Progress proceeded quickly on several fronts, but the core simply could not find any way to produce sunlight underground.

Still, it proceeded with its original plans and made preparations for its eventual success. There was a solution, and the core intended to have everything else ready as soon as a solution was found.

The underground tunnels were expanded, and large open areas were created. After a bit of examination for the different open regions, the core realized that it needed to introduce some water for its creatures and eventual plants, and so it connected to some of the underground water sources it had discovered within its area of control.

It took a bit, but the core eventually figured out how to cycle the water, instead of simply flooding its tunnels or caverns.

It was actually expanding the underground network of tunnels that provided the core with a path forward towards creating sunlight. It had already connected to several small natural caves, and as it continued to expand across the forest and through the ground, it continued to find more.

The core had learned how to connect to the senses of the creatures that had become its puppets. It had begun to do this more and more after obtaining the fragments of the high priest’s memories, as it had realized the value of information that could be obtained through alternate senses. After all, it had only learned of the importance of sunlight for plants through the human’s sense of hearing, and with that, the core had started examining the various senses of its creatures.

The ants primarily used scent and a strange sense with their antennae that seemed both similar and different from scent. The core had not yet learned about the existence of pheromones, and so it was somewhat at a loss to the ants’ pheromone sense.

Earthworms used their sense of touch, though it was a rather unique method that they employed, as earthworms sensed vibrations through their sense of touch.

Foxes and many of the other creatures of the forest used a combination of senses, which included hearing, sight, scent, and touch.

The core had also learned of other senses that most creatures disregarded, yet stood out to the core, given their completely foreign nature to its existence. Senses such as hunger, thirst, heat, cold, balance, gravity. Such things were odd to the core, but it felt that it was important to understand all of the biological senses, as only then could it be certain that it would not miss important information in the future.

The core had also realized that the strength of each species of creatures’ senses could be different, and some were entirely missing certain senses. For example, earthworms had no eyes or ears, which meant that light, sight, and sound meant nothing to the creatures.

The learning and practice experiencing various senses was also how the core had come to understand more precisely why so many creatures would not descend deep into the earth. They simply did not possess the senses necessary to do so. Many creatures navigated by sight, even when they heavily relied on other senses. Bears, deer, and foxes all moved about by seeing their surroundings, and since bears in particular were one of the core’s primary goals for creatures it wanted to introduce into its nest due to their power and size, it spent a good amount of time examining their senses and testing different options for introducing them into the underground areas that were constantly expanding.

It was when the core was exploring a small natural cave with a bear that it had discovered something fascinating. In the depths of the cave, growing from a rotten root from a tree up above, was something that subtly brought a hint of light to the cave.

The light was faint and soft, and could not compare to the brightness or intensity of sunlight, yet the core had found light.

This could change everything.

The glowing mushrooms were quickly examined, but what the core discovered quickly confused it. These things were not plants or animals, but something else. They clearly did not need sunlight to survive, lacked leaves that produced food, yet they had what seemed to be roots. However, as the core continued to investigate the mushrooms, it realized that they lived off of the dead root itself.

This was something the core was thrilled to see, as it hated loss and waste. Such things always felt like it was being robbed, and that was truly the worst feeling imaginable.

The core started to check and push the mushrooms, trying to find the proper way to improve or change them to allow them to produce more light.

Over the years, the core had gotten much better at this process. It had learned the importance of studying multiple samples, and testing several different paths forward at the same time.

It was not long before the core was pushing many different mushrooms, testing size, brightness, color, and more. It tested each aspect individually, and then also tested the successful combinations together, as it had accidentally learned that certain introduced traits could create disasters when combined.

One thing that the core had learned by experiencing the senses of so many different creatures was that not all creatures saw light the same way. There were creatures that could see at night, creatures that could see flowers blaze with brilliant colors in the sun, and creatures that saw with vision that did not even show any colors. Because of this, the core believed that it would be important to incorporate all of the different kinds of light, if at all possible.

Unfortunately, the core quickly found that increasing the brightness of the mushrooms drastically increased the amount of food they required, and things became unsustainable far before the mushrooms reached anything close to a sufficient brightness.

As for the types of light, that had proven to be far easier to achieve.

Was there an answer to provide the mushrooms with greater energy? The mushrooms were already refining and using waste products to feed themselves, which the core was thrilled to see, and it even felt a slight resonance with the mushrooms, though it could not understand why.

It took some time, but eventually, the core found the source of the resonance; the mushrooms were resonating with the black affinity within itself. It was much the same as how the trees and plants in the forest resonated with the life affinity the core possessed.

