The core was bombarded by a surge of foreign stimuli. Not only was the core’s mana that had been forced into the mole returned en masse to the core, more had been dragged back as well. The mole’s vitality was sent back to the core, but this was a strange, unknown energy that the core had never experienced before. It was not a biological creature, so what use did it have for the animating energy of living creatures?

However, there was something that so overpowered the surge of vitality and mana that the core did not even register their presence: memories.

After the mole had essentially been turned into the core’s puppet, the mole’s (minor) sense of independent will and self had been stolen from it. It had become part of the core, losing its previous unique identity. This was why the mole had not been able to leave the core’s sphere of influence, as that would have been no different from a person cutting off their own hand. Once separated from the true organism, a limb could have no life.

The mole’s memories, while limited and brief, given its short life, were still more alien than anything else the core had ever experienced. It had only ever perceived the world through its mana sense, and while moles are blind, they are not without other senses.

Memories of touch, sound, smell, and taste assaulted the core. Such biological sensations had no foundation to connect to in the core’s experience. This was not as simple as knowing a deaf person gaining hearing, but more akin to a rock experiencing the same sensation that air experiences when it moves through a breeze. There was nothing to relate the foreign sensations to, and they were overwhelming.

The core nearly shut down as it relived the mole’s entire life, all one year of it.

One thing that no one but the gods knew, was that while memories are stored in the soul, and thus never disappear, living creatures access their memories through their brains, which are biological. The imperfect connection between the spiritual and the organic was the reason for faulty memories and everything related to them. However, the core was not gaining the mole’s memories through the primitive creature’s brain, but by absorbing a portion of its soul.

The memories were perfect.

Not one experience, sensation, or moment in the mole’s entire existence was left out. The core experienced gestation, birth, weaning, and the mole’s first solid food. It experienced hunger and thirst, warmth and cold, isolation and companionship, infancy, and mating. The core even experienced something that should be impossible for a living creature to ever remember: death.

The core lived through the memory of the mole’s death. It felt the abrupt cessation of all sensation, followed by two opposing pulls that lasted for a moment. Unknown to either the core or the mole, one pull was that of Ixel, the god of death.

The opposing pull had been the core itself, and it had actually defeated Ixel and pulled the mole’s soul into itself.

A month passed before the core was able to rouse from the daze it had entered in the aftermath of the mole’s death and the shocking results of that death.

Upon recovering, the core was shocked to discover that its sphere of perception had increased by nearly a full meter. When the mana that had been given to the mole was returned to the core, it had acted as a growth spurt, accelerating the growth of the sphere of perception.

The core had new perspective to everything that it observed. It looked at the ant colony and the other small creatures within its purview, and understood their lives on a deeper level than had ever been possible before. One thing that had stood out from the mole’s memories that the core could easily observe in the ant colony was a sense of territory. Both ants and moles lived in the ground within a certain area, but they would leave their home turf for food, water, or even defecation.

While the concept of waste and defecation was intriguing to the core, as it produced no such thing and could only view such with horror, the idea of a home or a nest greatly appealed to the core. While it had some control within its sphere of perception, and absolutely no control outside of that range, it wondered if it might be possible to alter its territory into distinct portions. Could it be possible to have a nest, and then also have a foraging area? The idea of claiming or possessing a personal place struck a chord with the core’s instincts to hoard and protect. After all, if it was impossible to observe anything approaching, how could the core ever protect anything?

The core had already started to gain some ideas of using creatures it took control of as guardians or protectors. It had watched the defenders of the ant colony at work and thought it was a wonderful idea.

While the core’s perception was a perfect sphere and was unimpeded by any sort of physical obstacles, it had realized from observation and the mole’s memories that creatures were not capable of the same. In that case, it made sense to somewhat copy the ants again. Would it not be ideal to form a nest that used the earth itself as a form of protection? The ants used their twisting passages to funnel and control invaders so that they could be repelled more easily, and the core knew it was weak. It had been picked up and carried away without being able to do a thing, and it wanted to avoid that from ever happening again.

Time passed, and the core tried to condense its mana within its sphere of perception along the edges of the crevice in which it lay. Days passed with no progress. The core had seen mana move before, but had never seen mana coalesce or pool up.

The core tried pulling at the mana, but to no avail. The mana remained homogenous throughout the entire sphere.

Everything changed after more than a week of attempts had passed. On that day, the core watched another attack on the ant colony, and something suddenly clicked. The ants had claimed their nest as their home. It was theirs. They owned it and regarded it as their treasure that needed to be protected.

That moment of realization changed everything.

The core did not change anything other than its perception, but the moment it mentally declared the crevice and all that it contained belonged to the core, there was a mental shift. At that moment, the core saw the crevice as its nest, its home. The innate need to protect a possession enabled something new that the core had never been capable of in the past. Its mana essentially fused into the air and dirt of the crevice. No longer was the core’s mana part of the ambient energy in the area, it had instead become an integral part of the air, earth, and water.

At that moment, the core experienced a strange sense of vertigo, as its perception shifted. Its sphere shrank slightly, but more importantly, the mana filling the sphere stopped being homogenous. It condensed in the open space and the earth nearby, while diffusing throughout the rest of the core’s sphere of perception that was filled with dirt, stone, and roots.

