“If you choose magic you will never be able to return to the life you once lived. Your world may be more... exciting... but it will also be more dangerous. Less reliable. And once you begin to walk the path of magic, you can never step off of it.

-Neil Gaiman

Creating all of the traps had taken quite some time. Any individual trap was fairly easy, but refining the details took a while. I took a moment to look at the progress of the mana crystals.

They were growing quite slowly, but there were thousands of them. I looked at my ambient mana, it had gone down to minimal. I could probably get at least a single mana from each one. Actually… I should test that. I absorbed one. It was the size of a pebble right now. It gave me three mana. Much less than what I thought it probably held, given that one about the size of grain of rice could hold almost a single point of mana, but still more than enough. I looked at all the thousands of crystals. Should I…? I warred with myself. If I did it would be easy to level up, but that could distract me. On the other hand I had received an enormous benefit from my last level, and I would be a fool to ignore that kind of benefit right now.

I looked at my creation that was siphoning in far more mana than I would generate normally. I was sure part of this was simply because I had such a mana rich environment, but I knew that was not all of it. Honestly that probably wasn’t even the majority of it. No, I was more intelligent than a dungeon was expected to be at this level. That was the first part, and maybe that was the only part. I had to consciously include mana stone into my designs and that made me able to make a material that stored mana using ambient mana. And it was obvious from this that the amount of ambient mana available was far more than I was drawing in.

My other thought was that mana crystal was really rare, or perhaps it was simply artificial and not something dungeons encountered in nature. Though, I had my doubts that it was that hard for dungeons to get a little bit of it. It would have happened by accident if someone used it. No, it had to be intelligence more than anything else. This wasn’t my only idea to get better mana generation, after all. I was already sending my aura toward richer territory, and I had stored mana even when I had been trapped. I had considered setting a few minds to push ambient mana together so it would forcibly create dense areas I could focus on absorbing. And I was sure that there were even more ideas I had overlooked.

I quickly started absorbing crystals and less than a hundred later Exsan pushed for a level up as soon as it was possible.

I quickly agreed and my level went up. Most of the details were the same, though the next level needed two hundred survival points, which was easy enough. I had gained another skill and title, but I didn’t look at it for the moment. So I pushed through and absorbed enough mana to acquire the next level.

Your status has changed – Level Up

Status

Dungeon Name: None

Name 1: Caden

Name 2: Exsan

Species Type: Dungeon Core

Subspecies: Twin Souled

Level: 7

Crystal Integrity: 100% - Undamaged

Status Effects: Current synchronization: 1% (>400 days)

Available Mana - Caden: 1/800

Available Mana - Exsan: 1/800

Passive Mana Generation: 154/Day

Survival Points:200

Next level: Costs 1000 Mana + 300 Survival Points

Subsections Available: 2

Ability Points: 5817

Skills: Directed Mana Absorption II,

Limited Omniscience (Dungeon)

Soul Mana II

Dungeon Aura Expansion II

Manipulate Earth II (Earth)

Learning II

Enhanced Aura Perception II

Ambient Mana Manipulation II

Soul Meditation II

Interdimensional Repository II

Aura Mobility II

Destructive Assimilation II

Matter Fabrication II

Found Dungeon

Pain Resistance II

Vital Comprehension II (Life)

Mana Construct Intuition II

Mana Lexicon II (Language)

English IX (Language)

Living Creation II (Life)

Mana Diffusion II

Dungeon Control Menu

Appraise II

Manipulate Metal II (Metal)

Titles: (Shared)

First of its Kind

Skill Evolution

Mana Specialist II

Escape Artist IV (Deception)

Dungeon Martyr III (First)

Touch of the Grave I

Dread Salvation I

Seen the Infinite Void

Investment Specialist

Back from the Brink I

Dungeon Progression I

Innovator III (Dungeon)

Swift Descent

Titles: (Caden)

Reborn Soul

Titles: (Exsan)

Immortal Soul

You have gained new skills!

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Appraise II

You intuitively understand the relative value of various items in your local area. Moving locations will give different results. You are also able to learn very basic information about an object, creature, or person.

Manipulate Metal II

Metal can be created and manipulated at will. Some metals are harder to create than others and will require more time and or mana. Some metals may resist manipulation.

You have earned a new Title!

Swift Descent

Dungeons rarely acquire levels quickly, but you have earned five within a year. Extraordinary circumstances are required to make this possible. You will be given the tools and room to be even more extraordinary.

+2000 AP

+Maximum size of dungeon massively increased

+Dungeon is converted from aura twice as fast.

