It was there for quite a long time, doing nothing but just trying to be as still as possible. The Core did not fathom the idea of thought, the idea of doing anything with its Mana. In fact, it had even shut the output to the outside off, leaving it in total darkness. But that darkness was a comfort as well, the Core knowing that nothing could lead other ants over to it.

But… that line of thought didn't last for many hours. The health regenerated with time, leaving the Core as pristine as before. And the mental damage, the one not counted in numbers, was pressed against the desire to know more, to know for certain that something like it would never happen again.

For the Core’s instincts were quite interesting. It didn't want to die, yet it also wanted to explore. It wanted to know more, yet it didn't want to risk its own life for that goal. There were desires, yet those were overruled when it all became too much. Yet even those overrulings could in turn be overruled. It was all one big game of seeing what was more important. The Core did perhaps not want to see any ant again, yet it knew that one equalled the chance of another being there as well. With that chance, it likely mattered little what the Core wanted. Time would allow anything to happen.

And so it opened up the gates again, allowing a small bit of its own Mana to constantly filter out into the darkness. But that darkness didn't stay for long, of course, the energy bouncing off anything and everything, allowing the Core to see whatever moved and whatever lied still. More precisely did it currently let it see the latter, for the ant beside the Core had not moved for a very long time.

The Mana that once sat inside the creature had all but dissipated, nearly every part of the body having been dissolved into the rocks below. Even something as mighty as the ant was not prone to staying after losing all of its health. That was understandable in some sense, and the Core understood fully if it would have the same fate.

Yet… what was that? Right there, inside of the corpse of the now-dead ant, was something different than what the Core usually saw when looking at the still things. It seemed like a… at first, it might have been a larger point of Mana, but the Core knew it couldn't be that. The colour was too different from everything else inside. In fact, the colour seemed to be so much like the Core’s own.

With a wary mind, a tendril of Mana was created. It travelled out of the Core and right into the corpse, grasping the larger piece of something. Pure contact didn't make any reaction at all, so the Core simply brought it back within its own borders.

How peculiar a thing. The Core thought as much as it entered through the border with no problems. It was almost like a piece of Mana. It certainly looked like one, after all. Yet, no matter how much it looked or acted like one, the Core knew for a fact that it wasn't. The feeling was all wrong, the sense being put out by it by much different than anything else it had seen before.

Wanting to try out how much it truly did act like Mana, the Core took it one step further. Instead of just holding the peculiar piece of energy inside itself, it let go of it, allowing it to slowly float down towards the Pattern that held all the Mana.

Here, the first sign of contact was more than enough of a reaction. A moment was spent in blinding light, the next with the piece gone and a message that read something that the Core hadn't expected at all.

A [Skill] has been improved!

You have understood [Mana-Manipulation] more deeply

That… did not make sense to the Core. There was nothing it had done to work more carefully with the manipulation of Mana. It had not learned anything new, and if it had it hadn't been in the recent moments of its life. Why exactly did it get it now of all times?

And then the Core understood, new information raging into its mind. It was hard to describe. The word Pattern came to mind, yet it didn't feel exactly like the patterns seen in Mana before. This one was more… deep. It talked of the flesh, the symmetric, how each individual piece of Mana was supposed to be fitted, everything coming together to create one thing. A level one [Giant-Ant].

The Core could create it. If it was asked at that very moment to do it, then it would have taken nothing but thought to take out its Mana and start to create it. There was nothing holding it back from doing it other than the Core’s extreme surprise at the events. That was what it had been. The piece seen in the dead ant's body had been its own pattern.

Did the Core have something like it? There was the [Mana-Pattern] that it could mess around with if it pleased, but there had been none clues if there was something deeper than that. With the new information, with the fact being that a sentient being had such a recipe for its creation, the Core believed that it might just have one.

Not that there was any desire to bring it out at that very moment. The only viable method of doing so seemed to currently be the method called death which would release all the energies into the world. While there was a desire to check out exactly how the Core was built up, there was likewise a desire to keep on being able to desire anything at all. It was easy to figure out which desire triumphed over the other in that instance.

It was peculiar. The ant was so utterly complex that the Core knew it wouldn't have been able to figure out half of the Pattern without explicitly being shown what it was. It had never even thought of Moving around Mana in such a way, had never imagined that doing it would make the conversion to physical matter possible. But… it wasn't only physical matter. There was also something else in the middle. Not counting the Mana-Lines scattered across the body, there was something just beside one of the more centred organs. What was that? It wasn't made of physical matter yet it still took up a small amount of space, no matter how little that space mattered. And it was connected to just about everything in the entire body. What was its purpose?

It was a question for another time. First, the Core had to figure out something. It wanted desperately to figure out the new limits of [Mana-Manipulation]. There was close to nothing that would stop it from learning all it could, of course, yet there was one thing that might prove fatal in the long term. The Ant could kill the Core easily if given time. Why exactly would there be any desire to spawn a creature that wouldn't care about anything other than killing the creature?

Well, it would be very interesting to do. That was how the Core saw it, at the very least, the desire for investigation triumphing anything else. However, it still had a strong desire to come out of the experience alive, so it knew that certain precautions needed to be made.

First, a defence was created. Or maybe it would have been better to call it an offence of sorts. The new information that had been awarded to the Core through the upgrade was quite interesting, to the point where it could sideline it to other pieces of information it had already possessed. One such part was the creation of [Stone]. When the actual technique was down, creating the material was easy enough, though the cost was quite high. Too high to do at a larger level, in fact.

