《Colorful Core》


 A Blank Canvas

    Dungeons are not an uncommon occurrence, if they were many towns and cities would be significantly worse off. New ones rarely become anything of note, perhaps only valuable to locals near them, but sometimes either via the challenge, the experience, or the reward, some become wide known.


    Today another dungeon is forming, inside of a rather deep cave mana has gathered at the back for months, a long gestation time for a dungeon but not unheard of. In a burst of light on the ground the cave is illuminated for but a moment, at last the dungeon has formed scaring off a few insects in the process. With a few more minutes any remaining light dies down as the core is completely filled with mana, but afterwards something much more unusual happens, the insides of the cave becoming like paper, very mana rich paper.


    "...?" The core awakens immediately aware of its dungeon, the moment it can its mana leaves its core and floats around, almost as if it''s inspecting it, like a child inside of a new home, it curiously looks around at the paper for a while before it moves to the entrance of the cave, looking out at the sunlight it feels... joy, at this new sight. By mostly instinct but also led by its own innate curiosity to see more of this it forms a small, almost pencil shaped tendril of mana and begins scribbling on the top of the cave, turning it into the same hue of blue as the sky, and as the mana takes to the paper it forms a new fake sky inside the cave, the new wind blowing outside it.


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    "???" After finishing its work the core stares up at its own sky confused why there''s no new light coming from it even if there was wind. It keeps scribbling more blue onto the scribbled sky in some hope it might bring more light, even eventually adding on scribbles of white that form clouds, but to no avail. After a few more minutes of trying it becomes pointlessly frustrated, instead choosing to scribble some green onto the walls and parts of the ceiling to the cave. After it''s finished to any normal creature it would be... a strange sight inside the cave, as the sky would have converged with the land in a twisting but small landscape, yet to this core... it''s proud of its little drawings, even if it couldn''t do everything it wanted, it''s happy so far.


    After it''s ''successful'' drawing session it chose to return to its core, feeling drained might be an understatement for it, given it created its own sky, it exhausted most of the mana that had accumulated into its core without any realization. Resting in its core it feels a sense of ''rest'' as best a massive clump of mana can.


    An hour of rest later... the core felt something small entering into its dungeon.

 A Dash of Life

    The core felt almost a tang of annoyance at the new intruder in it''s dungeon, not out of malice or actual irritation, but because it''s curiosity made it want to stop resting, but it didn''t want to stop. After a bit of turmoil between the two... it''s curiosity won over as it zoomed out of it''s core and through it''s dungeon, excited to see what else there was. When it arrived at the place the intruder had entered, it found... a regular centipede that had wandered into the cave, likely just seeking shelter it was certainly in for a strange time in a cave where the sky touched the land, and the land touched the sky. But before it could even inspect its new surroundings, the core had almost crouched down with it''s mana in a sense, bringing it as close as it could, even if it could see it just fine from a regular elevation, it wished to see this new creature as close as it could.


    This observation was lasting quite a while, the centipede moved, the core''s mana moved, the centipede climbed up a wall, the core''s mana floated up as well, such a little creature was truly captivating it''s attention just as well as the sky and grass had earlier. "!!!" Eventually after at least ten minutes of watching the centipede, an idea popped up in its head, what if it had it''s own versions of them? So very captivated by the idea it immediately began working on it, a piece of paper was instantly made in front of it out of its mana, and it''s own drawing utensils readied again, it watched the centipede as close as it could, and attempted to replicate it.


    Brush... brush... brush... stroke... stroke... stroke... by the 20th leg the core was starting to get irritated at the monotony of drawing out each individual leg of its centipede while tracking the intruding one. "...!" Eventually that irritation boils over at the 40th leg, which results in it making more haphazard random strokes to get it over with, by the end it''s... in the shape of a centipede, but it looks like a child tried to draw one by memory.


    "......" The core was rather disappointed with itself with this one, the sticking out legs... the almost random angles... the randomly dull or sharp points, it all was wrong to it, and it simply couldn''t let that stand! So, it erased each wrong leg and tried again, calmer now after venting it''s irritation in that way. And so another brush... another stroke... and it is a centipede... with 96 legs, but it was hard for it to keep track of each and every leg, pure numbers never are a newborn dungeon core''s strong suit. Satisfied this time, it pours more of it''s own mana into this drawing, and brings it to life.


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    The centipede has to fall a few feet before it can reach the ground, but once it does it begins scuttling around, exploring this sudden world it has to roam, it begins climbing up the grass closer towards the sky, it must be quite the feat for a centipede to get that high. The dungeon core pays it''s full attention to it''s own centipede for a bit, before taking it away from it once it sees it''s just acting like any other centipede, it must have wanted it to be special, but even dungeons can''t have everything. Despite the lack of specialness in the centipede, it still likes the small insects, and so why not have more? More pieces of paper are created, and instead of monotonously drawing all 96 legs again... it simply instantaneously copies the centipede it previously drew onto the paper, and a new one is created.


    "!!" A decent few pieces of paper later, and a now excited dungeon core, someone could see a few small insects roaming around the plains, some slightly off looking insects... but insects all the same, even the original centipede who had entered, since drawn centipedes have no real reason to attack another centipede, it''s a rather peaceful sight for an intruder being in a dungeon.