Aside from the rather enormous jump in AP from swift descent, I noted that I gained nine hundred and ninety AP from leveling up. Looked like it was an exponential progression after all. I could expect another 1760 at level eight.

Appraise was definitely going to be useful. I had already been wondering what would be considered valuable. I also noticed that it specifically mentioned it would change if I moved. I wonder if it would have mentioned that it I hadn’t gained the ability to move and teleported once already. Not that I was going to be able to move anytime soon. I mean I had only been here working on a dungeon for a short time. Probably less than a week. I was still looking at more than four hundred days though.

And I could work metal now. Combined with my ability to prevent stealing, something I noted in the dungeon menu, I should be free to work with it as much as I liked. I had plenty of things I wanted to try.

I had been concerned about my own growth. The dungeon had grown by around six hundred feet in radius. I figured to be expanding it by around one hundred feet a day. That didn’t sound enormous, but it added up. That meant that the dungeon would gain about a mile in radius every fifty days. Over the course of a year that would be an increase in radius of seven miles. Still not the largest size imaginable, but it kept going up. A decade would see the dungeon at a total diameter of more than 140 miles. A century a thousand miles across. And a thousand years would be 10,000 miles across. That was considerably larger than the size of Earth. With that kind of growth any ancient dungeon ought to be truly massive. In fact the entire world ought to be made of dungeons, even if they couldn’t cover the surface. So I had been wondering if I was somehow different or I could expect to stop or drastically slow down my growth at some point.

I had an answer now. I had some maximum size I was allowed to be. That was somewhat reassuring, since it would apply to other dungeons too. And I could grow quite a bit faster now. And that size limit had just increased, so I could expect to keep growing for quite a while.

And I had way too much mana I could use now. Based on how I needed survival points to level I had already expected those to become the gate that prevented leveling, but I hadn’t expect that to happen quite so soon.

I remembered that my mana diffusion ability said that it would improve as my maximum mana was surpassed. I wasn’t entirely certain how that was even possible, but I was happy to try it. I needed about 1600 mana and I still had thousands of little glowing marbles, each would give me a little more than three mana. That meant I only needed five hundred or so. Not a terribly large number compared to what was available. So I started to absorb them. My mana rose quickly. There was something gratifying about watching it rise one hundred, two, five, and then finally eight hundred each for Exsan and I.

The number stopped at eight hundred, but mana didn’t stop flowing into me. I felt it spreading out along the dungeon. The threads of my aura began to hum with it. As more mana flowed in it continued to spread out. It didn’t leave the dungeon area, it just washed back and forth. Gradually the amount of mana increased as I kept absorbing it. After another two hundred it snapped into place and rushed away.

A notice let me know I had achieved mana diffusion III. Additional lines now went through my aura. They connected the various main threads together. I was now at the center of a three dimensional interconnected web.

As this happened I felt more mana passively flow into me from the dungeon. Obviously I had just become more efficient at absorbing it. Additional mana was flowing into the dungeon from outside of it. The overall draw on mana in my dungeon was simply better.

I looked at the amount of ambient mana listed in the menu. It had increased from minimal to moderate. This had some potential. If I raised my ability to handle ambient mana I could easily convert it into mana I could use directly. If I didn’t need survival points I could have really leveled fast with this.

Well, no point in stopping.

I continued and after another five hundred mana more threads of mana snapped into place in my aura, and it became even more interconnected. The main threads became more tied together, but subsidiary threads tied to each other as well. New structures also developed where major threads joined together. They were simple, just thousands of threads radiating outwards from each one. And they absorbed mana very well.

I kept going and more than a thousand mana broke me through to the next change. More of those branching threads radiated out from new locations. My aura became even more interconnected. Spikes of aura extended outwards from the edge of the dungeon by several hundred feet. They had the highly mana absorbent threads along their entire length. The difference between where my normal aura and the dungeon began had become very stark. The level of density was very different.

I had hit mana diffusion V now, and I kept going. However this time something different happened. I absorbed about 2500 mana but then it stopped. It washed back and forth across my aura in waves, but it refused to do anything. I looked back over the details of the skill now.

Mana Diffusion V

Your aura distributes all ambient mana throughout the dungeon. This mana is stabilized and capable of numerous uses. This skill is passive and can increase by both extending into richer mana sources and by acquiring more mana than can be held.

Right, there was an “and” there. Apparently I had progressed this skill as far as it could go until the dungeon expanded into areas that were more mana rich. I took a look at what the dungeon menu said about the available ambient mana. Yep, it said very dense. I swear I could see the mana crystals I hadn’t absorbed visibly growing. Nope, that was not an illusion, they were growing really fast.

