Watching rock explode again and again was perhaps fun to do for the first thirty times, but anything after that made it more melodramatic than anything else. The Core certainly knew that it had seen every possible way such an event could transpire, knowing more details about the process than anybody ever needed to know.

During the start of the process, the Mana would be directly injected into the borders of the stone, filled up with the Intent purposely made just for them. This was to make it assimilate into the normal Mana while also keeping up the orders sent for it and spreading that order over to the other particles of Mana. Quite ingenious, if the Core had to comment on that method. Which it did have permission to since it was the one who created the idea, to begin with.

Anyway. From that point on, it would work flawlessly. The orders would spread like a plague, every particle now moving with a purpose, memorizing every bounce it took to remember the exact shape of the stone. And with every bounce that had happened after, it would make sure that the rock stayed in the same shape, only moving along those preplanned courses. If indents were found where there was meant to be none, it would be pushed out to accommodate. If a wall wasn't met where there was meant to be one, the Mana would fold the nearby mass into it or use its energy to make sure it happened. The Core was proud of that, the idea for multi-stage planning being something of a favourite.

After that, the Mana Levels of the rock would constantly be checked by the particles inside doing something of a roll call. Each particle had a number attached. When the number before it was called, it would call out as well, leading to an endless repeat until all numbers were made. The final number would be the power level. If the level was too low, the particles would go out and recruit more Mana to come inside. If any of the Mana inside had been used up, new numbers would be sent out to each particle. It worked like a charm most of the time. At least… it was supposed to.

Balancing power distribution was quite the hard thing to do when it came to non-sentient materials. No organs were keeping it in check, the orders made for it simply repeating over and over again. If anything was wrong, anything creating the slightest change negative, it would spiral out of control in a few thousand loops. At least that was the Core estimated that to be since the rocks always exploded after four and a half seconds.

Something was wrong. For one reason or another, the Mana was unable to properly figure out who was who. While it had clearly been able to remember an integer and respond to the one below it being called out, there was some loss with each action that made the particles the slightest bit… weaker. They were still there and they could certainly still do their jobs perfectly, yet it just seemed that the constant response times and orders made them bad at their positions so quickly. A rebellion had been the first thought which the Core had made out, leading it to figure out how to make the orders more lasting. That hadn't worked out in any real way, the only thing being created being a shower of time wasted on nothing beneficial.

The next idea was that the communication length was sapping away the response time and making them incomprehensible due to it. So… Mana had been ordered to stay together in a higher density. And while that order hadn't done much to the Mana’s general aversions to doing things like that, it had worked out fine after a while, though the result was much less than what the Core could do blindfolded. Not that a blindfold hampered the results though. It was closer to a distraction than anything, the creation of fabric being quite hard to master. One could always be finer with it, always make it slightly more smooth, yet the cutting abilities grew with time as well. While the Entity hadn't figured out how to increase the durability, it was still sure it would make a formidable weapon.

Going back to the second idea, it hadn't turned out too well. If anything, the rock had become more unstable because of it, shaking in increasing amounts before it exploded. Though… the timing had been the same with that one. The Core should have taken a hint at that but it somehow didn't.

The third idea had been centred around increasing the simplicity of the orders wordings yet that did nothing at all, the intent behind the words doing the real pushing. And since that was always the same, it was just another ten attempts wasted. The fourth had been about mixing in coloured Mana to make it more stable yet that had just created more variants of explosions. Who knew that adding Red Mana to the mix could add molten Lava? The Core certainly did, having been forced to repair the damages from the extreme temperatures, glad that it at least hadn't hit any of the creatures. Not that the damages hadn't been entire without some loss, a patch of the [Blood-Moss] being hit. As a fun fact, it turned out that even Moss could sizzle before dying. It had been horrible to watch yet healing the creature did nothing but extend its pain, forcing the Core to stop the process. It really should have stopped after the first minute.

…

Going away from the guilt of allowing a living creature to go through multiple minutes of unimaginable agony, the Core was still having trouble with those rocks. A few more ideas had been tried out, some well thought and others made in a desperate attempt to make it work. Because that was all the Core wanted to happen, the Entity not able to spend so much more time looking at rocks blasting out. The shapes, directions, and pretty much everything else had been tried so many times that the Core was losing joy by being a part of it. The experimentation wasn't even enjoyable at that point, the time growing more and more serious. It wanted a dungeon that could repair itself and that was what it wanted! Nothing more. Nothing less.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Did the Core need to overcomplicate it even more? Maybe try and manipulate its own thoughts into just making there come even more steps? Or did it-

Oh. The Entity was dumb. It was the dumbest thing on the whole planet. Or at least it was starting to believe it was, wanting to try something new out. Something it hadn't done before even if it was one of the things that should have come into its field of mind within the first ideas. It was a step beyond laziness and likely the exact thing that the Mana was hoping to be sent.

