Character Screen

Name:

-

Gender:

Male

Level:

2

Class:

-

Race:

Giant-Ant

Title:

Dungeon-Born

Health:

140/140

H-Regen:

0.12/sec

Mana:

-/-

M-Regen:

0/sec

Stamina:

160/160

S-Regen:

0.15/sec

Cost:

90 MP

Basic Stats

Strength:

18

Wisdom:

5

Vitality:

13

Intelligence:

5

Dex:

15

Willpower:

5

Looking at it once more, the Core had to be sure that it wasn't confused or had misunderstood. Yet, such a thing would have been hard to do regardless of everything else. It had never misread the screens, after all. And… there wasn't anything to misread. The creature had gained a level, had gained new power just as the entity itself had. How curious such that development was.

What were the requirements for levelling up, anyway? That was easy enough to throw a guess at, the Core believing it to have been due to the act of killing another being. That was the obvious choice, at the very least, the increase in level coming just after the creature under its command had slaughtered the attacker.

This also meant that the Core didn't need to take action itself to gain experience from it. The only requirement was to have the ones under it do the work for it, and it would reap the benefits just as much as the creatures themselves. Though that also begged another question to come forth. One that didn't truly make sense in the larger scheme of things.

What were the precise amounts needed to attain a new level? And how was it calculated? The Core had crushed a creature through the practice of making a stone falling on it, yet hadn't gained a single level. When another kill was stacked on top, though, the increase had come swiftly.

Would this not hint at the requirement being two kills? One would think so initially until the fact came in that the other ant had only killed a single one yet had gotten the same benefits as the Core. Perhaps the requirement was different? Or maybe the method behind the kill was also influential on how the process worked? The Core had been hurt while the other creature had done it without as much as a scratch on its chitin.

It was a subject that the entity knew next to nothing about and would likely not know much about without another group of ants being killed. But, it supposed it would see more results later. If the next kill on the [Dungeon-Born] [Giant-Ant] resulted in it getting another level, while it still took two for the dungeon to have the same level of growth, the Core would know for sure.

The entity barely registered that it had called itself a dungeon, yet neither did it care too much about it. Looking away from its musings and back to the damaged ant in its repertoire, it saw that stumps had been elongating themselves. Steady progress in regeneration of the lost mass. Yet again, the Core couldn't help but believe that it was violating several problems with Mass. But it wasn't like-

Character Screen

Name:

-

Gender:

Male

Level:

1

Class:

-

Race:

Giant-Ant

Title:

Dungeon-Born

Health:

93/130

H-Regen:

0.12/sec

Mana:

-/-

M-Regen:

0/sec

Stamina:

160/160

S-Regen:

0.15/sec

Cost:

90 MP

Basic Stats

Strength:

18

Wisdom:

5

Vitality:

12

Intelligence:

5

Dex:

15

Willpower:

5

Wait. No. There was a problem right there. The health… it was increasing much faster than it should have done naturally. The regeneration was almost done already! The Core was more than a little curious about that process and how it was accelerating its own health recuperation until it realised one insignificant detail. The Mana that was normally around the creature had decreased by a small bit since it last noted it. And since there hardly was a chance that it could simply disappear, there was only one other conclusion to be made.

The [Giant-Ant] was taking the energy in and using the Mana for its own purposes. The actual process of how such a thing was done was utterly incomprehensible to the Core, the only thing being seen was that the middle organ, the one with some parts of the Entity inside, was used to distribute it across the entire body.

The passive intake wasn't the highest in the world, even when the creature was regenerating at such a massive rate. Since it was obvious by now that the ant would regain use of all its limbs, no matter how much had been chopped off previously, the Core decided to use it for another set of tests. What would happen if more Mana was to be forced into the system.

Could it even do something like that? And, if yes, would the effect be positive or negative? The Core could quite clearly think back to the bloated feeling that had come from stuffing itself full of Mana. That experience was not something it wanted to redo, even if it was just on another creature. Yet… there was always the chance that it would feel something other than extreme nausea. And the entity just had to know.

At the sacrifice of cutting a few centimetres of its sight, the Core funnelled more Mana into the downed creature manually. It was a hard process at first, the ant’s internal organs not seeming too keen on accepting the sudden increase at all. A simple order to take it without comment helped stop that resistance, the creature doing nothing to stop the heavy influx of energy.

And… the process was sped up, just as the Core had hoped it would. It took no more than ten simple seconds before the thirty-seven missing health was recovered. It was a wonderful thing to discover, the extreme healing being more than a little powerful. If it could be used during battle… an invincible army did not seem like such a bad idea.

