Devi crept down the dark tunnel, trying to be as quiet as she could, one hand holding out her flickering magic tool so she wouldn’t trip over her own feet. She was just waiting for the giant spider to drop down from the ceiling and try to take a bite out of her. At least there was only one of those around she had to worry about.

Probably.

She didn’t want to run into anything while she was out retrieving the mana crystals from the dead bats. The few encounters she had experienced so far had left her wanting less of them. Or none. She desperately wanted to just hole up somewhere and focus on crafting and exploring magic. There was literal magic here, and she hadn’t had all that much time to explore.

Granted, she’d only been here for just over a day. Possibly two at this point. And she had been the one to go out and explore instead of just focusing on magic. And she was continuing to try and complete the dungeon instead of running away. But that was beside the point. She could want to just explore magic while still wanting to poke around a dungeon.

The rewards probably were quite nice.

So here she was, galavanting around a dungeon she probably had no right being in, trying to survive another moment, but still actively trying to complete it. She had seen how dangerous the dungeon was, the massive spider showed her that. There was no doubt in her mind that if she didn’t have her firestarter, she’d be dead right now. The only thing that had kept the spider at bay was that it was afraid of fire. Even the bats would have ended her if she didn’t have the capabilities to summon fire.

But she was determined to at least get beyond the door, and even set up the array. She had the three potions and her firestarter. It would be fine. Probably. She was just up against a monstrous beast with capabilities far outside the realm of what they normally should be able to do.

She finally arrived at the scene of her battle with the bats, only to see quite a few of them had disappeared. Not all of them, but there were definitely fewer corpses than when she had left. Devi didn’t know what had taken them, but something definitely did. Or a bunch of somethings. Either way, she did not want to stick around any longer than she had to, so she go to work.

Devi had never butchered anything in her life, the closest she’d ever gotten to a dead animal was if it was on the side of the road, or if it was neatly packaged at the local grocer. She was not ready for the smell, or the sight. After the fight, she had deliberately not looked at any of them and then had been dragged off by the massive spider before she could really have a chance to take a look. But now, she didn’t have a choice.

She lifted her shirt to form a makeshift mask and got to work. Her small carving knife was not quite up for the job, but that was soon mitigated somewhat with a quick use of [Improvise Tool]. The familiar iridescent sheen enveloped it, making it slightly larger and sharper, enabling it to cut through the tough hide of the bats.

It didn’t help that she had no idea where the mana crystals would be, just somewhere inside the bats. The first place she looked was their chests because that’s where all her mana seemed to reside. It stood to reason that if hers liked to hang out there, other creatures’ mana might as well. But when the first bat’s chest didn’t contain any crystals, she sliced the whole thing up until it was a mangled mess just to make sure she didn’t miss it.

After repeating the process three more times, she finally found what she was after. A small, clear crystal, with smooth geometric sides, barely a centimeter larger. It glimmered in her palm as she studied it, looking to see if it was indeed what she thought it was. She was fairly confident that the odd-looking gem that matched the others in the disks was in fact a mana crystal, but she wanted to make sure. She had just pulled it from a bat's chest.

After she confirmed her suspicions of it being a mana crystal, she quickly cut open the remaining bats to find the rest. In total, from the fourteen bat corpses, she managed to extract five of the mana crystals. She had no idea if that was a good ratio, or if she was just very unlucky, but she had more than enough to complete the rest of the array disk with some left over.

The work left Devi’s hands and clothes stained and bloodied. While she had been careful with how she worked, all she had to use was a small knife, and no gloves. Which inherently meant it was not a clean job. She was in desperate need of a bath, but the only water she could conjure up was not nearly enough to fill a water bottle, much less a full bathtub. Devi was definitely going to use some to wash her hands though.

She looked around at the narrow tunnel, seeing if there was anything else of importance, and only saw corpses. There was Aks’ta, but they didn’t really have anything of value except maybe the broken and rusted sword that lay next to them. It wasn’t in the best of shape, be her option for stabbing anything that got close to her was a simple carving knife, which did not seem like a good idea. So she slipped the ancient blade into her pouch. It would take some time, but Devi figured she could get it into some sort of usable condition.

