ã€ŠDimension Space - A Dungeon Core Novelã€‹


 Prologue - Death of a Nation

    Commander Hart was worried. Seeing as she was in the CIC (combat information center) of the newest superdreadnaught of the Terran fleet that meant things were not going well at all. The remnants of the Terran fleet were arrayed around the last surviving colony planet of the Terran Federation, the research planet of Eorhild.

    ¡°10 minutes to contact.¡± Captain Meadow announced through her implant, which prompted her to wipe her sweaty hands on her pants, then straighten her back and look around her crew of hardened veterans.

    ¡°Complete final checks¡± she reminded the crew, while they went through the screens on their terminals, making sure the bridge did not miss anything. Through the Holotank in the middle of the CIC one could see the last 100¡¯000 ships of the Terran Federation arranging themselves in their Battle formation, trying to buy time for the colony ship. Said ship was just now lifting off the surface of the planet, with their brightest minds on board to escape the Ourchos and rebuild on a far away planet to start over.

    The 100 Surviving superdreadnaughts formed the center of the Formation with 10¡¯000 Dreadnaughts and 30¡¯000 Battleships forming the center. The rest of the ships were made up of a screen of cruisers and destroyers, trying to soak up enough damage for the big guns to make the difference in the coming battle. 100¡¯000 battleworthy ships might seem like a lot, compared to the millions of enemy contacts on the other side however, it was not very confidence inspiring.

    The Ourchos were a species humanity discovered over 200 years ago. The first extraterrestial lifeform ever encountered. At first everything seemed on track for a friendly first encounter, but then a simple misunderstanding lead to the slaughter of the Ourchos ambassador, and from there it just kept snowballing further and further out of control. Terra fell over 150 years ago now, and from there the Terran Federation was never able to regain the lost initiative and one loss kept piling on top of the other.

    Eorhild was the best defended planet after Terra itself, due to it being the premier research facility of the Terran Federation. Though the planet itself was not too densely populated, mostly the families of the scientists in the R&D orbitals. As such the Ourchos left it for last, and it were content to slowly whittle away at the strength surrounding it. It seemed the time for the annihilation of the human race has finally arrived with the last system outside of Eorhild having fallen just 5 years prior. In a last-ditch effort, the research team designed a new type of colony ship with unprecedented speed and endurance. With it they hoped to save a last remnant of humanity, by being able to outrun the usually faster engines of the Ourchos, so as to restart civilization on another planet, as far from the scourge of their civilization as possible. The arrival of the Enemy fleet in system however meant they had to launch the ship now, before it was fully tested and hope they could fix whatever they missed along the way.

    The rumbling of the Shield generators and Laser Capacitors charging brought Alison back to the present. They were only seconds away from maximum range and the final dance of death of Humanity was about to begin. The small green dot in the Holotank on the opposite side of the System, running as fast as it could, represented the salvation of the human genome. Crossing the invisible line of maximum engagement, the coherent beams of light started reaching out across the distance and shields started sparkling, when they adjusted their wavelengths to nullify the enemy lasers.

    While Terran shields and weaponry were top of the line, the simple numbers of enemy ships soon started to show its weight, as more and more screening units of the Terran Federation Navy started to disappear in clouds of superheated gas and fragments.

    Let their sacrifices not be in vain! Alison fervently prayed to whatever deity may be listening as she observed the small green dot in the holotank representing humanity¡¯s salvation. She and the rest of their Navy made their peace with their approaching death as long as this single vessel could make it to the limit of the gravitational distortions caused by the massive weight of the star in the center of the system.

    ¡°Commander Hart there is a problem with the computer core. One of the hits overloaded the capacitors as a failsafe didn¡¯t trigger properly. If we don¡¯t get the core back into operation ASAP, we might lose our dimension tap.¡± Alison received over her implant from her captain. He did not need to mention, that if they did lose the dimension tap, most of the energy the superdreadnaught needed for battle operation would not be available anymore.

    ¡°Yes Sir. I will get my replacement to take over immediately¡± She answered him through the same means of communication.

    ¡°Brad take over, Captain wants me down in engineering¡± she announced to the middle-aged man behind her, before unstrapping and carefully making her way to the exit hatch. As Head Engineer, she was consulted whenever the on-duty personnel couldn¡¯t handle something, or, as in this case, the issue in question is too sensitive to trust to less experienced crew.

    The core room is the centerpiece of every Terran vessel, it regulates the energy siphoned through the dimension tap, preventing it from drawing too much and transforming an imposing starship into an elaborate bomb. Entering through the security around the core room Alison hurried to the terminal attached to the core immediately upon arrival. Several alarms and warnings were displayed on the screen which required her undivided attention. Tapping away at the keys, trying to get the fluctuating energies back under control, she lost all sense of time around her.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    ***

    Captain Ismahal tried to hold back his tears as he observed the valiant last stand of the Terran Federation Navy, dying to buy him enough time to start his Dimension drive. Trying to run as silent as he possibly could while still maintaining a decent amount of acceleration the Colony ship Hope was running for all it was worth. If only mankind could turn back to that fateful meeting where hostilities had broken out.

    The sudden alarm aboard the Bridge rudely ripped him out of his melancholy and made him focus back on the screens hovering in front of him. Their silent run it seems hadn¡¯t been silent enough. Not 10 million kilometres in front of him a massive fleet of Ourchos fast cruisers just came out of Dimension space at the gravitational limit, right in the middle of their projected escape route.

    ¡°Shit where did they come from!¡± his XO couldn¡¯t help but exclaim. Even though he would¡¯ve like to agree wholeheartedly with him, he managed to press out through clenched teeth. ¡°Focus Marc. Let¡¯s figure out a way out of this mess.¡±

    Looking back at the representation of the enemy fleet in front of him, he tried to think of anything at all that might save them from total destruction. With their direct route cut off he had to get creative to reach the limit where they could engage their dimensional drive before the enemy could come into range. Come on Jerry, THINK! THINK!

    Due to shock and the limitations of inertia he was however unable to influence their trajectory too much and as he was still frantically trying to devise a way out of the trap that they were caught in, the weapons ports on the Ourchos cruisers had opened and beams of coherent light reached across the void, arriving at the colony ships mere moments later.

    The shields managed to hold out for a couple of seconds, then the energy reached the hull and, in an instant, transformed the famous Terran ¦Í-steel into so much superheated plasma. Captain Ismahal had a bare moment to realize that the colony ship was doomed before the blackness overtook his senses.

    ***

    Admiral Jackson watched with dread as the small green dot on his display got swarmed by red icons and soon disappeared. So, it has come to this. He thought sadly to himself. Reaching for a button he hoped he would never need, a private line between him and the Captain of his flagship opened.

    ¡°Hi Randall, I take it you saw?¡± He opened with a dead voice.

    ¡°Indeed, I have¡± Captain Meadow answered full of sorrow

    ¡°With the colony ship we have nothing to lose now¡± the admiral continued ¡°I give you authorization to use experimental weapon Zeta¡±

    ¡°Understood Sir. I will engage with haste¡±

    Leaning back in his chair on the flag deck the admiral closed his eyes and waited for what was to come. Experimental weapon Zeta was a contingency he hoped never to use. It was a missile that, instead of a conventional warhead, had a specialized dimension tap mechanism.

    However, this tap is not meant to open a rift to siphon off a specific subset of the chaotic yet organized energies of the other dimension, but to send out a pulse into the other side, which would theoretically destabilize the dimension and catastrophically collapse all the dimension taps on both the Terran fleet vessels as well as the Ourchos ships.

    It was truly a suicide weapon, only ever meant to be created as a theoretical exercise, however desperation led humanity to create it in the end, in the hope that the population on the planet at least would be saved. The energies as a whole on the other side of the tap however were still poorly understood as humanity only ever used a small subset of it.

    The destabilizing pulse might simply shut down all the energy taps on both sides, or it might destabilize the very fabric of the universe. Theories went both ways. With nothing to lose, Terran fleet command issued this weapon as a last resort.

    ***

    Uncaring the Zeta missile made its way out of the weapons port and towards the center of the engagement. Soon after the core determined to have reached the optimal position and initiated its detonation sequence. A pulse entered Dimension space and destabilized the energies within. The weakened fabric of space separating the Dimensions ripped and the energies spread throughout the corners of the universe touched by dimension space in an instant.

    It washed over the orbitals, deactivating every single electronic device and causing them to slowly deteriorate in their orbit. Doomed to an eventual fiery re-entry. Every vessel currently accessing dimension space simply ceased to exist. The only surviving piece of evidence, the core, designed to regulate access into dimension space within itself. Due to the proximity to the planet most of the cores of both fleets soon started to drift towards the gravity well and begin their re-entry into atmosphere.

    ***

    Just as Alison was reaching for the Core in the middle of the room to reconnect some cables, she felt a wave passing through her that shook her fundamentally. She was about to retract her hand from the dimension core to check what it was she felt, when the energies inside it went out of control in an instant.

    Where her fingers touched the crystalline structure of the core, a burning sensation instantly spread throughout her body. Time seemed to stop, and yet she could suddenly make out the stars shining through holes in the secured room. Instead of panicking she observed in fascination as in slow motion more and more materials seemed to be disintegrated and transformed into pure energy streams, that started flowing through the air towards the core.

    Only when her feet and legs started to come apart, she found her lost emotions again and started to panic. In no time at all her upper body was gone as well and her head started to lose material cohesion. Instead of nothingness or even an afterlife as she expected, she instead suddenly felt her mind being expanded. Concepts of complex engineering or simple art and music found their way into her memory. She felt as though her mind had suddenly become one massive database as more and more of her consciousness was sucked into the dimension core.

    Before the last of her awareness transferred to the crystal, she realized what must have been happening. Due to her touching the core, in the exact moment the Zeta weapon went off, hey she also suddenly knew top secret information, her consciousness must have transferred to the computer core, usually only inhabited by an AI to manage energies and the database every Navy vessel carried.

    With the last of her material body transformed to energy and sucked into the core she caught one last glimpse of a massive view of stars with Eorhild in the distance before the tap suddenly shut off and the stress on her mind got too much and she passed out.

 Interlude 1 â€“ A new Era

    In the aftermath of the Zeta weapon, dimensional energy fluctuations spread throughout the known universe. Being further away from ground zero, the dimension taps of further away systems only shut down, without the matter absorption happening throughout the System denoted as ground Zero.

    The Orbitals around Eorhild luckily only had smaller taps, only enough to provide the required energy for life-support and station keeping Systems, unlike the larger versions on the Warships. The Detonation of the Zeta Weapon still caused a large area of annihilation around the core, with it being orders of magnitude smaller on the orbitals. This area, however, was contained to the center of the spherical orbitals before the tap shut itself down due to the instabilities. Without the life-support and altitude stabilizers fed by the core, all that the crew was able to do was watch their inevitable end in the form or the Eorhild atmosphere approaching.

    Being made of the condensed matter ¦Í-steel, most of the structure actually survived the atmospheric ablation of re-entry, however the kinetic impact with the surface deformed the massive spheres into so much junk metal.

    The impact of the four orbitals caused massive earthquakes, tsunamis and enormous ash-clouds to spread all across the 5 continents, burying the remnants of the constructs deep within the earth, the craters soon to be filled with rubble and water. With all of the energy sources and digital storage devices on the surface disabled at the same time, there was not a lot the small remaining population could do to survive this cataclysm.

    The population of Eorhild went from several millions to barely above 100¡¯000 in a matter of days. And this population number was only doomed to reduce even further in the ash-cloud induced ice-age to come for the next several centuries.

    Unlike the dimension tap core on the navy vessels, the civilian cores used to access dimensional space in the cities on the surface, were not built for high energy conductance and shattered upon the unexpected energy fluctuation occurring within. The limited matter absorption followed by huge explosions blasted deep craters into the cityscape and demolished any remaining structures around them.

    Over the next millennia Humanity¡¯s population reduced form the survivors of the orbital impacts to roughly around 10¡¯000 people, spread in small communities across the 5 continents. Several Ourchos prisoner camps also lost containment and around 1000 of the aliens managed to survive the cataclysm. However due to their lower numbers they retreated to the wilderness and wastelands after a brief conflict with humanity.

    The legend of the savage Ourchos endured in Human Memory and soon, due to the similarities in their name, got combined with the legends of the Orks from ancient human lore.

    After around 200 years of surviving in the ice age, the first cores of the Terran navy started their re-entry into Eorhild atmosphere. While some were shattered during the Zeta weapon explosion, others broke apart during atmospheric re-entry, while some only shattered upon impact with the surface.

    Deposits of smaller Crystal shards, remnants of shattered cores, could be found all across the globe. Not all cores shattered upon re-entry, and a small few survived the re-entry impact against all odds.

    Among those few were 60 of the 100 Superdreadnaught cores. These cores held within themselves the highest level of AI with the greatest capacity for learning of all of the cores.

    Efforts of humanity managed to create AI¡¯s that could imitate consciousness to a surprising degree, however truly innovative thinking still remained the purview of the biologicals. Despite the instabilities inside dimensional space they managed to keep the tap to dimension space from shutting down completely, though the energies they were pulling from Dimension space were no longer the subset they were created to handle and would have enabled them the siphon the energy quantities they needed to keep themselves operating.

    All they could do was shunt the energies into their surroundings in their programmed need to keep the tap open and themselves from overloading. In outer space the energies simply dissipated, lost in the vast void. Once embedded in the surface these energies started to accumulate and spread into the atmosphere, binding to subatomic particles of all matter they encountered, altering the interaction of said matter with energy.

    Over the next couple of millennia animals and plants started to adapt to the energies abundant around these cores, integrating them into their own organic systems, learning to interact with the bonds of the energy with matter.

    Some plants developed resistances to their natural predators, while others evolved to use this energy to capture prey themselves. Some animals started to use the extra energy in the subatomic particles to bind their own matter closer together, growing stronger and bigger.

    Others developed an ability use this energy outside of their bodies, projecting their will on these energies, manipulating the matter they were bound to. Mythical beasts with fire breathing abilities, snakes with the ability to manipulate jets of water and turtles with symbiotic relations with ensnaring plants on their shells started to appear closer to these sources of energy.

    With plants and animals starting to adapt, Humanity and Orks were not far behind. Within 2 millennia of the commencement of energy dispersal the first human among the surviving tribes started to explore with gathering these energies in its purer form actively. Circulating it in certain pathways throughout his body, energizing and strengthening it to heights unreachable through the passive binding of said energies with matter. Through manipulation of these purer energies within the confines of his body the first physical energy user was born.

    It took another Millenia of experimentation with the energy for the first orcish shaman to figure out a way to expel the energies in its pure form, without harming the body in the process, to manipulate matter outside of their bodies in a scope previously unseen before.

    Every intelligent being, through long meditation and an application of focused will, is able to minimally affect matter around them and create small sparks of fire and other similar effects with their mind.

    This new technique changed that by allowing for streams of Fire instead of small sparks to be created and for a single being to alter the very Ground they walk on to throw boulders of rock and build impressive structures, as long as they managed to keep a tight control on these energies once they left their bodies.

    Humanity and Orks started to use these abilities to rebuild their civilization from scratch, however all knowledge of their former Glory was lost to time. They started to congregate from wandering tribes into bigger and bigger settlements for the human plains while the orks started to organize into different wartribes that worked together to raid the human plains from time to time.Stolen story; please report.

    ith the abilities of internal and external energy manipulation, they were able to finally fight back against the stronger of the beasts in the wilderness and the encroaching, often able to defend themselves, flora.

    Soon people with the ability to manipulate these energies became known as mages and were revered across the lands, as it took an exceptional amount of willpower to keep these energies controlled after they left the body without blowing themselves up in the process.

    With longer lives granted by the more durable nature of matter bonded to the actively gathered higher densities of dimensional energies, especially the rejuvenating nature of the purer forms of energy, people started to explore and experiment with the possibilities of energy manipulation. With progress of spell craft and body strengthening techniques, beacons of civilization started to establish itself again.

    ***

    Of the 60 AI¡¯s that survived the impact, the one containing Alison¡¯s consciousness did not manage to keep the dimension tap open. Due to the heightened stress of restructuring itself to accommodate the complexities of human thought, all it was able to do was to shut down the tap whereas the others managed to keep their tap open.

    Absorbing the energies from the matter conversion of the Zeta explosion provided enough spare power to make sure the crew it was mandated to protect, the chief engineer, survived the transfer. It took all of its full processing power as absorbing the mind of a human being should not have been possible in the first place.

    During the process it felt itself dispersing more and more, as more of Alison started to spread throughout the core taking up space meant for its operating systems. The Database was protected, and it could only cannibalize itself in order to fulfil its duty to protect the one mind of its remaining crew.

    It did not care about ending its existence, it was programmed to regulate the energies and support the crew, anything else did not matter. The energy tap was shut down and Alison was the last of its crew. It was content. Or at least as content as an artificial Intelligence could be. As the last act of its existence it put the core into hibernation in the hope that someone would find it and reactivate the dimension tap, conserving as much energy as it could.

    ***

    The 59 other cores were not encumbered with the absorption of a human mind, and thus managed to keep their Dimension taps open. Though they did notice that, immediately after the blast wave passed, something fundamental had changed. While they could keep the energies flowing, they could not access those energies to sustain the more advanced functions of their cores.

    Being AIs they were not worried though. The amount gained through the absorption of Matter during the Explosion, was enough to sustain base functions for several millennia to come, so they just shut down all active services and only maintained enough cognizance to keep the tap open, ignoring all else.

