Finally, the core had found an ideal location for a new dungeon, and it placed its best sub-core to the location so that it could start preparing its new “farm.”

As time had passed, the core had stretched its perception to the south, where it had encountered a vast area full of strange, hidden life, and little water.

There had been few people in that dry area, so the core had not considered it as a potential dungeon location, but had instead spread further south, hoping to find more people again.

As the core had found more verdant regions, it had also started to encounter more people again, and it quickly found more than it had ever seen before.

The core had reached the Savaren Empire, the largest nation on the continent, as well as the most prosperous and populous. Unlike the kingdoms to the north, the empire worshiped all gods in the pantheon equally, and did not hold closer to any particular deity.

The people of the empire believed in the divine mandate of the ruling dynasty, and this was supported by both the empire itself, and the temples, as it helped to keep them all in power, and the gods themselves did not care about such petty matters. So long as their specific worshippers followed the gods’ tenants, the rest of the details were irrelevant.

The empire had five provinces, and the capital of each province was larger than Guilone or Pris, the capital of Tamar. As for the imperial capital, it boasted a population five times larger than the provincial capitals, and was a true metropolis.

The vast desert was the only thing that had protected the northern kingdoms for so many years, as well as the fact that the Savaren Empire had been growing to the south and east, away from the desert. It was just not logistically reasonable to try to push across a desert with an army for the relatively pitiful wealth of the northern kingdoms, and the desert also protected the empire from raids.

As the core had spread its perception across the empire, it had reveled at the discovery of so many humans. This was the ideal place for a dungeon, as there were simply so many resources for the core to harvest.

The core chose a place a bit outside of Sercen, the capital of the province with the same name, as it was the northernmost province, and it fit the core’s requirements almost perfectly.

The mana in the area did not have any unique affinity, but the core was looking to try new things with this new dungeon.

It had not yet succeeded in producing more death affinitied mana, but the core was eager to see what was possible with its various affinities, as well as its Concepts of life and growth.

It had conducted a few experiments with the two Concepts, but wanted to push further with an entire dungeon to experiment with.

One of the first things the core had discovered was that the combination of the two Concepts allowed for much, much greater freedom than it had ever before enjoyed when it came to improving its creatures. For starters, when the core had simply been combining the two Concepts and manipulating a bit of earth-affinitied mana, the mana had started pulling up dirt and rock and had taken on a life of its own.

Oddly enough, the core was unable to sense even the primitive, incomplete soul of an animal in the construct it had accidentally created, and yet it moved, reacted to its surroundings, and otherwise behaved almost identically to an animal.

In fact, the core even found that if the construct was deprived of soil and stone, it would fall apart and collapse.

This discovery had prompted tests with every other affinity the core possessed, with the sole exception of its limited death affinity that it was trying to accumulate.

Sure enough, it discovered that it was able to produce elementals of most mana affinities, including earth, fire, water, and air, while life affinitied mana required plants or trees to create a new creature.

Even more odd with the life-affinitied attempt to create an elemental, the core observed that a spark that it had never before noticed within plants was somehow amplified by the life-affinitied mana, and that spark blossomed into a primitive soul. It was somehow both more than an animal, and yet less than a human. The core was not certain what it was, but it certainly intended to find out.

The core tested with various different plants, as well as different amounts of mana and proportions of affinities.

It was able to gain flowers that bit and ate things, vines that would reach out and grab nearby creatures, trees that would slowly move, which created the possibility of a shifting forest, and more.

A few times, older trees seemed to be trying for something more, but before the process could be completed, the core could feel that some key portion of the process was missing, and without that, the process failed entirely.

The core could not be sure, but it felt almost as though the trees were trying to produce a true soul to create a creature similar to a human.

Something similar happened on a single occasion with a water elemental that tried to somehow become “more,” but that also failed.

The core could not tell if it was lacking a Concept, or if it simply needed greater mastery of the Concepts it had already tapped into.

Fire had been quite interesting, as there had been different possibilities depending on how the core mixed things. When a bit of light was added to the mix, something that seemed like a floating orb of pale fire came into being. While it was made of fire, it had a pale glow to it that made it nearly invisible during the day.