The core had been in the forest since before it had even noticed its affinities, and that had been long before it had learned anything from Avery’s memories regarding just what affinities even were or how to use them. This was why the core had never noticed any sort of resonances before. It turned out that the core could sense resonances with the natural affinities that living creatures shared with it.

What did this mean and how could the core use this? It had no idea.

The core started to check for more resonances, and it quickly found that where the ambient mana was full of a specific affinity, creatures with the same affinity tended to gather, though it was unknown which was the cause and which was the effect.

After finding that there were several locations within its perception that felt as though they resonated with the same affinity as the glowing mushrooms, it had some of the odd little things moved to those locations to see if that would help with anything.

However, not only did the mushrooms flourish and grow brighter in the locations with higher levels of a decay affinity, the core was able to sense that the reinforcement went both ways. It had just discovered a feedback loop that could be taken advantage of.

Upon finding the feedback loop and how to take advantage of affinity resonances, the core’s research into improving the mushrooms’ functionality proceeded quickly, though progress brought about a new complication; how was such an affinity supposed to be introduced to the core’s tunnels and expanses underground so that the mushrooms would function?

This problem was not overly difficult to settle, as after sensing and gaining some understanding of how to take advantage of natural affinities, the natural progression was to see if affinities could be moved or introduced.

The results were shocking, as the core found that when it tried to feed decay affinitied mana to the mushrooms, regardless of where they were located, the mushrooms reacted powerfully. The bulbous little blobs started growing and glowing even more strongly than when they were placed in a location with their same affinity. On top of that, the core noticed that when supplied with affinitied mana, the mushrooms no longer required soil, water, or nutrients, as they were able to acquire all they needed from the mana.

This triggered a new flurry of experiments, and the core immediately tested to see if life affinitied mana could allow plants to grow underground without light, and also if the same process could be used with creatures.

As it turned out, both questions proved to be true.

Suddenly, new possibilities opened up for the core. It had settled the issue of introducing light to its underground realm, yet no longer needed light to allow plants to grow, and furthermore, it no longer needed plants to feed its creatures.

It could freely create whatever environment it wanted underground, and no longer needed to worry about balancing various life forms in order to have a viable ecosystem.

Things proceeded quickly from there, and in the coming weeks and months, the core created forests, grasslands, and cave systems beneath the forest. Each separate environment was lit from above by the glowing mushrooms so that the animals living there could see and move about, and the animals flourished and reproduced faster than ever with the core feeding all of the living organisms with the properly affinitied mana. The infant animals grew up and reached maturity in a very short amount of time, which allowed the core to quickly fill its various underground expanses.

The core was quickly accomplishing many of its goals so that it could start “farming” humans, but it felt that its creatures were still too weak to protect it adequately from the humans. It needed to somehow strengthen the beasts further.

The core had already learned how to cause creatures to grow to larger in size, and also how to strengthen their shells, pincers, or venom, but what about strengthening or introducing a mana affinity? Could it have foxes manipulating light? Or bears that used fire? Birds that moved faster or attacked with wind? Such things felt like they should be possible.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

The core continued to expand and develop its underground territory, and at the same time, it retracted its influence from the aboveground forest. Creatures changed, morphed and mutated into what the core believed to be greater and more powerful forms.

Preparations continued, as the core worked towards beginning its farming efforts.

***

For the humans, years had passed since the anomaly in the forest had been eradicated at the cost of High Priest Avery’s life. The minor incident had been all but forgotten by the few who had even known about it, until one day, five years after the high priest’s death, a middle-aged General Simon received the oddest intelligence report.

A cave had been discovered that had writing on the entrance. While this would normally be disregarded and treated as nothing more than something done by locals or a cult for some unknown agenda that did not really matter to the kingdom as a whole, the message on this cave was quite unique, and the initial investigation had found that the cave was releasing a large amount of pure mana.

The mention of pure mana instantly brought Simon’s full attention to the report, as he had only ever once before seen such a thing. As he read through the report, he got to what was written on the entrance to the cave:

Enter ye, who fear not pain,

Who riches and strength wish to gain.

Deep below, thy dreams may lay.

Dare thee enter and lay thy claim?

Unfortunately, all of the human writings that the core had learned from the high priest’s memories had been scriptures, and so the core did not even know that it was possible to not write in verse.

