Humans, Elves, and whatever other creatures that existed within the realm of [Enlightened] were all magical in some nature. Some could manipulate Mana better than others, some were born with gifts some would consider a cheat, and some had the aptitude of very smooth rock. The latter description was quite the compliment, the Core being above all when it came to its ability to learn

Yet one thing it couldn’t help but be frustrated by was the lack of ability to learn some things. It wasn’t one of the more extreme examples like a spell that would make the Core double in power or anything. No, what frustrated it so deeply was its lack of ability to manipulate the entirety of its realm. It could look into nearly every piece of rock, air, and flesh, yet when it came to a single piece of [Enlightened] skin, the barrier was much too powerful. No matter how much one pushed, there would never come more than a brief flash of sensation before the body would expel the Entity from looking any further.

Mana that wasn’t it's own held more power in their domain. Forcing itself inside the bodies of the intruders was next to impossible at the current point, and the Core was more than aware of it. It hadn’t been too prominent in the past, the ENtity never really thinking it needed it. Most intruders either died, which allowed access either way, or they fled before it became too important. Those that were interesting could just have gotten special attention by the Core, a few rocks from the ceiling making it easy to get what it wanted.

Such a way of thought did not work anymore, sadly. With the inclusion of the intruders more humanoid than monsters, just throwing rocks into their skulls wouldn’t work in the long term. The Queen had actively discouraged it from the start, only allowing the Entity to use such a tactic when needing to quickly dispose of a very high-level enemy. They had both been very sure that the strategy had worked then, the Core was not sure it had amassed enough power to take the intruder on in a fair fight.

But what was there about fairness to take seriously? Nothing in the world was fair. Creatures were never born the same, some more power from the start than others. While one could think there to be balanced in the abilities of all, one couldn’t think that it worked in such a way when a common fly could be crushed by an otter scratching its ears. The Core knew that individual creatures were balanced for a specific strategy but on a grander scale, nothing worked that well together. There were hierarchies, levels that couldn’t be breached. Some facts couldn’t be made false.

Even if the Core had so sorely wished upon that when it had first been tasked with healing a certain [Druid]. How was one meant to help such a pitiful being when the Entity’s [Healing] had no effect other than making more pool come out the mouth of the damned thing? It was annoying that the Entity was so limited in its methods. Back then, it had been forced to simply open up a hole into the man’s blood circulation and manually pump some more into him from the outside. It had likely caused serious internal damage but it had worked smoothly in the short term, so the Core was still proud enough of the achievement.

Yet when it came to fixing the humans afterwards, when cheap methods wouldn’t work anymore, and it was expected that the Druid made a full recovery, what could truly be done? Well… it was very hard to progress. The Queen had certainly played it off as just needing the Druid to give his undying loyalty to them, including the ability to command him to do whatever they pleased, but that wasn’t entirely true. Yes, they could certainly command him to accept the Mana being inserted into his body, yet who exactly could control their instincts so well? When foreign Mana was pushed out without a second’s thought, the Core was forced to think.

Previously, it had been impossible to get past the skin, the Dungeon’s Domain not holding up after mere pebble widths into the body. And that fact hadn’t changed in the slightest, likely never had a chance of it. The Queen saw no reason why the Core would ever be able to intrude upon the ground it didn’t own, the [Core] species never showing signs of being able to do such things.

It was a hard truth and not one that could be fixed. However, it was also one with enough details that smart thinking could subvert the requirements. If the Core could reach just a bit farther inside than it owned, then what stopped it from just making sure it owned something inside the body every few pebble widths? The Queen had thought it a spark of genius, though it had also required her to give some advice on how to shoot down nerve-endings.

There was something about the [Enlightened] going [Mad] when they were tortured for hours on end while every piece of their body was pierced with small wires. The Core wasn’t exactly ‘sure why they wouldn’t be able to just toughen it out as the [Giant-Ants] did but who was it to truly question such things?

The Queen was tasked with the insertion itself, piercing the required places to take control of the nervous system. It was surprisingly easy once things started up. With a few bursts, the nerves were forced to shut down, taking away any chance of movement at all while dulling any pain to an extreme degree. It was annoying that they couldn’t have just bled the man out to make sure they had no sensation from the ordeal at all, but Mother Carapace needed him awake to make sure nothing caused damage to the mental proficiency of the new worker.

Tears weren’t stopped for some reason, but the Core never paid much mind to that. With the small Mana-Tendrils spread perfectly around the body, the Core was allowed an extreme insight into how the Druid’s body functions. Everything from the inner organs, to the Mana-Nodes, was in proud display for the Entity to bask at. And if there was one thing, and one thing only, that could be said about the entire body, the Core would say…

That it was a massive pile of inefficiency! Nothing sat together as it was supposed to as if some idiot had tried to blend two Patterns that were never meant to be assimilated. There were open endings on the Mana-Nodes that constantly leaked energy into the body, a few of the nerves didn’t connect to anything, the joints on the upper legs were put in wrongly, and the brain was not something anybody could have been proud of. It had a massive tumour on the side, stopping any real chance of ingenius thought to be made. It was no surprise that the man had decided to give his life away so he could live another day. He hadn’t been able to think.

Even worse was that the tumour had spread itself out into the bloodstream. That’s how the Core wanted to describe it, at the very least, small bits floating around in the red liquid like it had nothing better to do. Some pieces had anchored themselves to the walls, slowly growing bigger than the smaller vessels could handle. It was a surprise the man had survived for this long.

At the start, the Core had just wanted to remove the Dark Mana the Queen had put in, fix the damage caused by it, and close him up just like that. After seeing all the mess inside? Other ideas were formed. Ideas that had been initially rejected by the Queen.

