‘‘One’s despair may only be uttered in the manner of how badly said person wishes to smash their Non-existing face into a hard surface. A quote from a wise scholar, namely me, Whatever age this is.’’ Allen sighed to himself, his vision flickering between the 3 parts of his… absolutely boring home…

‘’A blacksmith, A blacksmith! I’d give my mana supply for a blacksmith…! Definitely, also quoted by me, Still don’t know what age this is!’’

A group of Orcs wandered outside, not hearing a single thing of the crisis overcoming their host. Only a near unnoticeable and pulsing static present in the more magically-gifted of the bunch… Which… meant only Jigi, really. And, if you count the magical-feels bond, also Turok and Ozram to a lesser extent.

While Allen knew he was acting like a unruly child, he couldn’t help but feel… Well, Frustrated. From the several other discussions that had followed during the past week after he had received the dirt map which now decorated the wall of his core room, Allen knew the amount of mana at his disposal was, to put it bluntly, Immense. As in, being able to suffocate god-like entities with mana-poisoning should it ever be contained in a small enough area. Heh, How Fortunate.

Taking a moment to thank both the Old- and Devil man for their parting gifts, would he refocus on a rusted iron sword, laying as still as a sword should, in front of his core. Something that had vexed Allen was this stupid weapon, on how he could replicate it perfectly, but not enhance it in any way, shape, or form. Then again, he had only used the same technique of throwing a bit of his mana at it, see what it did, and go from there.

As such, he came upon the brilliant idea. Gathering his 3 musket-… Companions… and clearing his non-existent throat, would Allen explain his brilliant plan. ‘’I’m going to throw all of my mana at it, see what it does and pray it doesn’t explode. You’re here to throw it away in the case it does.’’

The orcs, well, any bystander could see how even the notoriously-clumsy Ozram would think this was a bad idea… However, before any of them could voice a complaint, or even react for that matter, Allen had already begun brute-forcing his way into getting something in, or out of it, whether it be a reaction, explosion, or something else entirely.

The latter, was what he got. Jigi could feel the mana-levels of Allen’s core room draining, even with his sub-par skill, making the Orc ghasp softly. He was tempted to touch the weapon, wait, scratch that, he was tempted to touch the now-glowing weapon. Which… did… nothing besides glowing, the mana-level of the room shooting back upwards to the level it was before.

Finally taking the chance to speak, would the smallest orc of the 3 bolt forward, lunging to grab the glowing object while yelling ‘’Glow thing mine!’’ , grabbing ahold of it before Jigi, Allen or Turok could stop him, All 3 expecting an explosion to occur.

The silence lasted for a precise 4,16029 seconds before a chorus of voices would call out in sync. ‘’You idiot what if it exploded!’’ followed by a softer ‘’Wait why did I measure how many seconds that took? And in decimals no less…’’ from the Dungeon core.

‘’Hey… Master Allen… Does this do anything besides glowing…?’’ A both uncaring and impatient Ozram would question, swinging around the weapon a bit. Allen, in answer, would form another sword, gifting it to Turok for holding. ‘’Lets run some tests shall we-…’’ The normal sword would seemingly pull itself from the bigger orc’s hand after a brief struggle, flying towards the glowing one as the two would fuse together, forming a roughly sword-shaped oval object, covered in rust and glowing a soft-blue color.

‘’Ooookay… Ozram… put the thing down…’’ Jigi would place his hand upon the younger orc’s shoulder, gently coaxing him and his arm to put the object on the dungeon floor. Allen meanwhile, was having yet another internal crisis at his blatant disrespect of universal laws.

But, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. So while Jigi and Turok were calming down a sweating Ozram, the latter having been scared out of his mind by a sword flying towards him, would the resident dungeoncore merely… summon a few more swords, all of which would quickly lunge towards the continuously-rounding shape of rusting and glowing iron. Not only that, but after a few normal ones, would he send a batch of his mana with every sword, turning them into more glowing ones. ’Whether this is gonna turn the thing into a black hole or not, it’s quite fun to experiment!’

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Whereas the normal weapons had only rounded out the ball of metal more in sacrifice of the blue glow dimming, would the glowing ones have the opposite effect. The rust ball schrunk, and the glow would deepen in color, cracks forming on the surface into which the glow would begin seeping. Atleast this was less struggling on the eyes, which made the 3 orcs drift their gazes over, as the bright light had disappeared. While at its maximum, the object would have grown in size to equal the youngest and smallest orc, it was now ‘barely’ the size of a human head.

