Day and night produced different forms of Mana. The Core had not realized it before, not having been aware of much surrounding that cycle, to begin with. At some point, it had learned of the concept of the planet moving, and that it even was a plant, to begin with. It circled around itself, around an even larger piece of energy far away, and that was only the beginning, it not stopping and going beyond infinity. Yet the Entity was getting ahead of itself.

During the night, as it had come to be, the Light disappeared and with it came Darkness. Both were just what one thought they were. One was but light and the other the absence of it. With no flaming piece of material being pointed towards that side of the planet, it wasn’t being brightened up, after all. The Core understood that much.

What it had yet to understand was how the Mana in the air was affected by it as well. When light shined upon the small particles, it was transformed into [Light]. [White Mana] came to buzz around in the air, not overwhelming but able to be sensed with time. The Core hadn’t noticed it, truth be told, but that was only due to the very minor amounts that could be seen. For, as it was, there were many colours of Mana flying around, every piece and material needing to be around for whatever reason.

Yet none changed as much the moment that the sun disappeared. The [White Mana] was still there, yes, but it became small compared to the [Black Mana] that came to replace its former position and grandeur. It wasn’t overwhelming either, and it certainly didn’t bear the same power that the Queen had once carried. Yet the Energies were still there, strong enough to [Enhance] any Magic in that field. During the day, [Healing] would be more powerful than during the night, being assisted by all the loose Mana. It was an incredible discovery, though not one which the Core thought it could put much work into at the current moment.

It was merely an observation, one discovered through pure chance. Or maybe those chances had been altered with how much time had been spent studying the Mana outside. The Core had not looked at any other points in its Domain, thought about anything else, for several days. There was a need to finish its current work, after all, and not getting it over with would only delay the needed tasks. There was much to do but doing it one at a time would speed it up. During all at once was… not preferable, and switching at random was even less so. By getting through it without complaint, the Core could have it over with faster than anything else. In the more positive outlook, it at least decided the new task after the old one was finished.

And progress had been had, after all. Putting so much work and time into one single objective made it possible for steps to be had through effort, and the Core embodied that with the results gained over the last four days. All of the [Electrum] pieces had been put up perfectly, though there had been a need to reposition it by a few centimetres a couple of times. That had taken several hours out of the timeline but the Core had accepted it as payment for the next step in the process.

The aforementioned dome-like structure of Mana-Panels had been… quite the idea. It required something other than perfect squares, something that allowed a small curve to appear after a while. The Core had spent so long on making sure it could all work perfectly, setting up a working prototype before anything else on a smaller scale. It was a beautiful piece of work and I was more than proud of it.

As a side-note, [Electrum] was more than worth its weight in gold. It provided the stability that the Core had truly and utterly craved, letting the Mana-Panels hang up in the air, only attached to the material and one point and then only Mana at all the others. Without that piece of Magical Stone, the Core was unsure if it would have been able to do what it had done at that point. The time and effort required to have set up anything like that dome would have been… terribly wasteful. Even the one inside the Main-Domain was simply a cheap copy, the plan being made as it went along and smaller pieces forced into place when needed. The Entity truly did plan to make it more symmetrical when it had the time, yet such a thing was put back on the task list. The very back. The current system was perhaps not slightly yet it worked as it needed to, meaning there was no reason to think of it as unbecoming. It would be more like a passion project when the initial Dungeon-Design was finished.

The Mana-Panels had been finished on day two of it all. Most of that time had been constant double-checking to make sure that they all meshed well together, that the [Electrum]’s ability to mesh Magical Parts together worked even when only touched indirectly, and that nothing was being pushed with time. The Core was still worried that some panel would falter, even if no such hint had been observed in the last two days.

