The coin struck the Soul Mana Pearl and things started to get out of control very fast. the barrier between the material world and the mana sea got thinner. As it always did at this time of day and I started to grab all the motes I could trying to twist them into the proper shape to try and force an activation of the variant monster widget.
Mana was a slippery thing though and my not-hand wasn't even really a hand. For the most part I was trying to let the core things do their core thing on their own but I started to run into a problem. That unidentified mana was growing in size and I was fairly certain that it was Death Mana and it wasn't eating the Life affinity mana to grow. This wasn't the worst of situations since there was a lot of Life affinity mana here and it looked like life affinity seemed to do exactly the same thing to a lesser degree the other way. The green and black swirl spun round and round and I could tell that Life affinity ate death affinity at a slower rate but with this balance life would win the tug of war fairly soon. Except there was suddenly a whole lot more of Death affinity mana.
It was like I had struck oil and immediately knew what must be happening. My new achievement 'Gatekeeper' I had opened something with this plan and the Death affinity mana was leaking in. I couldn't reach the bottom of the mana well with my Domain any more and suddenly the skeleton began to move. It covered itself in some glistening black ichor and rose into the air tearing apart what remained of the twisting clouds with a wave of its hand. It hovered there killing and revivifying the vines that held it together as more and more of the black coiling tendrils of Death Affinity Mana swirled around it consuming more and more of the Life Affinity Mana it reached out to me, not my monsters but me, and started screaming.
DeadOneComes [https://i.imgur.com/ArNcJzq.png]
I couldn't touch the thing with my Domain at all any more and I felt a little tickle at the back of my mind that it wasn't simply the wails of the damned shouting at me and my auto translator was churning away to no avail at what was being said. whatever it was trying to say it ultimately didn't matter. It wasn't supposed to be here and I didn't want it here.
My volpertinger grabbed the lifemist grenade I had in the pile of materials I had planned on using as material for the ritual and placed itself between the thing and the way out of the room and then tossed the grenade at the undead thing. Then channeled all of its remaining energy through the shard of my Core and held nothing back casting the first offensive cloud affinity spell. An arc of lightning leapt from the volpertingers antlers and passed through the lifemist grenade and the green tinged bolt struck dead center on the glowing coin on its sternum. and everything froze as several things happened at once.
My dire nimbus crab was bubbling ineffectually but at least trying to look as big and threatening as possible.
The Altar room snapped into place and the room started to change shape
The vitapigmy was praying at the back of the room and I started to feel a sudden pressure as the adamant prayers of a creature with a soul specifically praying to me at my Altar was being converted into Cloud Affinity Mana.
The lifemist grenade exploded inundating the skeleton thing with aerasolized Life Affinity Mana severely damaging it.
The bolt of lightning impacted the silver coin and Soul Mana Pearl and then arcing along and into the hole in the world that I had accidentally mad.
Then the Altar collapsed through the ground, No through the universe, and into the Mana Sea along with whatever had been trying to claw its way through from the other side.
The hole in reality tried to pull me through immediately making my nonexistent head spin with sudden sensation of virtigo and this time I didn't have a Mana Pearl to anchor myself. I did pull the knot of mana that I had been trying to assemble using the variant monster mechanism into place and it slotted into place.
I had a fraction of a second to feel the elation of accomplishment. To notice the vitapygmy sag in relief at having survived the encounter with whatever that thing was. To see the dire nimbus crab to do another of those little stick bug dances. To see my core fragment glowing with an intense amount of energy.
Then everything exploded.
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> Lights out of the dark.
>
> Two Gleaming eyes shrieking out at me with a wide grin of silver teeth to welcome me.
>
> Then pain and pressure then the feeling of being impossibly stretched out and then nothing.
>
> =-=-=-=-=
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Everything was white and it took me a moment to realize where I was. I turned my head and saw a storm in my fluffy clouded sky. where the crack I had made had been there was now an inverted tornado instead shooting off into the distance. I felt strange like I had finally gotten my comeuppance for ignoring all those warnings you get about not operating heavy machinery with baggy clothing and my arm was being ground up in a bunch of gears. Only it didn't hurt, which made sense since I didn't really have an arm, but after a moment I was able to re-frame the sensation. It was like my arm was stuck in a bunch of gears but the gears were made of stale toast. it was enough to pull me in but they were dry and crumbly and the expected result of being pulled into twisting machinery were reversed.
I shifted my focus outside my core to make sure that there wasn't a mini tornado sticking out of its side and was glad to see that there wasn't one. I looked around my domain and found that everyone was in a panic. First I calmed all my own monsters down with a simple thought and then went about taking stock of the situation. I checked the map out of habit to more easily focus in on specific spots and was met with something new.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Map
New Map [https://i.imgur.com/ZoAWAMP.png]
That would be the explosion. I shifted over there to check on the damage and first noticed my volpertinger was in bad shape. They had been blown free from the room and tumbled violently down the tunnel all the way to the main corridor. Their left antler that had held my core shard was snapped about half way down its length.
I directed my crab that was still hanging out with the vitapygmy to get the attention of the priestess and convince her to come down to help as I inspected the damage. It had taken me a moment but I remembered that I was supposed to have three crabs not two so the crab that had been in the room was gone. Most likely, so was the vitapygmy that had helped out.
