I could feel the presence of Scout, even though he had left my area. I could generally feel his location and direction if I tried to focus on him. But right now I had different things to think about.

I turned my focus to the plants lying about. I could sense some amount of mana within them. Living things must draw it in like my core, though likely less efficiently and with less capacity for storage.

I focused on one of the flowers, and ripped the mana from it. Several of the small particles were pulled from the surface of the flower. I absorbed them into my core. It was already dying by this point, but I was curious if removing the mana from a fully living creature would have some kind of negative effect.

Planting flowers and other flora within the dungeon likely wouldn’t help mana gain efficiency, as I would probably pull harder on the mana than the plants preventing them from gathering any in the first place.

Either way, it might spruce the place up. But I needed to try something else first. There has been a lot of trying stuff lately.

I focused on some weeds. I reached deep within them. I could sense their purpose and their form. I could change it.

The first thing I did was change the weeds to feed on mana instead of on light, water, and nutrients from the soil. Constantly tending to their nutritional needs wouldn’t be practical. After that, I changed their purpose. From simple weeds, to vines. These vines would bear fruit, a small orange berry. If all goes according to my desire, these berries would have a very minor healing effect when consumed. The plants themselves would wither if taken from my dungeon.

I turned my attention to the chambers of my dungeon, and finally decided to move my core. I shifted the earth beneath me, moving me slowly into the next chamber. With my new increase in size, I could still perceive the water falling outside of my entrance.

The first chamber needed some work. The floor was smoothed and shaped into tiles, with a circular pattern in the center. The circular tile pattern surrounded a flat stone circle. I may do something with that later. Into the unoccupied walls, I carved spherical indents, and I drew the walls out, forming bowls half sunk into the walls. I gave the bowls plenty of room in the wall above them, a nice arched indentation.

These bowls, I set about enchanting. I willed them to create and hold flame, flame that would burn as long as the enchantment held. The fire would behave normally outside of the bowls, however. I also enchanted the bowls to activate when someone enters the room, and deactivate when everyone leaves it. I wasn’t about to set someone on fire, with fire they couldn’t put out, even if it was an accident. Well, at least not yet. It wouldn’t be a bad idea if I need to take more drastic security measures. For now, I will leave that idea on the shelf.

While contemplating what to do with the plants now in my possession, a thought occurs to me. The earth that I get rid of has to go somewhere, and earth that I place has to come from somewhere.

Chances are, I have some kind of extra dimensional storage, or inventory, that terrain I carve away gets stored in. The question is if I can add and remove things outside of modifying terrain.

I find myself utterly out of mana, but decide to try anyway. With extreme effort, focusing on the plants, they simply vanish before me - disappearing into nothing. I search within myself, and find I have knowledge of the amount and types of earth I have carved away, as well as the plants I just absorbed.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

With some more effort, I manage to return one of the plants to the physical world at a different location, before taking it back into my inventory.

Useful.

What isn’t useful, though, is that I still have no mana and would rather not drain the plants.

If plants have mana, it would be reasonable to assume animals do as well. They probably have more actually.

I send Scout orders to bring me some critters. Also, this would tell me if mana exited the body immediately on death, if it took time, or if it didn't happen naturally at all.

Shortly thereafter, Scout enters my chamber. Fitting I had him hunt for me, considering he now looks like a bird of prey. He drops some small rodents before my core.

They are most definitely dead, but their mana has been drained. I focus on Scout. He has more than when I last saw him.

Interesting.

When a creature is slain, its mana, or at least part of it, is transferred or absorbed by the killer. This is likely a way in which creatures, and probably people too, can grow in power over their lives.

I order Scout to bring me a live specimen. Another thought has entered my mind.

By the time Scout returns, I have absorbed a small bit of mana that has randomly generated in my vicinity. He has the squirming rodent in his beak. I command him to kill it, and he does.

This time, I watch as part of the creature’s mana is drawn to Scout, about a quarter. The rest is immediately drawn towards my core.

This brings to mind the types of interactions a dungeon has with people, who probably possess much more mana than small wild animals.

Assuming most dungeons have monsters, and that the ratio of mana absorbed by the killer versus by the dungeon remains the same, then people probably adventure within dungeons to gain mana and therefore increase their power - “leveling up” as I might call it. The risk of course, is death. In which case, whichever dungeon monster killed the adventurer keeps a quarter of its mana, with the dungeon taking the rest.

Returning mana from a monster, assuming there is some way for me to create them - perhaps in a way similar or identical to my creation, or rather evolution, of Scout, means that a dungeon can recycle mana to some extent before needing an injection to maintain decent levels of mana. That would be from its monsters slaying adventurers, and passive mana income.

There still may be ways for me to gain substantial amounts of mana without killing people, though.

A few ideas come to mind. Perhaps the collection of resources from a dungeon provides mana, either less than, equal, or greater to the amount of mana the dungeon used to create or maintain the resource. That would encourage more passive dungeons, and would also enforce a sort of delicate symbiosis between people and dungeons in terms of mana. In fact, it may be the case that the only way, or at least only efficient way, to gain mana for people is to get it through going into dungeons.

Or perhaps as I grow, the amount of mana that spontaneously generates within my vicinity will increase. Or perhaps I could figure out some kind of enchantment to draw in mana from further away or perhaps even create it myself. Though that kind of infinite mana loop is probably about as impossible as perpetual motion machines were in my old world. Any god with common sense, or decently respectable natural laws wouldn’t allow that to happen.

Until I can test my theories revolving around human dungeon interaction, I can rely on Scout bringing me sources of mana.

I would really, really, rather not kill people as a primary mana source. But the idea that there should be risk and reward keeps coming back to my mind.

I can’t seem to fully shake the idea that it would be ok for at least some people to die.

After all, what good dungeon isn’t at least a little dangerous?