《The Dungeon of Earth》


 Chapter One

    It was a sweltering Canadian summer day. Already reaching 30 degrees by 9 am.


    And Nellie could definitely feel it.


    The uninsulated cottage that her grandparents left her in their will did little to stave off the oncoming heat.


    Sigh, thought Nellie as she sipped her milk. It¡¯s going to be a scorcher.


    The tiny one-bedroom, one-bath cottage was situated on a large, primarily unpopulated lake, which was a nice relief to Nellie. She had spent the past four years working on a degree in history with a minor in geography. She found it surprisingly pleasant to be surrounded by the lap of the waves and the sound of nature that encased her.


    Nellie only had the most basic internet and no TV. It was pretty isolated, and maybe not so bright for a single female to live alone in such a place, but she liked it.


    Looking out onto the lake, she felt the pull of what must be cool waters.


    After quickly placing her mug and plate in the sink, she rushed into her bedroom. She promptly donned a bikini, grabbed one of her new National Geographic magazines and a towel, and walked down the mulched path toward the lake.


    Nellie dropped her items half-hazardly on a patio chair and began wading into the water.


    The cold water sent welcomed chills up her spine, and she went deeper and deeper. Once the water went up to her waist, she took a deep breath, submerged, and swam out into the water.


    With a gasp, she breached the water and looked around. While she only made it a few metres out, it was deep enough that she couldn¡¯t stand.


    After ensuring no boats were around, she closed her eyes and floated on her back.


    Slowly, she was gently rocked back and forth by the waves as the hot beams of the sun warmed her front while the coldness of the water embraced her back.


    Nellie stayed like this for a while, and just as she was about to swim back to shore, a powerful boom rattled around her.


    Within seconds, the sound shattered her eardrums, and the gush of tsunami-like wind threw her through the water onto the rocky part of the shore. With a horrid crunch and rapidly approaching pain, Nellie was thrown hard into the rocks.


    Moaning in pain, she slowly blinked, revealing blurred eyes before falling unconscious.


    As she fell into the depths of her mind, the world began to change.


    With it, a floating blue screen appeared to every sentient, and some non-sentient, living beings.


    Congratulations Planet Earth 4.74532.12!


    After billions of years, enough mana has condensed within the universe to allow the System to activate.


    In three seconds, the application of the System and subsequent changes will occur.


    Three


    Two


    One


    As soon as the blue screen, well, the System, finished counting down, the System began rapidly changing the planet.


    Within seconds, everything was different. From the continents to the flora and fauna to even the civilizations that had conquered and controlled the planet.


    The System changed everything, but it allowed some things to stay the same.


    ****************************


    Unknown Place, Unknown Time


    ****************************


    As Nellie began to regain consciousness, she was met with a world that was utterly different, a reality that defied all her previous experiences.


    Murkily, Nellie realized that she was floating. Not in a lake or a body of water, for no coolness or warmth was touching her skin.


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    Steadily, she took a deep breath, but she hadn¡¯t realized she needed it. Subconscious awareness began spreading through her senses. Even with her eyes closed, she could still tell that she wasn¡¯t in the lake or near any environment that she was aware of.


    With a bit of force, Nellie managed to force her eyelids to open.


    A sharp intake of breath showed her a startling realization.


    A weird mixture of dark gray stone with flecks of brown and red and this dark, deep blue, transparent solid material appeared before her.


    Not even before her, it was pressed solidly against her, with no gaps between her and the materials.


    Within a couple of seconds, Nellie realized why.


    Her entire body was incorporeal. Not on the physical plane, but she could still perceive herself.


    Am I a ghost? Pondered Nellie as she examined herself.


    She had all the ghost traits. A translucent body, a white knee-length dress that Nellie would most definitely consider ghost-like. While not really ghost-like, she noticed a series of tiny sparks circulating right where her heart was supposed to be when she looked down at her chest.


    While not ghost-like, it reminded her of photos of nebulas she would see in national geographic magazines. At least that¡¯s what it looked like, or at least it was similar enough that it drew similarities to a nebula as soon as Nellie saw it.


    It was strange, really. Not something solid but made of a series of differently coloured circling tiny sparks. The majority of the sparks were a deep violet colour, with a few sparks that circulated only on the outer part of the pathway, which are dark green and light blue.


    The sparks all circulated counterclockwise and created a mostly spherical shape. The closer to the centre of the circulation, the more dense the sparks got.


    In the very centre of her core was a deep cluster of the little violet sparks. Close enough together to make a small two-centimetre sphere but apart enough that Nellie could see the spaces between the sparks.


    At the very edge of the sparks circulating around the densely packed violet sparks, a few light blue and dark green sparks circulated around it.


    Hugh, wonder why there¡¯s different colours?


    Before she could even think about the different colours within her nebula core, Nellie watched as a little string made up of the violet sparks began to separate from the rotation within her nebula.


    But before she could even ponder what this meant, something new appeared before her.


    A blue screen.


    A big fat blue screen, somewhat transparent, and had words written all over it.


    What am I? Thought Nellie sarcastically. A LitRPG character?


    As Nellie bemoaned the fact that something she only barely knew about was something she was now seeing, the blue screen, which she was currently ignoring buzzed and vibrated at her in order to get her attention.


    All sentient beings are deployed in the tutorial.


    A flash of confusion hit her as she began to process those words.


    ¡ª-


    Oh, you got to be fucking kidding me. Bemoaned Nellie.


    Why, oh, why did it have to be this? Nellie groaned in frustration, anger, and resignation as she ranted in her mind.


    While Nellie knew a bit about this from her ex-boyfriend, who was very into the genre, she only had some fundamental knowledge.


    Meanwhile, Nellie desperately hoped that this wasn¡¯t a tutorial and that a gaming system of some kind didn¡¯t just abduct her and take over the Earth or something like that. But with donning horror, it seemed that she was proven right to some degree.


    And she most definitely wasn¡¯t in some tutorial.


    Globe alterations will begin in:


    Three


    Two


    One


    As soon as the second blue screen finished its countdown, the still-rotating globe began to rapidly change.


    Lines of glowing red emerged in the earth¡¯s crust as the globe rapidly expanded to twice its size. Continents split, merged, and grew apart, along with new masses of the earth¡¯s crust pushing out of the oceans.


    As the growth slowed, the earth was left similar to what it once was, but very different. Some of the continents had some of the similar outlines, but others were very different.


    Mountain ranges rose and fell, lakes emerged, deserts and forests shrunk and grew across large swaths of land. Volcanoes pushed through cracks along islands, and mountain chains emerged. Large swaths of ice grew and retracted, becoming essentially large floating islands.


    Not even the oceans were spared.


    The average ocean depth grew to 10 kilometres. Still, the visibility in the waters increased further than before, as if the sun could penetrate further than it could once before. Ocean trenches grew more numerous, and oceanic environments became more numerous.


    The changes were astronomical, and Nellie stared at the changing globe with awe and fear.


    Once the globe seemed to settle into the changes, she continued to watch the newly changed globe continue its rotation.


    For what seemed like hours, but no true passage of time could be taken in the darkness, Nellie watched and waited for something else to happen.


    Isn¡¯t it supposed to show or teach me something if this is the tutorial?


    Speak of the devil, and he shall appear, as the saying goes. It was true in this case.


    As soon as she questioned if this was a tutorial, another blue screen appeared.


    Welcome being, to the System.


    Your atoms and energy have rapidly changed during the activation of the System within your planet. As such, you have been selected as one of the few beings to transition into your new System life as a dungeon core.


    Oh, you gotta be kidding me. Why did it have to be a dungeon core! Couldn¡¯t it have been something cool like an elf or becoming a mage!


    It finally hit after reading the message and having a little freak out about becoming a dungeon core. She must have died during the blast, and the System decided to recycle her into a dungeon core?

 Chapter Two

    As she busied herself with bemoaning her fate, another blue screen popped up, but this time, it highlighted areas of the newly changed world.


    However, only a few spots were glowing, mainly near the north and south poles, along with what was previously the northernmost part of Europe and Canada.


    The dungeon type within has been automatically given.


    Please choose the location of your core.


    With trembling fingers, Nellie reached out towards the northern part of what she assumed to be what was North America. She tried to adjust the globe just enough that she could try selecting somewhere she felt familiar with in this rapidly changing world. Somewhere where eastern Ontario used to be.


    But it did not work.


    And with that, the glowing parts of the globe gave a brief flash, as if they were upset that she tried to choose a place that the glow did not encompass.


    So with shaking, but oddly steady fingers, Nellie chose the spot she thought would be the safest.


    In her mind, it was the generally safest spot within an area that she was generally familiar with. Well familiar with what it was before the System changed the globe.


    The spot she had her mind on was the northernmost island point off of what was previously North America. It was right at the edge of the island, along the ocean. And Nellie thought that the area that she chose was a decent choice.


    Within seconds of pressing that spot, she was sucked into the globe like a liquid up a straw, and then nothing. Total blackness surrounded her as she lost consciousness.


    ****************************


    Unnamed Dungeon, Day One


    ****************************


    Consciousness slowly slipped back to Nellie.


    She blinked her eyes as the somewhat familiar surroundings of the brown and red flecked grey stone and the deep blue transparent solid material that was looking suspiciously like ice appeared more and more before her.


    Unlike when she first appeared in the stone and ice location, it wasn¡¯t her nebula-like core that caught her attention, it was her surroundings. Mainly because she now had a completed map-like grid of her surroundings. That she knew every inch of this space the moment she opened her eyes.


    Her environment was quite weird. She was stuck in a cube of ice and brown and red flecked grey stone.


    A perfect cube.


    What the¡­.? Murmured Nellie as this confused her even more. Everything she vaguely heard about dungeon cores was that they get placed into an environment, and they had to gain territory somehow.


    But she was in a cube. A perfect five-metres tall, five-metres wide, and five-metres long cube with nothing past it.


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    It was bizarre. As Nellie walked to the very edge of her territory, all she saw was nothing.


    Not darkness, not black, but nothingness.


    Nellie turned away from the nothingness and began to move back to the centre of her territory. But as she turned away, something caught her eye.


    Small, tiny strings, looping heavily throughout the cubed territory. It flowed with small violet sparks slowly moving from her nebula core through the cubed space and back.