As she was walking back up the tunnel to her small crevice, her traitorous stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten for at least two days now, and now that her thirst had somewhat been rectified, it was her stomach’s turn to complain. It wasn’t anything she couldn’t deal with, but if she was going to be facing off against a massive beast soon, she’d rather do it on a full tank.

Which meant her only real option was to figure out how to cook a bat.

~ᵥ----ᵥ~

Cooking the bat was an interesting experience, to say the least. She had gotten a bit of experience cutting up bats while she was searching for the mana crystal, but that didn’t quite translate into being able to get them ready for consumption. It was a process to try and get the skin off, and strip the guts out of the small creature. The only plus side was that the bat was definitely larger than the ones on Earth, which made working on it quite a bit easier.

She eventually managed to get the bat in some sort of shape that was passable to be cooked, only not to have anything to make a fire with. No wood to keep a fire going. All she had was her firestarter, which was what she ended up using to try and cook the bat.

The bat was placed on a few rocks while she pointed her magic tool at it, trying to limit the flames so they wouldn’t scorch her meager meal, but still be hot enough to cook it. It was a difficult process to manage her mana flow, but Devi managed to keep it under control, with only a few mishaps here and there when her concentration drifted to other subjects, but she was able to save her meal from becoming charcoal.

She used her carving knife to pick up the only slightly burnt corpse of the bat she had done her best to strip off everything unedible, but she still had trouble thinking of it as food. It did smell somewhat like roasted meat, though emphasis on the somewhat, but it did not look appetizing. Devi had done her best, but butchering was something she had never done before, nor did she even have the first idea besides meat equaled edible, and it definitely showed.

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Devi held her nose, and tried a small bite, before spitting it back out. It wasn’t that the bat tasted all that bad, but the texture was terrible. Bit of burnt meat were right next to raw sections along with the odd tiny bone. It was also kind of slimy, and she hadn’t drained all the blood out either.

In summary, the texture was terrible while the taste was passable, which meant it was inedible. She was actually reevaluating her whole position of eating meat. Just the thought of eating any other meat, regardless of how it was prepared and cooked, sounded terrible right now. Devi knew she had enjoyed steak in the past, but now, when she tried to think about it, all she remembered was the horrible slimy texture.

With her hopes of eating dashed, she turned to more pressing matters, her hands. They were coated with blood and viscera from digging through dead corpses. She had tried to get as much off as she could using walls and rocks, but hadn’t been very successful, and had been hesitant to use her own clothing. They were the only ones she had after all.

She closed her eyes and started forming the rune for water with her mana, planning on using the small amount she could summon to cleanse her hands. About halfway through, her concentration lapsed as her mind wandered over to the other symbols she had access to. Partcituallry the purify one.

If she remembered correctly, when she had been testing, it had cleaned her hands a bit. So it stood to reason that if she juiced it up with more mana, it could take care of quite a bit of the filth.

It didn’t take long for her to form the entire rune with her mana, and when she had finally gotten the last twist of the end right, the whole thing snapped into place, no longer fighting her control. Energy pulsed out, washing over Devi in a wave of pure white light that extended up to her elbows. She could somewhat see through the light, but the shapes inside were distorted.

When the glow faded, she looked down at her arms, expecting them to be clean from blood and grime, only to see the blood still coating her hands. Though as she looked closer, Devi noticed that all the dirt and grime had been removed, leaving only the blood behind.

Well, better than nothing.

Apparently, the rune did clean a bit, but only dirt, blood was obviously too much for it to work with. Or she hadn’t put enough mana into the symbol. Or she had to have been thinking exactly what she wanted going. Or she needed other runes to direct the first one. Or some other random possibility she hadn’t thought of. It would be nice if one of these times she could figure something out without a thousand more. Just once.

She still had hands still sticky with blood, so she focused back again on the water creation rune, forming its complex shape with her own mana. This time she had put one of her small pots under the symbol, hoping to catch most of the water before it could splash on the ground.

Her preparation paid off as she managed to collect quite a large majority of the liquid that coalesced in mid-air. The blob of water appearing basically right above the pot. She didn't know if it was because she had been focusing on making it appear there, or if it was more chance. Yet another question she would have to test later.

Finishing scrubbing her hands as thoroughly as she could without soap, she got to work making the last two array disks. The hardest part of the whole process was figuring out how to attach the mana crystals She was hesitant at first to try and force them into their sockets, but quickly got over her fears of breaking them when they stubbornly refused to click in. With quite a bit of leverage, she got the crystals into their places. Once she got those in place, the process of shaping the mana went fairly quickly.