I hadn’t really planned on these things working so well. I was just going to teleport these into a prepared area once they were full. Now I would still do that, but I would assign part of the menu to replace them whenever they were absorbed. That should give me a functionally infinite mana supply.

Now I needed to think about how I wanted to design the dungeon layout. I had done a lot of work with traps recently but I still needed to turn that into a comprehensive design. Obviously I wanted to start with the basic traps. From there they would progress to more and more dangerous options. I also intended to show people how the traps were made somehow. I would give people fair warning. A death should only come if people knew the risk. The sad truth was that nonlethal traps could be overcome and ignored. I was looking at the spaces I would need to clear stone or maneuver around existing native wildlife when I noticed something… odd.

Actually there was more than just one thing. I looked at an underground stream. A small section with a deep pool formed with slow moving water. It was full of fish and other life. Truly full. There were far more fish, insects, and worms, than I had seen this ecosystem support before. If fact I would have said that it couldn't support this many. And some of the fish were double in size anything I had seen previously here. I looked upstream and downstream to see if I had simply discovered some kind of spawning event. Nope, the entire stream was like this, and there were large amounts of eggs everywhere.

I broadened my search. The cave where the moss hung into the steam had seen the moss go through massive growth. It was more like bushes were hanging from the ceiling now. The little critters that tended it were everywhere and some of them were now the size of acorns, I could see the moss growing even as I watched. The moss looked like it was closer to the steam vents than before too. I would have thought it too hot for it to grow there. The insects on the ground had grown as well. They were aggressively fighting over scraps of moss and preying on each other. And here too were countless eggs.

The mana wing grasshoppers were swarming through their cavern. It looked almost like a procession of kites. They were more varied than before, their original transparent bodies now starting to stain with various colors. A few had grown substantially in size and were the size of sparrows. Everywhere I looked was expanding with variety and population.

Cave systems were supposed to be nutrient poor. It was one of their defining characteristics, and these cave systems had been obeying that before. This was not just absurd; it was impossible.

I checked the drainage on the sewer, and made sure I wasn’t dumping massive amounts of nutrients into the other ecosystems. That should not be enough to explain this, but I checked anyway. On checking, I found the drainage went through the barren cave systems I had specifically made just to drain the water away. As far as I could tell it was not seeping out anywhere. As I checked farther up into the sewer system the life there had progressed much faster than I thought possible. The relatively small section I created had more than doubled in area. Some of the filter feeders along the bottom had fans that were a foot across. Some of the mice looked like they were about to give birth.

I checked on my egg project, and everything had hatched. There were fish of all types. Some of the eggs that had seemed identical had produced different offspring as well. Colors, size, all these seemed to vary. This confirmed what I had suspected for a while now. Whatever was happening was not natural. At least, not something I would recognize as natural on Earth. Maybe this was normal here.

I took a quick look at my aura outside the dungeon. This area was as it had been before. Cave systems and life that was appropriate to that.

I checked on my plant sections. They were a mess. Some seeds had grown into full blades of grass. A few were small ferns or bushes. A few young trees were a foot tall. I absentmindedly tried to absorb a full sized piece of grass and found it vanished. Huh, looks like if something is raised in my mana I can absorb it. Well, for plants at least. I checked and found I could absorb one of the small fish as well. The excess mana just dissipated into the environment since I was full. I quickly recreated the fish. Might as well see what happens to it later.

I absorbed or moved plants to give them more room. I would need to keep an eye on things. Especially that one vine that looked like it was growing towards it neighbors. I had only been working on my traps and the rest for about a day at most!

I focused on the plants deeply. I could see the fern growing. Little buds formed into curling leaves which reached toward the artificial sky as they unfurled and grew. Roots reached deeper into the soil. A few plants had already hit the stone at the bottom. I offhandedly converted a few dozen feet of stone into dirt as I kept looking at the plants. They were getting denser with mana. It had taken me a bit to notice, however, because the plants were getting easier to see rather than harder. They were taking in my mana, and it was getting denser.

I shifted my perspective. Even with the new changes to my aura, I had tuned it out by force of habit. My aura was holding mana in the air, and it made the mana density richer everywhere. I had thought the mana diffusion was just for manipulating the dungeon by using it to grow blueprints, but it was doing this too. The plants were connecting to my aura. The mana and aura grew into the plants to fuel this incredible unnatural growth. The eggs that had hatched had grown into fish, but they hadn’t simply grown, they had mutated. Everything was more aggressive. The fish, the insects, the mice. Now I understood what Exsan had said.

Dungeon make monsters.