> You know, scratch that, people are dumb.
>
> At least most are, do you have any idea how many stupid idiots came along while I was emperor for a few months? I don't care to remember I can't confirm whether you're right or not, but, it was a lot of stupidity. My god, well, not god- Uh- My me, why the hell do you think that if one or two forests get cut down all the rest are going off to the beyond soon, you stupid medamned elves!
>
> One thing happening doesn't instantly mean another thing will, you idiots! And then those stupid tree huggers think that somehow by marrying me to their princess, 'Sacrificing her' in their own words, they think I won't kill them all. There's a very simple little rule for you to know, fools, one thing leads to another.
>
> You give a starving man food, that leads to them eating it and maybe dying from re-feeding syndrome. You give a starving man gold in the big city, they get a beating and have it stolen from them before they could buy anything with it.
>
> But that does not mean that for some reason, if I marry a princess that is only worth her good looks, I will stop massacring every single person you love. No, why would I do that? Just suppose for a moment, I marry your princess. Even if I won't ever do that, because marriage doesn't matter to me and I honestly hate her guts enough to kill her and every single person she fucking loves if she doesn't get out of my sight, just suppose it.
>
> Marrying your stupid, mentally handicapped, deserving of a purging, internally disgusting, irritating and unreasonably arrogant princess, will not lead to another action. Marrying someone to another will not stop them from doing something if they don't give a shit about what the person they're marrying, I would ignore her- Or even beat her, mostly out of my hatred for her- If she even tried to convince me of changing course.
>
> Because I don't trust her to have any kind of intelligent thought, she's just a pawn for power plays, why do you think I kidnapped her that one time? Especially that I didn't give her to the soldiers just to make her suffer? For negotiations.
>
> The thing you're suffering from is 1: Being stupid. 2: Being an idiot. 3: Being even more of an idiot. 4: The very fatal reasoning flaw, I call the 'Slippery slope fallacy'
>
> She's dead by the way, for anyone that doesn't know what I'm referencing, I took her hostage again since it seemed fun but she got annoying again, and you get the gist.
-Excerpt from 'Your mother is fat, HAHAHA!', by 'Lucaric Ba'alhos'
----------------------------------------
A small droplet floated in the air as mana swirled within, it ebbing and flowing in a ever changing cycle aiming to make the spiritual physical.
It wasn't going so well, though that was to be expected. A completely new avenue of progress was nearly never smoothly attained, it was to be expected by any intelligent mind. Especially Falc all things, considering his experience.
And he did, he expected it to be a pain from the onset.
That didn't mean he wasn't frustrated though.
But he was basically set on one fact; 'As long as I get this down, I'll finally be able to make slimes with directly a nuclei.'
...
A bit too ambitious if one looked at the past, but it was fine. Probably, at least Falc said it was.
Currently, the dungeon core was attempting to create physical mana by subsuming slime water and letting the material be propped up to the edge of physicality. Even if recently Falc had gotten a few more looks into the process and believed it apt to add along to the process the description of the mana propping up the water also, mostly because the mana took the place of the water and pushed it away from physicality and kept it there.
But after even more looks- Falc had examined it a lot- It seemed that the physical mana was also bound to the water that it kept at bay. So, then the question became, how does something that is being pushed outside of the physical plane also act as an anchor for that which was taking its place?
What if he could somehow make non-physical mana act as the anchor? Would the material still be corporeal? If not, wouldn't that mean this anything physical was unable to touch said material?
But, it was still just a fantasy, a useless one too. At least for now, he'd think about it more after this was done. One thing leads to another, so one thing needed the other.
As long as he could do it once, he'd be able to do it again, maybe even easier than before. It didn't matter if it was inefficient and Falc lost multiple points of mp in the process, the mere option of directly creating a slime with proper sight was more than worth it.
...
...
Still nothing, maybe he was going in the wrong direction, or at least doing it wrong. So, with his efforts showing little fruition so far, he once again asked for council from the slowly expanding tome of nuclei knowledge.
