The core was furious. It was almost as upset as when it had first been taken from the dragon’s lair years before. Once again, these strange creatures that walked on only two legs had come and ruined everything!

Almost all of the core’s creatures and puppets had been wiped out. It had tried to keep its various creatures hidden in the forest or deep underground, but when it had felt that surge of tainted mana trying to squeeze and destroy its nest, old, forgotten instincts had risen up, and the core had lashed out with everything it possessed as it had tried to protect its “treasure.”

At that moment, not only had the core completely crushed and dominated the attempt to destroy its nest, it had instinctively ordered every last puppet and creature to attack the invaders. The core’s instinctive use of mana had created a backlash that had wounded the mage priest so badly, and the order to attack had induced an unstoppable frenzy upon all of the creatures under the core’s control. The only thing that had prevented a few of the core’s minions from dying was the fact that they were slow and had not been able to leave the underground tunnels in time.

Over the last few years, the core had continued along the path it had discovered. It had continued to develop its nest, sinking deeper and deeper into the earth while creating a bewildering and confusing path downwards.

At the same time, the core had eventually learned how to push the growth of the creatures within its domain. It had to be a slow, gradual process, as the creatures required sufficient sustenance to fuel the changes, as well as enough time to allow them to adapt. However, the core had also learned that it was possible to accelerate the process a second time.

Upon seeing the final results that it wanted achieved, such as greater size, increased strength, sharper claws, fangs or teeth, or more potent venom, it was able to target those changes more specifically, accurately, and efficiently.

Additionally, the core had noticed that certain changes also led to developments in the brains of the creatures, which had been quite confusing. After all, how could faster legs and larger pincers require an ant’s brain to change?

Still, despite not understanding the reasons quite yet, the core had tried inducing the developments in various ways: step by step, one part of the body at a time, body then brain, brain then body, extra slow, extra fast, even all at once.

Interestingly, a nearly instant change had been possible when the core started with the changes in the brain, and then followed with the changes in the rest of the body. It was almost as though the body was trying to match what was in the brain.

Some of the core’s attempts had not been nearly so successful, though those failures were the only creatures still alive. It had attempted things such as ants with thicker carapaces, larger slugs and snails, stronger earthworms, moles with larger teeth, and giant versions of strange armored, multi-legged creatures that first appeared to be like bugs, but were fundamentally different inside. They would roll up into balls, and the core felt that they could prove to be powerful defenders, yet when it tried to make them larger, stronger, and generally more robust, the roly-poly creatures had proven almost incapable of movement and they struggled to even feed themselves.

These failures had been too slow to leave the underground tunnels with the rest of the centipedes, ants, snakes, and beetles. The core had eventually recovered some measure of self-control, and it had instantly tried to recall its forces, but it had already been too late. Only its failures had been far enough away from the humans to remain safe.

Once the humans had left, the core had been able to fully regain its composure, and it had started to try to analyze things. After all, it was still safe, though its forces were terribly depleted. However, the invaders had been completely unharmed, aside from the one who had tried to directly attack the core’s nest.

This proved that the core’s creatures were still insufficient, while the core was actually more capable than it had realized.

This was an interesting revelation, as the core had always believed itself helpless and defenseless, yet its instinctive reaction had actually proven to be its most effective protection. How could it take advantage of this information?

Also, the core started to go back over the times that its creatures had been fighting, and it quickly noticed a few things.

For starters, its creatures were simply too small. They had been unable to reach or damage the humans. Some creatures, such as the foxes, centipedes, rabbits, and squirrels, had been quick enough, but had lacked the size and strength to cause any damage.

The core had improved the centipedes’ fangs, trying to make them larger, stronger, and more venomous once it had come to understand the concept of toxins and how they affected biologicals. Those fangs had proven incapable of penetrating the humans’ “skin” that seemed so strange to the core’s mana sense.

Surprisingly, the beetles had proven the most difficult for the humans to deal with, as only the one who had used mana had been able to harm the creatures in the least.

The reason the core had not expected the beetles to have any effect was because they had proven practically useless within the tunnels or the forest. The beetles were rather harmless, as they did not hunt or attack other creatures, and instead just wanted to be left alone. When they had encountered predators, the beasts had all attacked the beetles’ bellies, which were relatively unprotected, and thus the large bugs had been quickly and easily dispatched.

The core wondered if there was any way to take advantage of the beetles’ defenses in other ways.