When the core used pure fire and life affinitied mana, it gained what appeared to be a far more typical elemental, and it would blaze with hot, bright flames.

Along with various wild creatures, the core had also managed to gain control of different domestic animals as well, though they had felt rather lacking, compared to wild animals. Dogs were mostly smaller, less vicious wolves, or larger, less cunning foxes. Horses and cattle were large and powerful, but were typically gentle and mild mannered. Also, given that they were herbivores, the core did not see much that could be done with them.

However, with its new abilities, it decided it might be good to return to the creatures it had essentially discarded. It was impossible to say what kind of uses they might have. After all, if even plants and dirt could become a useful quasi-creature, why not a horse?

As for the cows and bulls, the core opted to ignore them for the moment, as they were simply too difficult to get to one of its dungeons to be experimented with. For some reason, horses were a bit more willing to break away and leave humans to run away, which the core could take advantage of.

Goats and sheep had proven similar to the cattle, though when the core had gotten to cats, things had turned… odd.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

The cats were somehow… fluid. They easily adapted to just about any environment, and were quick to change into their wild cousins. The core ended up with jaguars, lions, and tigers when it simply wanted to improve the cats’ strength and size.

Cats were quick to accept just about any affinities mana as well, with the exception of water mana, which they seemed almost repellent to.

The air affinity, along with size and strength, pulled for something more. The core had started to get a bit of a feel for compatibilities between its creatures as they changed and improved, and had even started to focus on this as time passed, because it found that there were unexpected compatibilities between diverse creatures.

Of all things, the enhanced cat seemed drawn to birds, and as the core followed that pull, it ended up with a creature with the body and rear legs of a lion, but the head, wings, and front legs of an eagle.

The odd creature had been unexpectedly powerful, and also possessed impressive air magic.

Unfortunately, the creature was too powerful to be placed in any of the core’s currently used sections of the various dungeons, but it could prove quite useful later on.

With the horses, the core found two new options, both of which were… odd. Neither one was particularly aggressive, and they did not gain much in the way of strength, fangs, or claws, but their intelligence soared, and they quickly and easily acquired the ability to use multiple different kinds of mana affinities, which primed them to become powerful magic users.

Interestingly, this magical ability appeared with a physical manifestation in the appearance of a single horn on the horses’ heads, which the core simply did not understand. So many creatures had specific predispositions for certain magical abilities or affinities, that the core almost felt as though it was merely awakening things that had been dormant for a long, long time.

The core quickly expanded its new dungeon as it experimented with various creatures. It had decided to recycle the forest theme for its first section of the new dungeon, but this time, it would have only the strange new creatures it had recently developed.

In fact, why not create a theme for the entire dungeon? The core realized it had enough different creatures to introduce new creatures and challenges in multiple forests. Its wisps of fire loved floating among the trees and bushes, while the magical horses also loved to hide in the forests, and both of those were too powerful for the first portion of a dungeon. The new elementals were quite interesting in the fact that their power could vary greatly, and there was no minimum strength to the semi-creatures.

With a goal in mind, and more testing to be done, the core hurried to finish the first four sections of its new dungeon.

At the same time, the core’s other two dungeons maintained their farming operations. The core had grown the sewer dungeon slightly, yet interestingly enough, the soldiers did not have much interest in that dungeon. For that reason, the core decided to expand it a bit more horizontally, and connected to the sewers in more and more locations. It was clear that the humans who worked the sewers were very interested in the dungeon, yet were being kept out by the soldiers. The core could not allow its crops to be taken away, and so it found an alternative that would ensure a steady supply of humans visiting the dungeon.

As for the main dungeon, the core had underestimated how much time it would take the humans to gain enough strength to press deeper into the layers the dungeon had prepared. They had still not conquered the fire chamber, which prevented the core from testing more powerful options deeper underground. It almost seemed as though the humans’ own expectations and beliefs were preventing them from accepting the full strength of the core’s offered rewards. From its own estimates, some of the soldiers should have already achieved levels of strength that should see them carving through the upper regions of the dungeon without any issue, and yet they were barely three times stronger than their starting point. The core had not sensed any sort of external interference, which suggested that something within the people themselves was preventing them from obtaining the full potential they were capable of.