Seeing nothing that could instantly show him the way, so he had to think about it even more. And he could only think about two real methods that might be able to work, completely based on conjecture. The first honestly felt a lot more promising, so he went with that since the latter- Ridding all slime creation and nurturing parts of himself of their duties, subdividing the slime water to as small as possible and letting the wonder of unreasonable amounts of mana fix the problem for him.
Not actively taking note of the outside world, he created a slime's worth of slime water and even weaved a weave for it as well. Then tried again, this time only in the middle of the non-living blueprint of an autonomous being, and failed again. It seemed that either his influence had stopped the weave within the slime from exerting its own influence, or it couldn't since it wasn't alive yet. Or, an even worrying truth was possible, that he- As a non-slime- Could not create nuclei for slimes.
It felt inherently... Off-putting, the thought, and it seemed his instincts argued against it even if for a different reason. And that wasn't really that good of a sign, mostly that his instincts had a problem with it.
But, Falc wasn't at a dead end yet from what he could see, maybe it was just that he once again overlooked something. He was certain that he had looked at the important parts, but; he had only looked at how the mana took its physical form. But, again opening the quite new tome of his own creation, it seemed he might be able to also directly copy the way mana rested in the middle of the sightless creations.
The way that mana subsumed the slime water had maybe brought about a slightly off assumption of how was the best method to bring it about, as he had made the mana constantly flow in a cycle to try and get one or two little bits of mana somewhat wedged 'Under' the material before slowly nudging it to completely subsume and uplift it. But instead, in natural conditions it instead stagnated in the weird water aspect-formed fluid.
So, he quickly checked it, allowing all the mana that he had free to come to the prototype floating in the test box and calmly stagnate.
And he waited calmly, even starting another cycle of compression, with the hope that maybe compressed mana would increase the chances of wedging some mana into the physical plane. Even if that avenue of growth was not rewarded, as it had been revealed to be not as advantageous as previously thought, the compressed mana was easily repurposed for normal double weave slimes.
Then it was time to look at the other possible means of increasing his chances, focusing everything he had on a single droplet- Well, except for the wisps keeping the newly created double weaves in their place. He did want to take a look at the sentients to see if they had any changes, but seeing as there weren't any alerts of them getting any significant progress in the tunnels, it probably wasn't that important or significant.
And though he did indeed let the large amount of mana stagnate in the droplet, none took the initiative to wedge themselves as he wished. So, did that mean that the slime weave had some cataclystic property when it came to letting mana get itself wedged beneath slime water? Or was it instead a driving force?
...
Falc decided to get to the bottom of something that kept bothering; Whether a constant coursing of mana or the stagnation of mana was superior in encouraging the subsumption of material.
So, of one of the double weave slimes still calmly sitting in its little hidey-hole, he took direct control of the mana that reached the middle through the two weaves born of slime apostle 1's efforts- Long may he reign, might I add.
He did not force all of it to pour directly into the basically designated 'Nuclei space', but instead grasped the mana already accumulating and made it follow his course of action. If the slime he was 'Helping out of the goodness of his heart' got a nuclei before the one he had decided was good enough to fend for itself, that meant he wasn't a stupid idiot. If not, then that meant... He at least know what was better for future attempts.
Though, he did let all the extra mana that was going over his maximum storage pass by all the regulatory loops and directly enter the insides; making sure not to pack in too much as to make the two test subjects not explode from the inside.
And though he did not keep track of the time, he did keep closely to seeing how the mana moved and how the wedging of mana came about.
...The stagnant mana did better.
...
'Damn it!' And here he thought that innovation was good for progress, but it seemed plagiarizing directly from his monsters was the correct answer. Well, he could adapt, even if slightly sad that his efforts were for naught.
He broke free from the experiment and went back to what was important, letting the mana remain as his gaze refocused on the test box and the droplet contained in the middle of it.
It was somewhat troublesome, it seemed that letting the mana stagnate was the best option and compression did not increase the chances of mana subsuming the water, then what if he layered more and more mana on top of each other on the extra mana-exclusive dimension?
The mana put above other mana was neither further nor closer to physical reality than that which was below it, so it should be possible for it to also prop-up the water.