    Strange, thought Nellie. I wonder if this is why I can feel everything and why it¡¯s MINE.


    That increasingly growing emphasis of the cube being hers distracted her for a moment before Nellie spotted the violet sparks began to finish their rotation and ended back into her nebula.


    Nellie watched as the cycle continued over and over again as the tiny strings flitted throughout her territory, with violet sparks using the strings as a guiding line before coming back to her nebula.


    Before she could decide what she wanted to do with the strings and the sparks, another blue screen partially obscured her vision.


    You have one year to prepare before sentient beings from your world will emerge from the System Trials.


    Nellie took a couple of seconds to gain her bearings before she could even begin to understand what this was.


    System Trials???? Questioned Nellie. There are systems trials??? And why use sentient beings instead of humans??? Does that mean that other intelligent species will emerge from this trial? Why only a year??


    As Nellie began to be plagued by oncoming questions, one thing stood out to her and was very clear. She had only one year until these beings appeared back on Earth.


    But the bomb-dropping blue screen led her to assume three things.


    The first is that the System must have taken everybody and abducted them into the trials. With who knows how many will survive, or what survival might look like, the possibilities that arise from this tell a tale of either being left alone for a while or having increasingly dangerous opponents.


    The second is that there is a year until the trials end. Nellie knew this gave her some time to figure things out, get started, and prepare for what a dungeon does. But how will she do that? Well, she¡¯ll just have to trial and error it.


    The third is that there may be others like her. It might be a long shot, but if her atoms and energy were changed into a dungeon core, then others may have been changed into this new species.


    It took Nellie a bit of time to digest the three points that she thought were correct. But she did, and finally, she dismissed the blue screen and focused on her own circumstances.


    After all, she was on a time limit before the System Trials finished and who knows what will begin to appear.


    With the blue screen dismissed Nellie began poking the strings and violet sparks that circulated throughout the cube.


    As soon as she poked a string, the vibrations flowed into her core, making her realize that the string was a piece of herself. Something that was like they were her physical fingertips. It made her feel immense relief for some reason as she continued to touch and fiddle with the strings.


    Really, it was invigorating to Nellie. It was something that she now desired and hungered for.


    She didn¡¯t know why she felt this way. But the more she fiddled, played, and began to shape the strings, the more she figured out how to manipu\ate and use them. Nellie even figured out that if she pulled hard enough, a string would detach, and even more fun things could be done with it before she needed to reattach it.


    It was addicting, playing with those strings.


    For hours Nellie discovered what she could do with the strings, but at some point during this time, she unconsciously began to do something.


    Without even noticing, she began to weave strings together into some kind of strange wreath. String after string, Nellie weaved together, before something began to happen.


    As she added more and more strings, the violet sparks began to collect in the wreath.


    An hour passed before the strings were covered entirely in the violet sparks, enough so that she could barely even see the strings.


    Suddenly, the violet sparks flashed.

 Chapter Three

    Hissss


    The initial sound of the wreath startled her even more than the flashing of the violet sparks. But while Nellie was somewhat scared by this new development, she felt a primal longing, a natural instinct deep inside her that was happy about what happened.


    Nellie stood stock still as she watched the newly changed wreath gain an oily sheen to it. Kind of like if someone sprayed soap onto a mirror and rubbed it in. She didn¡¯t move a muscle as she watched and waited.


    Minutes, then hours passed, and nothing happened. So she slowly approached the wreath and pressed her hand against the middle of the wreath, where the oily sheen was.


    But nothing happened.


    She didn¡¯t know what she expected, but it wasn¡¯t this.


    Placing both of her hands within the centre of the wreath, Nellie pushed and shoved as hard as she could.


    The more she tried to push, the longer she was at it, and the more adamant Nellie became that something would happen.


    And it did.


    Suddenly, the wreath moved five centimetres backwards, surprising Nellie, who suddenly released the wreath.


    Hmph. Grunted Nellie. While it wasn¡¯t what she wanted, being able to shift the wreath showed her that she could do things to it.


    It was at that moment that a lightbulb went off in her head.


    What if I push a string through it?


    Quickly, she severed one of the circulating strings and, with steady hands, pushed the very tip of it through the wreath.


    With a gasp, her vision suddenly tunneled right through the wreath, into an environment exactly like hers, except for some differences.


    Nellie could only see a hint of ice, with some of the reddish-brown flecked dark grey stone. But she only had a hint of clarity within her own territory, within her own little cube. It was like seeing the world again as a human, with limited sight and limited ability to view closer than what the human eye could.


    She watched this newness, this uncertainness of an area not of her own, not of her territory. But the more she watched it, the more certain Nellie became that it wouldn¡¯t hurt her. Especially since as she watched and tried to perceive the surroundings, she noticed that one of her strings naturally broke out of its circulation, and made its way through the wreath, well portal more like, reached three millimetres away from the other side of the portal, and made its way back to her territory all the way back to her nebula.


    A hunger flew through her as soon as that string connected back to her core.


    A want. A need to grow and possess. So, after letting go of most of the strings that she wrapped around her hand, she kept one.


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    Nellie tried pushing her hand with the string further out, trying to get past more than three millimetres away.


    But she was met with a strange resistance. Something stiff but strangely springy, kind of like jelly, resisted any of her attempts of trying to get past the three millimetre area past the portal that was hers.


    Then an idea hit her. If she couldn¡¯t get her hand through the barrier stopping her, then what if the string could.


    Now, if I do this, I should be able to¡­ She murmured as she straightened out the string so that it was perfectly straight with only a slight curve before she chucked it with all of her strength out of her territory.


    With a wicked throw, the slightly curved string went about 50 centimetres out of her territory before coming back like a boomerang.


    With much haste, Nellie quickly connected the string back to her core and watched what happened with an unnatural stillness.


    She did not shift or even twitch as she watched as the violet sparks that made up the string began to circulate back into her nebula.


    Nellie held her breath as she watched the deep violet sparks from her nebula core begin to circulate out of her core and through the path of the string out of her territory then back again.


    As the deep violet sparks began to fully circulate, Nellie could feel the clicking of ownership of that small 50-centimetre long, 20-centimetre wide, and 20-centimetre tall arch becoming part of herself, part of her territory. But it wasn¡¯t.


    She could feel that the territory was hers, but she did not have the same ingrained control over it. The only thing that Nellie could relate to this awkward feeling of owning, but not being in control was when she was human and her hair would blow with the wind. It was a part of her, but she didn¡¯t have total control over it.


    But it didn¡¯t bother her. With that little throw, Nellie could feel the possibilities of new territory and even newer things grow. It satiated that hunger inside her, and she continued her expansion with a passion she had rarely exhibited before.


    With each throw, more and more of the reddish-brown flecked dark grey stone and the deep blue ice became hers.


    Every shot she threw gained her at least a couple more centimetres of territory. Up and down, left to right, and as much around the portal as she could. And at this point, whatever passed for north, south, east, and west, the string went.


    But, at a certain point, she hit a block.


    Or a boundary.


    Like the one she had just encountered, the barrier was rigid. As she pressed her hands and tried to move the strings through, it didn¡¯t move.


    The barrier prevented all movement, unlike when it was all springy and jelly-like.


    Eyeing the barrier, Nellie huffed and decided that she would leave the barrier for now.


    When she turned her back to the barrier, a cheshire grin grew on her face.


    The territory that Nellie gained was large.


    With the addition of territory outside of her cube, Nellie figured that she needed to have some sort of distinction between her territory that was inside and outside the portal.


    I think I¡¯ll call the cube the Inner and the territory around the portal the Outside.


    While the Inner was completely her own, it was composed solely of solid ice and stone.


    However, the Outside territory had potential, even though it was currently smaller in size than the Inner.


    The Outside wasn¡¯t a perfectly circular or cubed area, but that didn¡¯t matter. Nellie thought the indents, grooves, and ridges just gave the Outside character.


    From edge to edge, the Outside was 1.5 metres long. Top to bottom, one metre tall, and was 70 centimetres at the most expansive area.


    Fascinated at what she had gained, Nellie flicked her eyes and studied anything that caught her attention.


    And boy, were there a few things she wanted to sink her metaphorical claws into.

 Chapter Four

    The biggest thing that Nellie found within the new Outside territory was a naturally formed cave that was completely empty.


    It was jagged, rough, and creviced enough to appear completely natural, about 70 centimetres long, 40 centimetres wide, and 35 centimetres tall at the longest, widest, and tallest points. Which Nellie didn¡¯t really expect and kind of expected at the same time.


    Truthfully, she didn¡¯t really know what she was expecting. But seeing that natural way, the mixture of ice and rock formed to confine this space in the shape of a rocky and non-symmetrical kidney bean.


    Very natural looking. Like a caver opened up, swallowed her, and closed back up again.


    The System must have made even more extreme changes than the changing of continents. Nervously muttered Nellie as she began to think of everything that could have changed.


    This was just more proof that everything was changed, not just herself and the Inside, but everything on, in, and probably around Earth changed like it.


    The cave was completely empty of anything in her direct sight, but she could feel the buzz and the hum of what she could only assume were microorganisms.


    Huh¡­ I wonder why I knew that. Contemplated Nellie.


    That knowledge flowed to her like something she had long forgotten, but what could she do? It made complete sense. Everything in the world had microorganisms on, in, or around it, so why would the System change Earth to be any different?


    But it was strange. Nellie knew the microscopic organisms were there, but she couldn¡¯t really feel or see them. It was only the slight vibration within the Outside territory that the thought flowed to her and made her realize that they were there. However, there was none in the Inside. It was like the cube removed all the microscopic organisms that would usually be there. Or at least when the System made her into a dungeon core, it didn¡¯t add the microscopic organisms.


    Nellie wanted to explore this deeply, but there were greater vibrations throughout the Outside that she wished to discover before she even thought of doing any experimentation of any sort.


    She scoured every inch of her territory to find the slightly louder vibrations.


    As Nellie scoured, she found three much smaller caves. The biggest is only ten centimetres high, with the widest part being around 11 centimetres. One of them even had a one-centimetre layer of water lying stagnant at the bottom of it. While some empty spaces were hidden within crevices or stone, they weren¡¯t big enough for Nellie to consider them caves.