Simon set the report down, his mind racing. No one had yet entered the cave, as the locals’ superstitions prevented them from going near the mysterious cave after it had been discovered. They had all insisted that the cave had simply not existed just a week before, and its sudden appearance had unnerved the nearby village. They had a young acolyte who was assigned to the local shrine, and while he had not been able to become a mage priest, he had trained a basic mana sense during his time in the main temple. He had sensed the pure mana leaking from the cave when he had gone to check on what the villagers had reported so that he could erase their fears.

Unfortunately, he had failed to do that.

Simon tried to think of how to handle this matter properly. The last time a hole in the forest had leaked pure mana, it had taken the life of a high priest to eliminate the threat. That previous threat had also been a hole too small for a man to enter, while this new cave was large enough for three men to walk into side-by-side.

Simon did not want to overreact, but despite his rise in the ranks, he still would not casually sacrifice the lives of his men.

A missive was quickly sent to the temple of Hidde, to the new High Priest Aaron. As Aaron had participated in the previous excursion into the forest, Simon wanted both the man’s input, and support before delivering a personal report to the king. This incident had the potential to be too dangerous to ignore.

High Priest Aaron received the message from General Simon, as well as a copy of the initial report that had been submitted. The acolyte who had investigated the cave and found that it was leaking pure mana was not a member of Hidde’s temple, but was an acolyte of Yur, the goddess of the earth and bounty. This was why Aaron had not received any word of the newly discovered cave, and he was startled by the news from Simon. After all, Aaron had obtained his current position because of the previous threat that had been found and eliminated, and if there was any chance that the threat in the forest had not been eliminated and that it had returned more powerful than ever, Aaron would be held fully accountable.

Aaron immediately grew anxious, as he feared for the stability of his position. If the very foundation of his promotion became compromised, not only would he lose all possibility of becoming the next Champion, Hidde’s right hand on earth, he could even be removed from his current position as high priest.

That could not be allowed!

Aaron sent a runner ahead to deliver a message to General Simon as Aaron himself followed behind. This matter was too important to the high priest to not see to it personally and ensure that things were settled in a manner that did not reflect badly on him in any manner whatsoever.

Simon was waiting in his office when Aaron arrived. “Greetings, High Priest Aaron. I trust you read the report I sent to you. I’d like to hear your thoughts before I speak with the king, and I would like your presence and support at that time as well.”

Simon had never lost his directness when speaking, though he had been forced to learn how to develop at least a bit of tact in his speech. However, given how shaken Aaron was by the report he had read and the potential ramifications he faced, Simon could have openly insulted the high priest and Aaron would not have even noticed. “Is anything further known yet? The village of Eren is on the border of the forest, but it is at least two days’ journey from where the previous anomaly was discovered. While the two may be related, it seems too far apart for this cave to be connected to that burrow we saw years ago.”

Even when speaking to Simon, Aaron’s first words were trying to deflect any ideas of incompetence or blame that could fall upon him. He could not give even the slightest appearance of being defensive regarding his previous actions, and that meant that he needed to be very careful in how he addressed every aspect of this matter at all times. At no point in time could even the vaguest consideration of Aaron being negligent during the previous excursion be permitted.

Simon frowned. “All that I know, I shared with you. However, I agree that the location suggests that this is a separate event, though very likely somehow related. I’m wanting to suggest that we send an excursion to investigate this cave, but I would first like to hear your opinion. Given the difficulties we faced before, and the much greater size of this cave compared to that small hole we found before, I’d like to discuss the best combination of people to send. While we did not face much of a physical threat last time, the metaphysical threat was enough to kill a high priest. Given the increased size and potentially increased threat that we face now, I’m uncertain what sort of force would be optimal.”

Aaron went a bit stiff at the request. He had been so preoccupied by the personal threat that this newly discovered cave posed to him that he had not even considered what might need to be done in order to deal with this potential threat. His mind raced as he tried to run some calculations. “This cave allows people to enter, and it appears that either someone is behind the appearance of this cave, or they are simply taking advantage of its appearance. Each of the two possibilities indicates vastly different threats, though the solution remains the same: absolute strength.

“Given what we faced before, I would expect a more intense physical response, so likely more beasts attacking. Also, we saw giant beetles, ants, and centipedes, so I would say that there’s a reasonable chance that there will be more and different monsters that were once beasts. It will be important to make sure that any mages sent be properly protected from any possible physical threats.

“Finally, though perhaps most importantly, we have never been able to determine just what caused High Priest Avery’s death. While his death was determined to have been due to backlash from the spell he controlled, that has never truly sat right with me. Not one other mage felt the slightest bit of discomfort or struggle to maintain control of the spells. There was no reason for the most powerful and experienced of us all to have suffered the only bit of backlash from the spell. Such a thing should have first struck the most susceptible, which would have been the weakest and most inexperienced of us, not our most senior master. We need to remain on guard against unknown and unseen threats that remain a mystery to us.”