It still took all of her concentration, but it had quickly become rote to her, and not difficult. Which was a far cry from how she started. With every disk she made she figured more out about how mana worked and moved, making the next iteration easier. She still couldn’t quite figure out the underlying concepts behind the structure, why it needed to be the way it was. There were small hints, but she didn’t have any other reference points to compare the disks to so she could see similarities and go from there.

Really need another magic item to study. But one of these is not going to just drop into my lap.

She waited for a brief second, hoping one would. Because who knows with this place, it could happen. But no such luck, since that would be way too nice. She’d have to go out and find one herself.

Later though, first, she had a few more things to do. Like going through the massive stone door and fighting the lurking cursed beast. So pretty easy stuff. She did have a sort of feeling that there were other things to do before going through the door. The massive spider still lurked in her thoughts, as well as the other side of the tunnels she hadn’t explored, probably filled with bats. She didn’t know why she felt as if she needed to go do something about both of those, but she did. It was an odd feeling, an urge that she had no idea where it came from, and didn’t really want to go do.

Thinking about it, the feeling seemed similar to when she was looking through her Class and Vocation options. More of an outside vibe than part of her own consciousness. Which meant it was probably a hint as to what to do in the dungeon, but she really didn’t want to follow them. She just wanted to be done with the dungeon, and she didn’t think she could go and fight the spider whatsoever, so that was out of the question.

She didn’t have time to contemplate why she had these urges, she had to figure out how to make the paint for the array. Apparently, she hadn’t needed to worry about breaking the mana crystals, since she couldn’t crush them in her mortar. They refused to even crack under all the force she could muster. Not even in the slightest. They remained impervious to all her attempts to break them, let alone grind them into a fine paste to mix with water.

Since brute force wasn’t working, Devi decided to try a different strategy. She carefully extended her mana into the crystal to see what was going on and hopefully be able to weaken it from the inside. Still not able to actually see what was going on, Devi fumbled around with her mana, groping around in the dark, eventually getting a good idea of what it looked like to her mana.

It was very structured, quite unlike the array disks she had been working with that had more organic patterns and chaos thrown in. It made sense though, since Aks’ta had called them mana crystals, which gave the impression of repeating structures, exactly what she was feeling with her mana.

Rigid patterns repeated throughout the entirety of the crystal, creating a lactic effect. Every attempt she made to nudge it a bit out of place we met with resounding reliance. It was like trying to break a concrete wall with a wet spaghetti noodle. It could theoretically work, after ages, but more than likely, the noodle would splatter. And that didn’t seem like a good outcome, since her mind was the noodle in this analogy.

Instead, she decided to slowly start increasing the amount of mana she was putting into the crystal a small bit at a time, focusing all of it in a single point. Basically trying to drive a wedge into the stone so it would break. A much better strategy than wet pasta.

It seemed to work much better. The crystal readily accepted the mana, and all Devi had to do was to keep it all in one spot. A task that got progressively harder as the mana started to fight her, not waiting to be contained in just a single spot. So instead of fighting with it, she let the mana suffuse the entirety of the crystal, and just kept adding more, figuring it would break, like a ballon filled with too much air.

Her plan seemed to be working as the longer she added mana, the more small fractures seemed to appear in the crystal. She kept adding more and more mana, and she could now hear the occasional small cracks. Just as she was about to stop, the mana inside the crystal seemed to break, something integral snapped suddenly.

Acting immediately, she threw the small crystal out of her small crevice into the tunnel beyond, as fast as she could. It proved to be the right choice as she heard a sharp crack, and then the tunnel exploded. Bits of rock flew everywhere, carried by a wave of iridescent energy that flowed up the tunnel.

She didn’t have time to cover her face, getting pelted by flying rubble from the explosion. It ended just as fast as it started. Her ears still ringing from the noise, Devi peaked out into the tunnel to see the aftermath.

It wasn’t as devastating as she had first thought. The stone apparently had detonated right outside the crevice, so it seemed much larger than it had been. But it still carved a sizable crater into the tunnel. Seeing the broken rocks lay scattered around the blast site, she felt a grin spread over her face. Who didn’t love a good explosion?