    The dark blue ice and reddish-brown flecked dark grey stone mainly stayed the same as she studied all directions of the territory.


    When Nellie began to study the upper portion of her territory, that was when things got interesting.


    At the four-metre mark, at the top of her territory, the terrain started to change.


    The reddish-brown flecked grey stone slowly became taken over by a dark grey and very grainy soil with thick and dense streaks of dark brown soil, and it had a dense, watery quality to it.


    Within that soil and the few empty spaces made by and around the ice were microorganisms.


    The microorganisms were humming to her, but a few spots hummed even more than the others.


    The first was this tiny plant, just barely visible to her. It was half a millimetre long and 0.3 millimetre wide, with little grey-brown string and tiny hairs surrounding it. She found it at the very top edge of her territory, and while it was in her territory, Nellie knew that it wasn¡¯t really hers. It was within a small, hidden little crevice under one of the chunks of ice. Just a centimetre tall and wide and only 5 centimetres long.


    But it wasn¡¯t hers yet.


    No. It was living within her territory, but it wasn¡¯t wholly hers.


    Not truly. Not yet.


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    So Nellie did what she had done to make the territory hers. She broke off one of her purple sparks circulating strings, wrapped and looped them around her fingers, and connected them back into her nebula core.


    Gently, she placed her hands around the little grey-brown string of unknown plant species and began to circulate the purple sparks through her hands.


    Very quickly, the circulating purple sparks immersed the little grey-brown string of unknown plant, and it became entirely hers.


    Aaaahhhh. Moaned out Nellie.


    Just like when she began expanding, fully adding the little plant to her domain, to her territory, fulfilled a need that had been buzzing under her skin unnoticed. Until now.


    And as much as she wanted to play around with the plant, name it, get to know it, the more significant humming sounds of bigger organisms around her territory were calling to her.


    The next one that Nellie found was in one of the tiny crevices that had only about 9 millimetres of water in it, one so small that she couldn¡¯t even call it a cave, and it was vibrating the greatest.


    What she found surprised her.


    There were a bunch of these tiny plants that just grew throughout the water.


    The plants were tiny circles, about only a millimetre or two in width, with half a millimetre wide stems and roots that did not hook onto anything, just floated in the water. It was a pale green colour and seemed to just aimlessly drift throughout the available water.


    The circular parts of the plant were ribboned and seemed to be the buoyant part of the plant. The cave was only 3 centimetres long, 2 centimetres wide, and half a centimetre tall. Still, the plants covered all of the available space on top of the water.


    With cupped hands wrapped in purple sparked strings, Nellie submersed enough of her sparks into the plants to make them theirs.


    As soon as she felt the plants become entirely hers, she began looking for the other large humming spots.


    Out of all the more significant humming microorganisms or organism spots throughout her territory, she found two and couldn¡¯t wait to see the rest.


    And off she went to find the rest of them.


    The next occurrence of humming was a small collection of 0.3 millimetres long, cylindrical dark grey eggs. They were buried in one of the looser soil sections, with only four eggs.


    But unlike with the plants that she found, the eggs called to her in a different way. The eggs were attractive, especially to her instincts.


    With delicate hands, she cupped the four eggs and embedded her sparks into them until they became entirely hers.


    Nellie scoured the rest of her territory, but could not find any more clusters that hummed.


    But she was happy with that.


    The three organisms, two plants and one set of eggs of so far undetermined animals, calmed a set of instincts she could feel deep within her core.


    But those instincts continued to nudge her to do something.


    As Nellie sat in her Outer territory, just observing all that she had and pondering what else she needed to do, she had a thought.


    What if I move some things?


    It was a simple question, one that she would not have hesitated to even think about if she had her human body, but now she was a dungeon core, and that changed everything.


    Instinctually, without even really realizing it, Nellie began to reach out to one of the small crevices above in the more dirt-abundant section of her territory. It was only 2 centimetres long, 1 centimetre wide, and 3 centimetres tall, and was immediately surrounded by the dark grey grainy soil. With no forethought whatsoever, she lightly touched the dirt walls and pushed.


    The softest part of the wall slowly began to curve at her touch. With a bit more force, every part of the soil that her hand touched was forced back.


    Oh boy, smirked Nellie.


    And without another thought, she got to work.


    Nellie figured out quite quickly how to grow the cave. There were two ways that she figured out how to do this. The first is to push and compact the soil of walls with force, and the second is to literally scoop out the soil.


    While compacting the walls made them stronger and more robust, they were not all that effective in growing the size of the crevice.


    So she dug.


    Scoop by scoop, Nellie dug outwards. Scooping out the walls and discarding the loose soil in the empty space, she was able to increase the length of the crevice to 12 centimetres, making it into a cave. However, it came at a cost. As she displaced soil and increased the cave¡¯s size, small cracks began to form along the ceiling of the cave. But it was an easy fix. All it needed was for Nellie to scoop up the discarded dirt and compress it into the ceiling. It was pretty easy, and it allowed her to continue to dig.


    Nellie managed to make it to 50 centimetres before she hit some of the ice.


    Wrapping her hands on the exposed ice, she yanked at it. But unlike her easy movement and manipulation of the surrounding soil, the ice refused to budge. No matter what she tried to do, it didn¡¯t work. Trying to push, pull, and dig into the ice did nothing to move it. But that didn¡¯t really matter to her at the moment.


    Eh, I¡¯ll figure it out later, thought Nellie as she began slowly digging downwards. She figured out how to shift, compact, and move the soil, so she knew that she¡¯d be able to figure it out later.

 Chapter Five

    Nellie excavated all of the dirt within her territory that could be attached and added to the growing cave.


    Well, not excavated per say, but she scoped out the packed soil and left it either loosely laying on the bottom of the cave or used it to reinforce the ceilings so everything didn¡¯t just collapse.


    What was left of that once crevice was now a large cave, spanning almost the whole length of her Outside territory, and at its deepest, it reached a metre in length.


    But it was not just an empty cave. Nellie dug around all of the stone and ice that was mixed in with the soil, creating a kind of stalagmite and stalactite look, but more artistic.


    Kind of. But Nellie thought the cave looked beautiful with the mix of misshapen but smooth dark blue ice and reddish-brown flecked dark grey stone.


    While beautiful, just staring at the cave made Nellie itch with ideas that she could do with it.


    With an idea in mind, she turned towards the little grey-brown string plant thing.


    ****************************


    POV Mila Bergeron


    Unnamed Location, Day One


    ****************************


    The world had ended with a bang. What a cliche. Thought Mila.


    Really, the world ending with a bang? Did this System thing take all the cliches from every different type of media and decide to choose this?


    Well, it did.


    The day that the world ended wasn¡¯t that bad.


    She had an afternoon university class that the prof had let them go an hour early. And it was her favourite.


    It was an intro class on world mythologies, and it was fascinating. Myths and legends had always interested her, and today they began an introduction to African myths.


    But anyway, as Mila was walking to her car in the university parking lot, a giant blast shattered her eardrums, and tsunami-like winds pushed her to the ground.


    Mila didn¡¯t know what happened after that, but a transparent blue screen covered her vision as she opened her eyes.


    Congratulations, Planet Earth 4.74532.12!


    After billions of years, enough mana has condensed within the universe to allow the System to activate.


    It disappeared within seconds of her reading the blue screen, and a new one appeared. This System didn¡¯t even give her time to process before another one appeared.


    Welcome, homosapiens of Planet Earth 4.74532.12!


    You have been transported to the Shards.


    A training world for the sentient species that takes all the discarded shards of the worlds integrated into the System.


    You have one year to train yourself in the Shards before you are transported back to your home planet of Planet Earth 4.74532.12!


    Good luck.


    The blue screen disappeared within seconds, and her vision was finally clear.


    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    The first thing she saw was a deceptively calm ocean. A dark blue expanse slowly lapped at the boulder and white sand-ridden shoreline.


    Turning her head, she saw a thick jungle made up of what looked like pine trees with very long, draping leaves and trees with long, draping fruits and long, oval-shaped leaves. Filling up the gaps in between were different types of bushes, vines, and other flora that she couldn¡¯t even identify.


    Huh. Thought Mila. Well, I guess I¡¯m not in Kansas anymore.


    She clenched her fist unconsciously, gripping piles of sand that she didn¡¯t even know she was sitting in.


    Slowly, Mila crawled onto her knees, trying to stand up. It was like her muscles fell asleep; she couldn¡¯t really feel them.


    She stayed there a few seconds before collapsing into the sand.


    With a roll, Mila turned onto her back and stared back up at the sky.


    ¡°Oh.¡± Gasped Mila as she saw the sky.


    The first thing she saw was the sun. Well, one of three suns. It was gigantic, easily five times the size of the one back on Earth, but it was white that was edged in blue. When she turned her head left, another sun was at the very edge of her vision. It was barely visible for her to see, but she could see it. It was a dark red colour. As she turned her head to the right, she saw the same. It was a sun that appeared only on the horizon but was dark purple.


    It was weird. But Mila was drawn out of her thoughts when a blue screen appeared before her.


    To help with your survival, you will be given a random allotment of two skills.


    Skill Allotment:


    <ol>


    <li> Basic Dodging</li>


    <li> Basic Gathering</li>


    </ol>


    Ranking up skills takes a long time, but practice is key.


    Good luck.


    As soon as she finished reading the last sentence, a zap shot through her brain down her spine and tingled along to all of her extremities.


    Surprised, Mila froze for a couple of seconds.


    But that continued stillness proved to be disastrous.


    Mila slowly began to untense when the hairs at the back of her neck. Every deep instinctual part of her and her hindbrain screamed at her to move.


    With an unknown desperation, she wrenched herself to her knees. She crawled only a tiny distance away before the sand where she was standing exploded.


    With fear in her eyes, she turned to look at what attacked her.


    A small creature, like a squirrel, stood where she was lying. Coloured a dark green, dark enough to blend into the foliage, but in the sand, it stood out greatly. It had large leaf-like hair tufts on the top of its ears and a long furry tail, almost twice its body size. What concerned her most was the claws. They were thick but short, and they definitely looked sharp. Sharp enough that even if the creature clawed at her, it would probably tear her flesh.