I checked the room itself and was kind of amazed at what I saw. The entire inner surface was a perfect sphere and had a pale blue sheen as it was melted smooth by whatever happened here. It even pinged back different to my Domain as Mana Glass instead of stone. there were a number of cracks and fissures that marred the walls which matched the jagged cracks that had shown up on the map. That aside even though it was interesting wasn't the rooms most intriguing feature. That would be the Island of stone that was floating in the rooms center.
The island was rough contiguous lump of basalt like stone. It had a number of black stalagmites as if it had fallen loose from the ceiling as a lump of slag and just never reached the ground. There were little rivulets of cloud trailing out from where the Mana Well used to be but it was now capped by a lumpy plug of basalt that was run through with veins of pale blue and it had my silver coin embedded in its surface castle side out, it was also larger sitting now at about the size of a fist. When I went to inspect it with my Domain the entire lump of stone stood up and a pair of dull green eyes peered out at me. It had large gill surfaces that spread across its shoulders that seemed to glow violet with each exhale and a pale blue pattern was on the backs of its claws as well as the plate on its head. As it shifted around, taking in its surroundings, there was a noticeable seam around where the silver coin was that, if I caught it at just the correct angle, would hit me with a piercing white light but otherwise didn't seem to provide any more then mild self illumination giving the silver coin an eerie halo.
Carrion Stalker [https://i.imgur.com/MsUbpDq.png]
Dominion Sean McLeod Tier 5 Monster species Cay Hulk Level 1 Mana Type Cloud, Death, Mana, Animal, Soul Skills Cloud Spellwork, Death Spellwork, Emergency Molting, Carapace Fortification, BOUND
"So, do you care to show me what you can do?" I asked it
It responded by pulling its eye-stalks flat into its head and then raised its claws into perfectly shaped depressions along the under side of its back plate and then hunkered back down into the pool of clouds it was standing in capping the hole once again. Then it seemed to go to sleep. It was almost if it was saying 'You don't have enough gym badges to train me.'
It definitely wasn't what I was originally going for but it was close enough that I was willing to call the experiment a success. I just had to make sure no body I didn't want eaten didn't come in here until I knew how to get it to listen to me.
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I turned back to check on my volpertinger to make sure they were making a full recovery and maybe to try an-
"What did you DO to my HOUSE!" The blue man was back. Only this time he seemed less ephemeral and bizarre. He still stepped out of nothing and was suddenly standing right next to my point of focus. It was an odd trick. Kind of like he had been standing behind the camera and then stepped into frame, except that he hadn't been there a moment ago according to my Domain. Lu Xian's Avatar flinched at the sudden appearance and the priestess and her guard jumped in between him and the blue man. They could obviously see him this time unlike the previous encounter.
"I, how, you..." He stood there staring into your new chamber "I chose you specifically because of how low rated your world was for mana interactivity. How did you even know figure out how to do THIS."
"I used to read a lot and I had internet access." I responded but the blue man didn't react but I wasn't sure if he was being an ass or if he legitimately couldn't hear me in this state. So far the only speaking I had done was with my Core or inside Lu Xians core.
"You made a Gate! A capital G GATE! Is that a FREAKING Soul Coin!" The blue man waves animatedly in the direction of your monster. "When did you get in touch with the Bank of Avarice?!?"
The blue man makes a motion like he's pulling on hair that doesn't exist. and begins to groan "You're world definitely had to have some folk tales regarding making bargains with powers. And how it's a BAD IDEA! Please tell me you didn't connect my home to some outer plane for a Crab or a single bound soul."
He reached forward and as his hand passed the threshold into the Lair room and his hand suddenly compressed as if squeezed from every direction or looked at through one of those wacky carnival mirrors that make you look tiny. He quickly yanked his hand back and gave it a few shakes as if he had been shocked or had touched something very hot.
"Hoowee, at least you secured this side from direct intrusion. I guess that was what caused all the shaking. I don't know how you did it, but whatever you did don't do it again and maybe work out some way to secure the room because this level of domain wont last in the material."
I noticed Lu Xian was peeking up the tunnel at the commotion, standing slightly behind my volpertinger, clearly terrified of the shouting blue apparition.
"Ah Lucian! Is this your fault? Did your stupid hammer babies break something else important to the functionality of the cosmos? At least this time there isn't a corps blocking my Mana Circuits. Could you at least stop getting in the way of his own progress and wasting pearls on gimmicks like Avatars. At least hes half way there even without killing you, but its such a waste of time and resources."
The blue man then turned to me "Look here Sean, I need you to get stronger. 'Kill to become' and all that and I don't need a piddling two shell Core either. So the longer you take to get to that step, the longer it will take to get you back home. You want that right Sean, got to get back to your wife and kids, or girlfriend, or boyfriend, or sister. I don't know, cultures vary wildly from country to country let alone entire planes of existence. I don't judge anyone about that. I do get judgy when a poor work ethic gets in the way of my progress.'
So are you ready to get back to work?"
I was about to begrudgingly say yes before remembering that he probably can't hear me anyway but there was another thing that was proving rather distracting at the moment.
The Enemy Core Is Present! Live and don't Die! Kill to become