The Dungeon Without a System

Chapter 2

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Uncharted Island, Unknown Ocean

Night of Day 3, Week 3 Post-Corification

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Leaving my core just inside the mouth of the cave was a terrible idea; I knew that. Observing the flowing mana in the skies around the island, I could see the natural rivers it had formed and the tributaries that fed into the stream that led to my core. More concerningly, the stream was growing.

Some of the dungeon fiction I'd read had dungeons as nature's terraformers, passively healing the land. Sometimes they would refine or vomit mana into the land around them.

What I seemed to be doing was the exact opposite. I was a mana drain, taking mana from the air. I was coating the inside of the cave, growing my core with it, and adding it to my ever-growing rings.

Now that the process has been started, I don't think it could be stopped. The unaligned mana in the sky was naturally drawn to me. And I knew this drain would continue to grow, even if I kept it to the minimum level I possibly could. There was an unstoppable momentum to it.

If there are sapient beings on this planet, and if they can sense mana, they would eventually notice the streams moving towards me.

Thus, I needed to build defenses. I pondered spreading across the island's surface or spreading through the ocean but eventually dismissed the ideas. I had a chance here that I'd never even thought possible. I'm going to build a Dungeon.

Shifting the sand beneath my pedestal, I caused it to glide deeper into the cave. I stopped a distance away from the back wall, a point that the sand in this cave still reached. Feeling the back of the cave, I pushed at the mana that had absorbed into the walls, willing the rock to part.

With a crack, a black line formed by the ground, water rushing in as it slowly grew wider. Hmm. Not quite what I wanted. I stopped pushing, but the crack remained.

I willed a tendril of mana to leave my rings and directed it to crash into the crack. As the stone became saturated by my mana, I willed the stone to crumble. I kept an image in my head of an irregular triangular tunnel, sand enough to stand on without getting wet on the left, with a channel of water to the right.

And, just as I pictured it, the wall of the cave crumbled into sand, which itself rushed past my pedestal and out into the ocean. Foot by foot, my mental image became reality. After a good 10 yards of tunnel, it stopped, having used all the mana I'd sent there.

This wasn't as long as I wanted it to be, but I stopped before I could continue. I'd had an idea.

With renewed purpose, I directed a stream of mana into the tunnel. Some small parts carved the walls to look more natural, while the majority slammed into the back wall and drilled in, constant waves of black sand flowing back out.

Within another hour, I'd formed a cavern about half the size of a football stadium. One half was sandy, while the other was a deep-ish pool. The roof was littered with stalactites, pointing down like knives in the dark and making ripples in the almost-still water.

And whoo-boy. It was dark in here.

I needed thematic lighting.

So I had a cave. A nice big cave. What did I want to do with it? Well, I had a plan. Unfortunately, I didn't have any glowworms, so I needed an alternative lighting source. Strictly I didn't need light since the cave was my body, and I knew every square inch of stone like it was the back of my hand. Not that I had one. It's a metaphor, anyway.

I want my new home to look nice. Was that so bad?

That leads me to my next experiment with mana. To my 'vision,' individual motes of mana are specks that glow, but not in the 'light' sense. It had some strange Fluorescence that I could see easily, but normal creatures like the seagull couldn't. Thus, I want to find a way to make visible light with my mana.

Experiment one: Clumps.

I formed a sconce to cradle my potential light, which looked like a hand grasping out of the wall next to my entrance.

What? My pedestal was a hand, and I knew how to make hands. They were easy. Familiar.

Next, I took about a golf-ball-sized clump of mana and moved it to sit within the fingers of the sconce. It did nothing but continue to be a ball of mana. Alright then. I guess I have to catalyze it somehow. Perhaps by spinning it really fast? No. Radiance? No, that just makes it lose mana.

Okay, back to square one. Light is caused by the emitting of photons from an energetic reaction, usually resistance to the flow of electricity, fusion, or a sufficiently exothermic reaction like combustion. There might also exist a 'light mana' but I haven't encountered 'conceptual' mana yet, only my own 'aspected' mana, 'unaspected' mana in the air, and the Gull's mana.

Speaking of which he's fine, eating fish.

Mana Fire sounds extremely dangerous, I don't think forming electricity yet is a good idea, and fusing motes of mana together sounds the easiest.

Lets try it.

Experiment Two: Mana Suns.

And so, I cause the mana in the ball to crush inwards, creating an artificial gravity. Hmm. Not enough. I direct more mana into the ball, feeling more and more like I was creating a bomb. The 'gravity' grew and grew until suddenly I felt like the mana was going to explode outwards, an internal pressure suddenly existing. I forced the mana to stay within the ball and watched as the roiling, compressed mana twisted and turned on itself.

Then it happened.

From within the ball came a radiating pressure, as well as a pull that kept the pressure in balance. In the exact center of the star, I could feel a crystal come into being; the mana-star's Iron Core analogue. Would this become a mana crystal?

From within the fingers of my Hand-Sconce, a small sun of ghostly teal light shone. The light filled the mouth of my cave, throwing shadows and creating water-mosaics on the ceiling to join the moonlight.

Well, that's bright. It's actually incredibly bright. Might even be too bright. However, like Stars, this mana-star had a minimum mana requirement. It also seemed relatively stable.