    Before she could even study the creature even more, it lunged at her with its claws extended.


    Her scramble out of the way was a lot more graceful than it ever was before the System brought her to this place.


    Quickly, she rose to her feet, but the creature kept coming at her with a speed that she didn¡¯t expect from a small creature.


    She turned her back to run as the creature lunged at her again. But she only made it a few steps before a large stone hidden underneath the sand caught her foot.


    Mila went head over heels as she rolled onto the sand.


    Dazed, her reaction speed wasn¡¯t quick enough, and the squirrel-like creature took her clumsiness and slowness to recover, and it reached her.


    Quickly, it targeted her stomach and began slashing at her.


    ¡°Aarrgghh!¡± Screamed out Mila in severe pain.


    Its claws raked across her stomach as Mila tried to grab and push it away from herself.


    But the curved claws of the creature ensured that any attempt she made to get it away from her just made the pain even greater.


    The creature kept on slashing and tearing at her as she tried to get away, enduring more and more wounds and pain across her stomach.


    Clutching blindly across the sand. Mila¡¯s fingers managed to grasp onto a rock.


    Clutched in a tight fist, Mila used all of her strength to bash the squirrel creature in its side.


    The blow stung the creature and made it release her.


    With a blank mind, Mila reacted by instinct.


    She rushed at the creature and began bashing the creature¡¯s face with the stone. Within seconds, the creature stopped struggling, but Mila continued. It wasn¡¯t until only a mushed-up pile of bone, blood, tissue, and brain matter remained of the creature¡¯s corpse that she stopped.


    ¡°Huff, huff, huff.¡± Escaped her lips as she struggled to catch her breath.


    Mila quickly regained her breath as she sat beside the creature¡¯s corpse before she heard a rustling sound.


    Terrified at what might come, she sprinted down the beach as fast as she could.

 Chapter Six

    ****************************


    Unnamed Dungeon, Day Three


    ****************************


    Staring at the grey-brown string-like plant, Nellie had an idea.


    She scooped up some of the loose soil that was lying on the ground and placed it delicately on one of the largest ice shelves in the cave.


    For Nellie knew the basics of plant growth, and while she couldn¡¯t provide water or sunlight yet, she could provide the soil.


    Gently, she wrapped the tiny plant into her hands, carried it to the ledge, and set it down on top of the soil. In preparation, Nellie grabbed a bit more soil and laid it on top of the plant. And then she stared at it.


    Mhmm. Contemplated Nellie as she grabbed and fiddled with a mana string.


    With the basics of an idea, Nellie inserted the mana string into the plant. She pushed a bunch of her purple sparks, but not to claim it, no. Instead of trying to overwhelm the plant into becoming part of her territory, she tried to maneuver the purple sparks as best as she could into different parts of the plant.


    She waited for any sign of change or growth. But nothing happened.


    It led her to consider that the plant might not grow in the soil. And that may be why she only found one strand of this plant.


    It probably doesn¡¯t grow solely in soil.


    So, she scooped enough of the soil off of the plant so that only one end of the grey-brown plant string was in the soil.


    Nellie stood back and sat down. Willing to spend a bit of time to see if it works.


    Minutes passed.


    And just as Nellie was about to take the soil completely away, she noticed that some of the little hairs that were submerged in the soil began to grow.


    Within seconds, the hairs grew into roots half a millimetre long. And that was not the only change.


    It seems all she needed was to find the plant¡¯s preferred setting before Nellie could influence any growth changes.


    The plant strand larger, until it was half a centimetre wide and ten centimetres long. As the strand grew, the hairs along it grew with it. Some grew into the ground, and some grew over the top of the soil. But they were all connected to each other.


    Where the once single tiny grey-brown plant lay was now a shaggy carpet of bendy branches that began to drape over the ledge.


    As Nellie stared at the plant, she realized it was not actually a plant. The grey-brown colouring and the branch appendages reminded her of lichen she would often see hanging or growing on trees.


    Hmmm, what to call you¡­ what to call you¡­ Pondered Nellie as she began to think of a name.


    With a smile, she decided on one.


    Let¡¯s call you Bryoria. Spoke Nellie as she stared at her newly named lichen.


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    Nellie wasn¡¯t happy with the newly named bryoria lichen who was happily staying just on the ledge.


    She wanted that growth to completely overtake the room. But as she stared at the content fungi, she knew she would have to do something else to populate the cave¡¯s floor, crevices, and ledges.


    Eh, well, why not try again.


    And with that, Nellie took her mana string and once again pushed a bunch of her purple sparks into it.


    But sadly, all that happened was the fungi simply absorbed the sparks.


    It was curious, really, that it kept her sparks and did nothing with it, but it told Nellie something. That single act showed Nellie that not everything could be solved by overloading something with her purple sparks. This was not a game where one could simply repeat a simple action and expect it to work repeatedly.


    No.


    This was life. A new life, to be sure. And life is never simple, especially learning how to be her own species under the System.


    While Nellie knew she was just starting out, she had to figure things out quickly. The time limit of a year before sentients started returning loomed above her, but she pushed it to the back of her head and continued working on her task of trying to populate the cave¡¯s surfaces with bryoria.


    ****************************


    POV ???


    The Shards, Day Three


    ****************************


    The jellyfish was just enjoying a delicious fish that it luckily caught with its tentacles before something new appeared before them.


    A blue screen, the same one that has appeared in front of every living being, appeared. But the jellyfish didn¡¯t even register that the screen was there and continued eating its meal.


    The jellyfish would have been more concerned if it had been aware enough to register the blue screen.


    Congratulations, Planet Earth 4.74532.12!


    After billions of years, enough mana has condensed within the universe to allow the System to activate.


    Like a vacuum, the jellyfish was sucked up, bell, tentacles, and oral arms of the jellyfish before it was plopped into water that was rapidly cooler than where it was before.


    Any flailing of the jellyfish was stopped as its survival skills kicked in. By slowing down its movement, it can survive in cold temperatures.


    Congratulations!


    You have won the draw for non-sentient beings to be brought to the Shards and gain sentience.


    You are one of five Chrysaora Fuscescens to be chosen.


    Due to a lack of the required sentience, the beings¡¯ sentience has been increased far enough to survive.


    You have one year to survive until you are brought back to Earth 4.74532.12.


    Good luck, Chrysaora Fuscescens.


    ?????? Questioned the jellyfish, as suddenly it became more aware of its surroundings and began to process the words displayed.


    I¡­¡­ think¡­¡­???


    I¡­..Chrysa????


    I .. where???


    It¡¯s¡­ cold.


    Food!!! Thought the newly named Chrysa as its basic thoughts strung together to name itself before being distracted by a small fish that brushed against its tentacles that held tiny barbs and quickly inserted a stinging venom that quickly killed the small fish. Its oral arms slowly pulled the fish into its mouth.


    And as Chrysa began to consume its food, another blue screen popped up.


    You have learned the skill: Temperature Adapting.


    As soon as Chrysa gained the temperature adapting skill, their movement quickly freed itself of trying to conserve energy to go back to its normal warm water energy levels.


    For the last three days, Chrysa has gained more and more awareness of their environment.


    While the water was cold, there was a large amount of sunlight piercing deep into the water. This allowed Chrysa to perceive the shadows of the environment and what was around them.


    Tall, maze-like corals surrounded them. But Chrysa didn¡¯t really notice it. Over the past three days, everything that they encountered didn¡¯t attack them and those that brushed against them got caught in their tentacles and were either stunned long enough for their oral arms to bring the creature to their mouth or died from the venom.


    The full belly of the jellyfish didn¡¯t stop it from continuously eating those that got stuck in its tentacles.


    As it digested its meal, a delicious scent permeated through the water.


    Good¡­ Yummy¡­.Go too. Thought Chrysa as they opened its bell and used propulsion to swim itself toward the delicious smell.

 Chapter Seven

    ****************************


    Unnamed Dungeon, Day Four


    ****************************


    After a bit of trial and error, Nellie found a relatively simple way to have the cave filled with the lichen.


    She was able to sever with her mana strings a small part of the lichen at the very edge and transplant it to the soil on the floor. Once the fungi were situated into the soil, Nellie began to pump as many purple sparks into the lichen as she could and watched as it grew to cover about ten centimetres of the soil before stopping.


    So she repeated it.


    At first, targeting any ledge or crevice that could hold only a tiny amount of soil, Nellie placed whatever she could on them. Slowly, she went from ledge to ledge and crevice to crevice, taking small pieces of the lichen and growing them onto the next sight.


    Many of the bryoria had little room to grow, so they hung down, growing towards the floor or along the floor if they reached it.


    She continued across the floor once Nellie had all of the crevices and ledges filled out.


    However, before she continued growing the bryoria, Nellie did a bit of rearranging.


    There was still quite a bit of soil left over from her excavation and planting the lichen along the walls and ceilings. So Nellie decided to do a bit of landscaping to make the cave just right. The first thing she did was leave the pile of soil that already had some lichen on it and make sure that there was at least 20 centimetres of soil on the floor. With the rest of the soil, she created some hills throughout the cave.


    With the soil ready, Nellie quickly started filling out the room with the lichen.


    As the last lichen¡¯s enhanced growth finished, Nellie turned towards the ice.


    It¡¯s about time I try to crack it. Thought Nellie as she decided that now was the time to figure out how to manipulate the ice.


    Mana strings with purple sparks twirled around her fingers as she reached for the ice surrounding a small crevice, only one centimetre long and half a centimetre wide.


    But before she could begin any experimentation, a blue screen caught her attention.


    You have learned the skill: mana string manipulation.


    And with that, the ease with which she used her mana strings became a lot easier. More natural.


    They flowed the same throughout her territory, both Inner and Outer, but when she grabbed a string and played with it, the string was much more willing and less resistful. It was almost like the mana string became a lot less passive and seemed to want to be manipulated.


    Either way, the mana string manipulation skill made actively manipulating mana strings a lot easier.


    She wrapped the mana strings around her hands as she started to try to carve chunks of ice out of the walls, just like she did with the soil. But it didn¡¯t work.


    Ice is a lot harder, so it makes sense why it didn¡¯t work. Well, back to the drawing board. Sighed Nellie.