‘You are not going to rebuild an entire humanoid off the top of your mind,’ the Queen forbade when the prompt was first given over to her. ‘It’ll screw it up more than it already is.’

‘I don’t believe that’s possible to do anymore,’ the Core responded, sending over the visual image of the thigh muscles. The Queen was distracted by that for a moment, her emotions cooling down. ‘If we leave it like this, the slave won’t be able to work for more than a year or two. We have to fix it while we still can.’

‘... Fine. But if you accidentally kill him, you are in charge of finding another candidate,’ the Queen stated. ‘And you get to do the talking next time as well. My acting is horrid.’

Stolen novel; please report.

The Core had never openly agreed with the latter statement, though it had prepared a few pointers for the next time such a piece was needed. Instead, most of its mind had been centred around making sure there was enough space in the body to work with.

That was a good open-ended question. When most of the body’s inside was extremely badly made and had no real use being inside there, what did one do? Somebody fixated on cost-efficiency might have transformed the current organs into a more advanced version for days. Or they could have focused on making the organs improve themselves with the use of very crafty connections.

The Core had no real dreams of doing that, however, and had promptly just torn off most of the vital organs, letting the ants have a taste instead. They consumed flesh, which had been found out when another member of the adventuring party had been killed. The Core had heard the name a few times but couldn’t remember the name. It was decently sure it had been the healer…

Anyway. With the help of constant infusions of energy, the man had been kept alive. The acceptance of his fate and verbal agreement to give away the ownership of himself had allowed a very minor part of the Core to [Heal] but it wasn’t enough to matter much. It kept him alive but it couldn’t improve what had been there before. That was something the Core had to do piece by piece.

The stomach and lungs were the first parts. Each had been one of the parts that worked decently enough if the connections to them had been made properly. The lungs, as an example, had been capable of taking in extreme amounts of air and holding it under large pressure, yet the surrounding vessels hadn’t been able to take in any of the oxygen when at those levels, forcing the organ to work at lower pressures. The stomach had the opposite problem, the tubes going into it being well-fit for a large and varied diet while the organ itself was mainly equipped to process a more vegetarian diet. Years of consuming flesh had forced it to adapt to some degree, yet it was obvious a full turnover hadn’t been possible from the start.

Both had been fixed quickly enough, the new organs being spliced together from various others that the Core had gotten acquainted with. The lungs were given the space they needed to work right and the body around it was given the gear needed to use the lungs properly. The stomach was further enhanced to process the food at higher speeds while also making it possible for a much more varied diet. That then allowed certain components to be automatically made which allowed for the Core to switch out the muscle structure at certain parts of the body. A large issue was how badly balanced they were, the bone structure outfitted for holding up heavier objects while the muscles were made to run. The Core had initially wanted to change the entire body makeup to focus on strength yet remembered the more ranged role the [Druid] normally held. Yet… it was hard to choose, to the point where the Core just made sure each side was properly balanced. It would have preferred to focus on speed or strength and not both but perhaps balance in such things were more important. The servant would likely not have a group around it much so being able to play many parts was likely for the best.

The nerves were a bit harder to get through, the Core not being able to connect too many things without it felt on the man. Tears rolled harder when the Core fiddled with those. The mental pressure for what was likely attempted screams came rolling a bit more than what was appreciated, though the Entity knew it couldn’t fault for it. It was a natural reaction to having one’s nerves strung up like rubber. They were elongated with more material at some points to make the man flexible, and the disconnected pieces in the arms were put together as they should have been from the start.

Mana-Nodes… were mainly left alone. The Core cleaned up the insides to fix the smaller leaks, a few parts were reconnected with others to make energy flow better in the head, and a few new sides were put into the arms to account for the heavier casting. There were no direct replacements made, even if the Entity wanted to try out a few things. Maybe a later time, however. It first needed to figure out how to implant more Mana-Cores into a body without the eventual in-fighting.

The process after that was easy enough. With most of the inside replaced, the Entity was able to remove the last bits of the tumour while also making sure no Dark Mana was still reaping havoc. The improvements to the body were able to slowly fight against the intrusion, which was something the Core was quite proud of, but there was no chance it would have waited for that to happen naturally. Everything was made sparkly clean and the Queen was allowed to remove the strings from the body. It wasn’t as if the Core needed them at that point, so much of the insides being its domain that it could see straight through the man.

‘Did you make sure he didn’t lose his racial traits? If he comes up on an [Scan] as a monster, we won’t be able to use him for anything, you know,’ the Queen reminded the Core. It did not take a long while to see her point, making the Entity take a quick detour inside its mind to send a [Appraisal] towards the new servant. Even with the passing seconds, a connection of some form was beginning to be created between them. The burst of Mana required for the skill had certainly accelerated that process.

Character Screen

Name:

Buck

Gender:

Male

Level:

9

Class:

Druid

Race:

Elf/Human

Title:

Mad One

Health:

140/140

H-Regen:

0.13/sec

Mana:

140/140

M-Regen:

0.12/sec

Stamina:

130/130

S-Regen:

0.13/sec

Basic Stats

Strength:

13

Wisdom:

13

Vitality:

13

Intelligence:

12

Dex:

12

Willpower:

8

Available points:

0

Resistances

Fire:

5%

Earth:

5%

Water:

5%

Arcane:

5%

Lightning:

-5%

Light:

-5%

Wind:

5%

Darkness:

7%

The level had fallen but that was to be expected. The Core wouldn’t have been able to get ownership of the man if it hadn’t, the [System] not respecting one less powerful to have such control over another. Yet… all else looked good. The [Race] was still the same, at least, and so was the [Title].

The Core couldn’t help but give it a second glance, wondering why it was there, to begin with. What had created the need for it? That was something the Entity could ask when it had the time. For now, it had to listen through the Queen’s commands. They had made a small list, after all.