I looked at the detailed carving of a young woman walking next to a dragon closely. Then nodded to myself as I fixed the last few flaws in the stone's structure. The story I was following for my floors was over at the fifth floor. Though I considered my castle to just be an entrance, the second floor was the prologue of war. With the third floor being the girl being thrown from her home and wandering the forest until the cave in the mountain. The fourth floor being the meeting with the dragon, and her visits to all six Kingdoms of the Realm. Leaving the fifth floor when she returned with the treasures to the dragon and got her wish.
Something I had been putting off was the sixth floor I had expanded too a while ago. Once I had broken through another layer to my seventh floor. I decided that I need to at least fill the void of the sixth floor. Though, I felt like it was a waste of time since I hadn't needed extra protection in a while. It had been Yana's return as a dragon that had got my wheels turning. His words about the ruins he had found had me sending my soldiers to collect what they could from the place. And, one of the things they had managed to acquire was the large copper ball, and several broken chunks of that spell scripting.
After they returned and I said my goodbyes to Yana again. A moment I had engraved within my seventh floor. I started making the sixth floor proper. Repairing the copper orb had been easy enough, though I didn't want it to turn on exactly. Instead I hollowed it out and slowly had been replacing the script in the method that Yana reported. As well as holding almost all mana away from the new scripts. I decided that I would keep this isolated while I experimented with parts of the script I wanted to place.
I was surprised that I had never thought about using the spell script on walls or objects instead of just in spells or area commands. I decided that it was the "Instincts" and the "System" that had subtly pushed me away from the concept. After the long talk I had with Yana about what he experienced in the ruins. I had a good idea that it was somehow connected to the System. And we had a conversation about the likelihood of there being some kind of "Core" to the system.
In the case of my floor, the old bronze orb would be the core of it, and the place to perform my ultimate experiment. The patterns of those Beastkin were still floating in their exotic cages, but I could see that just supplying them with mana wasn't enough. I had almost lost the first one before I tried pushing them into the Mana Well's depths. The farther down they went the more stable they became. At the very edge of my Domain and perception they rested right now, and it seemed like they were staying stable for the time. Yet, I didn't want to rely on some odd interaction of magic that I barely could see.
It was clear that the same pure energy that broke down into mana was the cause for their stability, but I couldn't touch the stuff as far as I could tell. This floor was to be a magical engine that would convert those stabilized patterns into Elementals. With some tweaks of course for good measure. Mana was the building blocks of everything as far as I could tell, and both Yana and I had used it to just create matter from nothing. It just requires a lot to stabilize and not just become solid for a time. Early tests with condensing energy patterns had shown me that you needed a huge amount of mana up front and a very mana rich environment after.
Similar to how babies are made in humans and beastkin, a book I wished that Yana had left out of his presents. It took time for an elemental to be formed, and if the mana was too weak it would just break apart. In a crude sense humans and beastkin were more compressed and stable elementals, or something along those lines at this point. The clear difference was elementals were mainly made from mana mimicking life, where the other two were life mimicking mana. My favorite story told of the first human to the Realm, but it never spoke of the beastkin. And, given what I guessed, the origin of the beastkin was a dungeon of far greater power, but far less skill.
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Perhaps some kind of original dungeon made them to combat the humans at some point, or, like me, had been lonely and wanting to explore. I liked to think that I wasn't the first Dungeon to desire to travel and explore the vast world I found myself in. Even now I enjoyed riding along the senses of my soldiers and children when I could. Experiencing their lives as if they were my own. It was something I had been doing more often of late. With the cleansed mana making such experiences far more clear and easy to manage.
The sixth floor had a subtle glow from the walls with all the repeating scripts for illumination. Tall pillars of black stone stood out from the gray, and highly polished, floors. I intentionally curved the walls in odd ways to act as both support, and to confuse the mind if anyone got in here. I was happy with both the overall work and the details I had taken the time to carve in. The carvings of Yana and Pyra I had placed around the doors. The murals of major events so far that I had seen made from a combination of rocks and gems to add depth and detail to the scenes.
The other parts of my mind had all but completed the script testing for the bronze orb held above a pool of dense mana. It was something I was creating by directing condensed mana from the Well into the room above. A series of scripts condensed it beyond what my mind could handle unless I pulled it all together. It was far more efficient to just use the scripts, so I could stay connected to the dungeon and perform other tasks. A crystal claw held the orb above the pool since I had found that pure quartz wouldn't interact with Mana much at all. Though it would glow very impressively if enough passed through it.
It would be soon time to perform this grand experiment. Perhaps a couple days to finish the testing of the scripts and the engraving process. A part of me was excited to finally get this concept proven. In my mind it was a given that it would work the way I expected. As I was etching another detailed carving from the rock, something itched at my mind.
"Ah, it would seem that it's working then." Came a voice I had never heard it seemed off some how. I couldn't see anything but a hole in the world. A hole in the shape of a creature with points of blazing mana and twisting horns. Though it was just a hole in the world, my core seemed to ache looking at it.
"Hmm, too much perhaps for now." It's form flickered, appearing in another place within my dungeon. It seemed to be frozen in a moment of touching the wall. Flickering again it was somewhere else, like a human eye blinking. Moment to moment it shifted around, and my core ached worse.
"There is not much time, more here then others, but listen carefully." The voice came again, even though the shape shouldn't be that close to my core. A power like the one within the Well seemed to crush my core along with it's words. Reality twisting as my senses spun.
"There are many secrets in Masire. Even those about the System..." The air seemed hard to breathe, but I was a core? Why would I need to breathe. Panic setting in as I reached with my hands up through cold water and even colder chains.
"Find the Heart..an-d...bring it to.. be-..the Door..." I sunk to the bottom of the pool, the form spreading it's wings as my eyes closed. Reality snapped and I was looking only out from my core. Something deep within me was trembling at what just happened... What just happened? Like a dream only a vague shadow sat inside my memories. Imperfections within my core that I couldn't fix.
"A Heart and a Door?" I spoke out loud within my core room. That was all I could...remember? Or was it just a dream? What was I doing again? Oh right! I went back to focusing my mind on the grand experiment. It would be ready soon, and the heart shaped bronze chamber would be where it all began.