Then he once again gave it a moment, still no reaction, disappointing. Since that was a bust, he decided to think about how the mana came to wedge itself under the physical, or more aptly: How the mana began to take on physicality.
To wedge itself, the mana first needed to pass the boundary between spiritual and physical, or at least stand atop it. But stagnant mana wasn't exactly closer to the boundary than turbulent mana, meaning the reason it was easier to get wedged wasn't specifically that. Maybe the reason it was better was because the slime weave had an easier time pushing it when it was still instead of moving, maybe.
Then, he'd get his goal completed by finding a way to bring some mana through the boundary.
...A troublesome endeavour, but maybe he could extrapolate the method from something else he actually could do? It would probably waste less time that bumbling after the mystery blind, unless it didn't work.
So, what could he use? What was he doing that make mana physical? Aspects.
By interacting with one of them along with the usage of mana, they were somehow possible to turn mana into water or dirt; something physical.
...
Nah, it was a bust, it wasn't mana going into the physical realm and then becoming something, it was more like it was used as fuel for the aspect. Though that wasn't exactly correct, since the mana did somehow interact with the physical world in the process.
Uh, he couldn't really think of anything else, aspects were basically the only way he did it. Maybe the thing that taught him how to use aspects knew something?
Ahem, yellow; instincts, any ideas?
> ...
I'm beggin' ya!
> ...
Unironically anything relevant counts.
> Guide mana.
'It's something, I guess, thanks instincts.' Falc thought, directing it towards the distant part of himself without response. He couldn't help but feel that the metaphorical file that all its information was stored in looked quite a bit more polished these days, if this actually led to something, he might even add a nice word about it inside.
So, guiding mana, that had something to do with wedging it into physical reality? Falc was slightly confused, since he was already guiding mana, at least from his own perspective. He was using his mind to make mana do his bidding, even going from one place to another, was that not guiding? Were his instincts telling him to just directly bring it to physical reality first and then wedge it in place before figuring out the rest?
Seeing from the dozen failed attempts he just did with his little droplet of slime water, that did not seem to be the case.
But how else could he guide mana?
His mana only moved when he willed it to, or if he stopped controlling it; it aimlessly dispersed into the world around it. There wasn't anything he could think of! If it wasn't for the fact he couldn't think of any other way to progress except dumb labour and time investment to create a D-11-11-11 or a D-13-13-13-13 slime, and, though he could do it in around a cycle of light and darkness. Probably not a D-15-15-15-15-15 though, but that didn't matter, a whole day was too long
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
So, what could it mean?
...
...
Nothing was coming up, it was a dead end. And Falc couldn't think of a single other way to do it, not a single one!
A dead end, a waste of time.
With a sigh of disappointment, he marked down in the file for instincts that it was stupid and dumb and a fraud, and looked elsewhere. He redistributed the self around and brought the slime processing factory back to its former glory, thinking of something else.
Mana, specifically how to get more of it. Since, well, more mana meant that he could do more. Though mana troubles were rare ever since he had breached the surface, it did come up every once in a while. So why not fix that problem, increases in efficiency were always heavily respected.
First order of business was to look at why mp regeneration increased after breaching the surface, and then the answer was found; there was mana floating around up there which was pouring into the opening, flowing through the 'Correct' passage all the way, finally being shepherded to his crystaline form.
So, the answer was obvious, bring more mana into the artificial caverns, but how?
Maybe make another entrance?
Maybe guide more mana into it?
...
...
...
'Wait, guide. The mana moves on its own initiative, the opening just lets that happen. It isn't as if the entrance is clawing outward and dragging it all in, it attracted it.
I don't need to personally bring mana into the physical world, I just need to make it do it itself!'
Without even the slightest hesitation, he retrieved all of the him that he had just recently put into place and returned to the test box with a new droplet already formed. Mana started to pour in, completely filling the droplet, and then he loosened his grip on the mana. As it slipped free, all he did was make sure it did not try to escape with mana by surrounding the droplet with a 3 dimensional encirclement, and started to let the only slightly affiliated mana be graced by the blessings of his mental power and soul.