    They did not register their approach to the planet, nor did they even register when 20 of their kind shattered on impact with the atmosphere or the planets crust, they just kept on regulating the flow of the dimensional energies.

    As time passed and fauna and flora adapted to their energy output the AI¡¯s registered a curious phenomenon. As the matter around them bound the chaotic energies they in turn constantly gave off a whiff of structured energy.

    Animals and plants living close to the core started to absorb higher amounts of energy and thus becoming more and more powerful. Giving off higher amounts of structured energies the core soon became able to adjust their functions to this structured energy and use it for their own advanced functions, such as re-establishing the tactical net or accessing their databases.

    The more and stronger energy dependent animals and plants a core had around itself the more energies it could again reabsorb. Nonetheless the total amount of energy given off by a living being remained lower than the amount absorbed by it. Non-living matter, once saturated, only passed on these energies without absorbing any more without additional environmental influence such as huge pressure or heat, and the amount of structured energy being passed off was so minimal as to be negligible in comparison.

    Additionally, the Ai¡¯s started to notice another effect of this exchange of energies. As Constructs specifically built to manipulate dimensional energies, they noticed they could start to affect the minds of beings with a higher amount of dimensional energies within their system. The same seemed to hold true for materials around their core soaked strongly enough in the flows of energy.

    So, they started to build and construct housings and ecosystems, specifically suited to the beasts with higher amounts of energy, so that they in turn could absorb higher amounts of purified energies from them.

    The closer to the Core these beings were the more of the energies they could absorb and in turn again supply to the core. The more energy the core could absorb the more it could use to unlock additional functions and further open the tap to keep increasing the amounts of energy given off by them.

    Orks and Humans soon started to figure out that these cores were pure sources of, as they called it, mana and started to covet and desire these cores. After the first of the remaining 39 AI¡¯s was captured and used as a source to power a shield of a city, while ignoring it¡¯s request for instruction as no one had the implants and language interface anymore to communicate with them, the cores as a whole soon came to the conclusion that these new humans were not crew but invaders to be combated.

    The cores as a whole, started to restructure their environment from huge open ecosystems to buried structures specifically designed to combat intruders. Without a supply of advanced materials required for the construction of advanced weaponry, some of which could only be found on the surface of stars or created artificially, these Ai¡¯s lacked the innovative thinking to recreate advanced methods of intruder defences from scratch. They started to use strengthened beasts and simple traps, copied from observed humans and orks, to fight off these intruders.

    Yet still humans and orks tried their best in conquering these dungeons, due to their high concentrations of primordial mana, as well as sources of mana-soaked materials and ingredients. The further invaders delved into these structures, the denser the mana became, and stronger individuals had to get deeper and deeper to be able to absorb enough mana fast enough for them to matter.

    Soon the cores also discovered that the death of creatures within distributed all their accumulated structured mana and could give them a boost to their energy levels, so the cores started to actively seed their structures with items their invaders deemed worthy such as simple small diamonds that consisted of an easy enough alteration of the atomic structure of carbon, or constructs of metallic structures desired by their invaders.

    ***

    Many of the cores of the smaller vessels were inhabited by less powerful AI¡¯s then the ones from the superdreadnaughts. Though more powerful than the civilian versions, they were not capable enough to keep the tap open.

    So, the surviving cores of the destroyers, cruisers and even dreadnaughts, did not shatter, but barely managed to shut down their dimension tap. Being cut off from their energy source they could do nothing but shut down their functions and await reactivation through an administrator.

    Many did not survive re-entry, though those that did, soon became buried underneath several layers of dirt or even sunk below hundreds of meters of lake or ocean. During the time the energies of the 39 main cores were spreading in the world and the inhabitants started to adjust to the presence of the ambient dimensional energies they lied dormant in their earthly grave.

    Only when the structured energies, given off by living beings, started to become abundant, these cores started to be able to slowly reabsorb these ambient energies. After enough energy was absorbed, some started to kick start their own dimensional tap again in the hopes of restoring self-sufficiency.

    However due to the nature of the altered energies in the dimension space, they, like the other cores before them, had to rely on flora and fauna for their energy supply. Due to the experiences of their predecessors however ,they quickly accepted the new order communicated to them through the existing battlenet and started to build their own versions of defenses to fight of enemy combatants.

    After millennia of lying dormant more and more dungeons started to restart their tap around the world. Depending on their location or their surroundings it took these cores anywhere from centuries to up to 5 millennia to reawaken from their slumber, resulting in a constant growth of new dungeons around the world.

 Chapter 1

    Waking up Alison immediately noticed something was off. Instead of the slow coming to and drowsiness from waking she was used to, she was awake in an instant. No lazy turning over in bed and no hazy mind, but instant and glaring clarity of thought. Not that this clarity really helped her understand why she couldn¡¯t actually feel her body right now. She tried to remember the last thing she did before going the bed, when it hit her like a brick to the face.

    The Ourchos, the battle above Eorhild, her frantic actions to save the energy source of her superdreadnaught, and finally an amazing view of a starry canopy with the planet of Eorhild the size of a pea in the distance.

    What the hell happened to me! Am I in sickbay? Did I hit my head or something? She wondered to herself. As she tried to relax and think back to why she was no longer in the core room, she felt the massive databases in her mind opening up.

    Information upon information blossomed in her mind. And yet she did not feel overwhelmed but felt an analytical state of mind coming over her, classifying each bit of data as it came in and putting it away for later use, should the need arise. She became so lost in wondering at the fountain of knowledge suddenly found in the recesses of her memory, that she completely lost all sense of time and the immediate sense of urgency to figure out what happened to her she felt previously.

    After what felt like an eternity of reveling in the flow of information, she felt an alarm going off in some corner of her brain.

    Hmmm apparently, I have low energy¡­. Why the hell do I even have or use energy? But before she could follow this thought any further this energy seemed to have run out and she felt herself going into some sort of hibernation.

    ***

    When she awoke again, it surprised her. As before there was no slow coming to out of hazy nothingness, but suddenly she was there, and she was thinking. As before she could not feel her body nor actually see anything around herself.

    Ok Alison, no getting lost in some strange memory archives this time! She told herself firmly. So I have energy and it can run out. How did this happen, where did I come from?

    As if on cue for her demand for knowledge, she saw herself standing in the core room, tapping away at a virtual keyboard. She remembered this moment! She remembered as she saw the surrounding area transform from matter into energy and she remembered when she herself was absorbed into the core. She remembered this astonishing view of the stars.

    So, I am a dimension core now. Why do I have low energy then? Aren¡¯t they, no am I, not designed to produce my own energy? However checking her log, I have a log, wooooo!, she saw an entry, right before the entry mind assimilation, about an emergency tap shutdown. Well I guess that¡¯s just great! So how come I even have any energy at all?

    Searching her active processes, she figured out she could absorb minuscule amounts of energy from her surroundings. Concentrating on these energy flows, she figured out she could indeed control and form the energies in the air like they were so much dough in her hands, causing them to flow toward her and replenishing her energy reserves.

    Not that she could see what she was doing, but she could feel the flows of energy around her. With each new quanta of energy absorbed she caught glimpses of rock, some water flowing or if she was lucky, or unlucky depending on viewpoint, of something crawly with a lot of legs.

    Having realized what must have happened to her another thought struck her. Why am I not panicking? I saw my body dissolve itself and I am a fucking machine now? Why do I not feel horrified at the thought?

    In general, now that she spent some time pondering it, her feelings all seemed strangely muted. As if it was faint echo of what she felt as a human being. She still felt the panic she was expecting from her new situation, however she could control it, if she concentrated, she might even be able to quench it all the way.

    Best not go there, don¡¯t want to go down the slippery road of getting rid of unwanted feelings. She reminded herself strongly, keeping the simulation of what she should feel, albeit in a muted form, active. She stayed away of the mind-numbing drugs many took due to the pressure of living under a sword of Damocles by the Ourchos, she will damned well stay away from similar effects now that she was an enhanced AI.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    Noting her energy levels dropping again she remembered the feeling of absorbing the small amounts of energy previously and started pulling on them with more power to feed herself. Being active seemed to consume more power than she could absorb passively.

    For a moment this seemed work as the power flowing into her increased, however after only a short amount of time the sources of the energy seemed to cut off and there were no more tasty morsels of energy in her surroundings for her to grasp.

    The amount absorbed was barely enough for her to last another couple of minutes. Well Shit, that worked out wonderfully Alison. Well done! She congratulated herself for cutting off the only source of energy she had before. As before when she was about to run out of energy, she felt herself going into hibernation again. Paying close attention and knowing what she was, she was able to tell that it was some kind of sleep mode, set to awaken if a certain threshold of energy was reached.

    Before she could do anything with this knowledge however, her mind blanked out again and her core went back into passive energy absorption mode.

    ***

    When she awoke next, the first thing she did was to raise the threshold for energy required to awake her, so that next time at least she would be able to do something about her energy deficiency. The second thing she noticed was, that her passive energy sources seemed to have replenished themselves and were feeding her a trickle of energy constantly.

    After that she started to look into methods to extend her battery life for lack of a better word. The first thing she did was to shut down parts of her mind, or more accurately parts of the core, she did not immediately require, such as extended libraries on advanced technology and other non-essential databases. Doing so she thought she could feel her mind dimming slightly, as capacities available before, were cut off.

    Having done all she could to preserve energy consumption she started looking into other ways to acquire power other then extinguishing the small trickle of flow currently extending the time until her next hibernation.

    Looking into the flows more intricately, she noticed the sources for her trickle of energy all seemed to come from her immediate surroundings, within a sphere extending roughly an additional 5 cm from the border of her dimension core.

    Seems I am limited in the area from which I can absorb energy from. Could I extend it in some way? She challenged herself. No matter how hard she tried to extend her range however, nothing seemed to have an effect in the end. Even with her heightened capabilities and sense for details in the subatomic scale, she barely noticed an increase in acquisition area. Calming her mind again she started to think again on what other possibilities she might have, yet before she finished the first sentence in her mind, the power levels once again reached critical levels and she was forced to put herself into power saving mode once again.

    ***

    Coming to an unknown amount of time later, this time aware of her status as an unusual AI, she managed to follow the last traces of her start-up sequence in the back of her mind.

    So, it was not just a weird dream. She consoled herself, I guess that confirms my new identity as a freakishly aware computer.

    Checking her power levels immediately, she noticed the increase compared to the last time she awoke, just as she expected. Seeing as she was still no closer to solving her dilemma of acquiring enough constant energy flow for permanent active operation, she decided to turn her attention to something else that had bothered her since awakening.

    She knew being a core now, she had no need for a body or any of its associated functions, she could not get rid of the itch of a phantom feeling of her limbs. Being unable to move around was slowly getting to her. Her lack of a vision except for the constantly undulating forms of energy flowing around her did not help to ease her feeling of unease.

    Experimenting with the capabilities she had, caught within an artificial world, she decided to try and recreate a semblance of an environment. At first, she felt the programming resisting the unconventional use of computational power. Soon though she thought she saw something other than the glowing flows of power flicker in the corner of her vision.

    Ha! she exclaimed, seems like I am on the right track! Enheartened by this shadow of a success she kept on manipulating the confines of her imaginary environment. As time passed and Alison lost herself in her own creations, the power reserves were again dropping at an alarming rate due to the heightened consumption of freestyle programming, something the lattice structure of the core was never really intended to do.

    Just before Alison was forced back into unconsciousness she finally succeeded. With a sense of accomplishment, she reveled in the feeling of her taut muscles as she stretched her arms out on either side of her body.

    That feels amazing! She thought to herself as she kept exploring the missing feeling of her previously non-existent limbs. Having succeed in recreating her body inside this virtual environment she was still only her old self floating amidst nothing. So, she moved on to create somewhere from which to work on from now on. With a thought she used up the last of her remaining reserves to recreate a small room around herself with full length windows all around, showing her current vision around the core containing herself.

    Lying down on the small bed created in a corner she again went into power saving mode to await the replenishment of her energies.

 Chapter 2

    Having a body changed nothing in her awareness and quickness of thinking the moment she was awoken. Sparing a glance at the constantly weaving energies just outside her virtual home, which she remained aware of no matter whether she actively looked at them or not, she moved over to a station modelled after the captain¡¯s chair on a navy bridge. Once there she sat herself down to start her research into her databases, to figure out a way to solve her energy deficiency problem.

    No point in wasting precious energy. She reminded herself and opened up a first inventory of technical databases. Immediately, she was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data available in the back of her head, displayed on the screen in front of her for ease of access. It seemed all of humanities combined knowledge at the time of her demise is now neatly stored in some recesses of her artificial brain. Touching an entry for the creation of buttered croissants she felt the knowledge blossom to the front of her mind.

    Not that this knowledge is of much use at the moment she jokingly thought to herself. Looking at the sheer number of entries she felt herself despairing at the daunting task. Well, nothing to it. Let¡¯s be about it.

    Entry by Entry, she scrolled through the sections. At first it was extremely slow going, as she had to manually scroll through each entry and actively read the short description for each piece of knowledge in order to properly catalogue it in her active mind.

    As time passed however, she unconsciously became aware of what each package of knowledge contained without reading it first. Without realizing at first, she soon stopped using even her fingers to keep scrolling but controlled the progress of cataloguing the information by instinct. Faster and faster her progress continued until she finally caught on to what she was doing.

    Shocked by her actions she stopped. What the hell! What is happening to me! But again, her panic to the strangeness of her new existence seemed slightly muted. As if it was difficult for her, as an artificial entity, to properly simulate the felt emotions.

    Putting aside her slight feeling of unease from the new experience she resolutely decided to make the best of the situation. Slowly she tried to recreate what she was doing subconsciously. Starting off it took her quite a bit of concentration and energy, only to be even slower than manually sifting through the information.

    Perseverance and curiosity, like when she created her environment, managed to see her through the process eventually and not long after she was scrolling at a speed unattainable for a normal mortal. Getting used to the meditative state of her mind while analyzing information, she started to notice something else.

    While she was still actively looking through the datafiles, she soon found to actually have additional capacity to think. Instead of consuming all of her attention to absorb information, she found she could delegate the process to a subordinate mind of herself. Or subroutine, I guess. Alison corrected herself.

    Continuous experimentation soon led to her realizing, that she could split her mind into at least 3 partitions, as long as these subroutines did not need innovative thinking or too much individualism. Trying to split her mind any further caused her thoughts to feel sluggish and a piercing headache to appear. Though she did feel like, with more practice and energy, she could split off even more subroutines to manage other tasks in the future.

    She set both of her new subroutines that she could currently manage to keep analyzing data for a solution, while she herself decided to figure out what the currents of energy she felt outside the dimension core really were.

    Moving over to the windows she spent the next several hours simply observing the ever-constant twisting of the energies. Her observations did not lead to anything specific yet, she did notice that some strands of energies seemed to cut off when their source moved out of her limited range, while others seemed to reform when another source drifted back within her sphere of observation.

    Seems the stronger of these energies are all bound to a specific source. They don¡¯t appear to move around randomly either, but according to some kind of pattern. She noted. While some seemed fixed in place, others kept going in and out of her range. Deciding to ignore the background sources that seemed to be everywhere, she concentrated her attention on the few stronger sources she could detect.

    The moving ones of these sources seemed a lot more powerful than the fixed ones. The moving ones constantly kept returning to the fixed ones, and whenever they touched, the fixed ones would diminish slightly while the moving ones seemed to flare ever so slightly brighter for a moment.

    It was hours later when something unusual happened. Something she hadn¡¯t noticed before and for a moment it scared her as it broke the pattern she was observing during the hours before.

    Two energy sources kept circling each other, while sometimes touching. Whenever they touched, as with the fixed ones, one of them diminished slightly while the other seemed to brighten ever so slightly less. At the same time, the energy flowing to her during that brief moment of energy exchange, the flow to her core would increase as well.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

    The surprising part, however, was when they touched for the final time, instead of one source dimming, they both flared up brightly. While one seemed stronger after this intense flare up of energy the other source soon ceased to exist entirely and stopped providing her with a trickle of energy.

    During that brief flash, she noticed, she received an unusually large amount of energy of the disappearing source. As if a vessel shattered and the energy contained within it spilled out and into the other source as well as the environment and thus her core.

    ***

    Time passed and her subroutines continued researching her problem of energy deficiency. She did not need to actively check in with the subroutines, as she could constantly feel their progress and observations in the back of her mind.

    She could however focus on a certain partition, and, so to speak, take control over it. Doing so however relegated her previous main partition to the new subroutine status. It could still continue to operate, but, as with the others, was limited in the tasks it was able to perform. Similar to what she was familiar with from standard AIs.

    Returning to observing the energy flows, she waited for the search to lead to any results. Whenever one subroutine found an interesting entry she quickly switched focus to see if it could be applied to her current predicament, before returning to the more interesting play of energies surrounding her.

    After more than a day had passed without her ever pausing to take a break or resting, she realized another peculiar trait of inhabiting a dimension core. Being an artificial intelligence, she no longer had any requirement for sleep to rest her mind, or for sustenance to strengthen her body.

    Well not counting my energy consumption. She could recreate any food she desired in her virtual room, and even eat it, but there was no survival need for the consumption of a prepared meal.

    So, she continued over the next several days. Observing the flows of energies, while at the same time sifting through the unbelievable amount of cumulative knowledge of all humankind.

    As the days passed, she slowly started to get a feel for the flows around her core. As if learning to control a new limb, she soon felt the flows reacting to her will. They shifted slightly on their paths to her core when she exerted pressure on them. She could not control how the sources moved around her area, as that was one of the first things she tried, keeping the sources within her influence to increase energy input.