    Now that the dungeon had defense from... tiny insects (Sated it''s curiosity and urge to draw), it could go back to resting and accumulating some more mana, which was even lower after the centipedes, not enough that it''ll cause any problems, but enough that it knows well enough not to keep using up like it is now.

 (Slightly) Starry Night

    It had been a while since the centipedes, by now they were all settled in, and managing in the dungeon just fine, but that was not of any real note to the dungeon core right now. Instead, they stared out at the entrance of the cave, the outside world had become night now, and it looked up at the night sky with the best angle it could. "?!" It was both excited and confused at the new darkness that was in its dungeon and the outside world, curious to understand what was going on. It so curiously had it''s mana to the floor gazing up at the endless stars that illuminated the night sky, capturing it''s attention for even longer than the centipede previously had.


    "..." Thoughts were whirring throughout the core''s mind as it kept looking up at them "..." thoughts that it wanted to pursue, and... "!!!!!!". It would, it changed it''s dungeons sky to be black to match the night, since it was already made it was just a matter of changing color, and barely costed anything for it. What cost significantly more however was copying the many stars of the night sky, it dotted just a single one in the night sky and almost recoiled at the amount of mana such a small drawing cost. "???" It simply couldn''t understand why it cost so much but then it saw that the distant star it had drawn illuminated the cave... slightly, with that would be distance not much of the light reached.


    "......" The poor core was saddened at the lack of more light, but it wasn''t going to give up so quickly, so it readies to add some more white, and adds it to parts of the grass instead of the sky, it even adds a more opaque white around them, knowing that the star gave off a slight greater brightness around itself. The result of these new white blotches on the grass were large glowing mushrooms for the monsters and any intruders who would enter, it would certainly be a welcome reprieve from the dark for all who found them. The core proudly took in its new way of making light "!!" with mushrooms, even if it wasn''t exactly sure what they were, it takes pride in each new thing it makes and succeeds with.


    After it finished up adding just a few more mushrooms to the fields it decided to look around and check out how the dungeon was doing, even if it had a vague idea constantly it was better to check it out personally at times. Floating around it found a few centipedes checking out the mushrooms and did inspect the first time for about two minutes, but skipped over most the others, until it saw one centipede putting its mandibles into a mushroom. "??!!" The core was a bit shocked at the centipede biting into its own creation, but also confused, even if it wasn''t particularly smart at this stage in its life, it wasn''t hard to tell such sharp mandibles weren''t meant for poking into something so squishy. The core was about to stop the centipede until it found it absorbing parts of the white when it took some off of the mushroom, and its head had begun to let off a glow just like the mushroom did as it became more white tinted.


    "!!!!!!" It never did occur to the core to try adding different colors to the centipedes, since it only wanted to copy them, but seeing the new glowing centipede had excited it and clued it in on what it could do with them. Almost immediately it conjured up some more paper, and copied a random centipede onto it, and it''s first choice to change was... adding a dash of green to the centipede''s back and mandibles, scribbling it in quick it brought the new monster to life, and the result was a centipede with mandibles covered in a dripping green substance that had to be venom, and on its back there was a small amount of grass growing on it. "!!" The new grassy and significantly more venomous centipede was a little less joy inspiring since it couldn''t even understand what venom would be used for, not very well anyways, but it was still excited to see the pretty grass on its creature. The next choice of color to add to a centipede was red and purple, it colored its mandibles and head red, then added the purple to its antennae and dotted it around it''s back... before erasing the dots because it didn''t like how they looked.


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    This centipede had significantly more to it than just a bit of grass and more venom, it''s mandibles looked to be constantly heated up with its mouth spewing out some very slight amounts of steam because of the constant heat, but that was not all it had, for its new purple antennae were raised up high, and constantly trying to bring its centipede brethren to it, so as to bring them under its command. "!" At this point the dungeon core''s excitement was dying down a little, since its outward features weren''t particularly exciting for it, it might be good as a defender, but as something pretty, it''s not much more than a regular centipede with some brighter colors, but it had already made it, so it might as well add them around the dungeon and get some more colors in there. So, it copies and pastes some of its green and red/purple centipedes and places them around, if you looked closely now you could see almost moving grass and purple antennae in the fields.


    "..." All the experimenting had made the core feel a bit more sluggish, so it decided to head back to its actual core and rest, when it did enter it again it definitely had a little more room than last time, the star had clearly ate through a decent bit of its mana that it''d need a bit to recover, so it''d rest... drifting off to it''s own version of sleep...


    ...


    ...


