Well, thought Alexis, at least I didn't get it completely wrong.

His, Mareian's, and all of the crew and the one adventurer team that they hired for the trip had an eventful journey to the Kugluk plateau.

About a day into their trip, they were besieged by pirates. Not an uncommon thing to happen in the Huracan Ocean, but as their ship went at full speed, trying to outrun the pirates, they got caught up in a medium-sized storm.

As the crew tried to get the ship under control, the rest of them were clinging onto the railings and posts, trying to stay on the ship.

The storm raged and raged for two days, but from the captain's calculations, the storm was pushing them toward the plateau.

Alexis just hoped the storm would break soon, as he didn't think that he could take the rockiness of the boat and the sea sickness that came with it anymore.

POV The Dungeon Core

They played around a bit with creating monster cores and discovered something interesting.

In the creation of a monster mana core, if you add strings of different lengths, it changes the amount and ability of a monster's use of the mana string.

They found this out when they cut one centimetre off one of their ice mana strings, attached it to their own mana string, and rolled it into a core that they then placed in a crystal krill.

The krill evolved into a monster similar to their ice krill, but it was different. It had the same general appearance but acted differently, creating and using ice differently.

Instead of grouping into a swarm, this krill seemed perfectly fine by itself. But when the krill monster got spooked, it created this thin, circular sphere of ice around itself, like a shield.

Now this was interesting, but when the child did the same process, except with a five-centimetre piece of ice mana string, the krill that came out created a more extensive, denser, and more powerful shield of ice.

Doing this a couple more times, with different lengths of ice mana, the child saw a clear correlation to how powerful the monster's ability to manipulate and create ice was.

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They named it the sphere ice krill.

As they were doing this, two blue screens popped up.

You have created a variation of an ice krill monster called "Sphere Ice Krill."

If variations of monsters do not stray too far from the original species, then it will be counted as one monster species within your available monster slots.

Variations of monsters opened a whole new future of possibilities. Still, the child was curious about if they could create a core of mana that was not made using their own mana.

If they could create this, would the creature or plant they placed it in become a monster? A monster with an extreme amount of power? Something different?

The possibilities of different outcomes intrigued the child if they could even do this. But they created cores with ice mana in them, so they wanted to try.

Doing the same process, the child chose a string of ice mana, about 10 centimetres long, and started rolling and condensing it into a perfect sphere.

And it stuck.

They rolled it, condensed it, and it stayed that way.

So they went on to the final test.

Placing it within a living being and seeing what the effect was.

The child went a different way from the krill and chose a simple bird fern from the fifth floor.

Blue screens started popping up as soon as the child placed it and sewed it into the plant.

Congratulations! You have just made your first elemental core!

Elemental cores are physical cores made out of condensed mana strings. These cores can be used in many ways and are extremely powerful. If placed within creatures or plants, elemental cores can place them on the first step of becoming something alive made purely out of that elemental core.

Congratulations! You have just made your first elemental species!

Elemental species are creatures or plants that are part of an element. They are created in areas with extreme amounts of specific mana strings or when they consume an element core. In order to become a being made purely out of that element, then they would need to consume more and more of the same elemental core.

Please name your elemental species.

The child reading through the influx of information that the blue screens gave made the child realize that they created something powerful, even if they didn't truly realize just how powerful it could be. But from what they gleaned, the elemental bird fern was only a baby in terms of power.

They turned towards the elemental core-powered bird fern and saw something they hadn't seen before.

The plant looked like it was carved from ice. It was a sculpture of some sort that didn't look like it was alive, but it was. It was a plant made from what it looked like to be living ice. The elemental ice core shifted just like their monster cores, and it turned into a one-centimetre three-dimensioned diamond-shaped core.

But the child realized that they created something that was greatly desired if they read the blue screens right. That this could be greatly dangerous for them, especially if it was found someone was dangerous to them.

So the child hid the plant. They moved it to a small hole concealed within the roots of a mangrove that was not easily seen if you did not know how to look.

They will continuously move it deeper and deeper into their dungeon as they create new floors.

The child named it the "glacies fern," and a blue screen popped up again.

You have created the elemental species "Glacies Fern."

The need to continue building and becoming more powerful became even more apparent to the dungeon core. So the child started on their eighth floor.

They took their original inspiration from the overgrown greenhouse room and wanted to use this entirely for their eighth floor.

Digging out a series of three rooms with tunnels connecting them one by one, the rooms reached 10 metres in height and 20 metres in length; the child kept a large amount of ice from being condensed into the walls for the other aspect that they wanted to create.

And they hoped that their vision for this floor would work.