– Era of the Wastes, Cycle 218, Season of the Setting Moon, Day 19 –

Terry stood in front of a pathway leading underneath the earth. He was surprised to find that he wasn’t nervous. A lot had changed since the days he had first stepped into a dungeon. He did not truly think that he was becoming reckless. He simply had trouble imagining anything this dungeon could throw at him that he had not seen before. Seen much worse at that.

He retrieved the king spear from his dimensional bag and placed it onto his sheath belt. The magic leather wrapped around the orange pole and secured it safely on his back. He did not like carrying the pinnacle item on display inside the city, but he preferred to have quick access to it while in the dungeon.

Terry checked his two keen daggers that were placed at his left and right hip. He made sure that each of his leg straps carried three throwing needles: one octavum for its slow activation delay, one septimum for its fast activation delay, one aspected with oscillating mana for its properties that ignored space magic.

Technically, Terry had outgrown the need to select materials for their activation delay with his spell for regular equipment. He had learned to apply the aspect archer’s aspecting technique to control the delay through unbalanced aspecting. However, old habits die hard and in a pinch, the difference could still save him.

Terry played back all the warnings from his family in his mind while he tested the barrier summoning magic in his barrier spear and helmet. He proceeded to examine the Shape Metal imprints hidden in his bracers and then carefully checked the state of the mana-osmotic materials as well as the mana lines he had carved himself to form periodic shielding.

Examining his shielding, Terry frowned with an unsatisfied expression. He could almost hear the slightly disappointed voice of his aunt Brynn.

Even though his mana shielding had improved a lot since the last time he had spoken to her, the improvements were practically entirely due to his improvements in general mana foundation. Better control allowed for smaller tiles and crystals which in turn led to pathways that were more difficult to pierce and more flexibility in covering gaps and providing support structures. Better mana compression led to high mana intensity which in turn provided inherent stability.

Truthfully, his mana shielding was a lot more effective than in the past. However, he was painfully aware that he had made no progress in further mastering the techniques themselves. He was still relying on a mixture of periodic tiling, quasiperiodic tiling, and periodic crystals and the two-dimensional tiling techniques remained the central shielding.

He continued to have trouble predicting the surface area and edges when relying on quasiperiodic tiling and while he understood the tools for crystal shielding in theory, he was lacking the practice to wield them deftly.

Auntie would not be happy…

Terry clicked his tongue and sighed. In Thanatos, he had lacked access to his mana-crafting tools. In the pocket realm, he had been otherwise preoccupied to put it mildly. He resolved himself to make some time for studying during his hours as a Flower Protector, even though he was not sure where to find it.

‘If you never take time, you’ll never have time.’

Terry chuckled when he recalled the phrase his aunt Brynn liked to say. He’d find a way. Perhaps, he could combine it with his grind for money. He could inquire if there are any people willing to pay to have their items shielded by him.

For the dungeons here, my current shielding should be sufficient.

He had done his research and also requested information from recent dungeon dives. He had paid to be prepared. He had been reluctant to part with the metal coins, but he knew that his family back home would bite his ear off if he wouldn’t at least do this much. According to the reports, there were no reports of magic disruption abilities among the dungeon dwellers.

Uncle Samuel would not be happy regardless….

Terry took a deep breath and then stepped forward into the entrance room. He did not need to perform the test of killing a rat to confirm that he was in dungeon territory. He could feel it.

First things first…

Terry ripped a Mark-and-Recall scroll in half. He could barely make out a slight distortion that rippled over the space in his mana sight with the scroll’s activation. Afterwards, he folded the remaining half of the scroll and placed it securely into his dimensional bag.

He puffed his cheeks and stared at the closed dungeon entrance. He had chosen the earliest possible slot for his dungeon delving. While others might grumble at the early work, he was always up anyway.

A consequence of being the first to enter a dungeon was that the reservoir room was wholly naturalized to the dungeon. A fact that had to change for anyone to proceed.

Terry could rely on his ranged mana naturalization to conquer the ambient mana belonging to the dungeon, but the reservoir dam worked based on ratio not absolute mana anyway and therefore, another way was faster…

Terry dumped a part of his mana pool into the room while his eyes flared blue from mana use.

