During the years that the core had spent expanding its caves and caverns and building biomes, its perception range had continued to grow further and further, even as it continued to drop further into the earth. With this, the core’s field of perception currently encompassed a truly massive area, both above and beneath the surface of the earth.

While it had still not reached any of the human cities, it had reached the edges of Farun, and could observe several of the kingdom’s more remote villages, as well as quite a few roads and paths.

One single time, the core had detected the oddest echo. Something had passed through its perception field that had acted as some sort of relay or expansion, and for a few days, the core’s perception had expanded nearly double what it was currently capable of, though only in the southern direction.

Naturally, as soon as this had occurred, the core had zeroed in on the source of this echo, and had found something strange; the echo came from a single round stone that was being carried on a woman’s necklace.

Curious, the core had started to examine the stone, only for the echo to grow stronger and stronger.

Nothing unusual could be detected concerning the stone. It was just another gemstone, similar to so many others that the humans loved so much, and the core had even noticed other round gemstones before, so the shape did not seem to be anything too special. No, it had to be the makeup of the stone. Still, that also did not seem to be too unusual.

The stone only remained in the core’s perception field for three days as the woman traveled along in a carriage. She was accompanied by many other people, yet the core focused solely on the woman and her jewel.

On the third day, the core finally decided to examine the rest of its perception field for another stone with the same makeup as the stone that was producing the echo, as nothing could be gleaned from the stone itself.

Various stones were found, but the final one was shocking to the core: itself.

The woman was wearing a pendant that was a single spherical opal, the same stone and shape as the core itself. While the size was not exactly the same, the small jewel still acted as a mirror of the core, given the other similarities.

It was also at this time that the core realized that it had actually grown. It was currently about double the size it originally possessed. The years of absorbing affinities while purifying mana had built up within the core, and had caused it to actually increase in size.

Upon finding the similarities between itself and the stone that was causing the echo, the core had started testing things with itself, the stone that was quickly approaching the edge of the core’s true perception field, and the other stones that the core had found with the same makeup as itself and the gemstone carried by the woman.

The first thing it tried to do was reshape the stones. While opals were rather rare in the region occupied by the core, this did not mean that they did not exist at all, and on top of that, ever since the core had decided to offer wealth as rewards to the humans, it had started gathering and hoarding all of the metal and gemstones it could find.

There were a grand total of a dozen opals of varying sizes within the core’s little hoard. The core tried to use earth mana to reshape the stones, and while three were destroyed in its initial attempts, the other nine were able to be reshaped.

It instantly became clear that a near perfect shape was vital to produce an echo, followed by the fact that size also mattered. Five of the stones were beneath the still unknown size threshold, so the core had quickly set them aside and focused on the four stones that it had already detected echoes from.

The smallest of the stones was only the size of a pea, while the largest was barely as wide as the thickness of a human finger. As for the core itself, it had grown to be nearly the size of an adult human’s fist.

Given that the gemstones had initially been very close to the core, the four echoes had not expanded its perception field almost at all, but the core started examining the four stones in as much detail as possible.

They truly echoed the core, and nothing more. There was no filtering of mana, no accumulation of affinities, nothing. As the core had continued its observations and examinations, it had eventually come to the conclusion that the difference between itself and the four stones somehow felt very similar to the difference between a living creature and a corpse: one possessed life, while the other was missing that mysterious, vitalizing energy.

The core was ignorant to the circumstance that had led to its own birth, which prevented it from being able to obtain a full understanding of its own existence.

The core had pushed its experiments, trying to implant different types of affinities, and then energies, into the four stones, but nothing seemed to work.

The core had mentally set the stones aside, only returning to them occasionally as months and then years had passed. The stones were only noticed when the core had a new thought or insight into a new possibility, but all attempts to spark anything within the cores had failed.

Then, one day, something changed. That day, the core had a new thought, and instead of pushing something into the stones, the core focused on a single stone, and then stretched out its own self, its own essence, to somehow reach into the stone.

At that moment, something had snapped into place, and suddenly, the core was in two places at once. It was itself, but it was also the stone it had reached into. No longer was there an echo, but instead, there was an extension.