The 5 beings in the room stared at the roundish-ball…

‘’So uh… anyone have any ideas, Jigi, Turok?’’ Allen would mumble softly now that the Orc’s attention had gone back to the mysterious object.

‘’It uh… seems like a Mana-crystal, almost… from those deep-blue lines anyway but you usually find those in high-ranking monsters, not in balls of metal? And as the name suggests, they look more crystalline. I don’t really know a whole lot on how they form, but such beasts usually hold a lot of mana in them…’’ Forgetting to use the honorific because of the bizarre situation, even Jigi’s previously useful knowledge had begun drying up.

Allen reabsorbed the sphere, noting how expensive it was to copy, for anyone else really. He could spit out the things like… uh… just, his massive mana pool gave him no issues. From theory, the more complex the item he was trying to copy, the more mana it would cost. Made sense, considering he had bombarded the swords with quite a extensive amount. He guessed that whatever magic had been done, had streamlined the infusing, which resulted in the process of making one from scratch be more expensive then ‘pasting’ one after copying it.

‘’Well, thank you for the assistance, and thankfully we didn’t explode…’’ At yet another mysterious yet useless object, would the dungeon core give a mental sigh, the 3 orcs receiving a brief flicker of emotion through their connection, Ozram and Turok nodding softly before taking their leave. Jigi staring at the core for several more seconds, a brief silence remaining between the two, before even he would glance away and leave the room, leaving the floating crystal of mana by itself.

‘’Seems like someone almost caught on… Heh, I didn’t actually expect it to work, seems like I’ll have to advance my schedule…’’ Allen held onto the emotion of sadness, hoping it would allow his little ‘entourage’ to remain clueless, well, the rest anyway. The wall behind his core would open further, upon closer inspection having used to hold a small, horizontal slit in between the stone, as a certain mechanical spider would crawl out. ‘’Sorry I had to stuff you into the lower-levels, Neith, I’ll be sure to fix you up a tunnel or two leading from your room to down there.’’ The mech-spider merely tilted its head sideways, seemingly not quite as bothered as Allen had previously thought. ‘’I really wish you could speak… Atleast you I know I can trust… you’re my own creation, not some hired thugs like those Orcs.’’

Shifting his gaze towards the lower levels, would a several figures of different sizes be present, the only noticeable feature was that instead of flesh and bones, would every inch of the thing be from rusted metal instead, seemingly squished and molded to create the barest of shapes resembling a humanoid.

‘’Hold your friends close, but your enemy even closer…’’ The dungeon core would muse softly. He knew the Orcs were using him as much as he used them, their fragile relation with one another would probably vanish once they were strong enough to beat his only guardian, and the mysterious threat outside. How much of their words were truth, he didn’t know. But for now, playing innocent would suit his objective best. It still irritated him that, for the ruse to work, he would have to continuously show a increase in abilities, balancing himself between the lines of ‘lucky streaks’ and time-consuming ‘hard work’. In truth, anything Allen was able to form with his ‘Copy-paste’ skill, had a free editing feature. Though within limits. As brittle as the rusted-iron was, he couldn’t create fine parts with it and as such was stuck with creating something that looked like a simple golem. No fingers, no toes, nothing overly complex, merely the rough shape of a humanoid. Everything balanced on his supercharged magic-core. Allen had pushed his knowledge of magic to the limit with the last few glowing swords he had offered his project. Neith had evolved into a mechanical being with AI, but she had a soul, all be it a spider. A metal sphere filled with mana, had none.

Any respectable engineer would try as many solutions as possible, so yes, he had done plenty of trials. No, a core as it was now didn’t work, no he couldn’t create complex shapes, but that had to do with the state of the materials used. No, he couldn’t control it himself, while a normal-core did ‘connect’ the loose parts together, almost like mana-tethers and tendons, he had no influence over it, as if what he had created was a monster without brain. It was ‘alive’, yes, as much as a non-thinking Golem could be, its basic functions of cycling ambient mana throughout its body working just fine on its own. What Allen needed was something to wander into his dungeon that he could kill without rousing suspicion…

Well… Going by the chaos that had suddenly erupted upstairs after the return of the empty-handed hunting party, it seemed that said time had already come…