Near instantly, the path was clear. He stepped over the threshold and as quickly as the pathway had opened, it closed again when he reabsorbed all his previously dumped mana.

A slight smile played on Terry’s lips when he recalled how his uncle Samuel had similarly opened a dungeon reservoir room during his first introduction to dungeons. He did not allow himself to reminisce idly and spread his mana detection field far and wide.

Judging by everything Terry had read, this dungeon was ranked below the dungeon that Alrik had discovered. The unexplored dungeon that Terry had first entered to protect his whaka and later harvested for mana cores to assist the healers in Arcana City.

Back then, Terry had entered that dungeon together with a whole team of trusted companions. They had never dared to step onto the lowest parts either. Their goal had been routine harvesting and not conquering the dungeon completely.

More than two cycles had passed since then.

When the flash geckos radiated blinding light, Terry did not so much as flinch. His eyes had long been closed. He did not need his eyes to transfix the rock projectiles of the fake goblin constructs or the horns of the weird oversized rabbits roaming the room.

It had been a while since Terry had been confronted with creatures as weak as these. He did not know yet how far down he would go since he intended to play that by ear. He had a few experiments to perform before continuing into more dangerous floors.

He knew the local price for a Mark-and-Recall scroll as well as the price for the different mana cores he was likely to collect. In order to get as much out of his allotted time slot as possible, he had to be efficient.

One of the blinding flash geckos was pulled towards Terry’s hand with the bidirectional attraction glove. The little lizard tried biting his hand, but his head was squished between his thumb and finger before it could do anything. It did not take long for the gecko’s body to disappear and leave behind a tiny light-aspected mana core.

Terry summoned small sturdy layers of divine mana that trapped a fake goblin construct. He approached it slowly and then punched out rapidly with an open hand strike. Even though the outer shell of the construct was made of hardened earth, it gave way like wet paper. Terry’s fingers closed around the mana core and ripped it out of the construct.

Workable but…

He should be happy that he was able to easily recover mana cores in pristine condition, but Terry was frowning. Thinking about dungeon work and the financial goal he had to reach, he had brainstormed possible approaches. While his notebooks strained under the weight of his research and ideas, he had come away with one major obstacle: Scale.

It was possible to make good money even from weaker dungeon creatures, but in order to be truly profitable, that required scale. Unfortunately, punching or using weapons like his keen daggers or barrier spear didn’t scale. If there were a hundred creatures, he would have to punch a hundred times and he only had two arms. He might be able to punch faster than in the past, but a fundamental limitation remained.

Perhaps it was the experience of the dungeon defense as the Immovable Mage, but Terry yearned for more than simply faster punching.

His king spear allowed him to blow up a whole room of those weak creatures, but that would damage the mana cores. It really wasn’t a good option.

Terry circulated mana into the divine hammer inscription and punched. His aim was true and the divine mana hammered the small lizard head into a bloody paste. A success, albeit small. It did not take much force to break the head of a flash gecko.

He repeated the divine hammer attack on one of the immobilized horned rabbits and to his dismay, he required two punches before the mana-corrupted beast vanished to leave behind its core.

Terry shifted and used a finger flick instead of a full punch on the flash geckos. After getting the hang of this, he attempted to flick more than one finger at once. He managed to make it work but it was disastrous for his aim.

Something else to practice at the Flower House…

Terry had two more things to try in this room.

He flipped his inscription usage and pulled his hand back. Simultaneously, layers of divine mana followed his movements and propelled the flash geckos from the walls into his direction. He considered if he should just slash at them with his daggers, but then used a sturdy sack to catch them instead.

Once all the flash geckos were squirming inside, Terry hurled the whole sack up and smashed it on the floor. The shape inside the sack changed when the dead lizards evaporated to only leave behind their mana cores.

A single flash gecko was still crawling around the many cores and Terry grabbed it. He kept his eyes closed and concentrated on his mana sight. He compressed the mana around him and with a sequence of rotations around him, an intense spell slicer pierced into the mana core.

Terry knew that his spell slicers did not inflict any physical damage unless the hit object was transfixed with the Immovable Object spell, but he wanted to test the interaction in the magical realm.