    So, she went back to her very original usage of manipulating her environment. She let the mana string wrapped around her hand loosen and fall off into her palm. With the mana string in her hand, she pushed it into the first centimetre of the ice and held it there.


    Nellie wanted to see what would happen, so she just held the mana string there and let the purple sparks circulate through it.


    She sat and watched. And after the first two minutes, something different started to circulate.


    Light blue, almost white, sparks, the few she had within her nebula, started to circulate in that string.


    Nellie pulled back the string and looked at the light blue sparks along with the purple sparks.


    Maybe this is what I needed? Thought Nellie.


    She placed the string with the light blue sparks back in the ice and pulled.


    The very act of pulling allowed small cracks to form in the ice. Nellie wrapped her hand with the string with light blue sparks and began pulling small chunks of ice out of the walls. Very small. But at least now she knew that there was a way to manipulate ice, crude as it is.


    But as of now, Nellie was happy with this.


    Quickly, she extracted all of the ice that was riddled with cracks. The crevice turned into a small cave, about five centimetres wide and seven centimetres tall.


    When she released the string, some of the light blue sparks circulated back into her nebula. The rest, though, continued to circulate in the ice parts of her Inner and Outer portions of territory.


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    Nellie watched the light blue sparks circulate when something clicked in her head.


    The light blue sparks, are they ice mana? Or representations of ice in her mana?


    She pondered this thought. If the light blue sparks are ice mana, then are the purple sparks her own? What about the dark green sparks? What do they represent?


    Honestly, it was kind of confusing, but she knew this. The light blue sparks allowed her to crack the ice when she couldn¡¯t before. And now those that are circulating are only circulating within the ice sections of her territory.


    So, she continued to experiment with the light blue sparks. Grabbing a string with a light blue spark and a chunk of ice, she sewed the ice chunk back into the wall. The ice slowly fused with the wall as the sparks circulated through that string. When Nellie pulled the string out, the ice was fully fused to the wall, like she had never carved it out in the first place.


    Wrapping the string around her hand, she grabbed another ice chunk. Instead of fusing the ice back onto the wall, she decided to try to affect the ice differently.


    ****************************


    POV Mila Bergeron


    The Shards, Day Two


    ****************************


    Rain crashed down on Mila as she sat huddled in her small cave.


    It had been a rough day.


    Ever since that squirrel creature thing attacked her, she¡¯s been on edge. Always alert, always listening. She knew she couldn¡¯t risk being attacked again. Mila knew that she was unlikely to come out of a fight as well as she did.


    The Shards, at least the area where she was located, was very different from where she grew up. The forest that surrounded the beach was huge. She wasn¡¯t brave enough yet to venture out of view from the beach, but she knew that the trees were ancient. Most were as wide as she was tall. And Mila knew that meant they were hundreds if not thousands of years old.


    But many things along the edge of the forest were useful.


    The best was her home, her cave. Mila had found it soon after she dashed away.


    She was exhausted after fighting the squirrel creature, and running away, she stumbled across a pile of large boulders. Hidden between two of the boulders was an entrance. Mila wasn¡¯t originally going to even attempt to go in there, but a couple metres away, she heard a twig snap.


    And without thinking about it, she lunged into the hole and crawled as fast as she could into it. In hindsight, what she did was very stupid, but she was living off of adrenaline. Luckily, there was nothing in the cave, and she finally felt safe. Bright enough to just be able to see but dark enough that she was obscured from anything looking in through the cave.


    It was her safe place in this new world, as safe as she could have it at that point, a place to rest and heal. And from the cave, she centred her operations.


    The first thing she did after finding a safe spot was find something she could defend herself with.


    She found a large, thick stick at the edge of the forest. It was relatively straight and small enough that she could lift it easily.


    Mila dragged it back to the boulder cluster that held her cave and found a rock with a sharp enough edge. Quickly, she started scraping off the edge of the branch. Soon enough, she had a spear with a sharp enough tip that it would hopefully impale anything that would attack her.


    With the spear at the ready, she reached out to one of the large trees and started pulling large chunks of moss growing along its base.


    Mila remembered from a TV show, Alone, that moss was a good natural insulator for body heat. The chunks she pulled off the tree were large enough to be small blankets, and she stripped them enough to fill her arms.


    Hauling the moss back to her cave, she lined the floor along the back of the cave and laid the rest on top.


    With a little sleeping area set up, Mila curled up underneath the moss with her spear right beside her.


    ****************************


    The light of dawn pierced the cave as Mila jolted awake.


    ¡°Where am I?¡± Murmured Mila confusingly as she didn¡¯t recognize her surroundings. It took a couple seconds before she groaned and fell back into the moss bed as the events of the previous day flashed in her mind.


    The cuts along her stomach twinged in pain as she lay on her back, staring at the ceiling.


    As she lamented her fate, her stomach began to rumble. Not the basic hunger rumble, but the rumble and twinges of not eating or drinking anything for a day.


    She had her shelter all set up and a weapon to defend herself with, but Mila knew that if she didn¡¯t find a food or water source soon, it would all be for naught.


    Crawling out of the cave, she began to wander about the forest edge. Within a couple of metres from her cave entrance was a small bush. A normal-looking bush with palm-sized green leaves and small bunches of pink berries.


    Berries!


    Hunger overrode her as she rushed to collect the small pink bundles. A voice-like instinct sounded at the back of her head as she was about to eat one of the berries.


    Those are deadly. Whispered her instincts


    It warned her that they were bad.


    Mila quickly dropped it to the ground,


    She quickly turned and walked away before spotting more black berries growing on a vine. As she approached them and studied them, nothing nudged her that this was a bad idea.


    ¡°It¡¯s now or never.¡± Breathed Mila as she popped one into her mouth. Chewing and swallowing quickly, she squeezed her eyes shut and waited for something to happen.


    But nothing happened immediately.


    As Mila prepared to wait, a boom of thunder sounded close. Within seconds, rain began to pour over her.


    She quickly stripped the vine of all the black berries she could carry and ran back to her cave.


    Drenched in water, she huddled into the back of the cave and waited out the storm.


    Hours passed, and nothing happened to Mila. The berries were safe.


    With a stomach growling in hunger, she inhaled the rest of the berries.


    Mila continued to wait for the storm to end, and as she waited, she began to think.


    The System had gave her two skills: basic dodging and basic gathering. Mila had already experienced the basic dodging skill go into effect, was the instincts telling her that the pink berries were bad, the same? Was that instinct the basic gathering skill?


    As she thought about the consequences of the skills she gained, MIla stilled. The hairs on the back of her neck began to stand up as she heard a rustling sound just on the outside of the cave¡¯s tunnel. She scurried to a crouching position and grabbed her spear. Taking a deep breath, she readied herself for what was to come.

 Chapter Eight

    ****************************


    Unnamed Dungeon, Day Four


    ****************************


    Nellie twirled the mana strings as she thought of what to do with the ice chunk in her hand.


    Hmm¡­ What to do, what to do. She unconsciously squeezed it as she was fiddling with it and thinking about what she could do with the ice.


    She continued to tighten her grip as she thought, only stopping when she heard a sharp crack echo through the small cave.


    Glancing down, Nellie saw that she had done something to the ice. The cracking sound she heard wasn¡¯t the ice cracking apart, but¡­ she somehow compressed it? The ice chunk shrunk to about half its size, but the colour became a lot darker and less transparent. It was like the ice was now the colour of ice found deep within an iceberg or an ice shelf.


    The compressed ice was different from the ice of her Outer territory, and when she set the compressed ice down, the single light blue spark within the mana string wrapped around her hand, duplicated.


    Why did it duplicate? Thought Nellie as she stared in fascination at the compressed ice.


    Grabbing another chunk of ice, squeezed down on it as hard as she could. She exerted as much pressure as she could until she heard that crack again as the ice layered overtop of each other and compressed into itself.


    When she released the chunk of compressed ice, another light blue spark glowed into existence, appearing on the same mana string.


    Nellie made every little chunk of ice on the floor into compressed ice. And when she let the mana string wrapped around her hand go, she saw that there were now ten light blue sparks circulating on the string. When she let the string go back into circulation, the sparks quickly dissipated to those strings that were circulating through the ice, and one of the sparks seemed to just be solely circulating around the compressed ice pieces.


    Leaving the small cave with compressed ice chunks, Nellie chose another small crevice in ice to continue experimenting.


    Before she even cracked the ice, Nellie had an idea.


    In high school science class, she remembered that the higher the speed at which something goes, the more thermal energy is produced.


    Maybe if I speed up the sparks, it will cause a reaction?


    In the small one-centimetre crack, she laced one of her mana strings with no light blue sparks around the crack, and Nellie attached both ends of the string together. With the looped string ready, Nellie started spinning the string and urging her purple sparks to go faster and faster. The mana manipulation definitely made spinning and increasing the speed of the moving string and sparks a lot easier. With a bit of urging, the string and sparks were spinning with enough speed that the sparks began to blur together.


    Something began to happen to the ice as the sparks and string sped around the crack.


    The immediate ice that made up the walls of the crevice slowly began to drip. Kind of like condensation dripping off a glass.


    Nellie carefully watched the spinning mana string, and sparks slowly began to melt the ice.


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    For over three hours, the string spun. Over time, it seemed to create a faster melting process. And every time the ice melted, Nellie repositioned the spinning string to continue melting the ice. She had completely melted the bottom half of the ice in the North-West portion of her territory. What was left behind was a large cave, about two and a half metres long and two metres deep, that was almost completely filled with water.


    Nellie was strategic in the placement of this room. Just above the cave, she melted out of the ice was the small cave with the tiny floating circle plant. Before she let the mana string and sparks stop circulating at rapid speeds and continue to circulate the way they normally do, she directed it directly underneath the room holding the plant.


    A trickle of water slowly leaked from the ice before a large crash brought the water and the plant down into the water.


    She was quite happy with this. Now, she had two concrete ways of breaking up and manipulating ice. But Nellie was not done. She had figured out how to melt the ice, but she wanted to be able to have the ability to turn the water back to ice.


    Nellie chose one of the tiny crevices with just a few millimetres of water to experiment on.


    If speeding up a mana string and sparks heats enough area to melt ice, what if I slow down the string?