In fact, the core had even been able to sense that its own capacities had slightly increased with the addition of its new self.

At that point in time, the small, spherical opal was already filtering mana, stripping the affinities that tainted the mana and releasing a pure, if relatively small, bit of cleaned mana.

The core had quickly repeated the process, only to find that it was impossible. There was not enough of it to stretch out and reach into any of the other stones. For the moment, only a single second self was possible.

Immediately, the core had moved its second self as far away as possible, only to discover something amazing; its second self was not limited in any way. The secondary core was able to be moved outside of the core’s original perception field, and create a small, secondary perception field.

Even more importantly, the core’s creatures were able to exist in either field, though they were still unable to leave the core’s perception.

Even so, this was a massive step forward, and the core used an earthworm to transport the secondary core as far away as possible.

No limit was found, though the secondary core eventually found a home beneath Guilone itself.

Given the size of the secondary core, its perception field was relatively small, and so the core had used the other opals in its possession to expand the secondary core’s perception field as much as possible with the echoes the stones produced. With that, the core was able to observe about a thousand square meters of the capital city of Farun. It was not much, but it still allowed the core to observe hundreds, if not thousands, of humans every day.

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This was also why the core was currently considering trying to build a second “farm.”

After understanding what caused its growth, it had become capable of slightly accelerating said growth. After all, if the core and its secondary self grew through the accumulation of affinities that were filtered from contaminated mana, then given the core’s abilities to manipulate those same affinities, it could shift its affinities around. Also, using its affinities hampered, or even reversed, its own growth. However, the only usage that truly impacted the core’s growth was when it gave its creatures affinities for specific types of mana, and even then, when the creatures died, the core would recover the lost growth.

The secondary core was quickly improved, and it soon grew to be about a quarter the size of the primary core.

However, before starting on a second “farm,” the core wanted to see how the humans reacted to its first “farm.” After all, the first deaths had just occurred, and the core knew that this would be the true test as to whether its “farm” would be accepted and successful, or not.

As the humans retreated from the caves and returned to the camp that had been set up just outside the first tunnel, the core could see the commotion that the teams caused as they returned to the rest of their numbers.

The first team to return, which was the one that had lost two members, was greeted with mixed reactions.

Given the memories from two different humans that the core had obtained, it had become much better at reading human emotions, and it was starting to want to be able to hear, as it could not pick up on the vast majority of human communications.

There was anger, sadness, and grief seen from various different humans when the first group returned. One of the humans in the camp nearly attacked the returning team, only to be held back by others. On that person’s face, the core detected both anger and sadness.

Things within the camp calmed back down rather quickly after some people who appeared to be in charge said a few things. The core saw much of the anger dissipate, and the sadness grew stronger.

When the second team returned with the poisoned member, another commotion arose from the camp. This time, there was no anger, and instead there was panic and worry. People started running about, and a mana user was quickly sent for. The core recognized the female who had been a member of the first team of humans, and she ran over to the poisoned man, and quickly cured him.

The core felt the start of an idea begin to form as it watched, yet it needed more time for the insight to fully form.

As soon as the poison was dealt with, the second team delivered their report, and turned in the rewards they had gained. Excitement filled the entire camp, though the core was unable to determine the exact cause. Were they excited that the team had returned intact? Was it because of the reward? The fact that the poisoned man had been cured? There was no way for the core to tell.

Finally, the third team returned, and their return was met with an even greater commotion, though it appeared to be entirely positive. There were cheers and excited greetings extended to the final team to return, and the core observed smiles on nearly every face.

The individuals in charge of the camp smiled broadly as they offered what appeared to be new clothes to the final team, and the reward that the team had returned was only partially collected. Each of the members of the team was allowed to keep a single gemstone.

Though the core felt that what it had observed could be regarded as positive reactions on the part of the humans, it withheld any decision for until more teams of humans ventured into the caves.

More than a week passed without another person stepping foot into the caves. During this time, there were constantly guards posted at the entrance to the first tunnel. There were four of them; two watching the depths of the tunnel for anything to emerge, and two to watch for humans attempting to step into the caves without permission.