He exerted his will on it, pressuring it away from the spiritual plane while letting the connection that still remained to tell him about the process itself. The mana resisted, protesting as it naturally swayed and flowed through the liquid as if a gas, resisting by mere means of existing in high density. But that could not stop the might of a dungeon core, even a slime could breach the barrier even if only because of more sophisticated methods, he could certainly do it too.
At least that was what he believed, but his mental power was too diluted over the volume of the droplet, he had to release what was not necessary and focus it on a smaller amount. Using his aspect to clean away the slime water, subdividing it one by one as miniscule amounts of mana were released in to the air as they were not under the direct authority of Falc anymore, leaving only a small- No, microscopic- Amount,
And then it began again, the same as last time. It protested, the same as last time, Surprisingly. It had decreased by such a large amount, but still acted the same as always. It tried to pierce through the mana keeping it trapped, but it did not budge. There was only one way to go, but it was still difficult.
The boundary remained still, without worry as a non-corporeal thing and more a fact of the world instead of a personage, even as one little bit of mana stepped atop it; shaking and contorting in attempted rebellion.
Then another bit, then even more, a cascade as the hurdle of pressure needed for it had been achieved.
And finally, with one last push, a piece descended. But it did not wedge as expected, being once again affected by Falc's mental power in a small panic, finally being led to bind and then wedge under a small piece of slime water.
He did it, and he probably had all the data he needed from it all too!
Not that the multiple forays into the physical realm by others after the first pioneer were not appreciated.
But, what to do with the floating piece of physical mana and pseudo-physical slime water? Well, nothing. The sentients would probably pick it up when they found it, they seemed to like the stuff no matter how small the quantity.
He once again set up the psuedo-nuclei creation process, this time to get a bit more... control over the whole process. Since nuclei weren't just giant masses of what he had created, but instead something a bit more complex- Something Falc could only describe as a convergence of some kind of string? At least, he could be certain in saying that a massive block of nuclei material was not a valid nuclei.
Now, with the new droplet, he focused on only one 'Portion' of mana and tried to pull it down directly without any of the inefficient tomfoolery he had taken part in to create the first shard of nuclei substance.
He obviously failed in the process, but it did have some effect. At least it didn't seem as if there were no possibility, just that it'd be quicker to look more into managing the less artificial process alternative to it.
So, he let loose of the previously mentioned portion of mana and then pressed it down while making the mana still under his command stop it from fleeing, the entire process working surprisingly well.
But, doing that entire process one by one for each little bit of the nuclei seemed like a pain- I mean, inefficient- So there was a simple thing he had to do, see how he could upscale production while also keeping up precise control over the entire process.
Considering that the nuclei was interconnected entirely, it wouldn't be easy to separate different chunks. And doing an entire nuclei's worth of slime water wasn't exactly an easy thing that he could do on a whim, so he did need a way to do it gradually or in parts, but then he'd first need to know the nuclei's structure by heart. Which he already did, so, he just cross-refrencing the newly created ball of slime water the size of a fully formed nuclei with his info on nuclei before starting to formulate a plan.
All the physical mana inside a nuclei was indeed right next to each other, even touching, but physical mana was not required to be 'One' with that which surrounded it. Leading to a sort of strange web of sorts, sort of, hard maybe. It wasn't even that hard to differentiate between them while creating multiple little pieces of physical mana, which was... Surprising, in the good way.
Then was the question if he could do that but with like four portions at once, them being sectioned off in halves... It failed at first, but after one or two tries, it worked. It wasn't even especially difficult, just finicky since he didn't have total control over the mana like he usually did.
But he wasn't complaining, he wasn't even really thinking about it at all while increasing the scale of his nuclei creation efforts after discharging the minuscule amount of nuclei material.
'Hmm, a bit troublesome. This will probably take a bit, like a lot of time actually.' He couldn't help but think, it wasn't as if this was the most mana intensive process, so a lot of mana would be wasted if he didn't use it for something. So he took out a section of himself, not a lot, just enough to deal with the mana that he wasn't using, so the major majority of his mp regen.
This time he did the same thing as last time, increasing the amount. 9 portions this time, took a dozen or so tries to get it perfect due to the scale and the fact he was very actively trying to do all of it at once. Then he did it again right next to it, took two tries, not that bad.