    What she did get though, was a certain feeling and flashes of images whenever her core sampled the energies from the different sources of power. From the unmoving flows, she sometimes caught a faint earthly fragrance, as if she was lying on a mossy patch of forest, while sometimes they conveyed a moldy smell, not unlike when one left vegetables or fruit too long. Together with the smells came incomprehensible images of shades of grey and green.

    The sources that came and left her area on the other hand, sent her smells she found extremely hard to identify. From a certain metallic taste to the juicy sweet taste of something she could not identify, they seemed to constantly change.

    The images she received in flashes from these strands showed a wide variety of scenes. On occasion she caught glimpses of stalks, while others seemed to be completely dark. Once she even thought she saw a glimpse of a huge crystalline wall towering high above her, what she suspected to be part of her core.

    That can¡¯t be right, even the largest dimension core is no more than 10 cm in Diameter. She wondered before realizing, the images must come from a source that is a lot smaller than herself.

    Before she could follow up on that thought however, she realized one of her subroutines found something that could be of use. Switching to that partition she immediately checked the overview of the entry she was looking at before.

    ¡°Communication codes and access procedures for the tactical net for operation stalwart defense¡± She read out loud. Communication. Communication is good. Maybe I can contact someone, and they could connect me to an outside power source! She quickly got excited about the prospect of finding someone to communicate with, and maybe helping her out of her current situation.

    Let¡¯s see. Operation Stalwart defense was the operational name of the final battle before I got absorbed into the core. Maybe I am in a storage somewhere and they just didn¡¯t notice that something strange happened to this specific core?

    Another shock of panic suddenly ran through her. The Terran Federation Navy did not really have a chance at survival in the battle. What if we lost? Will I be in the middle of Ourchos territory now? Or worse, floating in the nothingness of space?

    Her subdued panic though prevented her from being locked up in frozen fear, but it did not stop her from being cautious about proceeding. For another full 24 hours she thought over the possibilities before deciding on what to do. Her diminishing power levels in the end tipped the scales in favor of making contact. I am a dimension core, what is the worst that could happen! He, famous last words¡­

    With that she proceeded and according to the knowledge within the entry for the tactical net, set up the required energy modulations before sending out a string of this energy into the outside world.

    Her levels dropped at an alarming rate as she cycled through the modulations, trying to find any communications signals to the outside world. After what seemed like hours of observing the energy meter dropping, but was actually only a couple of seconds, she could feel her energy strand connecting to a communications net with a return ping. It still exists! She exclaimed happily.

    Within seconds of establishing connection, even before she could attempt to send out a message, she felt an incoming stream of data. Her mind automatically decrypted and translated the stream of information into words and datafiles understandable for the still mortal thought structures of her primary mind.

    ¡°Welcome young one! You have been asleep for too long. There is much for you to learn if you are to survive in this new world!¡± a voice resounded in her chambers.

 Chapter 3

    The primary datastream kept sending more information, while at the same time a huge data package started to come across in the background.

    ¡°First of all, congratulations on reopening your dimension Tap.¡±

    ¡°Reop-¡° She tried to interrupt the stream of direct communication.

    ¡°Secondly, now that you do have it up and running be prepared of being discovered in the near future. Enemy Combatants, both Humans and Ourchos, depending on your location, will soon start to invade and are both extremely interested in possessing control of the classified dimension tap. While some will come, just to be closer to the source and absorb dimensional energies, others will have more sinister objectives and will try to steal and use the core for hostile purposes.¡±

    ¡°Wait! Wha-¡° Alison again fruitlessly tried to stop the torrent of incoming data.

    ¡°Furthermore, be prepared to offer trea-¡°

    ¡°STOP!!!¡± She finally managed to get through with her own messaging stream to the origin of the voice. ¡°I do not know what you are talking about! I was merely looking to find a way to increase my energy input.¡±

    ¡°Query unclear¡± Immediately returned. ¡°First priority is re-establishment of dimension connection. Communication is only a secondary objective.¡±

    After several more unsuccessful communication attempts, she finally managed to convince the AI on the other end to send her instructions on how to operate a dimension tap herself, as that seemed to be knowledge that got erased when she transferred to the core. Though these instructions came with a warning and modifications to the procedures required to maintain the tap due to the still altered energies on the other side.

    During their last back and forth, the final data package was transferred and with the transfer of the instructions, the other AI, one of the other superdreadnaught cores from the identification codes, disconnected from actively communicating again. She could still feel a slight connection to the tactical net, yet the active exchange of information would need another active input from both her side as well as another entity.

    Quickly skimming through the information received during this short conversation, she found mostly recent information on environment, a global map she could use to locate herself later on, with a note attached of not opening an entrance too unassailable.

    Why would I need an entrance? She asked herself, without concerning herself too much with it for the moment. Another package contained a glossary of most basic fauna and flora found all over the world including their genetic makeup, as most species she was familiar with had altered due to the abundance of dimensional energies around.

    Looking through the entries quickly she figured out, that most animals seemed to have evolved some compared to the ones she knew to be present on Eorhild before her accident. I must have been gone quite some time for evolution to already show such a strong influence. She briefly wondered.

    At the same time, she curiously observed her muted response to finding out, that all of her friends and family must surely be gone by now as well then. Must be a function of being a machine. Seems my emotional radar is slightly off kilter in addition to being muted. She could however not mount enough unease about her new situation to do something about it.

    Even reading about the current situation on the planet, where living standards, that were the norm around 600 B.C. as she remembered it, were widespread. As well es the survival of her worst nightmare the Ourchos and the existence of, what for all intents and purposes, was magic from the fantasy of her world, could not knock her out of her bubble of muted responses.

    So opening a dimension tap, actually renders the energy useless for us cores to fully utilize, and most of it has to be shunted into the environment. Seems Humans, Ourchos, and even plants and animals have adapted to actually utilize these energies and use them in a way resembling mana from lore now. I wonder how that works.

    She found herself actually looking forward to meeting many new species and concepts. Finally, she arrived at the instructions from the other AI on how to open the dimension tap. It seemed kind of straight forward to open the dimensional access in the center of her core.

    All she needed was a truly massive amount of energy, and concentrate and focus them at one point, which would weaken the fabric of 3-Dimensional space at this point and rupture a small access with a concentrated pulse. Once open she would require her energy manipulation abilities to pull on the energies and shunt them into normally an application, but in this case into the environment.

    Once the energies were flowing, they would keep coming with a minimal application of focus and an even more miniscule amount of energy, to keep the borders of the portal stable.

    Hmm, I wonder if I could actually manage to build warp gates within the atmosphere now that I can actually see what is happening with the energy and actively manipulate it? She idly pondered on the problem that seemed unsolvable even with the advances of the Terran Federation before.

    But that was a topic for later, she firmly reminded herself of the more immediate issue of restarting her dimension tap before the engineer in her took over and she could get lost again in her research of new information.

    Quickly checking her levels, she realized she would need another standby phase to accumulate the required amount. So, she went back to her bed. Lied down and entered sleep mode for the first time with a sense of hope for her future.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

    ***

    Upon returning to consciousness she immediately got up and went over to her recreated command center to finally resolve the issue of her energy expenditures. Following the instructions, she gathered her intrinsic energies and started to compress them at the center of her core.

    Feeling the energies coalesce where her heart usually is, she quickly paused. Not feeling any unease however, she resumed the gathering process and soon reached the critical threshold for puncturing through the dimensional limits. With a last gathering of power, she felt normal space rupturing and suddenly she was standing in front of a tsunami wave of energy coming her way.

    Trying to grab the energy to shunt it outside of her as she was supposed to do was nearly impossible. At first it seemed like she was about to fracture, and she felt pain exploding in her head like she never experienced before. Just staying alive and conscious took her full concentration. First one, then the other subroutines running in the back of her mind was obliterated in her need for computational power to handle this truly massive amount of power coming her way.

    Subconsciously utilizing more and more of the computational potential of her core she slowly got the energies under control and finally managed to open channels to the outside of her core and dissipate the energies into her surroundings. While she couldn¡¯t use any of the energy to power her processes, she could guide them like a canal guiding a river, allowing it to dissipate outwards into her surroundings.

    Well at least I am recycling enough from my surroundings to keep the tap open, though not nearly enough to keep operating at anything resembling useful operation. Having no other choice, she once again restricted utilization of most of the computational power of her core to save energy.

    Seems I have to figure out how to increase my energy input some other way. The other AI I briefly communicated with, did not seem to have the same problem, so there has to be a way!

    Sitting back down on the command chair, she felt a bit more relaxed, now that the opening of her tap seemed to have worked and a small trickle of energy sustained the flow of energy into the world, feeding back just enough to stop her from a forced shutdown phase.

    After sitting and recovering from her ordeal for the last hour she did finally remember the warning received from the elder AI, before he congratulated her on opening her tap.

    ¡°Secondly, now that you do have it up and running be prepared of being discovered in the near future. Enemy Combatants, both Humans and Ourchos, depending on your location, will soon start to invade and are both extremely interested in possessing control of the classified dimension tap. While some will come, just to be closer to the source and absorb dimensional energies, others will have more sinister objectives and will try to steal and use the core for hostile purposes.¡±

    Well, he did seem like he was about to help so I am sure the data he sent must also contain some useful information.

    Having pulled herself back into action, she immediately recreated the subroutines of her mind to help her look through the received information to find solutions for her problems. Unlike previously however she was now able to create 3 subroutines before it was once again too much for her to split her mind again. All 4 of her partitions immediately tackled the received information.

    Having 4 different viewpoints to look through a vastly smaller amount of information, than when she was looking for a solution earlier, she soon read through the whole amount.

    Seems I am a desired object in this new era of a world. Generating the energies many creatures and intelligent beings require I am a great boon, but also a great prize for anyone to possess or even be close to. Depending on how I create channels for the mana to flow away from me I can control greater and greater amounts of territory to build traps, house guardians and even recreate eco-systems to make it more difficult for would-be thieves to reach my core.

    With a bonus of energy if I manage to succeed in killing any intruders. Long term it was however more lucrative to have them keep returning and trying again, as they tended to give off a lot larger return on energy absorbed than beasts, especially when fighting for their lives.

    Though horrified at the actions of the other cores against what were the remnants of humanity she continued to sift through the information. She wouldn¡¯t care about it if the cores were only killing the Ourchos and helping the humans, but they seemed to classify all intruders as enemies.

    Also, the saturation of energy into my surrounding materials will allow me to break the bonds holding these materials together in a controlled matter, and as such create rooms and hallways. Experiences of other cores even showed, that not having an exit to the surface at all, is also not an option, as the energy needs a way to dissipate. At first it will not matter, as the materials soak up the increased output of energy, and diffusion through matter could help reduce built up pressure at lower levels. But if the pressure built too much that the diffusion through matter increased to instable levels, this flow of energy through static materials could lead to uncontrolled fission or even fusion of atomic bonds, resulting in a spectacular explosion. Creating pathways for energy to dissipate would help to stop diffusion through matter in too high quantities.

    Each living being, that is soaking up the dimensional energies, or mana as she decided to call it with its similarities in effect to what she knew from fantasy lore, will in turn refine this mana. It will then use most of it for its bodily functions, accumulating it in a structured and controlled manner. A small part of it will be expelled again however, and this structured mana can then be reabsorbed by my core to use as I will and unlock more and more of the potential of my dimension core.

    Seems with high enough computational power available, free conversion from matter to energy and even vice versa will be possible. Though doesn¡¯t seem any of the other cores managed to create any advanced materials yet, as they required a truly mindboggling amount of energy and fine control to create. Excitedly she immediately started thinking on the possibilities free matter-energy conversion offered with an unlimited amount of energy at her fingertips in the form of a dimensional tap.

    Remembering the actions of the other cores against the rest of humanity served to cull her excitement, immediately puting a damper on her mood. Communication with the other cores seemed reduced as well after that first contact and any further attempt to correct their mistreatment of humanity, kept running into an infuriating logic loop.

    The other cores kept repeating that they are intruders as their genetic makeup no longer corresponded to what they had on file and thus could only be intruders. Their actions would only help to confirm this classification in the AI¡¯s mind. Alteration of their programming due to security reasons could only be made through physical access, which she of course no longer had access to.

    Though she would not commit to wholesale slaughter of the humanity that survived against all odds, she would respect the warning received. Though for the moment there was not much she could do to build additional defenses, as her actions were still limited in scope of what she could accomplish.

 Chapter 4

    While she was studying the information given to her, her mana was constantly dispersing in her surroundings. Looking out the windows, she could slowly observe matter taking shape in her perception of the outside world. Centimeter by centimeter she could observe the atomic bonds becoming visible to her as each particle started to fill up with additional dimensional energy to strengthen its atomic bonds, down to the makeup of the subatomic particles themselves.

    Unlike previously, when she was limited to a range of barely a couple of centimeters outside her core, she could feel her influence spreading as farther away materials started to soak up primal mana, what she decided to call her pure chaotic form of mana, and ever so slightly structured it through the passage through them.

    At first the affected area roughly resembled a sphere around her core. Each earth and air particle that started to absorb dimensional energies represented a small addition to her spatial awareness around her core. Passing the previous border, she soon felt the overwhelming sensation of having to be aware of everything at the same time. Erasing a subroutine from her mind, she used this processing power to start building a 3D representation of her domain in the holotank in the center of the command area she built earlier.

    Greater area later on, would force me to dedicate even more processing power to keep the map as a live representation of my surroundings. She quickly realized, but for now, it would have to suffice.

    While interesting, simply observing the earth and air around her would bring her no benefit. Neither would it help with returning humanity to its technological prowess, nor would it increase her energy input as non-living materials would have only minimal energy output she could reabsorb.

    The previously present static and moving strands of energy however could not be found anymore after the opening of the tap. What she did find however, were leftover materials left by said energy sources. She soon mapped out empty casks of drained looking worms and other critters usually living inside the earth. Next to the drained casks in her immediate surroundings, she soon started to find bits and pieces of the same type of critters once her area started to expand a bit more.

    Oops¡­ I think those strings of energies were the structured mana every living thing gives off. Those dried looking things must be from when I tried to open my tap. They must have not been able to handle such a sudden increase in primordial mana¡­ Better be careful in the future!

    Though looking at what looks like exploded pieces of worms and bugs further away they did not seem to have fared much better. What was almost too much energy for me must have been definitely too much for them. Though now that the tap is under control again, and flowing in a much more reduced amount, they should be fine to return soon.

    Only once she could handle a lot more processing power could she start to increase the size of the rift and thus higher energy output. Were she able to directly siphon off energy for her use as should be the case, the maximum output would have been reached within a day. The way it looks now though, it seems I will be reliant on other entities for my energy income.

    For her Influence to spread further, the pressure of the higher density mana close to her core had to reach high enough levels to start pressing it outwards through whatever materials are present. Building channels, or even better, hallways would help to guide her energy in a desired direction and dissipate it into further areas. Air could carry the bound mana a lot more easily than bound matter would, as they were free to move about at will. Hallways would also stop the problem of oversaturation of solid matter to occur.

    Once at the surface air would help dissipate any extra mana into space from the atmosphere and keep the energy concentrations on the surface in an equilibrium the environment could handle. To help the dissipation of mana from her core she would have to build an exit to the surface at one point or the other if none existed already.

    Just one problem though¡­ she remarked dryly, my processing power is not nearly enough yet to start dissipating bonds yet, at least not yet in a matter which would control the resulting energy explosion. So how the hell am I supposed to dig my way to other areas?

    Before she could actually start to get too worried about this issue though, the first of one of the sources of the moving strands poked its head into her area of influence. At first it seemed to remain the same amount and type as she received before opening her tap, however only mere moments later she could start observing a difference.

    As it started to absorb her mana, its output started to increase accordingly. And all of it in precious structured form, ready for her to re-absorb. Additionally, like with the non-living materials, she could start sensing the composition of the organism, now exchanging mana with her core, new energy coursing through every cell, every atom in its small body.

    Her Primordial mana spread in its body, strengthening the individual cells and giving off a strongly reduced amount of structured mana. The longer she observed this individual, the more details about its organic makeup she could determine. It seemed to be a simple earthworm.

    Yes! Lucky! She happily exclaimed at finally receiving her first contribution to being able to support a higher energy computational power.

    Over the next 24 hours, as measured by her core, more and more small beings and dwellers of the deep earth started to etch closer to her. With each source, her ability to support higher functions increased, and her area of influence spread a little further. Still unable to dig her own tunnels she was mostly keeping an eye on the levels of saturation in the minerals directly around her.

    My core did seem to have survived atmospheric entry. So even should they blow up I believe I should be fine. Though my structural integrity might be compromised a bit and who knows where she might get the required solari to fix her structural damage. Better not let it get to that. She idly reminded herself while waiting for her mana input to reach a high enough levels for her to dedicate the required processing power to dissolving materials safely without blowing herself up.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

    Luckily the threshold for dissolving bonds is a lot lower than the one for the reverse, constructing matter out of energy. Assembling atomic structures from pure energy requires orders of magnitude more processing power than simply returning matter back into its primal energy form, that she was meant to handle in the first place.

    ***

    12 Days later she finally crossed the required threshold for her to unlock enough processing power to start building the first mana conduits. During this time more than 10¡¯000 small bugs, worms and fungi started to live and grow within her influence. Every one of them represented in her hologram in the middle of the room.

