The day passed quickly for Hebe as she explored the facets of her power and discovered the more obvious aspects about being a dungeon. For one, her core was the equivalent to the 'heart' of a normal beast and like any other monster it was her weakness. Unlike other monsters however, her core contained her soul as well, it was not evenly distributed throughout most of her body and focused in her nonexistent brain. The gaseous haze within the center of her pale-white pearl was her soul and her magic source combined. In other words, as Hebe was surprised to realize, her soul was inseparable from her magic and could even be said to be her magic from a certain standpoint. Just like other living beings, if she had her heart, or the dungeon core in this case, removed from her body, which comprised of the entire grand temple and its cloud, she would inevitably perish. More importantly, as Hebe was horrified to discover, since the soul being destroyed would cause the body to die and her magic was her soul, if Hebe ever completely spent the entirety of her magic she would die a tragic death moments later.
If Hebe could sweat, buckets of salt water would have been filling the floor when she realized this disturbing fact. After all, not too long ago, Hebe had just spent an excessively large portion of her magical energy to successfully summon forth a much weaker version of the fountain in her foreign memories. What exactly would have happened to her if she had tried to force the issue and summon the exact fountain in her memories? Hebe would surely have died a dog's death tens of times over...
This realization stopped the rest of Hebe's self-explorations as she understood the need for a system to measure her magical energy levels accurately lest she give in to the temptation of 'overspending' her mana based on an inaccurate 'feel' of the depth of magic it would take to perform any action. Such a system would allow her to recognize the quantitative amount that Hebe's 'feelings', born of a dungeon's keen magical instincts, told her would be the cost to achieve her goals. Next time she would know just how much the sensation of magic within her body was and would ration it carefully!
"Big sis?" Hebe asked urgently as soon as 'tomorrow' had arrived.
"Yes, little sis? What's the matter? Are you done?" Morrigan curiously responded.
"Is there a...system? One for magic, that you use? To measure it. To compare 'feelings'. To know for certain and be safe," Hebe carefully structured her questions in a somewhat odd manner, though her communication skills improved by leaps and bounds with every passing hour that the unlocked foreign memories were given to seep into her soul.
"Eh, a system for measuring magic? I suppose there is. Why is this so important to you? You know, with your kinds' instincts it would be hard for you to actually overdraw your power," Morrigan asked with a cocked eye-brow and a faint smile hanging on her cherry-red lips, as she skipped over the space between them to stand by Hebe's core from her perch on the throne.
"Better safe than sorry," Hebe gave a firm reply that elicited a chuckle from Morrigan.
"It's better if I just show you than if I tell you though. Especially given your instincts, this sway will be far more clear," Morrigan said as she strode back out of the hidden chamber with one stride and into the reception hall once more. Hebe's consciousness expanded and followed. Observing any events within her own body was but mere child's play to her and was done effortlessly.
Morrigan stood before one of the statues closest to the entrance. The statue of the mysterious human mage. She reached out her dainty hands and summoned forth a small flickering flame.
"Your race, the monster race of dungeons, can be said to be a truly unique and awe-inspiring marvel of nature. No other race can compare to you when it comes to the sheer magnitude of your creation magics. It is said that the density of a dungeon's magic is equal to the gods themselves," Morrigan said with a slight twitch of her lips as she continued to hold the small flickering flame aloft before the statue. Hebe listened intently, an apt pupil afraid to miss a single word.
"I am now showing you one sphere, or one unit, of internal magical energy, or mana, by summoning this flame. Of course, this flame is only enough to be equivalent to one sphere of a human's mana, which is said to have a magical density that is 1/10,000th the magical density of dungeons," Morrigan calmly explained before flashing over to a second statue, that of the sturdy dwarf bent over the forge.
"The dwarves and the giants ironically share the same level of magical density! They are said to have 1/1000th the magical density of dungeons. This is one sphere of their mana," Morrigan said with a light snicker and a twinkle in her eyes, savoring some joke that only she seemed privy to. A small fireball hovered above her outstretched hand. She flashed to the next statue, the alluring elven woman that wielded the bow.
"Elves are said to have 1/100th the magical density of dungeons," Morrigan patiently continued to explain. Hovering over her palm was a giant fireball that shone with a dim light but concealed fearsome power. In the next moment, she was before the statue of the enchanting, winged, fae woman in the blink of an eye.
"Fae are the best magi of the magical races, with only demons being close to their match. Fae are said to have 1/10th the magical density of dungeons with demons being a bit worse at around 1/15th. This is one sphere of a fae's mana," Morrigan said. The tame giant fireball that was hovering above her pretty hand was replaced by a raging inferno that sought to consume all in sight.
"Last but very far from least, this is what one sphere of your mana should feel like," Morrigan said as she stepped over many meters to the side of Hebe's 16cm wide pale-white pearl core. One of the fingers on her left hand gently tapped on the pale-white pearl, to guide its internal mana into the 'feeling' of one unit of magical energy. Meanwhile the single sphere of mana that represented a dungeon's magical density was showcased over Morrigan's right hand. The sphere of mana was a blazing star of heat and flame, a concentrated ball of licking flames and pure destruction. A few seconds later, the mana stopped and the magic vanished from the air.
Hebe was in awe of Morrigan's knowledge and the control that she had displayed. She was also internally amazed at the magical superiority of dungeons. The young dungeon totally missed the implications of Morrigan being able to casually produce the magical density of a deity for her perusal. Instead Hebe pensively imitated the demonstrated flow of mana as she 'felt' how many spheres of mana she currently possessed.