Simon nodded. He had not known of the doubts regarding High Priest Avery’s death, but everything else that Aaron had mentioned aligned with Simon’s own thoughts. Still, while Simon had faced mage priests before on the battlefield, an inside perspective could provide greater insights. “Given the fact that this is a cave that can be entered fully, I believe we should consider doing so to be a possible necessity. It might not be possible to end this threat from outside. Should that prove accurate, it will be necessary to have a small, elite force participate. There will not be much room underground, so we will need a team consisting of powerful mages, as well as capable warriors to protect them.

“Mmm… Considering the fact that the cave is only wide enough for three people, given the possibility of fighting, that will only be enough room for one warrior to freely fight, or for two or three men to form a shield-wall. The mages should be positioned at the center, with likely two warriors in front, and another two behind. With four warriors, I would suggest only two mage priests join the team, as any more would not be able to be fully protected.

“Your thoughts?”

Aaron had focused intensely on Simon’s words. Given the general’s background in espionage and assassination, he was far more experienced with moving about in confined spaces in enemy territory. However, the limitations that Simon was voicing gave Aaron chills. Facing an unknown threat with just four warriors and two mage priests? That sounded completely inadequate. Could it be possible to face something worse than what they had dealt with before with such a small team? Last time, they had sent ten mages and twenty soldiers, while Simon was cutting that number down to a mere six people. Was it even possible?

“The numbers you’re suggesting severely limits our options, and would even necessitate sending two high priests, and likely more powerful ones at that. Given the numbers of beasts that attacked us before, can just four warriors keep the mage priests safe?”

“Last time I sent scouts and young warriors. They were adequate to address the threat that we had assessed. This time, I will send a few elites, and the team I am considering should prove more than adequate to the task. Your mages will be safe.”

“I will think of two high priests who can be sent who would capable of single-handedly dealing with what we faced before.”

“Then I believe we should be ready to report this matter to the king and request he approve sending a team to investigate and destroy this cave. My men can be ready to leave tomorrow, as they were already here in the capital after finishing their last mission. How long will your mages need?”

Aaron was growing increasingly irate at Simon’s disrespect to the clergy, and he snapped, “Two of Hidde’s chosen can be prepared by the end of the week. His high priests each shoulder heavy responsibilities, and it will take some time to bring them back from their assignments.”

Simon just nodded, ignoring the fury in Aaron’s voice. “I will request an audience with the king. He should be willing to see us tomorrow, so please be ready. I’ll have a runner sent to inform you as soon as we are provided with a time.”

Simon then turned back to his desk and the various reports he had been going through, clearly dismissing Aaron. Simon understood the importance of a high priest, but there were at least three temples in Guilone alone with varying levels of influence, while the kingdom had only three generals. Simon was well aware of his status with the king and kingdom, and was unafraid of offending a mere high priest. Also, while the general had not acknowledged Aaron’s attitude of superiority, it did not mean that he had not noticed it.

Aaron stormed out of the office in a huff, furious at being dismissed as though he were a mere acolyte in training. Still, he knew that he could not do anything to Simon. The man was not only a general, he was the general who had the king’s ear, and all of the temples acknowledged the king’s divine right to rule. The throne stood above the clergy, and there was no way for Aaron to change that.

It took less than a week for things to be settled, as the king was disturbed by the report he heard from Simon and Aaron. An unknown threat so close to the capital that potentially had the ability to kill a high priest of Hidde was not something the king was willing to ignore. Not only did he approve the mission, and agreeing to Simon’s suggestion of the numbers to be sent, the king then summoned high priests from both of the other two major temples in the kingdom. If only two mage priests could be sent, then the king wanted to make sure that the most qualified individuals were sent. This was not something that he was willing to entrust to Hidde’s clergy alone.

In the end, a powerful earth-affinitied mage priest of Hidde was selected, as well as a healer priestess of Yur. Life affinity was rare, but it was agreed that with such a small team, it was important to ensure that everyone survived.

The king went one step even further, and ordered the priests recalled immediately, and if necessary, they were to be sent straight to the cave instead of first to the capital.

Thus, only four days after Simon and Aaron had spoken with the king, a team of four warriors and two mage priests stood in front of the cave, staring at the words written above the dark entrance to the abyss that lay before them.