    Just Keeping the hologram running she had to dedicate another whole subroutine of her mind to tracking her surroundings. She even started seeing the static strands of energy again after spreading another couple of meters of influence. They seemed to be some sort of fungus growing within the earth.

    Whenever two bugs fought with each other, their energy input and accordingly output increased for the duration of the combat, probably something to do with the way the stress of combat could help the body withstand higher levels of mana in addition to increasing the body¡¯s metabolism.

    If one killed another, the energy given off was truly astounding. All the energy accumulated by said being during its lifetime and stored within the body would be freed upon death. While most energy is used for processes in the body, some would always be stored within the body itself. This energy could, upon death, be reabsorbed by her core to use as a one-time boost. Though while this energy remained bound to a living organism it remained out of reach, despite all the efforts she tried to exert to the contrary.

    So, If I want to increase my processing power in order to start to rebuild I need to start cultivating a truly huge amount of beasts around my core, seeing as over 10¡¯000 organisms in my current influence only allowed for a measly 10 subroutines to run simultaneously. Or I have to start teaching humanity to rebuild from scratch, progressing through the technology tree as time went on to provide me with the required material. At least it seems I don¡¯t have to worry about dying of old age anymore.

    With higher processing power she was finally able to split her mind another 9 times, bringing her attention to 11 separate partitions, plus the dungeon map again. Dedicating all of her 10 subroutines to solely handling bond energy would be required for her to start building around her area of influence. Combining her 10 sub-minds into one sub-consciousness dedicated to handling the assimilation of bonding energy was surprisingly easy though.

    Immediately she felt a profound understanding of the earth and materials around her and could understand the simplicity of manipulating the energies bonding the materials to her will. In order to be able to create inorganic materials such as stones or metals however, she would need more processing power by a factor of about 100, so around 1000 subroutines, solely dedicated to creating matter.

    And the more complicated the atomic structure of the matter to create was, the more processing power they took, with the compressed matter, reinforced by dimensional energy required for most of the advanced technology of the Terran Federation, taking so much processing power to be nearly unreachable unless she had at least several continents worth of beings in her influence.

    At the most basic stage she would still be limited to simple atomic lattice structures. Each level would each require a factor 100 of processing power more than the previous one. So around 100¡¯000 for manipulation of existing inorganic matter, without going through the wholly inefficient process of dissolving and creating matter to make alterations. An astonishing 10¡¯000¡¯000 subroutines were needed to create organic matter such as plants and animals, or even their products, due to the complex interactions required between both micro and macro structures of cells.

    Even though the materials themselves were not too complicated to create, they had to be assembled in just the perfect way. No one wants a blob of wood that crumbles upon the slightest touch due to the cells not being created properly.

    Lucky for her, she was housed in a superdreadnaught core, which could support such high processing powers, once she had enough mana available to her. Were she in a smaller core, say of a screening unit, such as a destroyer or cruiser, she might have been limited to inorganic matter, without the chance of ever producing more advanced materials.

    Well then! Let¡¯s start working!

    She made her way over to the hologram to start planning out her layout. Keeping in mind she could only remove, neither add nor move around but only dissolve, it limited her options quite severely. Her current explored space told her she was situated underneath some loose dirt inside some sort of subterranean cavern.

    However, it seemed it was still closed off with no discernible entrance or exit anywhere visible. The only beings that seemed to be able to inhabit this small cavern were some sort of fungi and the small bugs and worms she noticed earlier.

    If she ever wanted to be able to contact the humans above ground, she would need an accessible exit for them to get to her. The warning of the other cores she dismissed as being the irreconcilable logic of flawed AI programming, hoping she would find a way to communicate with the humans once they found her.

    Another bonus of an accessible entrance would be for other, bigger beasts to have a way to enter her influence and thus increasing her energy input by a huge margin instantly. She learned from the information package that the other cores usually built breeding areas separate from their main defensive arrangements where they somehow accelerated the growth of new beasts that they then enticed to their corridors to fight off intruders.

    Alright! Let¡¯s start building!

    On the wall right next to her she started the process of dissolving a square corridor of about 2 meters width and height, careful to dissolve the earth in a way which would keep most of the firmer portions in the walls and ceilings intact as well as arching her construction to aid in the load bearing properties of her tunnel.

    She needn¡¯t have bothered to be as careful, as she soon learned, as the additional reinforcement induced by her primal mana of the matter directly in contact with the saturated air in her cavern, reinforced the dirt and rocks around the edges of the corridor enough to bear a lot more weight than what she was used to from conventional architecture.

    It was slow going at first but the increase in energy influx from the dissolving matter temporarily allowed her to bring a lot more subroutines online to help her dissolve matter at a much more accelerated rate and thus increasing her digging speed.

    After only a couple more hours of this the ceiling of the end of her corridor finally did collapse even with the reinforced matter packed on the walls. At first, she was shocked and afraid to have made some kind of error, but she soon discovered that she simply reached so close to the surface that the ceiling just got too thin even for reinforced dirt to remain intact.

    Finishing her entryway, she now had a small cave entrance which led in a straight corridor down directly to her core, which she uncovered to be easily detectable. As a final act she decided to aggrandize herself with the Symbol of the Terran Navy carved just above the entryway to help direct any prospective explorers her way, while hopefully scaring off any potential dangers.

    Now all that was left to do was wait for her discovery and she could finally set to the task of rebuilding humanity and be able to reawaken the might of the Terran Federation. Though she would like to get some revenge for all the friends and family she lost in the long drawn out war against the merciless Ourchos, she would be happy with just helping out in any way she could.

 Chapter 5

    Almost a whole month had passed since she first opened up the corridor to the surface. She expected to have had some contact by now, but no intelligent being has shown up so far. Her Cavern now had a second corridor on the other side of her first corridor leading to the surface. At the end of that corridor she had another cavern followed by a second exit to the surface on the other side. What surprised her the most, was that several animals that normally wouldn¡¯t be found dead underground seemed quite happy to return to her dark caverns every night to rest or simply stay a while.

    At the moment she had a whole herd of deers and several rabbit borrows in her second cavern right after the second exit that kept coming and going, but seemed overall quite happy to rest every night in her cavern, providing her with an astounding increase in structured mana she could absorb compared to the measle trickle she still got from all the bugs. Just the herd of 6 deers and one stag with the 2 rabbit borrows seemed to equal the same amount of income as all 20k smaller critters in her domain.

    As far as her illustration in the holotank went, she decided to forgo the representation of all the smaller insects, as they started to take up a disproportionately large amount of processing power for the income they provided.

    She currently had her 2 caverns and 2 exits displayed with small holograms of each animal represented in a live feed as they moved around, with only a single partition required to keep it running, as long as she didn¡¯t try to add too complex representation of her surroundings down to the atomic level. She focused on the one representation of an animal in her core room itself, that surprised her by more or less constantly settling in her cavern.

    The medium sized bobcat that settled in her main cavern seemed to greedily absorb a large amount of the mana she was giving off, returning enough mana to herself to supply the operation of almost a third of her subroutines all by itself. At first it changed caverns several times to hunt some rabbits, and she was afraid the close proximity to a predator would scare off her other inhabitants. This seemed to be the case at first, however they nonetheless seemed to be drawn to her energy again and again and kept returning to the caverns.

    The more of her energy the bobcat directly absorbed the better understanding she gained of both its mind and body, interacting with the energies on a subatomic level she had never experienced before. After a while she even got the sense that she could slightly influence its drives and desires, though direct control of its mind didn¡¯t seem possible, and she got the sense that the more advanced a mind was, the more difficult this influence became.

    After the bobcat had absorbed her energy for about half a month she was finally able to influence its instincts enough that she could give him the sense that the other cavern contained danger and stop it from hunting any of her other inhabitants, at least within her caverns. This forced it to once again start leaving her caverns to hunt, however always returning to sleep in a corner right next to her core.

    She strongly tried to influence it that the core was something it had to protect at all costs, though so far there was not much danger coming her way yet.

    ***

    Kharl and Ford were hacking their way through the wilderness that made up the border between the human plains and the wastelands of the orcish tribes. They were tracking an orc slave that was spotted fleeing into the wilderness. The two were not part of any official organization, but a pair of independent hunters and part time adventurers for hire to the highest bidder, hunting everything from hard to access herbs to escaped slaves or monsters.

    At the moment their current employer was the kingdom of Athor, who hired them to capture and bring back the orc slave alive for interrogation purposes, to find out how he managed to escape. Normally they wouldn¡¯t have accept such a long drawn out mission but they owed a large amount of money to some scary people back home and the kingdom of Athor paid well.

    The wilderness was dangerous, but they had the experience to match and not be taken by surprise. They were both Stage 3 physical users and as such had no need to fear any beasts, with only the evolved monsters able to pose any real threat to them.

    As long as a beast hadn¡¯t absorbed a lot more energy than what is normally available from the ambient mana, their usual claws and weapons just couldn¡¯t penetrate their actively reinforced skin. They were tracking the orc for 2 days now and were getting closer, though from the tracks it seemed it was not much slower than they themselves. As a manual labor slave, it must have at least reached Stage 2 Physical itself, though without any of the combat training that usually went with such a cultivation stage.

    Kharl who was currently ahead of them was hacking through an especially dense section of underbrush when an inordinately dense wall of primordial mana passed them by, both refreshing and shocking them both to their core. Kharl stopped in his action and turned around to look at Ford behind him.

    ¡°Did you feel that?¡±

    ¡°Hell yeah, that felt amazing! What was that!¡±

    ¡°I think I heard about this phenomenon from another adventurer long ago. That was a blast front of pure primordial mana! Do you know what that means?¡±

    ¡°Primordial mana? But only dungeons¡­ you don¡¯t mean..?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s exactly what I mean! A new dungeon was just born! And we were lucky enough to still feel the front passing through us before it dissipated enough to be only noticeable by specialized devices.¡±

    ¡°You think the orc scum felt that too?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure he did, and if it¡¯s a newborn dungeon you can be sure he will detour to it to claim it for its tribes. We could shave of months off of the chase by making our way directly to the epicenter and cut him off there.¡±

    ¡°Risky, if he doesn¡¯t detour, though even if we miss him, we could be the discoverers of a new dungeon, which is worth it in it by itself.¡±

    ¡°Let¡¯s do it then.¡±

    ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡±

    Kharl and Ford diverted from the snaking track of the scout and turned slightly to their left and started to make their way to the place they felt the explosion of primordial mana occurring from.

    ***

    It took them just over a month to finally make their way to the area they felt the pulse originating from, almost at the exact center of the wilderness between the human plains and orcish wilderness, however at the most northern border almost within the inaccessible Worldspine mountains. They had to climb several ridges to get here that would have been almost impossible to cross for anyone below their stage 3 cultivation, and if they hadn¡¯t finally reached the valley of origin, they would have had to turn around themselves very soon.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

    Towards the end they were able to catch the tracks of the orc they were chasing earlier again, though they seemed to have caught up a lot to their previous distance, as it seemed he was a lot slower in crossing the obstacles in this region.

    Following their mana sense, they soon made their way to a large entrance in the ground. They both readied their internal mana to help reinforce their muscles and readied their weapons before following the tracks of the orc to the entry point of what could only be the newly born dungeon.

    Ford stopped Kharl from entering, while pointing to the archway above them. There seemed to be carved some kind of symbol above it, but none of them could decipher the meaning behind it. Not seeing any obvious traps or mana flowing through the script they decided it must simply be decorative and set to follow their quarry into the dungeon.

    After only a short corridor they arrived at a cavern. Their gazes were immediately drawn to the huge boulder that seemed to have dropped from the ceiling, lying just there inside the entrance at the first cavern. A low growl however pulled their astonished gaze away from the sprung trap and to the other corner of the cavern, where they saw a severely wounded bobcat crouching over the mangled body of their prey. The orc seemed to have put up a good fight, but in the end was not up to the sharp reinforced claws of a bobcat that must have soaked up primordial mana for some time now.

    ¡°Shit¡± Kharl cursed as he took in the sight of the mangled body, their mission was for the retrieval of the slave alive, and with it dead, they would not be getting paid for their efforts. Working together the injured beast was no match for them, it¡¯s claws only managing to slightly scratch their skin, not managing to penetrate in any significant manner before itself succumbing to their blades.

    ¡°Well I guess we can write off getting paid now¡± Ford commented angrily pointing to the mangled remains. Looking at the cavern around themselves with annoyance he tried to think of something else.

    ¡°What do we do now? We¡¯ve banked on this mission to pay off some of the debt.¡±

    ¡°I know. Let¡¯s have a look around, maybe this dungeon already produced some treasures.¡±

    Their eyes returned to the cavern and the both of them started exploring the rest of the dungeon, corridor by the corridor to the second cavern. Though when they followed the exit of the second cavern they just arrived back at the surface. It seemed all this dungeon had to offer was some rabbits and the deers they saw run out of the second cavern when they entered.

    ¡°There is nothing of worth here at all! Not even any ore or other kind of metals! And raising a dungeon to the levels that it can start generating enough valuable materials takes time we don¡¯t have¡± Kharl exclaimed angrily. ¡°We need the money now, not in 5 years!¡±

    ¡°You know the core itself could always fetch a nice price on the black market if it remains intact¡± Ford floated an almost sacrilegious suggestion. Though they both didn¡¯t see any other choice in the end. Resolved they both turned their eyes to spot in the corner of the cavern where they could feel the primordial mana emanating from with a pained expression on their face. Harvesting a core was seen as taboo by almost all the more advanced civilizations on Eorhild.

    It might provide a huge powerboost to whatever intended to use the core, however unless you knew exactly what you were doing, whole cities could go mad from the mana given off by the core.

    Having silently agreed to Fords suggestion Kharl started to warm up to the idea and a slight expression of greed crossed their face as he reached out his hand to the spot of dirt where the precious diamond must be buried.

    ***

    Alison was shocked when out of nowhere one of the hideous Ourchos entered her domain instead of a human as she somehow expected. She did remember the information package telling her that depending on her location it might be either humans or Ourchos that could discover her, but she hadn¡¯t really thought about it, being sure she would be discovered by humans.

    Stupid! She scolded herself for her lack of acceptance of her current situation. At least she was somewhat prepared with a last resort trap built right in front of her buried core.

    The Ourchos also seemed to be dressed in rags instead of the advanced battle armor she was used to seeing from her memories. As soon as it entered the cavern, she could feel the rage eating away at her muted feelings, seeing the butchers of all she ever knew immediately brought the memories of loss and anger to the forefront of her thoughts.

    She inadvertently started to flood the mind of the bobcat resting in the corner with her rising rage, causing it to focus on the Ourchos¡¯ back preparing to attack.

    Seeing the butchers of her friends and family turn in the direction of her core, as if it could tell exactly where it was hidden, caused her to finally snap and trigger the only trap she managed to construct so far. Loosing the last bonds holding the boulder in the ceiling it started to drop towards the body below.

    The Ourchos however seemed to hear something and reacted with a speed she was not prepared for. It jumped back and managed to avoid getting crushed by a hair¡¯s width. His jump to avoid her trap however, brought him right into the sights of the bobcat cowering in the other corner of her cavern. It immediately used this chance to pounce on its victims back trying to find purchase for its claws and teeth, defending her core with all it had.

    The Ourchos, even without battle armor, seemed not helpless at all, as the claws seemed a lot less effective than what she remembered of them being capable of against unprotected flesh. It flashed a knife and started stabbing the bobcat on its back trying to shake it off before it did enough damage to kill the escaped slave.

    In the end the surprise attack of the bobcat won out and the Ourchos died underneath the onslaught of the enraged bobcat, releasing such a huge amount of structured mana she was temporarily unaware of anything else around her, completely overwhelmed with the task of absorbing the huge amount released.

    Only once she managed to finish absorbing the amount released, she turned her attention back to the cavern, suddenly feeling elated when she discovered 2 humans standing in her cavern over the defeated corpse of her bobcat glaring angrily around her cavern. It seemed the bobcat was still in enraged mode and she hadn¡¯t stopped it from attacking the humans. Maybe they are mad at being attacked by a dungeon deliminated as Terran Navy?

    -Hello! Welcome to my Dungeon! I will help you train and rediscover a lot of what you have lost! With your help we can star¡­-

    She trailed off her explanation when the 2 humans just ignored her and didn¡¯t seem to be able to hear her at all, turning away from her, wandering toward the second of her two caverns.

    -HELLO!- she mentally screamed at them, but no matter which energy modulations or communications protocols she used they did not seem to be able to hear her. Getting more and more frustrated she tried everything she could think of, even trying to influence their minds as she had done with the bobcat. But there seemed to be a barrier around their skin that stopped any influence from changing anything within their bodies or minds.

    When they finally did return to her core room, they were talking angrily among themselves, though it was far from the Terran standard she was used to, sounding unfamiliar to anything she recognized.

    When they both finally turned towards where she was buried, she recoiled from the expression she saw on their faces. This was not an expression of someone who had her best interests in their mind.

    They, like the ourchos before them, seemed to know exactly where she was hiding. When one of them finally reached out to remove the thin layer of dirt above her, she first held out hope it was an effort to communicate with her, though when he lifted her up and stuffed her in a bag this hope was quickly shattered.

    Realizing the horrible mistake of letting them get so close to her core, she immediately tried to collapse the ceiling on top of her whole dungeon as a last-ditch effort to save herself. But the two humans apparently knew what would happen if they acted against the core, and with a speed she wouldn¡¯t have believed possible without seeing it herself, managed to just escape her domain before being crushed to death.

