“Rule #50 - Though you have entered the same dungeon a thousand times, never assume that you are safe. Dungeons are terrible and treacherous.

- From 50 Rules for Dungeon Divers

Tam did his usual song and dance on noticing I had a new skill. However, I payed him little attention. I was far more concerned with all the things I could suddenly see.

For the first time I could see what my aura actually was. It looked like a spider’s wet dream. A vast intricate web with me as the spider at the center. It grew ever finer, but even the coarsest strands made spider silk look like rope. Thousands of threads met in the center and congregated inside me. And these were simply the main strands. Hooks, slightly thinner, branched out in every direction. Countless finer strands attached to the main branches, each with their own hooks. And each strand had more strands, with more branches finer still in an endless fractal pattern that went past my ability to perceive. Past a certain point all I could see was the faint glittering fog that indicated their presence, like someone had made fog out of fiberglass.

I could see the ambient mana in the air far clearer too. My aura waved its fine threads in the currents of mana like kelp beneath the sea. And amidst the mana currents I could see glimmering threads sweeping about the room from the beam enchantment on the wall. The other four runes effects could be seen too. The main threads of aura that ended in their area of influence were capped with a construct attached to a thread that gradually faded from my perception once they left my aura.

My aura pulsed like a living entity. Faint pulses of mana streamed back and forth across it. All of it was lit with the faint glow of mana being passively absorbed and traveling until it reached me.

And then there was me. For all the complexity of my aura, it was a pale imitation of the web in my core. I could only detect the topmost section, but this was not a few measly thousand strands. Here, there had to be millions, billions, of threads pulsing with mana racing between them. No doubt if Tam could see them he would cry for joy. Eh… he would probably cry for joy just being able to see my normal aura.

I lost myself in studying and observing. My remaining mana drained away without a care. This... was beautiful. For the first time I had seen something that surpassed the beauty of my old life. This kind of discovery and joy was worth it. And it made me feel alive. Perhaps it was silly, but seeing this I felt more organic. More connected to being a living thing. It felt like hours before insistent feelings from Exsan dragged me away. Exsan cared nothing for beauty, and barely seemed aware of my new perception. Sigh. Well, I suppose it’s back to the grindstone.

Now that I could see mana more clearly, I understood how my aura kept mana still. Threads and their finer counterparts shifted and wraped around an area, holding the mana within. Neighboring threads drew closer to assist, their own extremities reaching closer. In the end, the threads drew together, their hooks interwoven to hold them in place against the pressure of the trapped mana.

The structure was far from perfect. Threads poked awry and hooks were out of alignment, creating weaknesses. When I tried to command my aura to fix a particular flaw though, nothing happened; everything was an automatic process. However, as I focused on simply making my aura hold the mana tighter, I could see strands slowly bending themselves and hooks realigning. For now I had no direct control, but my aura did bend to my will. Slowly.

When the feeder activated again, I used the mana to examine other aspects of my earth manipulation skills and the beam runes. Something about the two was very different, but I was not sure what actually happened. The surface level was the same though. The little hooks would gather bits of stone and hold them together until they were fused, or the reverse for destruction. I could see mana pulsing down my aura both when I created and destroyed stone. Honestly this was frustrating. If I used mana to create stone, surely I should gain mana when I destroyed it? Nope. Maybe mana could create or destroy something? That would play havoc with conservation of energy, but I didn’t necessary know if that rule applied here. Well, it probably still applied to most things, mana could just be special.

In comparison, understanding how my aura expanded was fairly straightforward. Mana was sent out from my core until it reached the end of the largest threads. There, assisted by the smaller nearby threads, the mana was extruded and shaped into more threads. This process then carried down to the smaller threads. Since my main threads in the room were all clamped onto by an enchantment, I couldn’t even start the process of making more aura. The mana gathered at the ends and was funneled away into the runes before anything could be done with it. They glowed when I tried, maybe they turned the mana into light?

I took stock of myself at the end of the day. Honestly, I was worried about myself. My mind was clear, focused, inhumanly so. I hurt from the clarity of being forced to think at all times. My emotions roiled beneath the surface like a turbulent sea. It was making it progressively harder to ignore Exsan. It made it harder to organize my thoughts without getting distracted. My mind could continue to think and still start to become useless.

I knew what the problem was. Sleep. I needed sleep desperately. I needed to eat, laugh, and communicate too. I ached with need.

I hadn’t thought about it before I died, but I used to touch other people all the time. Little casual things like a quick hug or handshake. A brief touch on the shoulder.

I had a sense of touch now, but it wasn’t the same. I felt the stone. I felt the air. I felt myself and Tam. It wasn’t the same.

And I was not communicating at all. I was deliberately avoiding communication. I was actually acting deliberately to deceive him, and it was exhausting. I felt like I had been locked in solitary confinement. I knew why that was such a terrible punishment. I didn’t just want other people right now, I craved it, required it.

And this was going to make me desperate, and desperation would lead to bad choices. And from there, disaster was almost inevitable.

I hadn’t simply been idle. I had looked to see if I could solve the problem, but I had no real options. The AP store had an option for a body, but it was so incredibly far beyond my purchasing ability that it might as well not exist. Besides, if I could make a body I might be able to escape in so many other ways anyway. No. For now, the only thing I had was my own mind.

