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POV Unnamed Dungeon

???, Day Seven

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The last couple of days had been very eventful for Nellie. The moment that she started to shape her Inner territory, the hard barrier preventing her from reaching outwards loosened. Distracted by this new development, Nellie abandoned her building of the room in the Inner to see if she could get through the barrier.

Knowing she’d need more soil for her rooms and future endeavours, Nellie took one of her mana strings and tried throwing it out of her territory. Surprisingly, the mana string could pierce through the once unbreakable barrier before it looped back to her. Over and over again, Nellie continued to push her strings as far as she could throw them. By the time she got a metre away from her territory, something began to happen.

The moment that she added another metre to her territory on the top, any strings she threw dissipated, and the sparks slowly floated back towards her.

Considering the last time she was blocked, it was a hard barrier; this was different. Sure, it stopped any more expansion, but it also told Nellie that it was not definite. It also meant that working on her Inner territory led to her success in expanding her Outer.

So, she spent the time needed to quickly expand her Outer territory by a metre on all sides before returning to her Inner territory.

It was much easier to melt the ice in her Inner territory than in the Outer. Quickly, she had a rather smooth room that was two metres tall and just under three metres wide, filled with water and the remaining stone.

To get the true vision of what she wanted, Nellie quickly froze the first fifty centimetres of water before she chipped them into chunks. Nellie fused most of the smaller ice chunks onto the walls and ceilings, creating small crevices and ledges. She made the rest of the ice chunks into condensed ice pebbles or into little structures or movements along the floor and stone areas.

As the environment was now ready for soil, plants, and fungi, Nellie had to figure out how to move the materials and living beings through her territory.

It was quite easy in her Inner territory. All Nellie had to do was essentially divide the amount of space from the ice, and then she had her tunnel that went from the room to the portal. When she got to the Outer portion, it took a bit longer for her to figure out a workable process, but she did. It was a complex process of melting a tunnel the size she needed, turning the water back to ice, and manipulating the ice to completely seal the tunnels behind her.

It was tedious to take scoops of soil from her new territory and drag them through all the tunnels back to the room in her Inner territory. But she dragged enough soil from the Outer territory and filled the crevices and ledges with enough soil to sustain the bryoria lichen.

To finish off the room, Nellie cut a small piece of the fungi and the plant before bringing it back to the room, rapidly growing and cutting more pieces off to develop more of the fungi and plant.

After completing the room, she then hatched the cylindrical dark grey eggs.

Fully grown, the eggs turned out to be a metallic gray beetle about five centimetres long and three centimetres wide.

It had a round rectangular-shaped head, a centimetre long, and a larger oval-shaped body. It had wings that were delicately protected by the wing cases. The wings were transparent with small, irregular white lines and marks. On the beetle's head were two small antennas, and it had two small mandibles at its mouth. While the beetle's carapace was a metallic grey, its underside had a more coppery undertone.

Luckily enough, the five beetles that emerged from the eggs were a mix of male and female, so at least Nellie didn’t have to worry about a diminishing source of fauna.

The metallic chafer beetles, as Nellie decided to call them, found their home quickly within her Outer territory. With some changes in how she influenced growth, Nellie was able to have them reproduce quickly.

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Seven days in, and Nellie was quite happy with her progress. She already had a few caves and a room built, a species of fauna, flora, and fungi, and a way to increase the size of her Outer territory.

Nellie considered what she wanted to do. The ideas of exploration or experimentation haunted her as she couldn’t figure out what she wanted to do first.

I guess experimentation can wait a bit. Nellie decided as she once again attempted to expand her territory.

With the birth of the metallic chafer beetles, Nellie noticed an uptick in purple sparks circulating through her territory.

Looking inward at her nebula, she realized that it had changed.

When she first discovered her nebula core, it was only a two-centimetre sphere, and while quite similar in size, it was just a tiny bit bigger. It was hardly noticeable, but Nellie could see the differences between the past and current size. And it wasn’t just the slight size change that made her nebula different. There was a considerable change in the amount and type of sparks that circulated around her core.

The very centre of her core was much more densely packed with the purple-violet sparks. Nellie could only spot the bubbling and movement of the sparks, as there were no spaces between the purple sparks in the centre. Surrounding the centre of her nebula was a lot more spark circulation, not just the purple sparks. Compared to the dark green sparks in her nebula, the light blue sparks quintupled in amount.

Nellie continued studying her core as a realization hit.

Was the addition of species, manipulation of ice, and development of her Inner territory what caused her core to develop?

Was that why there was an increase in purple sparks circulating her territories?

Nellie didn’t take long to realize that the number of purple sparks she had increased her chances of gaining more territory.

With a mana string in hand, she started to throw it upwards. As it looped back, her purple sparks seemed sufficient to allow the expansion and quickly moved in to begin circulating in that area.

She moved upwards and upwards, gaining large swaths of land that became increasingly saturated with soil and less ice and stone. Nellie reached a metre and ten centimetres above her territory before she began feeling tremors.

Small vibrations appeared at the very top edge of her territory in the Southwest section.

Nellie stared in trepidation as the vibrations started getting stronger and stronger.

With nervousness, Nellie whispered. Oh god, what is that?

In a reducing sense of horror, her territory was breached as a small hole appeared where the tremors appeared.

The hole, well, a tunnel, was small, but what appeared from it was something out of a fantasy movie.

A worm-like creature slowly began moving into her territory. Its appearance made her skin itch and crawl, as a being not of her own was not naturally welcomed in her domain.

The worm was dark grey, with the occasional tentacle-like thing growing across its body. It didn’t have any eyes that she could spot, but it had 22 tentacle-like nodules at the tip of its face.

Quite quickly, the worm creature seemed to scent something as its tentacle nose began to twitch, and the worm began rapidly digging to her closest mana string.

That nervousness that she felt rapidly shifted into horror as Nellie watched as the worm began to devour a spark that it managed to grab.

The pain she felt was like a horsefly taking a chunk out of her skin.

No. No! NO!!! Shrieked Nellie as she watched it catch and hunt down more of her purple mana sparks.

She did everything to try to stop the worm. From hitting it to trying to pierce it with her mana string to even trying to remove the circulating strings out of the worm's range, but nothing worked.

As she watched the worm devour more and more purple sparks, she seethed in rage.

Every living being within her territory felt Nellie’s anger and bristled with rage. But the only thing that could move and try to do anything about it was the metallic beetles.

Without any pushing by Nellie, half of the beetle population began slowly digging towards the beetle.

With great surprise, Nellie rushed to help the beetles. She moved the soil to the side as they solemnly marched towards the invader. Nellie readied for the attack as the beetles marched towards the worm's location.

Despite the instinctual wrongness of letting the worm consume her sparks, Nellie cut a tiny string laden with a few sparks. Carefully placing it in the worm's path, she hoped it would stall the worm from moving anywhere as the beetles converged on its location.

With lines of beetles waiting in the four tunnels that led to the worm's location, she opened the tunnels without the worm noticing.

The beetles swarmed the worm.

The worm gave a piercing shriek that seemed to vibrate what purple sparks were left in the area as the beetles began to pierce the unguarded side of the worm. The beetles savagely tore chunks of flesh off the worm. Writhing in pain, the worm tried to crush the beetles against the soil to get them off of it, but it didn’t work. The beetles soon made quick work of the worm. Consuming enough flesh that the creature finally died off with a pitiful wail.

In victory, the beetles dragged the remains of the worm through the tunnels and back to the room of their birth.

Nellie watched in an alarming surprise as the beetles feasted on the worm's flesh.