The most distinct and noticeable change was the sense the core had of control in the area with the denser mana. There was a connection of some sort, almost as if the area had become a part of the core. The intimacy was odd, but the core could feel the dirt and stone, and it was instantly reminded of the mole’s memories of swimming through the dirt. That thought triggered an automatic reaction, and the core tried to move a bit of the dirt, using the memory of the memory of the physical sensations it had obtained from the mole.

Shockingly, there was a reaction.

The dirt was pushed away from the core in all directions, and it dropped about a centimeter in the newly opened space.

At the same time, the overall level of the mana belonging to the core within its sphere of perception dropped by a noticeable amount, and the core felt a new sensation: a wave of weakness.

Such a strange feeling was startling, and the core immediately stopped everything. It quickly tried to observe its condition, trying to understand what was wrong with it.

The core quickly realized that the weakness was due to the lower mana levels. Any changes in the past, aside from when the mole had died, had been so gradual and slow, that it had genuinely not noticed the changes until they were undone.

However, what had happened to its mana?

One particular trait of the core was its extreme levels of possessiveness. Inheriting the greed of a dragon had brought about a true obsession with ownership and “treasure.” The core refused to willingly part with anything it considered its own possession, and that included mana. Since mana had been lost, the core had to find out where the mana had gone and get it back, if at all possible. The truth was that the core had still not given up on regaining the dragon’s hoard in the future, even if it had no idea at all on how it could possibly do so.

This time, there was nothing around that could have taken the mana. There were no creatures moving in and grabbing the core or its treasure. There were no outside influences it could find at all. So, just what had happened to the core’s mana?

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The core started observing and studying. It started with the dirt it had moved, trying to find anything that might have changed other than the dirt’s location.

It took a bit of time—days, in fact—but the core eventually discovered something. The dirt that had moved held a higher amount of mana, just not the core’s mana. The energy felt different, tainted. While the core felt that its own mana felt somehow clean and pure, this mana felt like the dirt that it infused, which was also why it had taken the core so long to detect the difference.

What the core had inadvertently discovered was attributed mana. While the core’s own mana lost any and all impurities or attributes, mana took on attributes based on what it was used for or the surrounding environment. The difference was similar to the difference between kinetic and potential energy. Kinetic energy was more useful, but something was lost in the process. The core’s pure mana was essentially potential energy. There were limitless possibilities, but little would be accomplished without changing the form of the energy. By giving the mana a fire attribute, fire spells could be used with the mana. Using pure mana could allow for fire spells, but the spell itself would taint the mana, and such a forceful alteration was highly inefficient.

As soon as the core found its “missing” mana, it became even more desperate to take it back. After all, the mana was right there, literally next to the core, yet it did not belong to the core.

This was completely unacceptable and needed to be remedied.

The core did not understand what had happened, and had no concept of attributed mana. All the core understood was that its mana had been somehow tainted, and that same process had ripped the mana away from the core. It became the core’s most important priority to cleanse the mana and retrieve it.

Another week passed as the core tried to find a way to do this, only to find that the answer was surprisingly simple: nothing at all needed to be done!

The core had been slowly and gradually gaining more and more mana as time had passed, which had grown its sphere of perception. Since the core’s mana was pure, attributeless mana, that meant that the core had been cleansing the attributes from the ambient mana all along, and all it took was a bit of time for the used mana to be cleansed and returned to the core’s control.

In that case, what happened to the attributes that were cleansed? If mana was likened to water, then attributed mana was water that had been dyed with colors. In order to become pure once again, it had to be filtered and the dye needed to be removed.

How was the core removing the “dye” from the mana to claim more as its own?

What the core found was that the attributes were building up within itself. If an outside observer had been watching the core, they would have noticed that the iridescent colors of the opal that was the base substance of the core had subtly changed throughout its short existence.

Living creatures would sometimes develop or be born with an affinity for a specific attribute of mana, which would allow them greater control of that particular attribute. However, affinities were a double-edged blade, as possessing an affinity also meant that a creature would have less of an ability to access or manipulate other affinities, often losing the ability all together. It was a balance, and the more powerful a fire dragon became, for example, the less likely it would be to be able to use water magic, air magic, or any other attribute of mana aside from fire.

As for the core, its non-biological nature meant that the natural hazards that arose from multiple, clashing attributes caused no harm to the core at all. It was actually developing attributes as it cleansed used or tainted mana and produced pure mana.

Once again, this was something that the core did not understand, but given the overwhelming presence of dirt all around it, it was quickly developing an earth affinity for mana.

At the moment, the opal that made the core had flecks of blue, black, green, brown, and a tiny hint of red, indicating the various affinities it had started to develop. While the brown had not initially existed, it had developed during the core’s time in the crevice in the woods. The green and blue had always been there, but had not initially been related to any particular affinity. As time had passed, the green had come to represent the air affinity. The black was from the eldar dragon Grthak. Blue had been innate to the core from before it had come into existence, so it did not actually indicate any attribute (yet). The hint of red was fire attribute that had come from the heat and flames from Grthak’s egg that had died.

