As soon as the invaders were completely beyond its perception, the core restored the mana within its nest to normal. As far as the core was concerned, everything, absolutely everything, had completely changed.

When the core had lashed out at the dangerous invader and killed the creature, everything had happened almost instantly, but that single moment had truly been a defining moment.

When the high priest had died, the core had sensed something start to leave. It had felt almost exactly the same as when one of the core’s puppet creatures died, but this time, instead of that strange energy that held memories and sensations moving towards the core, it had been pulled away from the core. This was the first time the core had noticed this strange remnant energy even appear at the death of a creature that did not belong to the core, but given the benefits the core reaped from that energy it received when its own creatures perished, it had refused to allow the opportunity to escape.

The core had instantly tried to lock down and pull that strange energy to itself, but not only had the energy resisted on its own, some other power had quickly struck and ripped the energy away from the core. The core’s full strength and willpower had been utterly helpless before that foreign power.

However, the core’s efforts had not been entirely in vain, as it had managed to grab hold of a small portion of the energy before it had been ripped away, and the core had also realized that the energy had a small core of its own, and that core had been the origin of the resistance that had appeared, as well as what the foreign energy had grabbed hold of. This had left the rest of the energy rather free for the core to rip away and seize as its own.

And what a harvest that had proven to be!

After that strange energy had entered the core, it had been flooded with sensations and memories, but they had been so much more vivid than anything it had experienced from its own creatures. It was not that the human—the core had learned not only the concept of names, but also what the invaders were called!—had more intense or refined senses, but that Avery had had a far more intense sense of existence. The fragmented memories the core had received had shown that the human weighed certain memories and experiences as far more important than others, he had even considered certain other humans to be more important! This was such a novel experience to the core. Could its own minions have varying value and importance? What of itself? Should it regard certain experiences as more important? What would that change? Would it improve things?

The core had only received a total of a few disjointed years worth of the high priest’s memories, yet that had already introduced concepts such as buildings and construction, farming, diversification of roles, language, writing, more versatile uses of magic, and even the more vague concepts of things such as emotions, art, music.

Music was such a foreign concept, that even with the memories of Avery’s hearing, the core still could not fathom such a thing.

The core had quickly moved past anything that had to do with the strange sense of hearing and focused on other things. Things such as… farming.

While the core had noticed ants harvesting food from aphids before, that had ceased when the ants had gained a larger size and the aphids had not.

However, humans farmed both plants and animals, and gained many different benefits from farming. It supplied them with food, clothing, and labor.

While the core had readily seized control of creatures in close proximity, and had observed the various stages of reproduction, it had never considered the idea of purposely causing more creatures to be born so that it could have easier access to the living resources it required.

The core already craved more humans and wanted to start harvesting them immediately, but with other memories that it had gained from the high priest’s death, the core had started to gain a small idea of just how insignificant it was in the grand scheme of things, and it felt rather helpless.

There were far, far more humans than it had ever expected to exist, and the world was also far, far larger than it had ever considered. It had learned of the existence of Farun, and had gathered that there were other human groups in other places, but those specific memories had been missing.

Even more importantly, the core had learned of the absolutely terrifying existence of the humans’ gods. After all, Avery had been a high priest of Hidde, so even just a few years of the man’s memories had contained a great deal regarding Hidde, his temples, and his powers.

The idea of a physical, non-physical entity with powers that were far beyond anything the core had ever considered possible was quite terrifying. The core had even managed to learn of a few historical incidents where Hidde or other gods had directly intervened in human affairs, and those stories had made the core absolutely certain of one thing: it could never afford to antagonize the gods.

On the other hand, the core wanted to seize as much as possible from humans. The high priest’s death had not only provided the core with memories, it had also granted the core a tremendous boost to its mana. In fact, the core’s range had extended by nearly a third with that one death. Years of the core’s slow and steady efforts towards growth had been outdone in a single moment from just one death. Such efficiency could not be ignored.

However, what could also not be ignored was the fact that the humans were absolutely capable of destroying the core, even if it would take a great deal of effort. The core needed to keep itself safe while harvesting this new resource, and that meant that it had to make new preparations.

The best option would be to somehow farm the humans. Raise them up and harvest them in safety, but that seemed terribly complicated. Humans required so many different things besides food and water, and on top of that, the core did not even have any humans to start the reproduction process.