There were still a few logistics problems with that. To do it for more than a single creature, the Core would more than just need to funnel more Mana into the process. Its sight had been reduced by something noticeable while healing a wound that had already been close to fully recovered from. What would it take to heal that during an ongoing fight where the liquids hadn't even finished coming out? And then that cost had to be thought of as only one of several that would likely need constant healing. Would manual regeneration be enough to balance out the costs? Likely not. It was yet another reason that natural regeneration needed to be increased.

Now that the Core had that thought on its mind, it hurriedly went over to its own screen and increased its own regeneration of Mana.

Character Screen

Name:

-

Gender:

-

Level:

2

Class:

Core

Race:

Core

Title:

The Ancient One

Health:

160/160

H-Regen:

0.15/sec

Mana:

46/130

M-Regen:

0.13/sec

Stamina:

-/-

S-Regen:

0/sec

Basic Stats

Strength:

-

Wisdom:

12

Vitality:

15

Intelligence:

13

Dex:

-

Willpower:

12

Available points:

0

There it went with the increase, the available point spent without another thought. But, the Core knew it was the right choice this time. When having the thought of the bonus coming from the title it wore, it was actually an increase of one point two, right? Though… that wasn't shown for some peculiar reason. Maybe the system didn't want decimal points on the stats for some reason.

Which was fair enough. The Core could survive with what it had for now. Instead of doing anything else, it just increased its own Mana Points by spending a minute filling itself back up. The times were changing and time couldn't be wasted with useless thoughts anyway. Too many things were happening to simply lie in wait.

The ant that had now full recovered was back on its feet instantly, walking over to the Core to remain. It wasn't the same size as the other, though no real fault could be found for such a thing. There was only so much that could be done when the level was lower. Though… the Core did wonder if it could do something different with the newly powered-up [Giant-Ant]

The pattern for its creation was likely different at the current moment. Some changes had to have happened with the newer size, after all, so there was no need to even dream that it could create a level two creature with only the pattern gained the first time. However… couldn't the Core kill the ant and gain the pattern that way? If it worked, it would help create even stronger ants that very same instant instead of having to wait for more to level up through combat.

… But the side-effect of it not working would be that a more powerful creature on its side had been killed without reason, more than halving the power that the Core had at its disposal, and perhaps be the reason that it was made to lose his life. While the side-effects of failure could be seen as overdramatic, such thoughts would help keep it alive. And it knew that it just couldn't risk it anyway.

The other, weaker ants, however? Those were fair game to use as it desired. And there was so much more that it needed to see and gain. So with a healthy mind and more than a little dedication, the Core started to produce more soldiers for its army. The first ant came instantly at that thought. The second came a minute later. The third and fourth took one and a half. And the fifth took the longest of all since the Core had used too much Mana on the ones before, taking up an entire two minutes.

And with that, the Core had created more than a few creatures to fight by its side. Seven in total stood proudly beside the core, separated into levels. In other words, the most powerful remained by the entity while all the others were huddled up a few meters away. The Core found the sight a little humorous, even if it had set the scene up by itself. Some stress-relief needed to happen somehow, after all.

But other actions also needed to be taken, not everything able to be as joyous as before. Developments, progress, and all other ways to say it needed to be seen full-time. If another step wasn't being made then it needed to begin that instant. And that instant came at that moment, the Core ready to send out one order to the six ants that stood in the group a few meters away.

‘You will together venture outside of my sight to attain new information, materials, or anything else that I have not seen before. Your journey must not take more than an hour if you can help it. While the attainment of materials is a high priority, I expect you to defend yourself if one in the group is attacked. If the attackers number is over fifty, you must not go back here,’ the Core ordered, making sure that there were enough side requirements that it felt semi-safe about it. With it, they would search out anything interesting for the entity while also making sure that they wouldn't ruin it while doing so. No bringing in the ants that were nearby, no letting themselves be killed, and no leaving others behind to bring out something useless. It wouldn't make sense for anything else.

The six [Giant-Ants] complied with the order without any resistance, just as the Core hoped they would. There had been some worries that more vague orders like the one it had made would become more… difficult thing to interpret. The ants were perhaps assisted strongly through the entity itself, but that alone did not mean they could think for themself. There were still issues and there were likely still limits, even if the Core hadn't hit them yet.

And the entity did hope that the current orders wouldn't show that off later on. It had tried to set up what needed to be prioritised, yet it was sure that there was some kind of error somewhere. Even when the wordings were less important than the intent behind it, there had to be something.

But, as the last of the weaker ants stepped outside of where the Core could sense them, the entity knew that it needed to let the issue lie where it needed to be. It wouldn't be able to truly do much against it now.

However… if the ants would go off and kill themself, there was nothing wrong with creating a few more while it waited for some results. Just a few. Only five. Or twenty.