I am not a smart gem. I’ve gotten smarter since my reincarnation, but I still have my habits, and one of them is to avoid thinking deeply about my plans.
My grand plan to evict my unwanted vestibule-sitters was to take my secondary entrance and move it to the mage spire. Then I would open up the pathway connecting the two vestibules and close the one at the capital and return that gateway to my dungeon. If the refugees don’t immediately notice the new exit, that’s fine, I’m sure the mages who will come to investigate the suddenly appearing doorway will find them, and they would then finally leave. The refuse in my halls can be absorbed moments later, and it will be clean, finally.
Without considering the obstacles inherent in such a plan, I immediately began to implement it!
Releasing the grip I had on the fabric of space inside my entrance was a pleasant sensation. How other dimensional mages were able to hold stretched or compressed space for long periods was beyond me, and I was leaning heavily on my dungeon core nature. The only kind of exhaustion I experienced was emotional. Magical fatigue was alien to my new life. With the dimensional expansion inside the gateway released, the doorway appeared to be bricked over. My internal focus within my dungeon showed me that none of the refugees had marked the change. With a mental shrug, I turned back to the plan; they would notice when the mages arrived.
Releasing the grip outside the doorway had the door slipping back through the long tunnel of stretched space and returning it to my dungeon. In the back of my mind, I could feel miss blue box informing me that I had increased one of my skills a single point with my action. Ignoring my increase, I kept focused on my goal. Now was the point where I had to rush. My gateways were closed, and the mana density in my dungeon was rising. Before my mana suffocated me, I had to move my exit and open it.
Grabbing the world around my secondary gateway, I focused on the point of view from my [Far Seeing]. Compressing the world around my gateway to a small point, I then began to tunnel in the direction that was out of line with the standard three dimensions I was comfortable with. Pushing, I stretched my tunnel out further and further as it reached the place near my vision. With a surge of force, I tried to push back into normal space…
…and failed.
It was as if I ran face first into a wall made from store-brand jello. My mental hold on the gateway started to slip from my surprise before I clenched tighter and tried to wrestle through the resistance. The view from my [Far Seeing] showed the world bulging and distorting where I was trying to break through while grey and red flickers of some kind of spell flowed in and smoothed the space. My skills dinged multiple times, miss blue box screaming for attention, but I ignored it while I attempted to brute force through into the mage spire grounds.
If the mages had blocked scrying, then teleportation would be on the list of magic to prevent. Until I had bounced face first (figuratively) off the ward, I hadn’t even considered it. I had become comfortable with the idea of magic being rare in this world and limited to a precious few, an obvious mistake when trying to warp onto the grounds of a magical academy.
The pressure in my dungeon was building, but there was still time. I wasn’t reaching a critical stage by any means, but the refugees were awake and panicking. I could have moved my gateway outside the school grounds or even outside the city. But at this point, I was going to be stubborn.
I had been pushed around by the gods, but they were gods, and there was little I could do about it. A powerful mage and paladin had tried to conquer my dungeon, but I had succeeded in fighting them off…well…fighting her off. I was not about to let some spell stop me from doing what I wanted!
Pinching my dimensional grip into an even tinier point, I stabbed the new needle-like dimensional space into the fabric of the world and pierced through the spell! My elation was short lived as three mages came running, robes flying behind them, and started to gesture at the puncture in space, their mana slamming into the warding spell and pinching my dimensional hole closed. With the way shoved closed, even if there was a puncture, the mages slowed their headlong rush and began to walk as they waved their arms and muttered.
Refusing to back down, I expanded the space within my gateway, leaving the mana to rush out. Where precisely that gateway led to if it was pinched tight into a tiny hypodermic needle of space, pinched on the outside, human-sized on the inside, and all twisted ninety degrees to the rest of the world? I had no clue. But where ever it was, the leaking mana blazed through space in every direction like a released firehose, permeating every inch of the grounds around the mages. The sudden outpouring caused the mages to stagger and their eyes to wave wildly trying to find the source.
Pressing against the still ruptured puncture in space I tried to drive my needle of a gateway through, the spells pinching it closed flaring into incandescent waves of color as I hammered against the resistance. I would not be denied! Dungeons do not bow to mages with beards and silly robes!
My anger, my frustration, and my helplessness all slammed through me as I pummeled the spells. I found the puncture in space far too well reinforced, the pinhole of space barred with a webbing of magic. Instead, I slammed into the area around the hole, tearing long rips into the dimension, removing the very bracing the spells used to hold against the punctures opening.
My tearing of a new rip into space, avoiding the puncture I had made before, had the mages gasping and stumbling. The explosion of released mana as my gateway expanded far beyond what they could resist. I watched as two of the mages vomited while holding their heads as the younger looking mage just sat before my entrance, face grey and sweating.