But, problem, he wasn't able to connect the two sections as he had tried. The little layer of mana he had used to keep the loose mana contained was creating a small distance between the two sections, but... It wasn't as if there was really a problem keeping a bit of mana above something in the physical plane of existence, so the next try he made sure to have the loose mana be directly next to the other section he was attempting to connect it to in place of the barrier.
Still took a few tries to get sorta right, but at least it set a precedent for his perfect success only a minute filled with one or two dozen failed tries, then about a dozen more for another successful attempt, and even more minutes to get it sorted out well enough. With... 86 sections formed, the biggest amalgam of them holding 32 portions of mana.
So, he discarded that. He needed to start working on a larger scale, it wasn't as if he was at his maximum, and it wasn't exactly feasible to work in the hundreds of portions per few minutes when there were more than 10^22 portions in just a mere cubic centimeter of the stuff.
He had gotten used to it, and the only reason he was still limiting himself was because of the finicky nature of loosened mana, but that didn't mean he couldn't quickly get a handle of it as he already had.
Going from 9 portions to 16 was not big enough of a jump, he needed to go to 225 or 15^2. It wasn't much in the grand scheme of things, but it was better to start speeding up.
Just over a hundred tries to get it perfect, then only three to get the connections between sections good enough. So, off to 25^2 or 625. Not that bad actually, the most annoying part was mostly just controlling all of portions individually actually since they all had separate connective relations with other sections; since he was making them in accordance with the schematic of the nuclei, just to make sure he wasn't wasting time right now.
After about a dozen tries to get it right when he was moving slowly, it took about three to get it good in mass production mode. Then a few to get the connections up to par before going to 40^2 or 1600, the jump being so significant due to the ease of the previous step, and he found this one a bit more difficult, keeping him going for an entire fifteen minutes of trouble shooting.
And he found an issue, he was working with 2nd squares, a nuclei was in the 3rd dimension. He needed to learn in the appropriate manner, meaning in a cubic way.
So, next up was 20^3- 8000- A great hurdle due to the additional dimension included, but it was not impossible, no; it was only a bit troublesome. A few hundred attempts got it perfectly consistent.
Then he went to 25^3, not that big a deal with a mere 52 attempts spent. Then 30^3, a bit annoying, around 60 tries.
35^3, meh, 40. 40^3, bit more annoying, 46. 50^3 and it finally got a bit more difficult, becoming a proper learning experience with 86 goes at the arcane process before he could do it well enough to jump up even higher.
Then even higher, it both becoming easier and harder at the same time, Falc making sure not to use any of the ideas to speed up the progress as to make sure he was improving even more. While it might look like a waste of time, he was getting better and better, even if that was only because he was getting more and more used to controlling all the little moving parts.
If he wanted to, it would've probably been possible to do the annoying part of controlling the discordant portions with wisps of himself. But that wouldn't help with large scale production in the future, if he himself had perfect control over the loose mana, the separated parts would too. But letting them do everything would not lead to any improvement, since they didn't have the capacity to learn like the main part.
And so, with what could only be attested as about half a cycle, a nuclei was born. Though, yes, a good amount of physical mana along with the slime water it depended on was laying on the ground. Some sections like dust, some sections like gravel and sand, but it was still a sort of significant amount. Now, all that was left was a single little thing; make a D-11-11-11 around it.
Yes, he was going to do some simple dumb labour. Well, actually, another part of him would while he reviewed the elder slime nuclei, for obvious reasons.
That was pretty easy too, because of all the mana that had been accumulated by the fragment of himself he had left to deal with it all.
With a single touch of life, a new slime with three weaves and three
Now, to talk about the nuclei of the elder slime, there were 12 sections of slime water at the boundary with each having 5 cubic centimeters of the stuff. A bit of a bother, since he would need three or four times the normal amount of portions, so he'd need to repeat the process three or four times. So, obviously it was time to try to subsume already subsumed slime water, it wasn't super hard. It was just a bit annoying due to sliding even more mana under the previous mana as it kept slipping off.
