Two days had passed since the delvers had run away and their potential response was hanging over the dungeon like sword a Damocles. I needed more tools, more options. I briefly considered opening trying to talk with the Vitapygmy or Luciantsss about trading for more of their Mana Pearls since there wasn't any other clear use for the silver coins or rings. Maybe I could trade for food since so far my own food supplies were not sustainable. Ultimately the name of the game for today was learning and in that effort I was going to finish the library because it would likely be useful in my plans for today and I felt safe enough leaving myself with one Cloud Mana Pearl for tests and emergencies for now.
I slotted in the mote of power and the room began to shift forming tall bookshelves along the wall of the chamber and then a pair of bookshelves inside of that. The core feature was a round table that ringed the Mana Well at the rooms center that was dotted with a number of luminous crystals that shone with a pale blue light similar to my Core. I tried encourage the growth of more such crystals since they were similar to the green crystals I saw in Luciantsss' space but less bright but it seemed that initial room design was a passive function pulling from my subconscious. It looked like Cloud Mana was simply less insistent on illumination as Life Mana was and I just hopped nothing that I found embarrassing about myself would come out in the process of growing new rooms.
Checking out the shelves I found that they were mostly empty except on a few high shelves were stone tablets and with a simple application of Domain I could bring up the information on them without the need to task a dire hare to work as a librarian. On the tablets were the battle logs, an individual tablet dedicated to each of my Achievements, and a ledger that indicated my dungeon assets income and expenditure of resources. As a test I had one of the hare quickly shift the excess stone being developed from my excavation project into one of the nearby chambers. The ledger became slightly more precise in its calculations of spare stone but beyond that not much changed.
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With the library out of the way I had other important tasks to deal with. My Dire hare had eaten two vitapygmy so far and with their numbers growing and the vitapygmy being intelligent I was contemplating the need to find a different food source. I would catch them nibbling on the dungeon moss that seemed to be thriving in the high humidity environment but it felt like it would cover their basic survival needs but wasn't exactly a delicacy.
The moss was an interesting conundrum because I had noticed the moss scattered throughout the dungeon before in pitiful little browning patches, but I wasn't sure if it was the introduction of humidity or the reintroduction of mana that was causing the increased growth. It was at this point integrating itself into my various chambers either as representative of miniature grassy hillocks and valleys in my Core room or as soft bedding in my dire hare nests. Either way the moss on my side of the dungeon looked absolutely emaciated and limp in comparison to the fluffy velvet soft carpets in side luciantss' territory.
On the topic of moss I decided to check out where the pervasive plant originated within my territory where I had laid that first unfortunate vitapygmy to rest. The room had drasticly remodeled itself but it had used the material at hand to do so. Miniature lakes and rivers and hills were formed from my efforts to trap core room. These looked like they would still work even with the reduced thickness of the swirling storm the majority of the clouds congregating around and among the supports of the elevated castle at the chambers rear. The moss itself was thickest to the left of the chambers entrance in a thick grey-green spongy mass that looked kind of like a dense expanse forest. At its center was the pit I had placed the remains but what sat there was a shallow lake with a skull shaped cave sitting at its outer edge. the skull itself was made of stone and beyond that there was no indication that anything of the vitapygmy was left.
The other vitapygmy skeleton was sitting off to the side in the tunnel near the Altar room. I decided to move it to a nearby empty room for now and noticed that the bones were absolutely coated in dungeon moss. The ledger updated slightly indicating I had a Vitapygmy Skeleton in my assets but other then that there was no change.
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It was about time to stop faffing about and get down to Mana research. First thing I did was try and see if ten was the magic number for melding pearls together. It seemed to not be the case and I was rather confident in guessing that whatever my Core Mana Well was trying to do was likely operating on the same scale as fusing mana pearls. I also thought about trying to mix a Cloud Mana pearl with Life Mana and came to the conclusion that it probably just wouldn't work, at least not at the Mana Pearl level.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Thinking about the mana sea I had witnessed, and its vast chaotic Jackson Pollock pasta chef expanse, I felt it was best to regard mana in the form of dimensional axis. My cloud mana had aspects in common with both water and wind mana but it was something fundamentally separate from them. I couldn't for example pull out water or wind mana from my cloud mana nor make could mana from the other two. At least not at me current level of understanding. Even though I had specialized tools and insight into how Mana worked all of this stuff looked like doctorate degree level work and beyond me at the current time.
I then tried to see if I could use a Life mana as the founding mana in a new chamber. I tried out a Habitation room first to see if I could gain access to different monsters but was met with resistance and felt that it kept trying to use the mote of power to connect the chamber with a Core affinity that I so far did not have. I was able to work out through the use of the variant that I could generate a new monster from a Habitation chamber at the cost of a Cloud Mana pearl to make the room and a Life Mana pearl to pull up Life affinity in the same way my hare drew Animal affinity to make something called a Bramble Lurker.
It was a kind of ambulatory thorny shrub that could wrap itself with fog using its innate magical properties. It was smaller, less stealthy, and less durable then my mist-walker dire hare, but as anyone who has tried to deal with stubborn brambles know if you don't get them at the root they will just grow right back. I wasn't sure if their lesser regeneration would out pace the daily re-spawn rate though.
Dominion -@5* Tier 1 Monster species Bramble Lurker Level .333 Mana Type Cloud, Life Skills Stealth(mist), Lesser Regeneration
Beyond that it seemed that the resistance only applied to chambers that had some sort of output like the Habitation and Trove. The others seemed to be equal opportunity chambers that would develop slightly differently depending on the type of mana used but what was actually different was unclear at least without generating the rooms themselves.
On the basic Cloud Mana based options Making another Mist-walker Dire Hare Habitat would start providing diminishing returns resulting in only three extra monsters as apposed to six. I could however go for a pure Cloud affinity monster which would result in a Cloudborn habitat. I guessed it would be like the Cloudborn Dire hare being a creature made entirely of cloud stuff. I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be a very physically imposing monster but that didn't mean it didn't have its niche. Although I did wonder if there was a connection to the Fleshborn in a naming sense.
Dominion $*%& Tier 1 Monster species Cloudborn Level ----- Mana Type Cloud Skills Mist-step
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With a bit more time for my Volpertinger to be in top shape to consider another raid for more Life Mana Pearls. I was also feeling kind of odd holding what amounted to a church hostage from its worshipers and I wasn't sure what to do about that. Maybe supervised access to the Altar would help generate more Life Mana Pearls faster. Just so long as I didn't let them make another Fleshborn Behemoth without my permission it should be fine.If I could work out what counted as sacrifice I might want one of the things for defense if the Delvers response seeing one was any indication.
I decided to spend the rest of the time filling out my map. I marked out where each of the Mana Wells were It would still be a few days until the defensive room at the dungeon entrance to be finalized but I was cautiously optimistic about the location and design of the future Sand Pit. As the day turned over and my work force increased I was looking forward to the progress I would make in the future.
Map Map Expanded [https://i.imgur.com/1avSdC7.png]