That thought triggered another question; why did humans place such importance on their emotions when it came to reproduction? Why not take the nearest healthy human available? Choosing a single mate, or even several, and spending so much time and effort with them felt incredibly inefficient from the core’s perspective.

No, it would be best to treat the humans’ settlements that already existed as a farm, which meant the core just needed to find a way to harvest when the humans were developed and ready.

It seemed the core needed to somehow both attract humans to itself while also harvesting them.

How could it convince creatures that it did not control to sacrifice themselves for the core’s own benefit? This seemed to defy the survival instinct that the core had observed in every living creature it had encountered.

As the core was considering human motivations, it remembered some confusing memories it had observed. Avery had occasionally given away little bits of metal in exchange for items from other humans, or even for them to perform certain actions. One particular memory the core had observed had been of a small human—a child?—trying to simply take Avery’s bag of metal.

That had not gone at all well for that small human.

It seemed that little bits of metal were very important to the humans, and they were willing to take risks to get more.

This might be the right path to take.

The longer the core contemplated the idea, the more it took hold.

The core would lure humans into the depths of its nest by enticing them with bits of metal, and then kill them before they could escape!

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But wait, if it did that, how many times would it work before the humans stopped taking the risk and just walking to their deaths?

No, as much as the core hated the idea of giving anything away, it realized that it would have to treat certain sacrifices as being no different from a human farmer feeding their cattle or watering their plants. Small sacrifices made over time that led to a larger harvest in the end.

Also, the core checked a few more memories and realized that those farmers never harvested all of the animals at once. A few always survived so that they could reproduce and provide more later on.

This felt like a true path forward for the core.

This also meant that the core needed to change and prepare. Its nest was not ready for humans. The tunnels were too small, and its creatures were too weak. Both of those things would need to be rectified.

Also, the core needed to find some of those metal pieces. Did the humans make them? Find them? Harvest them from some other creature? That needed to be determined as well.

Finally, the core had also realized that it needed to shift its entrance if it wanted to stay safe. Humans had already visited the opening to its nest twice, and they would likely return again. Until the core was ready to welcome its first harvest, it needed to stay hidden from the humans.

With that, the entrance that had been plugged with a large boulder collapsed entirely. The first twenty meters beneath the surface of the forest was completely filled with dirt and rock, packed tightly, and reinforced with mana in order to keep the lower regions stable and safe.

With all access to the surface and the forest sealed, the core started creating new passages about a mile away from its original entrance. Its creatures needed access to the surface, and it also wanted to start working towards adapting some of the forest creatures to live and survive within its nest. It would need more powerful minions for it to be able to harvest the humans when they came to visit.

As the new passages began to open, the core made sure that they were large enough for humans to enter. The creatures clearly preferred to move about upright on only their rear legs, which meant that the tunnels had to be taller than they were wide.

Also, the core liked the idea of opening up a few more chambers like the one it had accidentally opened earlier, as it would be much easier to assault the humans from all sides within an open chamber than it would within a tight tunnel.

Time passed, and the core continued its expansion efforts.

Sure enough, the humans did return to the core’s original entrance to its nest, and they performed a long, elaborate ritual after days were spent carving the boulder that had once blocked the core’s entrance tunnel. The stone was reshaped into the rough form of a human, but that was the extent of the core’s knowledge of the matter. The only answer it could come up with to make a stone take on the external form of a human could be their concept of “art.”

As for the core, there were several issues that it encountered as the weeks passed. It had eventually managed to subdue several of the larger forest creatures, but they had resisted strongly when the core had tried to move them into its nest. It was a similar, though weaker, resistance to when the core tried to order a creature to die. There was an innate resistance for the deer and bears to move underground for almost any length of time.

The deer had actually provided a bit of an answer to the core, as it realized quickly that there was absolutely no food available for the deer within its nest, and that led to another round of developments. The deer clearly ate plants in the forest, and they seemed to like hiding among the trees. The core had observed that plants mostly grew from seeds, and it was easy enough to have various seeds moved into its tunnels.

That was where the trouble truly started, as the seeds simply would not grow more than their initial sprouting. The core simply could not understand what was going on. It had made sure that the seeds had similar soil and water to what was available on the surface, yet they still died.

It tried pushing to encourage growth, yet plants always died.

What was missing?

