Shaded by an ever more sad looking bush stubbornly hanging on to the last few strings of life lies a small orange gem strikingly similar to a Citrine gemstone, what few rays of life managing to pierce the sad canopy formed by the poor little bush striking the orange crystal making its orange glow even more intense. The light flowing through the gemstone illuminating a sparkling and ever changing white fog held within the little gem. Said fog ever changing and in a state of turmoil. Should any being with the ability to read thoughts pass by they would be quite surprised to find that the little gem produced an almost constant screeching nose strikingly similar to that of a Wump Rat, with the terrible noise only periodically being interrupted by random and broken thoughts of an entity attempting to make sense of its situation and seemingly trying its hardest to calm down.
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I don't know how many days its been I lost count after the first five cycles. All I knew is that it had been way too long and I had gotten way to lucky to not be spotted by an opportunist beast either attempting to form a Soul Crystal or improve their own with the vast amounts of Mana Essence I held within me. Truthfully I only knew that Dungeon Crystals held almost insane amounts of Mana Essence thanks to my grandfather who had been able to witness the shattering of one, he constantly liked to inform all of his children and grandchildren about the experience even if they had heard the ever changing tale a million times before.
Thinking about it, perhaps my overly annoying dungeon delving family who constantly pelted me with their experiences and knowledge earned through their many years of delving would actually be helpful in my new predicament. If I remember correctly I believe my grandfather had said that dungeons would naturally absorb mana from the surrounding area as they produced none of their own. Well it currently wasn't happening for me but I felt the inkling of a feeling of there being some sort of unused muscle that I would use to control this action.
Trying to figure out how to use the muscle I found I had accidentally triggered this action by trying to take a deep breath in am attempt at calming myself before promptly screaming my head off for multiple days, screaming aside the expulsion of the breath what had granted me my new viewpoint on a low hanging branch of this pathetic little plant that seemed to be a bush.
With what I now knew I came to the conclusion that in order to absorb more mana it simply had to be the action of constantly breathing in. That was, in practice much harder than it sounded. But after several hundred tries it was as if a puzzle piece finally fit and the process actually started up and I found I didn't actually have pay much attention to it. Like how someone doesn't have to constantly tell their heart to beat in order to stay alive. Flexing the ability I found I could actually stop the flow of mana into myself but doing so just sounded silly and there surely would never be a situation where I would have to do that.
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Now I had mana but I didn't actually know how I could use it beyond expanding how far I could see. Spending some very frustrating hours I ended up remembering the words of a distant cousin, somehow, I found that Dungeon Crystals could use their mana for two things shaping the world around them, and casting spells. If I remembered correctly that same cousin said that dungeon spells were incredibly powerful but incredibly inefficient, like attempting to start a bonfire with nothing but a few twigs. So that was out of the question, for now, on to manipulating the world around me I suppose.
To manipulate my environment I would need to imbue it with mana, but I luckily already knew how to do that I simply had to force my the mana I was now constantly earning into the area around me.
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I found that I was currently collecting more mana than I could actively imbue into the land around me and over the course of many painstaking hours I had managed to fully imbue this sad little shrub and parts of this hole I was stuck in. While doing so I found that I could actually push mana out of any surface already imbued with my mana in order to expand my reach, almost similar to some form of cancerous growth. But even with its similarities to cancer it would certainly help me expand much faster.
While the expansion has allowed me to see much more of my surroundings and I found I wasn't really stuck in a hole, more a valley between multiple tall and rocky hills. But sadly I could only see the bottom of the hills I was stuck between, luckily I had a solution. Said solution didn't even involve me remembering words from my annoying family, gods how I missed them, Dungeon Crystals could imbue their mana within living creatures and through imbuing them they could impress their will on them. Though I must admit remembering this bit of information was probably due to a dungeon in the near area I resided had released a small swarm of rats only four years before my death at the hands of that damned ox. The detestable little Dungeon Crystal had done it because it thought it was funny, it was not.
Looking around this shithole, or more aptly named shitvalley, for any creatures I might have some how missed I managed to find exactly none, apparently not even the bugs of wherever the fuck I was wanted to hang out with the sad excuse of a bush that resided next to me. I was actually surprised that there weren't even any bugs trying to escape the sun beneath a small outcropping of rocks that provided shade in the distant reaches of my holdings. Not knowing what else to do I turned to a stupid idea I had been pondering while I was expanding my holdings, the task was quite like absorbing mana into myself and I didn't have to put much thought behind it. The idea stupid in that relied way to much on coincidence. Basically I would have to expel bursts of my mana in a large cone above my only companion in the hopes of hitting a passing bird that I could latch onto and fill with my own mana, taking it as my own.
Sighing internally causing me to accidentally releasing some of my mana in a small cloud around the surprisingly not dead bush I decided to get to work. Signing myself away to slowly expanding my territory towards the tops of the hills around me and my little bush whilst expelling a cone of mana above myself in hopes of catching a stray bird, or any creature for that matter.