He had prepared for his solo dive by finally reading properly into some of the academic books on dungeons that Samuel had sent to him in Tiv. The bulk of the books posited that the cores acted as a way for the dungeon to control or influence the host creature.

By contrast, a minority of works suggested that the core itself was required for the dungeon being’s manifestation itself. While that was still a minority position, one of the advocates included Terry’s uncle Samuel, which made him very much inclined to consider it a working hypothesis.

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Terry was less interested in the theory itself but rather in one piece of evidence mentioned in favor of it: Extracting or isolating a mana core killed a dungeon being just like breaking the core did.

Ripping the core out of the fake goblin had killed it instantly. On the one hand, that was not really surprising. If the core was an essential part, like the heart or brain, then removing it would kill the creature.

In contrast to a regular brain or heart, however, a mana core was not really a part of a dungeon-assimilated’s inherent physique. For dungeon constructs it was understandable, but for dungeon-assimilated or dungeon-native beasts? There was no physical explanation for why those creatures would die when the core was damaged or removed.

There were plenty of competing magical theories that attempted to explain the phenomenon, but Terry did not care to sort out which one was correct. He only cared about the fact that it was a phenomenon rooted in the mana realm.

His means of physical attack simply didn’t scale, but his mana-based attacks might. His divine hammer inscription was promising but still required a lot of work. That left his disruption discharge variants.

Terry’s frown deepened when he did not perceive any effect from his spell slicer assault on the gecko’s mana core. He had been optimistic about his idea and his hopes appeared misguided.

If cutting the core out kills the creature and if the core itself interacts with the creature based on mana, then ‘cutting out’ should not just work solely with physical cuts either. It should be possible to kill a dungeon creature by isolating the core with magic.

By cutting off whatever magic it was performing.

By disrupting whatever the core was doing with its host.

By blocking all—

All!

Terry realized a mistake he had made. No matter how intense his spell slicers were, they were ill-suited to completely cut off a core from its host. He had practiced hard to make his spell slicers as sharp as possible because that was the best shape to rip into a spell structure. He had always aimed to shape them thin because that was the best shape to conserve mana.

The problem was that the spell slicers were more like arrows when what he really needed was a box…

When Terry’s thoughts reached this point, his mental image of a box suddenly shifted with the box turning into a vortex. Years ago, he had gained inspiration for his first discharge variant in Tiv. The ascension vortex of a demon had given him the idea for how to achieve his spherical disruption pulse.

A single spell slicer covered too small an area.

A sequence of spell slicers never covered enough at once.

But what about a compressed disruption field that centered around the core?

Terry had initially relied on the internal compression because that was where his mana control was the strongest, but he had come a long way since then. He had experience with rapidly setting up disruption fields of a larger scale.

But dungeon creatures move and they also— “Stop.” Terry rebuked himself gruffly. “Gathering facts comes first.”

In the blink of an eye, a tiny disruption field was established and then compressed to cover only the area of the gecko’s core.

When the mana-corrupted lizard finally vanished, Terry could not help but grin. “Okay, with that fact established…”

The dungeon critters won’t stay still, so I’ll have to be quick or capable of moving. Fortunately, these fields only have to be as small as the cores. Creating and moving them should be easier than for the disruption fields I use to protect myself.

Perhaps practicing with smaller fields will help me get to being able to move my…

“How should I call it?” Terry blurted out.

…to move my disruption domain.

Perhaps he had spent too much time among mana martialists, but he liked ‘disruption domain’ for the larger scale disruption field that he relied on for protecting himself from spells and mana abilities.

Terry absentmindedly created a little disruption field and compressed it in his palm. “This. Now this might scale.”

Up to a point.

He understood that stronger creatures had defense mechanisms for which this approach was unworkable.

Larger cores meant more surface area to cover, which required more setup time.

More agile creatures meant his setup was less likely to be on time.

Higher mana density meant more difficulty in succeeding in his setup as well.

Nevertheless, Terry had found a scalable solution for efficiently harvesting the higher floors filled with weaker creatures. A solution that could act as an intermediate stopgap before he further mastered the divine hammer inscription as well as a complementing supplement afterwards.

Terry collected all the cores and walked towards the second room with a newfound spring in his step.