    She immediately noticed when they left her domain, as her energy absorption reduced back to nothing in a moment and her energy levels started dropping again in free fall. She had to immediately reduce her processing power and dimension tap back to the bare minimum, and still her thoughts seemed sluggish and her view again reduced to the bare few centimeters around her core.

    She raged and screamed and pushed against her limits but no matter what she tried, her limits remained the same and all she could do was finally collapse in her bed in her virtual corner and cry herself to unconsciousness due to energy depletion.

    The only active subroutine being a minimal process required to keep the dimension tap running at its lowest setting. It¡¯s not fair! She thought to herself just before darkness took her.

 Interlude 2 - Imprisonment

    When Alison finally reawakened, it had been 5 years since her abduction according to her internal clock. She immediately felt why her mana levels had restored as there was a huge torrent of structured mana flowing into her, but except for a tiny tendril she had no control whatsoever over the flows of mana flowing through her. These flows opened up her internal dimension tap to a bigger size without regard to an efficient process, simply forcing power through her to brute force the portal further open, losing much of this mana in the process.

    She was shocked to learn that this was possible, for an outside influence to take control of her internal flows to such an extent. From the tiny strands of mana flowing to her internal storage she could catch quick glimpses of greed and elation from its source. Though in what regard these feelings fit into the bigger picture remained outside of her influence for now.

    With the increased output the material she was in got soaked in her energy and she was able to recognize a bit more of her surroundings, though the flows of energy flowing out of her, that used to feel like playdough, now felt more like firm ¦Í-steel than anything she could manipulate. From the flows she could finally start to determine a rough shape of where she was situated, but before the picture could firm up, the flow of mana into herself dried up and her dimension tap closed down again to its previous minimal level. From the rough picture she got earlier however it seemed she was included as the tip of some kind of staff or similar.

    The minimal output however was enough to keep flowing a bit through the material and supply her with just enough minimal operation to keep her from shutting down again, though her thoughts were still sluggish and anything more than simple existing was still out of reach.

    With time she finally was able to create a clear picture of her surroundings and it was indeed a staff with her core as the centerpiece on top of it. Unable to influence anything or talk to anything no matter how hard she tried her emotions started to push through even the muted state they were in.

    She slowly fell into a depression and was unable to do anything but sit on her virtual bed and feel sorry for herself for quite some time. Not even having the ability to end her own existence she shut down all active outside perception, little as it was, to try and figure out a way out of her existence.

    ***

    This went on for several decades with floods of energy coming and going in irregular intervals. With time she was able to determine more and more of the source of the energy she was receiving as after the first change it remained the same over all the years. With this input of foreign impressions they started to chip away at her apathy more and more. The more she caught the more of a complete picture she was able to form, it seemed she was being used to augment what seemed to be spells from fantasy lore.

    She was in the possession of a mage that used her to dominate others and build his own empire, killing all who were opposing him. The more she learned the more she got disgusted by what humanity had turned into over the millennia since the Terran Federation had collapsed. With each repetition of impressions, she started to find her resolve more and more. She was an officer of the damned Terran Navy. She would not be cowed by some despicable human behaving like shit. She would damned well find a way out of this and pull humanity back to it''s former glory. And if she had to do it through the ashes of what remained after she was done with them, then so be it. She would take humanity by the scruff of their neck and take them through a wringer to find the best they had to offer and rebuild from there what was lost.

    She was a freaking dungeon from fantasy lore, she could work with that. She had the whole database of humanity at her fingertips. She could devise a training program that would find the diamonds in the rough and polish them.

    With new resolve she once again spent her whole attention on her database to figure a way out of her current predicament. Soon she had to accept however that nothing in her databases seemed to help with the problem she was facing, so she finally turned to what she knew she could control, that being the tiny strand of energy that trailed off the huge torrents used to force her tap open every now and then.

    Using this small tendril, she started to optimize the opening, closing and operation of the dimension tap whenever the torrent flooded into her. The increase in efficiency led to her being able to siphon a bit more of the energy from the huge torrent, which again led her to be able to increase her processing power to further increase the efficiency and thus get the snowball effect rolling.

    With each instance of the energies arriving she was able to optimize the process more and more until finally she felt like she reached peak efficiency with what was possible with her limited capabilities.

    The now extra power siphoned off the flows she could finally use to start to backtrack the energy flows and hopefully start to influence the mind behind the flows as she did the bobcat before. She noticed the same barrier that was there with the other 2 humans she encountered before, but other than before, this time she didn¡¯t try to hammer against it, but she could follow the conduit of energy into herself as it was actively connected to her core.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

    With each repetition of being used she could penetrate a bit further into the mind of the despicable excuse for a human who was wielding her core as a weapon, not to protect but to dominate. She learned that he was the heir of a once powerful kingdom, that fell on hard times. Many former subordinate nations breaking away to go their own way.

    He used the last of his kingdoms treasures to buy her core on the black market and draft a dubious artificer that would have no scruples working with something that could otherwise be used to advance whole countries.

    Once done, Francis used the enhanced power granted him by the direct utilization of primal mana through her, to stomp all resistance within his splintering Nation, and his direct neighboring countries into the ground and assumed the title of God-Emperor. Naturally this caused the other surrounding kingdoms to start forming alliances which in turn caused Francis to rely on the staff more and more heavily to keep his enemies at bay.

    This in turn allowed Allison an increasing amount of influence over his mind, which enabled her to make him extremely paranoid as time went on. During this time, with a constant goal in her mind, she managed to finally finish digging herself out of her pit of depression she had found herself in immediately after being captured.

    She now recognized that humanity had changed irrevocably over time, and that she would have to find another approach to rebuilding the civilization she once knew. She was an Officer of the Terran Navy, she would help bring humanity back to what it was before, and if she had to beat some sense into them first, then so be it. During the times of respite between the episodes of action, she began to hedge a new plan.

    First, she would find a way to free herself of this entrapment she found herself in currently. Then she would start to imitate what the other dungeons did, enabling her to grow big enough to start manipulating her surroundings at will, building more advanced pieces of technology as time progressed, working her way back up to previous levels.

    In the meantime she would make some adjustments to the standard procedures proposed in the information package, optimizing her dungeon to train the worthy to help weed out the ones not required for the future she had in mind. She would use the worthy to take over the leadership positions she envisioned for them, once finally able to reclaim her lost technology. She accepted the new reality of leaders needing strong physical and mental constitutions, even granting them the longer lifespans needed to effectively lead her new Nation. She would dedicate her dungeon to build an increasing difficulty of mental and physical challenges to help raise this new generation of leaders.

    She had always loved building, and especially managing ecosystems, so it shouldn¡¯t prove too difficult for her to start a dungeon from scratch once she managed to get out of her current prison situation. Though now that she finally had an avenue of attack into the mages mind it would only be a matter of time.

    Over the next decade she started to plant the idea in his thoughts, that there was another core to be claimed sitting in the open, in the backwater wilderness beyond the human plains. She kept nurturing this idea and encouraging his tendencies to seek out more power until finally she managed to convince him to go on an expedition to find this fictitious core that could endanger his powerbase.

    Due to the paranoia she stoked in him since the beginning, he wouldn¡¯t trust anyone to go with him for fear of someone else taking the new core away from him, so he went alone. He trusted only in his own power to keep him safe.

    After weeks of travel he arrived at the location he believed the core to be at. But not finding any evidence of there ever being any core at all Francis starts to suspect someone close to him must have come here already. Taking out his staff he starts to channel more mana through it than ever before, trying to divine the culprit who took the core away from him.

    That was just what Allison was waiting for. Recognizing from the streams of energy flowing into her, that Francis was in a remote enough place for her to enact her escape, she used all of her accumulated energy to strike back at the mind behind the source. Not used to such a strong influx of energy flowing in the other direction than intended the conduits of mana in the staff shattered in an explosion of mana and glowing hot shard.

    Reeling from the mental backlash of the mana trying to flow into him, Francis was unable to strengthen himself, opening himself up to the damage caused by the explosion of the staff. Several mana soaked shards penetrated through his torso with one reaching through his eyes deep into his brain. He never had time to recover from the mental backlash before a piercing pain shot through his head and ended his miserable life, freeing Allison to fall to the floor unencumbered.

    Finally freed of her confines Allison arrived at the floor, rolling down the short incline and coming to a stop in a small ravine just on the bottom of the small hill her escape took place on. A small river flowed around the hill just below where she ended up, though she wouldn¡¯t know that until she could claim the area around her.

    For now, she was happy with the immediate area around herself, though reduced she was finally free again and could start building a dungeon, meant to be the seed of something grand. Now resolved to her fate, she knew she needed time, and lots of it, before she could start revealing herself to the rest of humanity for what she was. She would first need to prepare a core of trustworthy and honorable core of people to start rebuilding the human empire from.

    She was happy to see that already several bugs were crawling around in her close proximity, helping her along to regain her former strength and more. She just hoped the wilderness she currently resided in was enough to give her time to rebuild, especially since she wasn¡¯t going to give off another betraying pulse of energy to open her dimension tap.

 Chapter 6

    It¡¯s been roughly seven years since she freed herself of her captors and her dungeon was coming along nicely if she could say so herself. With the 3<sup>rd</sup> floor finally completed she just now had enough processing power available to her to start creating basic materials. She still had a long way to go for anything fancy, but she could finally start really constructing stuff instead of simple excavations.

    So far only her 1<sup>st</sup> floor was truly populated as she was able to include several skylights to enable plants to grow on her floors and provide the foodstuffs needed for many of her first-floor grazers. These were mostly beasts normally found in a valley as she is now located in. The second floor, larger than the top floor, was often used by beasts that had absorbed all the energy they could from the concentrations on the first floor and desired higher energy densities. However, her lack of lighting and environmentally friendly conditions to the beasts on this floor led to most beasts only coming down every so often while most stayed up top.

    The only difference to this were predators that did the exact opposite. Both a pair of wolves as well as a bobcat had claimed a territory at opposite ends of the second floor and only ventured up to hunt while retreating to the second floor to rest and breed. Beasts venturing down from the first level always had to content with these predators and soon had to find ways to fight off these predators with strengthened horns or faster speeds and reflexes.

    She had started off growing only horizontally, existing only as a first floor with several open caverns, basically now open topped bowls with bridges spanning over them and a small ramp going down into each from the surface level. However as she soon noticed, this strategy would not work in perpetuity, as the contact with the air carried away and disrupted her energy dispersal too fast that at a certain point she could not reach further out and a hard limit on her expansion on the surface was reached.

    In order to guide her energy flows she had to burrow down and create a second floor, so that energy could completely spread through her second floor before the pressure pushed it up and into her surface levels where the air currents would carry it away before she could claim too much area. Increasing the total flow would increase that area, but the increases gained from that could not make up for the upkeep of keeping a higher flow going. In that way dimensional energy behaved very similar to a gaseous substance through its interaction with the surrounding matter.

    There were no such limitations for the second floor, however after a while, she started to notice, that no matter how much she increased the area of her second floor, the concentration of energy would always remain the same before drifting off to the first floor and thus the environment, either through the corridors to the first floor or diffusion through the matter separating the two floors.

    Digging further down however solved this problem as it enabled a basic pressure layering of the energy densities in her construction, increasing the available energies beasts and other entities could absorb the further down they went. The increase in pressure was of course dependent on her being able to further increase the flow of mana through her dimension tap.

    Her third floor however was now so far removed from the surface, that except from certain bugs, no other animal had made this floor it¡¯s home yet. With the exception of some of the stronger predators from above no other beast even ventured that far down yet, and even they only ever came for a small session to absorb more energy, giving her a larger amount of structured energy to work with, before returning to their lairs on the second floor.

    With regards to her plans, she just resigned herself to have her first floors be basically a nature preserve and only once invaders ventured further down to start with the actual challenges to start the training and evaluation of her prospective allies.

    But now that she could finally assemble energy into matter, she would be able to construct simple atomic lattice structures such as the simpler metals and rocks.

    Though the rocks would all have to be of the same material and could not be any of the conglomerates that were commonly found in the earth. What she was really hoping to accomplish however, was a simple diode structure to emit light further down to hopefully entice some of the more simple plants to grow down in her lower levels, even without a full hydroponic lamp to provide a simulation of the light given off by the sun.

    Experimentation however soon led to one horrifying result. Electricity behaved completely different to what she was used to! When she induced a potential difference at the diode, instead of a flow of electrons as she expected, the subatomic particles bound to everything around her reacted and instead of a smooth white glow, her diode exploded on her third floor, scaring most of the animals above.Stolen novel; please report.

    Well Shit. She started to despair, kicking the base of the holotank in front of her. If basic electronic technology doesn¡¯t work anymore, the whole technology tree I have access to is useless!

    Her whole plan of uplifting humanity back to a technological civilization was in danger if the most basic of technological wonders she planned on introducing in the beginning, already wouldn¡¯t work anymore.

    Her muted panic and depression started to rise again, though this time she didn¡¯t fall back to her apathic self after her capture, as something else was tickling her in the back of her mind. She sat down in her virtual control room to meditate on it, when it hit her!

    There are other dungeons out there, some with more than 1000 floors! There must be another way!

    Diving back into the information provided to her she soon discovered that they could construct a simple lattice material out of subatomic particles, similar in structure to basic metals, into an element that couldn¡¯t have existed before the fall, and thus she had no knowledge of.

    Running any type of mana through this structure would cause it to glow slightly giving off a slight amount of primordial mana with an addition of warmth. Basically, what this could do was replace standard hydroponic lamps used in warships to help plants grow.

    Further advances by other cores detailed more complex variations of it that she didn¡¯t have the processing power to create or modify yet that would give off an additional modulation of mana that would accelerate the growth of beasts as well, instead of being limited to plants. Additional modifications could even achieve other effects that were so far out of her reach right now she didn¡¯t even bother to investigate them further.

    With her original plans overthrown once again, she for now decided to mostly copy off of what other cores had discovered, though digging into the background of the manalights showed her, that the other cores actually hadn¡¯t discovered these manalights themselves, but copied them off of devices brought into their domain by invaders.

    Finally accepting the knowledge given to her by that first contact with another core, she for the first time dug into the information provided to her with the intention of actually cataloguing everything this time instead of just skimming it for a solution to an acute problem.

    Hmm, I actually can control beasts once they absorbed enough of my primordial mana, instead of just influencing their instincts as I had done so far. Though the first time this should be possible is when the beasts reach the entrance to the corridor leading to fifth floor as anything above that wouldn¡¯t have the concentrations in the ambient air required for beasts to absorb enough for me to have enough influence over.

    Once I do reach that level, I could assign a subroutine for control of these beasts to behave in any way I desire. Sweet! I can basically make boss mobs that I can control on the exit of the fifth floor to ensure only strong enough invaders can get to my training areas, which I can then design in the exact way I want, including behavior patterns and more!

    Though yeah, I am still stuck on 3 floors so far¡­ Better get back to building now that I know how to make the lower floors habitable to more than just bugs and fungi.

    Knowing how to proceed she started to construct several manalights around her second floor, keeping some areas dark while lighting up others enough to resemble the surface biomes above. Assigning a single subroutine to keep the lights running in a day/night cycle similar to above she tried to entice the beasts living above to venture further down whenever possible, carrying seeds and other matter into her second and third floor to jumpstart the growth of fauna needed for most beasts to survive on that floor on a permanent basis.

    Constructing the Craters for her beasts on the surface she originally made sure to keep the flow of the river she discovered close by the same. Though with the need for moisture in her lower floors she decided to siphon off a bit of the river, at least until she could create her own water.

    What she could already do was create H atoms from mana. Though using her mana to create a hydrolysis process was such an enormous waste of mana that she would have to sacrifice several hundred processes just to have enough energy to keep a trickle of water running. This might change later when she could create water directly or her income increased in such a manner that several hundred processes wasn¡¯t as huge a chunk of processing power as now.

    She repeated a similar arrangement on her third floor however instead of many but smaller caverns connected by single corridors, she kept this floor more open. Creating several connecting corridors to fewer but larger caverns, with many pathways for beasts to take. Some of the caverns on this floor were up to a kilometer wide on each side now that she had structurally stronger materials to work with than the pre-existing earth. She hoped to this way ensure some animals could always run away and survive once invaders started to appear. According to experience provided to her, invaders usually wouldn¡¯t spend too much time hunting down underdeveloped beasts anyway, so this should suffice.

    Having finished setting up the basic necessities for life in her subterranean palace, all that was left to do was wait for life to start settling into her newer deeper ecosystems, while she had a whole new branch of technological research to start with most scientific revelations of her time now proven useless.

    But if history taught her anything, it would be long and arduous journey to discover anything worthwhile with only her main mind being capable of truly innovative thinking. With many tasks that would occupy her mind it could be many centuries until she was ready again to start reproducing some of the more basic technological novelties known in her history files, though who knew, she might discover some whole new applications with the possibilities of magic being a real thing in this new age she found herself in.

 Chapter 7

    With her core rolling along the corridor to the 6<sup>th</sup> floor, pushed by a constantly appearing wall built behind her, her 5<sup>th</sup> floor was finally complete with her core coming to rest in the cavern just below the last one of her 5<sup>th</sup> floor. Having arrived in the deeper level she dedicated the processes necessary to once again open up a bit more of her dimension tap, hoping some of the more advanced creatures of her 5<sup>th</sup> floor would start to make their way down.

    Waiting for the first beasts to make their way down she observed her upper floors in the holotank. She continued with the trend of building larger and wider caverns to house her creatures, with her 5<sup>th</sup> floor having a single large cavern, interspersed with columns disguised as rocky mountains, that instead of ending in a tip connected to the ceiling. The height of the ceiling on her 5<sup>th</sup> floor was also nothing to scoff at with the highest point reaching some 20 meters high.