Because that’s how it had been since that part was finished. Along with the much smaller dome down under, which allowed the Core to manipulate three meters down, the Entity had finally been ready to fill it up with unconnected Mana. And with such a large space, it had taken so much more time than initially estimated. Those underground parts had most certainly added to it, yet the Core could even then still not believe it. The density just seemed to be at a constant resistance. It didn’t want to go up but neither did it want to go down, instead extremely sated with staying where it currently was. The Entity guessed it to be due to the very open nature of the new part of its domain, the air filtering in and out constantly. The notice to not let any Mana get out could certainly be some cause of it if the Core had to wager a guess, yet it shouldn’t have done it to such a degree.

There was also thought that the size of the Domain was slowly becoming so much larger than it could truly hold. The Queen had been unable to give a clear answer on how much disconnected Mana could be sent out before it began to get headaches and lowered reactions, yet the Mana that the Core was directly connected to was certainly hitting it closer. The Mana-Panels outside had been initially designed to be thicker, yet the spatial constraints, the maximum amount of space that the Entity could mentally withstand having, had been overshot at that initial design, forcing the current one to be implemented instead.

It held the Mana just as well but also meant that the Core needed to make it stronger if it ever was to increase the Mana-Density in its Domain. A mere tripling of the current Energy would likely be enough to make some weaker points break. The Core thought it unsafe yet such things were needed to be thought of at some moments. It just knew that there was no chance of it building any further additions for the next long while and left it at that.

But, the new part of the Domain had finally been cut out and placed perfectly. The Mana-Walls were perfectly defensive, the Dome made oh so beautifully, and the Mana inside stirred perfectly. Yet the greatest thing was the lack of anybody being able to see it without first having Mana that interacted with the place.

Not a single piece of Energy was being lost over time. The Panels were totally and utterly perfect in keeping everything inside. A few particles here and there even had a chance of coming inside and assimilating into the grander structure, effectively increasing its strength with time. While that was a hidden negative, since increased size at the current time meant one small step closer to the Spatial Limit, the Core was sure it would grow happier about the addition with time.

For now, it could simply look upon its work and be happy about it. Mana had been spent well. Every piece of the river-side was inside its domain. Or, at least the parts close to the entrance. It would still take more than a small while before it all came to be within its borders. So much Intelligence would be required, so much space as well… it was a dream to be sure. Even though the time spent funnelling Mana inside the new part of the Domain, the Coer had dreamed about working itself to the brink of death and creating a new line up the river to gasp at the Mana-Source there was to see.

At some points, it had desired to cut out some parts of the Domain, just so that it would have the extra space to allocate to building a Mana-Line up there. Yet too much work had been put into the current space, too much that could be lost if the source wasn’t closed. The Core would certainly figure out the truth yet that truth would not be now. In later times, though? Most definitely. The secret behind that much energy needed to be found. if the Entity could harness it… it would be a grand day for all that was beneath it, the Core able to allocate so much Mental Capacity to other tasks. Until then, however, it would need to press on with the newer tasks.

First, however, it needed some comments on the work. The Queen, more specifically. There weren’t many other living creatures on the Core’s side and even fewer that would ever have a chance at uttering a word. The Entity did wager a guess that it could teach the regular [Giant-Ants] to draw if ordered to, yet it knew that such a thing would be more its own work than the creatures. A sad observation to be sure since it severely limited the number of intelligent monsters present.

Yet those that were there were still much better than anything else that could be asked for. While the Queen had started as an entity that very much wanted to kill the Core, she had turned out to be quite the resourceful ant, able to guide the Entity onto new fronts. The Core had wanted to go deeper into the cave system yet she had spoken about what could be found outside. And the Core had listened, wanting life instead of stone and ore. The idea of endless trees instead of endless material was the dream for the Entity, the idea of Biological Diversity helping those decisions along. It wanted to know how every single type of plant and beast worked and it wanted to put them all together. The ideas surrounding the perfect creature were still out there, but the Core was sure it would achieve it some day.