Overall, the core felt quite frustrated. It had believed its minions could handle anything, but clearly it had not understood just how powerful creatures could be in the world.

In truth, the core had already known there were more powerful creatures in the world, as there were far more powerful creatures even in the forest. It had detected creatures like wolves, bears, deer, and more, but unfortunately, larger creatures required far, far more mana for the core to gain any control of them, and the creatures simply moved too much. Unless they remained within the core’s perception and mana, it could not permeate their bodies with enough of its pure mana to be able to gain control or influence over them. This was why the core had been limited to only the underground creatures it had raised itself, or the smaller woodland creatures.

As for birds, the core had found them to be absolutely fascinating, but the feathered creatures were simply too skittish, and they seemed capable of sensing even the tiniest changes in their environment, and every time the core had tried to seep its mana into any of the birds-

Suddenly, the core stopped.

As it had been reviewing the “battle” between its minions and the humans, it suddenly realized it had completely overlooked an earlier event. One of the humans had used mana twice, yet both times had done so in a manner that was so strange and at odds with its own usage, that the only way the core had even realized what had happened was because one of the attacks had targeted it directly.

That attacker had used tainted, unclean mana. How?

Any time that mana took on a “flavor,” it was taken away from the core until the mana was filtered and cleansed. Only pure mana could belong to the core.

How had that odd creature mobilized and used the dirty mana? Not only that, it had done so in such an effective manner that the core had actually felt threatened.

Had the core somehow missed something? Was there some additional secret to using mana? All along, the core had been sinking itself into the earth by moving dirt with pure mana, and then it would re-filter and re-purify the mana to reclaim it, but was there a way to use the tainted mana directly and skip those steps?

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This question was so intriguing to the core that it completely forgot about all of its recent losses. It also did not notice the slow surge of rising mana returning to it after so many of its creatures had died. As the core focused on the prospect of using tainted mana, its perception range and area of influence spread out one meter after another. By the time the process stopped completely, the core’s range had spread to encompass a full two kilometers in every direction, more than doubling its territory within a single day.

The core ignored everything as it focused. First, it replayed the exact actions the human had taken when manipulating and using mana. The core automatically ignored the motions and words that the mage priest had employed when preparing the spell, as the core had no understanding of such things. In truth, the core did not even understand the concept of communication, so how could it possibly consider that the human had been moving and speaking to communicate with mana and the gods in order to release a spell.

However, the core had an advantage that no other being on the entire planet had: its perfect mana sense.

There were creatures that possessed such a sense, but it was almost always an acquired sense, and it was absolutely always a supplemental form of perception. The core was the only being in existence that had only a single sense, and thus it had unwittingly honed its mana sense to what even the gods would consider to be an impossible level.

With its perfect memory and peerless mana sense, the core was able to replay the exact mana manipulations that the human had employed in pristine detail. In fact, to better perceive exactly what had happened, the core removed the human from the replay entirely, and rewatched only the movements of the mana that had occurred in the moment leading up to the mana attack it had suffered, as well as what had happened immediately afterwards.

After a while, the core realized that without the human included in its analysis, there was something missing. The image of the human rejoined the moving, flowing mana, and at that moment, everything fell into place perfectly.

The human had a small reserve of mana, but the core had completely ignored the fact that the human had a tiny trace of the impurities that existed in the ambient mana in the ground that the core had been filtering out and storing within itself. The human had actually used those impurities to create a resonance between his own mana and the earth attribute mana in his surroundings. The human had not used his own mana to attack, but had used his own mana to control the ambient mana into attacking for him!

This was no different from how the core used creatures under its control to carry out actions in place of itself. This was a method that the core could completely understand and relate to, but it was a shocking revelation that it could direct and control mana that did not belong to it.

The core searched within itself for the accumulated impurities that had gathered over the years. When it compared itself to the human, the core had at least ten times more impurities that related to the earth affinity.

The core started trying to replicate the movements human’s mana had gone through, though it quickly realized that it needed to modify things heavily. After all, the core did not have the same physical form as a human. The structure, shape, size, and composition were all completely different with no similarities whatsoever.

What to do?

It did not take the core long to analyze the situation and come up with a solution. Simply enough, it had to create its own mana manipulation technique that created the same effect as what the human had done. While this should have been impossibly difficult to do, the core felt that it should be quite simple: all it had to do was analyze each movement the mana had taken when the human had been using his mana, and find a matching movement that created the same effect.