The core returned to the human’s memories, and examined all of the memories for the human’s interactions or observations of plants.

Unfortunately, Avery had been a high priest of Hidde, great god of battle. The high priest had barely ever paid attention to plants, and so the core was forced to try to piece things together from its own observations of Avery’s memories, and that had proven quite difficult as well.

Again and again the core had returned to the human’s memories, reviewing every single sight, sound, smell, and touch.

The breakthrough came from the most innocuous interaction, and the core only found it after overcoming its aversion to sound.

Avery had once confronted a servant in the temple of Hidde when she had been moving a potted plant. The woman had replied by saying the plant was dying because it lacked enough sunlight where it was, and she was moving it so that it would receive more sun.

That had caused the core to revisit every memory it had ever observed all over again.

Sure enough, there was some sort of bright, glowing orb in the sky far overhead in the vast majority of the human’s memories. The core had only a single sense, which was its mana sense. The core lacked any sort of long-range sense that could compare to vision. It possessed nearly perfect perception of anything within its mana range, but there was no way at all for it to observe anything from beyond that. Light entering the core’s perception range did not provide it with any sight of where the light came from or what it might have reflected off of, so the sun was a foreign concept to the core.

As for the memories of the creatures and the one human that the core had acquired, creatures accepted the existence of the sun, but did not observe or question it. In many ways, it was usually the same for humans. People would notice if it was cloudy, dark, bright, sunrise, or sunset, but the existence of the sun was such a natural part of the world as a whole, that people subconsciously dismissed the sun unless there was something unusual about it.

After realizing the existence of the sun was important for the life and growth of plants, the core revisited the memories of both Avery and the various creatures it had obtained. Sure enough, more plants grew where there was sunlight, and no plants grew where it was completely dark.

This was a massive obstacle, as how was the core supposed to create light within its nest?

Not knowing what else to do, the core could only dismiss the idea of moving plants, deer, wolves, and bears into its tunnels for the time being. Until the issue of providing light was handled, there would be no progress.

The core shifted priorities, deciding it would need to take a slower route than it had anticipated. First, it should revisit all of the human’s memories, this time focusing on those bizarre sound-based interactions that had taken place so frequently. If something like sunlight had been hidden in those details, then what else might the core learn?

After that, the core had also seen from the memories that there was more than just earth magic that could be learned. There was fire, water, air, earth, life, death, and more. Each of those types of magic had a corresponding affinity and manipulation technique, and the core wanted to learn as many different types of magic as possible. With all that was possible with earth magic, what else could be possible with the other affinities?

The core needed to first identify its own affinities, and then start developing manipulation techniques for each of those affinities.

Peering inwards, the core saw the brown of its earth affinity that it had used and developed over the years, but it also found a decent amount of deep green, which seemed to resonate with the forest up on the surface. By prodding and testing the deep green, the core realized that it was what Avery had referred to as a life affinity.

Following the brown and green, the next to most prominent colors in the core was black. As the core tested and probed this color, it received a feeling reminiscent of the forest floor and the dirt right beneath the leaf cover. Continued testing and prodding revealed that this was an affinity that Avery had never known about, but the core could sense that it had something to do with reducing dead matter to dirt.

It was a decay affinity, and it was one of the affinities that humans could not develop, as it would kill them. Grthak had been a decay dragon, which had caused their black color, and also caused them to be so mysterious to the human kingdoms. This affinity was also what had led to Grthak’s death. The rebounded attack of their own decay affinity-based attack had caused the dragon’s internal organs to start to decay, and was why a single attack had been so devastating to such a powerful being.

There was also a pale green color, which was the air affinity, and following that was a soft blue color, which was a water affinity.

Finally, there was a tiny hint of red which proved to be a fire affinity.

The core devoted itself to several tasks. One was gathering more creatures into its control, mostly by implementing its new concept of “farming.” It continued to encourage its creatures to reproduce, and then accelerating the growth and development of the offspring

Another task was learning the manipulation techniques so that the core could control all of its current affinities. This was not terribly difficult, as it simply needed to modify its existing manipulation technique to work with other affinities. Since the core had already created the first manipulation technique, modifying it further was relatively simple.

Finally, the core tried to find some way to produce light that could be introduced into its tunnels and underground chambers. It was imperative that it find the means to do this, as otherwise the core would be permanently handicapped in developing its nest so that it could start farming the humans.