Any ideas about just creating a wall around itself were certainly not accepted because of that. However, the previous method of eliminating the ant was much less resource-intensive. It simply required stone to be created on the roof and then made brittle enough so that it could be destroyed at a moment's notice. Most of the Mana even recovered, though some were lost because of a lot being spewed too quickly in one direction and getting out of the Core’s line of sight. It really needed to work on that range soon.

But, still. A defence was made and the ant was ready to be created. However, looking ahead at what the stone had cost to make, the Core double-checked its status to make sure that it had enough Mana to actually do it. If it failed midway due to lacking resources, it wouldn't do anything but just hurt it in the end. And that was stupid, no matter how one looked at it.

Character Screen

Name:

-

Gender:

-

Level:

1

Class:

Core

Race:

Core

Title:

The Ancient One

Health:

160/160

H-Regen:

0.15/sec

Mana:

130/130

M-Regen:

0.12/sec

Stamina:

-/-

S-Regen:

0/sec

Basic Stats

Strength:

-

Wisdom:

12

Vitality:

15

Intelligence:

12

Dex:

-

Willpower:

12

The Core was still more than a little unhappy at the health being so utterly high. While there perhaps was perks of being able to sustain more hits at once, there was also some very great perks behind having more of the stats which the Core used on a very regular basis. Just five more willpower would certainly boost the Core to a level of Manipulation higher than ever before. With the title bonus, it would equal out to, what, seventeen full points? It was more than anything it had done before, and the difference would likely be more than just great.

But, no matter. There were other things to think about and other parts to make sure worked. The Mana was as high as it could be without overloading it, and that was everything that the Core could work with. Oh, how it hoped that more wouldn’t be needed.

With a wary mind that grew warier by the second, the Core started out the process. It was slow at first, the pieces not exactly falling into place like it wanted them to. But steadily, it all began to work so much better, everything becoming more aligned with what the Core wanted to do. It all became like it needed to be. The differences between what was seen in the Pattern and the product was so minimal that even with a keen eye one couldn't see anything.

Creating it took somewhere around a minute. Checking after what had been done took much longer, mostly because the Core feared that it had screwed something up. Yet, no matter how closely it looked at it all, there was no flaw to be found, the steady creation truly being able to stand toe to toe with what would have taken much longer. It was perfect enough to be created.

Letting the Mana concert at precisely the same moment, turning everything into physical matter or the type of Mana it needed to be, the Core relaxed slightly as the newly formed Ant took its first steps.

… And promptly fell onto its stomach, clearly not able to walk. There was some fear about it being a fault in the creation, to the point where the Core stood ready to squash in its head with a rock, but some patience allowed the truth to be revealed. The newborn had simply never tried it before. Yet, it was still a quick learner.

The first minute was spent trying to stand at all. The second was spent warily moving one foot at a time. The third was when it could walk at full speed with no trouble. Though… the fourth was when it tried to leave the confines of the Core’s range of sight. And that just couldn't do.

Hoping that the previous trick would still work, the Core bundled together with a string of Mana with the Intent to keep it in close. The effect was near-instant, the ant doing a one-eighty and moving right back. But… it didn't move back towards the bundle of Mana that had been sent out. Just like the Ant before it. The Core was ready to crush the ant at that very moment, stone already being prepared to fall on the thing's head.

Yet it waited for when it realised that the ant's mandibles were not ready to attack. And, while it was at it, the Core had learned that the front end of the body did not contain an extra pair of legs but was actually something called mandibles. It was incredible how such things worked, the tool readily able to be used as both digging utilities while also providing ample weaponry should the need occur for it.

Yet to attack, the ant would need to open them up, just like the previous ant had done the moment that it walked towards the Core. But… the current ant did nothing like that, simply moving close to the Core before stopping in its tracks, the only movement being the wafting around the head and the antennas also having some movement on top. It looked entirely uninterested in chowing down on the Core. Yet… why exactly was that so?

And then the Core looked a little closer and realised a very important fact. The Mana inside of the insect matched very closely to the Mana inside of itself. Or, at least some parts in the middle did, the body, in general, having the regular colouring that the ant had showcased previously. But, inside the very middle was a part of the Core itself. And that likely had more than a little importance in the matter. Just to be sure, [Appraisal] was used.

Character Screen

Name:

-

Gender:

Male

Level:

1

Class:

-

Race:

Giant-Ant

Title:

Dungeon-Born

Health:

130/130

H-Regen:

0.12/sec

Mana:

-/-

M-Regen:

0/sec

Stamina:

160/160

S-Regen:

0.15/sec

Basic Stats

Strength:

18

Wisdom:

5

Vitality:

12

Intelligence:

5

Dex:

15

Willpower:

5

… That wasn't what had been seen previously. Instead of getting a sentence or two about the race in general, the Core was allowed a full look at the character screen. Just what had been done to achieve such a thing? The mystery only grew bigger and bigger.

Or, well, until the Core looked over at the tile of the Ant and noticed a very large indicator of something having been changed due to the way that the creature was made. [Dungeon-Born]. Just what was that supposed to mean? Focusing on it brought the needed answers.

Dungeon-Born

A being made by a Dungeon-Core, created for the purpose of eternal servitude. The one who bears this title will go forth as the servant of the Dungeon-Core, doing what is needed no matter the costs attached.