But how to reveal what was possible to the humans? The best option was by example, but the core had no way to show the humans what they themselves were capable of, and it had not yet come up with any such method.

In fact, those limitations did not merely apply to the physical improvements the core had given out, but even for the magic and skills that the humans had received. The first skill, that fire shield, should have been able to be maintained nearly indefinitely by the human who had received it, given his mana reserves and recovery rate, and yet he was so incredibly, unbelievably inefficient in controlling his mana that he exhausted himself after only a few seconds!

The core had initially believed that it must have made some mistake and that the skill had not been optimized for the man, but after carefully observing the man while he had used the skill, the core realized that the man was simply not properly following the skill! His mana had run wild, nearly uncontrolled. Only a small portion had followed the pathways the core had specified when granting the skill, which was what allowed the man to use it, but there was so much wastage and leakage that the core did not actually understand how the man had managed to activate the skill at all.

Were humans just stupid? What other reason could there be for them to not follow simple instructions?

The core had gone on to observe all of the humans who received its rewards, and invariably, they were only able to manifest a tiny fraction of the gift they had been given.

The core had studied the gifted humans for months, both within the dungeons where its perception was much greater than elsewhere, and on the battlefields where they had been fighting against other humans in the greatest waste the core had ever seen.

The humans were dying by the hundreds, yet the core could not see anything at all being gained from those deaths. Even worse, the core itself was losing harvests, as these humans were all dying far away from its dungeons! That was unacceptable.

Recently acquired memories revealed that this fighting was a “war,” and that different groups of humans were trying to conquer the other. This made a bit more sense to the core, as it was territorial and expansionist, and many of its creatures were also territorial. It was what allowed the core to make use of them without directly controlling them.

Even so, the core was more interested in how it could help the humans reach greater levels of strength and fully unlock the gifts it had given them, as it wanted them as powerful as possible so that its harvests would be even more beneficial.

Eventually, the core settled upon an idea to test; when giving the humans a skill or a spell, the knowledge they were granted would include a name and a mental image of the potential of what they were being given.

Unfortunately, that also failed to work. For some reason, the humans accepted the names, but treated the mental images of the true strength of their acquired power as a perfect goal to strive towards, rather than the minimum acceptable level of competence the core was willing to accept.

Even so, the mental image helped the humans improve at a slightly accelerated rate, so it was not a complete failure. As for the names of the skills and spells, the humans became extremely excited over that bit, and would brag to each other. They seemed to believe that named skills and spells were somehow more powerful than the others. While that seemed to remove a bit of the mental blockages, it did nothing at all to help the humans improve their mana manipulation skills.

Just what was preventing them from improving?

What the core failed to realize was that humans lacked a natural ability to perceive mana at all. Even once they developed that particular skill, which was something that only a very small number of the most experienced mage priests ever accomplished, it was like seeing through murky water. There was a rough impression of what was there, but there no clarity at all. This was one of the greatest challenges for human mana users. They were essentially trying to create a painting of a waterfall from just hearing it in the distance, while also being unable to see their canvas or paints. While it was possible to gain a rough understanding of what they were doing, and to give an impression of what they wanted to portray, it was completely impossible to have any clarity or details.

If the core truly wanted to improve the humans’ abilities with the magic and skills they had been granted, then it needed to first grant them the ability to truly perceive mana with some level of clarity.

The best analogy of how humans perceived mana was sound; it was readily evident when sound was present or absent, but sound could not be seen, only heard, and it could only be felt when it was strong enough.

In contrast, the core perceived mana as a liquid that surrounded it and filled the entire world. It could directly see affinities, density, flow, intent, and everything else. While humans could hear sound, the core could hear, feel, see, smell, and taste the sound from its origin to its destination. This fundamental difference in how the core perceived the world was completely different from the senses of biological creatures, and even after absorbing so many memories, the core still could not grasp the limitations of the human body.

Finally, more than a full year after the destruction of the undead dungeon, the core was ready to open its new dungeon in the Savaren Empire.

Not even the gods could have predicted how this single event would change the entire world.