    Really, her idea was to do the exact opposite process of what she did to melt the ice.


    Grabbing one of the strings with a single light blue spark, Nellie carefully coiled it within the three millimetres of water before attaching it to each other. Carefully, she slowed down the speed of the string to the point where she could barely notice the sparks moving.


    It took a bit of time, but after about thirty minutes of watching the water, it began to slowly freeze from the strings outwards.


    Well, that went about as well as I expected. Thought Nellie as she walked back over to the melted ice cave.


    Nellie had a vision for the small floating plant. She wanted it to be spread over the top of the water with a bit of space in between the plants.


    With a delicate touch, Nellie carefully split the pale green tiny circular plant into five sections. In a feat of multitasking, she inserted different mana strings into each plant and pushed as many purple sparks into the plant as she could.


    Quickly, the plants grew over the top of the water. Its once millimetre-wide circular leaves grew until they were two centimetres wide and half a centimetre thick. The plants¡¯ draping roots were the thing that grew the most. The roots grew a metre down and were very tangled up with each other. Though all five plants only took up about a metre of surface space.


    Huh, that¡¯s interesting. Murmured Nellie as she spotted something strange.


    There was no current in the water, but Nellie noticed that the plants seemed to be moving as if there was. Looking closer, she saw something at the bottom of the light green circular leaves. Tiny hairs stroked back and forth in sync with their brethren on the underside of the other circular leaves that it grew with. The strokes made by the hairs were enough for the plant as a whole to circulate around the available empty space. Surprisingly, though, each of the plants didn¡¯t collide with each other. It was like the plant was aware of the others and actively avoided them.


    The swim-stroke-like movement of the plant and the circular floating leaves inspired Nellie.


    Let¡¯s call you the Swym Pads.


    It was a mixture of the word swim and lily pads that the leaves take after.


    Nellie sat down and watched the life and vibrancy of her Outer territory. And when she looked in her Inner, it was empty and lacking. As she looked, something ached inside her.


    She stepped back from her Outer territory, walked through the portal back into her Inner, and imagined what she wanted to do with her territory.


    Nellie dreamed of an almost swamp-like environment. With the draping lichen and water filled with swym pads, she wanted to have this kind of environment. Obviously, she wasn¡¯t going to use her whole inner territory, but she imagined something about two metres tall and three metres wide.


    She chose the very edge of her Inner territory at one of the corner edges of the top part of her Inner territory, along the darkness of the void, to start the construction.


    Nellie chose a close mana string, broke it off its path, coiled it, and began to increase its speed around where she decided to build the room.


    As soon as the ice began to melt, something happened. It was like the invisible border that completely restricted her movement outside of her Outer territory loosened its hold.


    Huh.

 Chapter Nine

    ****************************


    POV Unnamed Dungeon


    ???, Day Seven


    ****************************


    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.


    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    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.

 Chapter Ten

    ****************************


    POV Chrysa


    The Shards, Day Seven


    ****************************


    Chrysa wandered the maze for seven dark and light cycles.


    It was quite different from their previous habitat, and the way of survival has changed for the jellyfish. The time they spent wandering through the dense coral maze allowed their mind to gain a bit more sentient thought. A drastic change to what they once were, but in the grand scheme of things, not much. But they developed enough sense of themselves and their surroundings to build their sentience into that of a four-year-old human child.


    Even their sight began to improve. From the previous shadows that they used to see their surroundings, shapes became more defined, and they could see further.


    Everything that they gained helped them survive, and they needed it.


    The sweet smell that drew them in drew other creatures in as well. The colder it got in the Earth''s oceans, the less vibrant the colour of many organisms was. But in the Shards, despite the cold water, it was like staring at a packed tropical aquarium.


    Filled with shrimp, krill, small and medium-sized species of fish, and crustaceans roamed the maze. They had a wonderful time eating its fill of deliciously yummy prey.


    But Chrysa wasn''t the only predator wandering within the maze.


    As they wandered the dangerous maze, they encountered many creatures. From the seafloor to those living above the ocean waves, there were many similar and many very different creatures that the hunting jellyfish did not recognize.


    The few developing instincts that it currently had helped it along its path. Giving it blaring warnings the few times that something perilous was around it. From a dark shadow with two webbed feet that deceptively floated at the top of the water, they set off their instincts like a blaring alarm to hide. Which Chrysa did, lucky to find a small crevice in the corals that allowed it to hide from the dangerous bird. To a tiny slug that slowly ate at the corals around it. It looked delicious, but when they decided to have a little taste, their instincts created a toxic taste in their mouth that immediately killed their hunger. That taste in their mouth told them that while the slug might look very delicious, they would most likely die a very horrible death if they took even a tiny nibble out of the slug.


    It was dangerous here, Chrysa knew. But the scent was calling them forward.


    Three days passed as they wandered the maze before approaching a small clearing. Hidden deep within the sand was a small grey crystal, the same width as its smallest tentacle. About three centimetres thick and who knows how long, from what they could see, it had small glowing scripts and images across its surfaces. It was nothing like they had ever seen.


    Like a magnet, the grey crystal pulled at Chrysa. They propelled themselves towards the sea floor, but before they could reach the sandy floor, a small, hard thing crashed into them, attracted to this small clearing by the same thing that drew Chrysa in.


    Crashing against the coral wall, Chrysa barely had enough time to even see what had crashed into them, before the creature came at them again.


    Dodging the creature''s open jaws at the last moment, it crashed into the coral. Small pieces of broken-off coral rained down on the creature and themselves as it tried to pry itself out of the coral walls.


    The small moment of time that the creature was stuck gave Chrysa enough time to figure out what it was. And they knew it within seconds as soon as they saw the creature''s body.


    A predator.


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    The natural jellyfish predator: a sea turtle.


    It was a small sea turtle, smaller than the ones that the jellyfish had seen on Earth. It was only about fifty centimetres long, but the way it crashed into the coral showed that while the turtle was small, it was heavy and could get some speed when it wanted to.


    But the turtle was still stuck, but the wiggling it did began to dislodge itself.


    Chrysa knew that they needed to do something while it was still stuck, and they had the advantage.


    Swimming as fast as they could to the turtle, they began to try to latch on and stab their stingers onto whatever part of the turtle they could touch. But the turtle''s skin was too tough for their stingers to get through and inject its venom.


    The turtle, feeling Chrysa try to latch onto its back flippers, struggled even harder to free itself.


    As it wiggled out of the coral, the sharp shards of coral pierced through its skin. Small gashes appeared on the turtle''s head and front flippers. Unluckily for the turtle, some of the coral in the wall was venomous, and the open wounds allowed for the quick-acting venoms of the coral to run through its bloodstream. The olive green skin around the wounds quickly turned red, like a deep blush. On the deepest cut, along its neck, the skin turned into a deep red, almost violet colour, with small fluid-filled sacs developing and growing.


    The turtle shook itself in confusion and pain before it turned and looked at Chrysa, who had backed up after the turtle freed itself.


    And then down at the small grey crystal.


    The turtle''s eyes changed then. It became hardened like it knew what it had to do.


    With beaks wide, it charged at Chrysa, taking a large chunk of its bell.


    Arrrrgh!!!! Wailed Chrysa as it desperately tried to get away from the beak. It wrapped its tentacles around the turtle''s head and shell to pry it away from itself.


    It gave Chrysa a chance. The attacking turtle''s hard brown shell only had a few light scratches, but its head and front flippers were covered in shallow cuts. Especially the large cut on its neck, which was rapidly turning a sickly yellow and green that was spreading along its neck and head, with the site of the cuts becoming loose and stringy, almost like it was dissolving.


    Chrysa was sentient enough to take advantage of the numerous wounds to plunge as much of their stingers as they could spare as it tried to pry the turtle as far away as it could, and plunged them into the wounds. They were lucky enough that the turtle only took some of its bell and didn''t get any of its organs in the attack.


    But the turtle''s attack, no matter how damaging, gave Chrysa a chance to end the fight.


    Typically, the venom of Chrysa''s species wouldn''t be able to take down this predator, but the turtle was weakened. The adrenaline that wracked through the turtle pushed the coral''s venom through its bloodstream even faster. Rapidly causing damage, the influx of Chrysa''s venom created even more stinging pain and breaking down the turtle''s muscle cells, pushing the turtle over the edge.


    The jellyfish''s venom, on top of the fast-moving venom of the different corals, spread through the turtle incredibly fast. More and more of the cuts began to bubble, and the flesh dissolved around the wounds. The venoms overwhelmed the turtle''s system, and with one last painful beat, the turtle''s heart stopped beating.


    Its weight yanked the turtle''s body out of Chrysa''s tentacles and arms, landing on the sandy ocean bottom with a soft thunk.


    The pain that the jellyfish was in dulled as Chrysa as soon as the scent of crystal invaded its senses more heavily than before.


    Unable to swim normally with the small chunk taken out of its bell, Chrysa relied on the movement of the current and its tentacles to help slowly direct it to the crystal.


    Softly resting on the sand, it awkwardly dug around for the crystal. With grasping arms, it brought the crystal towards its mouth and ate it. The crystal had the effect. It targeted those with any amount of sentience and pulled them in through the sentient beings'' main senses. Left by the System for those taken to the Shards, the crystals are one of the reasons that the Shards got their name.


    Delicious, purred Chrysa as the object that pulled at them for days was finally consumed. Within seconds, the jellyfish felt something tingle throughout their body.


    The tingling was a wave of mana. A wave that resulted in a blue screen with text that the jellyfish could read but not necessarily have the sentience to fully understand.


    Congratulations!


    You have consumed a skill shard.


    You have gained the skill: Sprawl (Beginner).


    The jellyfish looked at the blue screen before it dismissed it, not really understanding what the words were saying exactly, but it could read it.


    Seconds after Chrysa dismissed the blue screen, another appeared. This time was different and had more of an important feeling to it.


    Name: Chrysa


    Species Type: Marine Invertebrate - Jellyfish


    Species Skills:


    <ul>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Venom Trigger (Beginner)</li>


    </ul>


    Skills:


    <ul>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Temperature adapting (Beginner)</li>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Sprawl (Beginner)</li>


    </ul>


    After Chrysa consumed the grey crystal with glowing symbols etched on it, they felt no need to stay in the small clearing. But they were still in pain and wounded enough that it was not safe for them to leave the currently empty clearing.