However, there was something important about the core that made it unique in the entire world. There was no other existence that innately used pure, attributeless mana. It was pure, and therefore had limitless potential to take on any attribute at all, which meant that it was useful to every single creature that lived.

Unfortunately, the core had no idea how to take advantage of its building affinities, or use any mana other than its own. Human mages had some level of internal reserves, but that merely acted as a guide. Spells were used with ambient mana of the necessary affinity, or by converting pure ambient mana, but the core exclusively used its own reserves, which was a severe handicap.

On the other hand, upon understanding the basic process of the filtering that was occurring as the core claimed ambient mana as its own, it realized that it might be able to focus on that process and gain more mana. Could this be like the eating it had observed the creatures in its domain doing? But how could the core pull in mana that it did not control?

Without any idea on how to proceed on that front, the core simply decided to return to something that had already worked to strengthen it greatly. It would seize control of another creature.

Unfortunately, it had already learned that it was impossible to do this with the ants, worms, bugs, and other small creatures already present, which meant that the core needed to wait for another larger creature like the mole to draw close.

While waiting, the core also started working on something else. It had noticed that the amount of mana present in the ants had been slowly increasing, though it seemed to be a very slow and natural process simply from their proximity to the core. In the past, the core had not been able to really manipulate its mana much, but it had just claimed its own nest, which had included the ant nest. The core had also noticed that it had a bit of control over the mana within its nest, so could it do a bit more with the ants after the change?

The core concentrated more mana into the ant nest, and specifically, onto the largest ant there was: the queen. That ant already had much higher levels of mana than any of the others, though it was nothing close to reaching what had been present in the mole.

The core pressed, but found that trying to force things did nothing.

Still, gradual changes had already been observed, so it decided to leave the mana concentration and see if anything changed with time.

Another week passed, and the mana concentration in the ants more than doubled. More than that, the core found that the ants had started to feel… more connected. It was a bit similar to the connection it felt with the dirt and stones that made up its nest, yet somehow entirely different.

The core pushed on that malleability that it sensed, and while it did not feel any of the control over the ants it had enjoyed with the mole, there was something new present. It felt like the substance of the ants’ bodies could somehow be controlled like the dirt had been moved before. Well, there was only one thing to try to do then: grow.

The core had already understood that a larger size indicated a greater mana capacity, so if it wanted to be able to control the ants as it had the mole, the ants needed to be larger. If the ants were going to become larger, then it was only reasonable to start with the ant that was making all of the new ants.

The core pushed against the ant queen, willing the small bug to grow larger. There was a powerful resistance, though nothing like what had been felt from the mole. This was not a rigid resistance that needed to be broken, but more of a weight that needed to be moved and set down. Each push from the core changed something, though nothing could be seen. It pushed until the resistance increased, and then decided to stop.

Nothing seemed to be any different, but as it observed over the next few hours, the queen started to eat more and more. She appeared ravenous, and she devoured everything that was brought to her.

The core observed that the queen was slowly, almost imperceptibly, growing larger as she ate. The core had pushed for a change to take place, and had laid the foundation, but nothing had been provided to enable the change that had been demanded. A spark had started a fire, but more fuel was desperately needed to see that spark become a blazing inferno.

The core continued to watch, and the queen continued to eat. She stopped laying eggs, and it was clear that the workers were very upset by this sudden change. They tried to bring the queen more food, and also tried to care for her, but the more time that passed, the more agitated the queen became.

After a day, things came to a head when the queen took a head. She could no longer control her hunger and the overpowering need to eat and fulfill a drive that had been placed upon her. It had rewritten her natural instincts to lay eggs and ensure the survival of her nest, and her entire focus had become on growing herself larger.

One hapless worker did not move quickly enough when delivering food, and the queen bit the worker’s head right off and devoured it.

This was not the way of ants. Ants were not cannibals, and they did not eat their own. For the queen to do so meant that the queen was no longer one of them.

The workers descended upon the queen as though she were an invader, killing her within seconds.

The core observed everything, studying its failure. It had pushed too far too fast, and that had caused the queen’s death.

Days passed, but the ant nest started to die out. The workers continued to gather food and care for the eggs, pupae, and larva, but no more eggs were hatched. The nest was already doomed.

The core understood its mistake, though not how to fix it. It continued to observe, and decided to make its next push a bit more subdued. It seemed it might be important to start small and work towards larger changes, if it wanted to avoid similar failures in the future.

For the time being, the core chose a few worker ants, as well as a few other bugs that lived in the area, and it started pushing on them as well, though much, much gentler than it had on the queen.

Things became rather frantic in the tiny world that was the crevice in the ground of a large forest, as about twenty different ants, beetles, and centipedes embarked on a crazed feeding frenzy, trying to get the nutrients and food to power a forced growth spurt. The population plummeted, and the core watched as some of its experiments devoured each other.

After about a week, there was some level of success. There was a twenty-five centimeter long centipede living in the core’s domain, and the core could clearly feel that this creature was large and powerful enough that it could take control of this one. Finally, the core had another puppet to work with.