I meditated.

I was alone.

The faint rush of mana swirled all around me. I had no breath, but I rhythmically stopped and started the absorption of mana. Hold, then let mana flow in. The life-giving flow of mana came in, pause and hold, relax and repeat. I did not hurry. I had all the time in the world for this. I could simply… let go. I didn’t have a body to get itchy. No hair to respond to faint changes in the air. I could focus. Eventually I stopped focusing on mana at all. All my attention went inward. I felt the faintest stirring of something deeper, but my mind floated above it. Hours passed in silent meditation before I finally reemerged.

I... had not felt this good for ages. I was always alert. My thoughts were always sharp edged. Meditation let me dull them for a moment and settle my over stressed emotions. I felt rested. Well, I had something new to add to my routine.

And now I could truly think.

Ugh, I had been taking some things for granted. There were more things I needed to find out about myself. Regardless, now I could reexamine my situation.

I had made an assumption about my capabilities and assumed I could only focus on one thing at a time. Honestly, focusing on just one thing was great for meditation, but not ideal for other circumstances if I had better capabilities.

Humans, when all was said and done, were really bad at multitasking. What they did was switch back and forth from multiple tasks. It was possible to do this fast enough to seem like multitasking, but it usually only surface deep. There was a reason talking on the phone while driving was a truly terrible idea.

However, I didn’t know if I still had this limitation. I had already processed more input than I thought humans were capable of. So why not have the ability to split my attention in multiple ways. If a dungeon worked the way I thought they did, and had to handle the task of managing literally hundreds or thousands of adventurers, then they absolutely had to be able to process more. That did not even include all the monsters, environments, lighting, traps, and other details that needed to be managed.

If I had the capability to handle that much data, then there was essentially no limit to the number of tasks that I could practice simultaneously. Though, to be fair, I had no particular reason to believe that I would have that level of capability right away. Only testing could tell.

For now, I was not going to test anything until I finished my list. Sadly, I would probably get distracted if I wasn’t careful.

What else was worth studying?

Well, my mana restriction could be practiced in multiple areas simultaneously. At the same time, I could do what I had already been working on before, absorbing from as small an area as possible and as swiftly as I could.

So far everything I had made was spheres. Spheres were a great shape. They had the smallest possible surface area to volume. However, I wasn’t certain that was actually a good thing for absorbing mana. Maybe more surface area would actually be a good thing to capture that mana flow. I could try flat disks, toruses, slices, cubes, stars, and any other shape I could think of. It might be worth practicing oblong shapes so that I could extend my focus perfectly around a dense mana source like Tam.

I needed to continue what I had already done, too, studying my mana as it worked. And since I had so little of it, I needed to continue to be as efficient as possible.

I had so much to study. Thousands of strand of mana flowed through my aura from the beam enchantment. If they were going to merrily wave through my aura constantly, I might as well learn from them.

Tam cast spells at me every day. I had been familiarizing myself with the structures simply by force of habit without actually trying to understand then. I was getting mana now. I could replicate the spells in stone in my hidden area. I had no idea how Tam compared to others. Judging by the enormous amounts of mana he threw around, I was simply going to assume that he was very powerful. Who knew what I might learn from him?

My aura had potential too. I already knew that it could hold, break apart, and fuse matter. It could also interact with mana directly. It had the capacity to interact with both the physical and the immaterial. I might not have conscious control of my aura, but what if I could learn that? If I could, I would be able to use my aura to manipulate stone directly. I might even be able to do it without mana. And if I could do that, even if it was very slow, it would be a huge achievement. I might even learn to directly move and alter other materials.

And if I could manipulate mana… well I could do some impressive things with that. There was an enchantment constantly active below me, and another that fed me. Well, I didn’t really want to break the one that fed me… If I could manipulate and move or destroy mana constructs then I would have a much better chance of escaping.

Mana flowed through me all the time. It left just as quickly, but it was at least possible that I could use some of it before it flowed away. If nothing else, I might be able to expand my aura constantly.

Now that I could limit the flow of mana, I should practice doing that for one of the purposes I wanted it for most, to prevent mana from flowing out of me in the first place. And maybe I could speed mana up too. I could make the feeder give out more that way. And even more I could trap mana in an area and then try moving or compressing it. Mana was my lifeblood. Anything I could do to manipulate it better would only help.

Tam and the crystals that held mana were still opaque to my sight. Watching them, especially the one on top of the feeder stand as it slowly changed might give me better sight or at least help me understand why my sight was blocked.

I lived in a world with game rules and commands. What if I had missed some? What more options might be available? It might be nothing, but it could allow me to do far more.

And this was hardly an exhaustive list. I wasn’t from this world and I carried knowledge from another realm. Some of the things I could do were purely mental too. I wasn’t going to try all of them now, since I didn’t want to tip Tam off, but they were possibilities.

What skills might I get from demonstrating knowledge of math, cartography, chemistry, physics, and so on? Sadly, it was impossible to hide the fact that these skills required a thinking mind. There were, however, some things I could do that would make sense for a dungeon. I could make sculptures, art, and traps. These kind of creative pursuits would probably be good for my mental health anyway. And maybe I would get skilled enough to make art out of pure mana. I was sure there was more I could think of, but for now I just wanted to get started and practice.