It knew about the Evolutions already. It understood that the Rarities meant nothing. Yet it also knew that those evolutions were not limited to once or twice but able to be done on a near-infinite scale. If done enough times, if each generation of the creature proved more perfection, would a point not be reached where it couldn’t physically get any better? It could take a hundred or a thousand years, but the Core was starting to believe it possible. With infinite variants, there had to be something that stood on the top, something so extremely balanced that it was good at everything, better, and could survive everything. The Core, in essence, wanted to create a [God]. It was one of the last steps in becoming one of those itself, after all, yet it knew that such a thing would require it to be first more powerful than the standard ones. It was a hard requirement yet the Core knew it could do it. Hard work and perseverance would allow everything in the end.

‘I take it that you are either done with the exterior parts of your domain or you have given up on it,’ the Queen stated, walking away from her children and through the newly created tunnel. The walk from the Main Domain and out into the new one was quite long when one had to work with only six legs. The Core could only be happy about needing none at all to move its sight around. ‘Which is it?’

‘I have completed the outer parts of my domain, yes,’ the Coer confirmed, watching as the ant moved through the last parts. While it wasn’t quick, it wasn’t as slow as the other ants either. The Queen had perhaps been downgraded since her glory days yet she was still much more powerful than any of the other underlings which the Core had control over. It was happy to have her. ‘The Mana has been inserted in the needed places, the Electrum has been used to its full potential, and the Mana-Walls are without errors.’

The Queen said nothing at first, the ant still needing to see it for herself. The Core understood fully that she could have simply used Mana-Sonar to watch it from afar yet it seemed that being there in person was the superior way of doing it. There was no questioning why this was so, the Entity instead imagining it to be a mental thing. With so many limited to their natural senses, using Mana-Sense heavily would come at the cost of it being uncomfortable. If one had to take a few more steps instead of just sending out a pulse of Mana then so be it. The Core Would take that needed compromise if it meant its creatures were happy and fulfilled.

‘It does look nice enough,’ the Queen finally commented as she walked out into the grass. ‘Very empty, however. Makes it feel much smaller than it is.’

The Core couldn’t say if that was a subjective observation or if all living creatures had such issues. There was no way to confirm or deny it either since there weren’t any larger numbers of intelligent creatures around. it could have forced the dumber creatures to answer but, like stated before, it would come at the risk of the Core simply feeding itself the wrong information. And that wasn’t allowed to happen, the bias being able to grow from such things.

‘Do you have any idea about how we might fix that?’ the Core questioned, looking over the area again. It was about thirty meters from the two furthest points, a decent distance for most medium-sized creatures. It would take more than a few seconds to cross it for some yet the Core desired to increase it even more.

‘You need to decrease visibility, as the first step,’ the Queen started. ‘We don’t want anybody to know the true scales at what we operate at yet we also can’t have anybody be too blindsided. If they believe the place to be truly wild, they won’t engage and certainly don’t find the treasures within. Instead… perhaps mark it like a road of sorts. A winding pathway with trees and bushes as barriers. How far up does your dome reach?’

‘Far enough for one of the younger trees, ‘ the Core answered, double-checking to make sure it didn’t lie. ‘Though, the older ones will likely grow to have their tops above the area I control.

‘Since I don’t think either of us cares about manipulating the tops of trees for our dark desires, I believe we can work with that,’ the Queen answered. ‘But, it isn’t like we have any chance of relocating any of the established trees. The roots would require too much work to handle right, and some of these around us are deep enough to reach the cave system.’

‘You don’t suppose we plant one and wait for it to grow?’ the Core suggested. It knew that they could get bigger over time, after all. Waiting for a few weeks wouldn’t be too hard since it had other tasks to distract itself within the meantime.

‘I don’t think you have a clear idea of how many decades that would take,’ the Queen sent back. ‘Though… we could still plant one. And I was meant to show you how [Force Evolution] worked. So… how about we use a few of these trees as the perfect test subjects?’

The Core had nothing against that idea.