kind of had to do that in order to mine it out, but just saying to be sure.
Now it was time to return to his machinations, and the forging process had begun!