Once the trash was dealt with I filled the entrance to my dungeon with smooth stone, engraving some words Ryia told me to put there. I wasn’t sure what “I have the means of production, down with the capitalist oppressors!” was supposed to mean, but Ryia was smart; I was sure it was for a good reason. Once that was done, I got to work forming the bodyguards in the Underworld. Or at least, I tried to.

Every one of the bodyguards' cultivation flatly refused to manifest using any materials I could think of. This left me with the choice of absorbing their mana, or somehow storing it. I asked Ryia for any ideas.

“Why do you need to manifest their cultivation at all?” She asked. I gave her a blank stare.

“Look at me.” She commanded.

“Ok… hi?”

“No, you goof. I’m a wisp, I don’t have a physical form.”

“Ohhhhhhh. Hugh.”

It was true. Wisps were basically a living cultivation technique, one that had never manifested into something physical. Mana elementals, if you will.

“How do I do that?” I asked.

“How would I know!?”

“You're a wisp.”

“And you're Core. I don’t suppose you can make a baby Core?”

“No. Just… no.”

Making a wisp couldn’t be that hard. I just had to experiment on the Adventurers mana until I eventually got what I wanted. It would require me to be completely heartless, to ignore the cultivator's pleas for mercy, to be willing to commit irreparable harm on another living being. Without a second thought I extracted the arrogant leader’s cultivation. That jerk deserved what was coming for him.

I thought about everything I knew about mana so far. Mana was an energy. It responded to intent. Thank you for NOTHING Sigmundr. Still… I carefully sent some of my mana out of my domain in a bowl shape before willing it back, scooping uninfused mana to me. I hustled it through my dungeon, down to the Adventurer’s swirling mana matrixes. As the uninfused mana met the cultivation techniques, I tried to project my Intent to the mana. I wasn’t sure it would work, as the mana wasn’t infused by me, but considering that my Intent had impacted ambient mana when ripping Zimisite-may be rot in conflict- to shreds, it seemed possible.

The cultivation technique sucked up the uninfused mana like a… cultivation technique sucking up mana. I’m not great with metaphors all right? The only people I've talked to are a bloodthirsty wisp, an A ranker who tried to murder said wisp, and a lying A ranker. In that order. Annnnnnnd I’m dialoguing to myself like someone is listening. Again.

That can’t be good for my mental health.

For a long moment, nothing happened. The technique wasn’t something a normal ENAD could see, being made of invisible mana and all, but to me it looked like swirls of green, slightly enlarged as clear, uninfused mana filtered into it. Minutes passed with no other change, and I was about to give up when the mass of mana twitched. It was only a small movement, roughly an inch or so, but any movement was out of the norm.

I spent the next several hours gathering uninfused mana and feeding it to the technique, being careful not to allow the other mana matrixes near the mana. Slowly, the twitches grew more frequent, resolving into trails of mana flailing about. When I had given it 13 shots of mana, I let up and just watched it. The trails of mana fumbling about had no purpose I could see, and the blob didn’t make any understandable words. I was beginning to worry the thing was going to explode when Ryia burst out:

“Awwww!” Her tone was a soft coo, so utterly and completely foreign to her usual way of speaking all I could do was stare as the air seal on my tunnel failed, the equivalent of an ENAD’s jaw dropping.

“Ryia?”

“Yes Granite?” She responded distractedly, sending tendrils of mana to brush along the technique.

“When was the last time you slept?”

She whirled on me, her orb somehow managing to give me the side-eye despite not having eyes. Or sides. It was incredibly unnerving.

“I don’t sleep, Granite.”

“Ok.” The side-eye turned to a suspicious glare.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She asked, her usual cheerful, saucy demeanor returning.

“Just checking for mind control.” She stared at me in confusion for a second, before realizing that she'd been acting like an ENAD seeing its first kitty.

“I can’t help it. The World Core made us go all googly eyed whenever we see a baby wisp. That oaf randomly jerking about is close enough to trigger it.” Well, that was something I definitely wouldn’t use in the future every time Ryia got mad at me.

“Why would the World Core put in a cuteness trigger for baby wisps? What were you guys doing, eliminating the competition before it could fight back?”

Silence.

“Wait, you don't mean-”

“Focus!” Her tone made it clear the topic was not up for discussion.