The rock was created for the fifty-sixth time that day, all to be manipulated around with. But… it wasn't to the extent it normally did, the Core instead making a new order that less than a second to make. And if it worked, it would be more than a little annoyed.

The first second passed by without an explosion of any kind. The Entity was entirely unsurprised, it already starting to recognize the increased pace of the Mana moving inside the thing. It even made a few shields of Physical Arcane to make sure none of the splinters came close to its body again.

The second after that came with no shaking which was not entirely normal. At that point, most of the attempts had started some form of violent fractures, though not on the level where they were shot out. Instead… it seemed relatively stable. Not that it wasn't extremely unusual, attempt fourteen and twenty-seven having shown a peculiar just like that. The Core wasn't growing happy yet, still overly cautious due to the former's history. Nothing that had lasted that long liked exploding without a real punch.

The third second… no shaking. The Mana inside was even moving in the actual patterns. From what the Entity had experienced with the power-scaling of an explosion, so long a delay hinted at it not being able to survive the speed of splinters soon headed its way. Which was quite worrying, the Core not knowing it could get that much dread from a rock standing still. That act kinda felt stupid after a few moments more, however, since the fourth and fifth second passed as well.

The streak had been broken. Whatever had kept the rock at a point where it needed to explode after four and a half seconds was broken. The Mana inside was moving around smoothly, as if it had done the initial processing perfectly, though that wasn't exactly what the Core had told it to do. It was… moving in slightly altered patterns each time, the space almost being refined. Nothing was left without being passed through.

The Entity thought that curious as the seconds passed into minutes, no signs of explosions happening at all. It seemed that the next step of the testing was ready to start, though there was a success that it would be closer to the Core proving itself right than anything. And what it was going to prove was that it had wasted four hours of its life just to figure out that the solution was as easy as baking [Blood-Moss].

What to do now that it had been shown to have memorized the structure of the rock? Well, the Core now needed to make sure that it could rebuild it if damaged. And instead of hoping that the ants could work within normal boundaries, the Core instead created a piece of Physical Arcane and did something close to slapping the top-left corner of the creation, making a piece shatter quickly enough. It was not big to the point where it removed a large part of the rock mass but it was still big enough to make sure that the formation would notice.

And notice it the rock most certainly did, the Mana moving inside hitting the damaged spot within mere seconds. And from that point on, it was something of a waiting game. The Pattern that the Mana moved in was clearly still upheld, though the part of the Pattern meant to be inside the removed rock was altered the slightest bit. Each time the wave of Mana came to that, some of the energy would convert into the stone instead and build upon it. That process was done in ultra-thin layers, so slowly that it was invisible to the eye. But the Core was as patient as nothing else and was able to see it happen, able to see the several minutes it took before the rock returned to its original form.

But that did not matter in the slightest, the amount of time being under an hour and therefore more than acceptable. For the fact still out as being in the Core’s favour. It had done it. It had created a piece of stone able to repair itself. The amount of help that would offer in the long run was massive. The Entity was even starting to wonder how much could be done if it took it to a more grand scale.

However. The Core was still not able to keep down the method required for it. The solution had been both simple and infuriating at the same time. The clear and cut reason was that the Entity had overthought the solution, had thought that each step would be required before it would work. When it had tried to simplify it by creating a more simple order, the reasoning behind it had still been the same. Yet that lack of a frame-shift was the reason it wouldn't work, to begin with.

The Core had put too little work on the Mana. Or maybe even too much, if one thought about it right. When being more abstract with the orders, the Energy was able to work how it pleased, though it took a larger cut of Mana as the price. But when the Core then specified exactly how it wanted the process done, things became… a little wonky. It could go two radically different ways. The method that the Core described could have been exactly what the Mana would have done anyway and the added preciseness would therefore do nothing but lower the costs attached. Which were quite the deal and a great reason to specify the orders more. But then came the other path which could be taken, the one where a method not used by the Mana at all was ordered forth. It may have been close to the real answer or even just different due to inner semantics, yet that wouldn't stop the Mana from being forced into doing it wrong. And the Mana required to compensate was such a thing was so unimaginably large that the Energy then wouldn't be able to handle it, destruction being the next by-product. Hence the explosions.

And… that left the question of what the Core had actually done. What magic words had been thought to make it work? Well, since the goal was to give more freedom to the Mana to make sure it would work, the Entity did nothing but mentally change what it was looking for. Instead of following the three-step plan, the Core hard ordered nothing but for it to be repaired. Now, it likely wouldn't work on grander things due to the immense cost, the Entity able to see the Mana sucked out of the air at even that small a crack it had made, but the potential was still there. Perhaps in the future, it would be able to make it more efficient.

Not in the current moment though. Instead, it would just install the plan at a few select locations and move on with other things. For there had been one plan which had started to seem quite good.

The Entity wanted to go on the offensive.