In all the media I have consumed, dungeons can, without fail, manipulate their surroundings. My first experiment aimed to test that. I also wanted to see if mana played a role in my ability to manipulate terrain, assuming I could.

I bring my focus to the edge of the chamber with the exit pathway. I focus on the walls of the chamber, pouring my intent into them.

After a moment, I can feel the mana within my core begin to work. The roughly spherical chamber’s wall begins to flatten out, and my mana begins to drain.

This is a test, so I have to keep going. Once the wall is flat, I work the others, working to change the chamber from a sphere to a cube.

Halfway through the process, the mana I had acted on in the passageway reaches my core, slightly speeding up the process. But before I can finish smoothing out the wall furthest from the entrance, I feel my mana run out.

So mana definitely has a use, at least one that is. I can use it to manipulate terrain. The question remains, if I really need mana to do that, or if it just speeds the process up.

After some gargantuan effort, and what felt like 3 hours, I can confirm that I do not not in fact strictly require mana to shape terrain. It does, however, greatly improve the efficiency with which I can sculpt the earth if I use mana.

But really, the mental effort required was enormous. I can only hope that the more I do this the better I will become.

Anyway, with my now cubic chamber, 10 feet across on each side, I simply wait. I can’t do more experiments with mana unless I have mana, and I lost track of myself and used it all on changing the room.

As I wait, and look about my room, I notice that there is actually some mana here. This is rather odd, considering I had been sure to gather it all from my central chamber. As if to confirm my hypothesis, another particle of mana spontaneously appears in the corner of the room. I guess mana really does just start to exist. Now I just need to figure out if I can influence that generation somehow, and if there are actions that can cause it to occur.

As I wait, more particles slowly appear. As much as a slow crawl as it is, the rate seems to be 2 per hour in this chamber.

Time for another experiment. I draw a few particles into my core, and begin to work the passageway. This time, however, I explicitly will the mana within my core not to act. To my surprise, it doesn’t. This is good. This means I can dig without using mana, even if I have some to spare.

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I will the passageway to open further, molding it into a rectangular shape. It ends up 4 feet across the bottom and 7 feet high, bigger than the doors in my old world were, but I don’t know what kinds of races live here and they might be bigger than humans.

As I work the tunnel to the appropriate width, I realize that I can go further than before. Setting aside working the tunnel, I focus on its end.

Past the mouth of the tunnel, which I suppose is also the mouth of the cave, is a waterfall. This is why I could vaguely sense water before. The entrance to my dungeon is tucked away behind a waterfall.

Were I still a human, this is totally the kind of thing I would hide somewhere in, like, a DnD campaign. Caves behind waterfalls are a huge trope, so I feel right at home here.

I finish opening up the entrance. This is rather fun, actually. Everything comes out pretty much how I see it in my mind’s eye when I begin digging. It's like 3D modeling, but I can’t make mistakes and it's all very easy - actually scratch that this is nothing like 3D modeling.

Speaking of my improved area of observation, I focus back on my core. Definitely bigger. About 50% bigger. An influx of mana must increase the size of the core, which is probably linked to, among other things, my observation range.

On an unrelated note, it is time for another experiment. I know that mana serves a purpose as fuel for my actions, or at least for an empowered version of them. Though there are likely things I will be completely unable to do without mana, that I just don’t know I can even do yet.

I still don’t know how mana particles interact with one another, if they do at all. I need to know this so I can think about how to optimize my mana gathering efficiency.

There are a few particles of mana in the hallway now, and some in my chamber. It has been about 2 hours since I last gathered them. As I focus on the mana particles to begin pulling them in, I notice something I did not notice before. Rather than being stationary, the particles are slowly, and I do mean extremely slowly, moving towards my core of their own accord. It seems that my core has a kind of natural attraction to the mana around it. I am certain that I would have noticed the movement of mana prior to my acting upon it earlier.

The only conclusion in my mind is that this is also related to the change in size of my core. As the size of my core grows larger, mana nearby is further attracted to it. Chances are, the range at which my core passively draws in mana is also related to its size. Either the range or the strength of attraction, or both, when my core was its base size must have been so insignificant that I didn’t notice it.

My core is pulling in mana by itself now, and given that mana seems to promote core growth, this is likely to get out of hand quickly once it takes off. There may be people or other entities that may notice if mana in a larger area is being pulled into my core, and come looking for me.

I need to prepare while I still have the peace and quiet to do so.