    Laying on the sand, the jellyfish sat in pain at what they had endured during its hunt for the crystal. As it lay there in pain, trying to figure out what to do, Chrysa felt some tingling around the wound, the same thing that they felt when they ate the crystal. It was not painful, but it was like something was touching it. It continued on for the next hour as the pain began to subside. Using its arms, the jellyfish felt a bump where the turtle took a chunk of its bell.


    The sprawl (beginner) skill activated and seemed to pull and create skin around the wound, not like it healed it, but it just covered the wound.


    Chrysa didn''t really pay attention to the feeling; the only thing that mattered was if they could swim again.


    Rising up off of the sandy floor, they began to swim around, testing their ability. Realizing they could swim without problems, they swam back into the maze of coral.

 Species List

    <hr>


    Flora


    Aquatic Plants:


    Floating:


    <ul>


    <li>Swym Pads: Small pale green lily pad like leaves that are 2 cm wide and 0.5 cm thick. It''s a free flowing plant, does not attach itself to anything. Has a ribboned underside that allows the leaves to stay buoyant despite the thin draping roots. The roots will grow up to 1m in length depending on how large the body of water is. On the bottom of the leaves are tiny hairs that move in synchronisation to swim and circulate in the water. The plant avoids contact with others of its species. (first appeared in chapter 4)</li>


    </ul>


    <hr>


    FaunaDid you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    Insects:


    Beetles:


    <ul>


    <li>Metallic Chafer Beetle: A species of beetle that is metallic grey with a copper tone underside and is 5 cm long and 3 cm wide. Has a round rectangular shaped head (1cm long), and a large oval shaped body (4 cm long). Has clear wings with irregular white lines and marks that are protected within its wing cases. Has 2 small antennas and 2 mandibles. Produces 0.3 millimetres long, cylindrical dark grey eggs. (first appeared in chapter 9)</li>


    </ul>


    <hr>


    Fungi


    Lichen:


    <ul>


    <li>Bryoria: A type of lichen that has soft, bendy grey-brown branches. Each branch is 10 cm long and 0.5cm wide. Each branch has feather-like appendages that will anchor into the soil and turn into roots or will then further develop into more branches. Gives an appearance of a shaggy carpet. (First appeared in chapter 4)</li>


    </ul>

 Chapter Eleven

    ****************************


    POV Unnamed Dungeon


    ???, Day Eight


    ****************************


    The metallic chafer beetles dragged what remained of the worm back to the melted ice room for the rest of the population to feast on what remained.


    It was what the beetle population needed. A few minutes later, the females began to lay eggs throughout the room. There were many cylindrical dark grey eggs, except two were different. Nellie thought that the changes in the eggs were probably some variation or something that happened to them that made them misshapen. Deciding not to speed up their growth, Nellie continued with expansion, focusing on expanding upwards, trying to get to the surface.


    Getting entranced in the process, Nellie began the methodical process of increasing her Outside territory.


    ****************************


    Two days passed as she systematically increased her territory until she touched the solid barrier that prevented any movement outside her territory.


    But that didn''t matter.


    The fact that she gained an additional 15 metres of height and 10 metres of width to the Outside territory before hitting the barrier made her happy enough. A smile of glee spread across her face as she finally broke through to the surface and gained a glimpse of where she ended up after the System took over the Earth.


    She raced to see her location as soon as her territory touched the air. Basking under the heat of the sun as the rays caressed her body, Nellie took in the sights.


    She was on an island, or at least what looked like an island, just a bit bigger than two football fields. It was then that Nellie knew that she had ended up where she was selected on the spinning globe. If the location was the same as she chose, then Nellie ended up just off of the northernmost island of North America. Little did Nellie know, she ended up on not exactly an island, but an island that was able to float and move with the ocean. The island was somewhat of a shrubland-type environment, but very much so in a Northern Canadian way that was not quite yet artic. No trees could be seen, but Nellie could practically feel the life and potential that this place had for her.


    There were bushes and shrubs, different grasses and flowering plants. From just looking at the surface part of her territory, Nellie could see a few insects and signs that other, bigger animals had walked through this area. Farther out was a pond about fifty meters towards the island''s north end. About ten metres wide, twenty metres long, and very misshapen looking. Whether it was fresh or saltwater, she didn''t know. But the prospects of it and the rest of the island made Nellie hopeful for what she would find and gain as her Outer territory grew.


    From the island and the spot her territory emerged from, only a small part of the northernmost island was visible to her. Almost the whole skyline on the northwest side was filled with rocky shores, and tall trees lined the edge of the skyline. Huge trees, at least 50 metres tall. But that mainland island is very far away. Only edging along the skyline.


    Everything else was just water. Cementing the fact that the body of water the island that held her territory was located in is an ocean.


    She couldn''t see into the water, as the part of her territory that breached the surface of the island was not near the edge of the island, so she didn''t know what was inside it or what the depth of the ocean was, but it made her more excited to continue expanding her territory to reach the ocean and cover the whole island. She knew she could reach it if she had the chance, but Nellie had to wait for the barrier to release her before she could continue extending.


    But that left her more time to figure out what she wanted.


    Honestly, the days had passed by so quickly that Nellie really had no time or forethought to mourn her previous life.


    The pain and sadness were there but tempered by what she was now. Most of her memories and thoughts connected to her past were tempered. It was like the System decided that she should not be greatly influenced by her past. At least, that was what Nellie chose to believe, as she did not want to think that maybe, just maybe, she was better suited as a dungeon core. That the way she lived as a human was somewhat irrelevant now. Like she was highly adaptive in her emotions and memories. It puzzled Nellie, as that thought that maybe she had a mild personality disorder considering her lack of freakout and panic when she was brought to her Inner territory.


    Nellie sat at the top of her territory looking at the views around her as the waves slowly lapped at the island as the cold breeze ran through her. She sat there, just staring and thinking. Trying to pull herself together enough to continue with what she needed to do to survive and prepare. She only had one year, 365 days, until those that survived the System Trials came back to Earth, bringing who knows what and doing who knows what. The timed unknown that is going to happen, not for a while, was something that Nellie kept at the back of her mind. But she didn''t really know what she was really doing. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Honestly, for the last ten days, she has just been stumbling around, doing what her instincts pushed her to do and what she somehow figured out. And that''s what she''s been doing. But at this point, Nellie would start something, then get pulled to another thing, and over and over this would happen.


    As she sat on the island thinking, she realized that she needed to get her priorities straight.


    The first thing she knew she had to do was to claim every single living being that was now within her territory. She couldn''t wait.


    The humming and buzzing of organisms that were not HERS sounded in her mind. The bigger the organism, the more pronounced the humming was.


    But that humming led her to all the organisms in her territory, leaving no soil unturned and no organism left behind because Nellie couldn''t see it or sense it.


    Very quickly, Nellie began circulating multiple strings of purple sparks throughout the surface of the island. Adding hundreds of individual beings and what looked like to be 20 new species she didn''t have before.


    Aaaahhhh. Moaned out Nellie as suddenly the hunger inside her quietly screamed for her to continue adding living beings to her territory, to her control, and became quite full from everything that got caught in her territory. But she wasn''t finished yet.


    Bouncing from buzzing organism to buzzing organism within the mostly soil and ice environment. She added fifteen different beings and ten new species to her domain.


    Looking at what she gained from her territorial expansion and the headway she was making, Nellie knew that she had to continue moving forward.


    One thing she definitely knew she could do to move forward, make progress, and grow stronger, was that the more she did with her Inner territory, the more wiggle room she got with the barrier blocking her expansion of her Outer territory. And that, after large changes and killing invaders like that worm, seemed to give her more room to expand her territory.


    Along with expanding her territory and making changes, one of the things that soothed her instincts was the addition of animals, plants and fungi to her territory. To see and feel them in her territory satisfied something deep within her, not to add the fact that adding more types of beings to her territory fed her dungeon core instincts.


    Nellie sat, thinking about what she needed to do, and fiddled with her hair as she distractedly stared into space.


    Nothing is more important right now than finishing the Inner territory. Decided Nellie as she flowed and moved through the portal into her Inner territory, the most powerful physical part of her dungeon.


    Coiling a mana string, she increased its speed and continued melting the ice, creating the room. Nellie originally wanted to do something like a swamp environment, but that wasn''t something she currently could do. But she already figured out what she was going to create.


    As the ice melted, her vision of the Inner territory came alive.


    Keeping a small layer of ice to cover the void that held her core territory, she finished melting a two-metre wide and two-metre tall room along the top of the cube. Looking at the water pooled at the bottom of the room, Nellie began the second room.


    This room wouldn''t be the exact height for the whole room. The ceiling became a steep hill along the northwest side of the room and was a lot taller than the southeast side. The room was not going to be completely filled with water. The northwest side of the room was two metres and 70 centimetres tall, while the southeast side was two metres tall. The room was four metres and 90 centimetres wide.


    Each room was smooth, but not perfectly smooth. Each having some grooves and ridges throughout. And both of the rooms were completely filled with water.


    But there was too much water, especially in the top room.


    With mana strings coiled in her hand, Nellie began creating large and small chunks of ice throughout both rooms. The water level halved in the bottom room, but the top room still had a third left. She already had a plan for this, though.


    Nellie dug some small indents on the floor of the top room before she began melting five small tunnels that served and curved downwards into the bottom room. Each of the tunnels was only five centimetres wide and as small as one centimetre wide. And as soon as the tunnels connected to the bottom room, a rush of water poured down, crashing into the previously stilled water of the bottom room. In the top room, little mini whirlpools, like you see in bathtubs, spun around on top of each of the tunnels as the water level drastically lowered.


    Quickly, the crashing of the water slowed to small drips as the water began to settle in the bottom room once again. With the water level reaching about ten centimetres up the hill, air filling the rest of the room.


    Within the top room, the few small indents were the only water that remained, other than what dripped down the walls and lay on the ground. The largest of the indents, just on the edge of the room, had one of these tunnels that was completely filled with water. For some reason, the water level seemed high enough that it wouldn''t continue to drain what was left in the indent and tunnels. But Nellie decided to keep it like this, as once she found some aquatic fauna, at least something small, it would be able to travel through the tunnel into the small indent and even some of the other tunnels that didn''t fully drain.