This was only possible because of the core’s mana sense, as it was able to perceive the effects of every tremor and vibration in the mana, and then conduct a side-by-side comparison between what it was doing and what the human had done.

In this manner, the core proceeded to initiate a multi-week study into trying to find a proper technique with which to be able to start manipulating earth affinity mana.

As this occurred, the core started automatically replicating its previous processes in producing and improving various creatures within its field of influence. The core did not realize itself that it was essentially programming itself to automatically perform certain actions. The core did not have a brain, and instead, its mind and soul were bound to a gemstone, and this meant that the core was not restricted to biological processes. It was able to practically program itself to replicate any task that had already been accomplished in the past, even if adjustments and modifications were needed. This allowed the core to focus entirely on its self-assigned task, while also restoring its previous strength.

After a few days, the new ants, beetles, centipedes, and other creatures were well on their way to achieving the size and strength of their predecessors. Even if those predecessors had failed, the core still felt uncomfortably vulnerable without some level of protection, and so it planned to rebuild its forces to their previous strength. After that, hopefully it would be able to find some way to further strengthen and improve the various creatures, given what it was learning.

Several days passed, and the core made rapid progress. In fact, it had already learned how to duplicate the process the human had used to manipulate ambient, tainted mana, but something had felt… wrong about the perfectly replicated process. The most obvious problem was that the core felt that the process was too involved, and too many bits and pieces to the process felt wasteful, or even completely unnecessary. However, even after the core had eliminated portions of the process and started streamlining others, something had still felt wrong. It felt almost as if it was giving something away, which was naturally something that was impossible for the core to even consider. Whatever belonged to the core was its possession; its treasure, and it would never willingly part with any such thing.

Once the core dug into the process deeper, it found the exact portion that felt wrong, and instantly realized why. It was giving something away: its own mana. A minuscule portion of the core’s pure mana was being taken away, and in exchange, the resonance between the core’s affinity and the tainted mana in the ambient surroundings was triggered.

This was unacceptable and could not stand.

The core continued to examine the process, going deeper and slower into the mana manipulation. Eventually, it realized that the sacrifice of mana allowed for a critical step in the process to be skipped entirely. The connection between itself and the ambient mana was not part of the process. In some manner that escaped the core, the sacrifice of its own mana established a connection between the taint built up within itself, and the tainted mana nearby.

Upon realizing the missing portion, the core started trying to find a way to introduce it. How could it connect to something that did not belong to it?

What the core was missing was that the human had been a mage priest, which meant that his magic came from his god. The man’s spell had been, in large part, a prayer to his god asking for aide. The resonance between the human and the ambient mana had literally been established through divine intervention.

This was not how all magic was produced or even how all spells were cast, but the truth remained that it was very difficult for humans to create the same resonance with the natural world that certain magical creatures could perform innately.

The core was trying to copy a spell with divine portions of it and remove the god who was central to the spell-prayer.

It took a little while, but eventually the core found that by leaking a bit of its own taint outside and into the surrounding area, it was able to create the resonance it needed.

With that connection established, the core had a full mana manipulation technique, and it was even a more efficient technique than the one that had been used by the human.

With its new technique, the core immediately tested it out, and to do so, it tried to perform the same action it had performed countless times before during the last few years: it dug its hole further down.

Unfortunately, the core had become accustomed to brute-forcing its way through the process, and the gentlest comparison to make was that up until this point in time, the core had been trying to dig a hole with a teaspoon. This new mana manipulation technique had essentially given the core proper tools, as well as a team to use them. The core was no longer manipulating the earth itself, but was directing the earth affinity mana in the ground surrounding it to do the work instead.

Realistically, the difference was going from working alone and digging a hole with a spoon, to becoming the foreman of a work crew who were all equipped with shovels and picks.

In short, when the core tried to dig down with the same level of effort it had used before, it opened a vast cavern and dropped nearly 200 meters down into a spherical cavern that it had just opened up.

During the course of nearly four years, the core had managed to dig a network of tunnels into the ground that descended about 150 meters, and extended about that far in various directions. It had opened small chambers for its creatures, as ants needed to lay eggs, moles needed a nest, and other such spaces were necessary.

In an instant, the core had moved more dirt than it had throughout its entire existence.

Also, it was plummeting through empty space as it dropped to the new bottom of its nest.