But after making the slime water act as an anchor to both portions as if they were one large portion, the problem was fixed. How long did it take to think of that? A depressingly long amount of time, in which he did about a quarter of the new elder slime nuclei, so about 1/80th of a cycle. The same trick could then be used for the other one or two additional portions, even if it took a few hundred tries to really get it done well, then a few thousand to get any problems with connecting the boundary slime water with the normal subsumed slime water.
Then, after another learning session, after 1/12th of a cycle he finally had it finished. And once again he had mana piling up like last time, so, he created a normal elder slime weave for it. Just... To make a normal elder slime schematic.
With a touch of life, he let it pop into reality, already instantly feeling something coming from it. It could already see, it could already barely have something resembling thoughts. It was amazing.
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)
-Varient C+ slime (21 MP)
-Variant C++ Slime (27 MP)
-Variant D1 slime (39 MP)
-Variant D2 slime (52 MP)
-Complete D-11-11-11 slime (12729 MP)
... Uncommon >Elder slime<
-Elder slime (57 MP)
Just a singlular additional line of text, specifically two, had just brought his emotional state to an unexpected state of happiness. He even felt... Proud? Though it seemed that the windfall wasn't over just yet.
Common Infant dungeon core
A new dungeon who has just breached the surface.
Inexperienced, unprepared, and most importantly; Weak.
-No effect.
Upgrade condition:
-Gain an uncommon schematic ✔
-Survive for 10 days ✔
-Gain 1 leveled monster ✔
By building atop what of what you know,
You have gained something much more,
Coming far closer to greatness than before,
You have come far but still there is much left to grow,
You have gained the title;
Juvenile dungeon core
Uncommon Juvenile dungeon core
A relatively new dungeon who has proven themself greater than a majority of its fellows.
Filled with potential, awaiting what has yet to come, and still quite weak in all likelihood.
-No effect.
Upgrade condition:
-Gain a rare schematic
-Gain access to a rare aspect
-Gain 5 transcenders or 1 double transcender ✔
Huh? I gained a double transcender? When? Just now, or does it count to before I got this title?
But his questions were not answered, the entire world suddenly vanishing before his eyes in an instant.
And the next, he panicked as his core stood atop a shining platform of unknown diameter without any access to his dungeon 'What? Where? When? Whaeh?!'
But there was no respite for him, nothing around him caring. Neither the small glowing platforms with strange shining figures atop them, the weird strings or pillars they were held up by nor the giant radiant and blazing thing below to which all the pillars came from.
Falc was nervous, he was afraid, he had never been without his domain and his grasp on everything within.
Said feelings all quickly intensified by the sudden shivering of the platform below, was it unstable? Was he in danger?! What could he do if he was?! He needed to find an answer, and quick.
Though such time was not given, as the platform began to rise, ever so slowly as it started to grow from barely being larger than the diameter of his core to something a bit larger. And- For some strange reason- It just... It just felt uplifting. Outside of rising, just a feeling of becoming better than he was before.
But that didn't stop him from holding his negative thoughts, only softening their influence, neither did it stop him from constantly trying to find a way out.
Some of the other platforms' glowing silhouettes weren't even properly standing or laying on their associated platform, them being akin to sentients or some weird four legged creatures. Wait, was he just like them?
He couldn't be sure, but all he did know was that for the small duration of his ascension, his platform had increased from slightly larger than his own diameter to about three and a half times as large.
And then, the next instant, he was back.
'Was that...
What...
Was- Was that the process of going from [Common] to [Uncommon]?'
He was scared- Well, maybe not actively anymore, but still dreading another snap back to that strange place. But unlike what he feared, it did not come, no matter how long he waited.
Falc, well, Falc was confused. He didn't completely understand what just happened, maybe he didn't even partially understand it. He didn't like it, he never wanted to go there ever again.
But he did know one thing, he was better than before. He didn't know in what way, he didn't understand how, nor did he comprehend why. But he just knew he was superior to his previous self, he'd have to figure out in what way himself, but one thing was certain.
The first step to making a monster actually somewhat good was done, now was just to find out what the next one was.