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Silently cheering, I congratulated myself on besting the three mages. My excitement was short lived since I felt the deep thrum of an essential update in my mind, miss blue box had decided that I had reached some major milestone. Before I could open my status and see my accomplishment I noticed the world was waving and distorting, the mana in the air seeming to compress and expand, the space around my viewpoint rippling like a rock had been thrown into a pond. Trying to turn my view to see what was causing the distortion was a horrible mistake. Somehow I turned in a way I had never done before as if I was turning my viewpoint inward as much as left or right, but the direction I shifted was foreign to all of them. Disoriented and almost seasick from my sudden shift leftward of reality, I checked my status.
True Name: Dale Erickson Ender.
Race: Dungeon Core (Variant: Sapient)
Class: [Spatial Hedge-Mage][Spatial Traveler][High Priest].
Level: 38
Mind: 5
Body: 1
Soul: 8
Blessings:
[Blessing of Secrets]
[Blessing of Cunning]
[Blessing of Wealth]
[Blessing of Fame]
[Blessing of Magic]
[Blessing of Travel]
[Blessing of Challenge]
Traits:
[Focus of the Divine]
[Soul Seal - Divine]
Skills:
[Far Seeing]: Level 177
[Directed Prayer]: Level 6
[Mana Sensing]: Level 91
[Spatial Manipulation]: Level 201
[Will of the World]: Level 73
[Conjuration]: Level 71
[Etheric Pattern Formation]: Level 160
My [Spatial Manipulation] skill had ticked over the two hundred mark. The feeling that miss blue-box was giving me was that this was the skill which had improved in some fundamental way. Focusing internally at my ability, I brought up the description.
[Spatial Manipulation] is the legendary skill which allows for the creation of bags of holding, teleportation devices, portals, pocket worlds, and other places which are ‘bigger on the inside.’ [Spatial Manipulation] is the unstructured form of spells dealing with the stretching, shrinking, folding, tearing, or connecting of the very fabric of space.
Rank 200 Bonus: Perceive the dimensions traditionally reserved for those of higher beings.
The new bonus was vague, but I understood what had caused my disorientation. I was seeing into the dimensions, the directions, sideways to the ones I was manipulating. I could see how my doorway wasn’t stretched and shrunk; instead, parts of it were shunted over into these other dimensions. These dimensions were vast; the three-dimensional world I had experienced before was like a water droplet in an ocean in comparison.
Grabbing the space in my treasure room, I pushed the dimensional fabric directly towards another dimension. My treasure room expanded quickly. There was no resistance or push back as I had started to experience. The inside of my treasure room grew and grew, the wall pushing further and further away as I stretched the space in a direction sideways to the world. I began to howl in laughter as I expanded my dungeon into these new directions. The fear I had of my dungeon running out of space was gone. There was no resistance in any way. All the effort of expanding the area of my dungeon was from space pushing against space, and now I was shifting directly in a new direction.
While I had been distracted playing with my newest toy, the mages had gathered up a war party and entered my dungeon. The three magicians from before followed a pack of soldiers armed with glowing weaponry. Along with the three older mages, a young woman followed.
The soldiers and mages appeared as humans to my senses, but the young woman was not as she looked. The moment she stepped into my dungeon, I could see that she was simply an illusion. Every part of the display was perfect, from the tips of her hair, the pores of her skin, to the painted toenails poking through her sandaled feet. None of it was real, all of it was magical light bound to some construct of force magic. She appeared to be a woman, but she wasn’t. I couldn’t tell if the mages were fooled by her magic, but they seemed to hold her in high regard as she examined my vestibule and the portraits within.
I had removed the plaque with the message about the secret that Denda had left. I could just see some adventurer being convinced of the secret and refusing to stop searching my dungeon for it and making a nuisance of themselves. Taking it down had seemed like a bit of housecleaning. Speaking of housecleaning: the mages had entered the hall of the fallen and found the connecting hallway that I had released which connected it to the other vestibule. Their arrival surprised the refugees and caused some panicked screaming. One of the mages formed a ball of magic that he prepared to throw at the huddled masses. I was a bit surprised to see that same old man calmly talk to the refugees in a grandfatherly way, even as he held an invisible ball of death at the ready.
I made a note not to take things at face value as the refugees had, the old voice quickly calming them and getting them to evacuate the dungeon even as they spilled the beans about my challenges. The old guy interrogated them like an expert while sounding like he was deeply concerned.
The sly dog.
I stopped watching the old man because the illusionary lady was still walking around as the rest were marching the prisoners…err…rescued people, from my dungeon.
Seeing as she was doing a remarkable imitation of a human, using two different kinds of magic effortlessly, I considered her a top player in the magical community, and I would keep an eye on her. I didn’t know who she was, but I knew now who I would be spying on with [Far Seeing] while I was here.