It was also a fucking beacon. No, this could not stay on the outside of my dungeon. Inside, yes. That would work.

Attempting to move the small star, I found it incredibly easy. Then again, this was composed entirely of my own mana, I shouldn't be surprised.

I formed two large hands to cradle the star on the ceiling, in the middle of the room. The fingers remained above, like a pair of hands warmed by a fire, directing the light down and allowing the water's mosaics to fill the shadowed cave roof.

Light source; get!

So i have a cave and light. Time for part three!

Monsters and Critters.

For this, I need my good friend Gull the seagull.

...

He was sleeping...

...

Alright. I'll wait till morning for that. In the mean time, lets make more caverns!

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Hours later, Day 4 Week 3

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A mile of twisting, growing and shrinking passages and spacious caverns later, it was morning.

Ah, sunrise. I can't actually see it, since my cave faces west, but I can see morning arrive.

When Gull wakes, I direct him to find various crustaceans and fish, and drop them in the pool in my cave. Each organism gets a blast of converting mana, and they become extensions of my will.

Eyeing the incoming tide, I adjust the entrance tunnel to be partially submerged at high tide and entirely dry at low tide. I also carve a small and entirely underwater set of caves for my fish to live in, connecting all the deeper ponds in the cave system i had created. I also had one tunnel which lead to a point under the waterline in the cliff wall next to my cave, to let my fish in and out.

Either way, I was now the proud overlord of three small crabs, four fish which I don't recognise, though i did have breeding pairs of two separate species of fish.

I directed the fish to spawn in the tunnels, along with two of the crabs. Now, it was time for a new experiment.

I had a small crab, but I needed a larger crab if it was going to be worth anything as a defender.

So, I looked at my crab. First, I pushed more mana into him, to see what would happen. Much like my core, I reached a point where the crab's magical nervous system, it's magic circuits, felt 'full'. But nothing else happened.

So, I pushed an intent into the mana. Grow.

Immediately, the mana started being absorbed into the crab's flesh. The crab also began to stagger, suddenly disoriented. Over the next hour the crab grew, from the size of an eraser to a splayed palm and fingers. Alright, I now had a bigger crab. Not big enough though.

Next... Hmm. Perhaps mana cores? They were generally a staple of fantasy and the determiner for monster-dom.

Once again, I flooded his system with mana. (The crab was male. I'm not going to name it until I know it won't explode into gore.)

Now for some speculation. In theory, animals exist in the wild with some mutated and warped by natural mana, much like my unnaturally big crab. Animals accumulated this mana naturally, by eating smaller organisms and their mana; I had observed this with Gull eating some fish.

Once the mana reach some point nebulous point something must happen. I didn't really give the crab a chance to do what I would have naturally, by forcing it to grow. So, this time, I poured in mana until i could add no more, and left it like that. I withdrew from the crab's mind and waited, watching.

After a couple of hours of saturation and exploration, the crab fell unconscious on the beach of the second cavern. (Sized identically to the first, third and fourth)

I watched fascinated as in the middle of the crab, next to it's tiny heart, the mana condensed down into a solid crystal. The Monster Core. Soon after, the monster woke and continued on with it's life with a few differences.

It now absorbed mana from the air, much like I did. I assume this was 'mana regeneration'. It also moved with purpose, as opposed to before where it seemed to have just been wandering. It made its way through the entire dungeon until it found itself in my core room, behind an arena-like space I intended to be the boss room. After looking at me for a minute, it bowed.

It was a undeniably a bow. The crab spread it's claws, leaned forward and lifted it's back half higher off the sand.

Well, with dedication like that, I have to make you into a proper monster.

I sent it a pleased feeling, diverting a stream off my ever thicker rings, which looked more like the disk of a black hole at this point.

The crab clacked it's claws and I felt a vague sense of joy from our connection when the mana reached him. The mana was quickly absorbed into it's core, which began giving off it's own glow. Along with the mana I sent it the mental image of a Giant crab, one claw enlarged into a shield, the other elongated and sharpened, yet still usable as claws. It's shell was littered with spikes and pits, thick and rugged.

The armor on it's legs extending to cover the joints, but still allowing an unexpected agility. Thinner, but no less impressive armor on it's underside, to cover that potential weakness. The colour of his shell was also altered, becoming a dark grey to match the cavern walls.

I felt awe from the small crustacean, then resolve.

It took the majority of my stored mana, but over the next hour the crab grew. The claws adjusted as I envisioned, the armor growing as planned. His shell, already a greyish brown, changed to match the walls. From a size of a hand, to the size of a dog, then a small pony.

I cautioned him from growing larger, as he would be unable to leave the room if he were any larger. He agreed, with a small amount of disappointment and halted his growth.

I hereby name you Bastian the Crab Knight, the first floor boss. I declared to the not-so-small crab. He seemed pleased with the name, and returned to the arena-like room. The sharpened tips of his legs made satisfying thunks as he walked. Bastian settled against one wall, and half-buried himself in the sand. He made a rather convincing rock, so I modified his room and many of the caverns to have similar shaped rocks.

With the success of Bastian the Crab Knight, I decided to make them the main enemy of this floor. After all, the other two had bred already. It might take a week or two, but I'm sure mana can speed up the process.

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