    Somewhere outside the dungeon is a rabbit, slowly hopping through the fields in a pleasant morning, until it wanders into what looks like some strange field inside of a cave, it looks around with its beady eyes, curiously looking up and around, even towards the one distant star it finds its attention caught for a moment. That moment is all that is needed for the first centipede of a red variety with its new group to descend upon it, they quickly had scurried over to it upon seeing it enter the dungeon, and by the time the rabbit could realize something was there, it felt a searing, burning pain in its leg and kicked, but it only hit a regular centipede, the muscle in the leg had already been hurt so badly its force couldn''t even kill that regular centipede. Now it panics, attempting to jump away from what''s causing it pain, but the centipede remains attached to its leg, and once it lands the centipede attached crawls up further, it''s antennae outstretched to keep its little pack following it, and then it begins to bite into the rabbit''s back. Despite the rabbit''s jumping and pained movement the centipede does not detach, and instead keeps biting. Over and over the rabbit is bitten, even worse it had been caught up to by the other centipedes, and was being bitten faster by even more. After just a few more seconds of this relentless assault the rabbit keels over, falling to the ground dead and partially seared by centipedes.


    And the centipedes devoured the intruder''s flesh, and color, the leader''s gang gaining a new grey fur upon large parts of their bodies as they devoured. The dungeon core would have a rather shocking sight when it would eventually wake up.

 Death and Understanding

    In the back of the cave, where the paper had not yet been filled in with much color the core had awoken from its ''rest'', a bit confused as it could tell that something had intruded. "..?" The core takes a moment to reassess and then quickly flies out its mana from its core and heads over towards the entrance, arriving almost immediately it looked around. Scanning around it eventually found the now grey...er rabbit that had been nearly torn apart, and it stared down at it, not nearly as interested as it would be with something alive, not because it didn''t care about rabbits, but because it inherently knew that this creature had died, there was nothing left for it. Seeing that nothing remained to be dealt with regarding the corpse, it simply dissolved it into mana and went to look at the creatures, knowing that the color had been drained from it, that there had to be a culprit.


    A few minutes of zooming around later resulted in it finding furred centipedes who guarded one red and purple one, who had managed to grow slightly larger than it''s peers. Now this... had it''s attention, looking at the fur it was excited to see something it had no idea of before on its monsters, without even doing anything itself! Although... the lack of work did not provide it that pride and accomplishment it did love to feel before, but that was alright, as it had discovered something new to use, and that would bring it even more pride. "...!" It was suddenly struck with an idea to use the texture in a new drawing, but this time it would be it''s own, with no original rabbit to copy besides partially it''s corpse, this time it was all on the core. A large piece of paper manifested, and it held out tendrils of mana to begin drawing, it started with an outline, starting by making a rather round shape. ".." This wasn''t satisfying enough to it, so it decided to add a bit more behind it, forming segments almost like a centipedes but that were more spherical in nature than flat, afterwards it drew on some legs, it had seen the rabbit''s before, or at least what it had assumed were legs... and got some new ideas. It drew something more similar to a rabbit''s in nature, but at the end, instead of a foot it had several smaller legs all around, more legs had worked for the centipede, so it should work here, right? It got to spreading these around on it''s new monster, and was satisfied enough, with eight legs and several smaller feet. Moving on from its new legs it chose to color in its body before adding some finer details, coloring the top of its head purple, but surrounding it in black, it liked that matching of colors, then afterwards it decided to make the first circle, which was to be the head a dark shade of red. "!!" It was happy so far, the head looked good, the feet would likely function, and it was getting somewhere, before deciding to try something... new, each segment had that same dot on the top, but was a different color, the second segment was made a dark blue, the third a bright cyan, and the fourth and final one was green. This was good, but it needed more details, importantly the mouth and eyes which it saw the centipedes used a lot, forming the outline it was more akin to what you would assume a mammal or other animal''s would be, but it still had plenty large mandibles on the sides of it, and its eyes were very large... dots, they would fix themselves once it was made, surely. For the last touches, it added a few stripes, one on each segment, and then on the back it added two large black dots, with a little bit of purple and green together in the center, it wasn''t sure what this might do, but it thought it might look good.


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    Finally, it had made it''s own first original monster, it wouldn''t be particularly strong, but it was a good base for whatever colors they''d take and change themselves with, plus it looked pretty! "!!!!!!" Very excited to see its new monster it poured mana into it, and made the first of their kind... large, very large, bigger than the mushrooms it had drawn before, but this was not a problem for it, it''s strange legs were still functioning and slowly scuttering around, and it had begun inspecting its new home, it would surely be one of the stronger monsters on this floor until the core could get some better ideas... maybe something that would use the fur a bit more than just some legs.


    It''s excitement with its new monster would get to keep living even longer, as it detected something had wandered into the dungeon, it quickly flew over to the spot, and discovered that another... centipede(?) had wandered in, but it was clearly nothing like its own, it was significantly larger, about double the size, and its head specifically had grown to a size almost as large as a watermelon, the mandibles especially could likely tear through even a grown man if he was unarmored, and its eyes... its eyes were an almost glowing cyan. It slowly wandered about the entrance, looking around until it just about locked eyes with the core "..?" most mundane animals, creatures, whatever it be without help cannot outright see mana, perhaps detect it, but it''s rare even at that, but this centipede it looked was of a very strange breed amongst its peers. Despite seeing the core it made no move to even go near it, such overwhelming mana condensed into a ball was likely almost blinding the poor thing, instead it chose to head away from it, and to the right, the dungeon core wasn''t sure why it didn''t want to go near it, but it did know one thing, that being its role as a dungeon, and to defend itself from intruders.