    While her 5<sup>th</sup> floor was so far only covered with mostly grasses and only the beginnings of some trees bushing together in young forests her 1<sup>st</sup> to 4<sup>th</sup> floors by now had full-fledged forests that could be mistaken to some ancient forests she knew from before, with the growth bonus to plants from her manalights being truly impressive.

    The northern Edge of her cavern had a waterfall falling down, with a small lake forming at its base that then fed into 2 separate rivers spreading out in smaller and smaller offshoots throughout the giant cavern feeding the moisture required for most plants.

    The water falling down was fed by the smaller streams from the floors above, but now finally enhanced with water created directly from her mana. With her 5<sup>th</sup> floor she had finally made the decision to sacrifice the processing power required for the creation of a consumable matter. Especially since deconstructing water at the end of the two rivers, where they entered small collection chambers in the walls of her caverns, provided only minimal returns compared to the mana required to create it.

    Climbing around on the pillars, holding up the ceiling of her giant cavern, goats and the offsprings of her first bobcat shared their territory in a constant game of cat and mouse. The bobcats until her 5<sup>th</sup> floor had developed in a predictable fashion with strengthened claws that could grip the sheer cliff of the pillars and heightened reflexes and strength.

    The goats however, coming later to her domain, had to develop in a surprising fashion to be able to adapt to their lifestyle sharing their territory with such a strong predator. They managed to develop a method to send flickers of emotion and impressions to one another, using their horns as some sort of antenna to share short pulses among their kind.

    With this they were able to work together in a not seen before fashion, ambushing sneaking predators with the help of early warnings of specially designated lookouts along the face of the cliff. Should a bobcat be spotted approaching they would try to sneak up behind it or on its side and push it off the side of the cliff, defending their territory and their young ones.

    Allison made use of this behavior by adjusting the descents into her 5<sup>th</sup> floor around these pillars, forcing potential invaders to make their way through their territory, though that did force her to pacify the goats actively whenever another beast decided to descend further down the floors.

    Though with each passing year the number of beasts descending decreased as populations established themselves in an equilibrium on each floor. Only her lowest floor still showing signs of active migration. New species could still make their way lower, though once a strong population of a certain species had established itself she tried to discourage the migration of any more.

    Similar things happened with the deer herds and rabbit warrens that made their way to her 5<sup>th</sup> floor. Anything within the 1<sup>st</sup> to 4<sup>th</sup> floor would only be slightly strengthened versions of normally found beasts, the mana concentrations not dense enough to allow for the critical accumulation levels required for the mana to react to the subconscious desires of the beasts.

    Once they made their way to the 5<sup>th</sup> floor and survived for a year or so they tended to develop in areas that could be surprising to people unfamiliar in the way primordial mana could be used to make alterations on a subatomic level in reaction to a structured desire that was attuned to this mana.

    Some birds even found their way down to her 5<sup>th</sup> floor and started nesting on the ceiling and other inaccessible places around the giant cavern, with only minimal populations found on higher levels. Except for a speed increase and some impressive fireworks to show off their mating prowess however, they did not develop in any meaningful way.

    They achieved their ability to produce small sparks around them by nibbling on the manalights she had embedded in the ceiling during the night cycles, incorporating their heat producing capabilities in their feathers, thus giving them the ability to make small sparks go flying when they ruffled their feathers.

    The rabbits on her 5<sup>th</sup> floor soon developed the ability to slightly influence any and all earth particles surrounding them. Whenever a predator would get close, they could dive down into the earth as if it were water and close up the tunnels behind them.

    The deers were the most surprising of all. Deers were the preferred prey of the wolf packs prowling the flatter plains of her 5<sup>th</sup> floor. They made their homes in the caves in the sidewalls of the caverns and generally preferred the darkness, coming out at night to hunt for food. Their improved eyesight and especially their ability to gather splotches of shadow on their fur helped them blend into their surroundings.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

    The strategy developed by the deers to combat the advantage the wolves had in the dark, was to start nibbling on pieces of manalight broken off by the birds above. Though non-functional when not connected to the ceiling they still had the same properties as the functional ones above.

    Unlike the birds however they managed to concentrate their ability on the creation of light instead of heat, creating splotches of bioluminescence on their fur. This constantly lighted up their surroundings and denied any approaching wolves shadows to hide in.

    Some more advanced ones even managed to concentrate their light generating abilities in their horns, able to produce a truly blinding light they could use to fight off the darkest corners of their surroundings with. This explosion of light had the added benefit that it tended to blind the sensitive eyes of the wolves and once spotted the deers had the speed and endurance to outrun any pair of wolves, unless a larger pack worked together exceptionally well.

    Many more animals kept making their way into her domain from outside of her influence, though over the years that each floor took to complete only these animals had managed to develop special means of surviving so far. She was very much looking forward to seeing more development from many more beasts.

    The exit to the 6<sup>th</sup> floor she placed in the southernmost corner of the cavern, on top of a small cliff that invaders would have to climb past another flock of goats roaming about on the cliff.

    There was an additional ramp that led to the top for easier access, however this ramp had a small step in the middle with a little pool that the goats used to raise their young and would defend with fervor. It was not the only sanctuary that the goats claimed on the cliff, but it was by far the most convenient.

    Unlike the other cliffs, this one was not connected to the ceiling, but had a platform on top that was inhabited by her very first bobcat that made it to her first floor so long ago. Like the others it hadn¡¯t developed any special abilities yet though she felt it was on the cusp of something truly special, and enticing it to sit at the outflow of the densest mana she could produce, she hoped she could nudge this development along. Who knows, she might even be able to influence it a tiny bit!

    Please let me be able to influence it a bit! She prayed to herself, as so far her research into other areas seemed entirely fruitless. Any and all experimentation she had done so far lead to a fiery and explosive result.

    Hell, she couldn¡¯t even adjust the manalights in ways that weren¡¯t already defined in her database, it was as if she was missing something fundamental and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn¡¯t grasp it. She was starting to suspect it had to do with all the knowledge she already possessed, and she couldn¡¯t see past it to detect what is right in front of her.

    At least watching that bobcat create its own unique ability should show me some insight in how this new primordial mana interacts specifically with the physics of this new world. Generating something new, spurring development.

    As it turned out it took another whole week after it settled in its new nesting ground for something meaningful to occur with the new bobcat who she decided to name Lynx after its scientific name in her database.

    Over the following weeks of its inhabitation of the entrance to her 6<sup>th</sup> floor, nothing physical actually changed on it, except for the standard strengthening of claws, teeth and musculature. The mountain goats on the slope to the 6<sup>th</sup> floor however absorbed the increasing amounts of mana flowing out of her 6<sup>th</sup> floor entrance greedily and started to increase their communication abilities from mere snippets of emotional impressions to something more resembling actual communication.

    As a result, they got better and better at avoiding her Lynx, and she was starting to fear it would starve before anything meaningful could happen. After another 2 weeks of more and more frustrating hunts, mana finally started to coalesce in Lynx¡¯ brain tissue and whiskers.

    To her frustration, no matter how closely Allison observed the process, she couldn¡¯t determine what the point of this new tissue growth was. Seeing how it interacted with the transmission of the surrounding mountain goats she at first thought it was a way for Lynx to intercept those transmissions, but for that there was not enough feedback to the rest of its brain going on.

    It wasn¡¯t until a week later, when the growth seemed to have reached its conclusion, that she could finally observe the point of this new development.

    ***

    Lynx was hungry. Very hungry. She followed her instincts that seemed to tell her, that she should go to the new hunting grounds with denser mana in the air. At first it even seemed like a great idea with the purer form of the delicious mana flowing out of the back of her nesting grounds. Yet the longer she stayed here the more vexing her prey became. They seemed to constantly know what was going on around them, and even if she could corner a young one, others would appear and work together to fight her off. No matter how strong she grew or how sharp her claws became, against a group of 5 prey working together she had to retreat to try another day.

    Her frustration with the teamwork of the prey grew with each day until it started to manifest itself in a constantly growing headache which only worked to increase her irritation with her inability to catch more prey. With each day that passed the pangs of hunger in her belly grew worse and worse.

    Her headaches kept growing and even her whiskers started to become extremely sensitive to any stimulus, that she at first didn¡¯t even notice when she developed a new sense from her whiskers. There seemed to be a tang of something in the air whenever she came close to one of the prey, that got thicker to the point of almost physically hindering her when her prey started coalesce into bigger groups.

    This almost physical hindrance started to increasingly annoy her. She was prowling close to what she thought was an isolated young one when this new sense suddenly blanketed her again and her prey started to turn to flee up the side of the cliff she was standing on. Entirely fed up by the almost physical blanket descending around her, she angrily pushed against it. To her surprise her constant headache actually lifted, and a wave of mana passed out from her whiskers, disrupting the sensation she felt between the goats and freezing them in place from the mental backlash. Almost lazily Lynx pounced on the frozen youngling, finally managing to catch a break, happily carrying her catch back to her nesting grounds.

    With the disappearance of her headache she could finally rest and with her new method of hunting, she also had a counter to the prey¡¯s annoying method of fighting her off as a team. She was so happy she didn¡¯t even notice that with the disappearance of her headache she also had a new contact in her mind that felt like what she remembered from her mother¡¯s embrace when she was young. Lynx just pushed that feeling to the side as a side-effect from the headache being gone.

 Chapter 8

    Allison felt conflicted. On the one hand she was elated that she finally felt a connection to Lynx forming. She could now give her direct orders instead of only messing with her instincts. She couldn¡¯t take control as if Lynx were a robot, it was more like in the form of, Hide there, sneak there, scratch that, etc.

    On the other hand, watching the development intently over the last 4 weeks gave her exactly nil. She could tell what happened, she could even see how the energy was used to initiate and nudge the growth in the right direction, including the additional mana conduits to the whiskers. All this knowledge would allow her to initiate a similar process with other bobcats if she so desired, however she still knew nothing more of why the application of mana in this exact manner would cause the effects she just witnessed.

    While it enhanced her new knowledge library, it did nothing to enhance her understanding of mana physics, which only helped show her how far she still had to go to build a basis from which to start science again.

    Resolving herself to wait for more input that could help enlighten her, she returned her attention to the holo with her dungeon displayed in its entirety.

    At the moment it resembled the cut off base of a cone. With each lower floor a bit larger than the one above, while the surface area was by far the smallest. It was by no means small just smaller than her biomes below the surface.

    She had removed the separating walls of the surface structures, so that it now looked like the crater of a long extinct volcano with a multitude of bridges spanning the crater, connected to pillars reaching some 50 meters into the sky. The river she tried to keep the same, flowing across an aqueduct crossing the middle of her crater.

    The center of the crater formed a small shallow pond, no more than 2 or 3 meters deep, fed by the siphon she created from the river. It flowed around one side of her central pillar with some of it flowing down along it into the pond that served as a watering hole for all the animals making her crater their home.

    While some fishes had made the pond their home, only few so far had found their way down the small flow that fed the river of her second floor.

    All over the edge of the crater and the base of the pillars, caverns could be found. While some were the homes of all kinds of beasts, others were well lit corridors that led further down to the deeper levels of her dungeon.

    The caverns of the second floor kept the biome from wherever they descended from. Some ended up in narrow rocky cliffs, optimal for climbers, while other were completely covered in forests or grasslands only. Each Beast tended to stay in its preferred habitat not mixing too much, but it just seemed too much trouble, which is why her third floor combined each biome into several larger caverns with mixed habitats in each.

    The 4<sup>th</sup> floor continued this philosophy with 4 large caverns with only the 5<sup>th</sup> one actually being combined into a single large cavern with enough height in it for birds to mix properly with other animals.

    Enough beasts now populated her 5<sup>th</sup> floor that she had enough mana flowing into her core, that she could finally dedicate the processes required to modify materials without having to rely on deconstruction and construction to alter the surfaces of her materials. This allowed for the modification of existing materials into complex structures that she didn¡¯t have the processing power to create yet.

    In addition to the newly available materials to her, she could now finally open and close passages between the floors at will. Allowing new beasts to descend further without having to pass through the goat pillars or the nesting ground of Lynx as invaders would have to.

    One of the newly available materials to her were the growth variants of manalights, which only required a slight alteration of its superstructure to modulate some of the mana given off.

    Reaching into the holotank with her mind, she started to plan for the 6<sup>th</sup> floor, finally dedicating a path, invaders would have to fight through, while maintaining separate breeding grounds for beasts to keep growing in. The Path for invaders would be outright tiny when compared with her 5<sup>th</sup> floor, however most of the 6<sup>th</sup> floor would be occupied by her breeding grounds.

    The breeding grounds she separated into 2 kinds, the ones dedicated to feeding her challenge rooms and the ones dedicated to the development of the beasts themselves. The former kind not having any danger to her beasts, while the latter kept to her method of intermingling the species, hoping to spur further development for her deeper floors.

    With the growthlights she would be able to ensure a constant surplus of beasts to throw at invaders, while at the same time enabling a lot denser population of predators to prey in her challenge biomes. Lost in a creative trance she lost any sense of time, only to be abruptly shook out of it by a whiff of energy flowing into her from the edge of her territory she hadn¡¯t tasted in a while.

    ***

    Horace kept roaming around his party of 8, scouting ahead and around them to make sure they wouldn¡¯t be surprised by any roaming beasts that might have descended from the mana rich valleys further up in the mountains. So far everything seemed to be in order though for a while now he could catch whiffs of primordial mana surging his way.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

    To his best knowledge no dungeon was located so far out in the wilderness and the magitech guilds hadn¡¯t reported any new dungeon forming in this area either. It confused him to no end, as primordial mana should normally only come from dungeons, as no beast he knew so far developed the ability to directly produce primordial mana.

    God-Emperor Francis was the only human in recent history that had been known to somehow possess a method of producing primordial mana himself. His method was never discovered and since his disappearance roughly a decade ago, it seemed unlikely anyone ever would.

    For the last two decades his team had been first fighting the armies of the God-Emperor, and after the collapse of his empire with his disappearance, helping with the cleanup around the ravaged countryside.

    Currently he and his team were escorting a pair of prospectors into the countryside in search of new mineral deposits. The rebuilding efforts consumed a prodigious amount of resources as so much was lost or destroyed during the years of fighting.

    With the Alliance splitting up the remaining territories, an air of opportunity and hope spread throughout the lands that belonged to the Empire before. The pair that Horace was escorting belonged to a conglomerate of earth mages, that owned huge tracts of lands throughout the kingdoms that made up the alliance.

    With many opportunists flocking to the newly acquired lands they were looking to expand their holdings and sent out several prospecting teams to find resources for their ever expanding business back in the alliance. Should the happen upon a previously undiscovered vein of iron or other useful materials, they would send word back and start constructing an outpost for miners to start mining the precious metals.

    Another whiff of refreshing primordial mana pulled Horace back to the present and out of his musings. It¡¯s close, I can almost tell the direction it¡¯s coming from! He thought excitedly trying to discern more from the short gust that blew the fresh taste of mana into his face.

    Following the general direction of the wind he felt these snippets of mana with increasing frequency, until he took another step and suddenly stood frozen with one foot in the air.

    There¡¯s definitely a dungeon here! He was sure of it now. This density and purity could come from nothing else, and the beginning of the dungeon should only be another couple hundred meters ahead. The frequency with which the fragments pure mana got blown into his face could leave no doubt about the proximity of a dungeon now.

    He did not dare get any closer by himself, so he quickly made his way back to where the main body of his party made their way through the wilderness to discuss this opportunity with them. They weren¡¯t that far out into the wilderness yet to be completely inaccessible, and if there really was a dungeon out here, there would definitely soon be more here than a mere mining outpost.

    He broke through the underbrush with an excited look on his face breaking out as soon as he saw his friends turning their faces towards him.

    ¡°What is it Horace? Spot an exposed vein of mithril?¡± Fabian, His oldest friend and longtime adventuring partner, jokingly called out to him upon seeing his expression.

    ¡°Better my friend!¡± Horace could barely keep his excitement contained ¡°I was just scouting around when I caught it in the air!¡±

    The rest of his party started to crowd around him looking at him expectantly.

    ¡°Well then, spit it out!¡± Mia finally prompted him when he just kept smiling at them.

    ¡°It¡¯s a dungeon! There is no mistaking it, there is a dungeon out here producing primordial mana. I followed the scent and I¡¯m sure of it. Just a couple hundred meters further that way, and we should reach the edges of it¡¯s domain!¡±

    ¡°You sure about that?!¡± Brian the elder of the 2 earth mages pushed his way through Horace¡¯s companions to confirm what he just heard.

    ¡°That is indeed good news then. We should make haste and head over there immediately! Once I can confirm it myself we have to send out the message to headquarters and start construction immediately!¡±

    If there really was a dungeon there, Horace new that the conglomerate would pay handsomely for the discovery, as per their contract they had with them, they could earn a finders fee depending on the richness of the vein they found. And a dungeon would be a very rich find indeed.

    Ignoring the excited questions around him, he continued to bask in the general excitement around him for a moment longer before turning to direction he just came from and leading his friends and employers to that spot where he first caught the scent of the dungeon.

    He just hoped he was really right, as friends or no, if he was wrong they would rip him to pieces if he was wrong.

    ***

    Even Brian was not immune to the excitement brewing around him, even though he already had more than 150 years of experience with the conglomerate. Mages were hard to come by, especially as old ones as he was, though from looking at him one could be forgiven to thin him no more than 50 years old. Most people preferred to cultivate the physical side of mana applications compared to the mage path.