“Fine.” I muttered, starting the warmup sequence on one of the mana accelerators. When it was primed and humming, I manipulated it to point at the cultivation technique before reaching for the rune trigger. I wasn’t sure exactly what would happen thanks to a certain Adventurer Society Branch Director, but it probably wouldn’t be good.

“Stop! What in the World Core’s name are you doing?”

“Uh… science?”

“You can’t just kill a cultivator like that!”

“This is literally a dungeon. The entire point is to kill Adventurers.”

“But the Underworld-”

“Is for Adventurers who deserve a second chance. That idiot deserved what he got and more.”

Ryia looked between the mana accelerator, humming with barely contained power, and the floating, spasmodically jerking ball of mana it was aimed at. I could have sworn I saw mana gears whirling as her mind danced over a dozen reasons why I shouldn’t kill the “baby wisp”, before she settled on the only argument that would work.

“Why not make him a dungeon mob?”

“I’m sorry, I thought you said to make him a dungeon mob. Could you repeat that?”

“Claim its mana but keep the mana matrix intact. Then overlay that matrix onto a normal mob. It won’t be perfect, not nearly as good as allowing matrix’s to naturally manifest in the Underworld, but it should work.”

“He killed Chunky. Then sliced him up and paraded those slices around the room while demanding I subject myself to my rightful betters. On top of that he’s a coward and reminds me of Zimisite. Why would I give him another chance at life?”

“You can’t be that bloodthirsty. Give him long enough and he might turn over a new leaf.”

I wanted to pull the rune trigger.

I really wanted to pull the rune trigger.

But Ryia was right, I wasn’t a bloodthirsty maniac. Given enough time, and enough deaths, the guy might eventually grow a spine. Or he might turn into a raving lunatic, at which point I’d hang him in a cage with a sign saying: “This guy was like you once.”, warning future Adventurers against making me mad. Win-win either way.

“Fine.”

Infusing the cultivation technique was surprisingly easy. With no significant mana reserves or any practice being a wisp, the cultivator had next to zero defenses. What happened next was… odd. A cultivation technique was soaked in the cultivator's Intent and built around their memories to the point where a cultivator and their technique were two sides of the same coin. It was the reason those in the Underworld still had their sanity. So, when I infused the technique, claiming it as part of myself, I saw all of Leko's memories.

His earliest memory; being beaten by his father for treating a peasant with kindness. Learning that every child of a noble house he met had been told by their parents to be his friend. The gaping wound his mother's death left, how he never saw his father smile after that. Years of training in the Emerald Sect, eventually turning to violence to keep others away, relishing in the power it gave him. Watching his progress stall as cultivator after cultivator passed him by, bitterness embedding itself deeper and deeper until his whole life was reduced to proving himself. Learning of his father's death: his only inheritance being Artifact and a note saying: “To my useless son: May this artifact make you something better than the failure you are.”. Being relegated to a common Adventurer as his family branch stopped sending him money. Lashing out again and again as his upbringing, anger, and grief combined to turn him into something ugly. Taking his first assignment to a no-name dungeon in the middle of nowhere.

Fear.

Death.

It all came in a rush, an entire life laid out before me with all the dreams and fears, friends and enemies, emotions and experiences that entailed. For a brief, terrifying moment I was caught in the middle; between Granite and Leeko, unsure of which was truly me.

Then it was all whisked away, neatly cataloged and filed as my subconscious integrated it into the millions of other facts I’d collected. The entire process took less than three seconds.

“Well, that was interesting. And tragic. And a lot of information I really didn’t need to know.”

“What?” Ryia asked, looking up from making moon eyes at the ball of mana. She really needed to get that fixed.

“Oh nothing.”

Despite my newfound understanding of what had led to Leeko’s… Lekoness, he was still a spineless coward who desperately needed a backbone and a lesson on the consequences of his actions. A heroic death or twenty... would do him some good. Probably. I’m not and never claimed to be a physiatrist, which is probably why I keep talking to an invisible audience.

The next step was finding out where to place him. He obviously wasn’t boss material, and I didn’t want him getting in the way of my normal floor operations. I was stumped for a moment, before the perfect place for him struck me. A spot where he’d grow a spine whether he liked it or not.

And so it was that the First Piggy Commando Death Squad gained its first recruit.

If I didn't hate the guy, I would have felt sorry for him.