Finally, after nine days had passed, the core received its answer from the humans: another team was sent into the caves. The “farm” had been accepted.

With this, the core could advance its plans to expand its existing system, as well as start working on developing a second “farm.”

While the humans present in the camp outside the “farm” remained, the exact people were constantly changing. There were always warriors present, as well as several mana users of various affinities, though the core noticed that there was always at least one life affinity mana user present in the camp.

The third time that a life affinitied mana user appeared in the camp to replace the one who had been there for a week, the core finally managed to realize the insight that it had started to see when the three teams had returned to the humans’ camp: human mana users all worked for the humans’ gods, and even then, there were very, very few who could use life affinity mana and heal other humans.

Given this realization, the core reached a decision that settled several different questions it had been facing. It would indeed strengthen the humans while also providing additional rewards. It would very rarely grant a human a mana affinity, and it would also start looking into options to grant specific spells to the humans that would allow them to more easily heal each other.

In fact, the core had already developed mana usage of its own without the need to call upon the humans’ gods, so why not offer humans the ability to do the same? It would take some experimentation to develop spells for humans, given their different anatomy and such, but it should not be overly difficult to do.

In that case, how should the core go about sharing such skills?

The core could not write scrolls or books like the humans did. In fact, the core could not even see the writing on such items, given the way in which it perceived the world.

It did not want to reward humans who were not part of the team visiting the “farm,” so how could the core give away skills?

Affinities were easy enough, as the core could simply inject such a thing into the humans in the same way it did its own creatures.

Deciding to implement both options in the next cavern to open up, the core started looking into possibilities to teach spells to humans.

With its creatures, the core simply created the magical pattern within a creature’s body, and that allowed the spell or ability to manifest, but altering the bodies of humans was not possible, as they did not belong to the core, and there was something within the humans that blocked such a thing from happening.

More time passed, and the core continued to sink into the depths of the earth while developing its next ecosystem for its “farm.” At the same time, the core studied methods to provide humans with skills, as well as affinities. Several spells were found, as well as skills that could be used.

During its studies, the core had found that humans should be capable of manifesting the same sort of innate abilities as its creatures, although at a higher cost. This meant that it could create skills for the humans to use who were not mana users, provided it developed skills that could be used with tools and weapons that humans used, instead of the body parts that its creatures used.

As time passed, the core also managed to find a way to provide spells to the humans without making things overly complicated.

The answer came from the most unlikely of sources; the multi-tailed foxes.

The multi-tailed foxes were able to create illusions, and once their ability reached a sufficient level, the core had found that humans were utterly incapable of determining the difference between what was real and what was an illusion.

This meant that the core could simply create illusions of books or scrolls, and then dissipate them after the humans acquired the relevant information.

Furthermore, the core wanted to try something even more targeted to a single person. What if the information was mentally given to the human in the same way that the core received memories from humans and creatures that died within its realm?

Such a thing should be possible. The core could create little packets of memories that were limited to only the skills or spells it wanted the humans to receive, and then transmit them into the humans’ minds while causing the illusion of a book or scroll to disappear. This would allow specific humans to receive the reward, which would encourage increasing numbers of humans to brave the risks of the caves, which would further increase the core’s harvests.

Having already completed three caverns, and also having started on more, it did not take the core too long to complete a fourth cavern after it had settled the matter of how to provide non-physical rewards to its challengers.

As this time had passed, the core had managed to harvest several more individuals, though the rate had slowed substantially. Just as it had already expected, the increased experience and information the humans acquired about the caverns allowed them to streamline their tactics and lower their casualty rate. Though only one more team had managed to defeat the guardian of the third section, more than five teams had managed to defeat the swamp and had tried to challenge the subterranean maze.

As for the next section, given the core’s limited experience, it had tried to come up with a unique environment, and its descent into the bowels of the earth had provided the opportunity to observe a unique biome that it had never encountered on the surface.

How well would the humans be able to handle the fire and heat that the core had encountered deep underground? It had been fascinating to develop creatures that could thrive in the environment of rock that liquified due to sheer heat, and the core could not wait to see the results.