It did not take long, however, before his face showed a well-worn unsatisfied expression. He turned a corner and muttered: “...pity that it only works on dungeon beings that carry cores.”

Useless on mana-corrupted outside.

Well, perhaps also useful on ethereal creatures or to tear more efficiently at barriers. I’ll have to test that…

***

Terry waltzed through the upper floors of the dungeon without breaking a sweat.

The weaker constructs, beasts, and slimes were easily taken out with his disruption fields. Sometimes, Terry already killed everything inside before even entering a room. His disruption fields did not require a direct line of sight to attack and thanks to his mana touch, he could use them even beyond dungeon walls that obstructed mana sight.

It appeared that a dungeon of this rank did not manage to hide any traps or ambushes from Terry’s mana perception either. The few times that his mana sight failed to notice the lurking danger, his mana touch still managed to warn him.

Walls or moats were not much of an obstacle for him with his aerial movement and the few times that the dungeon attempted to block the open paths with movable walls, an immovable object prevented the dungeon from succeeding.

In Terry’s opinion, labyrinths were the worst. Thanks to his mana touch, he immediately knew which direction to take and spotted any shifts in the layout. His disruption fields killed the shining dropbears, attacus sleepmoths, grievance toads, and other creatures before he ever laid eyes on them. In contrast to open rooms, however, he still had to navigate around the labyrinth to collect the cores. The worst.

The only break from boredom in labyrinth rooms was the occasional gratification when he correctly identified a wall to break through as a shortcut. Thanks to the power of his king spear, Terry could break through in many places but he chose to refrain whenever possible in order to not waste too much mana.

A glimmer of excitement rose up in Terry when he discovered a room full of purplemist lynxes and what appeared to be a duo of young shadow panthers. The mana-corrupted felines were too quick to be targeted with his disruption fields.

The excitement didn’t last that long, however. It was quickly replaced by a workable idea.

As soon as Terry stepped into the room, his mana rushed into the divine hammer inscriptions and the purplemist lynxes found themselves trapped in golden cages. Their agility was of little use when boxed in like that and unfortunately for them, their arcane bolts were not strong enough to break the sturdy barriers.

Terry set up one controlled disruption field in each of the golden cages. Luckily, the purplemist lynxes were not that large and together with their limited movement, he could manage to make the disruption field attacks on their cores workable.

While the disruption fields were cutting off the dungeon connection to the lynxes, Terry was watching the area suspiciously. He knew that the shadow panthers were still here, only in a different plane.

He circled mana into his magic brooch and stepped into the shadow plane where he immediately emitted a blinding light from his glove. The two panthers appeared taken aback by the unexpected arrival and sudden intensity of light and Terry exploited the opportunity with his king spear.

The pole extended and the sharp spearhead pierced into the neck of the first shadow panther. Terry infused mana into another activation layer. Lightning danced around the orange pole and as soon as it was absorbed into the spearhead, a powerful blast of lightning finished the injured beast off.

Terry retracted the spear with satisfaction. The spear’s elongation ability was a nice mitigation for the limitations of his magic brooch. If he was not able to lift his feet and move, then he just had to extend the spear to where he wanted it to be. It was far from perfect, but it was workable.

Terry noted that the shadow panther’s body vanished, which was clear evidence that the dungeon’s sphere of influence extended all the way into the shadow plane.

He used the bidirectional attraction inscription to collect the panther’s core and then returned to the normal plane. He had to return quickly to maintain his disruption fields and divine barriers and the second panther had fled there anyway.

Terry decided to test himself against the surviving shadow panther until the last purplemist lynx had died. The beast was agile, but with burst techniques, he was able to keep up. It could extend shadow claws and even throw a ranged attack created from shadow, but the shadow aspect was a bad fit against his divine barriers that carried an intersection of the light and metal aspects.

Terry was familiar with some of the panther’s abilities from his stay in Syn City where the vampire Ying, who acted as the mayor, possessed a shadow panther soul spirit. The beast’s fighting style mostly centered around powerful sneak attacks from the shadow plane.

Unfortunately, for the beast, its sneak attacks were not working well against Terry even when he limited himself to not step into the shadow plane. By now, he was instinctively reacting to any breach of his little mana bubble that acted as his detection field. It did not take long until a keen dagger found the neck of the shadow panther lunging at him.