    As the drips of the still soaked rooms continued, she was continuing on with finishing the rooms.


    Condensing half the ice chunks in the lower room, she squeezed a small pile of ice pebbles that she spread out across the room. With the other half, she created small columns of ice that acted like mangrove roots throughout the watery part of the room. In the small area that just had air, she added a few small ridges around the walls.


    In the top room, Nellie focused on developing the ice into the room''s environment. She sewed ice chunks and shaped them into long edges and ledges. Creating different shelves and such that hung along the walls and even one that hung down from the ceiling. Squeezing the smaller chunks of ice, she made three large condensed ice pieces that Nellie was going to use as stones with a bunch of condensed ice pebbles. The stones she placed along three of the puddle indents. The rest of the pebbles she scattered around.


    Stepping back, Nellie adjusted a few things. She realized that she would have to drag soil through the bottom room, through the water and up to the top room because of where her portal was located. But that was realistic. The soil would completely spread through the water, and she would lose the majority of what she had brought in.


    Does it move? Thought Nellie as she grabbed onto the edges of the portal and began to try to push it upwards.


    Straining against the portal, Nellie managed to push it centimetre by centimetre until the portal lay fully in the top room.


    Huffing, Nellie began to gather enough soil around her Outer territory before digging a path back to the portal and depositing it around the top room.


    As Nellie finalized the room, she felt something nudge at her attention.

 Chapter Twelve

    ****************************


    POV Unnamed Dungeon


    ???, Day Fifteen


    ****************************


    Nellie stared at what she had created. With only being a dungeon core for half a month in this new System-controlled Earth, Nellie thought of herself as making decent progress.


    Nellie had raced through building rooms and pathways around her Outer territory. The Outer territory gave her 22 metres wide and long and 32 metres tall of stone, ice, and soil that she manipulated into a series of rooms and tunnels connecting them. The rooms were all somewhat similar, being around one to five metres tall, long, or wide. Five new rooms with the bryoria room and the melted ice cave created a sprawling system of caves throughout her territory, ending at a big five metre by five-metre room with a tunnel leading to the portal to her Inner territory. However, Nellie decided to keep the melted room isolated for now. Each of these new rooms was filled with every flora, fauna, and fungi that she collected, with an additional 30 species that Nellie meticulously added after her expansion.


    The first room at the top of her territory was five metres long and one metre tall. Carved within two large chunks of ice and soil. It was a curved room in an s-shape with ten centimetres of soil. She filled the room with two tall species of grass; pepper grass and switchgrass; and a short growing meadow grass; common meadow grass. The pepper grass was a dry, gold wheat-like plant with unique seeds. While observing this species, she noticed that its seeds produced tiny sparks when the plant moved sharply. The switch grass was a species that grew just under three metres tall with green stems and brownish leaf tips. As the plant grew, Nellie noticed that the plant grew their roots deep and wide and that it seemed to stop growing just as it began to touch the ceiling. The common meadow grass looked like normal grass you might find in a meadow. It was short, around 70 centimetres tall, but the plant seemed to do well in the cold, frigid environment.


    As the grass species in the room grew and spread, Nellie decided that she wasn¡¯t done with the flora in the room. Throughout the room, she added a few low-growing and densely matted flowering plant that she named lilac rockfoil, a few dark green ferns that had these nodules along the veins on the underside of the leaves that she called spinulose woodfern, and the last was a shrub growing just over one metre tall with wooden branches and yellow honeysuckle flowers that Nellie named bush honeysuckle.


    The second room was three metres wide and five metres tall. The room was a rough rectangular shape and had a few ice ledges and indents within the stone and soil walls. Half a metre of soil was laden on the floor and a bit on the ledges. In this room, she planted one of the unknown seeds that she found. Planted in the middle of the room. She grew the mystery seed with a string of purple sparks, and what appeared made her smile. On the island there was nothing bigger than large shrubs, but the seed grew into something bigger than a shrub. The plant that grew in that room was a tree that sprouted all the way up to the ceiling, with its branches spreading out, creating a large canopy. The tree had white papery bark with a small yellow shine that made her think of birch trees and had dark green round leaves. Nellie named the plant the yellow birch. Along with the tree, she filled the room with lilac rockfoil, spinulose woodfern, bush honeysuckle, and another new flowering species with strong reddish upright stems, yellow-green and red flowers and acidic red berries that she called red sorrel. She even strung up some bryoria lichen along the tree branches.


    The third room was slanted downwards, with a height of two metres and a width of three metres, and it was sloped rectangular. It was encased in condensed ice, stone, and fortified soil. Nellie filled this room with a layer of soil along the floor with bushes and dense plants. She used the lilac rockfoil, spinulose woodfern, bush honeysuckle, red sorrel, and a grass-like plant that extends upwards in strong red stalks about 90 centimetres tall and grows in bunches that she called the carex sedge.


    The fourth room was a long single tunnel that she shaped into a trinity knot. Only one metre wide and one metre tall, the tunnel would have been around fifty metres long, but since it curved and interested with itself, it was a lot more condensed than it would have been straight. The tunnel was filled with a lot of her newer, smaller plants. A cactus species that was bright white and had funnel-shaped flowers that only grew to 3.5 centimetres high that she named the albedo cactus. A small species of fern that only grew one thin, shiny, grey-white leaf out of the ground that she named white moonwort. A mushroom with a ringless orange-brown cap that had sticky white dots on its cap that Nellie called the orange-brown ringless mushroom. A moving vine species with strong roots and stalks that had the peculiarity of moving itself across the ground named the travelling vine. A deep green moss species with long leaves and strong roots that was named timmia moss. And lastly a type of slime mold that seemed to love to live on the exposed areas of ice she decided to call the ice mold. Along with bunches of common meadow grass, spinulose woodferns and bush honeysuckles filled up the tunnel, making it completely packed.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    The fifth and last room was with the biggest room. Five metres by five metres, she placed two of the yellow birch tree seeds in the room and let them grow throughout the room. Despite the competition for space, Nellie noticed that while some of the branches were intertwined, none of the leaves even touched one another. It was like the trees had a rule that they needed to leave about twenty centimetres of space with each other. Which Nellie thought contradicted the branch interweaving, but it was what it was. Nellie filled the room with grass, grass-like plants, orange-brown ringless mushrooms, and timmia moss.


    Each of the five rooms had a single tunnel, one metre tall, connecting the previous room to the next. The tunnels were filled with just common meadow grass and timmia moss, but Nellie didn¡¯t care if other species spread through them. Honestly, she expected it and wasn¡¯t opposed to it.


    Nellie had prepared all of the flora and fungi, but just before she added the fauna, she realized she had missed something. The luminous moss. Being underground, most of the rooms and tunnels were completely black, and those that weren¡¯t only had a bit of sun that managed to get through the ice that reached the surface. The luminous moss was a type of moss that was bioluminescent and produced a good amount of light depending on the amount of moss. So she sporadically placed the moss along the ceilings, creating a dark but bright enough to see the environment.


    With everything prepared, she spread all her new and old fauna species throughout the rooms and tunnels.


    She spread as many tentacled mole worms (a worm that previously hungered for her mana sparks but not is a part of her domain, that has a mole like nose and grows to around 20 centimetres), foliage earthworms (a small five centimetre earthworm species that consumed things that are dead), twist harvestmen (a graceful light grey to brown legged harvestmen that grows three centimetres wide and five centimetres tall), black ticks (a species of black tick that she found love to live in loose soil areas), hairy pill beetles (a dark brown pill beetle that grows up to 18 millimetres in length and has small hairs across its body), burrowing pill beetles (a dark brown ever moving pill beetle that is 15 millimetres long and specializes in burrowing), red furry aphids (an one centimetre aphid that is a soft red colour with a fuzzy, white waxy substance that has a defense mechanism that shoots out a mixture of blood and feces at predators), frostwing grasshopper (a cold-dwelling blue-grey grasshopper species that is five centimetres long that has powerful hindlegs that is used for jumping), ice bush moths (a four cenitmetre wide moth that has transparent wings with a white border), ice melt mosquitoes (two centimetres long and is adapted to the icy environment), dark-stripped soldier beetles (two centiemtre long beetle with a tannish-brown colour and dark blue stripes that can feed on both nectar and smaller creatures), dusky solider beetles (a one centiemtre long beetle that is active in the dusk and dawn), belted springtails (a one centimetre long springtail that is dark brown and has black stripes and has a forked tail-like appendage), and the three arctic short-tailed shrews (a shrew that can dig within frozen soil, has large teeth, and can grow between ten to 14 centiemtres long) throughout the rooms. Nellie tried to be careful with what she pulled from the soil and above ground, but she considered this more important. And she watched the insects, crustaceans, mammals, worms, and arachnids spread throughout the rooms and tunnels, making their own space.


    Along with finally completing the two rooms within her Inner territory, she had been quite busy. Over the seven days that she spent doing everything and tweaking things to be what she wanted. On the fifteenth day, she decided she was ready.


    Pheew. Sighed Nellie as she looked at the expansion of her work. I¡¯m ready.


    With trepidation, she slowly excavated a twisty, winding tunnel from the first room, the s-shaped room, to the surface.


    BOOM


    The second the tunnel entrance was stable, a noise blasted through her head. Crouching down in pain, she gripped her ringing head. Blinking, Nellie remained disorientated for a minute as changes rushed upon her.


    As the effects of the explosion sound disappeared, Nellie finally realized what happened.


    It was like the Inner territory exploded in size and within her head. It doubled to ten metres in length, width, and height, and with the expansion, new materials laden within the new areas. A dark brown soil with what appeared to be laden with the dark, organic material of hummus that forms in the decaying of plant and animal matter and a bubble, one metre long and wide, that was completely filled with fresh water.


    Not to mention the fact that her nebula core expanded in size and amount of circulating purple mana sparks in it. Even the condensed part of her nebula expanded in size. The tightly packed purple mana sparked space, growing to four centimetres from its previous two centimetres.


    When Nellie looked away from her nebula and started looking around, a blue screen appeared in front of her.