Although the mana and water loss through the evergreen vine had greatly decreased after the evolution, there was still a large drain on the dungeon vine resources. Vine growth all over the dungeon slowed, and spawn rates dropped. The evergreen vine had more mana available for growth than the rest, but it naturally grew very slowly. It grew almost flat along the ground, without any of the up and down arcs common in the dungeon worldlets. The evergreen vine pushed out bright green needle bundles that opened and darkened to match the older needles, followed by small cones that dropped one or two nuts when they opened. The nuts fell to the ground and lay there, inert, seemly dead, on the cold, hard ground. No creatures or plants spawned in the captured space.
Violet experimented with the visual scanner and getting it to function in the captured space. Violet was not used to working on something for long periods of time, so he had taken plenty of breaks to play his music or watch the people trapped in the dungeon. He wasn’t able to communicate with the outside world in any way, but he spent time writing letters anyway. Every time he ran out of procrastination ideas, he would work on the scanner.
After two weeks, Violet found he could maintain a viewpoint inside the space if it came from right on top of the dungeon vine and right next to the portal back to the dark worldlet. The image was fuzzy and inconsistent. By flooding the scanner with his own mana, Violet found he could get a clear picture for a second before the viewer collapsed again. The image was half filled with the dungeon vine itself, since the viewpoint had to be so close, but the area above the vine was full of… steam? Violet sacrificed a few scanners in a row to be sure that it was indeed steam. He turned a confused look at the dungeon core.
“Is your vine really hot in that captured space?” He asked. “It’s leaking a bunch of steam. Did you know that?” The dungeon core did not respond. Violet left a fuzzy view on the scanner and went back to his procrastination projects. While he compose lyrics for an emotional song about the uncaring nature of the older generation, the top half of the view on the scanner brightened to nearly white, then quickly darkened to near black.
----------------------------------------
Snow fell on the evergreen vine. At first, it was a few scattered flakes, but the steam from the dungeon vine crystalized into more and more snowflakes as clouds filled the air above. A wind picked up as the clouds began to swirl. The clouds thickened, cutting off almost all of the light in the captured worldlet. The wind grew so cold that the vine was near freezing, even with the thickened sap inside of it.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
In the dungeon mind space, the sensation of cold settled on all of the information bundles. The bundles suffered discomfort but could not be truly harmed by a physical sensation. The frog bundle tried to dig into the ground to hide from the cold, but the foundational instincts that made up the ground could not be pierced that way. The bat bundle squeaked mournfully as it flew around the mind space. It wanted to huddle with the rest of its colony and warm up. There was no colony of bats in the mind space, but it spotted a potential body to press against. The snake information tried to wind itself in a tight coil, but some of the mushroom network fibers pulled in odd directions. As the snake bundle went into torpor, instinctually responding to sudden cold, the bat landed in the middle of the coil and pressed against the snake. The snake offered no true warmth, and the bat shivered in loneliness.
In the captured space, the evergreen vine creaked as its branches coiled up. The bark on the vine cracked and shed some pieces, but the vine succeeded in coiling tightly with its needles shielding from the wind. Mana pumped into the vine and it began to shiver, dislodging the snow and ice and keeping the sap from settling and freezing. The blizzard whipped snow around for hours before enough built up on and in front of the vine to provide some shelter.
The blizzard eventually settled down, and the cloud dispersed. Pale white light shone on the snow. After a few more hours, the evergreen vine uncoiled and pushed free of the snow. Steam immediately began to rise from the exposed vine as it grew slowly across the snow-covered ground. A few of the smaller branches on the vine had frozen and died, but the majority survived.
----------------------------------------
The evergreen vine crept across the captured space for months. Each time the blizzards returned, the bat information bundle and the snake information bundle would huddle together and shiver, triggering the evergreen vine to do the same. The bat bundle eventually become stuck when mushroom network fibers grew across its wings.
During those months, Hana led the people in the dungeon to settle in the main, oasis, and delta worldlets. The delta worldlet had the higher number of apricot trees, and the oasis had fish and light that felt like sunlight, but the main worldlet was the easiest place to build simple huts. The people didn’t need the huts for protection from the elements, but it helped morale to have a place to retreat in privacy. Apricots and fish made an acceptable diet for the dungeon people, but many preferred to supplement the diet with snake, frog, and bat meat. The beetles and millipedes had turned out to be inedible. Spiders had never been considered.
One of the dungeon people, Jan, tried exploring the tunnel that led into the ground near the main vine body, but had returned, thoroughly spooked, after she heard something very large moving around in the pitch black. When Hana heard her report about the tunnel, they built a short fence around the tunnel mouth. “To keep it out of our thoughts.” They explained.