Terry collected the core and looked around while the last purplemist lynx was evaporating. He habitually pressed his mana as far into the walls as possible to check for any hidden rooms. He did not find a gap that looked like a room but he discovered something resembling the mana locks he had discovered in the dungeon with the hellspawn juggernaut champion.

Terry solved the little puzzle and was delighted to see a platform rising from the floor afterwards. On the platform, there was a little purple mana crystal. He briefly considered if he could use the crystal. He involuntarily thought back to Amelia the Spellcrusher and her mage staff adorned with many of the purple crystals.

In the end, he dismissed the idea. The crystal was valuable and he would be unable to imprint the crystal with useful spells himself anyway. Better to sell it than to pay someone for imprinting. His current goal was earning money after all.

***

Terry was frowning while walking back to the city for his afternoon job as a Flower Protector.

On the one hand, he should be happy. His dungeon run had practically been perfect. He had gathered a ton of valuable mana cores and even a few unexpected rewards to sell. It was his first attempt at this dungeon and he had nearly cleared it as far as his mana perception could tell.

The primary reason why Terry had not chosen to delve further down was that he did not want to risk being late for his afternoon jobs. It was always possible that something unexpected happened on his way up and he had wanted some additional buffer. Since this had been the first time in this new dungeon, he had chosen to be particularly cautious, which ate into his overall time. Next time would be different.

However, in spite of all the good news, there was also the bad. The fast pace at which he had progressed also showed him the true limits for the earnings potential in this particular dungeon. There was still the second local dungeon, but according to his research, it was only ranked slightly higher than the first one.

In theory, there was a third dungeon he could reach within two or so weeks of running, but that one was ranked quite high at B− and Terry could practically feel the reprimanding looks from his family whenever his thoughts drifted to the possibility of checking that dungeon out. More importantly, the area appeared to be bordering contested territory between the Free Factions Union and the Lich Kingdoms.

Terry was still trying to estimate the overall earnings from all his different jobs and how long it would take him to scrape together the fee for passing through the portal when he was jolted from his thoughts by the familiar ranting of an old woman on the market plaza.

“Look what this country has come to!” Tamsin gestured over the gathered crowds. “Flooded with people that neither respect nor care about our history and traditions! This chaos would not have happened under our king!”

“Ugh…” Terry tried to sidestep the old grouch but unexpectedly found her in front of him with a wagging finger.

“Do not roll your eyes at me!” Tamsin chided him. “How dare you barge into our homes and show disrespect! You are exactly what I’m talking about”

“I’m just passing through,” muttered Terry. He was slightly taken aback at being directly addressed. He tried to sidestep the agitated monarchist, only to find her step into his path again.

“And poisoning the minds of the locals while you’re here, right?” Tamsin wagged her finger accusingly. “Just like the fools that poisoned the mind of the queen with their hogwash ideas! Hundreds of years of history and look what we’ve come to!”

“Okay then.” Terry started to step to the side again.

“Do you even know the name of the queen?!” demanded Tamsin.

“Uhm…” Terry stopped at the question. He had read a bit about the history of the kingdom but only insofar as it related to his own security and path forward. He tended to skim names and exact dates because it did not really matter to him as far as he could see.

“Typical!” exclaimed Tamsin smugly. She raised her voice some more and gestured at Terry. “Coming here while knowing nothing! Not the slightest thing about the country they step foot in!”

Terry was getting irritated by the continued pestering. “Look Lady, I’ve been here barely more than a week. There are indeed many things on my list to learn here. Like the local flora and fauna – which plants I might eat and which beasts might try to eat me. Which merchants are fair and which smiths are reliable. Or any other thing that actually matters while I’m here. As far as I’m concerned, the name of some exiled noble or politician ranks lower than finding a place that sells pastries that don’t all taste like marzipan.”

“Ignoramus!” Tamsin’s head was getting red. “Coming here without—”

“Enough for today!” Terry decided to step around the grouch and use a direction she was unlikely to follow to block his path again. He stepped above her on layers of translucent golden mana and refused to come down again until he had reached a safe distance from pestering loudmouths.

***