"10,000 spheres!?" Hebe exclaimed in shock. Of course, most of that mana was being passively funneled into various uses, such as maintaining the statue golems' power and infusing the dungeon's body to give it insanely swift regenerative properties. Only a meager 10% of Hebe's mana was actually available for use, with 1,000 spheres of mana open for her to 'spend' at any time.
"What about the other three?" Hebe asked the amused Morrigan after she calmed down enough to let more of her curiosity shine through.
"The magical density of monsters and magical creatures vary widely, though monsters are consistently known to have far greater quantities of mana than any other races. Beastmen, on the other hand, are not considered a magical race as they are bereft of any magical gifts. Beastmen's forte lay in their immense physical strength and their unique physiques that absorb far more magic than any other races in order to nurture their bodily prowess. They are a bit like the animal version of spiritual herbs, containing plenty of magic but with no feasible way to use it," Morrigan quickly asserted, with an elegant flip of her long, flowing, iridescent black hair.
The young dungeon was skeptical to hear from her elder sister about the beastmen's lack of magic. To a being like her whose very existence was sustained by draining the ambient magic in her body's surroundings and that had a soul as inseperable from magic as a fire was inseperable from heat, she simply could not fathom being magic-less. The idea was as odd to Hebe as the notion of a sky without a sun or a night without the moon. Her foreign memories however, did contain many vestiges of interactions with the so called 'spiritual herbs' that Morrigan spoke of, so Hebe had some inkling of what her elder sister was trying to convey.
Spiritual herbs are normal plants that due luck, peculiar genetics, or special environments were able to absorb the ambient magics around them, much like dungeons do for sustenance, but on a much smaller scale. These miraculous plants still underwent photosynthesis for sustenance and only used the absorbed magics to improve on their bodily constitution, inevitably accruing a significant amount of beneficial magics over a long period of time. Sometimes, the spiritual herbs in Hebe's memories even had other special effects, like the ability to emit the hottest fires or to radiate the iciest frost. Hebe dearly wished to see such wonders with her own senses.
"I suppose if you are still that worried about conserving your resources, I should tell you another important detail," Morrigan said recapturing Hebe's attention, as she mistakenly construed her extended silence as she contemplated spiritual herbs and beastmen to be unassuaged worries.
"You would have discovered it for yourself soon enough anyway, eh?" Morrigan muttered.
"When you summon things using your creation magic, there are two methods of doing so- each of which have their own distinct advantages," Morrigan said to the eager Hebe her hovering consciousnesses giving one the sense of a wide-eyed little girl. Evidently, as Morrigan suspected, Hebe had not yet realized that her creation magic did not always work the same way.
"The first method is simple. You use your abundant creation magics to form a structure or a living being out of condensed magical energy. These energy structures can be called manifestations of magic and are naught but simulacrum of their true counterparts. The living beings made this way will all be incomparably real, their souls formed from strands of your own soul/magical energy source, but since they were born of magic, they belong to the monster race. As I told you once before, as a rank 1 dungeon, you can summon three different varieties of monsters, an example of one being the statue golems that line the audience chamber," Morrigan explained.
"Of course living things are not that simple and can also be formed by your creation magic as nothing more than common wildlife and trees instead of as monsters. The only caveat is that they will not be true living creatures. Though such creations may possess flesh and blood, they will lack the souls unique to the living. These beings are nothing more than shadows, incorporeal dreams that seek life but never find it," Morrigan stated firmly before continuing with her main point.
"This first method of utilizing your creation magic will be much cheaper and your creations will become magical residue when killed or destroyed, easily re-absorbed by your dungeon body. The monsters, on the other hand, can also be re-absorbed but since they posses true flesh and blood, they must be broken down and re-converted to magical energy in a process that only dungeons know how to instinctively activate. This process is incapable of being used to dispose of living beings as their souls will hold their bodies together and resist external influences. However, even when the process is successfully carried out on a dead individual, powerful fragments will often remain behind, as will the cores of monsters, which are simply too dense to break down in a short period of time. Any objects formed with the first technique will lose their cohesion and break down outside of your dungeon body if they do not possess a core," Morrigan said to a speculative Hebe, briefly lost in thought as she wondered about the varied applications of this method of using creation magic.
"As for the second method that your creation magic is used, the execution is complex. The second way is to convert magic into actual substances, essentially 'creating something from nothing' so to speak. When you use this method, you need to have an intimate understanding of the object or the living being that you wish to create or else it will fail. The moment of your birth, when you substantialized your entire body in the form of the grand temple, was a singular exception, as dungeons can always bring to bear their first forms rather easily. Luckily, though you have not yet experienced this phenomenon, dungeons have the ability to gain an intricate understanding of objects that they break down and absorb. The only downside to the ability is that the more complex or powerful the object or being in question is, the greater the magnitude of its kind you will have to absorb to attain the necessary level of insight to replicate their forms. Additionally, success of this second technique is limited as the price to accomplish the task of substantializing even a simple pouch of coins can be great," Morrigan finished.
Hebe thanked Morrigan and begged out of lessons for the remainder of that day as she had a considerable amount of new information to think through and analyze. Morrigan easily gave assent and returned to her raven form, flying out of the dungeon and into the night sky as she went out to do who-knows-what until the next day arrived. Hebe heaved a mental sigh of exhaustion. Despite having no need for sleep, as an untiring dungeon monster, she felt utterly wiped by the sheer amount of information and quantity of perspective changes she had unexpectedly received that day.