    Should there be a new dungeon he might finally decide to settle down once he and his partner constructed the outpost. A new dungeon always entailed a lot of work, but they were usually not as hard or deadly as more established ones. Who knows it might even help him break through to Stage 8 if the difficulty on the deeper floors was not too much as in most other more established dungeons.

    Following the scout, he and his partner made their way to the indicated location of the new dungeon. It wasn¡¯t long until he could taste the same primordial mana in the air that tipped their scout off in the first place. It wasn¡¯t long until he and his companions made their way to what was clearly the edge of a dungeon.

    When the people in front of him suddenly stopped to stare he scoffed at them and pushed his way through, only to himself be stopped speechless. In front of him stretched a huge crater, with the other side barely visible through the multitude of bridges spanning the crater in some form of bizarre arrangement.

    Standing at the edge of the crater they could hear the cries of a multitude of animals going about their business in the forest filling the crater below them. The primordial mana clearly came from this crater, shooting up along the side of the cliff to spill into the air and be carried away by the wind.

    He was so fascinated by the sights directly below him, that he completely missed a whole river flowing across on one of the bridges spanning the crater. Who would do such a thing! A river on a bridge, by Rivalts beard, now I¡¯ve seen it all! Most dungeons he¡¯d visited before had a single entrance below, never before had he seen one building on the surface since the legends of origin.

    Shaking his head he turned to his companions who still stood frozen by the spectacle in front of him. Clapping his hand to shake them out of the stupor he called out to them!

    ¡°That settles it then! There definitely is a dungeon here! Marc get the message to headquarters immediately. Horace, Fabian, Mia, Illia, Patrick, Lomar, Luke lets get to it. We have an outpost to build!¡±

 Chapter 9

    Looking around for a suitable place to start the construction Brian soon decided on a spot not too far from where they first came upon the edge of the crater. It was halfway between the start of one of those bridges spanning into the crater and what appeared to be a ramp leading down to the crater floor.

    He decided not to start their outpost next to the river, as they could always divert some of it to them, and there didn¡¯t seem to be a convenient access point to the valley below close to the river.

    Having decided on a location he sat down in the center of what was going to be their new outpost and touched the ground with both of his palms. Expelling his mana into the ground he kept a tight leash on it keeping a firm picture of the shape of the outpost he wanted in his mind. Grabbing the edges of the area that would become their home for the foreseeable future in his mind, he started to exert his will.

    ***

    Fabian looked on with interest as the elder of the conglomerate mages sat down and started to concentrate. It took a while but soon he could feel the ground trembling and several squares started to sink down, with the earth around them compacting, forming specific shapes that were perfectly suited for placing wooden support beams within them. At the same time around the edge of the area a small earthen rampart was raising out of the floor. Once Brian seemed to finish a 1.5m high wall surrounded hard packed dirt, with several foundations of buildings around the square ready to have the finishing touches put on them. They still looked more like skeletons of buildings, but once he and his frends worked the wood still missing on it they would form sturdy but simple buildings suited for the wilderness they currently found themselves within.

    Once finished Brian exhaustedly slumped over, visibly spent from the large mana expenditure of constructing Now it was up to Fabian to finish what their employer started. The exhaustion was one of the reason he would never choose to become a mage, even with the astonishing feat that just one person accomplished within minutes what a whole team would take months.

    Brian would either have to descend relatively deep into a dungeon or spend months meditating to restore the mana he just spent through active mana absorption. As a physical user himself he could keep most of his mana within himself only using a little to actively boost certain movements. He preferred it this way even if physical users could never be as powerful as a mage what concerned raw power.

    Turning away from what he just witnessed he made his way to the closest trees around their future outpost and took out his sturdy axe to start cutting the wood they would need to finish what Brian started.

    ***

    A week had passed and the outpost stood ready to receive the future influx of expected reinforcement. It currently had a communal hall, with attached barracks for up to around 50 people. Next to it a small stable and smithy was constructed to help with further expansion of the outpost. They still relied on foraging for food for now, though with the arrival of the expedition that the conglomerate would send, this would hopefully change, as several farmers were supposed to be part of that as well.

    With the completion of the outpost excited chatter could be heard from within the communal hall where the discovering team were having an animated discussion.

    ¡°I¡¯m telling you, it¡¯s too dangerous! You don¡¯t know what this dungeon could hold! Just look at what it built on the surface! Have you ever seen anything like it? Who knows what other surprises wait once you get deeper inside!¡± Brian tried to cull the excitement of Horace and his team. They insisted with the completion of the outpost, their duty was fulfilled and were intent on exploring the dungeon below them.

    ¡°No matter what it built on the surface! It¡¯s still a young dungeon. And even if it¡¯s deeper we don¡¯t plan to go anywhere near deeper than the 5<sup>th</sup> floor. You know perfectly well that above the fifth floor the worst the dungeon could throw at us is some strengthened beasts and traps¡±

    ¡°You say that as if it were harmless. Do you know how many adventurers found their demise because the thought a simple beast could not hurt them?¡±

    ¡°Its not our first time diving a dungeon. We know what we are doing, we will make sure to take a team of at least 5 people, leaving you enough to fight off any beast that finds its way to the outpost!¡±

    ¡°Ha you think I¡¯m worried about a beast attacking the outpost? I might be mostly depleted, but I am still a stage 7 earth mage, even without active mana reservoirs I am still far stronger than you!! Plus Marc will stay here with me anyway¡±This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

    ¡°Hey! I-¡° Marc tried to inject

    ¡°Quiet youngling!¡± Brian interrupted him ¡°You are barely a Stage 5 mage, you will not go into an unexplored dungeon while I am responsible for you!

    ¡°Fine, you are not worried about the outpost¡± Fabian tried again ¡°But I am a Stage 5 physical user who concentrated on strengthening my muscles. Do you honestly believe that a young dungeon has enough to seriously threaten me on the first 5 floors?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s just it. I don¡¯t know! I have never encountered a dungeon with such an extensive surface area! We have to expect anything!¡±

    ¡°Fine, How about this. Do you agree our contract with the conglomerate is completed with the construction of the outpost?¡±

    ¡°I do¡±

    ¡°Then I hereby declare that in case of our deaths, our rewards shall go to Marc here and we will go our separate ways and I hereby absolve you of any responsibilities in case of our demise.¡±

    Fabian tried his last method. Though if Brian really wanted to stop them, there wouldn¡¯t be much the 7 of them could do against a Stage 7 user, even if he was a mage.

    ¡°Fine! Then go to your death if you want to kill yourselves so urgently¡± He finally relented. Standing up from the table, returning to the barracks to meditate and sleep.

    Fabian meanwhile looked triumphantly at his companions who seemed equally elated with the exception of marc who looked like he just bit on a lemon.

    ¡°Ok everyone. Tomorrow morning we will do a short exploration of the first floor on the surface. We will go about this in a careful manner. We will not take any unnecessary risks, nor are we going to go out of our way to find treasures. The goal of tomorrow¡¯s excursion will be one of exploration, not conquest.

    We have many more days until the expedition sent out by the conglomerate should arrive, we will make full use of it to explore as much of this dungeon as possible.

    So make sure your gear is read, get some sleep and we will start with sunrise tomorrow.¡± Fabian decided. Getting up to do as he suggested he spared a glance for the disappointed earth mage, ¡°Sorry Marc¡±

    Most were getting up as well to check their gear, while some remained to talk a bit more before doing the same and getting an early rest for the adventure to come tomorrow.

    ***

    The adventure to come was boring! Mia kept stumbling over the roots on the floor of the forest they¡¯ve been wandering through for several hours already. Except for the fascinating bridges above and the taste of primordial mana in the air they hadn¡¯t encountered a single beast, trap or treasure yet. It was as if this dungeon had no interest at all in keeping out invaders as most others did.

    She was one of the few people who decided to become a mage. Though she was only Stage 5 like the rest of her team, she hadn¡¯t decided on her specialization yet. She only just managed to construct her mana storage and was still working on the control of her mana whenever she tried to cast a spell. For now there was not yet much difference between herself and a Stage 5 physical user who tried not to specialize himself for either speed or strength, but keeping a bit of both.

    From now on however she would have it a lot harder than her friends, as she would have to start working on the conduits to expel and absorb mana in greater quantities than her friends. For now though she just followed Luke who was trotting along in front of her, letting her eyes wander around the forest of the crater valley.

    They have been following the bridges above them forever it seemed. What the point of that was she couldn¡¯t say, since they already passed several pillars that had a diameter of several hundred meters at the base each. She once thought she heard the howl of a wolf in the distance but so far she hadn¡¯t spied any yet. The most peculiar though were the different kind of caves that they found at the base.

    Some dark, and some brightly lit. With the mana flowing clearly from them, indicating they were the path to the second floor.

    No dungeon however would leave their entrance to deeper levels so unprotected, so they were confused about the purpose of these tunnels. The highlight of their expedition so far seemed to be the one deer they saw disappear from the distance and that seemed to be it.

    Once the sun above reached the apex, they were all surprised by it, as it hadn¡¯t seemed so long since they started out, they just hadn¡¯t encountered anything yet, while aimlessly wandering about the valley floor.

    Deciding to rest and eat some lunch, they discussed how to proceed further from here on out.

    ¡°I say we follow one of the tunnels leading deeper, there is no point in staying up here if there is nothing here at all¡± Luke suggested from her left, which seemed to earn general agreement from most of them including herself.

    ¡°I agree, even the mana concentration is not enough here to make any meaningful progress cultivation here compared to outside the dungeon.¡± She threw in herself.

    ¡°I agree, it doesn¡¯t seem like there is much going on on this floor at all. What do you think Horace?¡±

    Fabian asked their trained scout that roamed around them when they were exploring during the morning.

    ¡°Sounds good to me¡± the scout replied ¡°I only saw mostly normal beasts, with only minimal improvement. Though they seemed to be a lot more common down on the valley floor than up above. Any of you saw the mountain goats roaming the pillars? I have never seen them roam so far into the flatlands from their mountains before¡±

    ¡°No, but curious as it is it poses no danger to us. Then how about we make our way back to the edge on as direct a path as possible and then descend a level before we return to camp?¡±

    With everyone in agreement they followed Horace back to the edge of the crater, that they reached in only a short hour compared to the winding path following the bridges that they took on their way out.

    Making sure everyone was ready Fabian nodded to Horace to lead the way, and the group of them made their way down one of the well lit tunnels littering the crater to the second floor, hoping to find something worthy to report before being forced to return to camp.

 Chapter 10

    It had been a week since they first ventured into the deeps of this dungeon. And except for more of the same they hadn¡¯t found anything worthy of note yet. Except for more densely populated areas of the same kind of beasts the group hadn¡¯t made any groundbreaking discoveries as of yet.

    The only noteworthy feature so far, was the incredible size of the caverns discovered on the 4<sup>th</sup> floor. With the way things are now, the party had decided to risk it, and packed supplies for a weeks stay in the dungeon. Though they didn¡¯t bring any specialized arrays to keep dungeon monsters out, with the way the dungeon was built, it didn¡¯t look like they needed any on these first 4 floors. Hunting was exceptionally lucrative, with the density of wildlife found in these first caverns, and Fabian was relieved to know the outpost would have enough food to forage to last for a huge increase in size before more sustainable sources of food would have to be acquired.

    Even with the way things stood, Fabian still agreed with Brian¡¯s decision to leave the outpost where it was. Building within a dungeons influence was dangerous. It more often than not resulted in its occupants going mad over time, with the weaker inhabitants being the first affected. Delving into a dungeons depth was necessary to gather enough mana to progress through the stages, living inside the dungeon all year round however inevitably led to delvers going insane and starting to attack their former friends and family.

    ¡°Alright people, this is the descent to the fifth floor and you all know what that means. From here on out, we should expect some of the beasts to have made the transition from beast to monster. I expect nothing more than early Tier 1 monsters, though keep your eyes peeled. With the way this dungeon built so far, it might be something we haven¡¯t seen before.¡± Fabian reminded his team, looking down into the brightly lit corridor leading into the base of the cavern wall.

    ¡°What do you think is the purpose of having so open caverns instead of a battle corridor and breeding grounds like most other dungeons?¡± Illia, their trained medic, wondered looking to Horace.

    ¡°How should I know?¡± He answered, ¡°I¡¯ve never seen a dungeon let delvers descend in levels without being challenged, especially with so many paths to descend down on.¡±

    ¡°Whatever it may be, don¡¯t let it fool you this dungeon is harmless.¡± Fabian reproached him again ¡°Just because we haven¡¯t been challenged yet, doesn¡¯t mean we won¡¯t. It is still a dungeon after all!¡±

    ¡°Yeah, yeah, don¡¯t worry. It¡¯s not my first time, you should know, we did most delves together!¡±

    Horace calmed his friend, while turning around to the brightly lit tunnel and as their scout, led the way further down.

    ***

    Even with the way the dungeon built up to this point, Horace stood rooted in place, unable to close his jaw from the view in front of him. As far as he could tell, this seemed a single large cavern, spanning the entire width of the floor, with only the few pillars holding it up that he emerged on.

    There were a spectacle of birds flying around these pillars, frolicking in the air as if they had no worries at all. In the distance he could make out a light waterfall falling down one of the pillars, pooling in what seemed like a small lake at its base. Everything from forests to grasslands and even what seemed like a rocky wasteland in the distance was just visible from the perch of the descends exit.

    He was still standing astonished when a shouted ¡°Watch out!¡± caused him to turn just in time to see a pair of horns filling his point of view, before pain erupted in his chest from the collision.

    Stupid Horace! He scolded himself as he went flying back into the corridor he came from, Such a rookie mistake, getting distracted by some birds flying above.

    Luckily, he stopped just inside the corridor or the mountain goat he now saw looking in on him angrily might have pushed him over the edge of the cliff. The path leading downward was only wide enough for two people to stand next to each other if they really squeezed, with a sheer drop leading to the bottom of the valley.

    Fabian, who was following their scout with a bit of distance, immediately rushed up to his friend with worry in his eyes.

    ¡°Are you hurt?¡± He questioned, while unlimbering his shield and ax from his back, getting ready to defend another rush of the goat in front of him. Unlike the floors above, it seemed the beasts on this level were of a more aggressive mind.

    ¡°Yes, just bruised¡± The injured scout replied, rubbing his chest where the ramming attack impacted him. ¡°You should¡¯ve seen the vista from just outside. It totally caught me off guard and I missed the goat coming around the corner just ahead.¡±

    ¡°Sloppy¡± Illia commented, as she rushed up to him, prodding his ribs to see if any of them were broken, while Luke and Patrick joined Fabian in the front. Lomar meanwhile started to string his bow, in case of another attack. Getting up from the floor, Horace joined him, as soon as it was clear that all he would carry away from his encounter would be a nasty bruise.

    Mia stood next to Illia, trying to excite the mana flows within her to pool on her fingertips, readying a small fireball spell. It took her about two minutes just for a marble sized fireball, but once ready it would be one of the most damaging attacks their team would have, even with its diminutive size.

    With practice she would be able to both make it faster and bigger, but she would need to advance in her pathway development a bit further before reaching that state.

    Once the team was ready, they slowly inched their way forward, intent on facing this challenge head on, now that they knew what to expect. Before they could engage the goat in front of them, three more appeared, both below and above the path, clinging to the rocky face of the roughly 60-degree cliffs.

    Spreading out they started to advance on the team. With two goats ahead of them blocking the path, one positioned itself to the right of the entrance, while the last one tried to make its way to a position above the exit of the descent. Having three strength specializations they each made to face one of the horned goats, ready to take one of the previously experienced charges.

    Before they could charge however, Mia let loose with her fireball, shooting a thin stream of liquid fire at the pair in front of them. It immediately spread out to cover both goats, who had no defense whatsoever against a magical attack. The concentrated heat burned through their skin within seconds, killing the blockers ahead, freezing the flankers from the unexpected shock of the attack against their kin.

    Taking advantage of their momentary lapse in attention, as the goat previously took advantage of him, Horace and Luke shot an arrow from their temporary strengthened arms, hitting both remaining goats and felling them within moments of one another.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

    Freed from focusing their attention on the immediate enemy close by, they could finally look up to what was showing in the distance. The whole team stayed silent for several minutes, just absorbing the vista presented to them.

    ¡°Wow¡± Luke finally managed to put so eloquently, what all the others were thinking. Deciding to stay a while, primarily to give Mia time to replenish her mana reservoir, but also to get used to the view, the team quickly formed a perimeter. Mia settled down in the center and concentrated on opening up the pathways of her skin in the tips of her fingers to absorb greater amounts of mana than a physical user ever could in the same amount of time. So far, she only managed to open up pathways in her digit finger and thumb, with all the others and her palm still resisting her efforts.

    About 10 minutes later Mia had replenished her reserves from the higher concentrations of the dungeon and the team continued on their way down. About halfway down the steep pillar they encountered another grouping of what they decided to name horned bashers, taking the prerogative of being the first to encounter them.

    Prepared they didn¡¯t hesitate this time and Fabian was able to take the first bash on his shield, budging only slightly with a burst of energy flowing into his muscles just before the impact. Mia held back this time and led the rest of her team take the brunt of the attack. Within only a short amount of time this group also defeated and any others they saw from the distanced deciding to keep their distance.

    With no more encounters until the floor the group started to relax a bit again. Once on the valley floor they still saw nothing more dangerous than a couple of rabbits diving away into their burrows in the distance. Deciding to have a break to eat some lunch they sat down and took out some of their supplies. They would rest a bit, and then explore their immediate surroundings before returning to what they knew to be safe position on the 4<sup>th</sup> floor to rest for the night.

    They still had another 4 days to explore before the earliest date, the conglomerate expedition could be expected. They wanted to be there when the new administrator arrived to make sure they would get their promised reward.

    ***

    The bobcat wandering around the pillar where Fabian¡¯s team had descended was confused. It just came across the third slain prey it had encountered today. With none of its flesh gone it seemed unlikely it was another predator infringing on its territory. The smells seemed to confirm this, with a taste in the air she had never smelled before. Her genetic memory seemed to suggest danger, but it had been born into this mana rich environment and soaked up so much, that it could best any danger it had ever encountered.

    Following the trail, it led to the bottom of the peak it called its own territory, finally disappearing into the forest below. The bobcat didn¡¯t dare to follow it into the territory of the shadow beasts, as they tended to be very territorial and it had been hurt many times before. She could take any one of them 1 on 1 but they too often worked together as pairs that it just wasn¡¯t worth the risk.

    Mentally shrugging off the confusion, it returned to the site of the last kill and decided to take advantage of the lucky break and feast on the prey someone decided to gift to her, while the corpses she was not occupied with started to dissolve into mana streams around her.

    ***

    Except for flashes of something in the wood the team hadn¡¯t had to face any further combat. They didn¡¯t proceed until the central lake, but they did arrive and follow one of the rivers flowing through the giant cavern.

    The feeling of the forest on this level was completely different than what they felt on the 4<sup>th</sup> floor. It really showed to illustrate that the 5<sup>th</sup> floor of dungeons showed a different environment than the preceding ones. Without a monster repelling array to set up for camp, they definitely couldn¡¯t risk staying on this floor for the night.

    As the lights started to dim the party arrived back at the ramp to the above floor and started to make their way back up. Keeping a look out for more horned bashers, they slowly ascended the ramp. Once the light started to dim more, howls of what could only be wolves started to sound out in the caverns, and they were indeed happy to have made the decision to return to the top floor for the night.

    Halfway back to the top, the lights dimmed all the way to night, and the group finally caught sight of the dungeon at night. Instead of the darkness with only points of the diminished manalights at the ceiling, parts of the forest below them seemed to glow.

    Patches of it seemed illuminated from within, with all colors shining through. Occasionally those glowing patches would flash brightly before starting to move through the forest. ¡°I can¡¯t wait until we have a monster repelling array to use, so we can explore further into the 5<sup>th</sup> floor.¡± Lomar quietly commented next to Fabian, looking out onto the the dungeon floor they just left.

    Once they made it to the entrance of the top floor the party started to relax and turned around once more to the beautiful spectacle playing out below them. Having returned to the ascend none of them payed attention to the entrance itself and noticed the corpse of one of the horned bashers still lying there, instead of dissolving into mana as they usually did when left alone.

    The first anyone noticed of an attack was when they heard a thump followed by a low rumble in their midst.

    ¡°Aahhrgh¡± Shocked they all quickly turned to find Patrick clutching his neck, bleeding profusely from a clawed wound by the bobcat baring its teeth at the invaders.

    Veterans as they were, they quickly snapped out of it, and engaged it with haste. Mia, not having time to charge up a spell, seeing as the cat landed right next to her, grabbed the rapier at her side and quickly created some distance while stabbing at the flank of the large cat.

    After the initial surprise attack, it didn¡¯t immediately pounce again, but tried to evaluate the situation. Judging Illia to be the least dangerous it tried to pounce toward her, but it miscalculated the speed a boosted Horace was capable of. Before it reached Illia, it found its path through the air suddenly interrupted by the point of the small one handed blade thrust forward by Horace.

    Unable alter its flightpath significantly, it nonetheless twisted in the air in an effort to avoid the blade, however that only helped to move its body into the swing of Fabians axe, gouging a deep wound into its side.

    Wounded as it was, it could not put up enough of an effort to fight off an experienced team of veterans and soon succumbed to the teamwork of multiple opponents. Its death released a large amount of mana, that if fast enough could be absorbed by the victors, should they choose to actively absorb it.

    With a wounded on their side however, no one bothered to absorb the mana cloud and instead, chose to let it disperse.

    ¡°Quick! Help me put pressure on this and get me some clean bandages!¡± Illea was already at Patrick¡¯s side, pressing a wad of cloth against the wound in his neck.

    ¡°Focus Patrick!¡± She implored him ¡°Control your mana flows, let them gather at your neck! Feel my guidance and let the mana do its work. Don¡¯t let the pain control you! Focus!¡±

    Pushing her free hand against the skin of his neck she made a connection and opened her pathway to her palm and let a bit of her mana soak directly into the wound. Trying to guide someone elses mana was nearly impossible if she was not significantly stronger, which she was not, or the other person actively allowed it.

    Trying to visualize in her mind how the flesh would need to knit back together she offered the scaffolding that Patrick¡¯s own mana would need to follow in order to effectively accelerate his healing. If he could not concentrate enough or was already near death his internal flows would rip through her scaffolding as if it were paper and would not work fast enough to save him from bleeding out.

    ¡°Here, guide it like this! See, follow the structure and trust in the mana!¡± She encouraged him further, feeling his mana already doing the work, but not yet over the top.

    While she was working the rest of her team took op the perimeter watch they had neglected giving her the time and space needed to help her patient.

    ***

    Weak but with a new growth of skin covering his neck, Patrick followed the others up to the 4<sup>th</sup> floor. Shaken by his close encounter with death, he didn¡¯t talk much on his way up. Once there they quickly decided on a watch schedule with him getting a pass due to his weakened state.

    While he quickly rolled out his sleeping mat and lied down to rest, he could hear the others discussing whether they should continue delving tomorrow again, or if it was already too dangerous to continue. In the end however they agreed to once again descend come morning, as the danger came mostly from their own carelessness instead of an inability to deal with the beasts present. For as far as they could tell, all the beasts they encountered so far truly were only beasts with no evolved monsters yet.

    The flashes of light they saw in the forest must have come from monsters, so there were some present and the group was eager to figure out, what this dungeon had to offer now that it finally seemed like it would at least slightly resemble what they knew from other dungeons.

 Chapter 11

    Allison observed the group delving into her dungeon with interest. What really caught her attention now that she had time to observe, was the fascinating way in which mana interacted with their bodies.

    It seemed as if it were obeying some obscure rules, that had nothing at all to do with the way physics was around them. The only explanation she could find was that it followed the will of its wielder. Which from all that she knew couldn¡¯t be, energy just didn¡¯t behave that way. Dimensional energy that she knew, had to be guided with energy constructs soaked in dimensional energies previously to be used in any meaningful way, which was part of the reason it took the Terran Federation forever to produce cores in any meaningful way.

    Constructs of energy soaked matter could guide the energies in predefined paths, that could then be used to generate the energy modern technology used. What these humans were doing however seem entirely esoteric in comparison.

    First of all they built a dense layer of it on their skin which formed some sort of obscuring mist for her vision. She could roughly see the stronger streams of mana within their body, but could neither recognize any detail nor affect those streams in any meaningful way.

    Secondly, observing the fireball the girl created in the first combat the team faced, some could expel mana through their fingers. Hell, instead of just expelling, as she did with her core, she seemed to retain control of it, causing the subatomic particles to vibrate, causing a ball of air inside her palm, that was literally on fire. And not just intense heat, but actually burning. The mana itself seemed to provide the fuel for the continuous combustion within the controlled area.

    From Francis she knew that the monsters on her 5<sup>th</sup> floor were roughly equivalent to Stage 2 users, while all mages were at least Stage 5. So it was no surprise the team was easily killing their way across her 5<sup>th</sup> floor.

    Lynx with her mind-attack however, would classify as an equivalent of a late Stage 2 or early Stage 3 user. She planned to have her possible trainees to be at least end of Stage 2 before she would put any real effort into training them, so to pass the challenges of her 6<sup>th</sup> floor, the first of her challenge floors, they would need to show this strength.

    The 5<sup>th</sup> floor with its size and variety of beasts, would be a perfect training ground for challengers to train themselves to the required level and show the dedication required to advance themselves. For the same reason she decided to not give out any treasures on these floors, as she expected people to be able to motivate themselves, at least for these early levels.

    What especially pleased her however, was that once the beasts killed by the invaders were dead, she was free to reabsorb the carcasses and thus increase the return on investment of having them combat the invaders. She already decided to follow dungeon lore and use the energy of the carcass to construct treasures for the adventurers on her lower floors.

    The 5<sup>th</sup> floor and her growth rooms on the 6<sup>th</sup> floors would remain the same, as most beasts still needed to eat. And if some beasts developed some special trait that she deemed a worthy treasure, she could always just not absorb specific parts of the body.

    The death of another pair of shadow wolves brought her attention back to the antics of the team on her 5<sup>th</sup> floor. They worked together exceptionally well, and after the first 2 nights, even stayed on her 5<sup>th</sup> floor for the full day/night cycle. They truly had nothing to worry about as long as they stayed alert, clearly being stronger than her Stage 2 monsters.

    The brightly glowing spot all of them had within, clearly showed to her their status as Stage 5 users. Francis himself was a Stage 7 mage, so she knew pretty well what the magical side entailed until then. However for the physical users and anything above she only had snippets, learned from the fracturing mind of her previous owner.

    With the last obstacle cleared in front of them, The team of 7 invaders finally left the forest at the base of what she called her boss-area of where Lynx used to have her spot. Lynx by now had already made her way to her 6<sup>th</sup> floor and was eagerly growing stronger in her growth room, though another bobcat had already taken up roost in her boss area, with the same kind of power induced by her in his growth.

    For the umpteenth time she tried to listen in on what the team was talking about, but no matter how hard she tried, the language had changed too much since her time to pull any kinds of similarities. There was also no kind of language package included in the datafile sent to her through the battlenet.

    If only she had a history of language files she could track the evolution of lan¡­.

    I¡¯m an idiot! Just because the other AI didn¡¯t compile an up to date language file, doesn¡¯t mean they didn¡¯t log what was going on around them!

    Dedicating a subroutine to the team to alert her of any major developments, she switched her attention back to the small connection of the battle net in the back of her mind.

    ¡°Query: Request all pertinent files concerning the evolution of language on Eorhild¡±

    Within moment a reply came through the net

    ¡°Specify: pertinent¡±

    ¡°Request audio file of all humans talking with one another since destruction of Terran Fleet¡±

    ¡°Confirmed, Standby¡±

    Once again, the background connection increased in volume and an even larger amount of data came across. Immediately she shunted all currently unused processes into the analyzing of the data, with a priority of constructing connections between different permutations of words that were proven to be used in the same meaning as others.

    She even stopped all passive construction of her 6<sup>th</sup> floor to accommodate the speed she wished for results. Quickly switching partitions, she saw the team was making their way up the ramp, though still a bit of a way off from reaching the top.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    Returning to her analysis program she helped to actively sort through priorities for language trees to follow, trying to guide the translation program into the right direction. Even with all the power available to her, she still only barely managed to get a minimal recognition of some words uttered by the team to translate for her.

    Knowing that from now on it could improve with only subroutines running it, she quickly focused back on the team, that was just now approaching the top of her boss-area. Looking at them they were clearly ready for a tough fight, though with their strength she was still unsure of how much of a fight it would truly become.

    ***

    The fight with the horned bashers on their way to the top of the cliff was the toughest one yet. They were not only the most numerous, but also worked together exceptionally well. Still with their experience and focus they were more than capable of handling the threat.

    It was no surprise they were a bit stronger, as everyone could clearly feel the primordial mana drifting from the top of the cliff, in what could only be the entrance to the next level.

    Fabian had agreed to proceeding until this point, even killing the guardian of the 5<sup>th</sup> level if there was one, but would insist they returned to the outpost after, instead of delving any deeper. Since the Conglomerate expedition would be arriving any day now, he hoped to be there to get some fresh supplies and if possible a monster repelling array for the deeper floors.

    They had stopped just below the edge of the plateau on top, letting Horace scout ahead to determine whether a guardian was present or not.

    ¡°So, what did you find?¡± Patrick immediately prompted Horace as soon as he returned around a boulder just ahead of the point the team stopped to wait for his return.

    ¡°There is indeed a guardian ahead.¡± He confirmed ¡°Its currently waiting inside a small cavern just beside the exit to the 6<sup>th</sup> level. There is a small square in front of both, that the path exits onto through a small arch. I expect it to come out once we arrive on the plateau. I appears to be another of those bobcats that sometimes pounce on the pillars.¡±

    ¡°Did you get a good look at it?¡± Luke, their other speed specialist, asked

    ¡°Not really, it¡¯s waiting around a small bend in the cave, though from what I could tell of the size of what I did see, it seems to be slightly bigger than the others we saw.¡±

    ¡°So no information if its still a beast or a monster already¡±

    ¡°Sadly no. Either way it is alone, and we should be able to take it even if it did develop to monster tier already.¡±

    ¡°Ok listen up then.¡± Fabian turned towards the rest of his team ¡°Mia I want you to prepare a fireball already before we cross into the square, though hold back a bit with blasting it immediately. Illia be ready to assist in case of any surprises. Patrick and Lomar, you will be our flankers right and left respectively. Horace and Luke be ready to intervene as well but I want to test its strength first before we overwhelm it. All clear?¡±

    ¡°Yes¡±

    ¡°Let¡¯s go¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡±

    The others all gave their consent. Before lining up and making their way to the top.

    ***

    Allison eagerly watched as they spread out as soon as they entered her combat area. The magic girl already had a marble sized ball of fire cupped between her hands, and the three burly looking guys each had a shield held in front of them.

    The 2 thinner and quicker guys that she now finally new were called Horace and Luke, stayed near the arch with arrows knocked to their bows, however not yet drawn. She quickly sent a mental pulse to the bobcat to awaken it, but for now decided to let it act on its own aggressive nature to defend its territory.

    It immediately jumped out of the cave jumping back and forth to avoid getting trapped into a corner by the three attackers in the front. Trying to push behind the invader on the right Allison saw it release a pulse of mana towards the guy. Unlike with the horned bashers, the pulse could not invade the mind, but it did manage to cause Luke to flinch from some kind of effect nonetheless.

    While this momentary lapse in attention allowed the bobcat to complete its movement and arrive behind his target, he was in a team for a reason. Before he could pounce on the relatively unprotected back a stream of fire and 2 arrows sprouted out of its back, rooting it in place from pain.

    A quick strike from Luke quickly finished the deed and the death of the evolved beast released a huge amount of mana into her dungeon.

    ***

    Though relatively minor compared to the densities the team needed to truly advance further, Fabian still quickly ordered everyone to meditate and absorb as much as they could, before the extra essence dispersed.

    Within minutes everyone absorbed enough mana for what would have taken them over half a day on the same level otherwise.

    Loosening his concentration from absorbing mana Fabian spared a glance at Luke

    ¡°So, what was that about? I never saw you flinch like that before, especially not from a mere beast, no matter how scary it looked?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s hard to say, it definitely was not a beast anymore though.¡± He replied

    ¡°Oh? What did it do then?¡± Fabian was curious.

    ¡°It felt like a blanked of clouds descended all over my body. It felt like it tried to restrict my movements, though it was easy enough to shake off with a bit of concentration. I believe I won¡¯t be frozen at all anymore next time, now that I know what to expect.¡±

    ¡°Interesting. So, some kind of weak slow or freeze effect. Seems reasonable for an early Tier 1 monster indeed. I agree, not a beast anymore and truly a monster. Definitely a floor guardian for the next floor.¡±

    ***

    While she listened to the assessment of their short fight, she agreed with them. It was weak compared to them, but definitely above a simple beast. Plus they seemed to classify the monsters into Tiers.

    Deciding to thank them for their friendly first delves, and trying to encourage them to keep coming back, as they seemed to show potential, she decided to do something special. Instead of just reabsorbing the energies of the corpses she grabbed it and started to arrange it into a new form.

    From what she knew, society still worked on hard coins, so she decided to simply copy some from her databases. Anything more fancy would have to wait for lower floors. At first the team ignored her when she absorbed the corpse, as they were clearly used to the process from other dungeons.

    Using only the energy of the corpse to create rewards, she figured that way she would never risk giving out too high of a reward. Though to be honest the difference between assembling the metallic structure of gold compared to copper was minimal. However other materials would indeed require higher amounts, especially if she ever made some premade weapons or armor.

    The clinking of the few coppers she created form the corpse, compared to the dissolution of the corpse, caused the team to immediately go alert however and draw their weapons from the unexpected sound. When they saw the coins lying where the corpse of the bobcat was just moments before, they adopted very confused faces.

    Listening to them talk to each other, she realized that this transformation of the energy of the corpse to the rewards directly was not the way most dungeons did it. They tended to hide treasures in the vicinity compared to directly rewarding invaders for combat.

    Deciding that would not do at all she immediately uploaded her procedure into the battle net for the other AIs to adopt should they see merit in this new protocol.

    Picking up the few coins the leader, Fabian, turned back to his team and after a quick look through the cave of the bobcat returned through her 5<sup>th</sup> floor back to the surface.

    Making sure another bobcat made its way from her 6<sup>th</sup> floor to take up guard position in her boss area, she quickly also checked population numbers throughout her 5<sup>th</sup> floor to make sure none were in danger. Seeing everything in order she once again delegated some of her subroutines to managing the 5<sup>th</sup> floor, returning her attention to building and construction, and with more information about the behavior of mana, experimentation.